High Society

There's some lovely print to see, from fascinating little bottles of potions to somewhat modernist, positively Burrill-esque simplicity in the new High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, if this Guardian gallery is anything to go by. It opens today and is on til the end of February.

Natsko Seki

Public Bath, 250 x 250mm, 2008

I went to see the Pick Me Up show at Somerset House yesterday and was really overwhelmed by the amount of great work on show. One artist that really did stand out to me that I'd never seen before was Natsko Seki. Her work is amazingly detailed (which is difficult to get across here) and really fascinating. It's joyful and happy but also quite subtle, and the range of techniques she uses in the pieces she showed seemed to blend together seamlessly, and gave an energetic feeling of depth. Really beautiful stuff. I wish I could of afforded one of her larger pieces, but I did manage to pick up an (unlimited edition I think) print of the gorgeous 'Kite' from the shop for a meagre £20.

It was amazing to see Rob Ryan in action, carefully and determinedly drawing away with an automatic pencil, while one of his glamorous assistants sat cutting away with a scalpel. The room was packed and actually kind of claustrophobic. I would of loved to talk to him, but he was so engrossed I didn't want to disturb him. Also, what am I going to say?! "Hi I'm a huge fan. it's really great for me to be able to meet you. And I'm definitely more important than the other 100 megafans also in here. I can't afford to buy any of your work though." YAWN.

Shake It

There's quite a lovely Polaroid exhibition at the moment at Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery, featuring a fetching David Hockney composite Nicholas Wilder Studying Picasso, some gorgeous Guy Bourdin images and André Kertész's intriguing portraits of glass blobs. And I never knew that Andy Warhol was responsible for those endless Beauty features in glossy magazines - you know the ones - lightbox + perfume bottles = feature...

Lubalin Now

Jessica Hische


TV Land, Gretel, Matt Owens.

This is what you might call my cup of tea.

I'm not sure whether this is at the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography or Cooper Union’s gallery, or both, but it doesn't really matter unless by some miracle someone hands me a free ticket to New York. That would be nice, though.

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.

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.

Saw Your Face

Saw your face, originally uploaded by alistairh.

Something, somewhere in Amsterdam.
It made me smile.

Update: This work is by Marijn van Kreij and Alistair has more info on the exhibition here.

from Francis Bacon's 'Detritus'

from Francis Bacon's 'Detritus', originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Blood on Paper

Banners, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Great banners at the entrance to the Blood on Paper exhibition at the V&A.

American Photography 1900-1960

Walker Evans, Subway Passengers, New York, 1938.

I went to a really interesting lecture last night at The British Museum. It drew largely on the incredible, and very accessible, FSA archive. It highlighted how influential a few photographers in particular have been to contemporary photography and photojournalism, including Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt, Alfred Stieglitz and of course Walker Evans. They're all worth a good look.


Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama 1936.


Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907.


Helen Levitt, New York, 1940.


Dorothea Lange, Woman of the High Plains “If You Die, You’re Dead–That’s All.” Texas Panhandle, 1938.

"Everything I do always comes back to me"

Sagmeister @ Deitch, originally uploaded by smoonyc.

The CR Blog has a piece about what looks like a really interesting exhibition at the Deitch Gallery New York right now - Stefan Sagmeister's latest. Sagmeister is a great inspiration to me (as he is to many) and this looks especially intriguing as it stems from more personal work (although I think most of his work has a sizeable element of 'him' in it). The 20 'maxims' are themselves just quite nice really - nothing earth-shattering (the fridge-magnet comment isn't wholly unjustified) but it's nice to see a break from corporate identity and other such yawnness, even if it is mainly to promote a book.

The exhibition will shortly be followed by another PR exercise for Michel Gondry's 'new' film, Be Kind Rewind, which looks A.MAZ.ING. I say 'new' as it was obviously written a while ago, seeing as the subject is a video shop, but I'm willing to ignore the fact I haven't watched a video in years in order to see Ghostbusters being re-made with cardboard and tinsel by Jack Black.

In Effect

Right – "Point of Exposure", Jen Stark, 2007 (photo by Harlan Erskine), Left – "Bad Hair Day", Diem Chau, 2005.
I'd really love to be able to go and see the new In Effect exhibition at the OKOK Gallery, a collaboration between two great artists, Diem Chau and Jen Stark. I'm quite intrigued - from their previous work I'd say it's going to be eye-achingly colourful, but the poster (below) suggests something a little quieter. But it's in Seattle. And I am not. Nevermind.

Print at The Science Museum

Lots of nice printed things, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Part of my favourite section of the Science Museum - the bit with all the recent history of gadgets, tat and rubbish. The brick-like mobile phones with car-battery type attachments, the mangy looking old Barbies, the old Apple Mac, the 1960's TV Times...

Flatter Face, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Small But Perfectly Formed

Yesterday I went to see Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan at the British Museum. It was a small exibition but fantastically beautiful. It was a really nice group of pieces actually, enough for a 'wow' factor but restrained enough not to be over-doing it, as if saying "we're really proud of these pieces, but of course there's a lot more where that came from". Which I've no doubt there is. A place where creative and craft skills and pure hard work are rewarded as much as concept and delivery, Japan seems to be really good at nurturing its artist community, designating the most accomplished Living National Treasures.

I found the Kimono/textile artists particularly inspiring. In a short interview one of them explained that he had considered what he could do with a kimono to make it different, more special. He realised that he shouldn't change the simple shape because that is part of why it's special - if you change the shape once then you will change it again and again striving to make it better, and it becomes like any other clothing. The simple shape of the kimono lets the textile speak for itself. Texile designs are produced by various laborious methods, including woodblock printing with a 2" square block, dyeing individual strands of hand-spun silk and then weaving together to create complicated (and perfect) geometrical patterns, and stencil dyeing, all done completely by hand.


Tokuda Yasokichi III - Bowl, 'Genesis' (Sosei), porcelain with vivid coloured glazes (yôsai), 1991. On loan from the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
This was beautiful - a coloured glaze bowl that apparently went wrong, so the artist then re-fired it at higher temperature and the stripey effect appeared - "a gift from the gods. Or an accident." Luminescent, and perfect. Perfection seemed to be a theme that runs through each and every piece actually. It's the only word for it.

How We Are

Finally got around to seeing Tate Britain's fantastic How We Are exhibition of photography at the weekend, just before it closed for good. It was really fantastic, thought provoking and beautiful. Of course I managed to home in straight away on one of the few prints in the whole exhibition that included some interesting typography, Anna Atkins' Cyanotype title page from 'British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns', c. 1852.

You can see lots more of them here.

Another that caught my eye was by Alfred George Buckham (1880-1986) who used his job as a pilot to take aerial photographs. The only example I can find at the moment is this quite fuzzy black and white image;

whereas in the exhibition the prints of views over London and Edinburgh were fantastically clear and more of a brownish, sepia colour. The London one was really detailed, with a crowd of boats all along the River.

As well as being great early aerial photos (albeit with super-imposed aeroplanes, which made them feel a little bit silly), the caption really amused me (copied from a scribbled version in my sketchbook, but I think that major points are right);
'Alfred George Buckham, 1880-1986, was the 1st head of aerial reconnaissance for the RAF in WW1, and later a captain. After crashing 9 times, he was discharged.'
9 times! Count 'em, 9. Would that by any chance be connected to the remainder of the caption;
'He took aerial photos with a heavy plate camera, and said, "If one's right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope it is possible to work in perfect security".' Hmm.

Also in attendance were fantasic pieces by
Dorothy Wilding,
Percy Hennell,
Tony Ray Jones,
Norman Parkinson,
Grace Robertson (one of the very few women to work for Picture Post),
Charlie Phillips ("what makes a good photograph is to be honest.",
Nigel Henderson,
John Hinde,
the archive of The Daily Herald (now The Sun) including what I would describe as early pap shots of Diana Dors,
Tom Wood,
Keith Arnatt,
Stephen Dalton,
the inimitable Martin Parr,
Paul Seawright,
Anna Fox,
Susan Lipper and
Penny Klepuszewska.
All of whom I'd recommend looking up. Phew, that's a big list, sorry!

If you missed the exhibition I'd recommend the catalogue, although some of the photos really aren't done justice by a small print on a page, and neither are many of the photographers' projects done justice by a single photograph. I would have liked to have seen more of the published collections for sale in the Tate's shop.

Helga Steppan

Helga Steppan's photography is so simple but so fascinating. Groups of belongings arranged by colour into classical compositions are immediately enticing and call into question all sorts of identity, ownership and authorship issues. The Man & Eve gallery website states;

'Belongings Apart' questions the extent to which an object or possession can ever represent its owner or hold particular meaning and invites the audience to discover its own associations in the work.

I can't help wondering how this will be affected once someone owns a print of the photographs, and if/when they sell it and so on.

Surreal Things

I finally got round to seeing the Surreal Things exhibition, just in the nick of time! Surrealism is quite easy to dismiss thesedays as being gimmicky and all too familiar, but seeing such a huge amount of work all in the same place was really overwhelming. It really helped give a sense of the works originality - concepts that really were dislocating and difficult and against the grain. However the use of recognisable repeated motifs fueled the transition of the style from shocking, to becoming talked about to eventually becoming appropriated into all areas visual culture. Dr MF Agha, the art director of Vogue at the time, put it really well;

"What is a snobbish art scandal today is an accepted style tomorrow and a merchandised style the next day."

Typical

I'm not going to be able to make it to this talk by Alan Kitching and I'm really gutted! He's been such a huge inspiration and I'm sure it would be an amazing experience (and doesn't he look nice?!) But typically it's an evening when I have to work. rubs.
Can't wait to see the exhibition.

Photo by Celia Stothard, pinched from the St Bride site.

Alan Kitching shows significant works and shares seminal influences from his fifty-year journey from printer to printmaker, apprentice to professor, Darlington to Kennington via experimental printing in Watford and letterpress in Clerkenwell to The Typography Workshop, Printroom & Studio in London SE11.
Talk, Tuesday 13 February 2007 at 7pm; exhibition preview 5.30pm
Exhibition, Wednesday 14 February to Thursday 8 March 2007