Peter Blake Pop music Happy Birthday Sir Peter Mark Ellen talks to the Pop Art Star at 80 Tales from the Modfather Paul Weller on Stanley Road Rebel Rebel Paul Gorman introduces Derek Boshier Adrian Berg Remembered Tracey Emin and Paul Huxley
£2 Number 27 June – October 2012 www.pallant.org.uk
BRYAN PEARCE (1929–2007) Bowl of Fruit on Blue Cloth oil on board · Painted in 1989 £15,000 –20,000
20th Century British Art London, South Kensington s 12 July 2012 Viewing
Contact
7–11 July 85 Old Brompton Road London SW7 3LD
Lydia Wingfield Digby lwingfielddigby@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7752 3250
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CASS SCULPTURE FOUNDATION MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE
IN A STUNNING SETTING 10 minutes drive from Chichester Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood West Sussex PO18 0QP
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Contents Features
Peter Blake, Portrait of Sammy Davis Junior, 1960, Oil on hardboard, Collection of Magda Archer and Harry Hill © the artist/ DACS 2012 Front Cover Peter Blake, Girls with Their Hero (detail), 1959–62, Oil on hardboard, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund) © the artist/ DACS 2012
You can find full details of our latest events programme in the What's On guide.
20 Peter the Painter Mark Ellen 25 Stanley Road Paul Weller 26 Derek Boshier Paul Gorman 30 Prints of Darkness Dr Norman Shaw 34 Adrian Berg Simon Martin 37 Artists on Berg Paul Huxley and Tracey Emin 38 Bouke de Vries: Stairwell Installation Professor Simon Olding 42 Richard Wilson Marc Steene 47 The Art of Knitting Kate Jenkins
Previous copies of the Gallery magazine, as well as all the latest news, exhibitions and events, can be viewed online at www.pallant.org.uk
Friends
You can also follow us at .com/pallantgallery .com/pallantgallery
Regulars
51 52 53
Chairman's Letter 30 Years of the Friends Friends' Events
9 13 17 55 61 63
Director's Letter Exhibitions Diary News What's On Events Peter Blake Products Pallant Photos
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Collection in Focus: Swingeing London 3
Celebrating its 25th anniversary
British art at its very best the premier fair for modern and contemporary British art
12 -16 September 2012 Royal College of Art Kensington Gore London SW7 2EU for information tel: 020 8742 1611 e: info@britishartfair.co.uk w: www.britishartfair.co.uk Proudly sponsored by
Contributors Editorial Editor Emma Robertson, e.robertson@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Gallery Editorial Simon Martin, Stefan van Raay, Marc Steene Guest Editorial Sir Peter Blake, Mark Ellen, Tracey Emin, Paul Gorman, Paul Huxley, Kate Jenkins, Prof. Simon Olding, Dr Norman Shaw, Paul Weller, Andrew Wilson, Richard Wilson Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Julia Cooper Design, Editing and Production David Wynn Advertising Booking and General Enquiries Paolo Russo +44 (0)207 300 5751 Kim Jenner +44 (0)207 300 5658 Jane Grylls +44 (0)207 300 5661
With thanks Peter Blake: Pop Music Sponsors
Peter Blake: Pop Music Supporters
Frank & Lorna Dunphy James & Clare Kirkman Peter Blake: Pop Music Supporters' Circle Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2012
Derek Boshier Sponsor
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY Friends
Gallery Information Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ, UK +44 (0)1243 774557; info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk Opening Times Monday Tuesday–Saturday Thursday Sunday/Bank Holidays
Closed 10am–5pm 10am–8pm 11am–5pm
Art Library library@pallant.org.uk +44 (0)1243 770824 Friends' Office Events +44 (0)1243 770816 friendsevents@pallant.org.uk Membership +44 (0)1243 770815 friends@pallant.org.uk Bookshop www.pallantbookshop.com; shop@pallantbookshop.com +44 (0)1243 781293 Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery www.fieldandfork.co.uk; Reservations +44 (0)1243 770827 6
Willard Conservation Limited, The Priory and Poling Charitable Trusts, The Garfield Weston Foundation, and other Trusts, Foundations and anonymous benefactors. Pallant House Gallery makes every effort to seek permission of copyright owners for images reproduced in this publication. If however, a work has not been correctly identified or credited and you are the copyright holder, or know of the copyright holder, please contact the editor.
An exhibition of
Modern British Art Modern British Art An exhibition of
1 3 J U N E - 2 8 J U LY
1 3 J U N E - 2 8 J U LY
Paul Feiler Maen Dower c.1962. Oil on canvas. Signed, titled and dated verso. 40 x 40.5 cm Paul Feiler Maen Dower c.1962. Oil on canvas. Signed, titled and dated verso. 40 x 40.5 cm ADAMS ARMITAGE AYRTON BUTLER CHADWICK CLOUGH FEILER FRINK FROST HEATH HEPWORTH HITCHENS KINLEY MOORE NICHOLSON PIPER REYNOLDS VAUGHAN WYNTER ADAMS ARMITAGE AYRTON BUTLER CHADWICK CLOUGH FEILER FRINK FROST HEATH worksVAUGHAN will be on view HEPWORTH HITCHENS KINLEY MOORE NICHOLSON PIPERSelected REYNOLDS WYNTER
23a Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG Tel: +44 (0)20 7493 7939 www.osbornesamuel.com 23a Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG Tel: +44 (0)20 7493 7939 For further information email: tsutton@osbornesamuel.com www.osbornesamuel.com A fully illustrated catalogue is available. For further information email: tsutton@osbornesamuel.com
from 28th June to 4th July at the Masterpiece Art Fair. Selected works will be on view from 28th June to 4th July at the Masterpiece Art Fair.
South Grounds The Royal Hospital Chelsea London SW3 South Grounds The Royal Hospital Chelsea
Director's Letter
Peter Blake, Mr Love Pants, Silkscreen and diamond dust on paper, 2004, Š the artist/ DACS 2012
Often described as a godfather of Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake is one of the best-loved British artists of his generation. This year he turns 80 and - as the home of one of the most significant collections of his music-related artworks - it is apt that we celebrate his birthday with a major exhibition dedicated to the theme. Peter Blake and Pop Music will explore Blake's love of American Rock and Roll in the 1950s, The Beatles and British Pop in the 1960s and his collaborations with contemporary musicians such as Paul Weller, Eric Clapton and Brian Wilson. Sir Peter talks to legendary music journalist Mark Ellen on page 20. We are extremely grateful for the support of Frank and Lorna Dunphy, James and Clare Kirkman and the Peter Blake Supporters' Circle; and the sponsorship by GAM and Zero C. In 1962 Peter Blake appeared in Ken Russell's film Pop Goes the Easel alongside a group of emerging Pop artists which included Portsmouth-born Derek Boshier. Like Blake, Boshier went on to reach a mass audience through his work with musicians such as David Bowie and The Clash. As part of the Gallery-wide art and pop music season, we present an exhibition celebrating these musical collaborations, supported by the Flowers Gallery. As he approaches his 75th birthday, Boshier talks to music journalist Paul Gorman on page 26. In Room 17 the theme continues with a show of Artist Pop Stars by people such as Bryan Ferry and Ian Dury while in the De'Longhi Print Room we present Prints of Darkness, a series of contemporary prints
exploring record cover art (p.30). I am delighted the portfolio has been acquired for the permanent collection of Contemporary Scottish Prints through The Golder-Thompson Gift. In the historic house we remember the landscape painter Adrian Berg who lived in Hove until his death last year. Berg never sought publicity but he developed a loyal following for his vibrant depictions of landscapes. Tracey Emin, Paul Huxley and Simon Martin remember him on page 34. This year marks 300 years of the historic house and we celebrate the anniversary with a new ceramic installation in the eighteenth century stairwell by contemporary artist Bouke de Vries, using the Gallery's Collection of Bow Porcelain, which was produced on what is now the site of the Olympic Games (p.38). 2012 is also the 30th birthday of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery and on 30 June this will be celebrated with the launch of the '30 for 30' appeal by the actor Penelope Keith, who has just finished her acclaimed appearance at the Chichester Festival Theatre. All Friends are welcome to toast the anniversary with a reception in the Galleria from 12 noon (p.52). Finally, some of you will know that the Government has introduced new legislation; when you leave 10% of your estate to charity the inheritance tax will drop from 40% to 36%. Of course, any gift in your Will would help to preserve Pallant House Gallery for the enjoyment of future generations. Stefan van Raay, Director of Pallant House Gallery 9
De'Longhi Prepares for VIP Charity Art Auction
From Left Sam Taylor-Wood, 2011 Donation, Maggi Hambling, 2011 Donation
Sneak preview of artworks coming to Pallant House Gallery De'Longhi, UK leader in domestic coffee machines, continues to invest in arts, charities and the local community through its fourth year of sponsorship of Pallant House Gallery. Designing functional products with elegant lines and innovative colour combinations, De'Longhi appreciates and supports creativity throughout the UK. Since our last gallery booklet, preparations for the Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction 2012 have been heavily underway. On Tuesday 25 September the much anticipated Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction returns to London's arts and social calendar, this year being held at the Royal College of Art. The auction, now in its sixth year, will see pieces of modern art go under the hammer with the help of a celebrity host, with all proceeds going directly to Macmillan Cancer Support. Some signature artists donating to this year's prestigious auction include Antony Gormley, Rankin, Gavin Turk, Maggi Hambling and Sam Taylor-Wood, among others.
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To date, the charity event has raised over ÂŁ700,000 to help people whose lives are affected by cancer. The money raised is used for funding services such as information and support centres, phone services, building cancer care facilities, as well as assisting nurses and other specialist health care professionals. Visitors to Pallant House Gallery will have the opportunity to get an exclusive preview of a selection of the artworks going under the hammer at this year's event, as they go on display late this summer.
Reserve your place today Invitations to this VIP entry art auction will be distributed through a ballot system. For more information about the artwork being sold, to request a lot book or enquire about applying for an invitation, please contact Clarion Communications on 020 7343 3147 or delonghi.artauction@clarioncomms.co.uk
For more information about De'Longhi, its products, offers and coffee events visit www.seriousaboutcoffee.com
ANDY WARHOL THE PORTFOLIOS 20 June - 16 Sept The Bank of America Collection
FRIENDS OF DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY Image: Muhammad Ali, 1978, Portfolio of four screenprints on Strathmore Bristol paper, Edition: 45/150, 101.6 x 76.2 cm, Š The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London 2011
Advert Pallant House_Layout 1 12/05/2012 12:09 Page 1
peter blake
Venice Fantasies & Paris Escapades To celebrate Sir Peter Blake’s 80th birthday, Enitharmon Editions are delighted to offer Pallant House supporters two beautiful new artist’s books at special introductory prices. Peter Blake has been producing quirky and inventive collages since the mid-1950s. His Venice Fantasies and Paris Escapades, made in his seventies with the same lightness of touch and fresh eye that has distinguished all his work, are marked by his characteristic wry humour and sense of the absurd. Taking Surrealist collages as his cue, he engages in the same sort of time travel and unlikely alliances that marked his celebrated cover design for the Beatles LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Teeming with detail, these humorous and highly entertaining pictures and accompanying texts show Blake at his imaginative best. Venice Fantasies and Paris Escapades are available as slipcased de luxe editions of 75 copies, each accompanied by a signed and numbered original print. For the duration of the exhibition these will be priced at £595 each.
Mickey’s Birthday Party, original screenprint from Venice Fantasies
For full details please visit www.enitharmon.co.uk or contact: Enitharmon Editions Ltd Tel: 020 7482 5967 info@enitharmon.co.uk
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The credit advertised is provided by one credit provider with whom we have a commercial relationship. Archer Publications Ltd (t/a artrepublic) is a licenced broker of Own Art loans. Registered address: 13 Bond Street, Brighton, BN1 1RD
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Exhibitions Diary ART+MUSIC season
Peter Blake, Lover's Rock, Silkscreen and diamond dust on paper, 2004 © the artist/ DACS 2012
Peter Blake and Pop Music 23 June – 7 October 2012 Sir Peter Blake has been closely linked with pop music since the 1950s. Not only has he painted images inspired by his musical heroes such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley but he has also worked closely with major British musicians and bands including Oasis, The Who and Eric Clapton to create some of the most distinctive album covers of the last 50 years. Most famously, of course, he created the iconic album cover for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with the artist Jann Haworth. This major exhibition, timed to mark the artist's 80th birthday, draws on the extensive collection of British Pop Art at Pallant House Gallery and will feature major loans from public and private collections across the UK. Rooms 12–14 ARTIST POP STARS 23 JUNE – 7 OCTOBER 2012 Music and the visual arts have been closely associated for decades. From the 1960s onwards, bands like the Beatles, The Who and Roxy Music all had at least one member who went to art school before embarking on a music career. Others have pursued painting in the later part of their careers. This display, which complements Peter Blake and Pop Music, features works by artist pop stars such as Ian Dury, Bryan Ferry and Bill Wyman. Room 17
Derek Boshier: David Bowie and The Clash 23 June – 7 October 2012 Derek Boshier, with Peter Blake, was one of the leading British Pop Artists of the 1960s. He first came to prominence with his paintings as a student at the Royal College of Art in London where he studied alongside David Hockney, Allen Jones, R.B. Kitaj, and others. In 1962 he was featured in Ken Russell's BBC documentary Pop Goes The Easel with Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips. During the 1970s Boshier experimented with different media, producing photographs, films, collages, constructions, books, posters and record covers. This exhibition focuses on his graphic work for pop musicians such as his designs for David Bowie's 1979 Lodger album and the Clash 2nd Songbook, 1979. Rooms 15 and 16 Prints of Darkness 19 June – 7 October 2012 The record cover provides a fundamental interface between music and the still image and has become an essential aspect of musical and visual subcultures. This exhibition of contemporary prints exploring record cover art recalls the golden age of the vinyl record cover, with references to the imagery of post-psychedelia, goth-surrealistic and art-nouveau designs. Published by the Edinburgh Printmakers, the prints have been acquired for the permanent collection of Contemporary Scottish Prints through The Golder-Thompson Gift. Artists include Christopher Orr, Norman Shaw, The Lonely Piper, Edward Summerton, Mark Wallace and People Like Us, aka international award-winning multimedia artist Vicki Bennett. De'Longhi Print Room 13
Exhibitions Diary Bouke de Vries Stairwell installation 7 July 2012 – July 2013 A new ceramic installation by contemporary artist Bouke de Vries commissioned by Pallant House Gallery to mark the 300th anniversary of the historic house. The intricate piece in the eighteenth century stairwell is constructed from the Gallery's collection of Bow porcelain which consists of over 300 key examples produced between the years 1747 and 1776. The collection is the most comprehensive record of the output of the Bow factory, which was originally situated on the site of the Olympic Park. Stairwell Adrian Berg, Second Lake, Sheffield Park Sussex Weald, 27th August 2002,Oil on canvas, © Estate of the artist
Adrian Berg: A Memorial exhibition 2 June – 30 September 2012 A memorial exhibition of the landscape painter Adrian Berg RA. A student at the Royal College of Art in the late 1950s alongside David Hockney, Berg's focus throughout his career was the landscape which he depicted in distinctively vibrant colours. His subjects were, in early years, the view of Regent's Park from his window at Gloucester Gate and, over subsequent decades, the gardens of the Alhambra, the glass houses and trees at Kew, the reflections in the lakes at Sheffield Park in Sussex and Stourhead in Wiltshire. Despite being elected as a Royal Academician in 1992, Adrian never courted publicity, except the occasional exhibition and annual showing in the RA Summer Exhibition. Room 4 1972 Olympic Posters 19 June – 7 OCTOBER 2012 An exhibition of Olympic posters from the 1972 Munich Games, created by David Hockney, Peter Phillips, RB Kitaj and others. Produced to 'represent the intertwining of sports and art worldwide', this series of artistic posters with strong individual designs created by the great Pop artists of the day formed the basis of the Olympic advertising campaign. Garden Gallery
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STUDIO First Steps into the Gallery 29 May – 2 July 2012 Showcasing the wonderfully talented artists being supported by Pallant House Gallery’s First Steps into the Gallery course. Chichester High School for Girls 3 July – 5 August 2012 An exhibition of work from the Chichester High School for Girls Textiles Department. Jon Adams: look about 14 August – 2 September 2012 Look About is a two-year mapping and collecting project led by Portsmouth-based artist/geologist Jon Adams in response to the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in the South East of England. The exhibition weaves together science and art and Jon’s autobiographical experiences of Dyslexia and Aspergers. Andy Hood 4 September – 14 October 2012 A chance to see the Gold Run project through the eyes of documentary photographer Andy Hood and his portfolio of images produced as part of the project.
Š Gilbert Garcin
A great way to see a New York style photographic gallery, without leaving the country.
Arden and Anstruther’s amazing collection of contemporary photography has a new rural setting amongst the apple trees. We welcome you to view by apointment at The Barn, Daymans, Bedham.
Arden and Anstruther The Barn, Daymans, Bedham, Pulborough, W. Sussex RH20 1JR
.
www.ardenandanstruther.com tel 01798 865 206. Open by appointment, just give me a ring.
Merston Gallery is a contemporary exhibition space near to Chichester specialising in one-person shows of fine art and design. The work shown offers challenge and the opportunity for visitors to engage with high quality art. Merston Gallery is managed in partnership by Paul and Sylvia Kopeček. Everything we do at the gallery is the result of careful decision-making with thought for quality, the community and the promotion of the visual arts.
Alice Kettle The Shape of Touch Textile Art 19 June - 1 July Alice Kettle Ruko 2011 Photo: Joe Low
Sylvia KopeĀek Shake the Cloud Pastels and Paintings 17 July - 29 July Sylvia KopeĀek Falling, 2012
Open: Tues-Fri 11-4 (late night Thursday 6-8), Sat and Sun 2-5. Closed Mondays. Marsh Lane, Merston, Chichester, PO20 1ED Tel: 07815 921 784 www.merstongallery.co.uk
Clyde Hopkins Indian Yellow Paintings and Prints 15 Sept - 7 Oct Clyde Hopkins The Silver Age, 2011
Gallery news
Kate Bradbury (Outside In Entrant), The Angels - Group One
Outside In 'On the Map' Outside In, the Gallery's innovative project which champions the work of non-traditional artists has been included in a new book, 'On the Map: Exploring European Outsider Art.' The publication explores 60 initiatives representing best practice in the field of Outsider Art in 26 countries in Europe. To mark the launch of the publication the Outside In team were invited to speak at the Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium at the 2012 symposium, 'Outsiders on the Map' alongside organisations from 16 different countries across Europe. World's Biggest Coffee morning Macmillan Cancer Support have been holding the nationwide World's Biggest Coffee Morning event every year for over twenty years to raise funds for their work, providing life-changing support to people living with cancer and their families. This year, on Friday 28 September (10am–12 noon), Pallant House Gallery will be holding a coffee and homemade cake-themed gathering in the Garden Gallery supported by the Gallery's Headline sponsors, De'Longhi. Coffee and cake are free but donations are encouraged. All proceeds will go towards Macmillan. Go to www.pallant.org.uk for more details.
Partnership with National PORTRAIT GALLERY Pallant House Gallery is working in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, London, to deliver a symposium on community engagement in September 2012. The symposium will explore the series of principles that underpin the Community Programme such as the entitlement of every individual to a creative life and the avoidance of labelling. Marc Steene, Deputy Director and Head of Learning and community at Pallant House Gallery says: 'It is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the Gallery's unique approach to developing meaningful and longterm engagement opportunities. I am delighted that we are being recognised for our work in the field.' Dr John Birch dies aged 82 We are sad to announce that Dr John Birch has died at the age of 82. Dr Birch was director of music at Chichester Cathedral for 22 years, re-establishing the Southern Cathedrals Festival and serving as musical adviser to the Chichester Festival Theatre. Director of Pallant House Gallery, Stefan van Raay, says: 'As the organist and choir master at Chichester Cathedral in Dean Walter Hussey's time, John Birch represented the link to the era of the Gallery's founding Collector. He and Hussey regularly discussed art and artists with resulting acquisitions for both Hussey's and Birch's collections. I met John as a very hospitable host in the Cathedral Close in Salisbury where he lived in the beautiful Fielding house and later regularly after he returned to the Close in Chichester. He was a great supporter of the Gallery in many ways. In particular his Bosendorfer has provided a regular platform for young musicians at the Gallery during the Proms series organised by his successor Dr Alan Thurlow.'
Charles Stitt, Portrait of John Birch, 1964, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Dr John Birch Collection)
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Southern Ceramic Group Summer Exhibition 28rd July – 12th August 2012 Open daily from 10am to 5pm Free admission Over 40 Ceramic Artists Exhibiting work At the Bishop’s Kitchen, Chichester Cathedral, The Palace, Chichester, PO19 1PX
www.southernceramicgroup.co.uk Southern Ceramic Group Sum12.indd 1
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Peter the Painter To mark his major 80th birthday exhibition Peter Blake and Pop Music, the Godfather of Pop Art talks to legendary music journalist Mark Ellen about art and rock and roll
Mark Ellen What's your personal interpretation of the term 'pop art'? Peter Blake Well in America you had Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg making pre-pop art experimentations which then became pop art through Lichtenstein and Warhol and Rosenquist, so they were like five years before. At London in the ICA you had the Independent Group – Richard Hamilton, the architects Alison and Peter Smithson, Nigel Henderson - a society who would meet and discuss and disseminate popular culture. Someone would come back from America with a Playboy magazine and they'd talk about the ads on an intellectual level. At the same time I was at the Royal College. I was there from 1953 to '56 with Dick Smith and Robyn Denny - very hip, very aware, they were the abstract expressionists - and out of that I started to paint autobiographically: the kids I saw, the kids I knew, 'ABC Minors', my brother and my cousin wearing badges. I was taught about James Joyce's Ulysses and in a funny way this was a throwback to the war. People like my Uncle Ray, who'd joined the army at the age of 15, came out of war having read Ulysses and having met intellectuals and been introduced to classical music. ME The war mixed up the old class system and allowed a lot of different types of people to meet who would never normally have run into each other. PB It did. I was working class and I brought a certain culture into fine art. I was living in Gravesend with my mum. One night a week I'd be going to wrestling with her. We'd support West Ham speedway team Peter Blake in his London studio, Photograph by Anne-Katrin Purkis
[motor-cycle racing]. I was into wrestling, sport, fairgrounds, music hall and jazz and I was bringing that into fine art and that's where my pop art came from – autobiographical popular culture. Lawrence Alloway, the English critic who was a great patron and supporter of British painting – until he went to New York – had a dinner party in the late 1950s. I was there with Dick Smith and Robyn Denny and we were talking about what we were all doing; I was describing what I was trying to do which was make an equivalent of pop music. I wanted to make a painting of Elvis so the same girl who loved Presley's music would like the picture. And as I described it to Alloway, he said, 'like a pop art?' There's a lot of different answers but that's my definition. ME What do you remember of the Young Contemporaries exhibition – you, David Hockney, RB Kitaj? It was major turning-point in your career. PB It was 1961, the year I'd sent Self-Portrait With Badges to the John Moore's competition and it won the Junior Section. It was incredibly competitive. I would have been 29. I'd met Hockney two years before that. The first Sunday colour supplement came out and I was featured in that as an artist. Then Ken Russell made the film called Pop Goes The Easel about four young artists – me, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips, a sort of day in the life of each of us. I'd travelled to Europe in '56 and shared a flat with Dick Smith but nothing much had happened. Then those three things suddenly happened at once. 21
Peter Blake, Self Portrait with Badges, 1961, Oil on hardboard, Tate: Presented by the Moores Family Charitable Foundation to celebrate the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 1979 © the artist/ DACS 2012
Peter Blake, The Beatles, 1963–68, Acrylic emulsion on hardboard, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © the artist/ DACS 2012
ME Robert Fraser seems such a significant figure, the art dealer who helped connect the two worlds of fine art and rock and roll. Can you describe him? PB Eton, Cambridge, foppish, rich but not posh. He wore velvet jackets. He showed most of the Americans for the first time in this country, people like Andy Warhol. He was a friend of the Stones and The Beatles - he also supplied their drugs I think! He travelled to India and contracted HIV and died two years later. Paul [McCartney] almost always came to my shows, John [Lennon] usually too. You'd get a couple of Stones. Through Robert I met Tony Curtis and Marlon Brando. Had lunch with Brando once, very sulky. Brando came to one of my private views actually and Tony became a good friend. I remember him coming to the house one day in a big black cowboy hat. It was my wife Jann Haworth's father Ted who persuaded Billy Wilder to make Some Like It Hot in black and white. ME An amazing mixture of people from different classes, lower middle class and working class pop musicians meeting the slumming sons and daughters of the aristocracy. PB In photography you had on the one hand, Lichfield, Snowdon and Beaton and, on the other, Terence Donovan, Brian Duffy, Bailey and the Cockney
boys. In acting you'd got the posh lot and you'd also got Terence Stamp. In modelling Jean Shrimpton, middle class, and Twigs, working class.It was an amazing, amazing time. The missing link for me was that I didn't take any drugs. Robert and Paul McCartney came to my studio to see what I was working on and were seeing colours, visibly tripping, seeing wonderful reds and greens that weren't there. Paul virtually insisted that I took some LSD but I declined. I never even smoked a joint. ME How did the Sgt. Pepper sleeve come about? PB Robert at that point was very close to The Beatles and told me about this record that was coming out. They'd already commissioned [Dutch design collective] The Fool and they'd done a cover – the inner sleeve of the early copies has The Fool's original design - but Robert said, 'in ten years' time this will look like just another Jimi Hendrix cover', all purple swirls, and he said, 'why don't you use an artist?' Paul had a clear idea of what the concept was, that they would step outside of the persona of The Beatles and become this fictitious band, and they'd had these costumes made already. Paul had the idea of some kind of photographic set-up – he'd done a sketch of a bandstand - so I continued the idea of it being a park. I introduced the flower clock and the parkland and I came up with the idea that, if we did it in
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Peter Blake, Got a girl, 1960-61, Enamel, photomontage and record, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester © the artist/ DACS 2012
a certain way, they could have crowd behind them that could be anybody they wanted. I've still got two of the cut-outs in the studio and the waxwork of Sonny Liston, and the little Snow White figure and the little green girl in the flowers. And I've got the Indonesian goddess with six arms somewhere in the loft, probably motheaten by now. ME Doesn't Snow White appear in the album cover for Oasis' Stop the Clocks? PB Yes, I put it into the still-life as a deliberate reference. I had an idea that because Sgt Pepper has had so many myths grow up around it – particularly after John died – that I wanted to set up some fake myths for people to discover. So I put the Seven Dwarves in one of the shelves of the locker but instead of placing them in a row I put two behind the others so people would wonder why they were like that. I liked the idea of creating fictitious myths for people to find. ME Why did you make the change from an urban art scene to The Ruralists? PB The Sixties were exciting and exhausting and, towards the end, there was a feeling that it was time to change. So in '69 there was a general exodus, mostly to East Anglia. Howard Hodgkin moved to the West Country, Joe Tilson bought a rectory where they grew their own wheat to make their own bread – that's
hardcore! - and Dick Smith moved down there. I was with Jann and a lot of the railways and canals were closing and they were selling off properties. A very eccentric man who drank Guinness and tomato juice, an enormous railway enthusiast, told us the line from Bath to Bournemouth, the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, was just about to close, and he said, 'go and have a look at it'. So we went to Shepton Mallet and bought the little station nearby at Wellow - £1,600 for the station, a quarter mile of track, an out-building and a little shed. The last train was going through - they sent an engine through with flat trucks behind it with a crane and they took up the track behind them. ME How did the group fascination with the PreRaphaelites come about? PB We organised an exhibition of West Country Art in '74 and I went to visit David Inshaw. We were talking about Pre-Raphaelites and I said I wanted to be John Everett Millais and out of that came this kind of friendship and bond, which became the group called The Brotherhood Of Ruralists – Graham and Ann Arnold, Graham Ovenden and his wife Annie, and myself and Jann Haworth. So we were seven – which is a magic number anyway. Every winter solstice we'd have a dinner and we'd have a holiday every year when we'd go to Coombe in Cornwall, take four cottages, go out 23
Peter Blake, Girls with Their Hero, 1959–62, Oil on hardboard, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund) © the artist/ DACS 2012
Peter Blake, EL, 1961, Lipstick, collage, oil paint on wood, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Loan, 2006) © the artist/ DACS 2012
and sketch, make dinners from food we'd found that day from mushrooms and blackberries. We were all vaguely living this back-to-the-land life anyway. I think we had a rabbit once. But it all ended when Jann met this other man, and I came back to London and had a bit of a breakdown. ME What have your leant in life? PB I think wisdom comes with longevity – you simply know a lot of stuff. It's accumulated knowledge I think. And the fact that, now, one is still alive. Sadly Richard Hamilton died at the age of 89 and Lucian Freud died at 88. There are one or two old-timers left but John Hoyland died and Patrick Caulfield too. So there's a sort of joy in still being alive. I always quote George Herbert – 'living well is the best revenge'! My other quote is 'stay ahead of the avant garde'. In a way they're both applicable. ME Who's the most impressive person you've ever met? PB In art terms, Lucian Freud. I gave him one of my 1,000 life drawings on his last birthday. And the next time I went to The Wolseley, he sent a note across saying 'thank you for the drawings' in child's writing on Wolseley note paper. ME Any professional ambitions you haven't fulfilled? PB The only ambition I didn't fulfil was when I was young
I would have liked to have represented Great Britain in the Venice Biennale. An artist doesn't have an ambition to get a knighthood so when that happens it's nice. ME What do you still want to achieve? PB Immediate ambitions - a painting I've been commissioned to do for St Paul's Cathedral of Saint Martin, a Roman centurian riding through a city on a horse, sees a beggar, tears his cloak in half and gives half to the beggar and the beggar is Jesus. Another is illustrating Under Milk Wood – I've been working on for at least 12 years. ME It must be hard to build a profile in the first place, but even harder to maintain it. PB Well David [Hockney] absolutely deserves the reviews he got recently. That was an incredible show, a fantastic late-period body of work. In one of the papers there was an interview with a young girl painter, Sarah Maple, and she said her influences were Frida Kahlo, Stella Vine, myself and Hogarth. What a great list! This is young kid just coming through. It's lovely when that kind of stuff still happens. Peter Blake and Pop Music is on from 23 June to 7 Oct 2012. Peter Blake and Mark Ellen will talk in-conversation on Thurs 2 Aug, 6pm (p.56). A limited edition print of 'The Beatles 1962' has been produced to coincide with the exhibition (p.61).
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PAUL WELLER ON STANLEY ROAD
Paul Weller. Photographer Julian Broad
Stanley Road (10th Anniversary Edition), 2005, Studio album by Paul Weller, released 30 May 2005
" I was really surprised when I heard Peter was up for designing my sleeve. I thought he would have been unaware of my work and almost unapproachable because of his standing in the art world. I met him first at his Chiswick studio and we talked over ideas. Me and Simon Halfon, who put the sleeve together, both wanted it to be a collage, which we obviously knew Peter would be great at. From that we all pooled ideas and images. My choices were the mod on his scooter, Georgie Best, a very young Aretha,
the Small Faces figurines, the old green bus, which reminded me of Surrey County buses from my youth, and the pictures of my mum, dad and sister from the 50s/60s. We kinda talked Pete into using his most famous symbols: the heart, target and star. His most celebrated and copied Pop-Art icons. The sleeve is iconic, isn't it? It's a work of art and a statement of its time. I loved it and always will. It captured many of the things I loved when growing up. I love the stark colours and energy it captures. It's like all great sleeves - it gives you a very clear idea of the music inside. Whether we'll work together again, who knows? That sleeve was so succinct, so beautiful it would be hard to beat! But I always love to see Peter and Chrissy. I love his commitment to his life's work and his pragmatic approach to it too. I remember being at his studio once and noticing a painting on the floor, a kind of portrait I think, and asking Pete about it. He said it was something he'd started in 1964 and was still working on! I love that. I love that artistic viewpoint - that your work is never finished and that need to look forward. Hockney's like that too, I reckon. It's a shame musicians aren't like that more." Paul Weller 2012 25
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rebel rebel One of the pioneers of British Pop Art, Derek Boshier reached a mass audience through his collaborations with musicians such as David Bowie and The Clash. Writer Paul Gorman celebrates his abiding preoccupation with contemporary culture
Derek Boshier's practice is informed "by a view of the relations between art and our surrounding culture", as the author and museum director Sandy Nairne has noted. Meanwhile critic/curator Guy Brett identifies Boshier's position among British artists as "one of the most closely attuned and critically attentive to cultural and political change". As politics remains a matter of deep absorption, so Boshier's engagement with popular culture, and in particular popular music, can be seen as an aspect of this abiding preoccupation with the contemporary. Brett has also talked of the artist's "infectious enthusiasm and rebellious wit", both defining ingredients of rock and roll in its purest form. And so it follows that when pop and rock music has been most vital – in the early 60s, say, and the late 70s - Boshier has reflected the impact on mass culture. One thinks of his inclusion of Buddy Holly with Abraham Lincoln and Horatio Nelson in the painting 'I Wonder What My Heroes Think Of The Space Race?', as featured in the 1962 Monitor documentary Pop Goes The Easel. "Buddy Holly personifies everything I like about pop singing and pop heroes and I suppose heroes in general," says Boshier in the voiceover to the segment dedicated to his work in Ken Russell's film, which incorporated sequences on such fellow travellers as Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips. Much later, in vastly different musical and social circumstances, Boshier created one of punk's most vivid visual documents in Clash 2nd Songbook. Simultaneous to Derek Boshier, Drawing for David Bowie ‘Lodger’ LP 2 (1979), Mixed media © the artist
the release of that remarkable publication, Boshier was working on commissions at the other end of the music biz hierarchy, from David Bowie. As revealed in his recent selection for the US college radio show Stranded – which has a Desert Island Discs-style format - Boshier's appreciation for the form goes back 60 years to membership of the British branch of the Guy Mitchell Fan Club. Creative expression of this interest in popular sound emerged in a pair of sketches of Bill Haley & The Comets. Made in 1962, these constituted a retrospective tip of the hat to the plump, kiss-curled and unlikely character who had introduced rock and roll to these shores in the mid50s, and coincided not only with the broadcast of Pop Goes The Easel but also Boshier's first solo exhibition, Image In Revolt at London's Grabowski Gallery. A decade later, Boshier cropped up again in a pop (music) context, at a time when rock was entering the so-called "progressive" phase; in truth the genre was at its most over-blown and pretentious, as was much of the accompanying artwork. This era of stadium gigs and concept albums was matched by an onslaught of elaborate and expansive record sleeve packaging, the trend having been set in train by Blake and Jann Haworth's ambitious Pop collage for The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. At the behest of the British blues/r&b rockers The Pretty Things (whose lead singer Phil May was a sometime tennis partner), Boshier – who had at this point forsworn painting in favour of bookworks, 27
film, photographic augmentation, print-making and sculpture - was commissioned to produce a design for a triple gatefold album cover consisting of three double-sided 12" sq card panels. Imposing the thematic device of pairs, Boshier juxtaposed an image of Laurel & Hardy with that of two tribes people from an ethnological book and a 1950s cocktail advertisement featuring a glamorous young couple. Examples of triple-gatefolds are few and far between, even amid the excesses of the period in which Boshier was commissioned; Grave New World, the cover designed by the Liverpudlian designer Steve Hardstaff for the 1972 album by folk-rock band The Strawbs, is the only other which springs to mind. Yet Boshier's Pretty Things sleeve was never manufactured, a fact which grates not just for the fan of record cover art. "In the end I became pretty pissed off," sighs Boshier down the line from his Los Angeles home. "I'd bump into Phil or the guys at parties and ask what was happening but they were always vague, until one day they revealed it wasn't going to happen, and, to make things worse, my materials had been lost!" Concurrently, Boshier was teaching at London's Central School of Art. Among those on the foundation course in 1971/2 was John Mellor, an acoustic guitarstrumming 19-year-old who styled himself "Woody". The student admired the artist (at that time, politically a Troskyite); Boshier recalls liking Woody Mellor in return, and giving him and his classmates such appropriation exercises as replacing the stations on a London Underground map with images and names. When Boshier encountered Woody on a London street in the autumn of 1978, the ex-student was transformed into Joe Strummer, charismatic frontman of incendiary punk-rockers The Clash. The group had recently sacked their Situationist slogan-spouting manager Bernie Rhodes and installed in his place Caroline Coon, the journalist and founder of drugs charity Release who had also studied under Boshier at Central in the 60s. Without delay, Boshier was given the task of producing a songbook to accompany the release of the group's second album Give 'Em Enough Rope. Making a merit of the spare use of spot colour dictated by the minimal budget, Boshier's 60-page paperback in 12" x 9" format proved as visually startling as the aural aggression communicated by The Clash in concert and on record. Spiky lettering, brutally presented monochrome photography and harsh graphics are enhanced by the red and yellow palette and aid the foregrounding of the street-level concerns of the lyrics to such songs 28
as Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad, about a nationwide police clampdown on illegal trafficking, Stay Free, a message to a childhood friend then serving time in HM Brixton for armed robbery, and Safe European Home, about the paranoia resulting from a disastrous trip to Jamaica's ultra-violent capital Kingston. It is no coincidence that Clash 2nd Songbook shares approaches with designs for similar publications produced in this period by the late music business graphic designer Barney Bubbles for new wave stars Ian Dury & The Blockheads and punk-poet John Cooper Clark. Around this time Boshier had been introduced by author and critic Marco Livingstone to Bubbles' work and commissioned him to design the catalogue and poster for the 22-strong group show Lives: An Exhibition Of Artists Whose Work Is Based On Other Peoples' Lives. This presented purchases made by Boshier on behalf of the Arts Council, and included work by Bubbles in the guise of "Ovski". Subsequently, the pair enjoyed something of an artistic exchange, with Bubbles incorporating Boshier's techniques of photographic augmentation in his music press advertising. One of the other participants in Lives – which opened at London's Hayward Gallery in April 1979 before travelling the country – was photographer Brian Duffy, whose CV was marked by the astounding Aladdin Sane sleeve for David Bowie earlier in the 70s. Bowie, himself a painter, had long been an admirer of Boshier's output, in particular the recurrent use of the Falling Man motif, and so drew him into a collaboration with Duffy for the cover of his new LP, Lodger. "There's another connection David and I share: mime," says Boshier. "He had studied and performed with Lindsay Kemp and I had taken a course in the early 60s." Boshier's Lodger "postcard" depiction of Bowie as though he had plunged from a great height necessitated construction of a trestle to support the superstar's apparently broken body. Physical distortion – achieved by use of mime training – was also a facet of Bowie's appearance in the lead role of a US production of The Elephant Man in 1980, as captured in a portrait by Boshier as he took up painting again after a decade. By 1983, when Bowie released his album Let's Dance, Boshier was in residence at the University of Houston, where he became best known for the so-called Naked Cowboys series. According to David Brauer, Boshier also turned his "detached, almost mordant gaze" on the Southern city and in particular its skyline, which became the subject of such paintings as 'The Darker Side Of Houston'. And so it was appropriate that another of Boshier's skylines
Derek Boshier, Drawings For Clash 2nd Songbook, Mixed Media Š the artist
is projected onto the shape of Bowie adopting a boxer's stance in the design for the Let's Dance cover. During his Texas years Boshier grew interested in a musical form at odds with his location: reggae. "I used to go out of my way to track down reggae events; I'd be just one of a handful of white guys present," says Boshier, who produced a series of paintings associated with the music, including 'Stepping Razor' for the genre's superstar Peter Tosh and 1987's 'Reggae Dancer In The Snow'. The latter – sparked in part by Breugel's incongrous setting of his 1566 Nativity painting 'Census At Bethlehem in snowy Brabant' - was initiated in sketches Boshier made on paper while attending a dancehall reggae concert in Houston. As if to underline the extent of Boshier's understanding of the music scene, he based the figure's silhouette on the "nutty" poses struck by British pop/ska outfit Madness Boshier returned to his association with David Bowie in the late 80s by producing bold, gestural stage sets in the form of five scale models for an international live tour. When I asked David for a brief he told me: 'Think big band; think punk'," says Boshier, who was also instructed to disregard considerations of portability and ease of installation and instead stay focused on the concept. "In the event the sets didn't
happen because they weren't deemed useable by the handlers and crew," adds Boshier, who says that Bowie approved of the models to such an extent that he kept one for his personal archive. 2012 has already delivered the latest steps in Boshier's musical/artistic tango in the form of his CD sleeve for the independent single release An Englishman In LA (Mr Boshier). This knowing slice of rock from art-tribute band Clem Crosby, Jonathan Stapleton and David Stephenson (from their album Robert Fraser's Groovy Arts Club Band, no less), makes ready with the references and hits the right note as the lyrics proclaim that Boshier is "not bound by the Sixties or any passing fad." As underscored by this exhibition, Derek Boshier has incorporated the contemporary into the heart of his practice yet defies definition by a moment or a movement, consistently slipping the shackles of predictability and thus achieving the unpindownable status of the restlessly inquiring artist. Derek Boshier: David Bowie and The Clash is on in Rooms 15 and 16 from 23 June to 7 October 2012. Derek Boshier will give a talk in-conversation with Paul Gorman in the Lecture Room on Thursday 28 June at 6pm (p.55). 29
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cover gazing To mark an exhibition in the De'Longhi Print Room, Dr Norman Shaw, artist and co-curator of Prints of Darkness, explores the enduring appeal of the record sleeve
The record cover has for decades been an art form in its own right, embodying a genre of visual art with a bewildering range of sub-genres and micro-histories. As a mass-produced commodity, the LP record has a unique relationship with its packaging. The images on record covers are unusually free from constraints imposed by their contents and often they have no tangible connection with the music on the record. Book covers are an obvious comparison, yet they are largely restricted to attempts at a visual interpretation of some aspect of the text, and it is impossible to look at a book's cover whilst reading the text. Have you ever bought a book purely for its cover? The record re-situated music for the first time beyond the event or performance. This resulted in an unforeseen democratisation and domestication of music. It was now possible to listen to your chosen music alone, with the use of headphones further increasing the listener's seclusion. This was a radical transformation in the way music was consumed. The experience of looking at images whilst listening to music is very different from reading whilst listening to music. When reading, it is impossible to listen beyond a certain level of attentiveness - unless you're reading the words to the song. Alongside its obvious function as a protective covering for the record, the record cover provides something for the listener to look at whilst listening. The artwork is often scrutinised for a lot longer than most art is viewed in museums or art galleries. Lengthier double albums are housed
in spacious gatefold sleeves, doubling the available picture space. The survival of the record as a musical commodity is due in part to its strong visual presence as an object. The visual aspect of other, newer formats has shrunk beyond the diminished field of the CD to the intangibilities of downloadable digital formats. Records are now usually pressed as high quality limited editions, reflecting their limited market and also their collectability. This reduced market for vinyl has encouraged greater creativity in cover design. The recent growth of handmade covers using traditional printmaking methods such as screenprinting, lithography, or etching, produced as numbered, signed editions, is the result of this market change. Significantly, it also emphasises the role visual art plays in the creation of records. As musical styles and genres continue to diversify, their visual identities become more distinctive. References to earlier record cover art or styles are common, drawing on wellestablished traditions of record cover design. Some releases feature only one playable side, the other displaying a pattern or image etched into the actual vinyl. The vinyl may be multicoloured, glittery, marbled, splattered, or they may be released in picture-disc form. They might be presented in a gimmicky box, or in some kind of unusual material. These modifications increase the 'aura' of a particular record. Older first-pressings or rare editions can have the aura of a religious relic or magical object, as can a worn, scratched, torn-sleeved martyr of a record. Record wrecker.
Mark Wallace, Lordin' It, 2010, Screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012) Š Mark Wallace
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The Golden Age of the record cover began in the late sixties when music was proliferating itself in new and diverse forms. In its heyday, the power of the record and its cover was greater than the sum of its parts. The psychedelic generation were taking drugs to make music to take drugs to and their wide-open eyes and ears demanded more from records and their covers than earlier generations had. As the music increasingly betrayed an irreverent, anti-rationalist attitude, record covers incorporated Dadaist imagery fused with macabre deathcult weirdness. By the time psychedelia had morphed into prog-rock, record covers had defined their own aesthetic sub-genre rooted in a reappropriation of the romantic sublime viewed through the distorting windows of symbolism, art nouveau, surrealism, and psychedelia. Record cover art of this period attempted to visualise the same complex multidimensional field as the music, feeding on a unique combination of sources; a collision of ancient mythologies with space-age sciencefictions; of eastern mysticism with gothic horror. The expanded canvas of the gatefold sleeve made space for vaster panoramas, providing the covergazer with everything he needed for a good night in. This was music for a new religion, with the record player as domestic shrine. The private nocturnal consumption of these records assumed a devotional, even sacramental aspect. Psychedelia's links with shamanism are well documented. The shaman invariably uses sounds and symbolic images to help him navigate his ecstatic flight through the otherworld. All religions have their symbols, altars, shrines and icons, combining still images with music to facilitate the devotee's passage from the worldly light of the image to the unworldly light of divine vision. Featuring the same symbiotic conjunction of music and image, the record was a portable idol, the worship of which afforded illicit glimpses of otherworlds and forbidden gods. The older generation feared the power of this primitive resurgence. Bewildered parents and outraged churchmen's hysterical reactions in the press and in cautionary books ironically increased the devilish seduction of these records. In a leap of faith far greater than the musicians were prepared to take, they accepted that these unsanctioned deities were for real. Hidden satanic messages lurked in certain records' shadowed spiral valleys, waiting to ensnare the listener's soul. In true black magick style, backwards messages on records tempted the listener to spin the record in an anti-clockwise direction: to hear the devil speak. These whirling sonic tornadoes were portals to hell, suicide32
inducing vortices of unholy din. Hysterical warnings and accusations only served to magnify the dark aura that the records gathered around themselves, enhancing the eldritch witchery of these black spinning wheels. However, with the odd exception, the occult references in the music were more likely to have come from watching Hammer Horror films and reading back issues of Weird Tales than from any serious attempts to invoke the Prince of Darkness. The 'dark psychedelic' imagery of the early 'seventies united such apparently disparate contemporaries as Black Sabbath and Miles Davis. Miles Davis was popularly known as The Prince of Darkness, as was Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy appears to take this moniker seriously, as he demonstrated in an episode of The Osbourne's, where he is informed that one of his forthcoming stage shows would feature bubbles instead of the usual smoke, bursting his bubble: 'Bubbles! I'm the Prince of f***ing Darkness! This attitude spread through the popular musical world like black wild fire, infecting pretty much every genre. 'Dark' has become a tagword for a particular well-mapped sound that thrives on dissonance, abrasion and minor-key desolation. This kind of music invokes a peculiar thrill in the listener, a kind of beauty that is a negation of the conventionally beautiful, illumination through darkness. To the romantics of two centuries ago, such disharmonic paradoxes characterised the new aesthetic of the sublime. Negations such as darkness, obscurity and solitude produced a new kind of aesthetic kick. In this sense, 'dark' music today thrives on the sublime in the same way that horror films or mountaineering do, producing a kind of exhilarated terror. The consumption of the record and its cover as a totality embodies a unique interplay between sound and image. If we consider that pictures are not timebased, whereas music is, we might ask how spacebound record cover imagery affects our time-bound listening experience? At best, the relationship is a symbiotic one of mutual enhancement, opening eyes and ears beyond sense. The record sleeve is the still light of eternity and the record's music is the dynamic darkness of time. A cover without its record or a record without its cover is a lover without its beloved. Prints of Darkness is on display in the De'Longhi Print Room from 19 June to 7 October 2012. Published by the Edinburgh Printmakers, the prints have been acquired for the permanent collection of Contemporary Scottish Prints through The GolderThompson Gift.
Clockwise from top left Lee O'Conner, Father Grey, Our Father, 2010, Lithograph on paper Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © Lee O'Connor Tommy Crooks, Farmhand Walking in the Woods at Ormiston Hall, 2010, Digital Print on paper Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © Tommy Crooks Chris Orr, Spirit Schrift, 2010, Etching on paper Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © Christopher Orr Andy Wake, Ace of Disks, 2010, Screenprint on paper Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © Andy Wake The Lonely Piper, The Skye Shuttle Space Song/Ballad of a Future Rebel (Speed 45), 2010, Screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © The Artist Lee O'Conner, Father Grey, Our Father, 2010, Lithograph on paper, Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2012), © Lee O'Connor
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A life in landscapes Simon Martin, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, provides a personal reflection on the work of the late Royal Academician Adrian Berg (1929-2011)
Adrian Berg's focus was always the landscape. He became the British painter of parks and gardens. From 1961 he repeatedly painted the view of the trees in Regent's Park from his window at Gloucester Gate and, over subsequent decades, the glasshouses and trees at Kew, the minimal Zen gardens of Kyoto, the reflections in the lakes at Sheffield Park in Sussex, Derwent Water in the Lake District, and at Stourhead in Wiltshire. As a student in the 1950s he had seen a retrospective of Monet's paintings at the Tate Gallery, and the influence of the Impressionist artist's depictions of the lily ponds and gardens at Giverney on his own work was immense. It was not just a matter of colour and light; it was a way of working in response to the changing seasons. Like Monet, Berg returned again and again to a single subject over months and years, irrespective of the changing artistic fashions around him. It was as if he was simply adjusting his focus to respond to the seasonal changes in shape and colour of the foliage. The sumptuous palette of Adrian Berg's landscapes is quite unlike any of his contemporaries’. It has more in common with the Fauve painters such as Bonnard and Matisse than most English painters. Only the recent bold and theatrical landscapes of Yorkshire by David Hockney, Berg's friend and fellow Royal Academician, have such heightened colours. Yet Berg was painting the landscape in vibrant hues for several decades before Hockney's latest series emerged and, although the scale of their paintings is radically different, there is something about the use of colour and form in
Hockney's landscapes that suggests Berg may have been a point of reference. When they were students at the Royal College in the 1950s, it was Berg who introduced Hockney to the poetry of CP Cavafy that was to prove so influential on the latter artist's work. Berg's love of poetry was often brought to the fore: he would send me photocopied and annotated stanzas from poems by Auden or Yeats and, on one occasion after an Artists' Benevolent Fund dinner at the Royal Academy, he recited an entire (and lengthy) poem from memory as we took the train from London to Brighton. At the time I was rather embarrassed by the volume at which he did this, but in hindsight it was typical and utterly charming. How many people can recite verse from memory, adding in the stanzas cut from later editions and personal recollections of the poet? It is surprising that given his affinity for literature and poetry his work never strayed into narrative, except perhaps through the representation of the passing seasons. Just as his paintings were not only sensual responses to nature but intellectual ideas in paint, Berg's mind was wide-ranging. His father, Charles Berg, had been an eminent psychiatrist who had trained under Freud and, after studying at Charterhouse, Berg had served for two years in the Royal Signals before being accepted by Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge to study medicine. However, he switched to read English and subsequently obtained a teaching diploma at Trinity College Dublin. Later he studied art at St Martin's then Chelsea and the Royal College of
Adrian Berg, Second Lake, Sheffield Park Sussex Weald, 27th August 2002 (detail),Oil on canvas, Š Estate of the artist
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Adrian Berg, March Landscape, (1966), Tempera and acrylic on canvas, © Estate of the artist. Photograph Duncan McNeil
Art, where he was a contemporary of Hockney and Paul Huxley just at the moment when Pop Art was beginning to emerge in Britain. He never achieved the fame of his contemporaries; despite being elected as a Royal Academician in 1992, he never courted publicity, except the occasional exhibition at Arthur Tooth's and later Waddington Galleries and The Piccadilly, alongside annual showings at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He was also a significant tutor at Camberwell, Central School of Arts and the Royal College of Art, where his pupils included Tracey Emin. Dinners in his flat in Hove were quite an experience. Berg would shuffle about, bent-double by an arthritic spine, preparing a super-strong Pimms (to his own secret recipe) for what seemed like forever. Galvanized by this, one would then be served something very late in the evening from his extraordinarily disorganised kitchen. His conversation was always entertaining – a mixture of anecdotes and asides about his artist contemporaries, incisive commentaries about others’ work, and a loud and belting laugh – as close to a 'HA HA HA' as I have ever heard. It was typical of Berg's mischievous sense of humour that he should create a fictional interviewer called Silas Tomkyn Comberbache who appeared as an interrogator in his exhibition catalogues to ask exactly the questions that he wished 36
to be asked, or that he would invent alternative surnames for his contemporaries such as Howard Splodgkin and Patrick Cornflake. In contrast to the disorder of the kitchen, his studio space at the front of the flat was incredibly ordered. Tubes of paint laid out in neat rows on shelves, endless hues of green, with accompanying charts on which he had mapped the infinite possibilities of colour. I was fascinated by these colour charts; endless squares each annotated like a systems painter. Every element of his paintings was carefully considered, even though the end result appeared to be quite spontaneous. The richness of his patternmaking was undoubtedly shaped by his appreciation of Islamic decoration, Persian carpets and Chinese classical painting, which is clear in his paintings of the sun-dappled gardens of the Alhambra in Granada. But he was equally at home in the mists and dampness of the Lake District, where he produced sweeping panoramas of the lakes and valleys. After his move to Hove in later life Berg had begun to explore the landscape and gardens of Sussex. He was not a gardener himself, living throughout his life in flats without gardens; it was the observation and the act of painting that mattered. Adrian Berg: A Memorial is in Room 4 from 2 June to 30 September 2012.
PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST
Adrian Berg’s studio, photographed by Duncan McNeil 2012
Paul Huxley RA Adrian Berg was born in the spring and died in the autumn. The two seasons that usher in the greatest change to the southern English landscape; putting aside, of course, the few winter days of snow. These are the times that Adrian loved the most and when his paintings flourished and reflect their subject most vividly. The seasons of the year and the times of the day mattered to him as much as they did Monet. And just as with Monet a system was required to manage the record of this fluctuation. Adrian would devise grid systems to compartmentalise the changes and he would sometimes rotate a canvas so that, like a Persian carpet, it could be viewed from different aspects. The Orient too was a continual influence on his pictures. He made many works that drew from Japanese, Chinese and Middle Eastern sources, often adopting the devices of flattened perspective. Adrian was proud of his address from the early sixties for two and a half decades in a Nash terrace facing Regent's Park in London. What other artist had the luck to live in a Regency house with his subject matter on his doorstep? When circumstances demanded that he move, he found a new home in Brighton, another top floor of a Regency house but
this time without the park for a view. For the first time he made the natural countryside his subject, making forays to the Lake District and roving the coastal ridges of the South Downs near Beachy Head. The result was a stunning series of smaller works in pencil and watercolour that explored the various textures of sea, shingle and windblown grassland. But all this can be seen in his work. What we have lost since Adrian's passing last October is a man of huge intellect and knowledge of poetry, music, history, and literature and, of course, painting. All of this fed naturally into his conversation to provide illustration to observations and jokes. He was a great sharer of fun. There has been no one I have learnt more from or laughed so long with than Adrian, and there probably never will be.
Tracey Emin RA 'Bergy baby he drives me crazy' - this was my favourite chant when I was at the RCA. Adrian was my tutor the whole two years that I was there. He spent most of his time just trying to reassure me and let me know that everything would be all right. We'd sit in my space drinking tea and discussing the ways of the world. Adrian Berg, a wonderful human being (half ninja turtle towards the end of his life) with his combat gear and rucksack, always laughing and full of enthusiasm for everything around him. I feel privileged to have known him and been close to him for the last 25 years. 37
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'Bringing ceramics back to life' Professor Simon Olding introduces a new stairwell installation by contemporary artist Bouke de Vries to mark 300 years of Pallant House
In the elegant front room of his West London home, Bouke de Vries (ceramic conservator, iconoclastic ceramicist and now installation artist) has installed a collection of white tin-glazed earthenwares. These speculatively gathered but exactingly placed ceramics have mundane provenances. They are the discarded undecorated wares of kitchen and shop, rescued from Dutch middens. Recovered by de Vries, the collector of the broken and cast-off, the works have been repaired with a delicate and subversive care to ensure that the mark of the repair is clearly visible (this is in opposition to the contemporary conservator's usual demonstration of skill, to make the repair invisible). De Vries remarks that he 'loved each recovered piece because it was broken', and he wanted 'to accentuate and celebrate its history' within his own imagined history. The very act of careful conservation in itself references the honesty of his predecessors, ancient Chinese and Japanese repairers joining porcelain fragments back together with gold. The pot may be broken, but its integrity is still intact. Grouping his Dutch Delft tin-glazed domestic wares together in a private installation, a kind of collecting that he calls 'random rather than deterministic', de Vries draws attention to the fracture of each piece as a part of its life story: used, forgotten, junked, accidentally rediscovered, repaired and installed. The arrangement has a harmonious and poetic note now. It is as if these Bouke de Vries, Wall (2006), Porcelain Š the artist. Photograph Tim Higgings
works are like a contemporary fugue: they have a new inescapable notation. Wall (pictured) is a significant work. It has sparked a wide interest in Bouke de Vries's creative take on contemporary ceramic art and has led to a number of new commissions: for example, to make a wall display of a Chelsea jeweller's inherited collection of New Hall wares that had long languished in storage; and to arrange a collector's Chinese celadon wares in the stairwell of a modernist house in Kensington; and also from Grayson Perry, who asked de Vries to gold leaf the joins on his Westfield Vase . When Stefan van Raay, Director of Pallant House Gallery, and Simon Martin, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, saw the work they immediately realised its potential for Pallant House Gallery. De Vries was asked to be the curator and commentator of the Gallery's remarkable Geoffrey Freeman collection of Bow porcelain. He was asked to arrange and reflect creatively on this collection and place it in the Queen Anne stairwell. The ceramic conservator has been charged with the responsibility of the curator. In Wall Bouke de Vries brought together his 20year technical command as a professional ceramics conservator (a graduate of West Dean College) with his developing interests in creative practice, indeed seeking an outlet for these precise and complex skills less in science and more in art. Or perhaps in a middle course between them both. This new work of ceramic art relied on his fine judgment both to make repairs 39
Bouke de Vries at work, photographed by Tim Higgings 2012
and thus 'accentuate and celebrate the history of these ordinary domestic wares' and to give them a new life as a collective artwork; to progress their life story, as it were. If this is a form of construction, then Bouke de Vries has also moved forward in his practice to force a sometimes unsettling marriage of conservation and reconstruction. In one series of works he has taken broken discarded porcelains and made dramatic, exploded figures where the lines of cleavage are blown apart, explicitly dramatised, held in an exaggerated tension. This is not a conservator's revenge on his client, however; it is a deliberative way of advancing the personal history of the piece 'celebrating brokenness and bringing the narrative of the work forward'. The conservator's natural judgment and tendency to erase the passage of time in a ceramic work, perfectly and yet reversibly, is thus upended. The broken remains broken and the shattering is given the force of a tableau all of its own, a 'charge is added to the work'. De Vries presented work in this vein to powerful effect in the important exhibition Crossovers at Pallant House Gallery (in autumn 2010), at once referential and disquieting. We are not used to seeing our ceramics explode in the museum, after all. 40
For the Stairwell commission, de Vries has brought all of the conservator's powers of laser-focused, time-hungry attention to bear. He has carefully plotted the course of the installation, analysing each work in the collection for its particular suitabilities, its neighbourliness or sense of contrast. He has preselected the collection from photographs cut out to size, imagining the installation. But then, he remarks, 'I like to work with the restrictions'. Paradoxically, this method of working, rather than constricting his vision, helps to direct and shape it, and it has the side-benefit of expanding his vocabulary as a maker. Conservation, collecting, making, installing and curating are all aspects of one creative whole. With this creative backdrop, then, one might perhaps be wary of letting de Vries loose on one of the UK's great museum collections of Bow porcelain. But as we have seen in his Wall, de Vries is a sensitive marshaller of the artefact. He seeks poise and balance in his curator's role. He can sense the historic charge of this collection as much as the historic resonance of its location. He is deeply aware of the contribution of Bow to the narrative of fine 18th-century English porcelain with its factory situated presciently on the site of the present Olympic Village in London.
Bow Factory, A Tea Party Group (Circa 1760) Porcelain, Geoffrey Freeman Collection of Bow Porcelain (2002)
Here is a moment to synthesise the instincts of the collected and the collector; to submerge the tendency to conserve and then unlock the need to order and group. To make these Bow figures on their airy plinths relate anew to each other and their surroundings, untrapped in the museum case for once. He has brought communal arrangement to bear on the individualistic object so that the whole is seen as much as the component part. This is a very responsible curatorship, fitting in its tact and discretion with the symbolic task of the commission to mark the 300th anniversary of Pallant House. Bouke de Vries remarks that 'the broken piece tells me what to do'. In this major new commission (following on in the footsteps of Susie MacMurray, Spencer Finch, Nina Saunders and Paul Huxley), the artist has had to search for a new motivation. He has been driven by affection for Bow porcelain, but as much for its imperfections and occasional 'lopsidedness' since that is what makes it 'more human' than the dazzling perfection of say Chelsea figurines of the same period. This arrangement may make reference to the ideology of private collection and its obsessions and chases and it may call to mind the classic foregrounding of museum histories and the
collector's cabinets, exuding private connoisseurship and wealth. But in this public domain, de Vries has added a graceful democratic order to the ceremony of collection. The installation has provided this most inventive and mercurial of ceramic artists with a chance to respond with fluent sensitivity to the ordering of a collection and the gracing of museum space. He has enlarged on his own disciplined and idiosyncratic rules of practice with a curator's elegant touch. De Vries says that he gets an equal kick from his on-going practice as a conservator as he does from his artistic practice. In both arenas, and perhaps as a curator as well, he sees the connecting thread as 'bringing ceramics back to life'. And his restless intentions propose that he will continue to make work in ever more imaginative and eclectic directions. He is, after all, a maker who says explicitly that 'I have to move forward; I don't want to stand still'. The Bow Porcelain installation will be in the stairwell from 7 July until July 2013. Bouke de Vries has produced a special limited edition of 50 ceramic postcards to mark 300 years of Pallant House. For more details go to www.pallant.org.uk. 41
the art of mentoring Marc Steene, Head of Learning and Community at Pallant House Gallery, talks to artist Richard Wilson about his role in Outside In: London and how to make a visual impact in an unusual space
Marc Steene You have been mentoring Outside In artist James Lake (pictured) as he creates his installation at Dilston Grove in Southwark for Outside In: London. What do you see as your role in the project? Richard Wilson I don't really see it as a role as such. I've done two exhibitions there so I can share my experiences of how I tackled putting them on. I can also gauge how feasible what James wants to do is for him and where the concept could be heightened or improved in some way that he maybe hadn't thought about. I suppose that 'mentoring' is kind of giving someone a crash course; you get the expertise handed to you. James can decide to take it or leave it of course but he seems to respond very well to it and we enjoy his company. In actual fact it's really quite pleasurable at this stage as we are engaging in conversations about ideas. It's been quite rewarding and it is interesting to listen to James and find out what he's attempting to do. Also I'm involved with a London 2012 project at De La Warr Pavilion (a rooftop commission based on the final scene of The Italian Job called 'Hang On a Minute Lads, I've Got a Great Idea') so we are comparing notes. I tell him about what I am doing and he tells me what he's doing. It's quite mutual. MS James Lake makes his often monumental sculptures from cardboard partly due to its utilitarian qualities but also because it allows him to make lightweight sculptures as his disability might make working with conventional materials difficult. What are James Lake at Dilston Grove, 2011, Photograph by Andy Hood
your thoughts on James' use of cardboard as a material for sculpture? RW I think it is very intriguing and it has a lot of advantages. Firstly, it's something he's quite expert at and secondly he's made it his own. When you think of the kind of material vocabulary sculptors have, there is the very obvious stuff: steel and stone, but they involve big budgets, special equipment and lots of time because they are very resistant materials. What's interesting about what James has seized upon is that it is actually something that doesn't need much money in order to acquire and with his disability he's able to work quite quickly with it. Also he doesn't need a big studio or all the related tools. I've always said that I use a material to suit an idea and to a degree he's done that too. The scale – particularly the head that he made for Gold Run–couldn't really be done in clay; it's just too cumbersome and heavy. He's also able to do things that almost makes the material unrecognisable - you really have to come up close to discover what it is. I think that what is lovely is that one's association with card is often to do with throwaway objects – boxes, packaging and recycled rubbish - and he has made it into something which he has allowed to transcend itself. I think that's quite wonderful. MS Dilston Grove, as well as being a listed church, is one of the first concrete poured buildings in the UK. I wondered what you felt were the challenges that the space offered and what advice you have given James? RW Well it's a big space; it's challenging and it's very 43
raw. It doesn't have dazzle spotlights or white pristine walls; it is kind of un-developed. The uniqueness of the space, though, is not so much in its physical presence but more in the attitude of the Director. I always cite it as one of those marvellous spaces where you could possibly get away with doing something that you probably couldn't do anywhere else. So it's trying to let James see that potential. That here he will have complete freedom and he's got to seize it whereas if he goes anywhere else he could find restrictions within health and safety or bureaucracy. In terms of practical advice, what we've talked about are things like visual impact; what happens when you go in. What you don't want to happen is for people to go 'wow what a space'. You want people to go 'wow what a sculpture' and that's what we talk about. You've got to really make sure that your piece of work can grip you and grab that audience and hold them before they get detoured off looking at the space. So it is a difficult one to work with in the physical sense but in terms of support, it's a fantastic space to work with. MS How significant do you feel the Turner Prize nominations have been to your own career? RW In fact it wasn't significant. I mean if you've been nominated twice and you didn't win it, you could actually see it as negative. I don't even tell people about it but they find it out and use it because they think the Turner Prize is something. I think once upon a time it was, however I think it's a little tired now and I'm not sure whether it's significant for one's career ultimately. If you win it, it must be but if you don't, you are the also-ran. Then again I was nominated in '88 and '89 and it wasn't four artists then; it was a group of artists and you didn't have to put on an exhibition so I didn't have that kind of exposure. It was a sit-down dinner, the name was read out and the winner picked up a cheque and that was it! MS You have been working with De La Warr in Bexhill on the commission for London 2012 and with Pallant House Gallery for the Outside In: London commission. How important are regional galleries to you? RW Well, regional galleries are absolutely vital. Artists don't just live in London; they live all over the UK so they need venues. By the same token people who have an interest in the visual arts or the arts in general need facilities to be able to witness that, therefore the more galleries out there the better. The notion of the new 'string of pearls' across the South is great to have. It means people have those facilities and
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they can feel enriched by having access to them. The thing is you have got to keep your head above water so you have to be doing stuff that actually grabs the limelight with the press and if you aren't seen to be doing that the Arts Council will have to make cuts. It's unfortunate because there are a lot of small galleries out there that aren't shouting; they are whispering and they get cut because whispering doesn't cut it in the climate today, which is rather unfortunate. MS What do you think about the arts cuts? Have you witnessed any negative impacts? RW Not directly though obviously I've heard of people who have run spaces and had budgets cut. And I know of situations where people are being forced to change the stance they have in order to survive the recession and cuts. Some spaces are even adopting a play safe strategy to secure funding like opening cafes or hiring their space out as a survival method. But if everyone becomes compliant in the same way, you don't get the diversity and I think that's the danger. And I don't think we should expect every gallery to be semi-commercial. Making money is a special art. There are those gallerists who lack that commercial skill who are fantastic at putting on shows and sometimes those shows are not for a commercial-gain strategy. It's wrong to assume that they are the ones that should be cut. Of course it's lovely to sell work but if that's the priority to survive it can often sway the aesthetic. MS What are your thoughts on the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad? RW I think it can only be good. The very obvious thing with the Olympics is that you've actually got to spend a bit to make a bit but it will bring tourism to the UK. It will bring an income (fingers crossed) and it will also mean that there are other things going on with the Cultural Olympiad. Everybody in the city and in the regions will be doing things to encourage visitors to move around and ensure that people go away with a good impression of our country. It also leaves a very important legacy in the East End, an area that could be deemed deprived. If we are able to maintain the new facilities for our new sports people then it can only be good. James Lake's installation will be at Dilston Grove, London (3-9 Sept 2012) and Pallant House Gallery in 2013. Outside In London is at CGP London (29 Aug to 9 Sept 2012). Outside In: National will be at Pallant House Gallery (27 Oct 2012 to 3 Feb 2013). For more information go to. www.outsidein.org.uk
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Come Twine With me
Famous for her unique crocheted food, Kate Jenkin's work takes a nostalgic look at everyday items, reinvented in wool and yarn with wry, comic touches. She has exhibited in London, Brighton and the United States and her work is collected worldwide. Have you always been an expert knitter? I was taught to knit and crochet at an early age by my Nan and my mother and became addicted from the start. I continued to perfect my skills and learnt new techniques whilst studying for my degree in fashion textiles at Brighton University. Is there anything you haven't tried to knit/crochet? I always feel that anything can be created as long as you put your mind to it and I think it's great to set yourself difficult challenges and continually test yourself. That way the work is always interesting, exciting and unpredictable. The most difficult commission I have had to undertake so far is a self-portrait in the style of the 16th century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. My face was created comprising of life-sized insects, amphibians, fauna and flora all executed in crocheted lambswool and sequins.
Kate Jenkins, Fish and Chips, 100% Lambswool ŠKate Jenkins
A lot of your pieces contain visual jokes and puns. what are some of your favourite? My work is focused on my own wry sense of humour and things that make me smile. One of the favourite areas of my work is coming up with the pun and visual joke. Sometimes this could be related to the technique of crochet or materials I am using at the time. For example I created a large bottle of crocheted tomato ketchup and re-named it Tomato Stitch-Up, Pot Noodle became 'Pot Needle', Lyles Golden Syrup became' Lyles Golden Stitch' and so on. Other times it can be a literal word associated visual joke for example 'French fries' where I made a carton of fries all wearing striped tops, berets and moustaches, to date this is one of my favourites! What will Pallant House Gallery visitors be able to see? Visitors to the restaurant can expect to see a range of my classic signature dishes including fish and chips, sushi, tinned sardines to name just a few. I love the endless possibilities that can be created using food as a subject matter and being able to create something that sometimes is dismissed as dull or uninteresting into something beautiful and imaginative and inevitably humorous. Kate Jenkin's work will be on show in Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery from 23 June to 7 October 2012. For more information go to www.cardigan.ltd.uk. To book a table at Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery telephone 01243 770827. 47
Collection news
Nicholas Sinclair, Portrait of Peter Blake (2000), Black and white selenium toned silver print, Presented by the Artist (2012) © the artist
This summer a number of paintings from the collection will be on loan to exhibitions around Britain and abroad. Richard Hamilton's iconic 'Hers is a Lush Situation' (1957) forms a highlight of the V&A's major exhibition 'British Design 1948–2012' while Peter Blake's 'Siriol She-Devil of Naked Madness' is at the Kunsthalle in Vienna as part of the exhibition 'The Circus as a Parallel World'. Meanwhile several paintings by R.B. Kitaj are travelling to Berlin for the major retrospective of the artist's work at the Jewish Museum, and Francis Bacon's 'Two Figures' will be a feature of Abbot Hall Art Gallery's exhibition 'Francis Bacon to Paula Rego: Great Artists'. The Gallery's exhibition 'Snowdon: In Camera' featuring around 60 portraits of British artists will be on show at Christie's in London to mark the 2012 Olympics. To mark his De'Longhi Print Room exhibition this spring, the book artist Ron King (b.1932) has presented the Gallery with his artist's book 'Anansi Company' which features puppets inspired by Carribean folk tales. Another collector has donated a copy of King's 'Canga', a suite of etchings relating to stories of Brazilian bandits. In addition, The Golder-Thompson Gift has enabled the purchase of the print portfolio called the 'Prints of Darkness' from Edinburgh 48
Printmakers, which will be on show in the De'Longhi Print Room this summer (see feature article p. 30).The Jewish painter Dora Holzhandler (b.1928) has presented a painting called 'Lovers at Rosh Hashanah' and two drawings and a monoprint by the Polish émigré artist Jankel Adler (1895–1949) have been donated by a private collector. Continuing in the vein of the Gallery's past exhibitions exploring portraits of artists by John Deakin, Lee Miller and Lord Snowdon, the photographer Nicholas Sinclair (b.1954) has presented a group of twelve of his portraits of leading British artists including Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake, Paula Rego, and Kyffin Williams. Two important paintings have been loaned to the Gallery on a long-term basis: 'Going to the Mill' (1925) by L.S. Lowry and 'Still Life of Roses and a Bowl of Apples on a Green Table Cloth' by the Scottish Colourist S.J. Peploe. In addition, an early bronze sculpture of a bull (1946) by Eduardo Paolozzi has been loaned, and will be a key exhibit in our forthcoming Paolozzi retrospective. Pallant House Gallery boasts one of the best collections of Modern British Art in the UK. Donated over the past thirty years, the collections tell the story of a number of passionate collectors of art who generously donated their lifetimes' labours to the Gallery for the benefit of the public.
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Give to Pallant House Gallery and pay less tax Gifts given via your Will to Pallant House Gallery, like gifts to other charities, are free of inheritance tax. New rules now in force reduce the rate of inheritance tax on the rest of the estate where gifts to charity are more than 10% of the taxable estate. If you inherit from a friend or relative, you can vary your inheritance within two years. Suppose a relative has left 5% of their estate to charity. If, by a suitable variation, you make a gift to Pallant House that raises that 5% above the 10% threshold, the government pays for the whole of your gift. You actually inherit more after tax! 7R ÂżQG RXW PRUH DERXW VDYLQJ LQKHULWDQFH WD[ LQ \RXU :LOO YDU\LQJ DQ LQKHULWDQFH LQ D WD[ HIÂżFLHQW ZD\ RU DQ\ RWKHU DVSHFW RI \RXU personal affairs, please get in touch with us. Thomas Eggar is proud to support Pallant House Gallery
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Chairman of the Friends' Letter
Peter Blake, I Love You, Sikscreen on paper, diamond dust, 2004
Dear Friends, Patrons and Gallery Club members Given the two major anniversaries this year, it was a particular pleasure to welcome the Earl and Countess of Wessex to Pallant House Gallery during their visit to Chichester on 8 June to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. 2012 is the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Friends. You may be interested to read how the Friends were founded in Julia Cooper's article (p.52) Julia, who is a Trustee of the Friends, has been involved with Pallant House Gallery since 1987 when she joined as a member of the staff. In commemoration of this milestone we will shortly launch the '30 for 30' Appeal. For this we are asking each of you to give ÂŁ30 during the course of the next three months. The money raised will go towards maintaining the exciting programme of exhibitions for which the Gallery has recently become so well known, the pioneering Learning and Community programme, and the conservation of the Collections for future generations. You will find details of how you can donate to this also on page 52. We are delighted that Penelope Keith has agreed to launch this Appeal in the Galleria on Saturday 30 June at 12 noon to which you are all of course invited and I hope to see many of you there. On Sunday 30 September, the last day of the Appeal, a lunch will be held to mark our 30th Anniversary and we expect to be celebrating a great result.
Our summer exhibition Peter Blake and Pop Music will celebrate his 80th birthday. Peter has been a great friend to the Gallery over many years and it is therefore very fitting to be able to honour his work. We were delighted that the premiere of Gold Run, held on 1 April at Glyndebourne was such a huge success. Gold Run, a collaborative project between Glyndebourne, Carousel and Pallant House Gallery, celebrated the return of learning disabled athletes to the Paralympics in 2012. You will have a chance to see Gold Run which is performed by disabled and learning-disabled artists at the Festival Theatre on Tuesday 30 October. We are continually grateful for the legacies we receive from Friends who remember Pallant House Gallery in their Will. The Government is now making it even more advantageous to leave legacies, so this might be something you would like to consider. The legacies we receive are paid into the Endowment Fund to secure the future of the Gallery in perpetuity making your gift one of lasting importance. The support of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery over the past 30 years has been of incalculable value to the growth of the Gallery from its beginnings to becoming one of the major players in the British Art World and I do once more want to say how grateful we are for all your generosity. Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Friends Pallant House Gallery Friends
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30 Years of the Friends
Peter Durant / arcblue.com
2012 has been widely hailed as the year of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the 30th Olympics. But, at Pallant House Gallery, there is much to celebrate too: notably, the 300th anniversary of the Queen Anne house, the core of the original Gallery, and the 30th anniversary of its opening to the public in May 1982. Three years earlier, an auspicious first meeting of the Friends of Pallant House took place. The playwright, Christopher Fry noted in his diary "To my surprise, between 300-400 enthusiasts trekked to the meeting that evening". The Chairman Philip Stroud was asked from the floor: "Is the priority to restore Pallant House, or to provide an art gallery?" His reply: "We intend to do both!" From this determined beginning, the story of the Gallery and its Friends has evolved. A debt of gratitude is owed that group of far-seeing, proactive individuals from many walks of life who, in collaboration with the more visionary elements of the Chichester District Council, seized upon the offer of Dean Hussey's art collection and his desire to see it displayed in a restored Pallant House. Their prescient belief in the value of an art gallery for Chichester has been fully vindicated, and we are the beneficiaries of their vision. Throughout, the Friends have played a unique role in the founding, funding and manning of the Gallery. Their on-going voluntary support is pivotal and 52
Pallant House Gallery Friends
all-encompassing. As room stewards, guides, events organisers, Friends Office and Library assistants, and in many other ways, including the all-important work of fundraising, the Friends are crucial to the smooth operation of the Gallery, its exhibitions, cultural and educational programmes. From 1987, first as a member of staff, later as a Friend, I have been privileged to play a small part in the story of our Gallery. I have witnessed the restoration of the 18th century house, the addition of other significant collections to Hussey's original bequest, the building of the new wing and the growth of Friends' membership to over 4,000. I am sure that for other members too, the rewards of involvement have been immeasurable. They include pleasure in seeing the Gallery flourish, the enjoyment of stunning exhibitions, good friendships made and pride in being associated with the success story, which is Pallant House Gallery. To celebrate the first 30 years of the Gallery, please support our "30 for 30" fundraising project which, with your help, will ensure continued success over the next 30 years. Thank you. Julia Cooper '30 for 30' will run from July to September 2012. To make a ÂŁ30 donation, please send a cheque payable to ‘Friends of Pallant House Gallery' or cash to the Friends' Office or donate online. For more information go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 770816.
what's on Friends' events
Jerwood Gallery, Hastings © Ioana Marinescu
Friends' Private View Sunday 24 June, 10–11am A chance for you to enjoy a private view of Peter Blake: Pop Music. This major exhibition celebrates the 80th birthday of the man who has been described as the Godfather of Pop Art. Free. Coffee and biscuits provided. Friends' Gallery Tour Thursday 28 June, 11am Your own guided tour of Peter Blake: Pop Music with Simon Martin, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, and curator of the exhibition. £5 (£2.50 student Friends) includes coffee and biscuits. 30 for 30 Fundraiser Launch Saturday 30 June, 12 noon The Friends are marking their 30th anniversary this year with a major fundraising appeal for the continued excellence of the Gallery's exhibitions, the pioneering work of the Learning and Community programme and the conservation of the Collections. Launched by Penelope Keith, come and join in the fun with a glass of fizz and canapés. Free. See invitation and RSVP asap Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)
The Art Lunch: Peter Blake and Pop Music Thursday 12 July, 10.30 am - 2.15pm To celebrate the 80th birthday of Sir Peter Blake and the major exhibition, Peter Blake and Pop Music, Katy Norris, Curatorial Assistant, will give an illustrated talk. Blake is best known for his design for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover and most recently the 2012 Brit Award, but he is also an avid collector of Pop memorabilia. Drawing upon objects and ephemera from the artist's studio, Katy will uncover the stories behind his best known artworks and explore just what it means to be a dedicated music fan. After a private lunch with wine by Field and Fork there will be a guided tour of this exciting exhibition and an opportunity to discuss his key works. £60 (Friends £54)
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill and the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings Friday 20 July, 8.30am – 7pm The visit begins with the De La Warr Pavilion where we will see the first century AD Roman bronze of the founder of the Olympic Games on loan from the British Museum and Richard Wilson's full-size motor coach teetering on the roof of the building. This gravity-defying commission Hang On a Minute Lads, I've Got A Great Idea is inspired by The Italian Job and is part of the London 2012 Festival. After lunch we will visit the new Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, the £4 million project to house the Jerwood Foundation's collection of 20th and 21st century art. As well as the permanent collection we will see the temporary exhibition Gary Hume Flashback, over twenty paintings and sculptures by the Royal Academician (2001) and Turner-nominated artist. £28 includes coach, driver's tip and entry to the Jerwood. Entry to the De La Warr is free. The price does NOT include morning coffee or lunch. There are excellent cafés at both the De La Warr and the Jerwood Gallery.
Pallant House Gallery Friends
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Friends' Annual General Meeting Monday 30 July, 6pm. This year's AGM takes place at Pallant House Gallery and is your opportunity to take part in the governance of the organisation. There will be the usual reviews of the year's activities, presentation of reports for approval and opportunities for questions. The business meeting will be followed by a talk by David Hopkinson and a (free) glass of wine. Pictures and Painting in Normandy Monday 10 – Saturday 16 September 2012 This trip is fully booked now but we do sometimes have last-minute cancellations so if you would like to go on a waiting list, do get in touch with the Friends Office.
Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood Thursday 20 September, 2–5pm Following the talk last year from Cass Curator Claire Shea we are doing the walk of the everchanging displays of monumental contemporary sculpture. We shall also have a special tour of the sculpture archive, an expanding resource of maquettes and drawings providing a unique view of over 400 of the foundation's past, present and future commissions. £15. Transport is NOT included. Make your own way to Goodwood. Maps and travel instructions will be provided. Please contact the Friends Office if you need a lift. Sensible footwear is advised.
Friends 30th Anniversary Sunday Lunch Sunday 30 September, 12.30 pm Come and join other friends to help celebrate the Friends' 30th anniversary year with a delicious Field and Fork lunch (includes wine and coffee).£30
patrons of the gallery We are immensely grateful to our Gallery Club members, the following Patrons of Pallant House Gallery, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous, for their generous support: Mr and Mrs John Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter Henry Bourne and Harriet Anstruther Vanessa Branson Patrick K F Donlea Frank and Lorna Dunphy Lewis Golden Paul and Kay Goswell Mr and Mrs Scott Greenhalgh Mr and Mrs Alan Hill
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Pallant House Gallery Friends
Kevin A S Jamieson James and Clare Kirkman Lefevre Fine Art Ltd Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O'Rourke Catherine and Franck Petitgas Charles Rolls Mr and Mrs David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Jane and Anthony Weldon Tim and Judith Wise John Young
what's on gallery talks
Find the rest of the public programme including tours, screenings and workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557 or at www.pallant.org.uk
Derek Boshier in Conversation with Paul Gorman Thursday 28 June, 6pm A leading figure in the British Pop Art movement, Derek Boshier was also an influential lecturer at Central Saint Martins where he taught the singer Joe Strummer in the early 1970s. Boshier will talk in conversation with the writer Paul Gorman about his graphic work for the Clash 2nd Songbook, one of the most vivid visual documents of the punk and post-punk era, along with his collaborations with the likes of David Bowie and The Pretty Things. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7 Students £7.50)
Andrew Wilson: Swingeing London Thursday 12 July, 6pm Prompted by a News of the World tip-off, the drugs bust at Keith Richard's West Sussex house Redlands in 1967 inspired one of the defining creations in British Pop Art, Richard Hamilton's portrait of Mick Jagger handcuffed to the art dealer Robert Fraser en route to Chichester Magistrates Court. Following his recent publication on the subject Tate curator Andrew Wilson will discuss this iconic work from Pallant House Gallery's collection. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Steven Parissien: Defining the Georgian House Thursday 19 July, 6pm In celebration of the 300th anniversary of the building of Pallant House in 1712, Steven Parissien, Director of Compton Verney and leading authority on Palladian houses and domestic interiors, will explore the architecture and fascinating technological context of the 18th century house and examine the genesis of the Georgian style - from its proportions to its technology. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)
Margaret Timmers: A Century of Olympic Posters Thursday 26 July, 6pm Posters have played a special role in announcing and celebrating the modern Olympic Games. Eyecatching and memorable, these snapshots though time offer a vital record of our world, revealing links between sport and art, place and politics. Margaret Timmers, formerly the Senior Curator of Prints and the Book at the V&A Museum, will discuss the evolution of the Olympics poster in relation to the Garden Gallery exhibition. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)
Allen Jones, 1972 Munich Olympic Games Poster
Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)
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what's on gallery talks Peter Blake in Conversation with Mark Ellen Thursday 2 August, 6pm Sir Peter Blake has been closely associated with pop music since the 1950s. Not only has he painted images inspired by his musical heroes such as The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Bo Diddley but he has also worked closely with major British musicians and bands including Oasis, The Who and Eric Clapton. He discusses these extraordinary pop connections in conversation with the award winning magazine editor, music journalist and broadcaster Mark Ellen. Talk + wine: £15.50 (Friends £14). Talk only: £12 (Friends £10.50 Students £11) Peter Blake: The Works Thursday 30 August, 6pm Since his emergence in the late 1950s Sir Peter Blake has built a remarkable body of work that includes figurative painting, sculpture, collage and graphic design. Marco Livingstone, curator of numerous Pop Art exhibitions and author of Peter Blake: One Man Show, will consider this endless creativity and discuss Blake's engagement with a wide range of media. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) 56
Made at New Canton: Thomas Frye's Bow Porcelain Thursday 27 September, 6pm To mark the opening of a new ceramic installation by contemporary artist Bouke de Vries, Anton Gabszewicz, specialist in Antique Porcelain and Ceramics, will uncover the history of the Bow porcelain factory, placing it in the context of London in the 18th century. The extensive range of products will be discussed with particular reference to the Gallery's Geoffrey Freeman collection which consists of over 300 key examples. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Simon Martin: Pop Goes the Art School Thursday 4 October, 6pm In the 1950s and '60s, British art schools were a nexus for innovation which led to exciting developments in design and pop art, as well as a meeting place for musicians. Simon Martin draws on his research for the V&A's British Design show to explore the impact of student revolutions and reforms such as the Coldstream Report. Talk+wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)
Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)
Special Event Best of British Wednesday 25 July, 6pm Celebrate the 80th birthday of one of Britain's best-known cultural icons, Sir Peter Blake, alongside the Cultural Olympiad with 'Best of British' at Pallant House Gallery. This exclusive, one-off event will include an after hours Private View and Director's Introduction to the Peter Blake and Pop Music exhibition followed by a two course meal showcasing the 'Best of British' cuisine at Field and Fork at Pallant House Gallery £45 Includes drinks and canapés during the reception followed by two course meal with wine. (The talk will start at 6pm, dinner is at 7.30pm).
Peter Blake, Beatles, Silkscreen with photo collage and Diamond Dust, 2010, From the 'Stars' portfolio, © the artist/ DACS 2012
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We endeavour to accommodate any special requirements. Please ring 01243 774557 to discuss your needs.
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From cinemas to chapels, leisure centres to libraries, phone boxes to factories, the Twentieth Century Society campaigns to preserve the best of Britain’s architectural heritage from 1914 onwards
Love it or hate it, the architecture of the twentieth century has shaped our world: bold, controversial and often experimental buildings. Join the Twentieth Century Society and not only will you help to protect these modern treasures but also gain an unrivalled insight into the ground-breaking architecture and design that helped to shape the century. Annual membership includes three magazines, occasional free Twentieth Society books, and members-only events. Individual membership costs just £40 (£25 concessions) per year. Visit www.c20society.org.uk for more details Leicester Engineering, 1963
C20_PHGM.indd 1
ALEX BOURNE HANNAH WADDINGHAM DAVID BURT ADAM GARCIA CLIVE ROWE
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FESTIVAL THEATRE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON
01243 781312 CFT.ORG.UK
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CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE
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'I love Field & Fork at Pallant House GallerySam Mahoney is a brilliant cook.' Elle MacPherson, Tatler
www.fieldandfork.co.uk
BEATLES FOR SALE
New Exclusive Peter Blake Screenprint As the co-designer of the iconic Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band album cover, Sir Peter Blake will be forever associated with The Beatles. To coincide with the major exhibition Peter Blake and Pop Music, Pallant House Gallery has collaborated once again with the Godfather of British Pop Art to produce an exclusive 20 colour screenprint of 'The Beatles 1962', the renowned portrait of The Fab Four which is housed in the Gallery's own Permanent Collection. Blake had first met The Fab Four in the early 1960s, before their acceleration to superstardom following the release of the No. 1 hit album Please Please Me in March 1963. Talking to the critic Mervyn Levy at the time, Blake rather quaintly said: 'At the moment I'm working on a large conversation piece of the Liverpool song group, The Beatles. Each of these chaps is closely associated with the city and I hope the local fans will find in this picture a visual significance that will somehow match the mood of the music.' The Beatles 1962 was part of a series on pop musicians, also including Bo Diddley and The Letterman, which Blake had embarked on after a trip to Los Angeles with his Californian wife, Jann Haworth, in November 1963. The composition echoes the design of record sleeves and fan magazines in his use of 'fairground' central panel and coloured borders. The white boxes were intended to hold each band member's autograph but sadly they were never signed. The print will be available as a limited edition of 500. Price on application. For more information go to www. pallantbookshop.com 61
Peter Blake, The Beatles, 1963–68, Acrylic emulsion on hardboard, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © the artist/ DACS 2012
Peter Blake Pop Art Badges Designed exclusively for Pallant House Gallery, these limited edition Peter Blake Pop Art Badges bear Sir Peter's trademark Pop Art touches including the star, heart and target. Blake has used badges in his work for more than 40 years, the most famous example being 'Self Portrait with Badges' which is featured in the Peter Blake and Pop Music exhibition. Edition of 2000. Each badge set comes boxed with a hand signed and numbered card by the Artist. £50 Peter Blake: Dancing Over Pallant Print The specially-commissioned signed print featuresfour figures dancing over Pallant House Gallery. The figures are from a ballet company image found by Peter in an old National Geographic magazine and are a recurring theme in his work. Limited edition of 175. Signed and numbered by the artist. £175 All editions are available to purchase from the Pallant House Gallery Bookshop. www.pallantbookshop.com
! ! "
The way we were
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Our ancestors’ homes and the way they built them, their animals and the way they raised them, their crops and flowers and the way they grew them... Explore the Museum’s village, working watermill and superb collection of rescued buildings set in glorious Sussex countryside. Children are free to run, play and learn. Come and discover six centuries of our rural heritage.
Opening of Keith Vaughan, The Art of the Theatre, and Robin Ironside Spotted yourself on our photo pages? Photographs from all our previews are available to view and buy online at www.photoboxgallery.com/pallant. The password is 'pallant'. All photographs by Jason Hedges
(Left to Right) Gerard Hastings (author), Jill Evershed-Martin, Lord Young (Chairman of Chichester Festival Theatre), Northbrook Students
(Left to Right) Danielle Lockwood (co-curator of The Art of the Theatre), Rose and Anthony Hepworth with Michael Bracewell, Pamela Howard (curator of The Art of the Theatre) with Joanna McCallum (actor)
(Left to Right) Ralph Koltai (Theatre Designer), Tom de Freston (painter), Virgina Ironside (writer and niece of Robin Ironside) and Peter Broughton (curator)
If you would like to hire the Gallery for a party, private dining event or a canapĂŠ reception please contact Helen Martin on 01243 770838
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Collection in Focus
Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London '67, 1967–68, Relief silkscreen and oil on photo on board, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, 2006)
Swingeing London 67 by Richard Hamilton Richard Hamilton's work portrays a particular moment drawn from the news, yet despite being based on a photograph that had been reproduced on the front page of a newspaper, his aim is as far from reportage as it is possible to be. This painting, along with the rest of this series, is one of the defining images of Pop Art. It is a painting that has its genesis in Hamilton's strong personal response to the British state's attack on the freedom of one of his friends – the art dealer Robert Fraser, depicted shackled to his friend and co-defendant Mick Jagger. It addresses celebrity culture head-on, but in the context of a clash of values between the world of popular culture – as counterculture – and the old order and traditions of the establishment. The painting is itself materially part of this clash. It is couched in an idiom that had for almost 15 years been elaborated by Hamilton, embodying a refusal to recognise the value judgements of an old aesthetic order and its attendant outmoded hierarchies. For Hamilton, Pop Art was the expression of an open-ended analytical, critical and artistic process that was evidence of his own direct engagement as an artist with ethical issues; the two being indivisible. With this view, he created an approach to painting that could properly integrate a range of sources and approaches to image production. This included as subject not only the image itself but also what that image's purpose and meaning had been and could be. The resulting painting was not a mute representational object but a trigger 64
for a critical activity that was as much about looking at as reading in. What Hamilton learned during the period of the Independent Group was that in investigating the language of car styling, for instance, he 'wasn't just concerned with the car and the idea of speed, but the way it was presented to us in the mass media … presenting a glamorous object by all the devices that glamorous advertising can add.' So, with Swingeing London 67, Hamilton is not just providing an image of an event, but also an image of what determines the conditions of that image – the finished work offering evidence of his investigation. For Hamilton, the 'long front of culture' (to use the term coined by critic Lawrence Alloway) proposes that an artist cannot but be involved in mass culture, and so be a 'knowing consumer' of it. It follows from this that an artist will produce art that doesn't just reflect changing values in society but also acts them out. In this respect Pop can best be understood as the manifestation of a new form of history painting – one that, through a clearly stated belief in the changing values of society, expresses a challenge to the dominant social and political culture. The expression of Hamilton's challenge was both critical and celebratory of the material that formed the subject and object of his art. It was a challenge that was bound up with images and the ways that meaning could be created and conveyed; an equation that was so strikingly achieved with Swingeing London 67. Andrew Wilson Andrew Wilson will discuss the work on Thursday 12 July, 6pm (p.55).
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20th Century British & Irish Art Wednesday 14 November New Bond Street, London Entries now invited Closing date for entries Friday 28 September +44 (0) 20 7468 8295 matthew.bradbury@bonhams.com Catalogue +44 (0) 1666 502 200 subscriptions@bonhams.com
William Scott R.A. (1913-1989) Brown Scheme (detail) signed ‘W.SCOTT’ (verso) oil on canvas 122 x 198 cm. (48 x 78 in.) £180,000 - 250,000
International Auctioneers and Valuers - bonhams.com/modernbritish