167. Francis Bacon

167. Francis Bacon, originally uploaded by tom gauld.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld for the Guardian (Saturday Review letters page)

Buy it!

Kuniyoshi

I went to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition at The Royal Academy last week and thoroughly recommend it. One of the most influential and prolific creators of Ukiyo-e, Kuniyoshi was not only a highly skilled craftsman but also an innovator, developing the use of tryptych. His work covered so many areas, from his famous Warrior series, to political satire (not easy to get away with at the time), narrative, landscape, portraits of actors and popular stage productions, and even his own line in pretty surrealistic shunga. If you can then go when there's a guide to take you round, we tagged onto the group a few times and the guide was really interesting. I hadn't realised that prints of this kind were very mass-market, costing not much more than a couple of bowls of noodles apparently, and were also copied by rival print-houses - there's even a counterfeit version of one of the prints on show for comparison.

Now I'm pretty clueless when it comes to manga and other comic books, but just looking at Kuniyoshi's warrior prints you can clearly see a forerunner to the modern graphic story-telling of Japan, so much so that some of the compositions are deceptively modern, only the slight fade of the ink and wear of the paper give away their age.

There's a (much better written) in depth review of the exhibition here, and more info here.

Yulia Brodskaya

The quite prolific Yulia Brodskaya has updated her website with even more yummy papery goodness. Check out her news for lots of recent commercial projects ranging from Starbucks, to t-shirts, more for The Guardian and lots more editorial.

Thanks for the tip, FormFiftyFive.

"New York's in Love" by David Bowie

"New York's in Love" by David Bowie, originally uploaded by frogers.

Just came across this in my Flickr contacts - a painting for the Ace Hotel in New York by Jeff Rogers.

Miura

Miura, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

I spotted some shots of this on vial3tt3r's Flickr , and just harassed him till he sent me one. And I'm so glad I did, it's really beautifull! And it came with my name on it, hand drawn, I can't tell you how fab it is :)

You can see more of it on the Miura website too.

GLAM

GLAM, originally uploaded by pam sattler.

Something pretty to get Friday going...

UK Wired

Possibly a bit weird that I'm quite as excited as I am about seeing this. It's looking good I think, some nice type - I like the squirmy 'start', it's a good springboard, and that header sans is lovely (not sure what it is though, I'm not very good at type-spotting). Some great illustration too, although I'm not sure about the clash of that orange with the orange-toned photograph on screen, but perhaps it will make more sense on paper. Nice portrait too with some lively colour (even with the floating punch-in-the-face arm). The article doesn't mention credits for these unfortunately.

Original article at SPD.

Plundered from Binky the doormat.

LEGO Twitter Fail Whale

LEGO Twitter Fail Whale, originally uploaded by tveskov.

Full marks for effort.

Aoyama Hina

sacla-fee600, originally uploaded by hinaaoyama.

Some amazing papercuts...

More here.

Picasso: Challenging the Past

I went over to the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago to see the new Picasso exhibition there. I'd really recommend seeing it, it was so interesting. His painting is so full of expression, even when his works vary to such a huge degree stylistically I feel he could not help but communicate a sense of how he felt about the subject. For instance, portraits of his first wife from the beginning of their marriage and a couple from later in their relationship certainly betray a lot of feeling about her beyond those of her being a muse. One felt even sarcastic. I can't say I've felt that about a painting before.

One of the more obvious questions the exhibition presents is that of originality and authenticity - these are all paintings openly based on other artists' previous work - and what that means. What is inspiration, and what is, frankly, copying? Picasso presents a range of works where he more than successfully demonstrates that a confident personal style and vision is what shows through beyond subject matter. I think spirit matters too. A lot of this work felt like it was produced for the enjoyment of painting and exploring the concept first and foremost. Anything slightly more commercial just would not, by it's nature, communicate this spirit.


Olga au col de fourrure, Pablo Picasso, 1923.

Words Are Pictures

I came across some fantastic work by Craig Ward today. It's so inspiring, and also really interesting to be able to see the work in progress on his blog. I find other people's work processes quite fascinating, perhaps because I'm not all that confident in my own; it helps de-mystify these fantastic finished pieces a little. Sometimes I don't feel like I exist in the same universe as some of the amazing artists I guff about on here.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld for the Guardian

110. 3d Friends, originally uploaded by tom gauld.

Lovely lovely things.