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state of art

slate3

JAN/FEB 2006

state

81'1'11' Gft,,dlh

OF ART 2006

STI?EET AI?T, GI?AFFiTi E OT/1£1? VAJfDALiSM ,

EDITOR

MIKE VON JOEL

INTRODUCTDON

mvj@state-of-a rt.org

MIKE VON JOEL

DEPUTY EDITOR

MICHAELA FREEMAN m if@ state-of-a rt. o rg

PUBLISHER

MATTHEW FLOWERS

WHEN THE AMERICAN painter Edward

examples of innovative and artistic tags, it

Hopper returned to the United States from

still remains a tool of the inarticulate vandal

as old as the art of writing itself.

his first trip to Paris, he famously described

and hastily sprayed initials, insults or

Modem graffiti is generally recognised as an

it as 'a chaos of ugliness'. Little has changed

signatures on any accessible surface is never

inner city manifestation that emerged from

since 1907, except the proliferation of street

more than vandalism. We are not concerned

the Hip Hop culture in New York in the late

PAUL GRAVETT JEREMY HUNT

signs, billboards, traffic instructions, neon

either with sloganeering or territorial

1960s. Apparently thanks to a

PETER HAMES ROBERT HELLER

and other acute visual pollution is now a

suprematism, as might be seen in South

Times

feature of public spaces the world over,

Central Los Angeles or the Derry Bogside

messenger boy who marker-pen'd his

including

these declarations of active aggression are

moniker (Taki 183) wherever he went,

space

well documented elsewhere by a myriad of

tagging

(uncontrolled, that is, by the people) and the

sociological studies. What we are concerned

'scene' in the early 1970s. It has expanded

cod psychology that underpins this excessive

with

is the evolutionary refmement of the

exponentially ever since. What began as an

assault on our eyes, is the subject of a

spawn of the LT. age, bringing into sharp

urban poor protest now spans all racial and

growing resistance from individuals across

focus a generation with new tools for

economic groups, complete with its own

the social· spectrum. T h e commercial

expression, new ways of communication and

jargon. It is reported one tagger recently

mf@ state-of-a rt. o rg

Contributors This Issue SUE HUBBARD DAVID FRASER JENKINS CHARLES KANE BARBARA MACADAM BRIAN MeAVERA MARCUS REICHERT ROWLAND THOMAS GEORGINA TURNER

Cover Image DAVID HEPHER painting, as seen In the film Match Point {detail)

Editors at

Large

USA CLARE HENRY

FllAr<t� JEREMY HUNT GEORGINA TURNER IRELAND BRIAN MCAVERA SARAH WALKER

PUBLISHED BY Momentum Publishing (Newspaper Division) 82 Klngsland Road, London E2 SDP Tel: 020 7920 7777 Fax: 020 7920 7770 Web: www.state-of-art.org

e ditorial@state-of-ar t.org Printed by Trinity-Mirror Group. Watford Plant

STATE OF ART is an independent p ublication.

Views expressed herein are those of the individual authorsand not necessarily of the Editor or the Publishers. ALL MATERIAL@ MOMENTUM PUBUSHING 2006

desecration

Paris. of

The

clean

uncontrolled outdoor

exploded into an excitable new

business of annexing public space is

an intellectual manifesto that has a new found

caught in Philadelphia was a 27 year old

sophisticated, lucrative and highly organised.

support from the community at large. In the

stockbroker who drove to his sites in a BMW.

At the very bottom end of the scale is illegal

context of Street Art, it encompasses

Whilst of the 19,900,000 Google references

flyposting, a process used by a multitude of

practitioners with skills and abilities that

for· graffiti, 99% are supportive, billions of

respectable businesses but run by a handful

could hold their own in any gallery situation,

pounds are spent worldwide trying to clean

of organised gangs. Anyone in London trying

creating imagery that is inventive and vibrant

up the

a spot of DIY flyposting runs the very real

and with the added piquancy of being

urban areas on the planet. But just as graffiti

risk of serious physical assault The other end

transitory.

graffiti

vandalism affecting most

art developed as a more sophisticated version of mere tagging, Street Art has evolved from

of the spectrum sees h oardings and lightshows sited for maximum effect (ie. right

But let's examine the Street Art phenomenon

in your face) taxed by acquiescent local

in some sort of historical sequence. The

authorities and sold to advertisers who can

earliest example of what we would recognise

afford the rates(Jl_ This in effect means the

today as graffiti survives in the ancient Greek

downloads from sites like Shawn Fanning's

larger corporations, with products they need

city of Ephesus (now Turkey) and, it is

Napster,

to repeatedly ram into your psyches at

claimed, advertises prostitution. Sited near

offered mainstream artistes free of charge).

graffiti with parallels apparent in publishing (the graphic novel from the comic book) and

music (tracks specifically created as free which illegally pirated and re

a stone walkway it consists of a handprint, a

(almost literally) every turn.

vague heart shape, a fo.otprint and a number:

�

New York

article on a Washington Heights

The Internet is the hub of this new activity,

However, there is growing evidence that an

supposedly indicating how many steps it

in so far as it enables immediate distribution

irreversible change is on the social agenda.

takes to find a woman (the handprint means

of a previously unique work. In the context

Not just amongst the Islington hand

payment required). Roman

of Street Art, it makes possible a visual record

wringers, the University wasters on their

common and examples o f their handiwork

and validation - accessible to an affiliate

meeja courses and portly TV arts presenters, but on the street. In the sensibility of the people, those previously seen as fodder for

also exist in Egypt. Vesuvius preserved a

audience- when previously a site specific

graffiti

graffiti treasure trove at Pompeii, inscriptions

artwork might have a life span of only days,

in vulgar Latin, insults, magic, l o v e

if not hours. This universal access has also

the dressed down agency blokes-with

declarations, political admonishments.

encouraged the development of a worldwide

haircuts (types who like to refer to their 15

Quotations from famous period literature

community, which has in turn postulated a

second commercial for anti-dandruff

(especially the frrst line of Virgil's

sophisticated manifesto, wherein the name

shampoo as myfilm). The people have finally

have been found scribbled on the walls of

got the message alright - it is no longer

Pompeii; one inscription gives the address N ovellia

Primigenia

HerbertMarshallMcLuhan (1911-1980) was

manipulation at its most cynical. This has

apparently a great beauty, whilst an

a Canadian philosopher, scholar, professor

engendered a subliminal anger in people who

illustration of a phallus was accompanied by

of English literature and communications

have never even heard ofMarshallMcLuhan

the text

'Handle with care.'

theorist and, as one of the founders of the

and, in addition, a growing resistance

A wall in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli has

study of media ecology, is today a venerable

movement that is producing some of the most

scratched:

which translates as

sage to technophiles. At Cambridge

interesting examples of personal expression

'beware of the dog' next to a picture of the

University he studied under FR. Leavis and

and Art seen in recent times.

animal in question.

cave canem,

Nu ceria,

of Marshall McLuhan is oft quotedt2>.

information, it is manipulation. And it is

mansveta tene:

Aeneid)

was much influenced by the New

Criticism. tJ>

However, in this context his key work Artists are pioneers, it's part of the job

published much later in 1951 - was The Mechanical Bride. HereMcLuhan turned his

Doggerel itself is nothing new:

description. Estate agents are well known to love the arts community and many forsaken,

Quisquis amat. venial. Veneri vola frangere costas

attention to analysing and commenting on

dilapidated localities have been resurrected

fustibus et/umbos debilitare deae.

numerous contemporary examples of

by the presence of artist communities; today

Si potest illa mihi tenerum pertundere pectus

persuasion in popular culture and made a

artists are probably watched with the same

quit ego non passim caput illae frangere Juste?

radical

departure

observing

the

'inwardness of persuasion carried out by

enthusiasm by property speculators as art

I want to break Venus"s ribs

communication media as such, as distinct

collectors. And the new pioneering art is:

Whoever loves, go to helL

Street Art. New? Pioneering? This needs

with a club and deform her hips.

from their content'. His notorious slogan 'the

some qualification!

If she can break my tender heart why can "t I hit her over the head?

call attention to this 'inward impact of [the]

Street Art, graffiti,

medium is the message' uses hyperbole to communication media'. However, the text in

tagging- it's been around

for some forty years, so hardly new? But we

Not only Greeks and Romans produced

which this phrase actually appears is

are not concerned here with

graffiti: the Mayan site of Tikal in Guatemala

Medium is the Massage

tagging

(the

The

(sic) published in

writing of slogans and nicknames in highly

also contains examples and ancient Viking

1967, a witry play on words title. McLuhan's

coloured stylised letters) most visible to the

inscriptions can be found in Rome itself and

·public on railway trains and commercial

at Newgrange Mound in Ireland. Egyptian

earlier_ work, The Gutenberg ·Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (written in

vehicles - although Paul Jones, from the

monuments are graced with

left by

1961, frrst published in Canada by University

idiosyncratic

Napoleon's troops in the 1790s. Whilst this

of Toronto Press, 1962) is still regarded as a

the importance of this letter-form to the Art

is all very familiar territory, it does

pioneering study of print culture, of cultural

Nouveau script which dominated the

Belle

demonstrate that the individual desire to

Epoch. Whilst there may well be outstanding

articulate publicly, with some immediacy, is

studies, and of media ecology. Throughout this book, McLuhan is at pains to reveal how

Elms Lesters

gallery, equates

graf f iti

-r-

l state of art

4state

JAN/FEB 2006

communication technology (alphabetic

lit, 1'1/A

ramifications for social organisation<4l. For

bombing I to bomb

contributed to and made possible most of the

writing, the printing press and the evolving electronic

media)

affects

cognitive

organisation, which in turn has profound McLuhan, the advent of print technology salient trends in the Mod ern society:

;--;:

individualism, democracy, capitalism and

bubble style

nationalism - but it is to be superseded (remember he is writing in the early 1960s) and brought to an end by what McLuhan calls 'electronic interdependence'. In this new age,

buff I to buff

humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, ·�

cap character

with a 'tribal base' -and who are all no doubt 'Lovin It' !<SJ A key McLuhan argument is the idea that technology has no moral imperative

per se

-it is 'a tool that shapes profoundly

an individual's and, by extension, a society's, self-conception and realisation'.

crew

It is easy to see why all this apparent validation is so attractive to the 'resistance movement' involved in creating art out on the street. However, the current philosophical

fill-in

debate amongst these urbane guerillas is somewhat less intellectually rigorous. It focuses on the dilemma of appreciation,

insides

acceptance

and

reward

the

'establishment', in this case represented by the gallery system and art collector. This is not something that overburdens

logo graffiti /Iconic graffiti

the

consciences of American graffiti writers and

Street Artists in New York (read Barbara

Macadam page 21)

mural

The present British centre of attention is 'Banksy', one time Bristol based and now

nozzle �--"; .:::-

outline panel

piece pochoir post-graffiti {neo-graffiti) stencil graffiti

street art

tag throw-up

London luminary who has attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi (it is often reported). Banksy works are popping up all over in buyable formats which incense the

wildstyle

a fu l l sized 9.4 m etre (40 feet) b i l l b oa rd. Elms Lesters G a l l e ry. Lo n d o n

now ricochet around the bars ofHoxton. Web rants discuss the 'did he/didn't he' of a commercial association with Puma and the

unauthorised public art, often with the

Ron English has no dilemmas over the steet/

price of his 'original prints', allegedly being

purpose of mak ing an overt political

gallery conundrum. As his wife succinctly

quoted at £25,000 each. The reality of the

statement'. It consists of 'reclaiming space

puts it in Pedro Carvajal 's documentary film

situation is far from clear. Banksy is a 'tag'

and changing its dynamics' with images or

on the artist<6l: thousands of hours of hand

that the press are extremely keen to unmask

counter images, created anonymously and

painted works are gone forever, often

and he is equally keen they fail. A press

left on walls or in public places.

destroyed by the weather in hours, and no

cutting about a laudable Banksy 'action' at

Art is not

only spray paint, text and images.

paycheck for any of it. Whereas English's

It can also encompass theatre actions and film

heart is on the street, his talents as an artist

of a fragment of cave painting wherein the

projected on to the walls of buildings. The

have enabled him of late to enjoy a lucrative

stick figure hunter pushes a shopping trolley,

doyen of this artform is the New York based

gallery career, with sell out shows of painting

declares him to be Robert Banks of Bristol.

artist, Ron English.

and prints. Unsurprisingly his New York dealers prefer he stay at home. Johnathan

Another report states it could be Robin (this has no connection whatsoever, of course,

The multi-faceted Ron English combines

Levine, of the gallery of that name, opines

with the 1994 graphic 'novelette' How to Be

inordinate skill as a painter with an acute

that street work 'hurts his career' and that

Famous in the Art Business by Mike von Joel

radical conscience and the intellect to

it's more important to 'focus on the painting'.

and Joe Berger whose protagonist is one

confront his demons in an inspirational and

Interestingly, English's most fervent public

Robin

highly compelling manner. RE's billboard

support is when he tackles t h e large

throughout a s Banksy. . . !?). Banksy's political

activities centre around New Jersey and

corporations and manifestations of big

stance might be deduced from his web site

Manhattan where, unusually, he is well

brother: ' someone's always controlling the

manifesto: an extract from the eyewitness

known and readily recognised. English's high

streets' he likes to announce. However, Ron

report of a soldier liberating Belsen

profi.J.e is in sharp contrast to the heavily

English

concentration camp. But his work is high

disguised anonymity of his cohorts but as he

fundamental truth that the very activity of

[robbing]

Banks,

referred

illustrate

has appeared in so many press and television

making art out on the street leads to the

profi.J.es, further concealment would be futile.

politicisation of the artist.

stencil work (or

seemingly the

a billboard size paper artwork in acrylic that

preferred medium of the top echelon, appears

mimics the original and superimpose it over

UK has experienced a more restrained

across the world and typically pays close

that original. His targets are (unsurprisingly)

development than similar cities in Europe

reflects

somewhat

pochoir),

One of English's techniques is to hand paint It is not difficult to see why Street Art in the

attention to the planes and angles, light

cigarette companies, oil conglomerates and

and the United States. Our predilection for

quality and colour, of the chosen location.

food chains: MacDonald's being the

CCTV to do the job of police patrols makes

These works are in no way haphazard.

perennial favourite. When

foe Camel

Camel cigarettes

'liberating' public space a risky business and

cartoon character

the central areas of London are a virtual no

A parallel branch of the best Street Art

aiming the brand squarely at young persons,

go area for

involves

Ron's ersatz

take time to install and rebuilding the image

direct

action

against,

and

foe Camel overpastes

actually

guerilla

artists. Quality works

confrontation with, the saturation by

killed off the USA wide campaign. On

on a 48 sheet billboard is a labour of love

corporate business of all available free space

another occasion when Apple Computers

that might be eradicated by the owners within

through the medium of billboards. This takes

hijacked deceased cultural heroes (Sinatra,

hours. Yet it is also easy to understand the

the form of painting over existing signage to

Picasso, Einstein) as part of their 'Think

frustrations of artists with no forum and a

subvert its meaning; removing and remaking

·Different' campaign, English neatly imitated

seemingly closed shop gallery system. In fact

the standard 48 sheet ad into a completely

the design by over pasting other 'different

galleries, stooping beneath rapidly rising

new artwork; or pasting over the existing ad

thinkers' : Hitler, Charles Manson and, as a

overheads have less flexibility than ever to

on pageS). This latter activity is often called

His

introduce raw talent. Even established

provocation - where does Apple· get off

household names might awake to find a shift

assuming Picasso would support· their

in buying patterns and fashion freezes their

company?

artists out - and only a tiny handful of the

guerilla art

and is 'the surreptitious, and

often sudden, creation or installation of

· -

appear

the

and

with a ready made one (read Peter Hames

COURTESY NICHOLAS GANZ

does

provocative imagery of Blek le Rat in Paris

impact

introduced a

writer

Guerrilla

the British Museum, he hung his own version

(read Jeremy Hunt on page 6). BLR's

toy

Ron English Guernica Five Minutes Before the Bomb Fell

purists and inevitably screams of 'sell out'

joke, Bill Gates .,.. Apple's

nemesis.

states

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

Banksy : Monkey's Tag Photo: Nicholas Ganz. C ourtesy Thames & Hudson many thousands of commercial spaces in the UK enjoy the power of perpetual limelight. But the Street Art

genre

is on the pulse. A

recent show at Soho's Elms Lesters gallery(7J of leading New Yorkers was a virtual sell out with visitor numbers in the thousands

(see

panel). Every movement in art has its antecedents, nothing appears in a vacuum. Pages could be written on Street Art and its relationship to, say (pull something out of thin air), Diego Rivera's mural painting. But the exponents of Street Art have often not got to art history yet, they are making up their own. The point is to listen to the beat. The fading luminaries of the late 20th century, so recently youthful, have been subsumed by the [necessarily]

through the lens of the digital revolution·. (3)The New Criticism of Richards and Leavis. (see Mcluhan"s Poetic and Rhetorical Exegesis: The Case for Leavis against Richards and Empson in

the Sewanee Review. volume 52. number 2 (1944): p.266-76.) New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century. from the 1920s to the early 1960s.The notion of ambiguity is an important concept here. especially the way that a "text" can display multiple simultaneous meanings. Immanent reading or "close reading· is a fundamental tool. such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general: they look at. for example. theme. imagery, metaphor. rhythm and meter. (4)

. if a new technology extends one or more of

·. .

our senses outside us into the social world, then

elitist gallery-auction house combine. The

new ratios among all of our senses will occur in

21st century might have a new message and

that particular culture. lt is comparable to what

the impetus for this new message could come from those with the imperative to articulate and who are prepared to go take the space to do it for themselves.

NOTES

happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque. and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent". Gutenberg Galaxy 1962. p41

(5) Tm Lovin lt" -the current world wide slogan of (1) JC Decaux's 2006 rate card seems to indicate

the MacDonald"s food chain.

a 48 sheet size Premium Plus two week display

campaign in conurbation/main city locations (750

(6) The Art

billboards) would set you back £382.500 (some

Pedro Caravajal. DVD available from

£500 per panel). Plus VAT of course.

Popaganda.com

(2) see Paul Levinson"s Digital McLuhan 1999 :

Crimes of Ron English a film by

(7) LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN: New York's.· Counter

which examines the ways that Marshal I

Culture 28th October to 19th November 2005.

Mcluhan"s work can be 'better understood

Elms Lesters Gallery London (see panel)

THE PREVIOUS ADVENTURES OF ALF CAN BE SEEN AT WWW.STATE-OF-ART.ORG

The Elms Lesters Gallery in the heart of Soho is a totally unique space. Custom built in 1904 to paint theatrical scenery, the semi derelict building was fully restored by Paul Jones (above) as an art gallery in 1980s, but still incorporates a working studio for painting theatre backdrops and curtains, a business Jones revived and which thrives to this day. This vertiginous space was used by Ron English to hang Guernica (see left) as part of the recent Last Exit to Brooklyn exhibition. Elms Lesters have a programme of maverick and provocative avant-garde exhibitions and Last Exit (and a previous show on the works of Charles Bukowski) experienced unprecedented visitor numbers and popularity. LINK www.elmslesters.co.uk

-t-

l state of art

6slate

JAN/FEB 2006

FROM GERARD de Nerval (1808-1855),

the

an early advocate of the

l'art pour l'art

considered that 'the fundamental activity of

movement, who used to promenade his pet

the artist is based upon ihe principle of active

and his 1960 photograph Leap Into the

Realistes

lobster on a pale blue ribbon, to Yves Klein

group in 1960,

Nouveaux Realistes

appropriation of the image'. The

Void,

founded

their

Nouveaux

art

the

showing him diving, arms outstretched,

appropriation of modern, mass media, urban

towards the pavement from the second storey

and industrial processes, and group action

of a building, artists have appropriated the

was integral to their activities. Artists

streets of Paris. Current manifestations

associated with the group included Italian

glass spheres resembling a landlocked

chandelier at the metro station entrance of

with the Parisian

include Jean-Michel Othoniel's coloured

artist Mimmo Rotella who exhibited a series

Palais-Royal replacing Hector Guimard's art-deco

architecture

the

'anonymously tom' cinema posters along affichistes, Raymond

Hains, Villegle and Dufrene. Daniel Buren added to this genre from the early 70s,

current

enthusiasm for Le Parkour. The latter, a

flyposting his signature work of 8.7cm

form of urban street culture akin to

stripes in the form of posters, considered as

skateboarding in the sky, where adherents

works

in situ.

trespass to traverse rooftops, scale walls and swing from lampposts. Sociologists are

Art Urbain is romantically

noting this art of movement as a type of social

open-air gallery with the prerequisite that the

and cul tural mapping, reclaiming and

artists are totally free from any personal

occupying the space of the city.

referred to as an

confrontation with the social and cultural phenomenon commonly referred to as the

Wall spaces have long been a breeding

'floe arts'. Street interventions celebrate their

ground for graphic forms. Commercial

subversive qualities, claiming to reactivate

murals originated in the first half of the 19th

closed and over-controlled public spaces,

century and from 1852 the city of Paris, who

drawing attention to the relationships

owned these gabled walls, taxed and licensed

between the citizen, social control, owner

their use as publicity spaces with painted

ship and authority, and the surveillance and

advertisements for cigars, chocolate, and

policing of public spaces, through the

aperitif brands. These have been superseded

creation and reclamation of local and

by a progr amme of murals commissioned by

personal histories. The contemporary artist

the Nouveaux Commanditaires, a section

is also familiar with the Duchampian

of the Fondation de France specialising in

philosophy of the appropriation of objects

art in public places projects. There is even a

that become monuments to the artist.

stray outdoor mural by Keith Har ing,

painted by the man himself in 1987, at the

There is a significant divergence between the

Paris Hopital Necker Enfants Malades. As

spray -can painters and the increasing

the walls of Paris are owned and controlled

significance and design influence of street

by the state, all public images in the city carry

art interventionists. The purist integrity and

the subtext of propaganda and like so much

global street politics of the activist graffs of

of French thinking, contemporary street art

the spray painters, interconnected with the

refers substantially to the political activism of the late 1960s. In

worlds of hip-hop ideology, skateboarding

The Society of the

and feral American urbanism is as time

the situationist thinker

warped as Punk music. Street art and urban

cocktail of activism, subversion, dadaism and

camouflage uniform and hooded tops of the

Spectacle (1967),

Guy Debord advocated a revolutionary

anarchism that has been adapted as a mantra to legitimise a variety of alternative cultural activity: 'The tactics of subversion have to be extended

from

schools,

factories,

universities, to confront the spectacle

activism merges under the provocative

J<VES Dt··PMIS

directly. Rapid transport sy stems, shopping

art terrorista.

The bourgeois Beaux Arts

intruders have developed an ironic stance of conceptual intervention with a diverse media of decorative stencils, posters and mosaic tiles derived partly from the micro-world of Japanese y outh culture- computer gaming, manga comic books and the ubiquity of Hello

Kitty style imagery. They

centres, museums as well as the various new

are also reverting

the previous street art philosophy of

forms of culture and the media, must be

alienation,

considered as targets for scandalous activity.'

communicating

through

sophisticated websites and internet blogs and vanity publishing books on their own work,

In 1968, revolutionary thought and slogans

making relationships with commercial

dominated the walls of Paris (see right). The

galleries and embracing branding and

direct descendent and kindred spirit of the

marketing opportunities in the luxury

soixante-huit generation is the contemporary

merchandise areas of fashion and jewellery.

activity of French street artists, known by

their coded language of tags: Mr A, Blek, S pace Invader, El tono, Nemo, Jef Aerosol, Zao, Mosko et associes, Arnaud, Ady, MissTic, Mesnager, Bounty, Alias, Lokiss, Elfemar, Dauphin, Le Bateleur, Le Corbeau, Marie Rouffet, Manda, Yarps, Lolo, Ultra, Black Chat, Sandman, Olivier Stak, Poch, Phida, Kent, TNT, HAO, HNT, ZEVS , S o.6, R.C.F and VLP (Vive La Peinture).

Mathieu, Michaux, Riopelle and Soulages, based on informal, improvised and gestura! procedures resulting in personal calligraphic images. The term 'other' denoted artists making a break with traditional painting.

Jean Dubuffet's interest in Art Brut (Raw Art) and his collection of

'extra cultural '

works from psy chiatric hospitals also represented a kind of extreme individualism, created outside the artistic mainstream and

The French like to intellectualise their social trends and the street art of improvised and illegal murals can be linked to the Surrealist doctrine of automatism, itself a reaction to

The French state, in a typical manifestation

imitation has no role; in which their creators take all (subjects, materials, transposition, rhythm, style etc. ) from their own individuality and not from the base of classical art or stylish trends. He also stated that: It is quite true also thatpeople who are not psychotic can create Art Brut, provided they are to a considerable degree socially isolated, live on the fringe of society, or are mentally retarded.

free from all social and cultural constraints. Dubuffet's collection of 15,000 examples of Dubuffet meant by the term:

works executed by those immune to artistic culture in which

Art Brut

is held at the Chateau de Beaulieu

in Lausanne. Pierre Restany, instigator of

the rationalism of the political and social

L'Oeil Cacodylate,

recognised the importance of the spon

taneous aphorism and S alvador Dali

proposed that a purpose of Surrealism is

to make the abnormal look normal and the normal look abnormal. Historical links can be traced to French critic Michel Tapie, who

in Un Art Autre (1952) used the term Art Informel to describe work by Appel, Burri,

De Kooning, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Hartung,

and the city of Paris and the RATP transport authorities spend c. l 2 million Euros annually to erase over 2,500 kilometres of tags. Yet at the same time all-important democratic rights of the citizen are acknowledged. The

Kosmopolite Festival International de Graffiti receives municipal funding from the Paris suburb of Bagnolet to support an annual graffiti event attracting participants from Europe, the States, South America and Asia to create large-scale works with 'jam sessions' on specified public walls and 'painting cubes' in a street-party-like

environment. Francis Picabia's 1921 painting and collage,

of bi-polar thinking, recognise that the intention of graffiti is to subvert the sy stem

atmosphere, pumped up by concerts and film

'Paris, capital of the art world? That position has been

screenings. The declared ambition being to

stolen from it by New York. Paris is an irreplaceable centre culturally, while in New York the financial side takes

the neighbourhood, and avoid the problems

precedence. Here, you can still avoid being taken over by the big bucks, that's important.' Denise Rene Rem§ Gallery

Denise

create monumental murals meant to enhance associated with painting on public property. Needless to say, this sop to the streetwise Cerberus is as credible as putting a flower in a Chinese soldier's rifle to promote world peace. Traditionally, the state has provided for the

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artists with subventions and subsidies, which together with an active localised art market, has enabled artists to prosper without becoming visible on the international scene. There are more than 3,000 artists studios in Paris, including 1,300 offered by the Ville de Paris and 1,000 by DRAC (Direction regionale des affaires culturelles) with more than 6,500 artists registered as professional through affiliation to the Maison des Artistes and the same number again who are not registered. Recently, a crisis was announced, as the number of artists' studios has not increased with the demand for places and competition from the rising values of the property market. As a result of the shortage of places to work, the 1990s have seen an expansion of artists' squats, currently numbering about twenty, and each serving several hundred creative artists. Often occupying empty buildings in prime sites such as the Rue de Rivoli, they are as much a comment on property values as art and are usually more creative than an artist's atelier. The Frigo, previously a cold store warehouse in the 13th arrondissement, an area under going dynamic cultural regeneration, is a landmark artists' block in the city. It is notorious for accommodating graffiti on every surface - floor, wall, ceiling, doors Dante might have included it as a description of artists doomed to suffer the results of their own expression down in the fifth level of the artistic inferno.

variations. He sees his role as a pacifist urban art guerilla, spreading his work in a benign military campaign derived from the two main themes of computer games, the map and the labyrinth. The mosaics are a form of computer virus; an extension of the circuits of a video game transferred to epidemic planetry dimensions in an invasion that has now reached some 28 cities around the world. Although many pieces are stolen, much to Invader's bemusement, as the tiles are not signed they have no value and the work is intended to be free for everybody. S pace Invader reflects the interesting trend of a street art crossover with contemporary gallery and public art interventions. He supports his art with tour guide publications. Invasion de Paris, meticulously records his placements in the city with action photos and locations. He has started to create large freestanding sculptures and for his gallery shows he creates Aliases, re-creations of the works, which are encased in resin and etched with the time, date and location of the original. It is also possible to buy Space Invader merchandise: do-it-yourself mosaic Invasion Kits, books, maps, posters, trainers, adhesive tape, t-shirts and a printed tile.

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The antagonism and lack of comprehension between a state system supporting creativity in the form of elitist artists studios to make canvasses and table-top sculptures and the frustration of a wider group of socially diverse and dispossessed creators is ex pressed by Matar, a Moroccan graffiti artist: 'In squats and urban artistic wastelands, which respond to an emergency situation in terms of space and art, outside of institutions, outside the system of control and outside the norms, creativity takes place in absolute freedom. These are new territories for art.' The Palais de Tokyo opened in January 2002 (see page l 2) specifically to engage and curate the activity of the contemporary Parisian and �ternational art scene. It was set up with the noble intention to show contemporary art outside of the existing gallery system, providing a democratic openness and negotiation about the curation of the space. The stripped-out interior and skateboard aesthetic of the galleries, adopting the industrial ethos of artists studios, was, however, widely perceived as an attempt by the art establishment to control creativity through official channels. This image of false credibility was reinforced when at the official opening, sponsored-by business information provider Bloomb e r g , the Boss suited business crowd were provided with felt pens and invited to write on the walls. The gap between official intentions and street reaction was personified by Stephane, an urban activist who became the bane of the PdeT, waging a long term guerilla campaign incensed by the appropriation of the street

art aesthetic by a state organisation. Over several months, he marked his passage by spraying his name on the wa11s of the gallery. Each time he returned, the mark had been cleaned. Then began a period of full-on activism. He began to paste pages of illustrations from l 'Encyclopedie des terrorismes on the walls of the PdeT. He was eventually declared persona non grata and developed a media campaign using posters, stickers and balloons with the slogan : Et moi j'n 'irais plus au Palais de Tokyo!" (And I don't go the Palais de Tokyo any more). Meanwhile, The PdeT organised Hardcore, vers un nouvel activisme (towards a new activism) in February 2003, with burnt out cars placed in the gallery and in September 2003 Interface, an Art and Squatters Festival. Stephane, further enraged by the exhibitions, ended his campaign with an event created outside thePompidou Centre, hanging a mannequin with the words Palais de Tokyo written on his back. The end result being more to irritate the bourgeois than to shock them. Space Invader is not a conventional graffiti artist, although his practice is similar as it involves an appropriation of the street and public-space. He is more an exponent of a spontaneous playful urban art style, working alone, placing ceramic mosaic tiles on public walls. His philosophy is that he is 'leaving a gift to the city' with the idea that his mosaics link the techniques of antiquity with the virtual world of computer games. These resemble the pixels of video game icons Space Invaders: Albins, Octopus, Hollywoodee, as well as Rubik Cube

Monsieur Andre or Mr. A is a fixture on the Parisian graffiti (graffeur) scene. The Monsieur A. character with his round head, winking eye and top hat is visible on most yellow Parisian post-boxes and the artist estimates that the logo has been signed 500,000 times. Monsieur A. created a highly visible mock political campaign involving posters and stickers as a retaliation to Jean Tiberi, who as Mayor of Paris, declared war on graffiti. Mr. A. extends beyond the street and back into the galleries. A collaboration, Love Graffiti, with the gallery Air de Paris, involved him accepting commissions to spray-paint the name of one's lover in their neighbourhood. Mr. A is also visible on a clothing range and t-shirts sold at the Palais de Tokyo and Mr. A. charms are sold through boutiques, notably Madame Andre, run by Chloe, Mr. A's amo ur. (www.madameandre.com) Blek le Rat (a reference to an Italian comic strip Blek le Roe) has been active for thirty years, helping 'the urban landscape to bloom with poetic intentions', with a range of more than forty stenciled characters including: Tom Waits, a young boy in shorts, Andy Warhol, Marcel Dassault (with a stick), a woman with a child, the Russian soldier, President Mitterrand, a fawn, the German artist Joseph Beuys, a running man crying, Jesus Christ, two dogs mating, and a woman in garters sprayed on the house of S er ge Gainsbourg. Scandal is an urban activist who has come up with the art-guerilla conceptual concept of the CS400, a wall-mounted, emergency paint spray-can dispenser to incite the public to brighten up the walls of their neighbour hood with a 'bombe de secours' (Emergency Spray-can). The 40x70cm, orange and black aluminium and steel unit comes with instructions: brisez la vitre, saisissez la bombe, agitezfort, taggez(Break Glass, Take Spray-can, Shake Hard, Paint Wall). A further plaque advises: Bombe de secours, reserve a l 'usage exclusif du graffiti (Emergency spray-can, reserved exclusively for Graffiti). Inspired by the familiar Parisian instruction to dog owners: J'aime mon quartier je ramasse, Scandal has a sticker campaign, particularly aimed at areas of high affluence: J'aime mon quartier je colle, encouraging the public to decorate their locality. Le Parkour is a new acrobatic urban sport

performed by gangs titled the Traceurs, Wakazai, Ninjas, lmpala and Parkour Clan. Described as free running, obstacle

--r

s.state

state of art JAN/FEB 2006 artists is an extension of the

fonctionnaire civil servant mentality where they are freelance employees of the state. This position of control and compliance is unlikely to result in the French artists making significant inroads into the international art world. A great part of the appeal of street art is as a protest against a closed and oppressive state influence, and a small gesture of individuality in a world of urban anonymity, which adds to the geological, historical and personal strata of city landmarks. In his Manifesto of Stencilism, Blek le Rat

Blek Le Rat

TO P: at work in P a ris'. M a rch 2 0 0 3 . ABOVE: Centaur Ste n c i l 2 0 0 4 B E LOW: The Man . . B u e n o s A i res. 2004. BOTTO M : Monsieur Ju/es-Edouard Moustic in R u e du Fa u b o u rg St. M a rti n . Paris 2004.

describes the history of stencil graffiti and the creative stimulus of there being ' nothing more exciting than working with ' frozen hands in the middle of a winter's night, when your heart is beating hard with fear. ' The essential excitement of Street Art is that it is alternative, forbidden and anti-authoritarian. Space Invader sums up the common fun, thrill and ego factor: To invade a new city

and to leave traces ofyour existence- to be able to say - I was there and I did that.

c oursing or the art of movement. It is part art body-gymnastics and part philo s ophy Eastern encouraging discipline, self improvement and inter dependence. It consists of moving through the city landscape by jumping and scaling walls, roof running and leaping from building to building. Invented by David Belle and Sebastien Foucan as teenagers in the Paris suburbs, they led a gang known as the Yamakasi, apparently derived from the Zairean dialect Lingala meaning strong spirit,

art without borders

THftR DAHCtHb iH . �£ . TAKE A WALK down Old Street to the bottom of Kingsland Road and it will hit you: East London is teeming with Street Art . Posters over posters, cut-outs over cut-outs, stickers over stencils. Every day sees new characters, new tags. Banksy is on the Culture Show; Charles Saatchi is simpering at his feet. Ruffians in caps with pixelated faces are getting gallery shows; books are being published by the dozen. It looks like we're witnessing the glory days of British Street Art. But all is not as it seems. Beneath this veneer of cultural buzz, there is serious discontent. What commonly passes as UK Street Art is variously described as 'the most prominent example of bandwagon jumping ever wit nessed' ; 'just a way of legitimising shit' ; 'a bunch of glorified graphic designers' ; 'art for bars' and 'fucking dire - total homogeny' . And that's just from people involved in the scene, some of the most respected, longest serving UK street artists. So what's going on?

However, many believe that this increase in volume, much as with the internet itself, has led to a glut of low-quality imitators and wannabes rather than a vibrant expanding scene. 'Ten years ago if you wanted to be cool you bought some headphones and said you were a DJ, now you put up a sticker and say you're a street artist' says Danny Sangra, member of the Scrawl Collective. 'A lot of it is about fashion, propagated-by this wave of books - everyone paints in a global style. You couldn ' t tell if it was from S an Francisco, Stockholm or Birmingham' says cross-media artist Kid Acne.

Or as Norman Mailer noted: 'the name is the religion of graffiti' . Jeremy Hunt i s editor of the

LiJf/(S

Art & Architecture journal

www.space-invaders.com www.monsieura.com www .onthewall.free.f r www.parispochoirs.com www.chez.com/lesmursmurs http://blekmyvibe.free.fr

STRf£

report PETER HAMES

'Six years ago street art was a local phen omenon - it worked on rumours. You'd hear that there were some stencils in Brighton and you'd have to go down there to fmd them' says Tristan Manco, author of Street Logos and a fanatical authority on global Street Art. 'Now with the internet, there's pages and pages of photos from across the world. It's not about what's going on in my street anymore, it's about London vs Tokyo vs San Francisco'. This globalisation of Street Art has made access to acclaim easier than ever before. Anyone can sketch a few stickers, throw them up, shoot them and distribute them across the world. This accessibility, viewed by many as the central virtue of Street Art, has lead to an explosion in the number of artists out on the street in the UK.

strong body, strong man. The authorities haven't quite got the message despite the provision of well intentioned grands projets in a spirit of open-handed schizophrenia. The Palais de Tokyo opened in 2002 as an experimental exhibition centre for contemporary artists, and a further new art laboratory and gallery space on the lle Seguin, the former site of the Renault factory on an island in the Seine to the North West of Paris, plans to promote emerging artists in a centre for contemporary creation. Paris has, however, long-been replaced as the world's art capital by New York and London. There are few French artists competing in the international art gallery, auction and museum markets and very few make a living directly from their art. The government has pledged a 50% tax reduction for artists in the first five years of their working lives and although this is a welcome survival mechanism for emerging artists, it doesn't address the reality of the artists survival in a market based on competition. The French situation is that support for the status of the

I NTERSTATE

This is a sentiment echoed by others. Mudw ig of Wet Shame, who made his name repainting billboards with foul mud-like appendages, is particularly vocal about his distaste for the way things are going. 'Any twat with access to a photocopier can draw a circle with two dots for eyes, produce 100 copies, post it up, give himself a stupid name like 'Wacky Boy' and call himself a street artist. There's no ideas behind this stuff. I could draw better when I was eight' . Once the work is out there, the power of the internet amplifies its prominence and fame can be almost instantaneous. 'If you look at the internet you'd think that the whole of the

country has become covered in stickers but it's all happening in a few alleys around Old Street' . In addition to questions regarding the quality of the work produced by these artists, their perceived commercial motivation is what really riles. 'It's all advertising for micro brands, for these graphic designers. After two minutes, they're selling t-shirts and pens with their name on' says a long-term London graffiti writer Toilet Boy. One of the more prominent of the graphic heavy artists under fire is Dface, whose twisted Disney-inspired tinheads and flying faces can be seen in abundance across London. He's a member of the Finders Keepers Crew, who organise street ex hibitions of artwork which can then be grabbed for free by viewers at the end of the show. He also founded the Outside Institute, the first London gallery of Street Art considered by many to be instrumental in the mainstream acceptance of Street Art as credible. However, his critics say he cares more about sales of Dface-branded t-shirts and caps on his website than artistic skill or groundbreaking context-driven ideas. All of this negativity could be explained simply as sour grapes from those who, when the corporations first came knocking around 1 999, were left without the Dazed and Confused articles and cushy ad campaigns. But that isn't it - the UK's most famous (and probably richest) street artist still garners almost universal respect. 'Banksy is amazing' says Kid Acne, hugely respected in his own right. 'If there was a street art Olympics, you'd put Banksy forward for the UK' adds Manco. His work retains a political message, is smartly placed and above all, has never bowed to authoritarian or commercial pressures. 'He's done the impossible, not compromised but made money from it. He's won.' says Mudw ig. So who's doing something interesting in street art in the UK? Happily there is a small but growing number of artists producing intelligent interventions in urban space. As with Banksy, their work is rooted in context relevant ideas rather than cute graphics, and above all has a reason. Brad Downey is a New York artist who has spent the last two years in London. During his time here Downey produced some of the most interesting work to be seen in London sculptural installations that gently contravene the rules and accepted usage of public space and question our slavish adherence to 'the rules' . He makes fake, highly accurate street signs, dons a high-visibility bib and then, in broad daylight, drills them into the pavement. For example, Madonna and Child features a half-size version of a 5mph speed sign bearing the limit '2.5', next to its full-sized parent. 'The urban landscape in the UK is so contrived and controlled, with so few consistencies that I had to reduce my work down to very subtle shifts. The British are characterised by subtlety, by sarcasm. Their emotions are hard to get close to - that's the

state of art

state9

JAN/FEB 2006

LEFT / ABOVE : Brad Downey's i ro n i c scu l ptura l i n sta l l ations often g o m o nths without b e i n g d iscovered by offi c i a l s

power of British culture' . The UK improved Downey's work. 'It made me more sophisticated. There's so much visual history here, the buildings are harder to destroy without looking like a total asshole. That's why I had to separate my work from the architecture, and produce signs' . Many of his pieces have survived for years, and can be seen around the East End and Euston.

and think' . So they covertly reclaim ad vertising sites that hold undue address in the urban environment. Their technique is to painstakingly remove billboard posters and then slice them into identically sized, pixel like pieces. They then reorder the pieces and collage them back onto the original site to create a new image - for example a child screaming. 'The question to us was how could we change the posters without adding anything new -just recycling what was there already in order to say something different.'

Another green shoot is the south London collective CutUp, a group of artists with the rarest of things nowadays - a strong manifesto and a powerful way of executing it. They believe that advertising has invaded and confused our emotional life: in the process of selling to us with extreme imagery, our own subjective feelings are made to look mundane. 'We are motivated by the idea that all westernised experience is becoming 'image only' - dominated by the need to have an image or live up to one. We want io make people notice that this controlled visual environment directly affects how people feel

CutUp are loath to class themselves as 'street artists', rather as artists who use the 'street as a stage' . And, in contrast to the cottage industry booming within 'street art', are fundamentally opposed to working with corporations. 'We couldn't do a commission for an ad - we would be shooting ourselves in the foot. But . . .it would be interesting to play games with them.' © Peter Hames 2005 Peter Hames is a writer on art and modern culture

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Shipley Specialist Art Booksellers are holding sales at all three of our branches on the Chafing Cross Road. Throughout January, most of our stock of new and out-of-print books on art, architecture, g raphic design, photography, film and fashion will be available at discounted prices 70 Charing Cross Rd London WC2

S HIPLEY

1 0state THE DESPISED, DISPOSABLE comic has been allowed into the rarified atmosphere of galleries and museums before, but will this latest dalliance between the lowbrow/class and highbrow/class prove to be another fleeting flirtation or bloom into a deeper relationship? Could this signal a post millennia! shift in how the typically separated worlds of comics and art can come to understand each other?

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It has required no less than two prestigious Los Angeles museums, MOCA and Hammer, to accommodate the most ambitious exhibition about comics yet seen in America. Looking back across the 20th century, eo-curators John Carlin and Brian Walker have cherry-picked just fifteen influential innovators as the Masters of American Comics (and yes, they are all men, not a chauvinist bias on their part, more a reflection of the male domination of the industry until the 1970s and women's lib). First proposed by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer prize winning author of the Holocaust memoir graphic novel Maus, the exhibition ranges from turn-of-the-century pioneer Winsor McCay's huge, colourful Sunday newspaper fantasies of Little Nemo in Slumberland through to present-day sequential geniuses like Chris Ware ·and Gary Panter. It's a brave and brilliant strategy, avoiding the confusion of showing too many diverse works and allowing a more in-depth focus on those by the select shortlist, each allotted a complete gallery to himself. It also avoids some of the biggest pitfalls from the previous attempts to exhibit comics in public art galleries. One of the earliest was held in the Louvre in 1 96 7 ; Parisian intellectuals like Alain Resnais were among the first to confess their passion for the classics of American newspaper strips. But in their desire to elevate comics to the status of art, the curators chose mainly to blow up individual panels, from Milton Caniff's chiaroscuro oriental adventure Terry and the Pirates and Borne Hogar th's anatomy lessons on Tarzan, to the scale of great master paintings. While this created impact and served to prove the artists' drawing and compositional skills, it had a similar effect to Roy Lichtenstein' s re-paintings of enlarged panels from war and romance comic books. Images were isolated and divorced from their story context, like a still photo from a movie, and had to be gazed at in isolation. Twenty years later, London's ICA filled every available inch with Comic Iconoclasm. This 1987 'survey of the quotation of comic strip and cartoon characters, narrative, style and iconography in 20th century fme art' harked back to Pop Art's precursors and hyped the hot 1980s generation of Raring, Scharf and Basquiat. Almost all of the budget was poured into sourcing the artworks, leaving next to no space, funds or respect to display and explain their original sources, the comics themselves. These were almost an afterthought, treated as if they were little more than anonymous, generic, mass produced 'found objects' . This curatorial approach, reducing the narrative worlds of comics to a set of standard styles and icons to be appropriated and transformed into art by visual artists, has persisted largely unchallenged in gallery shows to this day, for example in the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie's Funny Cuts exhibit in 2004. At least Comic Release! in 2002, which toured to the Pittsburgh Centerfor the Arts, deliberately presented both fine art and original pages of drawings from comics side-by-side. But it can be an uneven double-act, as in a gallery context the large works of art made for display tend to drown out the smaller, more detailed comics made to be read and solely for reproduction.

AT ACROSS CO MDC IN

WORLD COM COLD

report PAUL GRAVEn Why has it taken until now and the two-part LA spectacle for the art world to try to understand comics? It seems curators lacked knowledge about comics and how to deal with what they really do, something which, as Art S piegelman speculated in Modem Painters magazine, 'is not the same as just nice marks on paper . . . Maybe the taint that comes with things that are generally popular makes it harder for an elitist culture to look at them and sort through them, when it believes it has to be sociology or slumming.' The hierarchical divide between artforms is blurring and perhaps breaking down. In the view of one of the 15 exhibited practitioners, Gary Panter, 'I wish they could get the hairy brow out of the picture. The low and high

arts are always stealing and being enriched by each other. I think important species messages can flow through high or low sources and the message doesn't care about the conduit. ' Panter's feverish, visionary comics, published by Fantagraphics (www.fantagraphics.com) in oversized deluxe hardbacks with foil-blocked covers, include two interpretations of Dante 's Inferno, re-mixed into an annotated pop culture purgatory traversed by his naive everypunk Jimbo. 'The show is like an indulgent daydream and seems inauthentic to me - very nicely inauthentic, though. They have about 65 of my pages up and two full stories.' Showing whole pages and especially whole

Art Splegelman pages from his prize w i n n i n g Hol oca ust m e m o i r Maus 1992

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

state 1 1 advancement of the comics medium. ' Perhaps the French and the Japanese have more enlightened attitudes. Across the Channel, the comics medium, or

dessinee,

bande

is neither art nor literature but is

recognised as an autonomous artform, literally "the Ninth Art", Ninth not in some Top Ten of importance, but simply in the

order of its recognition. In Japan, Makoto

Aida is not the only acclaimed painter who

failed in his dreams of becoming a mangaka, and so had to settle for a career as a fme artist. Members of the cool 'Superflat' movement celebrate their love of

manga

or Japanese

comics and exhibit alongside art, toys and animation by their manga peers. The last word should go to Salvador Dali.

In Paris in 1967, visiting one of the first boutiques selling comic strip rarities, he had a revelation. Balancing a carafe of iced water

Robert Crumb's Zap Comix M r N at u r a l 1 9 6 7

on his head, to cool his boiling brain, Dali proclaimed 'Comics will be the culture of

stories o f comics a s narratives, a s immersive

the year 3794. So you have 1 827 years in

storytelling worlds, the way they are meant

advance, which is good. In fact, that leaves

to be experienced when they are read, may

me the time I need to create a collage with

be one solution to exhibiting comics. But

these 80 comics which I am taking with me.

Mark Newgarden, cartoonists and creator

This will be the birth of

of the infamous

this occasion we will hold a gigantic opening

Garbage Pail Kids bubble

Comic Art,

and on

gum cards and the subject of a plush new

with my divine presence on March 4th 2794

monograph

(Fanta

at 19.00 hours precisely. ' Dali may be proved

graphics), is not convinced. 'Comics don't

right, and far sooner than he ever anticipated.

do well on art gallery walls but then again

We All Die Alone

neither does art. Comics hanging on the wall is no good for the human spine. Or the eyeballs. Institutionalisation won ' t help

Paul Gravett is a leading authority on the history of comic and graphic art

comics. I am saddened by the current cultural climate that takes for granted that comics must somehow be aligned with both the art world and the novel to develop to their full

potential. I think that misguided melding has ABOVE : Wlnsor McCay Little Nemo in Slumber/and 1 9 0 5

more to do with cartoonists' egos and the dissipation of those institutions than any

Masters of American Comics The Hammer Museum

The Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: November 20,

2005 . 12, 2006. Touring to: Milwaukee Art Museum: April 27 - August 13, 2006; The Jewish Museum, NY, & Newark Museum, NJ: September 15, 2006 - January 28, 2007 March

O PPOSITE C E N T R E : Will Elsner Spirit S e ries (I/ Duce's Locket) 1947

LPf1$J!i!JW� '1

(,/A;i!25!J. 50/'J!. z.

.,..

ABOVE : Charles M. Schultz Peanuts 1 9 5 2

Masters of American Comics

Featured Artists:

Winsor McCay, Lyonel Fei n i n ger, George H erri ma n , E.G. Segar, Fra n k Ki ng, Chester Gou l d , M i lton Ca n iff, a n d Cha rles M . Sch ulz at the Hammer Museum

Wi l l Eisner, Jack Ki rby, H a rvey Kurtzma n , R . Cru m b , Art Spiegelma n , Gary Pa nter, a n d Chris Ware at MOCA

L I N KS www . paulgravett.com www. hammer.ucla.edu www. moca-la.org www .tcj .com www . lambiek.netja rtistsjindex.htm

Catalogue published by Yale Unlveslty Press 324pp profusely illustrated in ful l colour Large format Hardback £25.00 (see preview page 30)

Art Splegelman. M oCCA Art Festival Lifet i m e Ach i ev e m e nt Awa rd 2005. S p i egel m a n is a P u l itzer Prize w i n n e r (for his gra p h i c novel. MAUS), eo-fo u n d e r of t h e c o m i c a nth o l ogy RAW, e d itor of Little Lit, a c h i l d re n 's b o o k a nth o l ogy s e ri e s a n d a reci p i e nt of t h e 1 9 9 0 G ugge n h e i m Fel l ows h i p . Featured at MoCA L o s Ange l es i n Masters o f American Comics

1 2sta"te

state of art J4N/FEB 2006

EUROSTATE

paris diary

Bourriand

Sans' grand finale

report GEORGINA TURNER IN A B AR IN Paris in 1 99 8 , N icolas Bourr iaud and Jerome Sans, independent art critics and curators, mused on their vision of a contemporary art space: exhibitions that can be decided upon within two hours and shown within two months. To respond to art that has energy and to present the un expected. To mix daily life with art for everyone. Management through discourse and negotiation between artist, curator and visitors. Independence through gaining private funding with less reliance on restrictive state structures . An overall approach to presentation that is flexible, adaptive and accessible to a wide public. All they needed was an appropriate space.

In order to offer a forum to all those who, like us, have dreamed and continue to dream of institutions that are different: venue laboratories, places of adventure, open to all questions, contradictions, risks. In order to situate the generalframework of the Palais de Tokyo, which we want to locate as closely to current artistic practices as one can, hoping to preserve such a venue 's capacity to change over time. For this project is not the product of a dogma or theory; it is made up of experiments, encounters, questions. What do you expect from an art institution in the 21" Century? Jerome Sans I Marc Sanchez Palais de Tokyo. 2002.

In 1998, the then Minister for Culture and

Communication, Catherine Trautmann, was searching for a purpose for the Palais de Tokyo, an enormous and spectacular symbol of art-deco state splendour, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1 937, in the opposite wing to the Musee d'Art Moderne. This building, with elegant colonnades and courtyard overlooking the Eiffel Tower from the north side of the River Seine, had housed the national and Parisian modern art collections, but they had moved to the Centre Pompidou, leaving the neo-classical statues to be graffitied and the marble steps to get chipped by skateboarders. After various schemes for cultural uses had fallen through, a call for Art Directors was sent out. In 1999, Trautmann met Sans and Bourriaud and supported their vision to take on the site to diffuse avant-g arde contemporary art emphasising the need to take risks and to be provocative. The S ite of Contemporary Creativity opened nnder their direction in January 2002. It was greeted with enthusiasm by art curators; deep suspicion by certain artists; critical interrogation by quarters of

the art establishment; and by encouraging support from the public audience. The architects, Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal, with a limited budget, developed an ephemeral aesthetic literally stripping the building back to its core layers. This is not an anti-bourgeois statement: as Jerome Sans explained, if they had waited for the building and funding necessary to polish the place up, the project would never have started. But this suited them well, since the space itself was not precious and meant that for each exhibition the artist and curator could reorganise the gallery, knocking through walls, stripping and adding fittings as they pleased. The aim was to show emerging artists, with regular exhibitions to follow their activities, with one or two exhibitions per year of established artists, offering an unusual or unknown aspect of their work. Hence Louise Bourgeois did not show sculpted spiders but her experimental work with videos. By November 2005 over 300 artists had been shown including 96 solo exhibitions. By January 2006 there will have been over 1 million visitors. The norm in France is for a public art institution to be 100% state funded and centrally managed through a highly qualified elite administration, which enables a very effective and efficient museum service. The downside to this is that the decision making process is many-layered and technocratic. The key factor enabling Bourriaud and Sans to remain independent is that, uniquely within the French system of art admin istration, they are outsiders. Without the closed management structures, heavyweight diplomas and qualifications, they have created the conditions for creativity and innovation. Secondly, they have successfully attracted private sector funding, allowing them to develop their outsider and ex perimental status. Significantly, much of the sponsorship is from outside France (hence, typically, it was Bloomberg in London who sponsored their opening show). They are increasingly being supported by French companies, watched enviously by counter parts succoured by the poisoned chalice of state funding. So what of the art on show? In December, S h u L ea Cheang's Baby Love was an installation of singing baby clones seated in monumental teacups that rotated about the PdT, talking and singing of love in response to their interactions with the public. Pierre S emet's Guerilla Tea performance invited the visitor to take tea in accordance with the traditional Japanese ceremony. The Brazilian artist Artur Barrio filled a room with coffee in an olfactory layer over the floor amidst an installation of bread, wine bottles and sofas. Robert Malaval, proclaimed as the French leader of Pop Art, had an exhibition, Kamikaze, a retrospective of paintings, presumably drug and rock 'n' roll induced, by an artist described as dazzling, daring, dicey.... never giving in - who killed himself in 1 980. Sarah Morr is' s Endeavor (Los

state of art JAN/FEB 2 006

state 1 3 Angeles). was painted on a 50 x 10 metre walL The show not to miss will be Bourriaud and Sans' finale as directors at the PdT. Notre Histoire (Our Story) 1 shows their choice of 29 emerging French artists. After which, they hand over to Marc-Oliver Wahler, from the Swiss Institute in New York. The question being: will he maintain the art and ephemera business model? Coming up to its third birthday, the PdT is thriving on its ability to attract crowds and private funding whilst operating on a 50% matched subsidy from the French state covering 70% of their overheads. It has all the essential contemporary gallery accessories - a cool bar-restaurant, art boutique and bookshop, plus excellent press and communications , website and an extensive education and events programme. The result is an institution with a street-wise cachet and integrity that truly does open its doors, eyes and ears to share its under standing of art. The PdT is a huge, high ceilinged series of galleries - empty they could be echoing - but devoid of pretension and protocol it is a striking example of a public contemporary art space operating with verve and vigour. The traditional art establishment may seethe and deride but they are watching and wondering: How do they do it?

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The Palais

de Tokyo Site for Contemporary Creativity

opened in J anuary 2002

supported with the publication of a catalogue: What Do You Expect from an Art Institution In the 21.•• Century? it contained 300 replies from international curators

and creatives. The response from the ubiquitous H ans-Uirlch Obrlst, recently appointed as chief curator at the

Serpentine Gallery,

and dyn a m i c brain behind

the Musee d'Art Moderne's Migrators progra mme, is of particular interest : The Museum as Time Storage, Kraftwerk and Laboratory (Alexander Dorner revisited) Alexa nder Dorner who ran the Ha nover Museum in the 1920s defined the museum

Elsewhere in Paris, the major excitement has been the inauguration of a new museum of contemporary art in the Paris suburb ofVitry in November 2005. The MACIVAL (Musee d' Art Contemporain du Val du Marne) is funded equally by the state and the local authority and is a French cultural manage ment counterpoint to the Palais de Tokyo. The building, with initial designs conceived by architect Jacques Ripault in 1982, is the fruit of technocratic management at its most earnest and the only public contemporary art museum in the Parisian suburbs. lt is a brave location, sited on a roundabout in the midst of a realm of medium-rise HLM's or social housing estates. The nearest equivalent would be to build a gallery for the Arts Council collection in Hackney. In an area that is not awash with cultural amenity, the ethos

behind the museum has been to enhance social justice through cultural inclusion. In an effort to take art to the masses a vast publicity, information and education pro gramme has been developed over the last five years to encourage the local population to visit and appropriate the new museum. The museum houses the Val du Marne's FRAC (regional collection of contemporary art). The opening exhibition (to 26 March 2006) is a solo-show, Detour, of fifty paintings from 1965-2002, by Jacques Monory (b. 1934) displayed on a spiralling wall of colour designed by the artist. An alternative mind-tickling theatrical art

experience, Le Voyage Interieur - Paris London (to March 2006) funded by the EDF Foundation and the Mayor of Paris is a foretaste of the twenty or so London-Paris exhibition exchanges due in October 2006. Co-curated by Alex Farquharson (UK) and Alexis Vaillant (Fr) the exhibition is a sensual and strange journey, originating in the idea of house dreamed up by J-K Huysmans in his cult 19"' Century symbolist novel A Rebours (Against the Grain). The curators discerned a thread of opium-fuelled fin-de-siicle decadence running through a Paris-London axis, and the Espace Electra, a series of galleries elegantly re-fashioned on four levels from an electricity sub-station, has been entirely reinvented to create the aura of a libertine art salon. Yellow brick cushions in a glaring white room by Vidya Gastaldon jolt against dark crimsons and sinking blacks; exquisite works on paper by Kerstin Kartscher discreetly depict a symbolist pleasure dome; Bruno Telassy's ethereal silk fabrics float in fish tanks; Haluk Akak�e's video, Birth ofArt, seductively plays music to textures, colours and forms. The curators, however, are the stars of the show with the art pieces performing and indulging their feelings. Georgina Turner is a writer and curator based in Paris

NOTES 1

Notre Histoire - une scene emergente.

Pa l a is de Tokyo. J a n u a ry 21 - 7 May 7 2006.

as a Kraftwerk. H e invited artists such a s El Lissitzky to realize a contemporary,

dynamic d isplay of a museum o n the m ove. Dorner emphasizes i n his writings Ueberwindung der Kunst (Going beyond Art), that he intended to transform the

neutral white cube into a m o re heterogeneous space ... The importance of Dorner l ies i n his early recognition of the vital issues facing museums such as: - A museum i n permanent transformation with i n dyn a m ic parameters - A museum caught between object and process: "The idea of process has penetrated our certainties" (Dorner)

- A museum of multiple identities - A museum in flux - A museum as pioneer who takes risks: to act rather than wait! - A museum a s a crossroad between art and life - A museum as laboratory

- A museum based on a dyna mic interpretation of the history of art. As J o h n Dewey noted, it is t h a n k s to Dorner that w e f i n d ourselves i n the middle o f a dynamic centre of profound change

- A museum as relative and not absolute truth - A museum as constituent of a network encompassing artists a n d other

�

disciplines - An elastic museum: both i n what it contains and in form Accordi ng to Dorner's own words: 'We cannot understand the key i nfluences of today's visual p roduction, if we continue to ignore other areas of life.'

TOP LEFT : PdTokyo a rt d i re ctors Nlcolas Bourrlaud a n d Jerome Sans (on right) p h otogra p h e d b y Phlllppe Chagnon

B ELOW LEFT & R I G HT :The Pa l a is d e Tokyo a b a n d o n e d to skate b o a rd e rs

a n d graffiti before th e Site of Contemporary Creativity i n itiative 2 0 0 2

LINKS Palais de Tokyo - Site de creation contempora i n e. 13 ave n u e du President Wilson. 7 5116 Paris. T. +33 1 4723 5401. www. pa l aisdetokyo.com MAC/YAL. Musee d'Art Contempora i n du Val-d e-Marne. Place d e l a l i b e rati on. B P 147. 94404 Vitry-su r-S e i n e Cedex ." E. www. m a cval.fr

La Voyage lnterieur - Paris-Londres Espace EDF Electra, 6 rue Reca m i e r Paris 7 Open Tues-S u n . 12pm - 7 p m free.

Until 5th M a rch 2006

-t-

. -TI 1 4 stale

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

VAST COLLECTIONS of art are now in public ownership - what will be their future? David Buckman's

CHRISTOPHER R. W. NEVINSON 1889-1946 La Mitraifleuse 1915 O i l on ca nva s Prese nted by t h e CAS 1917

Dictionary of Artists in

Britain since 1945 records

page after page

of artists currently at work - but what on earth will happen to what they produce? Theoretically the best will be preserved and

the rate of acquisition is increased at two

eventually belong to some museum whilst

distinct periods. Surprisingly, during both

the rest are left to be enjoyed, irreversibly

world wars the rate of acquisition of modem

degrading, in private anonymity. That is more

British art markedly increased; and, secondly,

or less what happened to lesser paintings in

there was usually a big increase during the early years of each new director, particularly

the past, since, according to exhibition

in the cases of John Rothenstein and Alan

records, there is a terrific quantity that is now

lost - though sometimes, as with Samuel

Bowness.

well. But all art has now a secondary

In retrospect, it would have been far better

existence, which may come to be thought of

to have realised straight away who were

Palmer, major works have disappeared as

as primary, to give it a form of permanence.

going to be the best artists, to buy their pictures or sculptures when they were young

database, where reproductions can be

and doing some of their best work, were easy

preserved perfectly for as long as the

to approach and when prices were low. If all

technology stays viable. Pictures are made,

the artist's birthdates in the Tate database are

their likeness recorded, and works of art now

subtracted from the years of individual

regularly approach the condition of .jpegs.

acquisitions, then it is possible to see which

Art made as a photograph, of course, goes

works were indeed seized on when these

straight onto the database as it is, and has a

artists were young . No paintings or

struggle to retain value in its original form

sculptures by artists were acquired when they

as a print: photographs are often as a

were

consequence printed large or curiously

commissioned to decorate the restaurant at

framed or displayed dotted about on the wall.

Millbank when he was aged twenty-three, an

teenagers .

Rex W h istler was

But it is paintings and the like where these

amazingly daring choice for such a long

two existences coincide, an original with a

lasting work. This the result of the friendship between Gallery Tmstees and Director with

with a copyright owner (for a while) but no

the Royal College of Art, where Whistler

location.

had been a pupil at a time of a great revival of mural painting. There were only a few Modem British artists whose works were

The major collections of Twentieth Century art are well known, at the great galleries and

acquired when they were in their twenties,

private colle�tions. But numerous significant

and these were all gifts - but then almost all

art databases are also already in existence,

acquisitions to the Tate at the time were gifts.

expanding like reefs of coral. These are the

The youngest artists to have paintings or

sculptures acquired by the Tate were Dora

maj or collections that have their own database, which is 'visited' far more often

LI ES AN D STATISTICS

than is the collection itself. Ownership of the art gives license to an institution to include it in their database, allows it to pose for their own photographers - and to refuse access for others. Some databases take advantage of temporary ownership, or at last have the consent of the real owners, while the objects pass through their premises - the best of

Gordine, William Graveney and Margaret Baker, all at the age of twenty-two . At twenty-five and under were W in ifr ed Knights, Janet Cr ee, Waiter Hunt and John Young-Hun ter. Up to the" age of twenty-nine only two maj or artists were

acquired when young. One was C . R . W. Nev inson whose La Mitrailleuse, a brilliant image of a machine gun crew in action, was

these are the databases that combine the

given by the

auction catalogues. Others belong, or will do,

1917 - for reasons no doubt partly patriotic. The other was Chr istopher Wood, one of

to the beneficiaries of the older art

•

Vaux, and to the main art dealers.

DAVI D FRASER J ENKINS

These multifarious databases are destined to

THE POTENTIAL OF DATA AVAIILAB

photographers such as A.C. Cooper or Marc

become the front line of interest in past works of art, just as the databases of libraries and periodical publishers are already the points

FROM GALLE

of entry to the historian and researcher. A proven interest-response in these databases

A Church in Treboul,

was given by his parents after his early death.

John S inger Sargent; according to sales of

national collection of British Art. Just such

Contemporary Art Society

whose masterpieces,

WORKS

will reward the reputation and eventually the

an investigation - for Modem British artists

income of the major collections, so that the

- was made with a colleague by this author

again is Sargent. But according to number

real presence on the gallery wall, however

when working at the Tate. 1

of works in the Tate, the best regarded is

These examples show, at least at this period, that the Tate was a stodgy place and not much good at acquiring youthful artists. Apart from the success of choosing these two paintings, both of which came in for special reasons, it would have been better to wait until reputations were more certain.

Tate postcards, though this varies, the best

essential to experience, will become

The names of any artists can be searched in the database to see at what age they were

Henry Moore. At the Tate, if the list is

first acquired. In general (again only for

secondary. In return for the huge loss of

The group of 'Modem British artists' at the

searched again, the artists with the most

paintings and sculptures) many of the well

direct contact, a database compensates with

Tate consist of some 2, 779 items when sorted

paintings (not counting drawings or prints)

known artists came in during their forties.

more information and data attached to the

by suitable dates of birth, in this case between

record - which will expand with increased

1855 and 1920 inclusively. Most of the artists

there is a sharp escalation of inclusions for

(34), Sargent (33), Steer (27) and Augustns John (26). The most numerous sculptures are by Moore (67), Hepworth (60), Gaudier Brezska (31), Gill (21) and Epstein (17).

the most famous artists and those who were

These lists are available in much more detail,

input into the systems, especially with details

have only one item, whether print, original

of subject matter.

painting or sculpture, in the collection. But

One of the most advanced of all the databases is at the Tate

Gallery. For the outside visitor

are, in order, S ickert (39), Ben Nicholson

also printmakers, such as Henry Moore, the

to www.tate.org.uk, almost the entire

record with 623, and next, John Piper ( 1 84)

collection is illustrated, and new acquisitions added speedily, including thousands of

both are present with a huge number of images. The Archive at the Tate is also being

watercolours by Turner and a large collection

listed bit by bit, so that, for example, when

but these most numerous artists are all

Moore, Bacon and Gwen John appeared at the same age: 41 (so Gwen John does not appear to have been neglected, though a painting by her younger brother was first acquired when he was 39). B en Nicholson

was first acquired when he was 46, Steer and

Matthew S m ith both at 49. Lowry at 52,

modernists. Their numbers are large partly

and S ickert not until he was 57, when in

because the Tate has sought to cover the

1917 the CAS gave the Tate his Portrait of George Moore, seventeen years after he had painted it, along with his view of the Cafe des Tribunaux at Dieppe.

artists' regular changes in style.

of modem prints. Via the computer at home

the collection of photographs by John Piper

The rate of acquisition per year of these

come titles, sizes, dates of making, and the

is put on the database this one artist will have

artists' works should, in principle, have

sources of acquisition, as well as images. But

a considerable influence over how places in

started very gradually as they became known,

the same system can be manipulated for the

Britain (that is - the nature of Britain's

peaked at a long plateau during their main

as a criticism for later practice, since this

Tate's internal use to give much more detail,

landscape) are known. These artists were in

period of production, then gradually

period saw the onset of modernism, which

It is difficult to carry forward these figures

as records can be compared, added up and

their thirties between the late Victorian and

decreased to a constant trickle - as the

although now a ticket of approval was at the

subtracted, or linked to other databases. It is

post-war periods, and it should be possible

reputation of the (by then mostly deceased)

time unpopular with the establishment.

possible, for example, to isolate a section of

through statistics to produce some scales to

artist was occasionally revived - plus

Furthermore the Tate had little independence

the collection and play with its numerical

reveal which of them are thought to be the

bequests received from their families.

- and at first either no, and then only little,

records to find out how this grouping has

been represented in what is, after all, the

best. According to auction records, the most valuable artist in Britain from this time is

However, reviewing totals over the years, the exceptions to this

pattern are interesting as

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It exists as a computer record, an image on a

location and an owner - and a database entry

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budget for purchases - and can barely be said

to have been making up its own mind .But ·

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T state of art

JAN/FEB 2006

state 1 5 records on the database only go back a few years so far. There is no record of purchase price, which is in any case difficult to record

STATE O�RT

as many works are purchased in groups, or were part gifts. The names already noted are of artists whose work was acquired when they were relatively young. But the Tate has gone on acquiring their work and has sometimes received things made in their youth at a much later date. It is possible, by subtracting the dates of birth from the dates of creation, to fmd out which artists have been regarded as the child prodigies - whose work from their early years is now at the Tate. Of all Modem British works at the Tate, the one made when the artist was youngest is by

Duncan Grant, whose The Kitchen, a nicely

painted view along a passage, was made when he was sixteen or seventeen. Also made

WALTER RICHARD SICKERT 1860-1942 George Moore 1890-1 O i l on ca nvas Prese nted by the CAS 1917

when they were in their teens are works by

Willi am Rothenstein, J.H. Lorimer, Dora Gordine, Robi n Gu thrie, Kenneth Rowntr ee, von Motesi czky and Mary Fedden. It would be surprising if these were the child stars of Modem British art though the Tate Archive, which is not included in this survey, has juvenile work by (for

example) David Jones. These are student years, but a list in order of age does produce

many artists in their early twenties, just

emerging from schools, including Augustus

John and Stanley Spencer.

A search of any database is only as accurate as the records on it, and there is always a danger of an error -for instance with some works that have not been given dates. But before long it

will become possible to simultaneously search a number of collections, and eventually most of the public collections in Britain. A similar analysis will then show which collections acquired most wisely, and how patterns of collecting have changed across the decades. But

DUNCAN GRANT 1885-1978 The Kitchen 1902 O i l on ca nvas Presented by the C h a ntrey B e q u est 1 9 5 9

Sickert was well known at least from the 1890s and Augustus John was a star from 1909. It is clear from the records that this poor situation was transformed by the foundation of the CAS in 1 90 9 . But

although these collections will become far better known, there is the prospect that the computer records and screen images will indeed come to replace actual sight of the originals. It might be the case that art is made now with an awareness of its impact on a computer screen, and if this is the contemporary way oflooking, then it is being used retrospectively to turn historical art into a judgement-free area of information.

undoubtedly, the choice of young artists was a flop (or suggests some reputations in need of review). Different

groups

of artists can be searched

for acquisition dates, and for how often they have been displayed - although the display

NOTES 1 This is ed ited version of Is it Better to Buy Artists Young? by Heather Birchall & David Fraser Jenkins. a n a n a lyti c a l paper which is sched u l d to a ppear in fu l l in the British Art Journal (Winter edition 2005/6) .

comment ROBERT HELLER ON NEW YEAR'S Day, there were no street

private parties, which raises some interesting

parties in Whitechapel, nor sackcloth and

questions - like, if gallery owners sell an

ashes in Cork Street. Yet this was a red-letter

individual a painting from their private

day for the entire British art world - the day

holdings, is that a private sale or not? The

to share in resale receipts, came into force

in arguing that the administration of the levy

when Droit de Suite, the right of the artist

opponents of the Directive have no difficulty

as an EU Directive. British legislation is set

will present many difficulties, not only when

to follow later in the year.

loopholes are found, but in handling so many transactions - maybe 2,500 a year.

For eleven of the member states, led by France, this was nothing new - they already

A large and active bureaucracy will

have schemes of varying natures. In fact, the

presumably be needed to administer the

variations explain the emergence of the

scheme, which is made all the more complex

Directive. Brussels has a tidy mind, and loves

by the extension of le Droit to heirs - a right

to harmonise legal rights and requirements

which will extend for 70 years after death.

across Europe. The British Gove=ent for

What if an artist with a large family dies

a time seemed to resist this particular tide,

intestate? Why, anyway, should a child or

but will now be obliged to follow (or suivre)

spouse receive payment for the resale of a

- much to the distaste of art dealers who

work of art to which they have made no

thought their anti-Droit lobbying had been

creative contribution?

successful. To reap the fullest possible benefit from their The 'rightists', so to speak, are clearly in the

brilliance, and cash in on rising prices, artists

ascendant. They occupy the moral high

are well advised not to die. Since that

ground. Why should the poor artist, slaving

exemption can't be arranged, even by the EU,

away in the proverbial garret, part with

the disparities between first sale and resale

immortal works for peanuts, only to see

prices, which the Directive seeks to remedy,

Charles S aatchi pocketing yet another million later on? As it is, the lP (Intellectual Proper ty) remains with the artist unless the

initially sell his or her work for 50,000 euros

will probably be half that. The 2,000 euros

will continue to be enormous. If an artist can through a dealer, the gross share for the creator

purchaser. Therefore the creator merits a

'royalty' on a same-price resale would be a

share, a royalty that recognises the

useful addition, but the creator will by this time

continuing lP rights.

is well beyond the garret-and-starvation phase.

The easiest analogy is with writers, who get

At the end of the day now beginning , the

a royalty for every copy of their book sold

arguments for and against will seem far from

anywhere in the world. In fact, the great

the point, In France, where le Droit began in

majority of writers never see a royalty as

1 920 as a compensation for artists' war

such, though the advance they receive from

widows, the scheme seems to have bedded

the publisher is technically a payment against

down quite comfortably, and there 's no

future royalties. But the latter payments

reason to suppose that British bureaucrats

seldom exceed the advance, and the second

will do much worse. It will be a nuisance to

hand resale of a volume, of course, brings

dealers and auction houses - though no more

.the author nothing more. There is, however,

than an irritation. It will probably have little

a closer analogy - Public Lending Right.

negative impact on the secondary market in general, although that market could do with

I know this exists, because every once in a

strengthening rather than the opposite.

while I get a modest cheque for the borrowings of my own books. I opposed

Le Droit will, however, redistribute some of

PLR on the same grounds on which the

the money spent in the secondary market. As

opponents of Droit de Suite often rest their

a generalisation, the more cash flow into

that there's more than one of those) who

flow will make much difference to the

case - that it favours the J.K.Rowlings -(not

artists' pockets, the better. As to whether this

don ' t need the money, but provides

strugglers in their garrets, that is both

negligible help for that young tyro whose

unknowable and not especially important.

struggles make the sentimental case for the

After all, if buyers have trebled their money

art pay-outs.

on a prime 30,000 euros purchase, the share

The easy rightist retort is that the EU art

the latter.

payable to the artist will not seem large to scheme has a sliding scale from 4% to 114%

Chrlstopher Wood 1901-1930 Church a t Tn!!boul 1 9 3 0 O i l o n b o a rd Prese nted by Or a n d M rs Luc i u s Woo d . the a rtist"s pa rents. through t h e CAS 1930

and is capped - no cheque can be larger than

In the U S , of course, that's irrelevant.

12,500 euros. For that, the sale price must

Americans

reach 1 million euros (meaning that few other

interference with property rights as all but

have

long

regarded

any

than Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst are

blasphemous. But fears of a sellers' exodus

within reach of the maximum). While the

to New York from London seem grossly

starting point is very low (1,000 euros), most

exaggerated; the savings will rarely be worth

resales will fall into the 4% bracket, which

the bother. But if the amounts involved are

applies to any purchase up to 50,000 euros

so trivial, you may well ask, what's the point

but only from an art gallery or auction house.

of taking so much trouble to design and legislate these bothersome changes? Good

The Droit does not apply to saJ.es between

question!

--1-

T 1 6slale RESTATE

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

profile

The art of being

•

Lucy Jones

text SUE HUBBARD •

for several decades. But the fact of this disability is often glossed over in much of the Writing about her and yet this fact has fuelled some of the most insightful self portraits by a British contemporary artist. Born in 1955 Lucy Jones is of an age that THE SELF-HELP manual

Our Bodies

means feminism coloured a good deal of the

published in 1970, became a

cultural debate during her time at art school.

touchstone of the feminist movement. It was,

Within art history the female was passive,

Ourselves,

in many ways, a utopian tract that set out to

an object - within the codes of painting and

create a world in which all women could

cinema -for the delectation of the male gaze.

make choices about their appearances, a

It was this position that feminism aimed to

world in which all women were included.

subvert and in so doing construct new, more

From this expanded horizon of sisterhood the authors suggested the need to give visibility

complete narratives of femaleness. Artists

such as Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Judy

to the lives of women who had 'previously

Chicago and Cindy S hennan attempted to

meant nothing to us' . The discussion was of

identify women as subjects of representation

subverting the 'state-of-the-art' ideal levied

rather than as

against women who apparently didn't 'fit in'

Although many of the goals of feminism,

objects

of representation.

to a preconceived stereotype of feminine

thirty years on, have not been met - there is

beauty. There was talk of breaking silences

still domestic violence and racism - without

and encouraging self-esteem. It aimed at

it Lucy Jones would not have had the

raising the consciousness of fat women and

framework in which to paint her honest and

black women and women of colour. But

highly potent self-portraits.

nowhere, that I am aware of, did it speak of women with physical disabilities.

She has been painting since the age of eight. It was something she was naturally good at

but soon realised that her dyslexia and

Lucy Jones has cerebral palsy. It is not the

and found it compensated a little for not

inability to master basic literacy was

.critical fact about her, there are many others

being able to do ballet like her sisters. Hers

becoming a problem. 'I had remedial teachers

of equal importance - such as having won a

was a happy childhood until she reached

on their knees,' she jokes. When she was finally freed from the burden of writing and

Rome scholarship, attending the Royal

secondary school age. The progressive King

College, being married, living in Ludlow and

Alfred's in north London was the only school

allowed to dictate her work, she went on to

having a had successful career as a painter

that would take her; she had good friends

pass 0 and A levels and planned to go to

LUCY JONES i n h e r stu d i o BELOW LEFT : Anniversary ·1994 O i l on Canvas 1995 213 . 5 x 175.5cm

B ELOW : Still Finding A Way Out 2 0 0 0 O i l o n ca nvas 7 0 c m s x 8 0 c m s

'!,... ..... ( .....�.. ....._ _.., ..

__l

state of art JAN/FEB 2 006

stale 1 7

Durham University to read geography. Instead she took another route, first to Camberwell, then on to the Royal College where she won a Rome Scholarship. There have always been artists who have painted themselves, Rembrandt, Beckmann, Van Gogh and Munch are a few of the most significant men, along with women such as Gw en John and Paula Modersohn-Becker. For these artists the self-portrait was not an act of vanity but an act of becoming; a psychoanalytic process that provided a deep relationship with and an unfolding understanding of the self, a sort of artistic variant of the Descartian Cogito ergo sum: I paint, therefore, I am. The psychoanalyst Hana Segal claimed that all creation is really the re-creation of a once loved and once whole world. What Segal really means is that those who truly appreciate art identify with the artist's struggle for becoming, for reparation and restoration. Art, she claims, i s about destruction, loss and ultimate restoration. It is a successful act of mourning for what is lost. Out of chaos and destruction the artist is able to recreate and restore a world that is whole, complete and unified. Creation asserts that life is more positive than death, love than hate. It is not a simple recollection but a reconstitution of a lost unity and wholeness of subject and object. As a metaphor this is extremely apt when discussing Lucy Jones' work. Lucy Jones began to use herself as a model when she was in Rome and found that models were expensive. Her act of economy led to something much more significant. One can only image some of the internal struggles for a young woman (not to mention the external physical ones) suffering from a disability such as cerebral palsy and trying to cope with a demanding residency in a foreign city. Lucy Jones has talked of the time in Rome as: 'daring at last to be able to really begin to look at myself. Like slowly taking bits out of a box and beginning to examine them. It was so much easier to look at myself - a reflection in the mirror . . . Looking back . . . I see that [the paintings I did then] teach me an awful lot . . . I think the self-portraits have unified themselves. When I first started . . . I only ever did half a figure . . . Sometimes they were also cut down the middle . . . And then I gradually unified the figure, so that I gave less attention to the split halves of myself. This has happened as I have become more unified as a person . . . I suddenly felt confident enough to do a whole person, all of me . . . . these works . . . were totally, com足 pletely and absolutely Lucy Jones.' She has often been called a modem day Fauvist, and it is true that her livid pulsating colours are reminiscent of the non足 naturalistic hues of that movement and recall the work of Derain, Rouault and Vlam.inck. The Fauves emancipated colour. For Matisse expression lay in the organisation of the surface of the painting. Colour was funda足 mental to this. It allowed him to re-invent space and restructure form, to have a deeper relationship with his subjects than merely one that was skin deep. This is exactly how colour functions in Lucy Jones' vibrant paintings.

to produce powerful images of striking simplicity. Balance for someone suffering from cerebral palsy is, de facto, a problem; the tilted head, the slightly gangly off-centre body, the loose gestura! strokes of paint all invite the viewer to share something of this vertiginous world. Colour in Lucy Jones paintings is a revelation of an emotional state. It can suggest internal anxiety as in The Artist 3 (Blue background) 1 9 9 3 , where the red rimmed eyes and collapsing flesh imply internal disquiet; or

European art back to Van Gogh who used colour and line emotionally ' to express. . . . man's terrible passions . ' Later with artists such as Munch and German Expressionists like Kirchner it came to represent a rebellion against the predominant

it can show harmony, as in Anniversary 1 994, where she and her husband embrace against a background of midnight blue, the white spots on her black dress suggesting twinkling stars, his black and white checked j acket echoing her choice of colour. Hands also feature significantly. In Still Finding a Way Out 2000, she holds up her fingers like two bunches of bananas as if amazed at her uncooperative body's ability to submit to her will to paint.

naturalism of 19th century art, insisting, instead, on the supreme importance of the artist's personal feelings. Lucy Jones acts of seeing, her honesty, her self-scrutiny lead her

Self-portraits by women artists tend to ask different questions to those of men, for they draw us to the questions about identity that

She has also been called an expressionist, and this is perhaps an even more accurate description, for it traces a particular route in

LUCY JONES Being Fifty Acry l i c o n ca nvas. 168 lie behind the social expectation of the way women present themselves in public and to the world. The act of painting a self-portrait (unlike taking a photograph) requires a process of translation, for the image is based on a reflection, something that is already a

chimera, rather than the 'real' thing. The mirror, therefore, acts both as a screen for showing proj ections and as a way of

127 ems

menstruation, childbirth and female sexuality. The personal thus became the political, and the self-portrait a vehicle of self-discovery. Artists such as Jenny Saville, with her larger-than-life-sized nudes, challenged the tyrannical view that women's

bodies had to comply to some commercially imposed sexual standard, Mona Hatoum made videos that used medical probes to

structuring different interpretative possibilities. 'The mirror, ' writes the French psychoanalytical critic Luce Irigaray

explore the internal landscape of the body, while Cindy S herman adopted a number of

' ... almost

demanded of women by society.

always serves to reduce us to a pure exteriority - of a very particular kind. It functions as a possible way to constitute screens between the other and myself. In a way quite different from muscles or skin, living, porous, fluid differentiations and the possibility of communion, the mirror is weapon of frozen and polemical - distancing.' Feminism gave women permission to value their own feelings and concerns as highly as men had always valued theirs. It shifted the ground to previously taboo subjects such as

personae to challenge the differing roles

It was against this background that Lucy Jones was able to find the self-confidence to create her passionate, felt, raw paintings. They are fearless, heroic works. Not just because she has overcome physical and emotional obstacles to become a painter, but because she is unafraid of looking and painting the truth that she finds. Sue Hubbard is a freelance art critic, novelist and poet writing regularly for The Independent This extract is from Momentu m's forthcoming book on the artist..

-j-

1 8state

state of art

JAN/FEB 2006

ORSON WELLES WAS sitting in the corner

sitting beside me, with his insatiable

on the top floor of Mr. Chow's, reading. It

intelligence and burdening sensuality,

was late, well past a reasonable hour to be

hugging her, yearning, to his broad chest.

having lunch, or even lingering over one's coffee. I was sitting in the opposite corner,

Only a few months before, I had been

standing on the rooftop terrace of Deborah

by the big window on Hyde Park, waiting

Harry's apartment building in New York

for my estranged

discussing what urgency in life is relevant

wife

to arrive. The large

white room, gradually turning a soft grey

and what is not, and why we are given to

with the sun's retreat, was empty, the tables

impulses that we know are self-destructively

now freshly set for dinner.

futile. I had wanted to make some sense to her, but I couldn't make any sense of it to

Aren't you going to eat anything?

myself. I confessed this to Orson.

asked Orson. No, I'm just drinking, I replied. If you

I hope things work out, he said, when he

don't mind me asking, what' re you

left. You are very kind, I said, and he was.

reading? Crime and Punishment, he said.

Union City would never have been made

I just made a film about a crime, I said,

it hadn't been for Deborah's willingness to

inadequately.

take

Oh? he murmured, then looked at me.

a chance on me and Monty Montgomery. And, naturally, Chris Stein

Why don't you sit over here?

was guiding Deborah along the path they

I shrngged and joined him, wishing I

would take together. We first met in the

weren't quite such a figure of

lounge of the Algonquin Hotel where Monty,

disenchantment.

my producer and friend, and I had

Waiting for someone?

occasionally gone for a smart gin martini,

My wife, I said. I haven't seen her for a

indulging in the rarefied atmosphere of

while, a month or two.

Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner

Why don't you order something?

(who had one night in the late 1930's slept

I'm not hungry, but I would like another

with his drunken head resting against a

drink. What' re you having?

scorching radiator pipe in one of the

I don't remember exactly what he said, but

bedrooms upstairs). Chris Stein had scanned

dimly imagine it was cognac.

the screenplay, picking out lines he found of

Sauvignon Blanc, I said to the waiter, a

some peculiar relevance and reading them

large one, and another for Mr. Welles.

aloud. He knew what he was looking at, and for: he is a superbly gifted intuitif Needless

I wanted to talk about

Union City, but, even

to say, so is Deborah. When we embarked

more, I wanted to talk about Orson and Rita

on the making of the film,

Hayworth. Their marriage had ended after

virtually unknown in the United States. Heart

Blondie

was

only two years, although they were to remain

of Glass

friends. Sally and I had been married for nine

through our shooting-schedule. From that

hit number one about halfway

years, and we were just friends now too, or

moment on, my work became increasingly

sort of. Orson and Rita were married in 1943,

more difficult. Fortunately, the emerging star

Union City is set in 1953. What was ten years

who made her way up four rickety flights

in the overall scheme of things? A life-time,

every day to a cold-water flat - our primary

I now know. In 1943, Orson still had the

set - was a humble soul dedicated to

cherubic face he had so often used to disarm

becoming an actress. My recollection is that

the studio executives. Rita, the emerging star,

the only egotist on the shoot was Mr.

had recently had her hairline raised - the

Cocaine.

most beautiful, hairiest little Spanish girl in the world. I kept picturing the enormous man

In frame, as they say, fragility is prized, and

INTRODUCTION MIKE VON JOEL

�

;::

�

The

Making of Union City by

• THE AMERICAN PAI NTER Marcus Reichert is o n e of the great talents of his generation. His range is impressive, encompassing pai nting, photography, design, writing and filmmaki ng, all of which he conju res with equal skill. Had he remained in New Yo rk, it is without doubt his n a m e would be as fa miliar to a wider world as that of Julian Schnabel (anothe r painter;auteur). But Reichert is a traveller, an alien implanted withi n foreign and often obstructive cultures. lt informs h is writin g a n d is a n essential ingredient o f h i s oeuvre. Despite all obstacles, Reichert's output is consistent, at every turn the q u ality of his art never falters, never slips below his own high standards, a n d yet never e njoys the recognition accorded the fashionable milieu. Despite this, his work is always accorded respect. A recent collection of camera images was exhibited with Michael Hoppen i n Chelsea, acknowledged as one of the prime ven ues for photogra phs in Europe - th e cata logue written by respected critic Me I Good ing. His novel Verdon Angster, a lthough an association with a minor publisher, is now rega rded as a cult classic. Yet Reichert never stoops to e mbrace contemporary trends or adopt a careerist man ifesto - it is a pattern of integrity that he forged early in life and it has cost him dearly over the yea rs. H owever, Reichert's patience m ight be about to be rewa rded. Almost 30 years ago he was shooting his first feature fil m in New Yo rk, it was to be called Union City after its out of town location. Reichert had spotted and signed u p a singer, part of the p u n k explosio n , called Debbie Harry. Recently all over the British press to pro mote a 'comeback' tou r - the Mail's Rebecca Hardy was i nstructed on no account to address her as 'De'bbie' - Deborah Harry is today

arcus Reich

11:

a self-styled serious artiste. In the 1970s, the stunningly photogenic Harry was very serious about movie stardom and earnestly hoping to imitate her idol, Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Reichert's casti ng of u n knowns and beginners for Union City becam e the stuff of legend as virtually all blossomed into major players in the d iscipline of cinema or music. As the movie wra pped, Harry (as l ead singe r in Blondie) crashed the big time with a string of international hits. On paper this should have been an incredible fillip to the fil m and guaranteed a surefire success. But as it turned out, the asset was also the fatal flaw. Ha rry was now a hot property in the hands of music biz spin ners and the faded, sluttish Lillian was not an image that chimed with the sexy, pouting lead singe r of Blondie. lt was a lso a secondary role to Den nis Lipscomb, playing h e r screen h usband. The subseq uent cuts and enforced re-editing made Reichert's film something else - it attracted a lot of publicity then slipped discreetly from view, remembered as another art house film for the connoisseu r. Well times cha nge and a re-packaged DVD version is about to be released by Tartan , acknowledged as top international distributor for important independent films. Union City's lead actress is now no longer blond and is serious a bout her work o n stage and it follows there will be much interest i n seeing this aspect of her career. With the benefit of hindsight, fi lm buffs now refer to M a rcus Reichert's film as the first important exa mple of n eo-noir a n d as having the visual qualities of a contemporary graphic novel. lt just m ight be that, at l ast, Reichert is to be recognised and rewa rded as a significant a rtist of our times. His personal recollection of the genesis of Union City, extracted h�re, makes i nterestin g reading. . .

state of art

state 1 9

JAN/FEB 2006

of psychological underpinning consistent

with the simple hardship of The Depression era. For instance, the vagrant was merely a

vagrant, not a man suffering the emotional

�

destitution of war. I began to look around me, and found myself transported back in time. Minor horrors I had witnessed as a child revisited me. The glowing windows of apartment buildings hovering over the street on an airless New York night intimated obscenity and despair. Couples grappled in silence, locked in rooms reeking of anxiety. Their torments were bittersweet. America in the 1950's was secretly nurturing its culture of alienation. No one could have guessed what terrors it might rain down on a sunny afternoon, helicopter blades slashing an oriental sky. Communication of the healing sort was tacitly forbidden. All very cold and clinical, all deathly. This, I decided, was what the film should be about, couched in the absurdity of a sham upward mobility. Big stupid words and big pathetic emotions wrenched from the mouths of b abies paddling along in the murky waters of the American dream. I wrote the screenplay in eight days. I hadn't any money and was staying in a borrowed bed-sitter just off Fifth Avenue . in the twenties. The most legendary YMCA in the world was a two-minute walk away, and that's where I went to burn off all the nervous energy I somehow conjured up day and night. Monty would come by and sit on my bed on

ABOVE : O n set b r i efi n g : Deborah Harry, p l aying sl uttis h and frustrated h o u s e b o u n d wife Li l l i a n . with writer/d irecto r Marcus Reichert TOP LEFT : the writer/d irecto r fee l i n g the press u r e

the floor and I would read what I'd written, often unable to suppress my inane giggling. But the writing was ridiculous only on one very superficial level, the underlying tone being one of disorientation and abject dread. When the picture was first shown - I can recall a rainy afternoon at the Toronto film festival - hordes of viewers left the cinema disgusted, while those who stayed eventually ceased laughing and began worrying. Many of the critics could see what we were about, but there were a few, undoubtedly ignorant of the European absurdist tradition, who found the humour, such as it was, nauseating.

Union City

went over particularly well at

Cannes, and later Columbia Tristar licensed the video rights. I'd never made a feature film before, and now longed to realise the project Monty and I had originally set out to do - a life of Antonin Artaud. But that, of course, is another story altogether. For a picture that cost so little - less than $ 5 0 0 , 000

(Heaven 's Gate

was filming

grossly over-budget at the time) - and whose locations encompassed the top floor of a building comprised of railroad flats, a couple of store fronts, and a bar two blocks away,

Union City

engendered an awful lot of

publicity, especially in London and New York. This, I reckon, was due to two factors. Firstly, and obviously, Deborah Harry was having her way with the world and, secondly, what we had got in the camera looked so unbelievably good. Neither did it hurt that no one could work out what the picture was about. Was it a crime picture rendered in an

Tony Azlzo a s A l p h o n s o F l o rescu (l eft) with Pat Benetar a s h is n ew b r i d e . d iscuss a s e t u p with the d i rector (centre)

unnerving palette of Technicolor insults, or was it just another nonsensical art film? No

present me with the Cornell Woolrich short

one seemed to know. Now, of course, we

Union

story upon which I was to base the screen

know that it was the first

also about personal things, at least

play. Coincidentally, he telephoned me with

worthy of the coffee-table publishing format!

Deborah was in gentle hands. Dennis

formation of a man's sensibility, his tender

Lipscomb, having come out of a hard touring Shakespeare company, and Everett McGill,

ness turned to sneering disregard. But

having miraculously fallen from the heavenly

for me.

news of his find at the Grand Hotel di Milano

their young age, caring and consummate

I had been ruminating on the nature of

wife, next to whose room a friend of the

sought to reveal how I had organised the

professionals. Dennis struggled compellingly

criminality for as long as I could remember

booking agent was, in the wee hours of the

production and with whom. The

within the confines of a very demanding role,

and had come to the conclusion that it was

morning, binding up two other blonde

seemed to think the picture was made by a

and Ev brought comfort and confidence with

just another ugly, albeit pathetic, everyday

American

weird clique of fashion designers and their

the utterance of a single line. Both actors are

aspect of life - intriguing only in that it was

them to various forms of sexual humiliation

art school proteges. Nothing could have been

S am

so perversely banal. Subjugation, it seemed

- their intermittent shrieks and prolonged fits

farther from the truth. I had been in New York

McMurray, whose leg was injured and who walked with a cane when we first met,

to me, more often than not led to violence.

of swearing gave the game away. Woolrich's

for barely five years, and Monty had moved

Sexual inadequacy too was a tricky con

short story was entitled

to the city in 1976 - we began filming in

assumed the psychology of a destitute veteran of the Korean War while subliminally

undrum. I recoiled at the thought that the

Door.

communicating the nihilism of Vietnam. He deftly conv.eyed war's malignant trans-

atmosphere ofstark humiliation. It therefore struck me . as uncanny that Monty should

City was

now

internationally

known.

photo modelas

and subjecting

The Corpse Next

Soho News

March 1979. My background was the coal regions of Pennsylvania and Monty's was the

entire world might be haunted b y an

The Corpse Next Door was set in the 1930's and limited in its dlamatic potential by a lack

a genre

Much of the press coverage in New York

where I was visiting with my then modelling

gene-pool of 1950's cinema gods, were, at

neo-noir,

drawing-rooms and verandas . of Atlanta, ·

Georgia. We both. prided ourselves on being

20state

state of art

JAN/FEB 2006

>00 en

(.!) z ::::; en

:;;:: � 0

� c._

. young gentlemen, although I was by far the more unruly. Our very separate worlds began to mesh in places like the Mudd Club in Soho or, incongruously, Cafe des Artistes just off Central Park, restaurant to Hotel des Artistes

where the high-flying poet Harry Crosby and his lover had shot themselves in 1 929.

York was all about. Our old friend the illustrator Geor ge Stavrinos naturally became my designer and set decorator, and brought with him everyone he needed from amongst his friends,

including our make-up artist Richard Dean,

We enjoyed good food and drink, and we

who now exclusively perfects the on-screen

were voyeurs.

face of Julia Roberts. Richard is the only one of George's friends who worked on

I had a tip one night that there was a wild fairy-like creature belting out rock and roll in a club on the upper East Side and a few days later I was trying to line up a manage

ment deal for Pat Benatar. Another night,

my heart hammered in my throat as I watched

Tony Azito slither so very eloquently across

the stage at Lincoln Centre in The

Penny Opera. I later cast him

Three

as Alphonso

City

Union

who survived the 1 9 80 ' s . Our eo

producers are dead too . Monty got Ed

Lachrnan's number from somebody, perhaps Kathy Bigelow, and the next thing I knew

we were talking on the telephone every other day. Eddie had operated camera for D.A.

Pennebaker, and most recently run second unit for Vittorio Storaro on Ber tolucci's La

Luna.

Eddie liked the idea of shooting a

Dennls Llpscomb, as obsessive accou ntant H a r l a n . d iscusses script i s s u es with writer Reichert TOP LEFT : Marcus Reichert. the p a i nter at h i s stu d i o in Fra n ce . 2005 Archive o n-set p h otogr a p h s : Amos Chan

Florescu, and Pat Benatar as his new bride.

period picture that would be expressionistic

The only person no one ever asked about was

rather than purely authentic or fawningly

response to the picture, as defined by a

given date all abandoned material would go

imitative. There were extraordinary people

democratically contrived questionnaire, is

into the skip. From my research, this is what

because they couldn't pronounce her name,

working with us, many of them artists who

taken into account. This way, if the director's

transpired. In abeyance to some desperate

but had they found the courage to ask they

would later manifest their gifts to con

vision happens to be more astute than that

thirst for immortality, no doubt, the people

of his producers, his work at least has the

responsible for this desecration bequeathed

chance to fail - largely - on its own terms.

their share of the first neo-noir to the Museum ofModern Art. Both the Museum

the Countessa, Irina Maleeva, probably

would have been told, at least by me, that she had put us in touch with the rest of our

financing; and that while Fellini may have

siderable acclaim, like Kathryn Bigelow,

our script supervisor, Stefan Czapsky, our gaffer, and Arne Svenson, who perfected and

Sadly, many of the most difficult scenes in

looked at her, perhaps even caressed her on

applied my colours and saw to it that so many·

Union City have been lost:

it was decided,

and Monty Montgomery have been ex

the set

direct her. Orson Welles had been obliged

essential deadlines were met. There wasn't a

much to my chagrin and Monty's, that we

tremely generous in enabling us to keep this

fashion designer among them - personal style

must achieve a PG rating. Unbeknownst to

picture alive. Deborah Harry, forbidden by ·

to do the same when making

always, never fashion!

us, the scenes removed from my cut .were

contract to sing on the soundtrack, wrote and

Satyricon,

I was obliged to actually

The Merchant

of Venice in 1969. With Irina, you never knew

left, both in work print and negative, in the

recorded

account of realising the role of Lillian Harian

what you were going to get, but it was always

In America in 1979, there was no protection

vaults of Movielab in New York. The

Union ·City-Blue,

interesting. She was a diva without a piazza

for film directors. Now a director is entitled

building was later sold to Ariflex. Notice was

and a superb gift to the film. The footage I

of her own, constantly on the move, like a

to his cut and if the producers are unhappy

apparently given that everything must be

managed to keep I have made available to

gypsy princess. Networking was what New

with it an audience is brought in and their

removed from the vaults, and that after a

Tartan Video.

©Marcus Reichert 2006

Patrick H u g h es J i ro Osuga Wh at T hese Pictu res M ea n

�

2 1 J A N U A RY

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•

her poetical

1 9 F E B R UARY

state2 1

state of art JAN/FER 2006

STATE$1 DE

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manhaHan

dden revers Is t t e stree constitution •

BARBARA MACADAM IN NEW YORK ART OF THE streets is nothing new - cave

smart, socially sensitive drawings and

painters scrawled on walls, later citizens

installations haunt museums and galleries;

and

and C h r is Johans on, who p o rtrays

modernists and postmodernists mixed up

denizens of street culture and everyone else

p l a s tered

them

with

posters,

newspapers and daily detritus in paintings, collages, and sculptures. Every city has its own

S treet

Art,

perpetrat e d

sophisticated gangs, ordinary vandals, and would-be and real artists - all up-to-the minute b arometers of their time and

in faux naive drawings and mixed - ersatz

- media installations. Meanwhile, Ryan

McGuinness and Phil Frost have become mainstream fixtures.

McGuinness successfully moves fluidly between art and design, from commercial

culture.

graphics to 'art', embellishing soccer balls, But still, most people think of Street Art

surf boards, and mirrored interiors, as well

as the graffiti that proliferated in New York

as to painting and printmaking. Like his

in the 1970s and artists like Jean-M ichel

Basquiat and Keith Har ing, who were conceptual extensions of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and before them, M a r ce l Duchamp - artists who had already broken down the high-low art

art, his prices accommodate low and high, with s o c cer b alls and h a n d - p ainted skateboards selling for as little as $800 and $ 1 ,200, more for larger installations, like a mirrored labyrinth - the top price for a

Ryan McGuinness triptych is $35,000.

barriers . But Basquiat and Haring, who defaced

Phil Frost, who exhibits with New York's

public property and spawned a bevy of

Jack Shainman Gallery,

mainstream imitators seeking new subject

sophisticated self-taught artist who, like

exemplifies the

matter, also bridged the noncommercial

McGuinness, has it all ways. Discovered

commercial divide - of course, even more

in the '90s, painting on the streets, he

painting going for a s high as $2,480,000

being picked up by Shainman. Self-taught,

bringing in $492,000, at

iconography as well as European art

so p o s thumously - with a Bas q u ia t

at Christie's last November, and a Har ing May.

Sotheby 's

last

Clearly defiance doesn't preclude

began appearing in group shows before

Exhibit A : Phll Frost e m b o d i es t h e ethos of the Street Artist tod ay. with h i s s o p h i sticated m e l d i n g o f h igh a n d low. ABOVE : Insides Out. 1999. a m ixed- m e d i a work that i n corporates a watc h . base b a l ls. a n d w o o d . Cou rtesy J a ck S h a i n m a n G a l l ery

but well-taught, he incorporates street his tory and Latin Ameri c an , Native American and African American forms and

marketplace success.

imagery. Something of a cult figure for While Street Art continues to appear in

skateboarders, he collages his life into his

ever-changing guises and nationalities, its

works making no hierarchical decisions.

roots are in evidence this month and

His paintings, which in the late '90s sold

through April 2 in several New York

for $6,000 to $7,000 today sell for between

exhibitions, including

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1 9741984, at the Grey Art Gallery and the FaZes Library , New York University,

$8,000 and $32,000, and he 's had several museum shows. But success does not seem to have affected

accompanied by a succinct, insightful

these artists negatively. They accept it as

catalogue

easily as they move back and forth between

The Downtown Book (published

by Princeton University Press). At the same

culture and counter culture, operating

time, the show

Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New Yo rk, 1 9 74-1 984, at Parsons, the New School for Design,

inside and outside the system.

focuses on the same period in design, from

distinguish themselves by exploring

Members of the newer demi-underground

punk imagery to industrial trappings. And

outside .

a recent traveling show,

neighbourhoods, as comfortable working

Beautiful Losers,

featured hundreds of works by artists, from

Basquiat, Haring, and Larry Clark, to today's Ryan McGuinness, KAWS, and Geoff McFe tr idge.

with

their

graffiti

own

heads

and

as with performance art and

design. And galleries and museums and the public, eager to embrace novelty and associate themselves with the hip and avant-garde, have grown accustomed to the

The second generation of Street Artists,

unpolished aesthetic that began on their

those who came on the scene in the 1990s,

doorstep. So while Street Art remains an

Phll Frost i n sta l l ation v i ew of Litany. 2 0 01 . Courtesy J a c k S h a i n m a n G a l l e ry

beyond its

avenue for the poor and disenfranchised,

origins, beyond the drug culture, to include

who can collage their lives and dreams in

works appear as abstract mark-making and

graphic arti s t , revealed in an o n line

more social features of popular culture -

public using anything from chalk to

architectural and surrealistic renderings.

interview how he once wrote speeches for

skate boarding, surfing, and rap music, as

garbage, it is now often a commercially

well as folk art, television, and new media.

acceptable form. And, that is more a fact

Among this group are S hepard Fairey, an

have expanded the

genre

This ever-growing group includes James

the late design guru T ibor Kalman and recalls learning from him 'that if you're

of life - and art - than a nece ssarily

S iena, Daniel Zelle r, Marco Maggi, and Jacob El Hanani. Remarkably, they have

compromising factor condition.

a large and appreciative audience, and

you're going to have to sell your ideas to

going to work creatively in the world,

remarkably, big-time galleries are filling

people. And if you can't sell your ideas,

his graphics on T-shirts, posters and

And finally, in response to whether there

up cavernous spaces with their quiet

you're totally screwed ' . Such savvy is no

billboards to high-end corporate and low

end funky clients ; Mark Gonzales, who

is room for ' noncommercial' art in the marketplace, one only has to look at the

thoughtful works at often impressive prices

longer anathema to many of today's artists.

- PaceWildenstein

in New York is selling

You might call them, The New Realists . . .

has his own skateboard museum; and the

new fascination with drawing - pencil and

Siena's work for nearing six figures.

entrepreneurial Street Artist who delivers

late Margaret Kilgallen and her husband,

Barry McGee, whose art-literate, street

paper works by artists who both can and can't help doing what they do. Compulsive

M ike M ills, a skateboarder-filmmaker-

Barbara Macadam is executive editor of Art and Auction and Artinfo.com. New York.

state of art

2 2 stale �-,-�· =·- ··

If you wanted to look at the North negatively

IRISH ART, RATHER like Irish Literature, is a misnomer. By and large, whenever

- and that is a remarkably easy thing to do

people think of Irish Art, or Literature, they

the metaphor for the place is contained is a

mean art & literature from the Republic of

single painting, one by a Dutch artist called

Ireland. There are practical and political

Pieter van der Meulen which depicts King

reasons for this, most notably partition in

William of Orange being blessed by the

1 9 2 1 , which resulted in the North becoming

Pope. In 1933, this was defaced by Loyalists

invisible until The Troubles surfaced

who, historical truths notwithstanding, were

viscerally in 1969. At that point, the North

furious when they realised that what they

became known internationally, but mainly for

took for a military landscape depicting their

its violent politics.

hero on horseback, in triumph, was actually

JAN/FEB 2006

their hero being blessed by a holy figure Post partition, the Republic of Ireland had

ensconced in a cloud - to wit, the Pope !

got its act together. Many of its best writers

Almost continuously since then, the painting

and artists may have decided to live abroad,

has been banished to a basement.

but the government was adept at promoting tourism, and in particular cultural tourism,

This kind of behaviour is still with us in the

with the result that 'Ireland' became the Land

form of Belfast City Council, who, having

(poet and two painters), writers like Synge,

magazine called

of the Welcomes, celebrating the Yeatses

O'Casey & Joyce, and a whole raft of landscape painters, such as Paul Henry, who

contributed fu nds towards an artist's

The Vacuum,

became

decidedly annoyed when the magazine published an issue on God, and another on

Jack Butler Yeats Pedestrians Crossing the River Liffey

John Butler Yeats, who might be described as the portraitist of the Anglo-Irish. Lane was the impresario for the Irish Arts and Crafts Revival. Within four years he was mounting a huge exhibition in the Guildhall in London.

Jack Yeats to Now

This contained close to 500 works and has

been described by the art historian Hilary

Pyle as ' the first exhibition of its kind in which an attempt was made to defme what Irish art was ' . Not only did it contain works

by well-established artists like Hone, Waiter

Osborne, John Lavery, and John Butler Yeats, but it also introduced artists who were to become key players, such as Jack Yeats

BRIAN McAVERA EXAMINES TH�

(who was then producing watercolours and

illustrations), and William Orpen. Four campaigning years later, Lane had opened

EVOLUTION OF

the Dublin

Art,

MODERN IRISH ART

to found 'an Irish school of painting' .

CURRENTLY THE

Dublin was the proud possessor of what we now realise to be world-class works by

Constable, Manet, Corot, Degas, Renoir, P issarro, S ickert, W histler, Vuillard, Rodin and so forth, not to mention the

SUBJECT OF AN

Part 1 1900-1945

Municpal i Gallery of Modern

which he saw as crucial in the attempt

UNPRECEDENTS

John [Jack] Butler Yeats 1871-1957

leading Irish artists. Ironically, when Lane died on the Lusitania in 19 15, the torpedo not only took his life but exploded a controversy: because a codicil in his will had not been witnessed: 45 years were to pass before an equitable arrangement was made to share his Impressionist pictures between Dublin and London.

In terms of the route map of Irish art in the 20th century, not only the main arterial routes were used to promote a mythical version of

the The Devil. They demanded a public

but indeed the entire cartography of the

the West of Ireland.

apology and threatened to withdraw all funds

period needs to be radically rewritten. For

unless this happened. Sensibly, the artists

much of the period in question, Irish Art of

The North, not having any politician or

have taken them to court.

any form remained largely invisible outside of Ireland until, finally, the major auction

political party with the intelligence to But let us return to pre-partition days and look at the State of Art in Ireland as a whole,

treasure trove on their doorstep and so, in

society, in line with Presbyterian attitudes,

from 1900 onwards. From today's vantage

the late eighties, the Irish boom started.

considered the arts to be dangerous, and

point a general audience is probably familiar

Within Ireland, however, the terrain was

likely to lead to damnation.

with

badly served until relatively recently. There

�

The Irish Impressionists

(really a daft

but catchy marketing phrase) which is a

are few histories of Irish art (and none of

These basic attitudes have changed relatively

catch-all for a wide variety of artists who

them are particularly inspiring) most of them

Marjorle Fltzglbbon Statue of James Joyce in

little over the last century or so. In the

worked in France and B elgium, pre

are partial, and it has only been within the

N o rth Earl Street. D u b l i n

Republic, a go-ahead, thrusting and vibrant

dominantly in the second half of the 1 9th

past 20 years or so that the major job of

economy is reflected in the attention paid to

century, but with many of them - such as

excavation has begun.

was launched in 1990, tax-breaks ensure

Roderick O'Connor, Nathaniel Hone, John L a v er y , Paul H enry - spilling

In general, for obvious political reasons, the

large-scale donations to museums, the State

substantially into the 20th century. However,

impact of Northern Irish artists has been

itself collects on a major scale, there is a

in many ways, the development of modem

radically undervalued, and post 1 9 69

thriving, and expanding group of private and

Irish art owes much to Hugh Lane (b. Cork

first in line. Henry, in John H ewitt' s

virtually

written out of art history.

felicitous phrase, 'opened the path to the 20th

corporate collectors, and artists can live tax

1875) who became a London art dealer and

Correspondingly, much art from the Republic

century' , introducing early Modernism and

free in relation to their artwork. In com

who was also very well connected. He visited

of Ireland has either been overvalued or else

French Post Impressionism to Ireland. He is

parison, the North has no maj or museum

a Dublin exhibition in 1900 which featured

shoehomed into convenient, but ill-fitting

usually thought of as one of the major

the arts. The Irish Museum

� I�

houses realized that they had an undiscovered

understand the value of culture, ignored same. In fact, whole sections of Northern

ofModern Arts

fact that credit should b e equally divided

theory. Mainie Jellet and Evie Hone for

between the Northerner Paul Henry, and the

Southerner Jack Yeats, with Henry being the

temporary space, few collectors, no tax

two prominent, aging painters, Nathaniel Hone, the landscape painter, friend of Corot,

instance are usually given the credit for first

known for his depiction of the West of

breaks, and no tax-free status for artists.

and basically a

bringing 'Modernism' into Ireland, but in

Ireland, its peasants, islanders and landscape.

solely for the arts, has no maj or con

Barbizon School artist;

and

landscape painters of the century, and is best

state2 3

state of art JAN/FEB 2006 He became a brand name as his work was hijacked by the emergent Irish Free State

abstraction Uust think of his Thames Nocturnes or his 'arrangements') so Henry,

and his images were used to promote tourism, and especially to promote the idea that the whole of Ireland was one vast rural romantic idyll. That this was bollocks, became irrelevant. Whether the artist in his grave liked it or not, he became, in effect, a political

via Whistler, has a major claim to being the fount from which Irish abstraction eventually descended. His frequent division of the

artist, seemingly having created a gov ernment-sponsored version of the stoical Irish peasantry which hid the real truth of

Altan, Co. Donegal (c. 1 9 1 8-22) can be tracked through Middleton, O'Malley, & T.P. Flanagan, right through to the hard edge

depressing poverty, emigration and urban agitation.

abstractionists of the seventies and eighties.

France and was heavily influenced by

to be one of the founding fathers of modern

Before Henry, landscape painting had been primarily topographical. With Henry, what

Whistler. Just as Whistler has a major claim

:I u

�

landscape into three parallel planes, his reduction of, say, a mid plane mountain range into a two-dimensional band as in Lough

Some argue that Henry had a limited palette and was lacking in inventiveness (for which read repetitive) but painters like Morandi could be accused of same. Once S .B. Kennedy's catalogue raisonne appears, we will be in a much better position to make a judgement. One aspect however is critical.

Ironically, Henry was much more than a landscape artist who, according to one Southern Irish critic was 'the painter laureate of the Irish Free State' who established the West of Ireland stereotype. He trained in

� -

Be lfast H igh Street ci rca 1890. h e a rt of the c o m m e rc i a l centre. From a n o l d postcard

Evle Hone 1 8 94-1955 Sta i n ed-gl ass w i n d ow for the c h a pe l of the J e s u it C o l l ege at R a h a n . Tu l l a beg. C o . Offaly. 1946. Tod ay. t h e p i ece i s i n a c h a p e l at M a n resa H o u s e i n D u b l i n . I r e l a n d .

we would now call 'The Sense of Place'

that Yeats was in the first Armoury

really arrives: the artist engages with the landscape rather than simply observing it, and allows us access to his emotional and

and was befriended by the highly influential American collector John Quinn as well as by the likes of Kenneth Clark. And if one looks at the surfaces of American abstract expressionism, one has to say that Yeats albeit always, however loosely, figuratively based, got there first!

cultural attitudes. The other great modernist is Jack Y eats.

The rich G eo rgi a n cha racter of D u b l i n a n d Tri n ity C o l l ege. fa m o u s for the Book of Ke l l s

Often seen as a lone figure on the periphery, this is more a judgement on art historians than it is on the painter. Kokoschka used to send him letters addressed to 'The Last of the Great Masters in the World, Dublin' and even over forty years ago T.G. Rosenthal could write 'that Jack Yeats is one of the great 20th century European masters is probably beyond dispute' but being Irish was 'an inestimable advantage on the printed page'

whereas it was 'an almost insurmountable handicap on canvas ' . He is Ireland's

Maine Jellet and Evie Hone are usually credited with bringing Modernism, in the twenties and thirties, to Ireland -and there has been a huge campaign to try and situate Jellet especially as a major modernist artist. There is no doubt as to the catalytic effect of Jellet and Hone in terms of bringing aspects of abstract art (third generation cubism really, derived from Andr e Lho te and Alb e r t Gleizes) to the attention of Irish artists but it needs to be stated quite firmly that Jellet is a

Cezanne. His early career, mainly water colours and drawings recording an Ireland that has now long vanished, are primarily pre

minor artist of mainly sociological value, and that Hone is a much more interesting figure

1 920's & led eventually to the vibrant impasto and striking colour sense of the works from the late twenties onwards. His often unacknowledged influence has in fact been enormous. If one compares his work to that of English or Irish work of the twenties

- especially in terms of stained glass. English readers may know her window in Eton College. Both of them were instrumental in helping set up the highly influential annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art which first opened in 1943.

or thirties, his originality startles b y comparison. Allied t o a natural ability as a draftsman, the loosening of his technique, the variegation of the impasto, the shimmer of the colour and the compression of the imagery, all echo across the century. It's

difficult to think of people like Hodgkin or Auerbach without his example. In Ireland, everyone from Patrick Collins to Louis le

M us e u m o f M o d e r n Art . H ug h La ne G a l l e ry at C h a rl e m ont H ouse. P a r n e l l S q u a re. D u b l i n

Show,

Brocquy is indebted. We need to remember

Not surprisingly, most people probably think of John Lavery as one of the Glasgow Boys, though he was in fact Northern Irish, and retained his contacts with Ireland. Typically, if one looks at, say, The Thames & Hudson Encylopaedia of British Art, you find that not only are major figures like Henry & Middleton ignored altogether, but that Lavery is reduced to a brief comment in the

2 4 stale

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

section on the Glasgow Boys. It's bad enough

W il l iam L eech ( 1 8 8 1 - 1 96 8 ) , although

to be Irish, but if you are Northern Irish (and

primarily a landscapist, is an interesting

therefore British) you get excluded at both

comparison with Lavery in that they both

ends !

spent most of their lives outside of Ireland

Lavery is best known as an extremely gifted

then in Brittany) before rmally settling into

and stylish society portraitist. He was aptly

a long conservative sojourn in England.

synthesising the influences of Bastien

painter or not, and as to his supposed

...

L M S

(in the case of Leech that being in Paris, and

characterised by Kenneth McConkey as

Opinion is divided as to whether he is a minor

L epage and W histler (with whom he

influence upon Irish painting, but as a

founded

The International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers) into a form

conservative and pleasant designer of interior

of decorative naturalism. Over a very long

Lavery - one of a very limited range, he

LONDON MIDLAND & SCOTTISH RAILWAY

spaces or sunlit gardens, albeit - and unlike

life ( 1 856- 1 9 4 1 ) many different Laverys emerged- the Glasgow B oy, the Orientalist, the War Artist, the society painter, the landscape painter who was equally at home in Ireland or the South of France - and they are only beginning to be synthesised. But he can easily stand comparison with the likes

of a Sergeant or a S ickert; and in terms of the scope of his career, and the society aspects of it especially in terms of portraiture, the obvious comparison is with Sutherland. Although Lavery was an international figure, he did take a regularinterest in Ireland. Being canny, he was careful to keep a foot in both Belfast and Dublin, being the President of

Belfast Ar t Society from 1 9 1 9-24, and post partition, painting official events for the Free State Government, and even designing their paper money. His earlyplein-airiste abilities certainly fed into Irish landscape, and his society portraits left their mark on legions of (mainly dull) portrait painters to come. He shares with W illiam Orpen the same exuberant technical virtuosity. Orpen too was a society portraitist, though unlike Lavery,

Augustus John 1878-1961 Self Portrait cou rtesy Ten by M u s e u m & Art G a l l ery

he was, for a long time, left high and dry when that Edwardian society fell apart.

L OUGH DERG

Although from the Republic of Ireland, and highly influential upon Southern Irish art, Orpen spent most of his life in London and

BY PAUL H ENRY

it is doubtful if he regarded himself as Irish. He has recently been revived, most notably in the Imperial

War Museum

exhibition of

his work as a war artist. If you like

lRELAND THIS

bravura

painting, intense theatricality, and style rather than substance (a charge that is often brought against Lavery but which applies more

YEAR.

,..._, ,_..,m..�>,. oO<o lc>l>fio f.- llit' - �lkliaoo4 - ""'"">Qo C...IX•.041).'1, u.rm iiVt."tt.. :-�.ew 'H.I!Ut

properly to Orpen) then this is the painter

-.,. ·.�........... -

for your expensively accoutred mantelpiece. Occasionally his interest in sensuality

Paul Henry 1876-1958 d e s i gn for th e LMS r a i lway s h owing an i d e a l ised a n d ro m a ntic I r e l a n d

indicates the kind of painter that he might have become - some of his nudes have an explicit erotic candour that is remarkable for

would make a pleasant designer addition to

Craig ( 1 878- 1 944), a contemporary - and

the period - but really he had all the gifts

the wallpaper.

poor man's version - of Paul Henry who was

An altogether more robust and substantial

in the North and Connemara in the South,

painter, although like Leech of little seeming

became very popular in the thirties and was

relevance to the history of Irish art, is

widely reproduced. A much better, if

Belfast artist W ill iam Conor ( 1 8 8 1 - 1 968).

the so-called Irish Impressionists who

Northerner, was Charles Lamb ( 1 893-1964)

He is perhaps the Irish equivalent to French

became friendly with S eurat and S iguac and

who was influenced by Henry's subject

Van Gogh, and then became one of the Pont

matter and over a long career produced both

as they are best-loved for their recording of

Aven School.

fauvist

landscape and genre work. He can be

the Parisian street scene, so too Conor is best

discipline of colour he became more

distinctly monotonous at times but is one of

loved for his recording of Belfast street life,

expressionistic and, ironically, had a

those painters whose early work especially

whether shipyard workers or factory girls.

considerable influence upon English artists

is well worth a visit.

closely associated with the Glens of Antrim

except the capacity to analyse his own work.

An interesting comparison to both of these painters when in society mode, and indeed

Sir Alfred Munnlngs 1878-1959 PRA

Roder ick O'Connor ( 1 860- 1 940), one of

to both Jack Yeats and Paul Henry, is the

artists like Forain and Steinlen, in that just

Under an almost

somewhat

academic

painter,

also

Like Orpen he had talent to burn but no

like Matthew Sm ith and Duncan Grant.

intellectual rigour, and like Orpen he was a

Arguments rage as to his status, but he is one

In broad terms, and boosted by The Irish

war artist who did occasional state occasions

of the few Irish painters whom one can speak

Literary Revival, notions of Irish identity

as in a commission to paint the newly fledged

of in relation to the major French painters of

were very much to the forefront in the early

Northern Ireland parliament. He once had

his period. The key question is whether he

20th century. S.B. Kennedy characterized

was a sponge who absorbed influences willy

the point neatly when he remarked that there

the temerity to criticise Augustus John on

the grounds that his p ainting wasn ' t

nilly, or whether a clear line of development

was a tension between those who thought that

Presbyterian enough ! Nevertheless he i s a

can be charted through his complex range of

Modernism was more appropriate to the new

much underestimated figure. Often referred

work - and the latter is more likely.

to loosely as post-impressionist, his ability

and international age, and those who thought that being Irish, and thus Irish identity, meant

with pastel and oil crayon, and in particular

By and large landscape is the dominant mode

his technique of using a razor blade to score

of the Irish, even if portraits provided the

and scrape the oil crayon, give many of his

bread and the butter for many. Until the

works the dense luminosity of a Bonnard or

thirties Conor, and a group of influential but

Vuillard. Like many slightly naive painters,

minor painters including Frank McKelvey

and Humbert Craig, were the major figures

his ability to orchestrate divergent anatomies

being circumscribed by Irish traditions. The

more forward-looking painters founded The

Society of Dublin Painters in 1920 with most of the key founding members being

from the North. Identity was in the air as the

Anglo-Irish Treaty

happened in 1 92 1 and

in the North. McKelvey ( 1 893-1 974), who

partition, and thus Independence, in 1922.

Yeats he had a warm humanity, albeit without

started out as a realist painter soon became a

But if the modernists were visible, they

either the inventiveness, or the painterly

romantic, churning out well-crafted but

could slide into blufferdom, but like Jack

progression.

Sir John Lavery 1856-1942

pedestrian landscapes while James Humbert

weren't the majority. The Royal Hibernian

Academy

might have been burnt down in

I state of art

JAN/FEB 2 006

state2 5 Brancusi- and in 1 9 3 8 joined the British

emerge as one of the key figures o f the

Su"ealist Group and it is worth saying that

twentieth century in Ireland.

the only British scnlptor who overshadows

In broad terms, in Ireland, the 1930's were

art was negligible until the sixties.

isolationist years. In the Republic the government was establishing its signature

Colin Middleton ( 1 9 1 0-83). Middleton was

a naturally gifted painter and as everyone

tourist image (Ireland as the romantic West) . But on the other hand provincial galleries began to arise in cities such as Kilkenny,

points out, came under the sway of a wide variety of styles. He was a walking anthology of modernist practice in relation to Irish art

Waterford and Limerick, and the White Stag

Group appeared, formed basically by two

wartime emigres Basil Rakoczi and Kenneth

and is often dismissed as an eclectic. What

Hall, though opinion is divided as to whether

this means is that he supposedly had no style

this was an important if short-lived group of

of his own (yet a Middleton is instantly

progressive painters, or a waste of space.

recognizable). In fact the problems are that

With the formation of the aforementioned

over a long and varied life he had a huge

IELA, an open platform in reaction to the

output, much inferior work went onto the market immediately after his death, and no

conservative and academic Royal Hibernian Academy, Irish Artists were at long last trying

critic has yet traced his interior trajectory.

to grasp hold of their own destiny.

It's not so much that he had no style of his own: rather that his journey was not obvious, and frequently looped back on itself. He operated as a Surrealist, as an Expressionist, as a fairly straightforward landscape painter, and even as a geometric abstractionist, so it is not surprising that critics have had

Brian McAvera is an Irish playwright, curator and art critic. He has published 4 books of art history, over 30 catalogues and curated exhibitions for the Orchard G a l l e ry. D o uglas Hyde G a l l e ry. B l u ecoa t, etc. He contributes regularly to the I rish Arts Review. and to Sculpture (USA).

difficulty in pinning him down. But he will

Norah McGulnness 1903-1980 U ntitled la n d s c a p e . go u a c h e o n paper

The Brotherhood of the

l a n Charl esworth; Co lin Darke;

Inward-looking, technically

Aisling O'Bei rn; D a n Shipsides

1916 but Paul Henry often remarked that

common with

Ruralists .

competent and monotonous, he is a minor

One aspect of this was what is often called

figure, as is George William Russell ( 1967-

might be Free State propaganda) which

symbolist and indifferent portrait painter

Irish Academic Realism (another term surfaces in the work of painters like Sean 0' Sullivan, and Sean Keating ( 1 8 89-1977)

Much more interestingly, there are many female artists who deserve to be much better

classic Irish conservative. In some ways he

known. Jellet and Hone may be the promoted

he was regarded as, potentially at least, a

Northerner who trained under Lhote in Paris,

is an intriguing painter, & a fine colourist

academic, blown into over-significance by

whose landscapes are hugely undervalued.

1978) a widely-travelled artist who could

only much more facile, is another once highly

alternate styles somewhat disconcertingly serious art historical study which would

drawings.

make sense of her career. She can be viewed as a derivative cubist, and has been dismissed

There are various artists whose reputations

as a later version of Leech, but like

either slip and slide, or who have yet to break

Middleton, and unlike Jellet, she managed

into a wider official recognition. Of the latter

to bring modernist styles into Ireland which,

there are the emigres !ten & Nietsche. The

in terms of her work and especially her

1930) who moved to Belfast in 1 904 is, at

landscapes, were coherently assimilated.

his best, a much under-rated landscape

Looming large there is Grace Henry ( 1 868-

a Russian of German parentage who moved

husband Paul. Like him a landscapist but in

painter, while Paul Nietsche ( 1 885-1 950),

much more experimental mode, and later

Impressionist style painter of landscapes and,

with a distinctly expressionistic tinge, she left

especially,

Ireland in 1930 and is likely to emerge as a pressive landscape painter is Le titia Hamilton ( 1 878-1 964) who like McGuiness

who did landscapes and often sharply

is a fine colourist with a strong sense of

1956), best known as a portrait painter, was in fact a fine 'intimiste' painter of genre scenes while James Sleator ( 1 889-1 950),

like Whelan a contemporary of Conor, was

architectural design. Sarah Purser ( 1 848-

1943) is an excellent portrait painter who also

Har rison ( 1 864- 1 9 4 1 ) , another portrait painter, and who studied under Legros, although

and Italy, and who had a portrait practice in

adventurous, is at her best on a small scale.

rather

repetitive

and

London for a long period. Essentially an

As we approach the forties however, two key

academic painter, and very much under the

Northerners dominate the route map.

is another of those painters who needs to be

In sculpture F.E. McWilliam is the only

properly researched.

figure who has an international reputation. Like so many Irish artists, much of his life

Of the diminishing reputation variety we

was spent outside of Ireland. He once stated

have John Luke ( 1 906-1975) whose sim

that part of the reason for leaving Ireland was

plified landscapes may once have looked

because of 'the atmosphere in which the arts

vaguely modernist - he shared a studio with

could have their place of honour and cease

his Northern compatriot, the sculptor F.E.

to be smothered by the ugly passions bred

McWilliam in the thirties - but has more in

••

READ STATE OF ART

MAKE YOU R OWN

c· M E NT ?

AT T H E M OST C O M P ETITIVE RATES

did landscapes and still-life while Sarah

another Northerner who spent time in France

spell of Orpen, under whom he trained, he

PEOPLE LIKE

major painter before long. Another im

suicide, was a variable but interesting painter characterized portraits. Leo Whelan ( 1 902-

Golden Th read Gallery 3 3 3 Crumlin Road, Belfast. BT1 4 7 EA

1 95 3 ) , for long overshadowed by her

to the North in 1 926 was essentially an under-rated still-lives. Patrick Tuohy ( 1 894- 1930) who was friendly with Joyce and who most probably committed

STAND P 1

and who, like Colin Middleton, deserves a

slide, and is now best known for his portrait

Swiss landscape artist Hans Iten ( 1 874-

ART PROJECTS:

Likewise there is Mary Swanzy ( 1 882-

( 1 906-64), like Keating a fine draughtsman, regarded artist whose reputation is on the

1 8 -22 J a n u a ry 2 006. Come a l o ng a n d j oi n us at

names but Norah McGuinness ( 1903-80) a

major Irish artist but he is essentially an pomp and theatricality. Sean O'Sullivan

London Art Fair,

whose reputation is essentially literary.

West ( 19 1 5)

is another Alfred Munnings. For a long time

and U n a Wa l ke r at the

1 9 3 5 ) , better known as AE, a mystical

opted for Irish Heroic Subject Matter is the

who in paintings like Men of the

by intolerance'. He worked in Paris, knew

M .,

him is Henry Moore. His influence on Irish

His counterpart is the markedly under-rated

Dublin society was reactionary.

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state of art

2 6 slale

JAN/FEB 2006

WI NTER RE LEAS ES : FI N E ART B O O KS & CATALOG U ES EDITED CHARLES KANE

REVIEWS

ROWLAN D T H O MAS (RT) BRIAN McAVERA M I CHAELA FREEMAN (MF) M I K E VON J O E L (MVJ)

(BA)

on this very application to the Academie des Sciences when

Anonymous Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers

RF Johnson intra William Boyd 208pp, 211 i l l us. H b/Pb Thames & Hudson £14.95

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FOR MANY years The Man with the Golden Helmet was a prominent feature of the National G a llery's Rembrandt collection and extolled i n n u merous art books. When advancing technological wizardry finally proved beyond doubt that Rembrandt could not possibly have painted the work, it was rapidly demoted to the nether regions and removed from anthologies of the painter's oeuvre. Of course, the outstanding qualities of the painting remai ned unaltered, but the all important attribution was no more. The point being that here was a n u ndisputed masterpiece now by an unknown hand - that without logical reason was suddenly perceived as being somehow a lesser work. Robert Flynn Johnson has assembled a collection of images that are by the eponymous anonymous. They could easily bear the names of the great early 20th century photographers, and who is to say that these anon snappers were not influenced as to the concept of a 'photograph' by looking their works. These un knowns are not destined to grace the wa lls of the world's galleries and it is u n l i kely that they will star in auction catalogues, although

i nterest in the genre is expanding rapidly amongst col lectors. Nevertheless, it is the subj ect matter and content that fascinates the contemporary audience for old photographs - the 'time machine' quality of a glimpse of the past that seems simultaneously alien and yet somehow familiar. The 220 i l lustrations encompass l a ndscape, animals, architecture, society, a timeless section on erotica and the inevitable 'you've been framed' type of rehearsed i mage - a l l of which are devoid of the cynicism and perky self awareness of modern image makers. it is this latter quality that m akes each and every photograph included an item of tremendous value and one can only envy the people of future centuries that will have these frozen moments available to study if only we ourselves were able to examine pictures of Agincourt (MvJ)

Antiquity and Photography Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites

A.Szegedy-Maszak;J Papadopoulos; CL Lyons;S.Stewart240pp.120 ill us H b Thames & Hudson £35 FROM ITS first public demon stration i n Paris (1839) the miracle of ph otography was fully appreciated as a n u n paralleled tool for archaeologists by its abi lity to reproduce 'actuality' in the minutest detail. Renowned scientist Franco is Arago actually enthused

annou ncing M . Daguerre's wondrous invention. He was preaching to the converted. An intell igentsia across Europe a l ready acquainted with G rand Tour idea l ism, 18th century imitations of architectural styles and notions of the 'antique' - responded to photogra phic reportage with enthusiasm. The immed iate result was a myriad of scientifica lly based expeditions to areas previously visited only by the most adventurous. Whereas Roman Italy was at once famil iar, Egypt, where little had changed for many centuries, was a place of wonder and awe and photographic studies caused a sensation. There are many intellectual assessments possible for this photographic record of treasures from the ancient cultures, but a prime consideration has to be the sense of gratitude one feels for the opportunity to view sites and monuments long since submerged by the tides of modern tourism, theft and war. The near Mediterranean was no stranger to itinerant artists and explorers, even Edward Lear produced a cred ita ble portfolio of watercolour studies from the region (1830s). But artists inevitably select and i nterpret in a way not open to the early photo grapher encum bered with rudi mentary equipment and chemicals - and certainly without Adobe Photoshop to hand! These early image makers approached the challenge imbued with the excitement and sense of discovery exemplified by the ongoing excavations at Pompeii - stark images of here by G iorgio Sommer from the 1870s - which had

become familiar to audiences in London and Paris via large scale photogra phs, exhibited in the 1850s by Tommaso Cuccioni, a print seller from Rome. Egyptology was developing exponentially and the sense of documenting historical ruins accurately, a passion of Napoleon himself between 17981801, continued to be a guiding concern. These fragi le and delicate images produced by a small a rmy of i ntrepid p hotographers (often trained artists) and their assistants bestow a tota lly unique legacy on modern scholarship. Their work was carried out on an heroic scale - the Frenchman Girault de Prangey, for exa m ple, made over 400 daguerre otypes on his way to Baalbeck (aka Heliopolis}, Syria in 1843 - and

freq uently captured features that subsequently disappeared without trace. A prime example of this is the so called Frankish Tower, a 15th century fortification adjacent to the Propylaia (the monu mental entrance to the Acropolis) de molished in 1875. lt appears in many Athenian views of the period and exemplifies the extraordinary way (to modern eyes) in which Antiquities were a l lowed to deteriorate and be defaced under local a uthority control; whilst simultaneously commenting on our own obsession with preserving the past (as we would like it to have been). Another mesmerising example is the Colosseum in Rome, shown here by Macpherson in the 1850s, a different entity from the

TOP : Albrecht Diirer repeating design Satyr Family for wallpa per. 1505 LEFT : p h otogra phic i m a ge from Anonymous - Father Time. English c.1900 BELOW : Robert Macpherson The Colosseum, Rome. 1850s a l b u m e n silver print

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state of art JAN/FEB 2006

2 Sslate

BOOK OF TH E MONTH

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GRAPHIC NOVELS Stories to Change Your Life Pa u l G ravett THOSE I M M ERSED i n the world of comics, gra phic a rt a n d a relatively new m a n ifestation, the modern gra phic nove l , w i l l recognise the name of Pa u l G ravett i m med iately. G ravett has been the UK cham pion of these a rts for over twenty years, someti mes a lone voice addressing an a nonymous aud ience. Those not so fa m i liar with the genre ca n forget superheroes, geeks meta morphosing into a l ien monsters

a n d such l i ke, the modern gra p h i c novel is a ma rriage of cool writi n g and origi nal d rawi ng, street phi losophy a n d net savvy a rtwork. it's a bright and del uxe production, designed by G ravett's long ti m e associate Peter Sta n bury. A brief i ntro covers the a ncestry of the gra phic novel with exa m ples goi n g back to the early 19th century. it m ight be a rgued one could travel back to 17th century chap books a n d beyond to try fi nd the essence of these contem porary - fa r more sophisticated versions of what Gravett tel l s us (quoti n g Eddie Campbel ija/ec) is a

movement,

not

a form. Here, a collection of 30 ' masterpieces' (or 'essential gra phic novels to get

----

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you started ' ) a re presented, ana lysed and decoded, enabling the reader to access the i ntel lectu a l layeri ng and a lternative i nterpretations i n herent with i n these indivi d u a l titles. Although it wo uld have been i m possible to exclude the gia nts of this med iu m , Americans Robert Cru m b ( Fritz the Cat etc) and H a rvey Pekar

Sp/endor)

(American

G ravett trawled the world to offer up exa m ples from as fa r afield as

Canada a n d Pa lesti ne, endeavouri n g to i l l ustrate the various editoria l preoccupations he has i dentified - for exa m ple: child hood; growin g-u p; seeing the fu n ny side of l ife; u n requited love and secret desires; etc . Without the h ighest of production va l u es the many reprod uctions, sourced from a myriad of previously pri nted pages, wou l d have fa llen flat. Au rum have excel l ed themselves and this la rge format, trade paperback offers 194pp of deta iled del ight. These stories m i ght not actually 'change your l ife' but they will certa i n ly cha n ge the way you look at the i l l ustrated nove l , a n d comic books, forever. Paul G ravett's own most excel lent,

information website has become a beacon for those i nterested i n the art form , check out www.paulgravett.com (MvJ)

inglorious traffic island is has become for today's visitors. The authors' exa mine the work of two luminaries i n detail (William J ames Stillman and J oseph-Phil ibert G i ra u lt de Prangey) and embrace the testi monies of M axi me du Ca mp, John Beasley G reene, Francis Frith, Robert Macpherson and Adolphe Braun with enthusiasm. Curiously, it is hard n ot to view these images without a sense of melancholy, and one can fully understa nd the im pact these vistas must have had o n the early pioneer tou rists, especially in the visions of a n unpol l uted Egypt. The only source of regret is the brief period when photography over lapped engraving and many delicate glass plates were ruined by a process devised to m a nufacture accu rate reproduction prints. A bea utiful a n d very worthwhile book. (MvJ)

,. .

The Papered Wall The History, Patterns & Techniques of Wa llpa per Ed. Lesley Hoskins 272pp, 348 il/us, 195 col. Pb

Thames & Hudson £19.95

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ACROSS THE nation excited squeals come from homemakers engaged in a spot of DIY a n d whose anxious scrapers suddenly unearth a fragment of the past - old wa l l paper - buried for decades, maybe centuries, now suddenly revealed. The emotional im pact of these scraps far outweigh any tangible value involved and, to the roma ntic mind, are akin to the discovery of a secret passage. H eritage and restoration is currently a cultural obsession - so all the better for this timely book. -To the novice enquirer a number of thi ngs come as a surprise about wallpaper: its astounding pedigree (it first appeared in the fifteenth

century); the brilliant quality of early exa mples (Durer designed a repeat pattern in 1505); and the sophisticated colour and 'modern' appearance of some papers, particula rly from the 18th centu ry. The collection of special ists gath ered together in this terrific book know their subj ect backwards. Technological inn ovations and advances in man ufactu ring processes are clearly explained to support the genesis of wall paper and it is easy to see our a ncestors had a m uch more relaxed attitude to decoration than 'interior designers' today. N arrative prints (a sort of cartoon strip) with scenes of sporting activities were popular in the 1600s and flock wa l l paper (Indian resta urant style) in the 1720s. The whole business was a thriving ind ustry of designers, pri nters, showrooms and 'paper hangers ' ; and a lthough one is aware that Roman villas were luxuriously appointed in wall decorati o n, it is the flexibility and accessibility of wallpaper that has the advantage. Houses great and small benefited from the extensive ranges available and 're-ha ngs' were a reasonable option when fashions cha nged. We are indebted to the great country houses for a splendid legacy of period papers in good condition. Although often subj ect to late Victorian excess, these palaces suffered less from chop and change than middle class homes desperate to keep u p with fashion. B ut, and this is where we came i n , there was a tendency amongst the fashion conscious to 'paper over' the· old thus preserving it for future exploration. By the early 19th centu ry, in parallel to rococo tastes in a rt, wal l paper became detailed, exuberant and excessive, especially in France. H owever, a glimpse at the styles available i n

Aurum Press 194pp f u l l col o u r t h roughout £18.99

the psychedelic 1960s indicate these revival papers were not so uniquely extravaga nt as might first appear. As the 'paint magic' generatio n settle back exhausted, wa llpaper is making a comeback

and modern reproduction tech niques are enabling a uthentic facsimiles of the great designs from wallpaper history. Let this terrific A to Z be your guide to the possibilities. The Papered Wall also

THERE IS a uniqueness to books on the graffiti and Street Art genre which sta nds them apart from other art publications, it is the fact that the copious ill ustrations are examples of artwork that has long since disappeared. M aybe it existed only for a few days - for hours - yet is photographically recorded within these pages as an etern a l record of what has been. Whereas this may seem a romantic notion it is one that is being taken very seriously in the USA where the I nternational Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences awarded its a n nual Webby (IT equivalent of an Oscar) for the best art site to Graffiti Archaeology, a pictorial research study of graffiti-covered wa lls. Cassidy Curtis, a San Francisco ani mator in his 30's, monitors eight sites where graffiti appears and is pai nted over and over. U s i ng archive data a n d contemporary photogra phs he peels back the individual layers, and years, of 'writing' to offer a sort of time lapse collage back to the early 1980s. When our culture moves on and away, the remnants of the graffiti art period will surely have all the fascination of Pompeii, so Thames & Hudson's support of these authors', by way of extensively i l l ustrated and full colour picture books, is to be commended. The l atest, Graffiti Brazil, exa m i nes the politically charged outdoor graphics of a host of exemplary artists using a simple, clear format : brief overview of the style, then individual exa mples and biography ofthe artist. Most n oteworthy amidst a phalanx of exceptional image ma kers is the wall pai nting of twin brothers Os Gemos, painting that would not look out of place in any fashionable European ga l lery. Co-author Tristan M anco, a Bristol based gra phic designer, also edited Street Logos, more a focus on the multitude of personal identity ma rks (or small images) posted by artists across the world. Far more sophisticated than mere tags, these logos are as diverse as they are ingenious. Manco delivers up a mass of quality p hotogra phs in his trade mark editorial style of overview text followed by individual examples and artist biography. As if this was not enough work for the cause, M a nco also ed ited Nicolas G a nz's blockb uster 2004 volume, Graffiti World: street art from five continents. This mega work was reprinted in 2005 and is exceptional in its range, detail and biogra phical data. Anyone thinking .that Street Art is a n aberration by marginalised gangs of local vandals will be amazed at the breadth and quality of the a rt, produced by raw talents working on outdoor spaces in most major cities of the civilised world. Likewise, anyone with an avowed interest in the visual arts cannot afford to ignore this work. Any of these books are an excellen� primer to the new art of the 21st century.

Graffiti Brazil T. M a nco;Lost Art;Ca leb Neelon 128pp, 300+ il lus, Pb£9.95 Street Logos Tristan M anco 128pp, 485 ill us, Pb £9.95 Graffiti World N . G a nz. ed. T M anco 376pp, 2000+illus, Hb £19.95 all published by Thames & Hudson

includes methods of ha nging, preserving and removing wallpaper as well as encompassing all aspects of design and man ufacture from the 16th century to the present. Excellent! (MvJ)

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

s tate2 9

MEN OF FEW (THOUSAND) WORDS Mike von Joel TOWARDS THE end of the 18th centu ry, two relatively unknown and unconsidered writers collaborated on a book of verse-that was designed to make sense to the ordinary reader, to be what would be glibly termed today: accessible. Both writers feared rejection by the critics and that the work would be considered too experimental, which might have been the reason Lyrical Ballads appeared in 1798 without either authors' name on the title page. But there was a subtle sea change in the cultural climate of an English society at the dawn of a new century, and the reception was favourable. William Wordsworth and Samuel Tay! or Coleridge are now regarded as opening a door to the Romantic movement in English poetry. Whilst not without its critics, Lyrical Ballads is generally acknowledged as a significant moment in literary history Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth 's Tintern Abbey remain firm favou rites 200 years on. There are libraries of texts by academics analysing Lyrical Ballads ad nauseum, but could it be simpl istically argued that the most im portant aspect was that of context? And that context was one of people power. The French Revolution and its aftermath obsessed contemporary England on every level and anti-authoritarian attitudes were beginning to coagulate into a unified proletarian sensibility. But this is no history lesson. Leapfrog to the 1950s, a grey and Jack-lustre decade over burdened with wartime constrai nts and petty Jegislation. As the overwhelming nu mber of war babies came of age and 'teenagers' were invented, the 'swi nging' sixties arrived (a lthough for the ordinary Joe it didn't really happen until 1966 and beyond). Poetry, formerly the province of an educated elite with their U niversity magazines and submersion in literary traditions, joined music, art and film as a ready tool for a new generation dedicated to people power a /a mode. This is surely no less a significant moment in literary history than 1798? - and it li kewise produced no less a cast of outstanding characters. Whilst some poets of genius added music to gain a wider audience (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen) others worked within the tradition, maybe restrai nt, of words on paper.

POT Poetry Olympics Twenty05 ed. M ichael Horovitz 112pp illus Pb New Departures £7.99 M ichael H orovitz is a truly remark able man. lt is impossible to meet him without being hustled to buy something or other; it is impossible to ever take offence at this. H orovitz has written poetry, produced it, promoted it, supported and encouraged its creators by (literally) magicking funds out of thin air. Over four decades he has tirelessly devoted himself to the business of words, as a poet, songwriter-singer, literary journalist and editor-publisher. He has published more than thirty collections. His New Departures series is legendary and the live performance Poetry Olympics

anthologies (POW! Poetry Olympics Weekend, POP! Poetry Olympics Party, and POM ! Poetry Olympics Marathon) are becoming collector's items. None of this is news: Horovitz is loved and appreciated by the great and the good across the world and accolades from the famous are as common as trees. But what is new is POT!, the latest poetry olympics anthology - 'a miscellany that is partly a hymn book . . .' - with contributions from Ginsberg, J eff N uttall, Roger MG ough, G regory Corso, Stevie Smith, Fran Landesman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, P ete Townsend, William Slake and num erous others of merit. There are signs that M ichael is finally being a ppreciated in a ways that might make him some money; he is popping up more on radio and in the national press as reviewer and sage. Meanwhile, buy this book. Even if to you poetry means flacid oversize jumpers, dand ruff and cordu roy trousers, buy this book. it will make a difference - possibly to you .. !

· C. r· , J. l' c· '- , . ..l ;41• ;\.V1 Said and Done

sense of life's bitter ironies. Newcastle is one, Liverpool another. McGough's genius is to synthesise this into an art form that loses none of its punch but simultaneously avoids viciousness and rancour. McGough's immense talents polarise with ease: he produces witty writings for children on this hand, and provocative and knowing verse for adults on that hand - and provocative and knowing verse for children on the other. it would be a grave error indeed to mistake the lightness of touch and innate humour for Jack of depth and intellect. So here, final ly, is the author by the a uthor, no chance of a ghost-writer in this tome, un less it is R. McGough. As might be imagined, a l l is related with typical h umility and self effacement as the cultural icons of the century slide by: J i m i H endrix, Bob Dylan, The Beatles . . . and he is not averse to a bit of introspection when the moment demands it (page 2, line 16). But the voice is pure and his own and it imbues this autobiography with a certain authenticity which only exists when the subject is also the professional scribe. lt is rumoured that McGough is now a l m ost 70. He has become a .org; and like a good bottle of wine he has evaporated with age and is a slim, elfin like figure recognised and appreciated the length and breadth of Britain. it couldn't happen to a nicer man - and probably the next Poet Laureate ...

compromise the steadfast writer and undermine his stoic belief in social freedom and responsibi lity. Enoch Brater is a n a uthority on the theatre and this book is a fine introduction to one of the acknowl edged gia nts of 20th century drama. What is remarkable is the issue of this book after M iller published his own autobiography in 1990. Given M iller's reputation for personal integrity and his own skills as a wordsm ith, it would appear pretty futile to retread such a well worn path a lthough the 70 odd black and white ill ustrations are noteworthy. Professor Brater makes a decent fist of it, however, by examining seminal works in detail

(Death of a Salesman, the

mi lestone work of 1947 ; The Crucible & etc.) as wel l as commenting on M i ller's extensive output in the fields of journalism, fiction and the screenplay. And therein lies the strength of this book. Whilst the great man is omnipresent, it is his written work that is the main subj ect of Professor Brach's intuitive text and as such is a first class primer for the general reader - and those who have most certainly heard of Death of a Salesman but never actually seen it. Miller is a true icon and the fact is that M a rilyn's main claim to fame ought to be that she was once Mrs Arth ur Mill er.

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Why not Guarantee

your copy of STATE arrives First? �

.._,

Said and Done The Autobiography Roger McGough 352 pp 16pp mono i l l us H b. Century £17.99 Roger McGough, on the other hand, is doing a lright. Both a CBE and OBE are safely tucked away in his sock drawer and his hypnotica lly . attractive tones entrance a tri llion fans over the airwaves via Radio 4's incredibly popular Poetry Please. it comes as no surprise to learn that the one most amazed by all this is McGough himself - and no one is more deserving of this level of recognition and applause than this self effacing man of words. As a Liverpudlian, he could not have been better positioned to benefit from the social changes of the 1960s and the Mersey Beat was seized by McGough (and friends Brian Patten and Adrian Henri) to transm ute into the rhythm of the Liverpool Poets (Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10.

1967). Although McGough and friends had fun with spoof, anarchic 'pop group' The Scaffold in the first half of the 60s - which incredibly had Top 10 hits with limerick-like ditties such as Lily the Pink - he has put in over 40 years at the coal face of poetry with an impressive list of publications. There are certain areas of the North that are breeding grounds for a laconic, droll humour informed by an acute

Arthur Miller A Playwright's Life. . . Enoch Brater 146pp 70 mono i l l us Hb. Thames & Hudson £15.95 THERE IS A certain irony in the story of Mil ler's infamous marriage to Marilyn Monroe. it made him a household name for the wrong reasons. it l u mbered him with a lifelong financial penalty as his divorce from M a ry M iller was anything but amicable and included a percentage of his earnings until she re-married (she never did); and his new wife u nderwent an immediate identity crisis. Writing is a n insular activity and presumably M i l ler was attracted to the effervescent, outgoing movie star (qualities in stark contrast to his own: Jewish intellectual; political and moral) on the principle that opposites attract. The reconstituted Norma Jean converted to the J ewish religion in order to have an orthodox marriage ceremony and obsessed about having a child and the notion of being a hausfrau. On the flip side, M arilyn's glamour and high profile also made M iller a 'must have' target for the notorious House Committee for Un-American Activities. But it failed to

Would you like your copy in advance, direct from the printers , 5 days before general availability? Simply pay us the Postage and we will mail it to your door ! SIX CONSECUTIVE ISSUES

UK : £4.00 AirMail : £9.00 Cheques payable to 'Momentum Publishing' 82 Kingsland Road. London E2 SDP

state of art JAN/FEB 2006

30slate THE ART OF WHITE. Ex. cat : The

Lowry, Sa lford (Nov 05 - April 06).

96 pp, illus in col . Pb. £9.99 W H ITE IS TH E colour L.S. Lowry increasingly used to create contrast for his industrial scenes and iso late his si ngle figures. This cata logue exh ibition explores the ways in which a rtists have used the colour white; in representational a rt, as a sym bol and in abstract pai nting, the 'monochrome' and conceptual art.the many mysteries of this surprisingly elusive, en igmatic colour. The sym bolism of white, with its connotations of i n nocence and p u rity, is also explored in the work of a rtists as diverse as Landseer and Picasso. Many of the 80 a rtists represented here were much admired by Lowry, such as Dutch 17th century and Pre Raphaelite pai nters. Finally, the use of wh ite is seen in purely a bstract form, via the monochrome paintings of American artists such as Robert Ryman and contempora ry post-modern work. With essays by Edwin Bowes and Clive Adams.. Artists incl ude: L.S. Lowry, M a u rice Utril l o, Edward Surra, Paul Nash, Paul Delva ux, H enry A. Payne, Lord Frederic Leighton , M a rina Abramovic, Ben N icholson, Robert Ryman', John H i l l iard, H i roshi Sugimoto, David Batchelor, J MW Turner, John Constable, George Seu rat, Pierre Adolphe Valette, Dame Laura Knight, J ean-Francois Rafaelli, G iorgio Morandi, J ean Auguste Dominique l ngres, Anthony Van Dyke, Thomas G a i nsborough, Pablo Picasso, Zineb Sedira, M aud Su lter, Ford Madox Brown, Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti, Michael Craig Martin, Andy G oldsworthy, and Fra nk Auerbach. (RT)

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Mary Ya coob, Therese Stowell, Tim Taylor and Tony Kemplen. The publication also acts as the central point of the Day-to-Day Data project, a place where a l l twenty artists involved in the various aspects of the show are drawn together and coexist side-by-side. it covers a wide breadth of media and provides a broad su rvey of contemporary artists creating and working with data i n the context of everyday life. As a n i ntroduction to the a rtists' pages, two specially commissioned essays by Ben H igh more and Kris Cohen help set the scene for the exploration of the artists' ideas and interpretations of Day-to-Day Data. (RT)

Masters of American Comics

convinci ngly positions the genre of comics into the history of art and is desti ned to become a classic text for years to come. (RT)

Tony Cragg at Goodwood 152pp, i l lus col. H b. Cass Foundation £20

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Day-to-Day Data. Ex. cat. Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham (Ju ly-Sept

2005); Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth (Sept-October 2005); Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London (March April 2006). H a rrison, El lie; H ighmore, Ben and Cohen, Kris. 80 pp, ill us col. Hb £10 TH E DAY-TO-DAY Data Gall ery Exh ibition tours to three venues around England in 2005 and 2006, and the show evolves as it moves between the different gallery spaces: several artists' projects will be remade to reflect the locality of the three different cities visited, and add itio nal a rtists will join the exhibition at different stages of the tour. New work by Hywel Davies and Ja mes Coupe, Hedley Roberts and Rob Saunders will be shown at Aspex Gallery, and projects by Cl eo Broda and Richard Dedomenici will be previewed when the show reaches Danielle Arnaud contem porary art. The Day-to-Day Data Publication is more than just an exhibition cata logue. The artists' projects extend onto its pages with five specially commissioned page based works by G a brielle Sharp,

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taste, economics, and printing conventions. Fi rst appearing in newspaper Sunday supplements, the comic strip became immed iately successful and created the la rgest audience of any medium of its time. The comic book first began as a way to print existing newspaper comics, then sub sequently established the mass popularity of superheroes in the 1940s and 1950s before it matured as a vehicle for indepen dent personal expression in the underground comic books and graphic novels of the 1960s. I ncluded in the book are insightful and entertaining essays on individual a rtists written by major figures in the fields of comics, na rrative ill ustration, literatu re, popular culture, and art history.

cat. Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Carlin, John; Karasik, Paul and Wal ker, Brian. 328 pp, 283 col illus. Yale Hb. £25 TH E FI RST comprehensive history of 20th-century American comics to examine the genre's significant and varied contributions to art and culture. Comic strips and comic books were among the most popular and influential forms of mass media in 20th century America. This fascinating book focuses on fifteen pioneering cartoonists -ranging from Winsor M cCay to Chris Ware - who brought this genre to the highest level of artistic expression and who had the greatest im pact on the develop ment of the form. Orga nized chronologically, Masters of American Comics explores the rise of newspaper comic strips and com ic books and considers their artistic development throughout the century. Presenting a wide sel ection of original drawi ngs as well as progressive proofs, vintage pri nted Sunday pages, and comic books themselves, the authors also look at how the art of comics was transformed by artistic innovation as well as by changes in popular

TONY CRAGG AT Goodwood is more than just a book presenting finished pieces of sculpture. lt is a book about the whole process involved in creating not only the pieces themselves, but the la rgest exhibition of Tony Cragg's outdoor scu l ptures in Britain to date. From conception through drawings to creation of the pieces in Cragg's studios in Wuppertal Germany, to the sculptures arriving and being installed at the Goodwood Estate. The concept not only reveals the process behind how the artist works, but how the Cass Sculpture Foundation produced one of the largest sculpture projects ever realised with a British artist. Photogra pher Leon Chew was commissioned to record a l l aspects of the project which culminates in 24 spectacular, ful l-spread photogra phs of the com pleted pieces situated in and around a new 5 acre site. This 'flush-cut' hardback book, including an essay written by Jon Wood from The Henry Moore Institute, conta ins coloured paper stocks, high gloss varnished paper contrasted with thick, uncoated 'sketchbook' paper over 152 pages. (RT)

The Drawing Book. Ed. Kovats, Ta nia. 320pp, 280 coijb&w il lus. Hb. 2005. Black Dog Pub. £34.95 THIS IS A RICHLY ill ustrated, comprehensive history of drawing edited by the artist Tania Kovats. Many of the drawi ngs included

describe first thoughts, positioning drawing as an essential vehicle for creativity. Drawing has recently ga ined greater attention due to the prominence of contemporary artists who use it as the final medium of expression, often on an epic scale. This book spans the dista nce between the initial sketches of architects, artists and scientists, all the way to remarka ble and concluded drawings as works in themselves. Artists include William Slake, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, l ngres, Paul Macarthy, Henry Moore, Chris Ofili, G rayson Perry, Kiki Sm ith, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rachel Whiteread and Sol Le Witt. (RT)

such as bus tickets, magazine clippings and other such 'debris' represent a highly innovative approach to materials which may be seen as anticipating that of Arte Povera itself. Levi was collecting at the same time as Eric Estorick, but tended to favour abstract rather than figurative art. This catalogue's selection of key works brings out both parallels and differences in their approaches to collecting, as well as serving to illuminate an important episode in the cultural life of 20th-century Italy. (RT)

Marcello Levl: Portrait of a Collector Ex. cat. Estorick Collection, London (Sept-Dec 2005). 160pp illus coijb&w Pb Hopefulmonster Edltore £18.99

OVER THE LAST sixty years Marcello Levi has been one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in Italy. H e began collecting works by members of the Futurist movement, such as G iacomo Balla and Gerardo Dottori, before becoming one of the earl iest supporters of Arte Povera during the late 1960s, and played a significant role in promoting the Deposito D'Arte Presente, an innovative exhibition space for young a rtists in Turin. His friendship with the artists enabled him to acquire a remarkable series of works that have rarely been shown in public. Arte Povera was a movement founded in the second half of the 1960s and promoted by the Italian critic Germane Cela nt. Literally meaning 'poor art', Arte Povera is not a household name like other movements of the 1960s such as Pop or M i nimal Art, yet its influence on succeeding generations of artists worldwide has been immense. Like Futurism, it emerged at a time of dramatic socio-economic change, against a backdrop of political upheaval and tech nological expansion. U n l ike the earlier movement, however, Arte Povera was i nternationa list in outlook and sceptical about ind ustrialisation. The term 'Arte Povera' refers to the choice of humble materials such as earth, iron, wood and rags with which the artists aimed to chall enge conventional means of creative expression, reduce the artificial gap between art and life and react against the commercialism of the art ma rket. Levi 's collection of Italian art exists a longside works by such international gia nts of Modernism as Man Ray, Joseph Beuys, Paul Klee and Andy Warhol, all of whom are represented in the exhibition. Also included is Kurt Schwitters, whose collages constructed from discarded items

User: lnfoTechnoDemo. Lunenfeld, Peter and G erritzen, Mieke. 172 pp, ill us col Pb. MIT Press £16.95 IN THESE ESSAYS, Peter Lunenfeld does theory and criticism 'in real time,' looking at (among other subjects) a rt, video ga mes, book design, 'techno-masturbation,' The M atrix, and life extension diets. 'Readers will have to determine for themselves,' he writes, 'if this range is symptomatic of pluralism or promiscuity.' User illuminates the patterns and repetitions that link - for example nanotechnology to electronic music, artist;archivist Harry Smith to arch itect/superstar Rem Koolhaas, Pontiacs to open source software. And User offers a reading experience that is more vivid than most: Mieke Gerritzen's bold visuals create a book that is also a designed object - a compact matrix of words and image as potent as a smart bomb. User is not a man ifesto. Lunenfeld means these essays - which were written originally for the international magazine a rtext - to be translator uti lities, bridging the gap between the art world and the design establishment, between journalism and the seminar room. Pondering the 'permanent present' of today's visual culture, Lunenfeld blames the twenty-first century's inability to imagine the future on a movie and an interface: the too-infl uential aesthetic of Blade Runner and the ubiq uitous desktop of nested files, icons, trash cans, and cascading windows, he argues, have become impediments to our thinking beyond the present. Lunenfeld writes about Euro-Disney, Matthew Barney, the VHS pornucopia that killed off Betamax, the computer as a 'solitude. enhancement machine,' our embarrassing Y2K hysteria (when TEOTWAWKI - The End of the World As We Know lt - didn't happen), and other faces of what he calls 'that overwhelming diversity which for lack of a better term we call the present.' (RT)

I state of art JAN/FEH 2 006

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Showcases more than 75 paintings and drawi ngs. (RT)

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In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems by Frank O'Hara . 224pp, i l l us b&w. H b. 2005.

MoCA New York £35 THIS BOOK, originally published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1967

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Cosmopolitan Modernlsms. Ed. Mercer, Kobena 208pp i l l us coijb&w Pb 2005 IVA £15.95 THIS BOOK EXPLORES various moments in 20th century art where the encounter between different cultures has produced something distinctive and revealing about the lived experience of modernity. Travelling through a variety of historical contexts, from colonial I ndia and pre-war Germany, to post1945 Brazil, and the Caribbean and African-American spaces of the black Atla ntic diaspora, this unique collection re-defines the 'cosmo politan' as a critical aspect of the questioning attitude that artists adopted throughout the world. Featuring i nternationally respected schoi<:rs at the cutting edge of contemporary research, Cosmo politan Modernisms is the first volume in the Annotating Art's History series. Each volume builds u p an in-depth understanding of cultural difference as a constant factor in the history of modern art Texts by Michael Asbury, David Craven, Ann Eden Gibson, Kobena M ercer, Partha M itter, Paul Overy, Michael Richardson, Lowery Stokes Sims. (RT)

In Memory Of My Feeling�

ELIZABETH M urray has radically a ltered the structure of modernist painting. Her shaped and constructed canvases, often topologically modeled in three dimensions or fitted together out of multiple j igsaw-like parts, treat figure and ground in unprecedented ways, giving the elastic shapes of classic Surrealism a space in their own image. The most detailed exa mi nation of M u rray's art yet mounted, showing its development from Pop-oriented reliefs in the 1960s to the extraordinary volumetric formats of her recent work. With an essay by Robert Storr, the book explores M urray's relation to artists such as Jean M i re, Stuart Davis, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Stella.

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Frank O'Fiara

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to honour its late cu rator, was edited by the poet Bill Berkson, who had been a close friend of O ' Hara's and was then a guest editor in the M useum's Depa rtment of Publications. Berkson invited thirty artists who had known O'H ara, ranging from Will em de Keening to Claes Oldenburg, from Jean M itchell to Jasper J ohns, to produce works to accompany his poems. The book was issued in a limited edition as a set of folded sheets held loose in a cloth-and-board folio that was itself contained in a slipcase. Now, for the first time, the Museum has republished I n Memory o f My Feelings in a conventionally bound edition, and with a newly designed paper jacket instead of a sli pcase. I n every other way, however, this book is an exact facsimile of the edition of 1967. I ncludes 49 black and sepia illustrations. ( RT) Daniel Richter. Hackert. Nicole. Ex. cat: Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (June-July 2005). 28pp, 25 col ill us. Waiter Konlg Pb. £13

Elizabeth Murray. Ex.cat Museum of Modern Art, New York (Oct/05 J a n 2006). 220 pp, i l l us coijb&w. H b. MoCA New York £29.00

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TH E G ERMAN artist Daniel Richter paints large-scale canvases which are figurative yet dreamlike, featuring people with their backs turned to the viewer. This series of paintings are from the exhibition Acht Stunden sind kein Tag at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin. In the accompanying essay, Nicole H ackert d raws attention to the influence of Romantic and Cubist painters, and the balance between content and form, the isolation of the figures and the vibrancy of colour, in Richter's work. (RT) Robert Kudlelka on Brldget Rlley: Essays & lnterviews,1972-2003 264pp, illus coijb&w Pb 2005. Rldinghouse Editions £14.95 FOR MANY YEARS, Robert Kudielka has followed and commented on Bridget Ri ley's work. This is a collection of those texts - a mixture of occasional essays, introductions and interviews. lt is a document that is both personal and objective. (RT) Jean-Georges Slmon: Hungary to England. An Artist's Odyssey.

104pp, 131 ill us, colour. Pb. 2005. Robert Waterhouse £14.95 TH E H U NGARIAN artist Jean-

G eorges Simon, born Simon Gyorgy Janos, came to Britain in 1938, aged 44. He had recently married an English wife, Patricia, and had been working in Belgium. If it had not been for the approaching war they might have stayed on the continent. To the couple's su rprise and chagrin they were treated as enemy aliens by the British authorities on their arrival in London. Simon moved to a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales to escape the Blitz in 1941, and Yorkshire remained his base for the rest of his life. This book is a celebration of his three decades in England, assembling a selection of the large volume of work -paintings, drawings, watercolours, pastels and prints -in studios in Harrogate and London. (RT)

The Birth of Avant-Garde Art

in New China Karen Smitb

Nine Uves: The Birth of Avant Garde Art in New China. Smith,

Karen. 464pp, ill us. coijb&w. H b 2005. Scalo £24.95

I N TH E EARLY 1990s, the idea of contemporary art in China sim ply did not compute to a foreign audience. But in 1993, ten contemporary Chinese a rtists debuted at the 48th Venice Biennale. They were immediately hailed as progenitors of a Chinese avant-garde. Their brightly coloured, Pop Art-inspired pai ntings p layed with social ist motifs, parodied Mao, and gave a visual expression to the feeli ngs of disaff'3cted Chinese youth. They were everything western audiences expected of contemporary art from the People's Republic of China. But a number of critics were rather guarded in their opinions. Was this another flash-in-the-pan phenomenon just as Soviet art had been in the 1980s? Could a Chinese avant-ga rde maintain a disti nct identity of its own and shake off its penchant for imitation? The answer is clea rly 'yes'. The emergence of a market for their art transformed the lives of these avant-garde pioneers from rags to riches, from outcast to hero, from social pariah to cutting-edge cool in a Chinese society adapting to a new era. They did not change but China has cha nged. The ideology they once had to fight now propagates a cultural climate of laissez-faire that is tantamount to encou ragement. Set against China's official program of modernization, Nine Uves paints a compelling picture of a rtists working beyond the pale of official culture, who started a new cultural revolution that is sweeping China today. (RT)

The Impressionists at Home Todd, Pamela . 176pp, i l l us. coij b&w. Hb Thames&Hudson £19.95

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THE G R EAT tragedy of this book is the title, it shrieks of yet another book about the sainted Impressionists. This could not be further from the case. Todd bri ngs a welcome woman's eye to what might well be retitled 'the private lives of ' the a rtists a n d produces a well researched tome overflowing with small and fascinating details: Frederic Brazille unusually tall; Monet a gadget freak with his cars and ice cream machine; Degas an obsessively secretive worker. She is also generous with her coverage of the women artists - l i ke Cassatt, Morisot and the lesser known Jean M a nnheim - a n i ntegral (and essential) part of the impressionist milieu. Beginning with the succinct observation that most of the leading lights of the movement were born 1830-1840, into a time of great social and technological flux, the collecting of the groups' daily lives together demonstrates just how surprisi ngly similar they were. We are treated to a fine selection of p hotogra phic images of the pai nters a nd their society, juxtaposed with the pai ntings; and a biographical list at the end of the book is illustrated with photo gra phic portraits, and aga i n , the simila rities of the p layers is striking. Aside from the dealer Rene Gim pel's diaries, this book cannot be beaten as an introduction to the real personalities behind the impressionist movement - and not a hagiographic sentence in sight (CK)

6 0 Vitamin

D: New Perspectives in Drawing. Dexter, Phaidon Press £39.95

19 Stubbs and the Horse. Warner &

Blake, Yale University Press

£30.00

6J Robert Kudielka on Bridget Riley: Essays & Interviews, 1 972-2003. 0 Munch by Himself. Muller-Westermann & Mazzarella, fJ History of Icon @ Egon

Ridinghouse Editions £1 4.95

Royal Academy £38.00

Painting: ... Zacchaeus & Cooke, Orthodox Christian Books £1 9.95

0 Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec. f.D> Canaletto in Venice.

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iO National Gallery Publications £25.00

Robins &Thomson, Tate Gallery £35.00

0 Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris. Green &Morris,

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Schiele. Price, Prestel Publishing £37.00

fi Rubens: A Master in the Making. Jaffe & McG rath,

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Tate Gallery £35.00

Clayton, Royal Collections £1 4.95

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