Art Jealousy

Art discussion and features

[jealousyj]

The swimming pool as a machine for voyeurism - Adolf Loos' Josephine Baker House

Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect’s task, therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise. The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable. The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture towards secret vice. The bank must declare: here your money is secure and well looked after by honest people.

The architect can only achieve this if he establishes a relationship with those buildings which have hitherto created this sentiment in man.[i]

- Adolf Loos

The concept of the swimming pool is a rare and interesting entity in that it simultaneously offers the opportunity to exercise, to repose, to play and to be seen. It is the extreme bias on the latter that makes the central focus of Adolf Loos' Josephine Baker House so intriguing. 

The swimming pool in Adolf Loos’ never-realised Josephine Baker House (1927-8) was an architectural device designed purely for the purposes of voyeurism and exhibition. It is, at the same time as being largely hedonistic, a masculine construct intended primarily as a machine for the objectification of women, namely one woman – Josephine Baker, the American who rose to fame in Paris in the 1920s as an erotic dancer and entertainer. The whole house in fact seems to be a product of the fantasies of Loos, at the time a middle-aged man entranced by the eroticism of an unattainable beauty less than half his age. As el-Dahdah (1995) so neatly puts it, ‘Loos instrumentalizes a building as a tactile extension of his sense in order to covet the exoticized body of an absent Josephine Baker’.[ii]

Loos’ design for an exhibition house had the swimming pool as its centrepiece, entered from the dining room or the bedroom on the second floor, the top of the house. The facade of the house, quasi-comically referencing the classic striped bathing suit, even hints towards what we might find inside, underneath. Crucially, the walls of the pool incorporated large glass panels so that the swimmer could be viewed underwater from the surrounding halls and petit salon on the first floor; the voyeur can gaze at leisure at the objectified swimmer, who is aware of her audience, but is unable to see him through the water.

Heightening the voyeuristic, dominating, possessive element in this fantasy house is the fact that there is no record of Baker ever having commissioned such a design (if we can discount Loos’ vague account of a supposed meeting between the two in Paris, an event which is itself told to us in vignette by Claire Beck Loos). The plan for such a house was in effect forced upon her; it aims to make Baker the doll in a doll’s house, resident to indulge the fetishist, the window shopper. A look-but-don’t touch peep-show, a ‘state of pure pornography’ has been created; here Loos stands behind the window ‘anticipating the diving body of Josephine’.[iii]

Despite this being a popular consensus amongst critics and scholars today, should we be so ready to attribute Loos’ design as a reflection of his unrequited sexual desires? Baker was after all a performer; although acknowledged to have an obvious degree of talent her success and fame depended on being objectified and viewed voyeuristically by an audience of hungry, desiring eyes. It has rightly been put forward that the Baker House can be seen as ‘a distinguished front to promote the commercial interests of a businesswoman’.[iv] A glorious affair of self-promotion in other words. Nonetheless, it is interesting to examine this instance in which the actual act of swimming, for exercise or leisure, is far from being the intended primary function of the swimming pool.

From Stephen Atkinson's Josephine Baker House: A Sequential Reproduction in Assemblage published by the MIT Press (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171418)

Interior view, Slice House, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Procter-Rihl Architects, © Marcelo Nunes. 

Casa Devoto, Argentina, Andres Remy Arquitectos. © Alejandro Peral

[i] Adolf Loos quoted in translation in Shapira, E. (2004) ‘Dressing a Celebrity: Adolf Loos’s House for Josephine Baker’, Studies in the Decorative Arts, Vo. 11, No. 2 (Spring-Summer), p.8

[ii] El-Dahdah, F. (1995) ‘The Josephine Baker House: For Loos’s Pleasure’, Assemblage, No. 26, April, p. 75.

[iii] El-Dahdah, F. (1995) ‘The Josephine Baker House: For Loos’s Pleasure’, Assemblage, No. 26, April, p. 80.

[iv] Shapira, E. (2004) ‘Dressing a Celebrity: Adolf Loos’s House for Josephine Baker’, Studies in the Decorative Arts, Vo. 11, No. 2 (Spring-Summer), p.11

[jealousyj]

A Bridge Too Far

All images courtesy of Heatherwick Studio

  Before making London buses cash-free in 2014, Tfl held a public consultation. The fact that only 37,573 people cared to respond would suggest that the consultation was not very well advertised, but more importantly 25,330 (67 per cent – a clear majority) of the people that did take part in the consultation were against scrapping cash fares on buses.[1]  But Tfl ‘made a decision to go ahead’ anyway. One wonders if there is any point of holding a consultation only to completely ignore its results, but this is something that our governments have been doing routinely for a long time. One of the examples that springs to mind is when Jacqui Smith and Labour approved the upgrading of cannabis in 2008 from Class C to Class B against the advice of the scientists that they themselves had commissioned a report from. Alan Travis of The Guardian noted at the time that ‘Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), said moving cannabis from class C to class B "is neither warranted, nor will it achieve its desired effect".’[2] But again, they went ahead regardless.

Given this, I am led to seriously doubt that either Tfl or the Mayor of London will pay any attention to the petition against the building of the proposed new ‘Garden Bridge’ that will span the Thames from the South Bank to Temple, which is to my mind a frivolous enterprise, an ill-considered waste of public money.

Perhaps New York’s High Line and Paris’ Promenade plantée have been influential in the design of this ejaculation of the extraneous, but immediately one notices the fundamental difference: that both the High Line and the Promenade plantée were created by redeveloping a defunct space, not by bulldozing pre-existing green space, which will have to happen in order to build this ‘Garden Bridge’. Equally, Paris and New York’s projects redeveloped or repurposed derelict stretches of railway line; London’s will involve closing Temple tube station for six months.

According to Tom Edwards of the BBC, supposedly ‘high-profile’[3] backers of the project include Joanna Lumley (high­-profile!) and Thomas Heatherwick, who was responsible for the new Routemaster and the Olympic cauldron (urgh). Naturally Thomas Heatherwick is backing it; the proposed design is by Heatherwick Studio.

I find absurd that one of the reasons for being is the supposed necessity to get more people from the South Bank into the City, not the other way round. ‘The revival of the South Bank over the past two decades has created a vibrant and artistic district attracting large number [sic] of visitors to its art galleries, theatres, music halls, restaurants and outdoor entertainment. However, visits to Temple and the north bank area east of Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge are much less frequent.’[4] Why? Because people aren’t as interested in going there. ‘The bridge will grow and nourish the connection between these distinct areas whilst providing new walking routes to and from Covent Garden and Soho.’ Even though the bridge will close at midnight, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to walk through a wooded area in the dark on my way from South Bank to Soho when I could just use the much more convenient Waterloo Bridge or the pedestrian ones next to Hungerford Bridge.

Perhaps the Garden Bridge will be wonderful. But do we need it, especially at a cost of over £70 million to the taxpayer?

Thames Open Central Space -

http://www.tcos.org.uk/

The petition against the bridge -

http://www.change.org/p/lambeth-council-planning-david-smith-lambeth-council-put-the-garden-bridge-where-it-s-needed

  [1] (https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/buses/cashless/user_uploads/web-published-consultation-report-post-14july14.pdf-1)

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/may/08/drugspolicy.drugsandalcohol

[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-29627906

[4] http://www.heatherwick.com/garden-bridge/

[jealousyj]

Veronese's Animals Are Actually People

Veronese's works are expansive, majestic, imposing maybe, and certainly monumental. Often the viewer is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things happening in his paintings; Veronese does not depict only the necessary characters and elements in order to tell the story - there is usually a plethora of other extraneous or purely decorative goings-on jostling for room on the canvas between by-standers, patrons or vernacular architecture. One of the lasting impressions that followed me out of the Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery is just how involved some of the various pets and livestock seem to be in some of his paintings. I mean, really fascinated, as if they are fully conscious of the importance of the events that they are privileged enough to be witnessing. I don't know if Veronese was showing off, or trying to depict how species outside the human race were equally enthralled/compelled by the power o' Christ, or if he just really liked painting animals.

Veronese / The Anointing of David (detail) / c. 1550: The billy in the bottom right looks on intrigued at the clamour of curiously clothed people showering each other in oil.

Veronese / The Family of Darius before Alexander / c.1565-7

Veronese / The Family of Darius before Alexander (detail) / c.1565-7: Having defeated the Persian King Darius at the Battle of Issus, the victorious Alexander (in the classical red armour) is honoured by the family of Darius - except that they make the awkward post-bellum faux-pas of mistaking his close friend Hephaestion (in the contemporary armour and orange cloak) for him, giving homage to Hephaestion instead. Tense, nervous and unaware of the magnanimity with which Alexander is about forgive the family of Darius, the concerned dog in the bottom right hangs on Alexander's every word. 

Veronese / The Rape of Europa / c.1575: The cow peeking in at the far right of the picture appears shocked and panic-stricken, wondering simultaneously how her friend with the garlands has managed to get herself mixed up in all this mess.

Veronese / Happy Union / c.1570-5: Whether or not the dog's inclusion is to symbolise the fidelity of the couple being crowned by Abundance, he is an equal party to the occasion, and seemingly just as fixated on Abundance as anyone else present.

[jealousyj]

Momentum: United Visual Artists @ Barbican - Last Chance To See

Photo: James Medcraft

Photo courtesy of UVA

Photo courtesy of UVA

Momentum, the installation in the Curve at the Barbican by United Visual Artists, closes on June 1st, this Sunday. As with many exhibitions or installations of its type, Momentum is at home in a Brutalist wonderland like the Barbican Centre, a cavernous, warren-like masterpiece that is even pre-emptive of Postmodern architecture, its interior especially.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly fascinated and enamoured with the kind of immersive, all-enveloping and deliriously disorientating gesamtkunstwerke of artists like Doug Wheeler and James Turrell, both of whom featured notably in the Hayward Gallery’s phenomenal Light Show last year. To be able to lose oneself physically and mentally, completely and totally exploring an artwork is a wonderful experience; I sat for about half an hour in blissful detachment in the Grafton Architects room at the RA’s Sensing Spaces.

Very sensibly the exhibition assistants have been limiting entrants to a strict maximum of thirty people at a time. A crowd would be critically detrimental to this installation; the queues are worth it.

“Meditative…hypnotic,” says UVA co-founder Matt Clark of ‘Momentum’. I agree. This kind of art is for the individual to project their own ideas and feelings onto; in the absence of any narrative we are naturally inclined, compelled even, to integrate our own intensely personal emotions. I suppose the unreal high I’ve been trying to attain is made real in these ethereal spaces made of light and shapes, contemplatively stimulating spaces to revel in. “The tension between the…synthesised and the natural,” or for me the unreal and the real, is the major attraction.

[jealousyj]

Fevered Egos and The Concept of Psychic Price / John Grande's New Works

John Grande, 'Jimmy Dot', Oil on canvas, 2013

At one point during the last recorded show before he died in 1994, the acerbic American comedian Bill Hicks explained as an aside: "All I'm trying to do folks is rid the world of all these fevered egos that are tainting our collective unconscious and making us pay a higher psychic price than we can fucking imagine."

Just before this Hicks had floated the idea of a TV show he hoped to host, with the “fairly self-explanatory” title Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus. How sweetly life has repeated itself since 1994: Hicks was an outspoken critic of Bush Snr and the first Gulf War; now we suffer from the almost unavoidable exposure to the cerebral canker that is Miley Cyrus and everything associated with her.

The concept of 'psychic price' or 'psychic cost' is a broad and far-reaching one that identifies and acknowledges the adverse effect on the human psyche of varying forms of emotional stress encountered in one’s life. An experience that ‘costs’ the human psyche, something that worries, can be in the form of anything from stressing over whether your spouse will like the birthday present you bought, fretting about money, trying to be someone you’re not or even the guilt felt when you know Mike has stolen Frank’s beloved Batman DVD, but you keep schtum because it’s easier than dealing with Mike after you’ve betrayed him. All kinds of things.

I think there are plenty more things in modern Western life that damage the psyche. One of them is spiritual boredom. It can be a subconscious boredom that eats away at your brain and advances dementia - you may never know you have it, but it’s there, festering due to lack of exposure to culture, beauty, real stimulation. Or it could be an equally malevolent boredom created by over-exposure to mindless dross and banality rammed down your throat by those that have ‘sold out’. I mean those that are only in it for the money. Some start as sell-outs, those who sing or paint or write things that they know will sell because they are just like everything else that is ‘in vogue’. Others are moulded by those in power in their respective industries into whatever shape will make the most money.  Cyrus is of age now so screw Disney, let’s see some tits. Of course all this is obvious, but the point I’m trying to make is that not only is it rubbish, it is actually bad for you - it rots your brain in the same way that sugar rots your teeth. Not all ‘art’ is for ‘art’s sake’, this ‘art’ is for money, idiots’ money, your money.

Hicks was also a fan of Jimi Hendrix, so consequently I am using this space to honour their memories and simultaneously single out some really bad people. Today I have my sights zeroed in on painter John Grande, whom I hereby label A Sweet-Toothed Bullshit Merchant of The Highest Order. Currently the Jim Kempner Gallery in New York is hosting OH YOU PRETTY THINGS, an exhibition of his works that comprises a seemingly random selection of crude portraits of twentieth century ‘icons’ behind multicoloured Damien Hirst spots. There is nothing of any value in these paintings. There is nothing positive. There is nothing new. At all. John Grande should be banned from ever picking up a paintbrush again if this is what he comes up with. OH YOU PRETTY THINGS depicts the rotten fruit spat from the loins of an unabashed cringe-fest of blind hero-worship and lack of creativity.

John Grande, 'Kurt Dot', Oil on canvas, 2013

John Grande, 'Judy Dot', Oil on canvas, 2013

A few years ago I bought the brilliant ‘John Marley’ t-shirt from the clothing company African Apparel. I might have to buy another and Fedex it to John Grande. The most important thing however is that one should NEVER be afraid to denounce something as utter bollocks, especially if that’s what it clearly and most blindingly obviously is.

John Grande: OH YOU PRETTY THINGS is on at Jim Kempner Fine Art from Jan16 - Feb 23, 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjkF6UEsT80

http://store.africanapparelstore.com/product/john-marley-t-shirt

[jealousyj]

Foresight, understanding and open-mindedness: Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro

Interior and exterior shots of the Casa de Vidro then (black and white) and now

Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro (Glass House) is a wonderful example of the developing sensibility of an artist in a new environment. Born in Rome in 1914, Bo Bardi was a post-war émigré to Brazil in 1946, becoming a Brazilian citizen the same year she built the Casa de Vidro for herself and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi in 1951. The house demonstrates the crossing point where Bo Bardi’s European Modernist ideology met with the burgeoning optimism of 1950s Brazil and was changed irrevocably. To give a bit of background, the Casa de Vidro was built at a time when the idea of building Brasilia was being seriously considered (the idea was actually first dreamt up in 1827, but wasn't finally acted upon until 1957 when it was taken up by the then President Juscelino Kubitschek with Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer at the helm). This was certainly an interesting time to be around; Costa and Niemeyer went on to build a Modernist fantasy - a city from scratch in the middle of nowhere; something that could not and will never be realised in Europe - nothing like Brasilia will ever happen again. Over here, if Le Corbusier had his way he might have bulldozed Paris and started from the beginning. I could go as far as mentioning the idea of airports in the middle of a city - perhaps convenient but in reality a very, very bad idea (runways and skyscrapers...). Such is the beauty of Modernism: in hindsight we can call it optimistic, wonderfully over-optimistic.

There are immediate comparisons one can draw between the Casa de Vidro and earlier works by notable European Modernists, especially Le Corbusier; notice the similarity of the pilotis here and on Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye for instance (1928-31). But Bo Bardi is somehow more understanding and natural; her Casa de Vidro seems less of a shock. As Rowan Moore pointed out in The Observer in 2012, ‘over the years vegetation has surrounded it, as [Bo Bardi] knew it would, such that it has become a richer and more beautiful place than when first built.’ The house has now become nature; whilst it looks out onto the rainforest, it lets the outside world in as well - there is a central courtyard deliberately there to let trees grow up through the centre of the house, essentially interacting with it. The Villa Savoye however seems to distance itself from its surroundings in an almost obsessive-compulsive way: an area of clinically sterile lawn separates the house from the trees, and the pilotis here raise the house from the flat ground as if it were someone tip-toeing their way over a puddle of sick (or alternatively the house could be a fat man with skinny legs). Of course it is arguable that Bo Bardi had time to expand and perfect some of Le Corbusier's earlier ideas (ones that by that time he had more or less abandoned) while he himself was off in India working on totally new and monumentally large commissions.

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye

When compared to similar and more famous contemporaries, the Casa de Vidro also seems to be simply more habitable (even if at the basest of levels it just looks cozier) than Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1945-51), and Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. Mies van der Rohe was keen to stress that houses should not interfere with or get in the way of nature, but in my opinion this has led to the Farnsworth House looking like a spacecraft that has landed in the middle of Illinois. It is completely alien to its surroundings, whereas with the Casa de Vidro Bo Bardi has remembered that humans are a part of nature, and that building a shelter to live in is a fundamental part of human nature - nature should not be appreciated through a frame, but should be integrated into one's life. With later projects such as the SESC Pompeia, an effective leisure centre in São Paulo, Bo Bardi furthered the idea that there is a mutual between relationship between firstly, architecture and humanity, and secondly, a building and its surroundings, regardless of whether said building is in the rainforest or in the middle of a metropolis of over ten million inhabitants. In both cases, one affects the other and vice versa.

The glass house that Bo Bardi built for herself and her husband does not feel like 'a machine for living in'; there is no strong emphasis on industry, mechanics or engineering, more a sense of relaxation and having a connection with nature. There is not a sense of detachment from the past as such; the house is definitely built with its surroundings in mind. Neither is the house entirely glass - there is a further part on solid ground above where bathrooms and bedrooms are not as exposed to the outside. In other words, the house strikes an intelligent balance, knowing where and where not to be so open.

I should point out at this juncture that my aim is not to brashly dismiss as second-rate the work of some of the most important and influential architects of the twentieth century. I just think that in this instance, in the sensible and successful design of a 'glass house', Bo Bardi triumphs above the others. For me, the photos of the Casa de Vidro depict a level of living that is as good as it gets.

Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House

Philip Johnson's Glass House

[jealousyj]

A right way of doing things? Emotional Realism in Léon Cogniet's 'Massacre of the Innocents'

Léon Cogniet / Massacre of the Innocents / 1824 / Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes

It's always worth remembering the general rule that there is no one right way of doing things, although subjectively at least some are more appealing than others. Léon Cogniet's Massacre of the Innocents (1824) sees the artist taking a well-worn subject from a completely different angle. Over the preceding years numerous interpretations of the violent story have been executed in marble, alabaster, manuscript, fresco and most notably in canvas form by the likes of Giotto, Rubens, Guido Reni, Le Brun and Poussin, to name a few. What draws me to Cogniet's Massacre... is that he manages to achieve a different kind of horror than before; he creates a personal and confrontational mood of panic. The woman sheltering her child looks directly at the viewer; she offers the audience no escape from the trauma, just as she strives to escape it herself. Here the drama occurs largely in the background, in a small proportion of the painting. Gone is the overzealous head-hacking, skull-bashing and infant-tossing. The Massacres... of Rubens, Reni and Le Brun depict total confusion and have multiple focal points, whereas Cogniet focusses on the personal plight of a nameless woman and her child. I should point out that I am in no way criticising the approach of the earlier artists, who were and are arguably superior painters, and certainly more famous ones. When one considers the provenance, patronage and purpose of all four paintings, among other things, it is quickly evident that they are largely incomparable. However, credit is surely due to Cogniet for sheer innovation and originality, at the very least. Perhaps different methods would have appealed more in different eras, but it's Cogniet's ahead-of-its-time humanist take that pushes my buttons. 

Peter Paul Rubens / Massacre of the Innocents / c. 1610-12 / Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

Guido Reni / Massacre of the Innocents / 1611 / Pinacoteca Nazionale Bologna

Charles Le Brun / Massacre of the Innocents / after 1647 / Dulwich Picture Gallery

[jealousyj]

Three Controversial Vasily Vereshchagins

Vasily Vereshchagin, The Apotheosis of War, 1871 (dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come")

Blowing from Guns in British India, c. 1884

A Forgotten Soldier, before 1874

By the time of these paintings photography was already firmly established, so why document war in paint? Surely photography is a more objective and practical record, one would have thought.

Vasily Vereshchagin used his canvases not merely to document events, but also to remind us of the inglorious side of war. The three paintings above are some of his most controversial; the artist has spent a great deal of time to produce real horrors to a marvellous yet perverse degree of detail.

Involved in the military for most of his life, the Russian Vereshchagin experienced the events he painted first hand, believing it necessary to endure up close the 'cold, disease and wounds' in order to inject authenticity into his work. Many paintings of his appear at first sight to be fairly objective, these three however are there to make a specific political point. Additionally, all three paintings are fictionalised to one extent or another - in the case of The Apotheosis of War clearly, but more subtly with Blowing from Guns in British India, which depicts events of 1857 but with soldiers in contemporary late-nineteenth century uniform.

Blowing from Guns... depicts the particularly grisly execution of Muslim 'rebels', in which a was tied to the barrel of a cannon which was then fired, scattering limbs everywhere.The Apotheosis of War is Vereshchagin's blunt yet effective metaphor for the best that war achieves - at the end of it all, one is left only with an anonymous heap of dead souls. There is no sense of victory here, only futility and loss. The latter painting was rejected from an exhibition in Saint Petersburg because of its negative portrayal of the Russian military.  

'Does war have two sides? One that is pleasant and attractive, the other that is ugly and repulsive? No, there is only one war. It attempts to kill, injure, or take as many people prisoner as possible. The stronger adversary beats the weaker, until the weaker pleads for mercy'.

             -  Diary of Vereshchagin

In the case of the third painting, the forgotten soldier has had no chance to plead for mercy - he is simply an anonymous by-product of the ruthless war machine. I find these three paintings in particular the most interesting of Vereshchagin's oeuvre, largely because they strive so much to emphasise war's proclivity for futile, meaningless destruction.

[jealousyj]

MEMENTO MORI / PERTWEE ANDERSON AND GOLD GALLERY / In collaboration with THE MUSEUM OF CURIOSITY

The stated aim of this exhibition is supposedly to bring ‘together both historical and contemporary artworks which ask the viewer to contemplate their own mortality’, which essentially is the whole point of a memento mori. I can’t say however that I got anywhere near to contemplating my own inevitable terminability during the exhibition.

Apart from two or three fairly thoughtful works, the show seems to be more of an exercise in how many different things one can do with a human skull, to which the blame lies largely on the part of the artist. Most have taken this regretfully uninspired and overwhelmingly over-clichéd route. The image of a human skull, often doctored or adorned in some way, is nowadays such a widely reproduced one that it has become completely meaningless and devoid of metaphor. To this extent I am reminded not of death or mortality by some of these works but of tired and uncreative popular culture. Tom Gallant has drilled some holes in a skull, turned it upside down and set it in a wooden mount of GCSE Design Tech quality, Bj Cunningham’s effort is crass to the extreme and Mat Chivers’ is baffling in its futility. Suffice to say none of them get close to exploring the true nature of mortality, and therefore fall at the first hurdle in the memento mori qualification stakes. I went to the George Bellows at the RA on the same day last week and saw something that truly made me contemplate death. A doomed man sits blindfolded in an electric chair, surrounded by the usual people at an execution: the chaplain, witnesses, family, executioner and so on. Unlike the empty metaphors of before, here the viewer is hit by the stark and ugly realisation that this most certainly is the end. Why does a memento mori always have to be a skull? Obviously not everyone plans on being executed, but I feel that Bellows here reminds us of what death really is - an ending. There is no hint of any afterlife, nothing to represent decomposition and the forming of new life; there is just blank and irrevocable finality.

Tom Gallant, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (detail), 2013

Bj Cunningham, Too Bad You're Gonna Die, 2013

Mat Chivers, Limbo, 2013

Chapman Brothers, Migraine, 2013

Jim Skull, Soir de Paris, 2009

Dr. Viktor Schroder, Memento Mori with Azure Magpie, 2013

George Bellows, BELLOWS: EXECUTION, 1925. 'An American Tragedy', 1925

[jealousyj]

Peter Blake: Four Decades / CHELSEA Futurespace

I went to the private view of a small new Peter Blake show last night, which opens today at Chelsea Futurespace near Chelsea Bridge. Some new, some old; a bit of a money spinner (how people feel they can justify a jump of more than a hundred pounds from unframed to framed I'll never know; in one print's case for nearly 17% of its actual value you can have some wood and glass over it - £1000/£1200).

Not to say it's not worth going to the seemingly makeshift 'Futurespace'. Even though I know a small bit about Blake, I was struck yesterday with the thought that his treatment of the human figure is so incredibly natural. One doesn't associate Pop Art with this, but at some points his treatment of simple human mannerisms is spot on. This is especially true in the case of Alice in the Through the Looking Glass series.

If you're in need of a 'bitesize injection of Blakepop' (as PR might sell it), or you're just wondering why Blake is so highly regarded, then it's worth popping by if you're in the area. In this small space they've managed to fit in a fair few examples of what Sir Peter Blake is all about. Clearly I am a fan, even though it pains me that Blake has an Homage to Damien Hirst series.

'and to show you I'm not proud, you may shake hands with me!', 1970

'But isn't it old!' Tweedledum cried, 1970

'Well This is Grand!' said Alice, 1970

'I Love You', 2004

'Found Art - Watercolours', 2005

'R is for Rainbow' 1991.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the last print, but I'm going to file it under Controversial/Perfunctory.

I should also say that the prints in this exhibition were 'selected by the artist', which essentially means that this is in no way a retrospective whatsoever - not even a flirtation.

[jealousyj]

Storm Thorgerson 1944-2013

Storm Thorgerson passed away on Thursday afternoon aged 69. If there's a list of graphic artists that need little introduction, he'd be near the top. The name may be unfamiliar to many, but his artwork is some of the most widely recognisable of the last forty or so years. Close friends with Pink Floyd since before they were Pink Floyd, he is responsible for all of their classic album covers; David Gilmour called his contribution to the band an 'inseparable part of our work'. A sign of the influence of his enormous oeuvre over popular culture in the second half of the twentieth century is that his work has been copied and imitated to exhaustion (often poorly). As well as Pink Floyd, he designed covers for Muse, Scorpions, The Mars Volta, Led Zeppelin, Audioslave, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Thunder and Peter Gabriel, amongst others. It's hard to garner much meaning from Thorgerson's work. Surrealism is a clear influence, and then there are recurring themes such as the sense of extreme isolation and vulnerability. But then again I don't know if creating a hugely thought-provoking image has ever been the point, but simply something that people notice. Album artwork doesn't always have to be striking or memorable, but that's the way Thorgerson did it. He really did fly a giant inflatable pig above Battersea Power Station, he did set a man on fire for 1976’s Wish You Were Here; it’s the kind of simple yet striking imagery that many contemporary artists wish they could pull off so perfunctorily.

Pink Floyd 'Dark Side of the Moon' front cover, 1973

Pink Floyd 'Animals' front cover, 1977

Pink Floyd 'Wish You Were Here' front cover, 1976

The Cranberries 'Bury The Hatchet' front cover, 1999

Pink Floyd 'Meddle' 1971

As an aside, I wonder if Syd Barrett would have approved. The early front man of Pink Floyd was known to take an interest in the synaesthetic. A painter himself before and after the band, he claimed to see different notes and chords as a particular shade or colour, an A Major as a warm yellow for instance. I’ve always thought the spectrum of keyed chords on Dark Side of the Moon’s ‘Any Colour You Like’ is like a rainbow in its range; I doubt this is coincidence. For me especially, his work has been a part of my life since, well, forever. I grew up with my father’s records, and learnt how to use a turntable when I was about five. I used to delight in taking out all the pristine Thorgerson covers and inlays, an integral part of the experience of listening to a particular record. All things considered, with Barrett and Rick Wright also dying in recent years, Thorgerson's passing is another nail in the coffin of the era that was Pink Floyd. Always modest, who else could dismiss the hype around something as significant as the light prism cover of 1973's Dark Side of the Moon as 'a nice but simple idea'?

Pink Floyd 'Dark Side of the Moon' inlay, 1973

Pink Floyd 'Dark Side of the Moon' inlay, 1973

[jealousyj]

Ruben Brulat

One of the most admirable traits in an artist of any medium, I believe, is the ability to offer a fresh interpretation of an age-old and established concept or idea. Ruben Brulat talks about getting ‘skin to skin’ with the earth, and of being ‘fascinated by places where the beauty of human beings has gone [away]’. But what intrigues me most is his will to express ‘the vulnerability and the smallness of our species’ when compared with the perennial omnipotence of nature. This is of course by no means a new idea - religion has been reminding us of this since we worshipped the sun, as have artists since the dawn of time. More recently, the Sublime and those associated with it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries delighted in depicting mankind’s relative impotence when faced with the power of the natural world. Think Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘The Monk by the Sea’ (1808-10), John Martin’s ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’ (1851-53) or James Ward’s ‘Gordale Scar’ (?1812-14). Brulat’s 2009 series Primates adroitly presents an examination of man’s needy son-mother relationship with the earth whilst simultaneously demonstrating the futility of man against the eternal dominance of nature.

Frictions / 2009

Embrassement organique / 2009

Une paix / 2009

Ils ne s'abandonneront pas / 2009

[jealousyj]

Neil Krug

Neil Krug's images have an incredible 1970s chromatic radiance, almost exothermic in some ways.

Subject matter that is, arguably, fairly unoriginal or clichéd is augmented by wise choices of models, locations and clever manipulation of images. One could be forgiven for not realising how contemporary many of his photographs are. Additionally, in many of his works he demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of the female form that is on a par with Klimt.

As well as his Pulp Art collaboration with partner and model Joni Harbeck that started it all off, he is now a prolific album cover artist, where his record sleeve designs perhaps owe some of their imagery to the work of Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere Alejandro Jodorowsky and Robert McGinnis are cited as influences.

The sheer number of beautiful images he has produced is an amazing achievement.

http://www.neilkrug.com/

From the series 'Jamul'

From the series 'Ainsley Burke'

Bedroom 3

Cover artwork for the band Ladytron

The following images from the series 'Carmen Danae' are appealing for a number of reasons. The first is notable for the pose in which the model is captured, an unusual but entirely natural one, which introduces the main theme of the next photographs: contrast.

The contrast of the natural curves of the body with the blank, linear simplicity of minimalist mid-twentieth architecture, as well the appeal of the weather, location, and (non)activity - that of leisure and repose - represent an interesting examination of how we interact with our man-made environment. They are also, on the other hand, simply remarkable for their aesthetic beauty.

[jealousyj]

Kate Middleton, Dusky Maiden

This was a post written in mid January after the portrait was officially released, but I've moved from blogspot to tumblr., hence the repost.

Paul Emsley / Portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge / 2012

  It was Ben Street who described Paul Emsley's critically slaughtered portrait of Kate Middleton as having 'a soft focus, Seventies porn look', which I think is spot on. Something in the back of my head told me I had seen this painting before, but it took me a while to figure out where.

Bored at school one day we went exploring in the upper reaches of the science block. Up one of those staircases that seemingly leads to nowhere we stumbled across the sordid lair of the lab technicians, those unshaven Quasimodos that creep around the complex with grimy test tubes and Bunsen burners. It was a small penthouse grotto with a couple of battered sofas, improvised tea-making facilities and hardy pot plants struggling in the hostile atmosphere of stale sweat and putrefying John Player Specials. My eyes came to rest on the high priestess of this temple, presiding over an untidy mountain of used and abused copies of FHM and Maxim, a J.H. Lynch Tina, the Astarte Syriaca of soft-core.

J.H. Lynch / Tina / 1961

J.H. Lynch / Autumn Leaves / Before 1969

Similar to the effect of painting on black velvet, her sultry eroticism shines through the darkness and the (imagined) tobacco-stained fug on the surface of the canvas. For me, there is a horrible similarity between Emsley's Middleton and the crass ooh-la-la of Lynch's various dusky maidens. It gives me the creeps looking at it; I feel as if I am being forced against my will to be a sweaty-palmed voyeur - looking into K-Middy's eyes too long makes me want to go and wash.

Emsley, Emsley, what hast thou donst?

[jealousyj]

Yeah, so. If you've seen http://jealousyj.blogspot.co.uk/ then you'll have some idea of what this is about.

For now I'm going to use tumblr. as most people do. I'll share things that I think are probably worth seeing.

It's interesting (and unfortunate) that many utterly forgettable films have brilliant soundtracks that have disappeared into oblivion - because the film has been forgotten. Think Alessandroni, Morricone, Ortolani, Piccioni, Orlandi, Bacalov, Dell'Orso. Or maybe that means nothing to the average reader.

On the other hand, having listened to a lot of what someone like Les Baxter has to offer (as entertaining as some of his seemingly unending oeuvre is), I seem to be preferring the artwork.

Baxter was an American composer, most popular in the 50s and 60s, who later rubbed shoulders with score giants like Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin.

Then again, Baxter's Moog Rock album is (ludicrously) worth a listen.