WHAM! …Lichtenstein: A Retrospective.

As with all of Tate’s retrospectives, a ticket for this mammoth show should definitely cover two days. 125 examples of his most definitive and often  infamous works recount his career from the early ‘60s until the late 1990s; it’s a blast of colour from every corner, fairly unknown pieces interspersed with those which dominated the Pop Art movement.

For me, it was Lichtenstein’s monochromes and vast interiors which were most interesting; however having studied Pop Art through the “oh, Brad!” and “WHAM!”s of Lichtenstein’s romance and war period, it was thrilling to also see these huge polkadot canvases in person.

Lichtenstein’s work never appears particularly profound but perhaps this is where its success lies: the artist explores emotive situations in a flat, comic-bookish way to mirror our own de-sensitivity to sex, violence, power.

Meaningful or not, Lichtenstein’s work can simply be enjoyed for his bold use of garish primary colours and blatant commercialism. His interiors even include previous works of his hung on the walls –  twenty years after his career kicked off, already viewing his own work as an essential asset for the home. Slightly egotistical, but humorous all the same.

One huge influence which I hadn’t previously been aware of was Picasso, and in this show Lichtenstein’s reinterpretations of his work are not numerous but are extremely successful: a Pop Artist’s simple linear style combined with the complex acute angles of a Spanish master.

This exhibition certainly recognises an afore unappreciated depth to Lichtenstein’s work – it’s by no means moving, but it remains the product of a great deal of thought, research and careful drawing. Lichtenstein’s draughtsmanship reveals itself to be both accomplished and stylised, and his painting style punchy and unapologetic.

We’ve all seen a Lichtenstein reproduced in book or poster form – or currently pasted all over every London tube line – but these vast paintings must be seen in person for the full comic-book to canvas concept to take effect: postage-stamp sized cells blown up to  shout in electric colours and the dizzying pinpricks the man became famous for.

Designs of the Year 2013 & The Sea Chair Project: Sublime Design, Simultaneously Technical and Ethical.

Yesterday morning I attended the early breakfast press view (the first ‘breakfast’ view I’ve ever attended where there was no breakfast! hmph) of The Design Museum’s Designs Of The Year. Luckily, the show was so fantastic that I didn’t even notice my grumbling tum: 99 designs chosen by a panel of artists, architects, curators, designers, journalists and other experts, tidily packed into the first floor of The Design Museum.

This year the majority of pieces were either heavily technically or ethically focused, with a  strong emphasis on 3D printing and aid in third world countries. The winners will be announced in due course, the jury hoping to pick category winners by the end of this week, but top of my list are The Sea Chair, Little Sun and Kit Yamoyo; three stunning examples of intelligent, and potentially life changing, design.

My review of the entire show is on One Stop Arts, but I’d like to to also tell you all about The Sea Chair, which the very lovely Kieren Jones also took a minute to tell me about.

I had no idea about the effect that the dumping of plastic had on our world environment before 10am on Tuesday morning, but it turns out, it’s pretty huge. Simply put, there are gyres in our sea which act as whirlpools which collect debris; this has now resulted in three enormous plastic islands sitting just below the surface – all ‘out of sight and out of mind’ until now. These islands, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch and North Atlantic Garbage Patch are breaking up and the light plastics they contain are beginning to wash up on British beaches.

The project begun when Kieren and a few friends heard a radio piece about an enormous bundle of debris which had arrived on a beach in the Southwest, and decided on a whim (in hindsight a pretty profitable whim) to drive down and have a look for themselves.

Arriving on the white sands of a postcard-perfect beach, the group thought it had been a wasted trip, but after a closer look begun to notice fine grains which floated where others did not: ground down plastic, the waves a ‘plastic soup.’

Chatting to the local fishermen who, like many tradesmen are suffering due to supermarket exploitation, the group came up with an idea: why not trawl for plastic instead?

The collaboration between Kieren Jones, Studio Swine and the seamen of Hastings has now resulted in a line of unique three-legged stools, all made entirely from discarded plastic, melted and formed at sea, upon the boat. The stools are crude and heavy and the process messy and smelly, but they have an identifiable charm as clunky symbols of a small plight to help save our seas, our jobs and our livelihood as a whole.

The finishing touch to these stools acts as a nod to the fishermen who brought this project to life, and for me completes the story: tied by a ragged rope to each stool is a small tag noting the coordinates of where its plastic body was harvested, melted down and reinvented.

The Sea Chair Project is in its infancy, but I hope that it continues to be nurtured and to grow into something which really makes a substantial difference to our great British seaside.

Here’s an amazing film featuring stunning shots detailing The Sea Chair process – a must-see, and I hope you also enjoyed the full review of Designs of the Year.

Open Source Sea Chair by Studio Swine from Dezeen on Vimeo.

Between The Lines: Surrealist Sketches, Uncanny Inks and Impossibly Detailed Drawings

All Visual Arts, King’s Cross is a gallery with a unique taste: their shows heavy with the dark, the bizarre and the mysterious, the works always fresh, unique and sublimely crafted.

This spring AVA is saturated with surrealist sketches, uncanny inks and impossibly detailed drawings. Not just limited to the eight AVA represents, over 21 artists feature in this vast show – ranging from the sublimely grotesque erasure of contemporary German artist Dennis Scholl, to the carefully contoured illustrations of the infamous Salvador Dali. For a show entirely based upon a single medium, the variety is astonishing; as we see here, drawing does not only refer to graphite doodles but instead stands for anything put on a page by expert craftsmanship and the cultivated imagination. AVA’s shows often display a penchant for the bizarre and Between the Lines is no different, with artists from across the globe and centuries brought together by a common theme….

See the full review on Aesthetica, here:

http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/blog/between-the-lines-all-visual-arts-london/

Huis Clos… surreal, intimate, stunning.

This series was created by French photographers Amélie Chassary and Lucie Belarbi as an examination of our everyday habits, literally turning each subject into a personification of their daily routines. The title, Huis Clos, derives from a French play and translates literally as ‘in camera’, referring to a private conversation carried out behind closed doors; with this series, people’s privacies are exposed as they openly wear their rituals and routines on their sleeves.

Simply conducted but effective, and I think they’re pretty darn beautiful.

Cacher à Paris…

I’ve been a little quiet recently – the last few weeks in uni combined with a weekend in Paris has left me no time for sitting at the computer! However today I am nursing a sore head due to a few too many celebratory drinks last night, I won an award from my university to go travelling (yay! more on this later..) and it’s been my birthday so apparently I had to drink my weight in Blossom Hill. Foul beverage.

Anyway I was in Pariiieee this weekend; I’ll only bore you with a few photos of fine food (I’m rapidly growing outwards) and beautiful buildings, then it’s onto my favourites from the Pompidou Centre..

I was quite disappointed by the Pompidou actually, the contemporary art section was a lot of French Minimalism and that’s not really my thing. I actually made the faux pas of mistaking artwork for, well, rubbish! A grey piece of foam leaning, LEANING, against a wall – can you blame me?

There were a few gems though, and upstairs the Modern Art section was really impressive. Not bad for free entry if you’re under 25!

This film piece was just displayed on a small screen titled Anonyme, but it captured me.

After some research I found that this piece was recorded in 1896 by Auguste and Louis Lumière and it features the Serpentine Dance choreographed by Louie Fuller: a pioneer of modern dance and the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement. This film doesn’t feature Louie herself, hence the Anonyme title, but she was a regular performer despite having no formal training. Fuller made her own costumes out of silk which were illuminated by different coloured lights of her own design, but in the Victorian era it wasn’t possible to film in colour so to imitate exactly how Fuller’s performances would have appeared to her audience, this analogue film has been laboriously hand-tinted with stencils and coloured dyes.

Fuller is said to have been so enthralled by colour that she once had to be escorted from Notre Dame, after waving maniacally her handkerchief through coloured light pouring in through the stained glass and being mistaken for a mad woman!

Here are a couple more pix from Paris: origami birds made by children hanging in an old church in Marais, and my favourite place in all of Paris – the amazing bohemian half way house and ancient bookshop, Shakespeare and Co. 

….à bientôt!             x

Gemma Correll wrote a book about me.

More from Comica Comiket!

 Not only was I bringing my dear friend coffee on Saturday, I also got to have a good snoop at Comica Comiket and discovered this illustrator, Gemma Correll. I’m not normally into childlike drawings but I sort of fell in love with these Zines and prints – mainly because they actually narrate my life. It’s uncanny.

I am the above image at the moment, last three weeks of uni are killing me. Meh.

Anyway here’s a little insight into the problems of scatty, disorganised, hypochondriac, creative types.

And me.

…I leave a trail of these like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs…

…hypochondria vastly increased by third year stress levels…

…cats are far more interesting than silly pretty boys with tattoos on their necks and deep Vs…

…at least you can always rely on one thing to make it all better!

That is why tonight will be red wine fuelled, yay!

More pugs, cats, dry wit and less me-related-stories from Gemma Correll can be found here.

Comica Comiket and being a mate.

I spent my last Saturday morning over by the Gherkin, trying to find a bank – FYI all banks in the business section are closed on Saturdays. The reason for this was that my little childhood friend, Bex, was selling some of her wares at the independent comic and ‘zine festival Comica Comiket.

I’m not really into superhero stories, but there was more than enough printing, illustration, writing and small novelty items to keep me amused. Which is where I come to Bex’s work: drawing, print, painting, collage and charming little books are her thing. She would kill me for saying ‘charming’. Bex’s books are small and cute (again treading dangerous territory here) but also dry, witty and politically aware – see the naively titled: The Day I Met a Fatty.

So if you like ‘zines, decent illustration (none of that naive-art bull…), and interesting little stories check her out.

Here’s few tiny tasters….

…lovely handmade screen-printed robot cards, and Tick, a book about a little steampunk robot and his quest to find a purpose in our modernised lives…

An excerpt from Rumble - the battle between Mike Bison and Trevor Bearbick (ahaaa..)

Finally a couple of snippets from The Day I Met a Fatty – which taught me that make-up does not make you stupid, and not to be scared of chavs. I wish all helpful life lessons could be learnt in this way…

…more to come from Comica Comiket in the next few days.

Thank you to Miss Bex Bagley for helping me to discover a new genre of doodles.

Waxy fingers and toes: Ron Mueck, much better than Madame Tussauds.

If you head over to Savile Row this Spring, you will be greeted by this rather grumpy looking lady. Standing at an ungainly four foot tall, her naked body scratched up by the bundle of twigs she’s almost straddling, it is a representation of human beings at their most inelegant. This is Aussie-born, London-based Ron Mueck’s solo show at Hauser & Wirth  in which you can also see  Drift – a mid-life crisis in the form of a bronzed man on a lilo, Still Life - a 6ft slit-throated plucked chicken, and Youth - a tiny stab wound victim.

The works on show are all very different: Woman with sticks seems to tell a story, she could have stepped out of a Brothers Grimm tale, while Drift‘s buff middle-aged sunbather with his glitzy watch and shades seems to be more a satire of society.

I like an exhibition which can change my mind, and this one did; when I first encountered Drift, I was less than impressed – a man on a lilo, so what? But close up, the craftsmanship of his little fingers and toes is really incredible. These are wax models, so I’d been expecting the calibre of those at Madame Tussauds or those dodgy historical ‘experiences’ that school used to take you to, but Mueck’s scale and facial expressions remove this association immediately. There’s none of that waxy rigidity, these strange beings look like they’ve been frozen in time and appear familiar by how real they look but completely bizarre due to their not half-size, not life size, but just-slightly-wrong scale.

At human size, the dead chicken of Still Life becomes quite a sombre image. It’s grotesque, with its gaping neck wound, but the facial expression of this chicken had me feeling very sorry for it. To me, Mueck is confronting his audience with death – the cold, hard reality of it disguised as a bit of butchery. This piece really is uncanny as it’s so precise: somehow every single texture from rope to flesh and metal to downy feathers seems completely real. It felt like we were just waiting for the poor thing’s eyes to blink open.

Finally, Youth; this piece was my most and least favourite all at once. I didn’t like the stance, and I don’t think his expression is as captivating as that of any of the other ‘characters’, however it’s the smallest sculpture and so the details are extra exquisite. I took so many photos of this man’s feet, I think the invigilator thought I had some kind of weird fetish or something, but they are actually amazing! They’re only about 20cm long and absolutely perfect. Maybe I do have some kind of weird fetish.

Anyway, I’m getting sleepy now and I’m starting to ramble. So I hope you like my slightly rubbish iPhone pics – I didn’t expect to be allowed to take photos so I did not take a camera. Breaking the Brownie pact once again (always be prepared).

Ron Mueck, Hauser & Wirth, 19th April – 26th May: much more FREE and much more INTERESTING than Madame Tussauds.

Oh AND it’s on Savile Row which gives you the perfect excuse to hit Hamleys first, then mill about and stare at people with more money than sense afterwards.

Surrealism Sunday… Man Ray’s Muse.

Happy Mothers’ Day!

I’ve discovered someone fascinating today and it’s all down to my good ole Mum. I was going to write a post on her favourite artist, being the doting daughter I am, she umm-ed and err-ed before saying “oh, I just remembered, have you heard of Lee Miller..?”

I had not, but now I’ve looked into her life and she was an absolutely fascinating model, muse, photographer and Surrealist.

Miller by Man Ray.

The reason Mother mentioned her is that the house she came to settle in for the last thirty-something years of her life is just up the road from us in East Sussex, near Lewes and it’s open to the public from the 1st of April.

Lee Miller and Surrealist writer and second husband Roland Penrose came to Farley Farm House in 1949, and it became an unlikely meeting place for many leading Modern Artists such as Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miro, Richard Hamilton…the list goes on… The house is permanently filled with works of art by these and many other big names, and has been preserved “as if Miller has just popped out to gather some vegetables”.

A model for Vogue in 1927 at just twenty years old, leaving New York for Paris at twenty-two to become Man Ray’s assistant-come-muse, Elizabeth Lee Miller began her artistic career  at the centre of the Surrealist movement. She moved back to New York in 1932 at  the age of twenty-five to open her own studio and went on to be a portrait, travel and war photographer.

In 1937 on a trap to Paris, Miller met Roland Penrose and began to attend the Surrealist group, becoming a model for Pablo Picasso, as well as her already close friend Man Ray.

In 1947 after three harrowing years spent as a photojournalist in Second World War Germany and Eastern Europe, Miller finally married and settled with Penrose in England where she contributed to his  biographies of Man Ray, Miro, Picasso and Tapies.

Here are a few beautiful photographs taken of Miller by Man Ray and for Vogue, followed by her own works…

‘Lee Miller’s Neck’ by Man Ray.

‘Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub’ controversial image for Vogue.

Picasso by Miller.

Charlie Chaplin by Lee Miller.

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning - have a look at her, personally I think she was an absolutely incredible painter – by Lee Miller.

Women with fire masks, Downshire Hill, London, 1941, Lee Miller.

Woman with hand on head, 1931, Lee Miller.

Nude Bent Forward, 1930, Lee Miller.

…You can tell from ‘Nude-’ that she worked with Man Ray, just look at the similarity in their works….

 So anyway, I now have one trip planned for Easter, I’m going to avoid the London crowds and instead head to a lovely farmhouse to see some world-renowned artists.

Not only can Miller and the Surrealists’ work be seen at the house, this year the first exhibition, Two Painters and a Sculptor, features the wonderful abstract painter David Armitage, emerging Spanish artist Samuel Paradela and Michael Cooper who works with bronze, silver, marble and stone. Plenty!!

Stunning photographs and an amazing life: Lee Miller, Man Ray’s secret muse.

iPhone Art…more than just Fat Face.

I haven’t blogged since last week, tut tut tut… This is partly due to a nasty nasty man stealing my beloved iPhone from me on Saturday night. Oh well, I guess this is the mess you end up in when you head to a grimy dive bar with a £500 phone in your handbag – uninsured of course!

Anyway, in my hunt for a new baby I’ve discovered quite a few iPhone ‘artists’ – including Mr David Hockney himself!

Hockney is showing in A Bigger Picture, currently on at The Royal Academy – 50 years’ of work including recent iPhone and iPad paintings – not bad  for a 75 year old!

To be honest, although one of the most famous artists of recent years, Hockney’s not really my thing… So here are a few amateur iPhone artists I quite like the look of.

iPhone art, another thing that dirty pickpocket has deprived me of *sniff*

I want to be here….                                    or there….

 

 

 

 

…slightly hideous but I like..

 

 

When I do finally replace my lost one, I may be mucking about with more than Fat Face and Face Blur. Maybe. They are a lot of fun…