Roll Up! Roll Up!

This Friday night's entertainment comes in the form of Buffet's Fire Eater.

Also, take up your seats for The Sword Swallower, The Trapeze Artists, The Giantess and The Elephant.

For all the fun of the circus, enter through here.

A Slippery Subject

Queues are forming for the David Hockney exhibition which is currently running at the Royal Academy. It is the first major exhibition of new landscape works by Hockney featuring intensely coloured paintings inspired by the Yorkshire landscape.

Here we have a print from our Hockney collection, where the artist is concerned not by colour, but by the transparency of this very particular imaginary landscape: The Glass Mountain.  It forms part of his series of illustrations for the Brothers Grimm fairy tales (dating 1969) - stories that had long enchanted him.

Peter Webb, author of Portrait of David Hockney (1988) tells us that “Hockney chose Old Rinkrank because it starts with the words ‘A King built a glass mountain’, and he was fascinated by the problem of drawing a glass mountain. He made various attempts, even smashing a sheet of glass and drawing the ragged pieces piled up in a big heap, before finding the solution: he depicted a tree and a house with a glass mountain in front which distorts their reflection.”
 

Hockney considers this series to be one of his major successes.


Follow the links to see how he dealt with Rapunzel and Rumpelstilzchen.

More than A to B

During the 1970s and 80s London Regional Transport commissioned a number of artists to help modernize and brighten up the underground system.

Paolozzi was chosen to design mosaics for the Tottenham Court Road tube station, to which he responded with what he called, an ‘alphabet’ of images, representing the vibe and culture of the surrounding area.

In this original coloured study we can see how Paolozzi has incorporated symbols for life above ground in his work. Seemingly abstract forms become music records, saxophone keys or electronic chips and all are fused together in a vibrant celebration of urban living.

To see more of Paolozzi’s studies, here’s your stop.

If, on the other hand, the tube makes you feel more like this...

Tube Train by David Kirk, 2010

...jump off here.

Work hard, played fast

Watch the video below to see Mike and the goldmark team in action...

Only 4 days to act now so Go, Go, Go.

POTS: LOOK and LISTEN

If pots could talk…

Well ours can. ‘Talking pots’ aims to bring you closer to individual pots by letting you hear about them straight from their makers’ mouths.  

This lidded box by Phil Rogers, however, would be pretty good at keeping a secret or two…

Look and listen here:

Self Branding

 Colin Self’s etching, Nesting Birds in an Oak Tree, is exactly what it says on the tin. Or is it? Self has incorporated a found object – in this case a plastic lid bearing the Nestlé logo – and, as is common of the Pop Art movement, transferred it from its known context into something new. But here lies another twist: the logo is in fact three nesting birds – a nod to the Nestlé family tree and the surname’s roots*. By placing the object within the tree, the Nestlé birds are plucked from the corporate environment of the world’s largest food group (+ its multiple branches) and reunited with their natural habitat in a surprising and visually striking way.

Other allusions to mass culture are found in Baked Beans, Republic of Maldives Tuna and The Waiter – the last of which is drypoint on microwave oven cardboard.

But Self's art is so much more than playful references. It was the late Richard Hamilton who called Self "the best draughtsman in England since William Blake."

Labels don’t get much better than that.

To find out more, have a look for yourself.  

 *'Nestlé' meaning a small bird's nest in a southern German dialect.

SmArt Casual

"Cultural Ties" was a truly international project inviting 80 artists from around the world to showcase their diverse styles on one unifying medium – the tie. The scheme was devised by London art dealer Kapil Jariwala between 1998 and 2000 resulting in a colourful range of signed, limited edition ties, produced by Italian manufacturers in the beautiful silk capital of Como.

Nothing is conventional about these ties, whether it’s John Hoyland’s vibrant departure from pinstripes, John Mclean’s fun take on neck wear (left), or Tom Philip’s statement piece bearing the words: a tie is culture, or read differently, is culture a tie?

Each of the ties comes in an acrylic box which can be easily stored as a collector’s item, or mounted on the wall. Alternatively, it’s a sure-fire way to brighten up a Monday morning.  

Click here for our tie rack and be suitably impressed.

 

Hommage to Searle

Newspapers have been paying tribute to illustrator Ronald Searle who died this week aged 91. His long and prolific career ranged from political satire to his renowned cartoon creation: the St Trinian’s schoolgirls. He contributed to a wide variety of magazines, including Punch and the New Yorker.  

The two Searle prints we have in stock are from his Hommage to Toulouse Lautrec (pic 1 and pic 2) – both pieces humorously portraying the vertically-challenged artist, famous for his representation of late 19th-century Parisian nightlife.

Looking at these, it’s easy to see why Searle will be remembered for his talented draughtsmanship and for his delightful, insightful wit.  

Read the Guardian obituary here.

The Year in Sport (1897)

2012 -  A big year for sport.

Here we have William Nicholson’s Almanac of Twelve Sports, each month represented by a different activity.

Although archery in a crinoline dress (Miss July) and golf in a top hat (Mr October) display Nicholson’s skill in depicting the customs and fashion of his own times, his simplified forms and clever compositions have a lasting freshness which make them so appealing today.

Whistler said of Nicholson’s work: ‘This art of leaving out is proof of the acquaintance with the art of putting in. [He] states the few essential facts, and makes all else accessory.’

Just goes to show that in art at least, 'out' can often score more points than 'in'.

Click here to see the individual months. And here to see more of Nicholson's prints.