Vengl Funfbenger, the Belgian maths surrealist and artist. A guest retrospective by the TOOHIGHBROWFORU blog writer Jeffanen Argle.

Where to start? Where to start indeed? I have been told to assume that you will know nothing of the immense body of work that Funfbenger produced, in his all too short life.

Assume that I know more than you? Nothing would make me happier. Let me just pop off and refresh my artisanal coffee and let’s go.

Vengl was born into a difficult childhood after his mother left before he was born and he was brought up entirely by his accountant father. Vengl spent a lot of time around the feet of his father and developed a love/hate relationship with numbers. He would later find his oeuvre would, almost predictably, be him exploring this dichotomy in his personality.

It is also said that his mother was very artistic, and went on to become a semi-famous cheese sculptor. Sadly these facts cannot be verified, but that won’t stop me pontificating about it at length in my most recent blog post. It will also be the subject of the next three Youtube videos that I have made, that will all be released this afternoon.

I digress, which is easy to do when you have a massive ego and little in the way of editing skills.

Funfbenger struggled through the Belgian schooling system, and eventually found himself working in the chocolate mills. As soon as he could afford to, he left Belgium and made his way to the bright lights of England. It was seen as the place to be for any aspiring surrealist at the time.

Arriving in June 1973, he found a country in turmoil, that was very different from what he had expected. He had read avidly about the British surrealist maths movement, and it had all seemed so exciting and alive to him. He greatly saddened his father that he did not want to follow into his family business, and he eventually died of a broken heart shortly after Vengl left. He died of a broken heart, and a series of hideous complications related to his spastic colon, if truth be known.

The death of his father hit him hard, once he eventually overcame his self-absorption long enough to find out, which then came back with a vengeance when he managed to make his father’s death all about him.

It was the catalyst for his first, and probably most famous, work; ‘Surrealist Bingo calling.’ It cannot be denied that when he first started showing this work, as performance art, in working men’s clubs in the North of England it faced a difficult, and on occasion violent, reception.

The genius of the piece was simple, take the working class pursuit of bingo, and subvert it with new and absurd bingo calls. British bingo is well known for the low brow calls that are used, which the audience know and can join in with. It is similar in it’s bawdy style to the British tradition of saucy postcards at the seaside.

Vengl’s new surrealist calls were always challenging and at the cutting edge of numerical improvisational theory. Unfortunately, he went too far when he got a 22 and shouted excitedly “22 – The absence of absinthe!” The bingo players turned nasty when they did not get to hear about the two fat ladies that they were expecting, and Funfbenger was made unwelcome in all Batley clubs.

His work fared much better in the trendier parts of London, when he demonstrated the art at hip jazz clubs, in between the poetry and interminable bass solos. He had found his natural home, in a place where pretension was not only tolerated, but openly celebrated. Word grew excitedly about his dangerous and raw performances, such phrases as ‘Number 11 – A peculiar shade of blue’ and ‘Number 45 – Slow it down and feel the rhythm’ made him exceptionally popular and he was seen to be guaranteed a place in the art firmament.

Sadly this was not to be at the time due to two factors, one was Funfbenger’s unwillingness to perform the same phrases more than once. This was allied to a bad review from The Stoke Sentinels’ art critic, who seemingly just did not appreciate how cutting edge Vengl’s work was.

Arthur Chibble, the art critic wrote angrily; ‘I refuse to acknowledge this as an art form, it is simply saying a number and then saying a random phrase afterwards. Where is the exploration of the human condition in that? What does it tell us about the world we live in or the emotions of the performer? It simply bemuses me that people are paying to see this.”

This review hit Funfbenger hard, he had always struggled with the feeling that what he was doing was a complete waste of time, and this solidified that belief incorrectly in his mind. Like so many artists before him, his work started to get darker and darker as he turned inexorably towards alcohol and doughnuts to cope.

His later work was seen merely a shadow of his youthful exuberance, as was noted by many of his contemporaries. In the fanzine, ‘Artsoul’ the editor, D (He was called David Argent, but he wanted to be known simply as D) recorded ‘Funfbenger is no longer in his salad days, and from his now larger stature one can only assume he is in his bakery days.’ Somewhat nastily one would have to reflect.

In the later years of his career, he would see a revival in his fortunes, when in the early ‘80s a new surrealist bingo calling movement started up in the North of England. Young ‘Numberpunks’, as they called themselves, loved the ideas that they had heard about being passed down as stories from their elders who had been scandalised by the practice.

They were unaware of Funfbenger to start with, but started experimenting with their own bingo calling nights. Some of them went as far as using phrases like ‘Number 21 – The concept of Terrorism.’ and “Number 3- A failed threesome.’ This breath of fresh air was, you would have to assume, a wonderfully bright spark of culture in the dark recesses of Northern Britain. An area utterly devoid of art and history, I assume, I have never been. Why would I?

Funfbenger gradually became aware of their work, and got in touch with the most prominent performer at the time Daisy Arkwright. Arkwright was a seemingly strait-laced young girl from Yorkshire, who had rebelled against everything that her family had pushed her towards. Her parents had always wanted her to aspire to a career of working part-time in the local Co-op, but Daisy had bigger dreams.

She started in a small way, but word quickly got out and she was in demand to do her bingo calling to excited audiences the length and breadth of Wakefield and Dewsbury. She was amazed when Funfbenger contacted her, and they quickly embarked on a collaboration project; entitled ‘The Co-operative of numbers.’ Their fans, or ‘Numeralista’s’, as they became known talked about this new underground inventiveness.

They had a couple of minor shows, then did their breakthrough performance at a pub in Beeston. Thankfully it was recorded for posterity by a local musician, who was in the band on after the bingo. He simply could not believe what he was hearing and used his audio equipment to quickly and roughly record the show. Sadly most of this recording has been lost to time, but tantalising quotes and snippets survive in living memory.

Firecracker phrases like – ‘24 – The life and times of George Orwell’, ‘2 – It’s time for a brew.’ and probably the most famous moment of the genre ‘9 – I can only see darkness and death from here.’ Statements that ring through time with their crackling excitement and charged with hidden depths.

As you can see, at this point they were so confident in their work that they no longer included the word ‘Number’ in any of their calls. That was how breathlessly exciting and transformative their shows were. Sadly, like any form of beauty that is so incandescent with emotion, it cannot last forever.

Funfbenger and Arkwright had artistic differences and ceased working together, after satisfying their contractual requirements. Their last performance together was reportedly a bittersweet thing to witness, as their enmity was obvious, but so was a deep respect for each other’s work. They parried all night long, taking call after call. The audience applauded for ten minutes after the show, and tears were wept by the performers and the viewers.

Their love for the numbers briefly swept aside the anger, and for a short moment, art and numbers fixed everything.

After this, they did not talk for many years, and lots of rumours about the reasons for their falling out were spread like a particularly virulent disease. Like a disease, some of it became to be believed as fact.

Funfbenger, being considerably older than Arkwright, was edging towards retirement age, his children secretly laughing behind his back at his ‘Pointless art’ as they saw it. He once again believed that he was wasting everyone’s time, calculated how much of it he had actually wasted and put a loaded abacus in his mouth and flicked those balls until he was found unconscious three days later.

Daisy Arkwright visited him in hospital, her solo career was on the skids due to an ill-advised performance on the Daytime TV show ‘This Warning’ where the presenter was so incensed by the riff on prime numbers that Arkwright was doing that he told her to stop and pushed her behind a sofa. When she got up she started seemingly randomly shouting alphanumeric characters at him and had to be carried from the studio.

It was in that meeting that one more tour was first mooted. ‘The Financial Inevitability Tour’ as it became known was simultaneously a swansong and love letter to their formidable body of work together. It garnered mixed reviews from the press at the time, but the fans simply did not care, here they were in the presence of numerical beauty, the simple and yet complex dance of numbers and balls.

Following the tour Funfbenger’s health worsened and he passed away on the 3rd day of the 3rd month in 2012. He had been hoping to hang on until the 12th of the 12th 2012, but sadly that was not to be.

Arkwright wrote a moving biography about Vengl, both about his life and their work together. In that book, she crushed the rumour that they had an affair whilst they worked together. His widow sadly contested this, and so the stories still roll on.

The one thing we know is that the world is a much richer place thanks to Funfbenger and his groundbreaking love of numbers.

Now please go to my blog and read more of this sort of thing you plebs. I write high art, and no one wants to sponsor me for some reason.

Great art is rarely appreciated at the time. I do not want to die penniless, thank you very much. I like fine wine and food too much for that.