On line Video Confessions. The First Church of New Purism.

The Irreverend Jan Nieupjur of the First Church of New Purism.

Now available for on-line video confession. Guaranteed absolution and fast-tracking to heaven.

Jan Nieupjur, Gloaming, marshmallow dreams and a bonfire of Tory vanities.

Rudely awakened from my, post liquid luncheon snooze, by an helicopter chattering overhead like an Inuit naturist's teeth, I peered, in an old fashioned fashion, from the front door only to notice old friend Jan Nieupjur, standing on the corner, looking nonplussed, in a myopically challenged kind of way, at a discarded tailors dummy.

'What ho! Jan'. I cried in greeting. 'What ails thee?'

He limped, his Zimmer frame rattling like a pox doctors clerk, over the cobbles to the six foot perimeter barbed wire.

'Just taking my post Covid libido out on a test run. Judging by my groin's response to that charming young thing on the corner and her reaction to my Seventh Avenue come on, I am fucked... Or not fucked. If you get my drift'.

I handed him a glass of the funeral sherry I keep to ward the barflies off my good stuff and pointed out that she was, in fact, a dummy.

'You bet'. Ejaculated Jan. 'I have three florins in my pocket itching to be spent. Enough to get her back to Estonia and still have change'.

I gave him the address of a wonderful sex therapist in Barnard Castle I had once had the pleasure to consult.

We talked on into the burgeoning gloaming of our lives. Toasting marshmallow dreams on a bonfire of Tory vanities.

Racism in the UK today.

Jan Nieupjur writes:

I read today that 25% of the population is openly racist. Add to that the 50% of the other 75% who weren't being honest that gives you a figure of 62.5% of the population as racist in some shape or form. Full marks to UKIP for tapping into this. My prognosis is that the Tories will move to the right to capture this voting mass, Labour will move back to the left in an an attempt to regain some honour, the Lib Dems will go back to buggery and shooting dogs (apologies to anyone who does not remember the glory days of the Liberals), UKIP will vanish and the Green party will remain a single issue party without a hope in hell. Shoot my dog If I'm wrong Jeremy Thorpe.

The Guggenheim and Warhol

My memories are like motes of dust; occasionally they sparkle and when they do I must capture them and pin them down like formaldehyde stunned butterflies. Sometimes the memory itself stuns me; as if I too have been dipped in the capture jar. Old Nabokov always liked a drop of his Killing fluid.

I am reminded (by an annonymous message (although I know who the message is from; how could I forget her)) of my performance at the Guggenheim in the mid 80's, I had intended to roller-skate all the way down the ramp at the gallery. Warhol was to film the event on super 8 and we intended to present a copy of the finished film to all the major galleries around the world apart from the Guggenheim itself. The purpose of the act was to create a 'fast forward' of my life and hint at my impact on modern art...

Warhol of course did not turn up! He had been pissed off with me for some time and just didn't bother. I was nabbed by security as I made my uncertain way down ( I had never roller-skated before) and unceremoniously removed from the premises. As I sat undoing the laces of my skates I was joined by a young French/Italian woman who had witnessed the whole thing. We talked about art and literature. We talked about Dylan and Springsteen. Her Name was Mona Hebuterne (Ithink I have spelled it right) and she gave me a pebble she had found on a beach in Devon; the pebble had a hole through the centre... I still have that pebble in my studio; when I need to focus on a single object or image I view it through the hole in the pebble. The pebble also reminds me of that day and of a magical woman who vanished as suddenly as she arrived.

It also reminds me my old friend Warhol.
Andy and I had had a mercurial relationship. I had met him in the sixties, he was working on his soup tins and stuff like that. I had arrived at the studio we shared to find Andy gone and a set of monochrome prints of Marilyn Monroe on the table: they looked unfinished to me so I applied bright overpaint to the prints; lips, eyelids and hair came alive... I was elated. Andy was not. We had a blazing row upon his return:
'Pop'. He said ( he always called me pop). 'I do not think that is art, pop'.
'Andy' I replied. 'One day the world will be clamouring for my 'popart'.
Well I guess Andy made a few bucks from that idea. But I'm not bitter. Andy then took to stealing my wigs and wearing them in public. He also airbrushed me from all the photographs of us in the studio... The rest isn't history.