<h1>Archives</h1>
    anatomy, drawing, renaissance

    Leonardo Da Vinci, Studies of the Human Skull (1489)

    November 11, 2011
    Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Studies of the human skull, 1489, Pen and ink on paper, 29 x 20 cm. Lent by Her Majesty The Queen (RL 19059). The Royal Collection © 2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

    He may be one of the fifteenth century’s best known scientists and empiricists, but Leonardo has become synymous with mystery and obscurantism.

    The smoke which blurs the features of his most famous painting, also coils around the edges of these burnt-brown anatomy drawings and the plans he made elsewhere for real world inventions.

    So today it could be his legacy is most present in antiquated pen and ink studies like this, and in the backward-facing handwriting that accompanies them.

    It’s not that we learned so much from his observations and blueprints. Leonardo is said to have kept his findings to himself. His machines were too fantastical for his era.

    But filmmakers and game designers make heavy working use of the aesthetic of his private, ochre drawings and script. Skulls like these crop up all the time in movies and intro sequences.

    It hardly need be mentioned that the secretive mood evoked by the old master’s researches also inspired one of the 21st century‘s best selling books.

    In fact, the closer Leonardo came to understanding humanity and improving our lot, the further we now plunge him into the realms of the arcane and the hidden.

    In our times of mapped DNA, our love of these smoky studies could be a nostalgia trip. I hope one day they can revisit our own scientific reports with as much delight.

    This work can be seen in Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, The National Gallery, London. The show runs until 5 February 2012 see gallery website for more details.

    aggregation, contemporary art, Uncategorized

    Found Objects 07/11/11

    November 7, 2011

    Once again I’ve whittled down the infinite reaches of the world wide web into ten or so convenient destinations just for you:

    • Not entirely art related but this does feature some highly creative metaphors: John Lichfield writes about the Eurozone crisis in the Independent (via @tds153)
    • Also in the Independent, gallerist Richard Cork tells us about the role he played in saving a Leonardo drawing for the nation, aged just 14.
    • The other Italian to have a much talked about show this month is Maurizio Cattelan. Artnet publish a vertiginous slide show of his works at the Guggenheim.
    • Meanwhile the Guardian carried news that an enthusiastic cleaner had wiped £690,000 off the price tag of a Martin Kippenberger sculpture.
    • Tate Britain revealed a dozen Olympic posters by the team GB of British art. There’s a good slide show on Phaidon’s website if you haven’t yet seen them.
    • The Telegraph report from a piece of public art in Kent which inspired “an odd respect” from local youths.
    • Whitechapel Gallery posted a video trail for their intriguing Rothko in Britain show.
    • I’m not sure what the point of this film on Brain Pickings might be, but René Magritte fans should like it
    • There’s some much more urgent footage on American Suburb X. Do find 20 minutes to watch Jean-Christain Bourcart’s documentary about Camden in New Jersey.
    • Digital typography can get fairly baroque. There are no less than 50 lapel grabbing examples on 1st Web Designer (thanks @kevinexley).

    Uncategorized

    Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Romeo Echo Delta (2011)

    November 4, 2011

    Why it should be pleasant to imagine aliens are invading planet earth is not clear. But the only clear result of a recent hoax broadcast from BBC Radio Merseyside was listening enjoyment.

    The Halloween transmission may have confused a few people, but it was nothing like the famous Orson Welles stunt of 1938. There are no reports of widespread panic in Liverpool.

    A caller called Mavis who phoned the station in the immediate aftermath of the show said, “I couldn’t believe that was a play.” She sounded thrilled by her anxiety attack.

    Indeed, realism is just what made the hoax good listening. As reports of a red beam of light came in, the cheery presenter moved steadily from amusement to dire concern.

    Those who lived in the vicinity of Birkenhead could step out their front door and see the reported invasion of red light. And for many that was worth tweeting about.

    But that was all it was worth. There are few things to be taken seriously in our age of irony. We have moved from the society of spectacle to that of debacle, perhaps.

    The best sociological insight of the night came from, and this was a brilliant touch, an interviewee on the interrupted show: Maria Lawson, X-Factor finalist in 2005.

    Lawson, a psychology graduate, pointed out that the story was feeding on itself. It was a story about tweets and phonecalls as much as anything else.

    This proved doubly true in the bigger scheme of things when the BBC and Liverpool Post were able to report on a bona fide media phenomenon the following day.

    You can find their reports here and here, and read a local blog post on the evening’s entertainment here. It was a cracking show.

    Romeo Echo Delta can be enjoyed in the safety of Kate MacGarry, London, between 10 November and 17 December 2011. See gallery website for details.

    Uncategorized

    Found Objects 31/10/11

    October 31, 2011

    Resisting the temptation to do a Halloween special, here are a bunch of largely unfrightening links. Enjoy:

    • As the art world’s most eminent reflect on where they stand in the Power 100 in Art Review, Hyperallergic completes the picture with the Powerless 20. Funny it is too.
    • Carsten Höller’s show at the New Museum sound like the most fun you can have with your clothes on and. in one exhibit, off. Carolina Miranda captures the excitement for WNYC.
    • Most alarming news this week comes from this Q&A with Alex Katz in which the octagenarian painter claims to do 300 push ups and 400 sit ups every day (Hat tip: @ArtObserved).
    • Alistair Gentry casts a merciless eye around just about every private view you’ve ever been to and compiles a priceless spotter’s guide to the gallery.
    • Not sure what is more inspired about this, the animation or the soundtrack. Beautiful Decay posts a morphtastic film by Allison Schulnik.
    • Be warned: these art-inspired Halloween costumeson Art Info are not the most practical, except perhaps a blood-stained nurse by Richard Prince
    • If you haven’t yet heard about this film for chimpanzees, now might be the time to read about Primate Cinema by We Make Money Not Art.
    • Chloe Nelkin is bowled over by Soviet Art and Architecture at the RA. Sounds like a rare glimpse of some buildings with a limited life expectancy.
    • On Spatial Narratives, you’ll find a dreamy account of a vegetative intervention in a lab foyer in Paris. Nice to discover the meaning of phytoremediation.
    • There’s a factually poetic snippet in Frieze about human culture travelling through Space.

    literature

    Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard

    October 28, 2011

    As a novel set in an art gallery, Old Masters might be of some interest to readers of this blog. Viennese readers especially, since it is set in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

    Thomas Bernhard narrows things down even further by setting the entire thing in the vicinity of a single painting: White-bearded Man by Tintoretto.

    But the good news here is that, unlike another museum based book which sold more than 40 million copies, there is no cryptology in these pages and only a little conspiracy.

    Instead there is polemic. 99 percent of the novel is the reported speech of an aesthete called Reger. He writes music reviews for the Times of London and hates art.

    He may have a 30-year habit of visiting the same room of a gallery every other day, but here is an example of Reger in full flow on the subject of artists:

    “The painters, all these old masters, who most of the time nauseate me more than anything else and of whom I had always had a horror, always served one master and never themselves and hence humanity. They always painted a fake world, faked by them from within themselves, which they hoped would bring them money and fame…”

    Other terrifying generalisations made by the snobish Reger include the observation you won’t find one single well painted hand in the whole of Vienna’s greatest gallery. I’d be too stunned to argue.

    If you too are someone who tends to venerate the greatest names in the art canon, not to mention those of literary and musical renown, you might find this book of some value.

    Bernhard’s 250 pages about the uselessness of art are so far out on a limb that their distance from the common view may well give them equilibrium with the many tomes written in praise of classical art.

    So Old Masters is both depressing and amusing. And it will not escape your attention that, for all his bile, Reger cannot give up on art. And if he can’t, what hope for the rest of us?

     I’m not taking commission for this, but you can buy the book on Amazon here. Better still go to a bookshop!

    contemporary art

    Canvassing views: a survey of UK art blogs

    October 26, 2011

    Quick art quiz question: who said in 2009: “I spend 90% of my energy on blogging”? It wasn’t Jonathan Jones, who posts daily on art for the Guardian. Nor was it a professional US art blogger from Hyperallergic, C-Monster, Art Fag City or ArtInfo.

    It was in fact Ai Weiwei, just named Art Review’s most powerful figure in art. The Chinese artist blogged every day for four years till he was shut down by his government and arrested. Clearly, in the art world and the real world, blogs matter.

    If you already knew this and are a regular blog reader, great. If not, I hope this survey of the UK blogosphere gives you some inspiration. Either way I would encourage feedback and suggestions on this list. It is only an attempt at being definitive.

    There’s good reason to limit ourselves to the British Isles, mind you. Art blogs don’t travel as well as musings on Film, Music or Books. That lovingly crafted review of a show in Dundee, may not grab too many readers in New York and vice versa.

    Some blogs get round this with plenty of photos. fundamental (PAINTING) is a pithy appreciation of other people’s talents, which suggests demonstrates that brushstrokes often work well as jpegs. The numerous comments here attest to a healthy interest in this 14 month-old blog.

    Another well-illustrated blog is A Kick up the Arts, which covers the London gallery scene, with the odd trip beyond. Its author is anonymous art consultant Akuta, who is quick to praise, but not slow to criticise when it’s called for.

    But the general encouragement these great sites offer, to get out and see art, is characteristic of many UK blogs. Compiling this feature, it seemed that most bloggers fell into one of two camps: cheerleaders and critics.

    Other pom-pom wavers include Lynda from Echostains, who gets around geographical specificity with theme-by-theme musings on art history. The enthusiasm of this blog is infectious, and if that doesn’t get you, the poetry competitions might.

    Chloe Nelkin is another woman who clearly enjoys her art. This PR pro blogs at Artista and covers a lot of London gallery floorspace in oft-mentioned high heels. She’s a blogger content to let her words count as much as her less frequent photos.

    Speaking of PR, Tate has long realised new media is a way to reach new audiences. The museum group has a blog dating back to 2005 and this offers a fascinating look behind or around the scenes for their many concurrent shows around the UK.

    No less professional but somewhat less frequent are the weekly postings on Jotta. The self-described facilitators of collaboration in the arts run a contemporary art blog. It’s interesting but gets a bit lost on their nebulous site.

    And a final burst of enthusiasm comes from Art Wednesday. Like Jotta, they offer a multi-faceted browsing experience and despite the name AW are not averse to entertaining lifestyle features. One small gripe would be the ubiquitous italics.

    So those are the cheerleaders, here come the critics. Despite being chief art blogger at the Guardian, Jonathan Jones is not the world’s biggest fan of all contemporary art. But he always has something to say and passionate reasons for saying it. A top blog.

    Another seasoned journalist cum blogger is JJ Charlesworth. He uses his blog to repost pieces from Art Review, Art Monthly and Art Agenda. And whether writing about Frieze or the Chapman brothers he has a habit of confronting the real issues.

    You will find as much intelligence from another, ruinous-sounding blog, After the End. London resident Lizzie Homersham scores highly for dropping in just enough theory and an early review of the French version of Michel Houellebecq’s new novel.

    But you won’t find a lot of theory on Birmingham based David Green’s stylish and irreverent blog. Contemporary Monkey gets to a good number of UK regional art shows and weighs them up with a clear-thinking minimum of pretentious artspeak.

    Phoenicia aka Dr Crystal Bennes would probably share his aversion. Her straight-talking and at times controversial blog takes its title from a poem by J.H. Prynne so you can expect a wide range of inspirations at The Rightness of Wayward Sentiment.

    The final blog worth rounding up moves beyond criticism into out and out cynicism, and that would be Career Suicide by Alistair Gentry. The Suffolk based artist and writer has a loathing for press releases and a way with withering words. Essential.

    Things get even more extreme over at Cathedral of Shit. These scurrilous bloggers who, it is said, operate out of the backroom of a branch of subway, post gossip rather than reviews. But it’s been quiet of late. Anyone heard anything?

    But blogs work best when they find common ground with other blogs. In this respect the UK blogging scene suffers from its diversity and regional spread. Blogs in the US can often focus on the same shows and issues and get conversations going. Let’s hope that can happen more over here as well.

    What do you think of the UK art blogging scene? Who might have got missed out? What else needs to be said? Please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks to Corinna Spencer and Chloe Nelkin for their input this far. This piece also appears on Culture24.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 24/10/11

    October 24, 2011

    In solidarity with occupy Sotheby’s, etc, criticismism has been occupying GoogleReader to bring you another bunch of links:

    • It could always be worse. So suggests Der Spiegel who report on the publication of a database of Nazi appproved art.
    • Being dubious about the Museum of Everything, I liked this Jonathan Griffin piece which raises questions.
    • Art-related tale of survival: combative critic Rosalind Krauss fights her way back to health from a brain aneurysm (via @TwoCoats).
    • Non art-related tale of survival: Detroit skateboarder Ross Capicchioni recovers from a triple shooting (must-see video).
    • American Suburb X runs an old Sebastian Smee piece about photographer Bill Brandt. Good excuse not to smile for the camera.
    • Emily Steer endures the interview from hell with photogapher and painter David Bailey. Remarkable stuff from Art Wednesday.
    • Harvard Art Museum take a short vimeo clip to discuss a rhino woodcut by Albrecht Durer. Interesting (via @TylerGreenDC).
    • Also on vimeo there’s a charming half hour to be spent with Edward Burra, whose show just opens at Pallant House. Thanks Richard Moss.
    • Can’t resist this animated film by Spike Jonze. It is after all set in Shakespeare & Co bookshop, Paris.
    • Finally, an art history lecture, or rather a lecture about the difficulties of writing a history of contemporary art (via @sluiceartfair).

    architecture, contemporary art, installation art

    Ximena Garrido-Lecca, The Walls of Progress: Project Country (2011)

    October 21, 2011

    Amidst the bright, shiny things one could take home from Frieze to put on your wall was this: a structure of mud, daring collectors to take it back to their bright, shiny homes.

    Hand made from adobe bricks and modelled on an original in the highlands of Peru, this sculpture brought the outside world into artworld via the Frieze marquee.

    As a 6m wide wall, it echoes the countless partitions which separated the 173 galleries who showed up to sell work. It suggested that was all capitalism amounts to, divisions.

    But Project Country also had a resonance from the cultural exterior as well. In the outside world, such walls in Peru demonstrate a close relationship with the earth and veneration for nature.

    That’s an angle for the jet-set to consider, for many of whom art is surely a ‘fragment shored against ruins’ of industrial or ecological collapse. In other words, it’s an investment.

    And yet exterior is the wrong word. Like 48-sheet posters at the nearest tube, these walls now carry murals advertising consumer brands, or in this case a now-defunct political party.

    And just as there might be no escaping the marketplace in the wilds of Peru, so there is no escaping from progressive politics in the heart of a lucrative art fair.

    To purchase this crumbling structure from Revolver gallery at the fair would be as absurd a gesture as those tales of Americans shipping home English castles brick by brick.

    It would cost a packet and serve as a constant reminder of all those peasants or serfs who cannot buy blue-chip art. And Peruvian or not, that’s most of us.

    Project Country could be seen last week at Frieze Art Fair. There’s more about Ximena Garrido-Lecca on her website or in this interview in Momardi blog.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 17/10/11

    October 17, 2011

    Post-Frieze comedown fodder:

    • Too much has been written about the fair this year, I know. But this sharp analysis by critic JJ Charlesworth makes a lot of sense.
    • Non-native English speakers only need to know 1500 words and ‘globish‘ is one of them. The Guardian also reports from a talk at Frieze.
    • If you’re not still in mourning for Steve Jobs, you may find these pages from a 1983 Apple gift catalogue give you something to chuckle about.
    • A wall-dwelling fly’s eye view of Gerhard Richter at work on Leg of Lamb blog (video). You wonder how he manages to know where to start or when to finish.
    • Ed Hall, maker of protest banners, has a show in Manchester. Enjoy the pictures from We Make Art Not Money, plus short art doc by the RMT trade union.
    • The pleasures of Ostalgia are all the more problematic for this blog on the topic in Frieze.
    • The Guardian editorialise about an architectural swing to the right of the famous clocktower attached to the UK’s parliament building.
    • The television reviews in The Moscow Times are better than most things on TV. Check out a new Russian show with the catchphrase: “The punishment will be cruel”.
    • I’d not come across @tejucole, but this piece in The New Inquiry suggests this controversial tweep is one to follow.
    • If you’ve never read a William Boyd piece about Nat Tate, now might be the time. The fake artist’s work is coming up for auction.
    • Here’s the trailer for artist and director Steve McQueen’s new film. Both tantalising and titilating.

    contemporary art, critical theory, translation

    Nick Davies, d PlsUR of d Txt (2011)

    October 14, 2011

    As a structuralist who wrote about wrestling, wine and fashion, it can seem Roland Barthes is one of the less abstruse theorists you might come across in an artwork.

    And now Nick Davies has added a layer of either difficulty or simplicity by translating the Frenchman’s 1975 work, The Pleasure of the Text, into mobile phone textese.

    His newly created book, d PlsUR of d Txt, is at once too highbrow and too lowbrow for most people to enjoy in a casual manner. In either case, this Barthes is not easy.

    But he is at least down with the kids. The thought of a generation of Blackberry wielding looters giving up trainers for semiotics and textual bliss is a hopeful one.

    Whether or not that could ever be, the mere possibility must stand as a threat to the status quo. The authorities cannot like secret languages of any description.

    Far from being a shortcut to communication, the translation of this work into textese was a long and laborious process. Even with the help of transl8it.com

    In doing so, Davies has in a literal way expanded the vocalbulary of this commonly used website and also expanded the scope of what you might talk about in 160 characters.

    Reinventing Barthes for the street and reinventing the street as the academy, his essay or experiment promises much. Just don’t mention it on Twitter.

    For some reason the social networking site cannot compute the title of Davies’ work. In an ironic twist on the work the artist and later myself had no joy tweeting PlsUR.

    The translation has been produced in an edition of 160 by the artist. For more information see his website.