David Cobley's Dreadlocks

Dreadlocks

pencil

11.5 x 8 in

(29 x 20.5 cm)

Private collection (ie with me!)

I was so pleased to take delivery and impressed with the packaging  of David Cobley's drawing Dreadlocks I made a video of its unboxing. 

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Update 6th June - the Framing:

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I first saw  David Cobley's work All By Myself on the excellent and entertaining TV show Show Me The Monet

All By Myself is 80 self portraits in the styles of the 80 artist who have influenced him  The centre of the 9 by 9 square canvas is a self portrait in his natural style. The closer the portrait is to the center the more influential the artist. I couldn't (can't!) afford the work but I bought the signed tea towel of the work!

Signed T-Towel of David Cobley's All By Myself

Sometimes Artists Find It Hard To Accept Criticism

Came across this video at  Bendor Grosvenor - Phillip Mould’s right hand man – excellent blog - Art History News.

Having watched it a few times I’m now not fully convinced that this is real. What do you think?

Gormley’s Bollards - Great Art or Gormless Artefacts ?

Fenwick Road, South Peckham

I was driving through South London the other Sunday afternoon when I was surprised to pass bollards which looked like the work of Anthony Gormley , he of the  Angel of the North.

The last time I’d seen work like these was in an art dealer’s garden – they looked magnificent – monumental in the closed, intimate space of an urban back garden. There on the streets of South London they looked equally stunning against the mundaneness of their urban setting.

Art Dealer's Garden with Sub-Titles

I believe this is Gormley connecting art and life - the sublation of art with the praxis of life [1]. And the Council acknowledging that connection, sustaining the link using aesthetic objects for practical purposes, Gormley's forms for traffic control.

The bollards are named Oval , Snowman , Peg and Penis each presumably  taking its name from its essential form. You can buy Penis, discreetly called No2 , along with any of the other three, each with a price guide of £650 plus VAT – numbered but unsigned. All four original bollards numbered one –from an unspecified edition- are still available  at £16,000 plus VAT. 

Marshall's Specification for Gormley's Bollards

Marshall Brochure for Gormley's Bollards

I find Gormley’s bollards interesting as they bring art to the street in a very practical way; public art without the pomp and  inevitably with a bit of controversy eg the absence of Penis. There again I wonder if anyone really noticed Penis’s absence, simply enjoying the monotony of the urban landscape being broken up by his bollards with their aesthetic appeal in addition to their functionality. And there is wider market for these bollards as garden objects and it looks as though some of Fenwick Street's bollards have been stolen to become a woodland or garden sculpture perhaps.

Bell Street Maidenhead

Sandwell, Near Birmingham

Fenwick Road, S Peckham with two Possibly Stolen?

Gormley like so many contemporary artists is a one trick pony re-working an idea almost to death, for Gormley it’s his body cast in one position or another.

IRON:MAN outside Birmingham's Town Hall

Detail of Another Place

Having said that his casts do work. The lone human figure when viewed at a distance in a seascape, landscape , set amongst skyscrapers, on mountainside or in a wide river bed its isolation makes one consider one’s own isolation amidst the hustle and bustle of twentieth century living. The cast seems to slow things down to a stop.

View of Gormley's Another Place

One of Gormley’s many lone repeated figure works is in Crosby near Liverpool, my hometown.  It’s  called  Another Place, it means something to me personally as it was there that I had the last day I had out alone with my Mum before she went into a care home. Mum’s dementia subsequently deteriorated to a state where Mum couldn’t safely be left alone, for fear that she would wander off.

Me Mum at Another Place

Mum very much enjoyed that day – if not the work as Mum kept asking about the figure’s presence “What are they doing here?” Sadly now Mum has gone to Another Place.

So, although I’m not a great fan of Gormley I can see how his artworks liven up the urban environment either as functional bollards or aesthetic objects. His bollards in particular making the connection between art and life – a fundamental purpose to my mind of art. They are not gormless equally not great, but good works, worthy of a place our society.

[1] A left wing statement from the Capitalism v Marxism debate of the Sixties and the role of the artist, I've written more about it earlier in this blog

GR8 USE OF TXT BUT NOT GR8 CAUZ

Delighted to see the National making use of QR codes but saddened by the use case.

The National's QR code was real easy to  use; seamlessly making link from the real to the virtual world and back again. I scanned the code using an app on my iPhone almost by return I was presented with a text  message screen ready for me to text 'POUSSIN' to the short code 70880 so no need to type in the number. Making it no problem  to donate £5 via my iPhone to the cause - raise £4M  of the £14M required to ‘save’ Poussin’s Extreme  Unction (Final Anointing) for the Cambridge’s  Fitzwilliam Museum and the nation as it was a 'national treasure'.

Extreme  Unction (Final Anointing)  [1638 -1640]

But I have to ask WHY? Couldn’t the National loan one of it’s 16 (sixteen) Poussin’s to the Fitzwilliam. In doing so free the £4M to fund some contemporary - local or international - art to inspire and enrich.

Yes, Posssin is important  but the nation has enough of his works,  in fact it is awash with Poussin’s paintings.  Poussins  can be found in Cambridge (they have one already so why be greedy?) Cardiff, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Liverpool  as well as in the collections of a number of Dukes.

So the nation is not short of a Poussin or two including several quintessential - 'national treasure' - Poussins  for example A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term 

A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term [1623-28]

So any artist in search of Poussinian education or inspiration  can easily seek out good examples of his characteristic painting style:

• Linear frieze and triangular compostions
• Use of primary and complimentary colours
• History painting composition with its roots in the Renaissance work of Michelangelo and Raphael   
• The painting’s narrative is revealed  thru gesture, body movement, hand and eye co-ordination
• History or the Bible as the inspirational basis for each painting 

Just as so many artists have done  including David, Ingres, Cezzanne and even Picasso  in times past.

So, to conclude great to see this use of  'new technology' making the link from the real to virtual world  but let Extreme Unction go and use the money raised to help fund contemporary art we have enough Poussins!

Team GB Kit Uses Ideas Seen In Leonardo da Vinci and 18th Century Horse Painter Paintings

Stella McCartney’s Team GB’s kit for the Olympics 2012 is my first chance to combine my interest in contemporary art and my Games Maker role in London.  I believe she has made masterful use of colour  and design to create not just specific and highly functional items of sportswear but an iconic, individual look and feel to for Team GB.

Her use of colour has come under attack as many argue there is not enough red attracting headlines such as the Guardian’s  22 March 2012 on the Internet Absence of red in outfits criticised by sports psychologist. Stella responded to this populist disapproval with a defiant tweet “The design actually uses more red & shows more flag than any Team GB kit since '84.”

I would argue her use of colour is brilliant and subtle taking full advantage of the eye’s physiological responses to a trick of perspective known and used by artist for centuries: the lighter the blue hue the more distant an object appears behind the picture plane while the colour red creates the opposite effect  as red objects appear to come out of the picture plane when set against an apparently distant blue object: the picture below demonstrates this visual effect.

The picture plane seems anchored by the black TEAM GB while the light blue TEAM GB  is perceived as behind the picture plane while the deep red TEAM GB is in front of the picture plane.

Leonardo used the effect in The Mona Lisa (1504)  where the distance rocks in the background behind the Madonna’s head are  painted in the palest of blues.  George Stubbs used the same effect in his painting William Anderson with Two Saddled Horses, 1793 the rider’s distinctive red frock coat makes him and his horse appear to be closer to the viewer than the riderless horse despite the reverse to be true on closer inspection. With the picture being given added depth by the persepcively distant mountains are in light blue.

Detail from Mona Lisa

Stubbs William Anderson with Two Saddled Horses, 1793

Stella’s use of red and blue has exactly those visual affects seen in the Leonardo and the Stubbs: reds advancing  effect is the first thing one seems to see when set against the kit’s dark and light blues . So the red of the Union jack is there it just does not appear to dominate the kit but it is the very first thing you see when you look at the kit – look again at the photo shoot picture.

Stella’s design reduces the red, white and blue of the  Union Jack to a monochrome design with different tones replacing the flags iconic colours. In doing so she creates a whole new palette of design elements taken from – a gold flag, a red flag, a blue flag - as exemplified by the background to the press release images.

She creatively takes these monochrome design fragments of the Union Jack – light and dark blue triangles and rectangles supported by even darker blue  rectangles. Collectively these fragments create the effect of being wrapped in the Union Jack as seen in the BMX star Shanaze Reade’s kit.

To conclude, Stella uses the iconic elements of the Union Jack   – its colours and its shapes -  to create a wonderfully diverse range of kits for the 38 Olympic and 22 Paralympic sports; maintaining each sport’s individuality  yet uniting the Team collectively under the Union Jack in a dramatic, eye-catching  twenty-first century look and feel, she is to be congratulated not castigated. It takes a step on the road to to the super human performances needed to win gold!

Wonderfully Weathered Wood In Dortmund

As all the usual hotels I stay at in at Dortmund were full I was forced to stay at an anonymous, box like hotel on a dreek Industrial Estate(IE) on the edge of the city. To add insult to injury I was charged a rip-off rate taking advantage of the city being full. – normally for B&B in Dortmund I pay 55 Euro tonight it was paying 99.5 Euro – 4 star price at 1 star hotel.

To cheer myself up the next morning I went for stroll around the estate and to my delight and surprise came across Hecker’s in the middle of this wasteland of functional buildings and spaces. Hecker’s was a conventional IE building – built as a price per square foot modernist box with much use of glass and steel and metal cladding with little architectural imagination and surrounded by assiduously marked out car parking space, with a grassed area to the side.

The grassed area was serene - a little oasis - a pool surrounded by steep banks with mixed green vegetation and the most wonderful, roughly-hewn, slenderly-shaped wooden figures and shapes in groups of three. The figures rose like totems commanding the space around them.

The whole Hecker plot and building was decorated with these wonderfully weathered wooden figures and shapes often in groups of three  Not so much a building and a car park more a sculpture park on a par with Yorkshire Sculpture  Park.  A pleasing distraction from the depression of the hotel and the Industrial Estate and their dour glass, steel and concrete edifices  A very pleasant surprise!

Christian Marclay’s The Clock at the White Cube Gallery

A stopped clock is right twice a day trouble is you just don’t know when – Christian Marclay’s The Clock on show at the White Cube Gallery , uses 24 hours’ worth of shots and clips of stopped, stopping clocks from over 3,000 movies to create a synchronised, real-time working clock to solve that problem.

The Clock was brought to my attention by a tweet from Waldemar Januszczak. I follow @Januszczak as we admire many of the same artists and I like his work with his ZCZ film company and

we share a common passion for the Sistine Chapel and the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti . So although normally I have no time for video art - I’m no fan of art that needs to be plugged in - a recommendation from him sparked my interest. And I was AMAZED.

This is a brilliant, innovative idea : a collage which at once both aesthetic and practical - art for art’s sake yet it’s art with a purpose – it’s a real functioning clock which is a delight to watch.

The staging is the bowels of The White Cube gallery set up like a giant living room with large, comfy sofas and a huge screen with great sound.

I took my seat and immediately checked my watch and blow me if it wasn’t 4:55 on my watch but also on screen!....4:59....than bang!...5pm...I was watching time or was I watching the narrative which cut from one scene to another. Time seemed to pass so quickly, a very strange experience as I tried to follow and anticipate the narrative which made sense one moment only to break down and morph into another story in the next minute – all done effortlessly in time, on time.

I’m not a film buff but even I recognised some scenes from Casablanca and Brief Encounter and even a few actors Dirk Bogart , Clint Eastwood and Alistair Sims. But the majority of The Clock’s shots where unknown to me and not just the German, French, Japanese, Bollywood scenes but also the block busters, such is my ignorance. It was great fun to see something you vaguely know or recognise – an actor, a scene , a building , whatever only to have it morph seamlessly into something you didn’t know or recognise. The ever present time either spoken or shown flawlessly moving the disjointed, fractured story on – wonderful!

Available for £500,000 (including hard drive!) from an edition of six and two artist copies to private collectors and museum The Clock would make a brilliant addition to the reception of any company wishing to keep track of its own time.

You can watch The White Cube's Clock for free now , but hurry this Clock stops on the 11th Nov.....at the 11th hour?

Recommended, you'll be amazed.

Reference...

Economist review

The White Cube’s The Clock Photo

Photograph in White Cube Ben Westoby