Camerashake

Kolbe

2012-01-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

This lovely lady was in an otherwise rather dry exhibition of German prints at the British Museum. I like her hat, and her muscularity (reminds me of the Michelangelo paintings of women on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who are basically just blokes with boobs.) And the fact that she is naked by the river for no apparent reason. Just shows, the most unpromising exhibition can have surprises.

By an master printmaker & etcher called Kolbe of quite staggering technical skill.

My art shows of the year

2012-01-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

Yes yes, it's another end of the year list. It helps me to remember what I've seen, otherwise it's all a blur.

Wild Thing - Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill at the RA
Can't stand Gill's work, not just because he was a horrible human being, but I loved Gaudier-Brzeska who was so young and talented (tragically killed in WW1 early on) and seeing Epstein's Rock Drill was breath-taking. I loved that this sculpture had a story too - mechanistic and all-powerful before the war, and then mutilated and cut down to size afterwards.

Degas at the Royal Academy, bien sûr. When you see his art replicated on posters and postcards it tends to look a bit anodyne and pretty-pretty. When you see it live, it is powerful. He was so innovative, this show was all about painting movement, but there is something very tender and sympathetic about his pictures of women. If you haven't ever seen it, go and check out the pastel picture in the National Gallery of the woman drying her back after a bath, it will knock your socks off.

OH MY GOD I got to see Egon Schiele, hero of my youth, nude drawings in a tiny gallery in Bond Street. They didn't take card payments for the catalogue though, boo. * Very sexy, very exquisite draughtsmanship. If I'd had a few thousand quid knocking around I would definitely have bought one. * though you can download a colour pdf of it from the site, which is very generous.

Ghosts of Gone Birds at the Rochelle School. Beautiful, varied exhibition of many artists, on the theme of extinction. Really saying something.

Gerhard Richter at the Tate Modern. So analytical, so intellectual, but still somehow full of emotion. The paintings of 9/11... There's just something about his work. And how does he do that blurry thing? How?

Toulouse Lautrec (and Jane Avril) at the Courtauld. God, this was a great year for seeing the work of my heroes live and direct. Plus from a printmaking point of view it was fascinating and inspiring, as he did so much lithography and graphic style work.

Private Eye 50 years at the V&A - one tiny room of brilliant cartoonists and covers, I loved the reconstruction of the editor's desk piled up with stuff.

Swoon, Murmuration at the Black Rat Press. An alive artist to admire, hurrah. (My photos here.) Though it is strange to see her work in gallery, it suits the streets better.

Left me cold...

Postmodernism at the V&A. Maybe appropriately for the subject, this was a bit of a nothing exhibition. They should have just stuck with the clothes and the graphic design.

A couple of shows at the Saatchi Gallery. There's good, bad and indifferent there, but it's an experience similar to going around Tesco's.

My tips for this year:

Hockney at the RA.

David Shrigley at the Hayward

Picasso at Tate Britain

The Mystery of Appearance at Haunch of Venison - Bacon, Auerbach, Freud, Hockney, etc etc...

And coming soon... ELP at the V&A and the Westfield in Stratford. Watch this space...

Hockney & the healing powers of art

2011-12-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

Listening to an interview with Hockney on Radio 4 got me thinking, it's not just about the paintings, or the artist, but the memories and experiences you have with them over time.

(By the way, can't wait for the retrospective this year. The RA does have unmissable shows, even if it's full of pushy, posh old ladies with sharp elbows and always too packed to see the work properly. I am lucky enough to have a friend who works there and wafts me past the queues - the queue for the Degas exhibition this year stretched right across the courtyard all the way back to Piccadilly. She just walked me straight in.)

He is a great artist who seems to have also led a great life. And deservedly so, he seems like a lovely man. He's done it all, lived a life of full on hedonism in California, reinvented and innovated his technique constantly, escaped the closet and the trap of a small town to go to art school in London and be himself, had passionate affairs, including a platonic affair with his best mate's wife and muse (who he is still close friends with today, this is the sign of a nice loyal man) been close to his family and returned to his roots in the later years. He's like the anti-Lucien Freud. I know Freud was a genius. He was probably the best painter we've ever had. But I'd rather have a Hockney on my wall. (I did have Pear Tree Drive on my wall for a long time.)

Pear Tree Drive, one of his famous polaroid pictures.

He's done it all, he's a beautiful draughtsman, he's done pop art, printmaking, theatre design, photography, portraiture, he's written art history books. He's not afraid to use new technology. I can't wait to see these huge landscape pictures in the retrospective. Most of all, he's extravagantly gifted, but unlike some he's led a life as an artist full of acclaim and followed his own desires and made a success of it. He hasn't had to lose out on relationships or making a living through pursuing art. Lucky, lucky, lucky bastard.

Anyway, one reason I'm so fond of him is because of the memories I associate with the art. We used to always visit Mr & Mrs Clark and Percy in the Tate, though I wasn't ever sure I liked it, but it had a definite atmosphere & prescence (now I think I didn't like it because actually there is tension inbuilt into the picture, I was just too young to trust my instincts.)

There used to be a great shop in Neal Street called the Postcard Shop, this was the beginning of an education in art history.
Postcards were stacked in little alphabetical pigeon holes, you could buy postcards of every artist, we used to buy all the Hockney Californian swimming pools and pin them up in our teenage bedrooms and dream of living in a different, glamorous climate.

And later on he was part of our twentieth century history of art A level syllabus. But mostly the memories are of a trip to his gallery in Saltaire.

Once we went on a roadtrip to visit our friends in Leeds. I was ill with the worst cough in the world that refused to go and Emily was in the midst of major depression. She'd just moved in with me from having been in a semi-squat (they'd paid rent to a shadowy landlord but it was in a kind of warehouse with no heating, no interior walls and no front door - they'd had to climb in through the window.) Her flatmate had skipped out without paying his half of the rent and she'd had to do a moonlight flit. When she'd moved in with me to a place with central heating and an actual front door, it was like she'd been able to let her guard down and the depression had landed on her. I remember the trip to our friends in Leeds as being a healing one. I think she felt better just by being with friends who knew how she was feeling and didn't judge. We just sat around with Em and Sean and ate and played with the cats and went on healthy country walks.

We did a day trip to Whitby for fish and chips and one day when Em was at work, Sean drove us to Saltaire. I was taking a strong cough medicine and Sean, it turned out, was a maniacal driver.

On the way to Saltaire. Hockney did a painting of this very road.

By the time we arrived I had to spend 10 minutes hoicking up the cough medicine in the carpark whilst Emily patted my back and held my hair out the way. But Saltaire was a beautiful place, and the Hockney museum was fabulous.

Here is a picture of us in the museum cafe, Salt's Diner. The menu has a picture Hockney drew of his little dachshund on it.

By the end of the week she was on the mend. I think the healing powers of art might have helped too. I'll always remember this trip.

Brossa

2011-01-25T14:37:00.001-08:00

Latest crush (in the latest post in a sequence of posts that no one else would ever be interested in) is Joan Brossa.

Em and I tracked down his museum in Barcelona. He was a Catalan artist and writer, all about typography, visual puns, poetry, cabaret, theatre, cinema, magic & sleight of hand And fiercely keeping Catalan alive during the Franco years, when the fascists tried their best to stamp Catalan out entirely. (He kind of makes me sorry that I totally dissed and pooh-poohed Catalan for the two years I lived in Catalunya. Because otherwise I could understand his writing.)

You don't need Catalan to understand his sculptures and graphics though.

Swoon

2011-01-16T12:25:00.001-08:00

Swoon couple
Originally uploaded by Slaminsky

January blues. What better to cheer you up than some Art? Art never lets you down. Going to start posting here again, and sharing the artists I love.

This is a blurry photo I took of Swoon's work, at the Black Rat gallery in London. It is strange seeing her work in a gallery setting, she started off pasting up her work in the streets in Brooklyn, before she got spotted by Deitch in New York, and ended up getting a solo show there (installation pictures here and here - click and marvel) and being collected by the Museum of Modern Art and all. I like her Expressionist style.

Not only is she ridiculously extravagantly talented, but she's also socially engaged, setting up the amazing Switchback Sisters project where a group of people made a boat out of junk and sailed it down the Hudson River, having events and parties along the way, to publicise issues about recycling.

She's done work for Haiti and I think is currently setting up an artists' project to help regenerate a recession-hit city in the States. All power to her elbow.

DIY America Ep #2 - Swoon from WKEntertainment on Vimeo.

Evan Hecox

2011-01-09T23:08:00.000-08:00

I forget about this blog. Hello, little blog.

This is Colorado artist Evan Hecox. I love his work. More here.

The Cabinet Maker's Granddaughter

2009-09-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

So what would you like to do? she says patiently.

I'd like to listen to the radio and make things out of wood all day. That's what I want to do. And not have to talk to anyone or go to another bullshit management-speak meeting ever again.

I like wood. I've got old wooden tables, wooden boxes, bits and pieces from Brick Lane, secondhand shops, fleamarkets... I wish now I'd bought the wooden hatmakers' head covered in pins I saw in Colombia Road, it looked like a voodoo artefact or some spooky modern sculpture, but it weighed a ton.

It's pure fantasy though, despite the fact that I'm a cabinet maker's granddaughter, the last time I did any woodwork was in 1983, when I was 12. I'd just left a girl's school (due to family wranglings) and gone to the local mixed comprehensive.

The woodwork teacher was a big, bluff grey bloke, and I was a cack-handed clumsy ex-private schoolgirl. For some reason we got on like a house on fire. The project he set was making an ashtray - think about that - an ashtray, made out of wood. My ashtray was pretty rubbish, as I'm not so good with my hands. But but but... look what I found here. They need carpenters (and wheelwrights, and blacksmiths) and they offer bursaries.

Maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel yet.

I'd like to make something like this too - as made by the Robots, in Brighton.

Moustache Bar

2009-08-29T03:01:00.001-07:00

2009-08-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Crows

2009-08-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

fox and bear

2009-08-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Parisian graffitti

2008-11-09T08:53:00.001-08:00

Two poppies

2008-06-08T08:25:00.001-07:00

Right in the middle of inner city London (Arnold Circus)

Toilet graffitti

2008-06-07T06:49:00.001-07:00

Toilet graffitti
Originally uploaded by Slaminsky

Thinking of setting up a group on Flickr just for toilet graffitti...

Live East Die Young

2008-04-20T13:15:00.001-07:00

Live East Die Young
Originally uploaded by Slaminsky

My street art fandom is getting a bit obsessive. It's starting to take over.

But of all the photos I've taken over the last few years, this one has got to be my absolute favourite. If a picture paints a thousand words...

Absolute genius. I salute you, unknown artist...

Is it a sperm...?

2008-02-03T09:48:00.001-08:00

currently appearing all around Tower Hamlets...

Skating, Somerset House

2007-12-08T17:05:00.001-08:00

Skating in Somerset House

2007-12-08T17:04:00.001-08:00

Luddite

2007-10-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

Just discovered some very basic photo software which I've had since I first got this computer, was playing around with it and lo! It has opened up a whole new world.

1. Photo unenhanced, looking a bit pale and anaemic.
2. Photo after jiggery-pokery, much closer to what I saw in my head when I snapped.

*Sigh* Guess I'm going to have to get proficient with Photoshop after all. There's no going back...
1.

2.

When Roobarb Made A Spike

2007-10-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

Peerless Pictures

2007-08-25T10:44:00.001-07:00

Flyer

2007-08-11T03:37:00.000-07:00

Some day, I will make it to the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Berlin

2007-07-27T14:35:00.001-07:00

Is it art? No, it is a children's playground.

Little worlds

2007-06-09T11:16:00.001-07:00

Art lovers

2007-05-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

In Marroccos

2007-05-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Sculpture

2007-04-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

It's a skateboarder. Can't you tell?

I'm so proud!

Cafe Moskau

2007-04-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

This flyer is by the fantastic Manga style graphic design firm, Rost, whose designs are happily available to order online.

Velvet

2007-03-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

neck detail - check out the rhinestones

Could not convince myself that I'd ever have occasion to wear a floor-length red velvet dress (with appliqued rhinestones on the neck), but had to take a photo of it in Beyond Retro just to remember it by.

Adios, dress...

Penguin

2007-03-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

You have to love old Penguins. They don't make covers like this anymore. Sometimes I buy them just for the covers, and have found some good books this way.

(When one of the hostages in Lebanon, maybe Brian Keenan or Terry Waite, was being held, their captors brought them books, but they weren't very good ones - so they drew a symbol of a penguin and said 'See if you can bring me one with this on' - knowing it would be a guarantee of quality.)

Postcard

2007-03-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

Colour wheels

2007-03-10T03:52:00.002-08:00

They appeared one day off the Roman Road, with no explanation. The next day, they were gone...

old school shop front

2007-03-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year lantern

2007-02-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Red for good luck

Shoot London

2007-02-12T09:10:00.000-08:00