Recent Book Purchases

I’ve made four book purchases of note recently.
Firstly, artist Max Ernst 1891-1976. I stumbled across his work originally in the modern art museum Munich. His technique of “Frottage” sparks the imagination where he scrapes paint on a canvas over a contoured background, eg – bark, creating unearthly landscapes and unsettling forms. Actually, he more accurately called it “Grattage” – the French for scrape. Although “Frottage” is still used (meaning “to rub”) to describe his work, if you look it up, it also is a colloquial term for dry humping, so lets not confuse things….
In summary Ernst was deeply effected by serving in the First World War, I’m not claiming to know much more than what I’ve looked up or seen, but his autobiography begins "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914", so I’m going to add that onto my wishlist too.
Another interesting fact brought to my attention by a proper Art Historian (thanks Miriam!) is that he was deeply effected by the death of his pet bird as a child and a lot of his work also incorporated birds. And you can feel that, without sounding too pretentious, in the deep melancholy in some of his pieces.
Which brings me onto my first book purchase… when I was in Paris recently, the modern art museum had a book on display called Une semaine de bonté. It had a series of animal headed figures, including bird headed ones and prostrate bodies in dramatically posed disturbing scenes. Ernst pulled this book together by cutting up and collaging various sources (magazines, newspapers, books) to create a graphic novel of sorts. I found a modern reprint of it for sale on Amazon, so I bought it. It’s the kinda weird shit I like.
  

If I saw these two dudes fighting, I wouldn’t take sides, I’d just run away….


The second book I purchased is about a Japanese artist and printmaker, Ohara Koson (1877 – 1945). His work, depicting animals, especially birds, flowers and trees are evocative and beautiful.
Little is known of the artist himself, but his work speaks for itself. It’s pretty much a source catalogue of his work, with some complementary text as to his life and possible influences.
What I find interesting is there is a lively and accessible market for his original work. I may start saving up to buy a print myself one day…. of a crow… obviously. But crows will be the subject of another blog.
The book is called Crows, Cranes and Camelias, the Natural world of Ohara Koson. (By Newland).
 


My third purchase…. it’s about tube stations (nerd alert)… and one of the foremost architects of the day (1920s/30s) Charles Holden 1875 - 1960. Having spent most of my youth traversing up and down the Piccadilly line, I feel part of it. The stations in the northern section are sleek and modern, full of sexy (can a tube station be sexy? Yes, but no so much as to develop inappropriate behaviour leading to my arrest) curves and lines. Southgate tube station, with its circular form, like a flying saucer is my favourite. As you approach when it’s brightly lit at night, I can imagine myself as a 1930’s spiv, lighting a woodbine against the brim of my trilby and trying to sell watch straps to housewives. Or whatever it is that spivs sell. Is it art deco? I dunno, I’m no expert, but it makes me proud to be a londoner. And a 1930’s spiv.

A pic of Manor House (my most local station as a kid) tube platform from back in the day…

Southgate tube station, where I went to college and took my first steps as a computer loser (and spiv). Even though the shops are different today, the shop frontages and signs use the same low key font and design.

Charles Holden’s last (finished 1937) and arguably most famous building though is Senate House, part of the University of London, but taken over by the government under the Ministry of Information during the second world war. It is an Art Deco monster, imposing and looming over you. It cuts an impressive sight even today when there are so many taller buildings dominating the London skyline.
You can tell why Orwell, who worked there during the war, used it as his inspiration for the “Ministry of Truth” as part of his novel 1984. (photo from wikipedia)
 
And my final book, and the one I’m most proud of, is I’ve finally got a copy of “Skeletons” by Ray Bradbury… and not only that, but signed by the author! I mentioned this in my blog of 7th April, where I declared my love of Ray Bradbury and his works and also of artist Dave McKean. Well, now I have a copy…
There is an amazing bookshop in LA called “Mystery and Imagination”. If I lived there, I’d be in it most days I’m sure, to browse around. Lots of rare / signed copies of cool books from various authors, deliver to Europe too. Have a browse…!
http://www.mysteryandimagination.com/
Ray Bradbury, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday in an event at the shop, had signed it on a previous visit… and lucky me, I bought it! I’m very proud and honoured. Happy birthday Ray Bradbury, and thankyou Mystery and Imagination!

The ink of a master storyteller…

Some art from McKean and wordage from Bradbury….

Saving a baby from falling down the stairs

Yesterday, I got back to the station from a day at work in London and in front of me was a grandmum and her daughter, who was pushing a baby buggy. They looked a bit haggared, eroded in the wind, like a cliff face battered by the North Atlantic. Broken pieces of foundation flying off them like cornflakes. The grandmum was particularly hard looking, huge hooped earings, grim determined lines in her face, a harsh slash for a mouth, I half expected a fork tongue to poke in and out, but it didn't of course. Although that would have been cool.

I looked up at the stairs which led to street and had one of those awkward moments where I thought should I offer to help or not? In my best friendly disarming cockney voice, 'Allo madams, (doffs cap - if I was wearing one) I see you've got a bit of dilemma on yer 'ands, well let me 'elp ya. I wont charge you a farthing, let alone a shilling. It's me pleasure madams'.

I've been told curtly in the past to piss off and mind my own business when I've offered to do this, or viewed with suspicision as I do look like a dickensian villain who will steal your brief case and fence the contents off to buy broth. So on this occasion, and I must admonish myself, for I should not be swayed by how some people view my genuine offers of help and thus become one of the silent majority who become utterly self centred because of their pride. But at this point, I thought "fuck them" and let them get on with carrying their buggy up the stairs.

The grandmum had forearms like Popeye though, she was a downsight stronger than me by the looks of her. Probably a bare knuckle boxer in her day, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

Anyway, so they start their ascent, grandmum in front, veins all popping in her arm as she drags it up one handed, the more willowy daughter pushing upwards, and the younger lady shouts “MUM! I CAN’T HOLD IT!” and the buggy starts tipping sideways, ready to spill the baby. So that’s when I was required, so I readied my sinews for a majestic leap to save the child, catching it, before cracking my skull against the metal wall and dying myself, the sprawled but safe child cooing on my brain splattered body. In that split second I saw the headlines. “Hero dies saving baby”, except some bald northern dude intervened instead, who looked a bit like a fat Bruce Willis with no teeth, “Ere, let me help thee love” or whatever Yorkshire shit he spewed forth from his cake hole. He just steadied the buggy with one hand and helped to lift it up the stairs.

And the baby was safe. But I was ready. I tell you, I was ready to die.

Things in Specimen Jars…

My last blog talked about the Collect event at the Saatchi Gallery. From the exhibitors there, one artist who worked in glass really stood out for me. His name is Steffen Dam. His work focuses on the forms in nature, combining them with how science catalogues and interprets them. It really is unique, creating forms which could easily be mistaken for fossils or marine creatures captured and frozen in a display box or a specimen jar. His website is here if you wish to look :
http://www.damogkarlslundglas.dk/showpage.aspx?sideid=61
From an early age, I’ve been fascinated with collections and curio’s of the natural world. Those old cabinets in dusty museums, the creatures slightly scuffed and brown or pale with age, pinned to a board or suspended in some jelly like preservative, limp, pale and empty.
The process of having to capture, kill, then preserve an animal stimulated my sense of the macabre, these weren’t just naturalists, these were invertebrate murderers to my childlike imagination, beastie’s plucked from their habitats, leaving a hole, possibly being missed… I always applied some sort of Greek tragic element to everything and to a certain extent still do, taking a point of view that somehow there would be a butterfly “wife” missing her butterfly “husband” and these crying caterpillar babies… ! And the process of capturing these creatures, who were these men and women, where did they walk? Who did they meet along the way?
So when I walked into this particular gallery and saw the beautifully lit collections, pristine, not sad or mournful, but bright and vibrant, I thought wow! Until I saw the price that is (some pieces were around £12k), then the reaction was still wow! But with the added incentive not to touch or break anything with my clumsy Mediterranean paws.
All of the images are taken from his website…. firstly a picture of the artist, he is Danish, he is making of one his jellyfish like specimen creations from the look of the work. I believe it is the law that all Danish men of an artistic temperament must look like this, I bet Hans Christian Andersen did too.. although I’ve just googled him and he doesn’t look like this at all, so that’s blown that theory.

We also ordered the catalogue of his work through an older exhibition, which was sold out at the time, but has recently arrived in the post. It’s awesome and contains some background information on his inspirations which of course includes the meticulous work of naturalists in building collections through history.

As to the work itself, the website can give you some excellent blow ups, but for now….

Yes… this is all glass work, no animals were harmed or involved in the making of this art…. nature was only used for inspiration.

Amazing fossil like image below

The man is unique!
But this brought me onto the second part of this particular blog entry… at the moment, the Natural History Museum has a special exhibition on called “The Deep”.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/thedeep/index.html
Once again, as a child (my creative peak as a human being… it’s been downhill ever since), when I would flick through a book on fish or the sea, I always impatiently trawled through to the dark murky pages specifically focusing on those deep sea creatures, the frighteningly bizarre ones which dwell in the inky depths of the ocean. Those creatures who are so rarely caught and  never observed in their natural habitat, we know very little about them beyond what we can glean from their corpses, they exist in a world which is still the last place on Earth yet to be fully explored and discovered. They look grotesque, with their massive eyes or their lack of eyes, their huge mouths, their monstrous teeth, distended jaws, lanterns and filaments, long bodied or stout. These creatures are frightening. And it seems the impressions of this undersea world gave the artists of these old nature books some creative license from the monotony of drawing “normal” sea life, bringing them horribly to life in these black pages, with the occasional flash of light, generated from within the creature itself or shone on it, like some ghostly wisp.
What is it like living so far under the ocean, where these creatures, whose bodies have evolved so well to the water pressure, a pressure which could crush a human in seconds? Well, this exhibition does it’s best to explain. It focuses on the Natural History (as you would expect) but also on the exploration of the depths, from the voyage of HMS Challenger a research vessel travelling to the arctic then up through Australian waters, New Zealand and the Pacific / Japan in the 1870s, to voyages in such marvellous inventions as bathysphere’s (a tiny two man submersible used in the 1930’s). As well as this there is a cool recreation of a deep water sub you can pretend to drive (I was on my own, and even though I wanted to shove the kids out of the way and take the controls I felt this would have been inappropriate).
Anyway, I’ve taken some photo’s of “Things in jars” from the exhibition, just a little bit like Steffen Dam’s work…. enjoy.



  





And not forgetting this absolutely terrifying “mermaid”

Mark Hanvey – Collect, Saatchi Gallery, May 14 -17, 2010

In the middle of May, me, Debbie, her sister Alison and her husband Mark popped along to the Saatchi Gallery in West London. Mark was exhibiting his work as part of Collect 2010, an event sponsored by the Crafts Council.

In summary, it is described thus “Between 14 – 17 May this international art fair for contemporary objects will be presenting a range of selected galleries that showcase the finest examples of contemporary craft.”

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/whats-on/view/collect-2010-call-for-applications/detail

So… there was reams of work in wood, glass and metal from international artists. As the only street savvy cockney in our travelling party I suggested to the Northern Irish members of my family that we should avoid going there too early, as Chelsea would be having their open top bus parade for winning things this season and we would be trapped amongst the heaving blue chested masses…. and as a gooner this would be unacceptable to me, to subject me to such hellish torture.

So we popped to the Geffrye Museum first, which is a pretty cool place to check out interiors, furniture and furnishings from the ages in some old converted alms houses.

Anyway, to the point of this blog… An unashamed plug for my brother in law Mark Hanvey. His work in wood is awesome, both artistic and pragmatic in the form of beautifully designed contemporary furniture.

Check his website here…

http://markhanvey.co.uk/

And an interview with him here…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mJTrRLXZf8

Deftones, ULU, 12th May 2010

After much deliberation, we decided to ebay our chance to go and see Deftones at an intimate venue, ULU. We love this venue, plenty of bars, fast staff and a crowd of students who can’t afford to buy many drinks thus leaving the bar free from massive queue’s :) Also good views of the stage and mosh pit from pretty much anywhere. The bar’s were so good, we decided to buy sixteen JD and coke’s each before the action…. I look rough in this photo. It’s because I’ve only got 5 and a half drinks left.

Perked up, after the 16th one below, as has Rob….

As for the gig itself, it was awesome, they played most of their new album and some of the classics. Elite is my favourite track. It’s a monster. Got to be played ear bleedingly loud in the car. There was plenty of moshing and I even partook in some moves myself, but no punching people in the face or anything like that. I was too busy taking rubbish shaky photos…. see below.
More rubbish photo’s on my facebook page.

Francis Bacon - In Camera @ Compton Verney

Compton Verney... where? That's what I thought when I saw this exhibition advertised in the Independent. It's a pleasant country house in the middle of Warwickshire is where. (I imagined Royston Vasey...)

Francis Bacon is one of my favourite artists, and as the journey to get there wouldn't be too unpleasant on a lovely sunny day, I drove up to Compton Verney to have a look. I went to the Tate exhibition a couple of years ago, which was a brilliant and fairly representative collection of his life's work and although this exhibition was small and therefore there wouldn't be much "new" work on show it did provide some insight into how Bacon worked. How he was influenced and inspired by photography, and also touched on his influences from other artists :Michelangelo for instance, of which there were some torn out pages exhibited from a book owned by Bacon showing Michelangelo's anatomical sketches, splattered with the paint of Bacon's brush. And of course there was Velazquez (although there are no popes in this exhibition, screaming or otherwise)

(Page from a Muybridge book owned by Bacon - messy pup, got it smudged)

When Bacon died, a lot of his resources came to light within his studio (amazingly this was archeologically and painstakingly moved in exacting and brilliant detail from West London to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin), photography from the late 1800's by Eadweard Muybridge for instance, showing the althletic motion of people and animals in stop motion frames. On top of this he had more contemporary resources, cuttings from sports magazines, bloodied boxers, footballers, cricketers stretching for a shot as well as photography from his friends, most notably John Deakin.

Bacon's style, the contorted and tortured figures, writhing, seething into one form, sometimes melting away into nothing, other times reduced to pulped meat really make me feel something. There's violence and sexual energy in a lot of his work, which reflected his upbringing and journey into adult relationships. And an intense sadness. It's hard not to feel something.

It was interesting to see what he did with photos, he'd crush them, rip them, tear them up and then repair them for instance, thus this patchwork repaired photo was what he sometimes used to spark the creative energy to create the painting it ultimately became. This is one of the works on show (I don't believe this was exhibited in the Tate) of his model Isobel Rawsthorne which was based not on a sitting but on three photographs provided by Deakin. I would have taken a picture of the photographs it was based on which was exhibited side by side with the painting, but the beady eyed old security lady with the walking stick would have told me off as there was a strict no photography rule.... and I fancied she was faster than me over 10 yards...

The exhibition also touched on Bacon's inspiration by the moving image. They were showing the "The Battleship Potemkin" a silent soviet propoganda movie where a characters scream inspired Bacon to paint screaming popes (mashed up with Velazquez's popes). Interesting film, especially the way the Tsarist soldiers march down the steps like faceless automatons, lacking compassion, mercilessly butchering the wailing masses (Cossack mo-fo's!) and the use of shadow and light was awesome in the film, especially the way the shadows of the soldiers bayonetts seem to push the crowd in terror down the Odessa steps. Would have been nice to squeeze in a screaming pope painting in the exhibition, as it would have looked cool side by side with the movie still....

I'll be spending the rest of my birthday money on a couple of books now

Francis Bacon: Incunabula by Harrison a lovely hardback book which loosely covers the exhibition and

Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, by Peppiatt, a biography of the tragic artist, his life and lovers

To summarise, well worth a visit! Now until 20th June.

http://www.comptonverney.org.uk/?page=exhibitions/francisbacon

Dave McKean and Ray Bradbury

Last Autumn, me and D were looking at places for a weekend away whilst the sun still warmed the face and the breeze was bracing but not cold. Having investigated the east coast in suffolk, our normal haunt, we tried norfolk, but no luck in terms of character accomodation anywhere. So I traced a fingers along the map of the South Coast and randomly selected a place to visit... Rye. A bit of research proved this was not a chav town and there was plenty to do. The selection of the Ship Inn was a good one too, not too fussy, quirky and with delicious unusual stuff such as razor clams on the menu (oh my god, Ray Mears is right... they are delicious...!)
On the Saturday afternoon we popped into the small Art Gallery in Rye and to our surprise, multi-media artist Dave McKean was exhibiting there.
For the unitiated, McKean has form in many media, childrens books (eg - Wolves in the Walls) and comics such as the absolutely seminal Arkham Asylum graphic novel featuring Batman up against all his enemies. He's also recently designed a set of stamps for the Royal Mail, featuring mythical beasts such as Giants and Dragons... and there are reams of further work.
Both of us are big fans, I was aware of McKean through his work in comics, D through his childrens books, so to find him exhibiting and more thrillingly selling original work in this gallery was amazing for us. He lives locally and is a keen and active member of the local arts community.
We've never done this before... but we thought sod it, once in a lifetime... so we ended up foregoing food and heating for three months and buying two original pieces of work from a new hardback graphic novel/story he penned set in Sussex and around called "The Coast Road". This book isn't to my knowledge going to be available on major release, it was printed as a limited run for the gallery to sell alone, so we felt proud to be part of it and own part of it.
These two pieces of work are now proudly displayed in our living room.
There was another one of a crow in a graveyard which I drooled over, but someone else had already purchased it, so it's just the two bird related McKean originals.

Photo quality isn't that good, but it gives you a gist for the quality of the work.

What was also in the gallery was a group of pen drawings made by McKean to illustrate the sinister Ray Bradbury story "Skeleton". It's about a guy who becomes fixated and terrified of the fact that a skeleton was inside him, so much so that he plots to have it destroyed. His descent into dark obsession is wonderfully captured.

I grew up with Bradbury short stories, tales of small town american fairgrounds and the disfigured and the supernatural.

Most were written in the 1940's and 50's, certainly those I read, and still have some relevance and resonance today. His story "The Veldt" for instance, is ominously premonitory of the technology coming down the line in the modern age.

But anyway, Skeletons, limited release of 500 books. You can't get one for under 100 quid now... and here was the whole set of art from the book, available to buy. Alas... I couldn't afford it of course. Gutted. Here is a snippett of what I mean, it would have made an amazing portfolio if someone was rich enough to buy them all. And there they all were, hanging on the wall... saying "buy me", laughing at me with their bare skeletal teeth, looking through the bare bones of my finances with those empty leering sockets...

Finally, and thankfully more widely available is another great McKean / Bradbury collaboration. In the lush hardback version of "The Homecoming" a tale of a normal mortal boy being born into a supernatural family, McKean adds his art to the old short story.

I wouldn't say this is a particular favourite story of mine, but from a popular culture context I believe the supernatural family Bradbury created was the inspiration for either (or both) the Munsters and the Addams family.

The art really fleshes out the story though and the ending, the last paragraph in fact is really heart wrenching and sad. Here is an example.

If you want to check out more examples of McKean art... try this amazing blog article which pisses all over mine....

http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=1599

Finally, I salute you Ray Bradbury.. he's around 90 odd, still writing, but my favourite stuff is from his pulp short story days in the 40's and 50's... never get bored of them.