Lisbeth Zwerger - Leonce and Lena

Illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger has won almost every accolade that can be awarded to an illustrator, and is one of my favourites in the genre of children's book illustration. I was excited then to have her latest book arrive on my doorstep recently. Leonce and Lena is the comic story of two royals - Prince Leonce, and Princess Lena, and adapted from the well-known play by Georg Buchner. It was written in 1836 and is like a Shakespearian tale of mistaken identity in which the two main characters are due to wed, but are unaware that it is to each other, and how they eventually fall in love and their true identities are revealed.

It is good to see Zwerger's work develop with the inclusion of collage in this and the last few books that she has published. The use of patterned and marbled papers adds a nice textural element to her beautiful watercolour illustrations. A welcome addition to my collection.

Lisbeth Zwerger - Leonce and Lena

NorthSouth Books

Mark Shields: Host

Mark Shields is one of my favourite contemporary artists, and it's always a joy to go to a new show of his work to see which direction his art has taken since his last exhibition. His work is in a state of constant evolution and it is interesting to see the stylistic shifts his work has taken since his first exhibition at the Grosvenor gallery which I saw a long time ago as a student, to his new work currently on show there. Constants appears to be an underlying thread of spirituality, narrative, and a love of the human figure.

For this new exhibition (Host),which is split across two galleries, Shields has completed a set of 99 paintings of a single figure on muslin, each 5ft by 2ft in size. Shields looks as though he has been channeling the spirit of Roualt and Leger in some of the paintings and I feel that the figures seem restricted by the size imposed on them. It would have been interesting to see some of the figures break out of their confined, restricted format and developed into larger scale narrative compositions like in some of his previous work. They are of archetypes and seemed to me like figures adapted from Tarot cards, or Byzantine altar-cloths.

Shields states of this new series - "In early 2012 I had been combining collage and paint and ended up sticking patches of muslin over the paintings to allow quick changes to be made. The texture reminded me of the painted linen shrouds from Egypt, and I decided to work directly onto roughly cut muslin fragments with diluted oil paint. 

The ghosts and traces of disintegrating, overlaid images made me think of the image as a residue of an almost ritual act rather than as the result of mere picture-making. This and perhaps associations with the Turin shroud and embroidered Byzantine altar-cloths led to the painting of full scale figures on narrow sections of cloth. It seemed natural that there should be a large number of these and that the number should be incomplete to evoke a perpetual search. 

 
For me they seemed to document moments of doubt, anxiety, revelation, gratitude and so on. A primitive and emblematic 'Host' of witnesses having their origins in real life, but interlaced with literary, cultural and historical references of personal resonance. I thought of them almost as icons acting as go-betweens or entry points to invisible realities".

Host: Recent Paintings by Mark Shields

14 February - 7 March 2014

Grosvenor Gallery, 21 Ryder Street, London SW1
&

Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1

Jean Paul Gaultier: Butterfly Burlesque

Another season, another Butterfly themed collection floats down the catwalk, this time courtesy of one time fashion 'enfant terrible' Jean Paul Gaultier for his Spring/Summer 2014 Haute Couture collection. He had already used a butterfly motif on prints in one of his collections from last year, but he has really gone all out with the theme in this collection recently showcased in Paris.

Gaultier was apparently inspired to create the collection after a visit to London and seeing mounted butterflies in a shop. "I was thinking about colours and fabrics and what they could be, and then I kept seeing the shape (of the butterfly), and saw that it could be a body - everything was like a dress". Click on the pictures below to see this demonstrated in detail. Some of the designs seem a little kitsch, I guess this is for maximum impact on the catwalk, but they are a real testament to the skills required of dressmakers in haute couture.

Gaultier does admit though, (as I guess everybody would who works with butterflies), that beautiful as his designs are, they could not compete with the real things and Nature. "What's incredible are these blue butterflies, they're almost metallic blue and then on the back they're almost leopard. It's stunning!"

  

 

For the last part of  his show Gaultier gave the models the title of "Papillons de Paris", and dressed them to reflect the glamorous show girls of Parisian nightlife who add spice to such nightspots as the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere.

 

 

The showstopping finale of the show featured the ultimate showgirl - the lovely Miss Dita Von Teese in a stunning Morpho butterfly corset dress created to accentuate and complement her unbelievably tiny 22 inch waist. Lovely detail in the last picture below.

John Craxton RA: A World of Private Mystery

I had been eager to see this exhibition, as the last time there had been a major survey of Craxton's work was in 1967 at the Whitechapel Gallery. I had seen two of his paintings at Tate Britain fairly recently and was curious to see more.

Craxton was born into a musical family and was mostly self-taught as an artist. Formative influences on his art were the work of Picasso, (he encountered Guernica, which was to remain a profound influence on his style of painting throughout his career), Fernand Leger, Miro and Cubism. He became friends with Graham Sutherland and Lucian Freud and lived with the latter for a period. It was though, a visit to Poros in 1946 and the quality of light, and life of the fishermen, goatherds and sailors there, that became the main focus and subject matter of his painting.

His early work was influenced by that of the Surrealists, William Blake and Samuel Palmer, and consists of solitary youths in pastoral settings such as Shepherd and Rocks, (1943) above, which has a mystical quality about it, and reminds me of the spirit of the work of Cecil Collins. Most people will probably be familiar with Craxton's work through the series of book jacket designs that he illustrated for the author Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Craxton's particular style of painting lends itself well to illustration, and also textile design, as is seen in the piece below which was a tapestry commissioned by Edinburgh University. It is a really good example of Craxton's love of colour and mark-making and was influenced by Byzantine mosaics he'd encountered on the Greek islands.

The two favourite pieces of mine from the exhibition however were:-

This piece 4 Figures in a Landscape (1950-1) above, which shows his a mastery of composition, line and tone. And Reclining Figure with Asphodels, (1983-4), below, where Craxton again returns to the theme of a solitary figure in the landscape, but where Craxton's mature style is less reliant on the influences of Picasso and Cubism, and again displays his love of colour and nature.

There are also a variety of drawings and personal photographs on display in the exhibition. I enjoyed this show as it was a bright blast of Mediterranean sunshine on a wintry Cambridge morning. The walls of the exhibition space reflect this as they are painted a nice sunshine yellow and complement the vivid colours of the Med reflected in Craxton's paintings. Well worth a visit.

A World of Private Mystery: John Craxton RA (1922 - 2009), continues at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, until 21st April.

Stanley Spencer: Heaven In A Hell Of War

Portrait of Spencer by Henry Lamb

I thought I'd get away with seeing this exhibition alone whilst everybody was out of London for the Christmas break, but it was still hopelessly crowded. Apparently it is only the second time that these murals have ever been shown in London, (the last time was 33 years ago), so it's no wonder the exhibition was so well attended. I shall have to try to sneak back now everybody has returned to work for a better, unobstructed view.

These mural paintings by Stanley Spencer are taken from the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire, and are Spencer's depiction of his wartime experiences. They were commissioned by John Louis and Mary Behrend to honour the forgotten dead of the First World War. The murals have been lent out for exhibition whilst the chapel at Sandham is undergoing renovation work.  

There are 17 mural paintings on show at Somerset House and a projection of the altar piece which cannot travel because it is permanently attached to the chapel wall at Sandham. This series of paintings took six years to complete and were finished in 1932. There are also some interesting paintings by Spencer's friend and fellow artist Henry Lamb such as the portrait of Spencer (top).

I like that in a similar vision to Eric Ravilious, Spencer chooses not to depict the horrors of combat, and instead focuses on the domestic and small incidences of life during wartime when he was both a hospital orderly here at Beaufort Military Hospital, Bristol, and also a soldier abroad on the front at Salonika. I really like Spencer's painting technique, and the unusual viewpoints adopted in the murals, as well as the way he contorts the figures to fit into the picture planes.

 

 

Stanley Spencer: Heaven In A Hell Of War continues until the 26th January 2014
Terrace Rooms, South Wing, Somerset House, London

Andy Warhol for Dior

Art/Fashion collaborations seem to be quite the thing now. The Alexander McQueen/Damien Hirst skull scarf collaboration produced some great results, and now Dior are using Andy Warhol's early shoe drawings to good effect also. I was fortunate enough recently to be able to see a private collection of Warhol's early illustrative shoe drawings. It was great to be able to get up close and examine them and his drawing technique first-hand, and in relative privacy. His blobby, linear drawing style was unique at the time, and the use of butterflies quite whimsical.

Raf Simons and the design team at Dior have realised the beauty of Warhol's early shoe drawings, and with the permission of the Warhol Foundation, put them to use decorating a series of Dior handbags and dresses for their A/W 2013 collection. It is not the first time that Simons has sought inspiration from artists, as previous collections have seen him using the work of artists from the Bauhaus movement as well as that of Picasso and Roualt. I really like the Butterfly Shoe illustration hand-bag and clutch, and think it is a particularly apt use of the art/fashion collaboration considering the drawings were originally commissioned for Harper's Bazaar fashion magazine in the 1950s.

The attention to detail on the dress below is pretty amazing. The designers and technicians have done a fantastic job of translating Warhol's whimsical butterfly imagery, and blobby line drawing technique into the textile medium with the use of sequins and beads.