small ritual

oh roy... i love you, too... but...

notes on the roy lichtenstein retrospective at tate modern:

lichtenstein's art exists in relation to abstract expressionism and should be seen with it. they should have hung a rothko or newman in the first couple of rooms, their brushstrokes against his. abstract expressionism was about handcraft, authenticity of feeling, the artist as existential hero before the cosmos. lichtenstein's work substitutes pseudo-mechanical reproduction, fake emotion, second-hand mass produced sources. in the early 60s it violated the norms of high art in the way that, say, tracy emin's bed violated the norms, in terms of subject matter [trashy] and technique [apparent lack of]. the early pop works, taken from newspaper small ads, are bracingly cheap and vulgar.

the exhibition shows that the iconic mid-60s comic strip paintings are far above the rest of his work. there is the immediacy that makes people smile, but the compositions are usually perfect both visually and emotionally. considering that they are meant to imitate printing techniques it's odd that the colours of the benday dots are never CMYK. or at least the C and M are replaced by primary red and blue.

from the late 60s it's mostly downhill as lichtenstein gets academic and art-historical. his subject matter is cheap commercial america. when he tries to be respectable and painterly it fails. gentility is deadly to his art. the comics gave him a subject matter that he could edit and simplify to a fine point of impact. the later works suffer from being worked up to cluttered complexity which obscures rather than communicates. postmodernism and self-reference led him down blind alleys. ironically the best later works are the calculatedly crap perfect/imperfect paintings, "the nameless or generic painting you might find in the background of a sitcom"… precisely, roy. that's your territory.

in pop terms, he's the musician who went on too long, gained too much technique and no new ideas, wanted to be considered serious, thought he was ready to compose symphonies. but the discovery of 60s pop art, as for 60s pop music, is that low art can be great art when its simplicity and focus come good. the equivalent of whaam! and the comic strip girls is spector's girl groups and wall of sound, where production line music nailed universal emotions for all time - will you still love me tomorrow? the lyrics sound like lichtenstein paintings.

of course, it's a disturbing thought, as a creator, that you only have so much in you. it's no good for a career.

bauhaus: art as life

the olympics aren't a great time for getting things done ;) but i broke away from the tv to go see the bauhaus exhibition at the barbican - my firm are sponsors so i got a free ticket. it's really good, but it finishes on 12th august - sorry about late recommendation.

the exhibition takes us from the early days of arty-farty mysticism to the closure of the bauhaus under pressure from the nazis. the immediate impression is how much more fun this all was than one had imagined. it's a revelation to see how colourful everything was, when one has only ever seen grainy black and white photos. there was an emphasis on play as a force for creativity, and there are delightful toys, crazy puppets, even crazier theatre costumes, mad party invites to mad parties. there seems to have been a golden moment in the mid-20s when everyone was inventing modernism in an explosion of colour and form, new stuff for a new free way of life.

however, a chill seems to descend even before the onset of the depression, like a bucket of cold water thrown over the party. the modernism becomes doctrinaire, and the emphasis of the bauhaus shifts to architecture away from the arts of living that might make the architecture palatable. initially this too is fun. there is a lovely film of slightly crazed women with radical haircuts showing off fixtures and fittings - built-in cupboards! sliding doors! reading lamps that you can waggle about! convertible sofa-beds! tubular steel chairs! best of all, a little flat sink in the living room where you can fill up a kettle, and plug it in under the taps [which are high above the sink to accommodate the kettle]. utterly suicidal. in the fullness of time most of this stuff, or stuff that looks just like it, went into production to become the new normal, so that the radical living room when seen in colour photos looks like 1970s habitat or 2000s ikea [apart from the deadly sink].

but then we see drawings for functionalist schools and 'socialist cities' that foreshadow the worst of postwar modernism. much of this can be blamed on the new head of the bauhaus, hannes meyer, who was a marxist obsessed with functionalism, a cuckoo pushing the more decorative birds out of the nest. he stated his own philosophy like this:

1. sex life, 2. sleeping habits, 3. pets, 4. gardening, 5. personal hygiene, 6. weather protection, 7. hygiene in the home, 8. car maintenance, 9. cooking, 10. heating, 11. exposure to the sun, 12. services - these are the only motives when building a house. We examine the daily routine of everyone who lives in the house and this gives us the functional diagram - the functional diagram and the economic programme are the determining principles of the building project.

by the time the gestapo extinguished the remnants of the school, the party was long over. the lingering impression, aided by those black and white photos, was of a school of severity. but for two-thirds of its life the byword of the bauhaus had not been functionalism, but celebration. perhaps this is best summed up by wassily kandinsky's small worlds, exploding with life and fun - racing cars and neon lights conjured out of forms that on examination are non-specific, like something from a dream - the shell-bursts of a first world war battlefield transmuted into party poppers raining streamers.

conran was boring

what the conran exhibition at the design musuem reveals is that conran is really rather conservative and a bit boring. he is often written up as the man who brought modern design to the british mass market - but the exhibition suggests that the strongest thread in his work is nostalgia. the bedrock of habitat from the start was country cottage victoriana and mediterranean rusticity - homely tradition with less ornament, old-fashioned teapots and tin mugs, wicker and stripped pine. even the modernism was nostalgic - the breuer chairs were a 20s-30s revival in synch with biba. the exhibition has a section for conran's 1990s-2000s restaurant career - each restaurant represented by a chair and a place setting. with one exception these all reference the late 19th-early 20th centuries, moderne and art deco - nostalgic again.

of course this was shrewd retailing - the mixture was perfect for baby-boom suburbanites just back from a greek holiday, sitting in their stripped pine kitchen dreaming of the good life. the first habitat shop also sold some braun products, which now seems strange because they represent a much more rigorous and technological modernity.

conran's breakthrough was in packaging - the whole look for your home in one place, down to the small details, room sets and the catalogue to show you how to put it together, piled high and flatpacked to take away. what ikea would do cheaper 20 years later [and kill habitat]. much of it was expensive, but there were plenty of cheap[ish] pieces which would turn up in everybody's home [a 'noguchi' lampshade, a chicken brick, a teapot]. by such osmosis the british were introduced to the duvet - maybe conran's biggest achievement is in changing how the british sleep. it's fair to say that half of the stuff in the catalogues was plain and rather dull, which represented conran's idea of simple good taste but doesn't have the wow factor that leads to revivals.

cut out the light

was at the coolest private view tonight at the scin gallery in old street. downstairs noma bar made cutout illustrations on a huge press, using wooden dies, and scribbled with his iphone torch on photoluminescent versions of the prints. upstairs jake dyson talked about his wonderfully engineered lighting products. also lots of strange and beautiful materials for buildings.

the horizontal arm of dyson's CSYS lamp is a heat sink that cools the LEDs, using the same technology that cools the chips in computers. the very efficient cooling extends the life of the LEDs to almost 40 years. the power consumption is 8.8W. the arm moves horizontally and vertically on a very smooth counterweighted mechanism. the lamp is fascinating in a way that's hard to photograph - you have to touch it and move it.

stop making sense

so, postmodernism exhibition. the first thing to say is that i am over-familiar with the subject matter and exhibition contents, having been an architecture student through the height of it in the late 70s and early 80s. in fact i could mount a miniature version of the show from my own possessions. it starts with a large architecture section, which undoubtedly touches all the bases in a comprehensive way, but this is the hardest part for me since it is all the stuff i know too well and have rejected.

i would have liked to see more blade runner and more early 80s japanese fashion - comme des garcons and yamamoto had a huge impact with clothes that seemed to violate western notions of tailoring and fine fabrics. the one comme outfit in the exhibition brought back pleasant memories of wearing mass-market rip-offs of that look - oversized black wool and cotton. i still like.

studio alchymia and memphis probably made the best artefacts of the period. memphis especially retains an optimism and strangeness, partly because it had deep roots in the 60s which are not made clear enough here. the stuff influenced-by is more disturbing - showing how this quickly became a meaningless luxury style for the new rich. there is a large section of these luxury objects [of course we're in the v&a], but the thing that would be good just here is the movie 'wall street', wherein we see the characters surrounded by pomo architecture and possessions - the setting for "greed is good". again, it isn't made clear enough *why* postmodernism was so easily co-opted by neo-liberalism.

being so familiar with the period, i can't help noticing what's missing. there isn't enough explanation of context at the beginning, before we are dumped into postmodern architecture. too little is said about the crisis of modernism in the late 60s, and the varying motivations of the first postmodernists in rejecting it and seeking new directions. little is said about the philosophical and societal underpinnings, semiotics and deconstruction, the effects of consumerism and the media - all the things that loosened the presumed ties between form and function, style and meaning. the exhibition shows us what, but isn't clear enough about why.

even within each section, there is not enough storyline - more a scattergun survey, entertaining but frustrating. postmodernism was highly referential, so what came from where and in what order matters. it would have been a good idea to provide a list of references on the label for each object.

the beginning also needs more pop-cultural pzazz, some sweeteners to get the punters into it. roxy music and biba, say, to introduce themes of historical revivalism and identity [self]construction. neither roxy nor biba appear here - no pop and fashion from before the 80s, so missing some key parts of the story.

so, worth a look, but i feel like i should make a supplementary set of notes for anyone i know who goes, to make better sense of it. a metanarrative, if you like ;)

textile field

'textile field' by ronan and erwan bouroullec, turns the raphael court at the V&A into a perfect example of the new church environment. except it's an art gallery, and commissioned for the london design festival. sadly today was the last day so you just have these pictures.

the field consists of padded fabric panels. you take off your shoes and walk, sit or lie on it, to contemplate the artworks. childern love it - they roll about and turn somersaults. it's an all-age experience, unless you're too old/stiff. "and how do you do teaching?", the church voices ask. well, the cartoons are all major biblical scenes with large print explanations beside, so you can unpick the iconography at your leisure. don't look too closely at the altarpiece though, it's gruesome.

so how about it, church people with budgets? get rid of those wooden chairs in the naves of most of our cathedrals, and do this so we can look at the vaults in comfort. i'm sure we could do some good adaptations for people of limited mobility. add some nice music, people will love it, as they did here.

five good things at tent london

my favourite things at this year's tent london:

1. flat frame systems' bicycle made from engineered wood. the frame can be in many different plywoods and veneered to your liking. cost of frame itself just under £1000 but add the other parts like this one and it's £2000 or so.

2. also with a touch of cycling, patrick laing's illustrated plate series 'i could just go to the shops' which celebrates making something unique rather than buying mass-produced [the 7th plate shows graham obree's 'old faithful' bicycle]. the plates themselves are wedgwood.

3. anthony hartley makes furniture featuring multicoloured layers of ply that remind me of late 60s italian pop design.

4. newcastle specialist joinery firm raskl have a table [probably not for sale] in the form of the iconic gateshead car park:

5. alison milner's stools can be taken apart and carried in a string bag. she is also showing beautiful vitreous enamelled spun steel bowls which cost a fortune - but are highly crafted and probably almost indestructible.

rothko exhibition

went to see the rothko exhibition at tate modern. had to buy this wonderful piece of kitsch:

the seagram murals [average dimensions a couple of metres or so] reduced to fridge magnets! someone has a sense of humour in the souvenir department.

also - the 'black on grey' series - the last works rothko made - are surely pictures of the moon. a room full of these is like being in moonbase alpha looking through windows onto the lunar surface. and they were painted in 1969-1970. consider:

how can he not have been aware of these photographs [which were on my bedroom wall in 1969]. it would be a great stunt to make a cutout of the earth, go into the exhibition, and suddenly hold it in front of the painting while a friend takes a photo.

naz & jane's pARTy

a couple of weeks ago naz and jane had a party that was also an art exhibition. they had filled their house with works by michael l radcliffe [the modern icons] and joanne vance [the portraits]

this is my video shot during the party:

naz and jane's pARTy from steve collins on Vimeo.

you can see mike at about 2:55 in the rectangular glasses explaining one of his paintings. his account is here and he shot a little pre-party video which i like so much i've added it here:

hyperbolic crochet coral reef

and now for something completely different. back in the summer, the hyperbolic crochet coral reef made an appearance in the hayward and the royal festival hall. my photos of the stuff in the festival hall - they wouldn't allow photographs of the hayward stuff by the original creators, which seems strange for a collaborative all-join-in project. the crochet techniques are discussed on the website - definitely one for the grace knitting group! also for the modular altar pieces - give everone a knitted coral, and the altar is a fabric reef to put them on.