Gert + Uwe Tobias

Just returned from a really inspiring visit to the Whitechapel Gallery. I wasn't familiar with the work of these twin brothers before, but absolutely love their out-sized woodcut prints and collages which mix hybrids of human/animal/plant and ceramic/furniture forms. Love the textures of the print, and the bright colours on dark backgrounds. Their collages are really interesting also, a mixture of abstract, textured backgrounds with Victorian ephemera collaged on top. Reminiscent of the work of both Peter Blake and Sara Fanelli. 

I also love their typewriter drawings, which is an idea I've seen used by other artists such as Carl Andre, Apollinaire and concrete poetry artists of the 1960s.

Not so successful in my opinion are their attempts at sculpture which are also on display, but nevertheless this was a really inspiring show. So glad I managed to catch it before it closes this week.

Gert + Uwe Tobias, Whitechapel Gallery, London E1

Dragonflies

Dragonflies are my new current obsession. This was inspired by looking at Art Nouveau jewellery at both the V&A Museum, and also the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, both of which house stunning collections of jewellery in specially designed galleries. The main inspiration however, was the stunning brooch above, created by Rene Lalique. It is called "Dragonfly Woman Corsage" (1897-1898) and is in the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It captures perfectly the mythology of the dragonfly as well as the fragility, and beautiful irridescent colouring of these wonderful insects. It also embodies themes characteristic of the Art Nouveau movement such as Nature, eroticism and metamorphosis as well as the use of opulent materials.

Dragonflies have a bad reputation in mythology and they are called the "Devil's Darners" as well as "Water Witches" (Lalique may well have had the latter term in mind when designing the femme fatale/dragonfly hybrid in the above brooch). They were said to sew shut the eyes and ears of children who misbehave, pick out human eyes, and weigh the souls of those whose heads they flew around and then bring injury to them.

It's not all bad news for the poor dragonfly however, as they are revered in China and Japan as holy insects and they also symbolise victory in battle. 

Depictions of dragonflies in the arts and crafts of the Art Nouveau movement perfectly show off the variety of colours in dragonflies and their irridescent glow. Compare the bejewelled versions above to the natural versions below.

My new series began with "Sonar" (below) in which I'm trying to emulate the jewel-like colours of the dragonfly bodies. "Echo" is a meditative all-white piece where the dragonflies are laid out in a similar pattern to "Sonar". More pictures of other designs to come soon.

Crucifix

Just before Easter (quite appropriately), I was commissioned to create this Crucifix from white paper butterflies for a client's daughter who is soon to recieve her first Holy Communion. I really enjoyed this commission, not least because it brought back memories of when I also recieved my first Holy Communion as a child. 

The other reason I enjoyed creating this piece is because the client understood something of butterfly mythology and their Christian symbolism. The butterfly has long been a symbol of the Christian story of the resurrection, and a parallel of Jesus' life. The butterfly starts out living an earthly life as a caterpillar before disappearing into a cocoon and appears dead, (Jesus entombed), but emerges later, transfomed, (Jesus resurrected), far more beautiful and powerful than before.  

The Grosvenor School at Bonhams

Last week at Bonhams auction house, Old Bond Street, London, there was a major sale of linocut prints from the 1920's and 30's of the Grosvenor School and work from other avant-garde printmakers from the same period. I first discovered these amazing prints at the Redfern Gallery on Cork street some years ago when I first moved to London, and loved the power of their graphic imagery instantly.
  

 
The Grosvenor School of Modern Art was established in 1925 at 33 Warwick Square in London. The aim of the school was for students to explore contemporary themes and work in new or progressive media. The term Grosvenor School is used nowadays to denote the group of artists and printmakers associated with the school who helped establish the colour linocut in Britain. The course tutor (1926-1933) was Claude Flight who was aware of the major art movements in Paris and advocated the use of the colour linocut as a progressive form of image making in Britain. The modernist subject matter of Grosvenor school prints was fairly notorious in the 1930's as they  were so different in look and feel to the more traditional etchings of the time.

The main influence on the group was the work of the Italian Futurist movement. The Italian Futurist movement developed in 1909. They focused on the dynamic, energetic violence of modern city life. Their aim in particular was to emphasise the power, force and motion of machinery combined with the contemporary fascination for speed whilst denouncing the 'static' art of the past. The driving force behind the movement was the poet FT Marinetti.
I absolutely love the process of linocutting, being a linocutter, and collector of linocuts, in a modest way, myself. The prints of the Grosvenor School are dynamic, beautiful and of their time, though sadly, now out of their original remit, of being affordable to the average person. 
Linocutting is a printmaking  process that is gradually coming back into fashion through the work of artists such as, Edward Bawden, (and his son Richard), Gary Hume and Angie Lewin. There are other contemporary linocutters who are using the work of the Grosvenor School printmakers as a more obvious inspiration for their work, such as Gail Brodholt, and Paul Cleden. The recent sale at Bonhams, saw sales of Grosvenor School linoprints reach eye watering prices as demonstrated below. The main artists of the Grosvenor School were:-

Claude Flight:

Street Singers print sold for £79,250

  Cyril Power:

Whence and Whither print sold for £97,250

Tube Station, sold for £61,250

Speed Trial, (which the seller bought for £20 originally), sold for £73, 250


Sybil Andrews:

Speedway, sold for £79, 250

The Winch, sold for £22,500

Sledgehammer, sold for £27, 500

Racing, sold for £46, 850

Other artists considered minor in the Grosvenor School canon (Ethel Spowers, Leonard Beaumont, Ursula Fooks), still achieved respectable prices at the sale also. A further selection of these wonderful, dynamic prints can also be seen at:- Osbourne Samuel Gallery, 23a Bruton St. W1J 6QG, in a show entitled: The Cutting Edge of Modernity: Grosvenor School Linocuts, April 11th - May 11th.
  

160 Pieces of Gold

I was asked to make a companion piece, similar to the large silver Periphery commission that I completed earlier this year, by the Pond Gallery. I decided to make this new piece with gold leaf, so set about preparing and gilding the paper, (which takes on a lovely leathery texture when gilded), then set about cutting out another 160 Sweet Potato Acraea butterfly shapes. Once all of the butterflies were cut, they were meticulously arranged in the circles and then glued into place. It was a labour of love and the framed finished piece measures just under 1 metre square. It is available to view and purchase at the Pond Gallery.

Periphery (Gold) 2013

Becoming Picasso Paris 1901

To the Courtauld, once again to see Becoming Picasso Paris 1901. A small but very interesting show focusing on the year and exhibition in which Picasso broke through to become a major force in the Parisian art scene at just 19 years of age. All of the paintings on display are from that year, and it is interesting to see the many stylistic changes that his art took in just that one single year. From the highly coloured pieces created with loose brushstrokes, which pay homage to his contemporaries of the time, (Lautrec, Degas, and Van Gogh), to the heavily outlined pieces with muted colours that mark the beginning of his Blue Period, brought on by the death of his poet friend Casagemas.

This was also the year that he started to sign his work with the recognisable Picasso signature. Some of the paintings are weak, as he was so prolific that he completed no less than 64 paintings, (sometimes as many as three in one day!), in preparation for the exhibition at the studio of Ambroise Vollard. Others though are now recognised as early masterpieces, where he began to develop his his own vision and a career of constant stylistic experimentation.

 

Although the exhibition at Vollard's was both a critical and commercial success, the stylistic shift to a blue palette and more profound, sombre subject matter was not what collectors wanted, so at the end of 1901 he was forced to return to his parents house in Barcelona virtually penniless.

This exhibition offers a great chance to get up close to some of his famous early paintings that are usually hidden in private collections, or exhibited in museums overseas. Really enjoyable exhibition, my favourites were the two powerful self-portraits, and the pensive harlequin paintings. Hope to return before it closes in May.

Becoming Picasso Paris 1901, The Courtauld Gallery,Somerset House, Strand, London

Ravilious Submarine

Finally recieved my copy of this book. I have seen original copies of this series of lithographs at various art fairs for years, and have coveted them because they are so beautifully drawn and coloured but they are well out of my price range. I now have the next best thing in the form of this well designed, affordable book. Followers of this blog will know that I have been a fan of the work of Bawden and Ravilious for the longest time, and this book charts Ravilious' second venture into the art of lithography, (his first being the book High Street, which was reprinted last year).

The Submarine Dream lithographs were made in the winter of 1940-1 whilst Ravilious was a war artist, and are ten images of submariners at work and rest aboard the submersibles. Rather than handing over the images to a master printer to produce, Ravilious made them himself, and the individual prints vary widely across the edition to show how he subtly altered each of the images. As a result of this altering whilst printing the lithographs, each print has the status of an original piece of art rather than a reproduction.

There was a an interest in auto-lithography among British artists in the mid 20th century, and it is a process that faithfully reproduces, and in some cases enhances the the line and texture of the original artwork. The auto-lithography process was used widely to good effect in children's illustrated books, the School Print and Shell advertising poster series,  as well as London Underground posters of the period. Other fine exponents of the process whose work I particularly admire are the artists/illustrators Barnett Freedman, Clarke Hutton and Kathleen Hale.

It's funny to think how when Ravilious' beautiful watercolours were exhibited at the National Gallery, he was criticised as a war artist as it was thought that he was more concerned with capturing the effects of the landscape and light, rather than the human drama of war. Ravilious was posted onto the submarine HMS Dolphin, which set sail from Gosport in the summer of 1940, and found in the confines of the submarine the perfect subject matter for his work.

The resulting lithographs were printed by Cowell's of Ipswich, as the Curwen Press in the east end of London had been bombed, and sold by the Leicester Gallery. It is not known how many sets of the edition were printed because of the difficulties of doing so during the war.

I think the images of Submarine Dream are beautifully designed and capture perfectly the claustrophobic conditions and boredom the submariners would have had to put up with on a daily basis. I also think that despite their age they still remain fresh and 'modern' looking. The book also contains reproductions of Ravilious' little seen original sketches for the series, many of which are in the National Maritime Museum archive.

 

 Ravilious Submarine is published by Mainstone Press