Tribal Art London

The Tribal Arts London fair 2016 is now on in The Mall Galleries until the 4th September. It's a great opportunity to catch an eye-popping spread of Tribal Art all under one roof - areas covered include Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Entry is free but bring your wallet in case you are tempted to buy any of the masks, figurines, bronzes, textiles, ceramics or jewellery on display.

I dropped in to have a look and here are a few of the things that caught my eye. First of all, obviously, some African masks:

(Songye masks from the Congo)

Another Congo mask

A Pende dog mask

A spectacular Sowei/Nowo mask from Sierra Leone

This Fon bronze of a lion with its prey I thought was very elegant.

Exotic head gear!

A fascinating 'power object' - we in the West are more familiar with lovers' locks on bridges - a very different sort of magic I imagine.

The Zulu are very famous as a tribe but actually their art is quite rare - here is a fascinating 19th-century staff with a lion being hunted (top) and a zulu snuff box made out of horn with a metal lid.

Finally, this Ethiopian headrest I thought was striking in its beautiful shape and patina, with highly intriguing metallic adornments and repairs.

Pearls

It’s the time of year when you realise with a start that all the major exhibitions you’ve been meaning to see all winter are about to close. Pearls at the V&A ends on the 19th.

It wasn’t a particular “must see” of mine, but a friend wanted to catch it and I tagged along for the ride.

Reader, if you have been meaning to see it but haven’t got around to it, I would avoid the last weekend absolutely. There will be an incident.

Lesley remarked that the V&A seemed to have spent more time considering customer flow patterns in the shop than in the exhibition. It really is the most cramped exhibition I have ever attended in London, and that is quite a competitive field.

Museum exhibition designers just don’t appear to think about crowded conditions. The experience is just so miserable.

Here we have a quite frankly awesome collection of gems from all over the world - featuring some unique and historically very important examples. They are all, obviously, tiny and need close observation.

So let’s put them in a dark room. Why the dark? Does electric light fade pearls? - and then place screeds of text in small fonts at the bottom of each display case. Viewers will then cluster round the display case blocking the view of others behind them. Meanwhile, those others are casting shadows across the text panels, making them hard to read and making sure that the people in front spend even longer in front trying to work out what number 6, 7, 8, 24 is and what it all means. Cleverly, I had picked up one of the large-print exhibition guides (with all the exhibition texts) on offer at the entrance - it helped a bit, but it still was so dark that reading even this had difficult moments.

There was no room to move about on your own volition - visitors are funnelled though from start to finish. Think Ikea, but in the dark and in rush-hour tube conditions. I started to panic halfway through.

One feels that fewer exhibits given more space to breathe might have helped - but it would have been a pity to miss some of the really wonderful examples the curators had assembled. The V&A really need to have given this whole show more space.

This issue does seem to recur in recent V&A offerings. I recall desperately cramped sections of the Hollywood costumes show. Very clever, varied design helped the David Bowie show a lot (also, I went to this multiple times so could skip bits that were too crowded, catching them on a second or third visit as necessary. I’m a Friend and can do this - my sympathies to those to have to shell out quite a lot nowadays for a single ticket).

Rant over.

The show is beautifully curated and the organisers seem to have gone out of their way to be super-educational on all aspects of the pearl industry. I noticed this trend at the Museum of London’s Cheapside Hoard exhibition as well - almost as if there is some guilt involved here; the educational content makes up for all the luxuriating in the frivolous trinkets of the super rich. Actually, comparisons with the Cheapside Hoard show are apt here because their display was far better organised than the V&A’s Pearls. But I reckon security is the big unspoken issue - the Museum of London has turned its entire exhibition room into a strongbox; here at the V&A each display case was its own safe - no doubt locked up every evening for protection.

Two things I learned about pearls:

1) No pearl is created by a grain of sand irritating an oyster. Instead, pearls seem to be a response by the animal to parasitic invaders - usually tapeworms. The oyster captures the invader in a cyst which continues to grow until it becomes a pearl.

2) Every shellfish can make pearls - but most usually and frequently bivalves. And not just oysters - the humble mussel can too.

I was quite staggered I hadn’t known about the parasitical origin of pearls before. But I suppose it’s not in the interests of the industry to promote that knowledge - not something their customers would enjoy knowing, wearing a pearl necklace!

Au Bon Accueil

One of my first trips to Paris was with friends, in the winter. I remember we made our way to the Trocadèro and walked down to the Eiffel Tower and up the Champ de Mars to Les Invalides. It was beyond freezing, with a vicious wind and grim lowering leaden clouds. However, we were young and foolish and high on an exciting journey to the most glamorous city in Europe.

Yesterday, I retraced that walk with my friend Nicolas. We were in Paris to catch the Masculin / Masculin exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay and Nic had arranged for us to eat lunch at a friend’s restaurant near the Eiffel Tower. We got off the Metro at the Trocadèro to be welcomed by a sublimely beautiful winter’s day.

You just don’t get light like that in London - crisp and high-keyed and blindingly clear. The Trocadèro’s polished marble platform bounced it all around amazingly - heaven for two amateur photographers. In the distance, the tower shimmered like a mirage in the miraculously blue sky.
After walking down across the Seine to the tower we explored the bottom section of the Champs de Mars a bit before heading off to the restaurant: Au Bon Accueil - ‘The good reception’. And what a reception it is.

I was excited as although I’ve been a fairly frequent visitor to Paris I’ve never eaten at a smart contemporary restaurant at the top of its game. Au Bon Accueil has a deliciously lacquered maroon frontage onto the street, and is a calm refuge within - simple and luxurious textures of stone and wood enclose intimate spaces. One of the stone columns had been carved by a grateful customer - a Bacchus or vaguely Assyrian monarch surveys the room. Front of house staff were friendly and efficient - you just immediately feel in very good capable hands. We quaffed a delicious glass of champagne and consulted the menu.

It seems I have good luck with fish in Paris. On that earlier trip a waiter at La Coupole (of course) suggested a fish dish different to my initially ordered salmon. As it was cheaper I went with his suggestion but if my French was up to the menu I might have avoided it: I seem to remember it was mullet with red wine and bone marrow (??!) However, it came, and was totally wonderful. On my last trip - a work outing with colleagues - I was desperate to eat at the hottest, smartest place in town and spent the day trawling my trade fair consulting restaurant guides and barking instructions to Angela (who spoke French), to try to get a table. Sadly, everywhere was booked and when we got back to the hotel that evening the colleagues were too exhausted to go out, and suggested we eat at a place next door. This turned out, hilariously, to be a celebrity hang-out from the 1950s totally fossilised in its time. Our table was treated with disdain until we ordered a second bottle of wine. Jo didn’t want a starter and I fancied two on the menu, so ordered tuna tartare for her for me to eat. It came and it turned into a tuna stand-off, it was so delicious.

But my salmon starter at Au Bon Accueil trumped all: a generous slab of salmon fillet, briefly seared (basically, sashimi). Breathtakingly gorgeous - a real work of art, with delicate dabs of different sauces, condiments and vegetables arranged as if by a florist or a jeweller on the plate. Lovely textures and flavours, really leaving me wanting more: a perfect starter.

The arrival of our poached and roasted chicken breast main course was heralded on our table by a culinary implement I have not seen before: a “pelle à sauce” (sauce shovel). This is something I can get behind! Especially when the sauce in question was the unctuously smoky mashed potato accompanying the chicken.

Again, achingly beautiful composition was backed with flawless execution: the chicken was tender, flavourful and juicy, with skin crisped to perfection by the roasting. A drift of blanched brussels sprouts leaves across a smear of sweet potato added a touch of wit and colour to the plate.

For pudding I fancied the brioche perdu, which Nicolas informed me was French comfort food (he went for the chocolate tart). My brioche was lovely, a squidgy yet fluffy square of caramelised eggy goodness, punctuated by the sharpness of mango and passion fruit. It came with a separate jug of caramel-topped whipped cream. So perfect.

We ordered from the lunch menu and both thought it offered excellent value for the price. Although we both felt that nowadays one can find similar quality food in London, it typically comes at three times the cost. Also, in my experience the lunch menus in London tend not to be as generous or imaginative.
After this wonderful meal we said our goodbyes and hurried off to the Musée d’Orsay for Masculine / Masculine. All I can say is the quality of the reception at Au Bon Accueil is mirrored superbly by the quality of the food. I’d love to go back.

A London Weekend

However long you live here, London always throws up something new, surprising and fabulous. It’s diversity doesn’t stop at having the largest number of foreign communities resident - every Londoner’s specific interests are catered to in depth as well, allowing for wonderful crossovers, mashups and discoveries.

So this last weekend was a bit of a London mash-up for me. It started, as all good weekends do, on Friday evening. A friend treated me to a play at the National Theatre: This House by James Graham. This is not the sort of play I am usually interested in - contemporary, and about 70’s politics and House of Parliament procedures. My usual theatrical interests are Classics (deep!) and Stars (shallow!) - I recently took in James McAvoy’s Macbeth, covering both - so This House was completely off my radar until I saw a trailer for it at the cinema. It looked amazing! It turns out that it’s a National Theatre hit and had returned for a second run at the larger Olivier theatre.

We were lucky to get great seats in the auditorium. The staging has a block of parliamentary style benches on stage, and some lucky audience members get to sit on these - the blocks are on two of the Olivier’s revolves and swivel round for scenes set in the House for parliamentary votes. Most of the time they are flat on and the front of the stage becomes the Whips’ offices as they plot and scheme (Tories) or desperately try to keep things afloat (Labour).

The play covers events from the fall of Ted Heath to the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through the eyes of the Whips. The Tories are blasé, urbane, worldly, and have seen it all before. Born to rule. Witty, but prone to bullying their newbies and snobbish. They become increasingly nervous of the top dog as Thatcher entrenches her leadership (initially portrayed as a weird fluke they expected not to last).

The Labour side show mainly working class types and accents (and the only women MPs in the play). The men swear like sailor’s parrots and then apologise to the women, who get annoyed by the apologies. Wilson’s government had a wafer-thin margin and was expected to fall within weeks - however, it lasted 4.5 years, and the play shows the desperate lengths the Labour whips went to to keep it all together (and the lengths the Tories went to to take them down). It’s all very funny and engrossing but one is aware that Thatcher wins in the end and changes everything (the play ends with a recording of her famous victory speech in 1979).

We repaired afterwards for a debrief and cocktail at Skylon’s bar. I’ve not eaten in this restaurant in its current incarnation (I did before when it was run by a celebrity chef) - the room itself is so much more beautiful and glamorous now after the Royal Festival Hall refurb. It also benefits from the fifties revival trend. We quaffed fab cocktails, surrounded by Italians - so many of them around in London at the moment. Our discussions turned on the Parliamentary news of the moment - the spectacular and catastrophic fall from grace of Coalition minister Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce, dubbed “the Clytemnestra of Clapham”. Indeed this is a greek tragedy, with both parties being sentenced to a jail term for perverting the course of justice today (over a speeding ticket in 2003!), but all their family dirty laundry has been fully aired in the press over the last few months. The Huhnes’ marital home was actually quite near to me, I’m familiar with their street in a “would love to live there’ kind of way. I also lived for many years with someone who went back and forth to Europe frequently, and would no doubt have known the stretch of road Huhne was caught speeding in (luckily, my housemate had a driver to ferry her to and from the airport so speeding was never an issue).

So far, so usual for me but Saturday would see me yanked right out of my usual tracks.

My niece is in a women’s eights team (Cantabridgian juniors) and was booked to race in the Womens’ Eights Head of the River Race (WEHORR) on Saturday. I’m vaguely aware of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race at the end of March but it appears that the whole of March is a big racing month on the Thames for rowers. My knowledge of rowing is not extensive (I called them ‘paddles’ and was put firmly right by a rowing mother - they are correctly called “blades”).

I met my brother and sister-in-law at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair where they had just made a purchase, and we taxi’d to the finish line at Putney Bridge just as the first boats arrived.

There were around 330 boats taking part. A ‘head’ race means they aren’t all actually starting at the same time - they are let go in batches in number order, so are racing against the clock. Coxes and teams use “Cox Boxes” to monitor their progress. The race goes downstream from Chiswick to Putney (the Oxford/Cambridge race goes upstream but timed to start on an incoming tide).

There was a great atmosphere amongst the crowds of supporters, and the sight of all the boats on the Thames was magnificent. we were treated to watching them sprint for the finish line in front of us and then double back past us to where they disembarked.

It took hours though for them all to come through, and the temperature noticeably dipped throughout the afternoon. After my niece’s team sailed past (they did well and were rightly proud of their achievement in their first big race, even with a broken cox box), we supporters all repaired to The Duke’s Head pub for a very late lunch.

The Duke’s Head is a quintessential rowers’ pub, and makes the most of its prime position on the start line of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race with a magnificent dining room - soaring ceiling and massive windows on three sides overlooking the river - and racing paraphernalia as decoration. The pub nails its colours firmly to the mast with its walls a Cantabridgian light blue.

Lunch/dinner was a hugely welcome wild boar burger with triple fried chips and a bowl of “allotment vegetables” - chanterey carrots, savoy cabbage and french beans. I toasted my niece’s team’s performance with a glass of sauvignon blanc, even as said team was whisked back to Cambridge thoroughly exhausted from their 4 hours on the icy river.

Boris's brush with art criticism

Yesterday Boris Johnson wrote such an extraordinarily provoking column in The Telegraph and on his blog that I broke a lifetime’s resolve and left a comment (on the blog). A couple of hours later my comment disappeared, so I thought I may as well vent my reactions more fully on my own blog.
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In his column Boris reacted to two small criticisms made of the AcelorMittal Orbit by the BBC’s arts correspondent Will Gompertz: he felt it was too small and was a pity entry wasn’t free (Anish Kapoor, the Orbit’s sculptor, is on record as being against the entry fee too). Boris’s bile knew no limits and from these minor and entirely reasonable personal comments Boris concluded that the BBC as an organization was biased towards the Labour Party and that the next BBC chief must be a Tory.
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I’m very disappointed in this; I hope his column was flung off two minutes to deadline (apparently a common practice) and doesn’t represent Boris’s considered opinion. I imagine he would have lost a few votes if this had come out before the election.
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The BBC was set up during the last major financial crisis in the 1930s by a political establishment concerned to neutralise extremist views in the UK media. They succeeded brilliantly. However it seems the modern Tory’s attitude to public service broadcasting is far closer to that of Goebbels and Stalin than it is to their own Tory forebears. Today’s Tories are clearly absolutely determined to create a Fox News in the UK – with all the consequent divisive coarsening of public debate that will result. It’s worth noting the BBC had its worst clash ever with the (Labour) Blair Government over Iraq – and despite the Hutton enquiry the public still believed the BBC’s version over Tony Blair’s. To this day the BBC remains the most trusted news source for the British public - vastly more trusted than, say, The Telegraph itself.
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Boris complains the BBC is suspiciously interested in the Leveson enquiry despite the public not being that interested.
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Whether or not the public is interested in the Leveson enquiry, the apparent wholescale corruption of our political classes, the police, and the intimidation of celebrities and members of the public alike are clearly issues which go to the heart of our democracy, as Boris as a senior politician should realise.
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Boris also claims that public funding somehow corrupts the BBC. As Boris’s Mayoral salary is also publicly funded, and he enjoys a generous £250,000 per year from The Telegraph for his journalism, will he abstain from claiming his Mayoral salary? - Mrs Thatcher of course didn’t claim her salary as PM back in the 80s.
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About the Orbit I tend to agree with him that it’s better and more interesting close up – at least as far as I could see from the BBC television pictures. However, you can’t have it both ways – it’s either a monument to the public munificence, advanced aesthetic taste and civic pride of Mr Mittal and Boris Johnson or it’s a commercial fee-paying attraction. As Boris knows, the famous bread and circuses of ancient Rome were free to Roman citizens - that was the entire point. The London Eye was always meant to be a fairground ride – the Orbit is supposed to be public sculpture. And the £15 entry fee is on top of the £10 fee you have to pay to get into the Olympic grounds – so despite what Boris claims it does work out as considerably more expensive than the Eye to go up a not very tall stationery tower. Boris should have insisted on slides!
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Boris’s tiresome diatribe has been dissected brilliantly by Dave Hill in The Guardian, who particularly points out Boris’s dodgy denial of any links to Rupert Murdoch’s News International during his election campaign. Boris’s full-throated diatribe against the BBC will, of course, endear him to the Murdochs père et fils, whose long-term objective is to eliminate their rival media organization in order to maximize their own personal profit and influence.

Design Museum Heads West

The Design Museum is in the news because of its annual Design Awards (Designs of the Year 2012 exhibition now on at the Museum) and because the museum itself is on the move across London from Shad Thames to the old Commonwealth Institute in Holland Park - its best frenemy the V&A will be a near neighbour in South Kensington (target date 2014).

While part of me is thrilled that someone is giving this mad 50s folly a new lease of life (Grade II listed, no less, and apparently regarded as second only to the incomparable Royal Festival Hall in post-war British Modernist importance), the bigger part of me is sad the Design Museum will be leaving Shad Thames, which it has graced since the 1980s. I imagine it will be replaced with more expensive flats with river views, impoverishing the cultural life and diversity of this stretch of the Thames immeasurably.

Also worrying is what they intend doing to the old Commonwealth Institute building (Sir Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners, 1960-2) , an architect’s flight of fancy if ever there was one, a triumph of form over function or even reason:

“Regarded by English Heritage as the second most important modern building in London, after the Royal Festival Hall, the building has a low brickwork plinth clad in blue-grey glazing. Above this swoops the most striking feature of the building, the complex hyperbolic paraboloid copper roof, made with 25 tonnes of copper donated by the Northern Rhodesia Chamber of Mines. The shape of the roof reflects the architects' desire to create a "tent in the park" . . . The interior of the building consists of a dramatic open space, covered in a tent-like concrete shell, with tiered exhibition spaces linked by walkways. “

Those links include swooping stairs down to a floating mezzanine level beneath the immense expanse of that magnificent roof. This grand flourish is extravagantly wasteful of space, which no doubt the Design Museum covets. The proposed remodeled interior designs I have seen sweep away the stairs, walkways, floating mezzanine, etc, and close up that central block of empty space. The original complex and delightful spatial interplay is completely annihilated in favour of a grim heavy concrete platform with a rather mingy oculus allowing a partial view of the roof. My criticisms are purely aesthetic here - no doubt in practical ways the redesign will make the space function far more efficiently as a gallery, as well as generating more usable floor space. It’s just sad that something so intrinsic to the building will apparently vanish in the process. John Pawson has a lot riding on this - a very modish architect, most of his projects so far have been either commercial or private commissions by the super rich; this will be his first major public project. His brand of highly aesthetic minimalism seems a refinement of 60’s Brutalism - the movement which reacted forcefully against the effete and almost rococo modernism represented by the Commonwealth Institute. We shall see whether the styles can harmoniously cohabit.

R.I.P. Lucien Freud

One of the greats passed away sadly on Wednesday evening. From his obit in the Guardian:

"Freud described the move to England as "linked to my luck. Hitler's attitude to the Jews persuaded my father to bring us to London, the place I prefer in every way to anywhere I've been.""

Ai Weiwei - Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads

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Ai Weiwei's magnificent ceramic sunflower seed installation at Tate Modern has just ended, and today his first monumental bronze outdoor installation, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads opens to the public in the courtyard of Somerset House, having just been to New York and Sao Paolo.

"Designed in the 18th century by two European Jesuits serving in the court of the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong, the twelve zodiac animal heads originally functioned as a water clock-fountain, which was sited in the magnificent European-style gardens of the Yuanming Yuan. In 1860, the Yuanming Yuan was ransacked by French and British troops, and the heads were pillaged. In re-interpreting these objects on an oversized scale, Ai Weiwei focuses attention on questions of looting and repatriation, while extending his ongoing exploration of the “fake” and the copy in relation to the original."

The installation is a real triumph - very imposing physically, and richly layered conceptually - a wonderful icon of the way cultural exchanges happen through the centuries. It can only add to this most prominent contemporary Chinese artist's global reputation.



So it is absolutely extraordinary that at this exact moment the Chinese authorities have chosen to 'disappear' the artist - he hasn't been seen or heard of since the 3rd of April when he was arrested while boarding a flight to Hong Kong.

Gwyn Miles, Director of Somerset House Trust, has issued this statement:

"Like everyone who admires and respects the work of Ai Weiwei we are dismayed and aggrieved by the news that he has been detained by Chinese authorities. We deplore the actions taken against Ai Weiwei and his friends and colleagues, and indeed any curtailment of individual’s human rights. We are very concerned about their safety and wellbeing and ask for information on their whereabouts to be released and them not to be detained without a fair trial."

"Ai Weiwei has chosen and approved the installation set up for Circle of Animals at Somerset House and the works have already been shipped to the UK. The sculptures will be installed as planned and Circle of Animals will open to the public on 12 May. We believe that more than ever, his work should be seen and appreciated by as many people as possible."

Anish Kapoor, one of our leading sculptors, has issued a call to action by artists and the world's cultural organizations:

"As a colleague – I don't know him personally – I feel that as artists we have a communal voice and it's important that we stick together, that we have a sense of solidarity with each other," he said.

"It would be nice to see the art world come together a little more. Perhaps all museums and galleries should be closed for a day across the world. I think some such campaign needs to form itself."

Kapoor said the Chinese state's behaviour was reminiscent of the Soviet era, when "the voice of artists of different kinds was seen as being dangerous".

He added: "It does bear witness to the barbarity of governments that if they're that paranoid they have to put away artists. It's a ridiculous situation."

The situation is very distressing. China should view this artist as a tremendous asset to its image and growing cultural reach in the world.

I do recommend popping along to the exhibition at Somerset House. I particularly enjoyed they way they have chosen to exhibit the scultures next to fountains, as an echo of how the originals were designed to be viewed.

A Cut Back

Carol Ann Duffy is definitely shaping up to be one of our most interesting Poet Laureates. I've quoted her amazing Last Post before, this one is her response to the Art Council's decision to cut all funding from the Poetry Book Society from April next year. It originally featured in the Guardian, and I'm quoting it from Belinda Hollyer's blog. Here's how you can help the Poetry Book Society.

A CUT BACK, by Carol Ann Duffy

It’s no go the LitFest, it’s no go up in Lancaster,
though they’ve built an auditorium (still quite wet, the plaster)
a bar, a bookshop, office space … well, they won’t need wheelchair
access.
All we want is a million quid and here’s to the Olympics.

London’s Enitharmon Press was founded in 1967,
but David Gascoyne and Kathleen Raine are writing now in heaven,
with UA Fanthorpe, John Heath-Stubbs; dead good dead poets all.
The only bloody writing now’s the writing on the wall.

It’s no go the national art, it’s no go cake with icing.
All we want are strategic cuts, it’s no go salami slicing.

It’s no go the Poetry Trust, it’s no go in East Suffolk;
Aldeburgh’s east of Stratford East. As Rooney says, oh f-fuck it –
because it’s no go First Collection Prize, it’s no go local writers.
We’ve been asked to pull the plug, the rug, by coalition shysters.

National Association of Writers in Education?
No way, NAWE, children and books, the train’s leaving the station.
It’s no go your poets in schools, it’s no go your cultures.
All we want is squeezed middles and stringent diets for vultures.

It’s no go the pamphlet, the gig in Newcastle no go.
All we want is a context for the National Portfolio.

Three little presses went to market, Flambard, Arc and Salt;
had their throats cut ear to ear and now it’s hard to talk.
They remember Thatcher’s Britain. Clegg-Cameron’s is worse.
Deathbyathousandcuts.co.uk, the least of which is verse.

It’s no go the avant-garde, it’s no go the mainstream.
All we want is a Review Group, chaired, including recommendations.

Stephen Spender thought continually of those who were truly great;
set up the Poetry Book Society with TS Eliot, genius mate.
But it’s no go two thousand strong in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Phone a cab for the Nobel laureates as they take their curtain call.

It’s no go, dear PBS. It’s no go, sweet poets.
Sat on your arses for fifty years and never turned a profit.
All we want are bureaucrats, the nods as good as winkers.
And if you’re strapped for cash, go fish, then try the pigging
bankers.

London Art Fair

The energy and enthusiasm of the city always amazes me. On a dark, freezing night at the beginning of January - a time to be tucked up in the warmth at home detoxing after December’s blow-out - throngs of Londoners descended en masse on the 23rd London Art Fair.


It has now officially become a venerable institution and it’s great to see the Fair thriving despite all the developments in the London art fair scene in the last decade - at the affordable end, London now has the Spring and Autumn Affordable Art Fairs in Battersea, and of course Frieze occupies the high-end Avant Garde international slot. But the London Art Fair seems to straddle quite successfully the contemporary-ish, affordable-ish well-heeled (and unsqueezed) middle ground - focussing mainly on UK Art.

Much of the stuff on display was familiar if you’ve been to London galleries or other fairs during the past year, but it is good to see it all mixed up with emerging artists and the more affordable side of the ‘big names’. I’d really like a Tracey Emin etching! - and it was great to see again Grayson Perry’s amazing Walthamstow Tapestry (last viewed at the Victoria Miro Gallery) and some of his ceramics dotted around. There was an incredible buzz at the preview evening and so much to see. The Fair ends today.

One of Emily Young's beautiful angels - the way she works with the markings in in the stone is exquisite

A detail from Ralph Fleck's Antiquariat (2010, Purdy Hicks Gallery)

A gorgeous floral by Ffiona Lewis - Window Poppy - Cerulean Blue (2011, Redfern Gallery)

If I had the cash this is the one I would buy - a quietly powerful early work by Derrick Greaves (L'Humanite, c 1953)




Many thanks to Nic for inviting me to accompany him - you can read his review for Londonist here.

Tate à Tate: Arshile Gorky, Theo Van Doesburg, Henry Moore and Chris Ofilli

A post which went lost and missing earlier this year!

April was a lovely month for visits from far-flung friends. One of my
very dearest friends was in London on a lap of honour the last couple of weeks before a significant milestone. It was fantastic spending time with her and catching up. We had excellent, sociable meals here and here. She was whisked away to a country spa for a few days, but was back in Londres for an afternoon of hitting the Tates.

I had not seen any of the temporary exhibitions, so it seemed like a plan. We decided to start at Tate Modern and take the Tate-to-Tate boat upstream to Tate Britain.

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective

To be honest I couldn’t really remember much about Arshile Gorky from my Art History studies – other than he seemed to be a second-ranking Abstract Expressionist. This show bears that impression out – it contains copious quantities of rather dull and derivative surrealism-based abstraction – all bar one room, which is by far the most impressive.

Poor Gorky had a desperately unhappy and tragic life – his father left Turkey for America when the future artist was little more than a baby; he and his remaining family had to flee Turkey during the Armenian Genocide and in the aftermath his mother died of starvation in Russia while Gorky was still a teenager.

Many years later he came across a photograph of himself and his mother from this time and used it as the basis for a series of portraits and paintings: without doubt masterpieces all. Tender, sombre and tragic – a supreme memorial. I responded to these so much more than to the abstracts – several of which were beautiful, but mostly just seemed professional and competent. One wonders if Gorky was in the wrong place at the wrong time – he was a brilliant figurative artist in a New York art world in thrall exclusively to Abstraction.  And it turns out my half-memory was wrong – it was Gorky apparently who lit that Abstract Impressionist fuse. But in retrospect his artistic heirs overshadow him.

Arshile Gorky
Tate Modern
10 February - 3 May 2010

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World

Van Doesburg was a founder member of the Avant-Garde and crossed swords with the Bauhaus (before the Bauhaus succumbed to his vision). The title of the show definitely describes it well - his ambition was definitely to construct a new world. The exhibition contains examples of his typographic work, furniture design and architecture as well as painting. The typography still looks modern. This show is hugely fun and very absorbing.

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World
Tate Modern
4 February - 16 May 2010

Chris Ofilli

Both of us are Chris Ofili fans and were looking forward to this one with anticipation. A retrospective, especially a first one, is a tricky event for an artist - can the body of work sustain the hype?

Ofili is undoubtedly the real thing - stunning paintings and ambitious ensembles; very sensitive drawings too.

Chris Ofilli
Tate Britain
27 January - 16 May 2010

Henry Moore

This show looks very handsome - the sculptures are arranged against beautiful coloured walls. It’s very refreshing to see Moore’s more intimate pieces.
Henry Moore
Tate Britain
24 February - 8 August 2010

Grace Kelly - Style Icon at the V&A

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"I am very happy that Grace has found herself such a good part" - Alfred Hitchcock

Grace Kelly’s film career ended when she was 27 upon her marriage to Prince Ranier of Monaco, and thereafter she lived the life of a European Princess – atoning for her privilege by doing good works while dressed in haute couture. But not acting. A rumoured comeback in 1962 was quickly denied. And thereafter one of the most notable film actresses of her generation did not act in films. Like Garbo before her, she absented herself at the peak of her career: unlike Garbo Grace remained centre stage for life.

The wedding of the Prince and the actress was incredibly glamorous and hopeful at the time – a symbol of an alliance between an America maturing into easy sophistication with a shattered Europe reinventing itself after the cataclysm of war. Joy was returning to the nations, even if we still had rationing.

But the dutiful timeline in the V&A’s exhibition brochure tells a more melancholy story – pre 1956, classic films with Alfred Hitchcock - an Oscar for Best Actress; post 1956 – this ball and that ball; cutting this ribbon or that ribbon. And this room full of pretty frocks, so dismally failing to conjure a sense of the woman.

Post Diana and Charles we are used to examining the cracks in the magicked up veneer of "happily ever after" - the newsreel footage showing an interview with Ranier on their engagement reminds one forcefully of Charles's ominously wooden public declaration of love: "Yes, whatever that may mean". Grace acts her part to perfection but there is no screen chemistry with her prince. And the rest is couture.

Grace Kelly: Style Icon
Victoria & Albert Museum
running to 26 September 2010

Gent with flower

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Strictly speaking I wasn't supposed to take this pic so am keeping mum about where this is from ;-)

This is a portrait of the author of an 18th-century florilegium, or plant encyclopedia. He was German and the book was published in Amsterdam beginning around 1730 (it took 12 years to complete). It's in 8 volumes; each around 500 pages long and contains 1,000 etched and hand-coloured illustrations. Each illustration was waxed to preserve the colour (and presumably to prevent it rubbing off on the facing page).

Imagine the logistics of organising that in that time period. No phones, no email, no typewriters or computers - no reliable postal service even. If the print run was just 1,000 that would mean they had to have 1,000,000 illustrations hand-painted to a consistent quality and correctly interleaved in the books. The text refers to illustrations by numbers (and there is an index at the end of the last volume)

I was really charmed that he had his portrait done in his baroque frock coat and wig holding a flower - his life's work.

Quilts

Quite surprisingly, the Quilts exhibition at the V&A is the first in the museum’s history. Nevertheless, the museum is clearly preparing for a blockbuster, with yards and yards (literally) of merchandising opportunities in the gift shop as you exit – the V&A has produced swatches of limited-edition fabric samples for inspired exhibition goers to get quilting with; books on how-to-quilt, as well as the exhibition catalogue. Of course, the bookshop also has loads of other quilting books to choose from.

My company got complimentary tickets from the V&A and my colleague Stu and I were gagging to go – strange really, two guys (one straight) instead of all the girls . . .

The V&A has clearly put a lot of work and thought into the show, and the results are stunning and amazingly inspirational.  The show gives an overview of the historical context and development of quilting, plus very specific insights into the stories of individual pieces – quilting seems intrinsically to sew stories into the piece, as the quilts were made for specific people, to commemorate specific events, were made from material recycled from other projects which had their own stories – and were ultimately handed down through generations and thus embodied family history.

As we zoom headlong recklessly into a future with a fraction of the resources than we currently enjoy, it was great to see how people’s relationship with the material world was actually richer then than now – every scrap of fabric was prized; saved for reuse in a quilt; every scrap of paper too as the bedrock of the quilted patch (even if most of the stories of women using their husband’s love letters appear to be fabrications – most of the papers used were old tradesmen’s bills). This was recycling on the level of the individual household – ingenuity was used to rework one obsolete item into another, more useful one.

This aspect inspired me as much as the beautiful workmanship on display.

As a counterpoint to this, the V&A has commissioned new pieces from artists – there are quite wonderful pieces by Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin. Emin’s done a new bed; far more sumptuous than the infamous Tate one of the last decade. Perry’s piece was quite small but packed an emotional punch. It’s a pity the show didn’t have his new tapestries, but I assume they were simply too large to exhibit in the relatively intimate spaces of the V&A temporary exhibition rooms.

Quilts: 1700-2010
Victorian and Albert Museum
20 March - 4 July 2010

Last Day of the Anish Kapoor Exhibition, RA

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Anish Kapoor at the RA has been quite the autumn sensation - I've been three times myself and each time the RA has been more crowded. I think they were very wise to end it on a Friday rather than the more usual Sunday - it would have been a riot! Photography was not allowed, but the rule was being comprehensively flouted so I joined in. I'm rather pleased with this mobile cam shot.