Design Museum - Tate Modern (Between Cinema & Hard Place)-Royal Academy (Apocalypse)

Anyway.....we all met on the South Bank......at the Design Museum. Particularly to visit Buckminster Fuller Exhibition. How interesting......a brilliant unstoppable designer...... a dismal business failure. But his work was fascinating never-the-less. His original drawings.....his car.....houses.....and his only real success...."the domes" Definitely a "one off" person.

We walked from there, pub lunch in-between, to the Tate Modern. Our Tutor took us to the special exhibition "Between Cinema and Hard Place" This was way out for me, we dwelt on a Matthew Barney installation. A NY artist into his "Cremaster" series of videos. This one was OTTOshaft......lol, still digesting it !!!! but quite bizarre.

Cornelia Parker's exploded shed re-assemblage.......now that was logical and made a real interest, suspended like in the midst of an explosion. I commented you could make many many Joseph Cornell's boxes from this lot of junk, lol.

And so this one went on......Tatsuo Miyajima's installation from LED counters...........Jeff Wall's Cibachrome transparencies.......Rachael Whitbread, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, and a few more.

Anyway, I cut loose on my own at 4pm, the RA is open until 10pm on Fridays and I was legging it there. On the way out I sneaked a look at the general Tate Modern. I must go again on my own. I loved looking at two of George Brache's traditional early cubist paintings. To see my first paintings of the day was wonderful !!!!!!

Anyway.......I got to the RA.......APOCALYPSE

You get Gregor Schneider in your face as you enter through a maze of small entrances and dead ends you have to crawl through, then his video......of his own house......where he has perverted the normality with walls within walls.......claustophobia......making the voyeur a victim.

Luc Tuymans paintings, 8 of them, promoting aggression and violence.......but very subtle.....you would never guess unless you read the meanings.

Cattalan.......the stricken pope........should be destined for Madame Taussaud's waxworks imo. They find a fine description about this.....shock and daring, etc.

Mariko Mori.....Dream Temple......a whole gallery. There was a queue to see the meditation space and the vitual reality video inside. The underside of the temple roof looked awful, it lost the milky glass effect seeing it all joined together imo.

Mike Kelly.......video and the video set, with a bed (not disimilar to Emin's)......boring.

Wolfgang Tillmans.....10 photos (the fullest gallery)......some real nice ones. Still Life, Tel Aviv the best imo.

Chris Cunningham.....the porno video. Not a lot......They harked back in the catalogue to the Renaissance, Michelangelo, and the PRB. But in essence it was a nude punch up between two lovers and a re-union by making love.........it happens every day, doesn't it? One girl from College whom I re-met there found it shocking !! But she would find a good boxing match with a bit of blood the same no doubt.

Daren Almond......about Auschwitz, the effect it had on him. The exhibition was two bus shelters which are going on to Auschwitz after this exibition to replace the two original ones Almond nicked for an exhibition in Berlin. I honestly walked through this room the first time without realising these two bus shelters were in the exhibition.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster.......a room of garbage, plastic dustbin sacks and general garbage, well synthetic coz it didn't smell, now that would have been really good to have a good stench !!!! But a light projector at floor level produced a realistic shadow landscape on the wall behind of the two artists in a landscape, fans made it move. My late father produced much better moving rabbits and owls on the wall when I was a kid with his hands and a candle. They ran and flew too !!!!

Angus Fairhurst......a meta-meta-metaphor of life, a loop.....projected on to large white screen......poor and blurred. Not a lot.

Jake & Dinos Chapman.......8 glass cases of their tin soldiers/folk. Actually plastic. Depicting minatures of genocide. Belsen, Kwai River, etc. I don't think the artists had any deep feelings about this, they probably enjoyed their mini mass produced toy assemblage. It was meant to be shocking, but nothing as much as the holocaust museums are.

And fun.......a room of Jeff Koons......centrepiece being his huge stainless steel "Baloon Dog" surrounded by three other of his paintings, works.

Well thats it folks.....the whole of the RA with 36 works by 13 artists, oh some jokes by Richard Prince up the staircase......very old jokes to boot.

I arrived home at 9.30pm, a 12.5 hour thought provoking day !!!!

Am I biased? The best thing I saw today was George Brache and the Tate Modern itself. I will defintely return and spend a whole day at the Tate Modern......soon.

I think the artists themselves probably loved putting this together, they gathered together every cliche imaginable in the catalogue. Much ado about nothing......as our Will would say.

I have to study/practice all this for the next three years, I think some good debates should ensue !!!

Alan

RA, The Turner Prize shortlist- Tate British- Courtauld Gallery- National Portrait Gallery (Painting the Century)

The main purpose was the to see the Turner Prize shortlist..it proved to be much more rewarding !!!!

Left at 9.15am to catch the train in...arrived at the Tate about 11am and missed my College friends....they went by coach earlier. Anyway, I've no problem viewing art alone... often the best way...staying as long as you like anywhere.

The Turner Prize shortlist was much better than I expected, I think Tracy Emin's renowned bed led us to believe we were going to experience similar stuff this year. However, it was Glen Brownpaintings; Michael RaedeckerPaintings with collage; Tomoko Takahashi..installation; and Wolfgang Tillmans.Photos.

The whole thing was enjoyable..I thought Takahshi's installation was good....reminiscent of an old fashioned junk shop/country auction house in real life. In this respect it seemed rather ordinary walking around stuff everywhere...hung from the roof and really crammed to ground level. Probably really fun for the instigators..she thanked a whole team of mates for helping her.....but not my own kind of creativity. I had to play with her WordPerhect on the puter provided.....a send up of the original.....but again it was produced in collaboration..Flash4 was the software.....and a team produced it. Is it art I say? Funny never-the-less.

Wolfgang's photos......phenomenal photography dating back to 1991. No question that he is good and he chooses contemporary images. Modern printing techniques have definitely enhanced his work....absolutely huge images by inkjet methods. Who makes the art? Inkjet printers or Wolfgang?..there lies my question.

Michael Raedecker...interesting, painstaking silk woven paintings. Very drab colours for me. Some highlights shine out amazingly though from his system. Not that impressive for me.

Glenn Brown: A really painterly painter....surrealist, scifi, quite breathtaking paintings and sculptures. Rendered like you've never seen..smooth as silk. A totally new art form......breaking new ground imo.

I would award it to Glenn Brown.but I think Wolfgang will win. Tuesday on Channel4 the awards are liveI will have to view it now I feel involved. Get there if you can.

I thought the other in-house exhibition was Peter Blake.wrong !!!! It was William Blake..poet, printmaker and visionary. (I did see Peter Blake inside the Tate and at the NPG). Anyway....William Blake was prolific..I'm not into all the religious stuff but he was definitely a visionary....so much work and living in the pits of a place at the time. (Lambeth in 1790 was a running sewer)..even so it never stopped such a guy !!!!

Then the Tate..what a change from my last visit in 1999 !!!. The themed rooms were magic.any century art all lumped together. I loved it. Contemporary painters with old masters. One really grabbed me..it was actually was a sunny day today and a John Singer Sargent just shone out "Carnation, Lily, Lilly thing" from 1885. The Chinese lanterns looked so real, illuminated by a high domed window with the sun streaming though. The first time I've seen this Sargent painting.

Well I then walked to Somerset House..strolled to the river bank, had a fag, lol, and sketched. Simultaneously a young girl was doing similar....we exchanged sketch books..she was Lili Izsak from Hungary. She said her Dad, Joseph Izsak was a famous painter and she was studying. I wished her well and shook hands.

Shit......the Hermitage opening day is tomorrow.25th November. But it is going to be very limited visitors..mostly by phone bookings to start with. I'll have to return. It says only 5% of the art treasures of the Hermitage are on displayso they are putting them about to encourage visitors to St Petersburg. One day, eh?

Anyway I ducked into the Courtauld Gallery.....brilliant as usual. The impressionist stuff never dates.I love it. And the gallery does so much for kids..special Saturdays.lots of stuff. I looked more at religious icons, tryptecks.(no spellchecker, sigh) And a special exhibition of Sinai, Byzantium & Russia.

Up to the National Portrait Gallery. Painting the Century.....gob smackingly wonderful exhibition. I even lashed out 20 quid on the soft cover book of all 101 portraits. I can thoroughly recommend this exhibition. Words cannot describe it !!!

It's so historical, all described, they say "Munch, Picasso, Sickert, Hockney, Bacon, Warhol, Freud"but that's not the 'alf of it.German impressionism.Otto Dix..Grosz..Beckmann....going onto ..well you'll have to go....one not too be missed. I think the best exhibition I've ever been to. But one of my passions is portrait painting....one day?.again, lol. I must say...Portrait of Andy Warhol as a Banana was great !!! Why can't I think of sommat like that?

That wasn't it!!! In the foyer (it's open till 9pm.brill!!) was a recital free.

Subject: Women in wartime.....from America to England.

It was amazing..6 women singers accompanied by a harp to start with and later piano. No amplication..I counted 120 audience..the acoustics were fantastic. Their first piece they walked down the stairs singing and as they finished they sung going up the escalator to the 4th floor.....mind boggling and it brought the house down with applause. They augmented into 1940's American/English compos. Rogers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, etc and came back to Ivor Novello..Ross Parker stuff. Closing song: "We'll meet again"..Nuff said..Al

Craft Council Galley (Fabrics of Fashion)- Tate Modern- Kings Road

It was a late start because my colleague Jane has work to attend to Friday mornings. We met in London at 12.30pm.

We went direct to the Craft Council building, it used to be a Georgian Church but now split into two floors.

It was amazing to me to see textiles and fashion, what a spectrum !!! Work was on display by Hussein Chalayan, Carol Frazer, Eley Kishomoto, Jessica Ogden, Uniform, Vexed Generation.

Again like lots of fashion, a lot was spectacular but woould not have stood everyday use. Some dresses were made by burning the fabric in a design and leaving the frayed ends.

Some interesting fabrics were made by reverse printing velvet and then the front face took the form of the print. Most of this was for Jane as she's the one doing textiles.

We then went on the Tate Modern, my second visit just to see the open free floors.

It was a real treat to see famous works only ever seen in books. Such as Robert Gober's foot (1989) Duchamp's The Bride stripped Bare, etc, etc., Bueys' The end of the Twentieth Century, Oldenburg's Soft Drainpipe & more work by George Braque. I'm getting particularly fond of Braque.

The main hall of the Tate was being prepared for a new exhibition.

From there we went to the Kings Road visiting textile shops for Jane's work. What a coincidence we bumped in to out tutors Brian and Karen and their family. Hey.....this proved we were not skiving off coz it was then 6pm.

Another brilliant day out.......Alan

British Museum........8th February

This was a coach trip from Barnfield. It's fairly self explanatory cos I took my camera and sketch book.

First we were assigned a project to study and sketch in the Parathon Room. This was the remnants of the Parathon, built 447 - 438BC on the Acropolis at Athens.

	The map of the site
	The write up of the basic history, forgive my camera flash

We did a bit more than an hour and then dined within the Museum. Here's the gang with that famous new ceiling in view above them

	On site sketches as described. I loved the horses head.

We then went to the special exhibition on the human form, the way is has been depicted in sculpture and art through the centuries. I loved this little fellow on the right.A Carribean Dety, wood and shell. From Jamacia 1200 -1500 It was interesting to see the picasso below hanging out in there too

We then split up a bit to pursue individual interests. I went with Jane to Soho to visit some textile shops, then a quick look at the National Portrait Gallery and the National Galllery before walking up the the RA to catch the coach home.

Hey on Sunday night we go to Paris......watch that page for results.

But these trips are really worthwhile, you do learn a lot.

It was all about exploring the relationship between cultural creativity and the metropolis, by focusing on 9 Cities at specific moments over the last 100 years.

Lagos, Mumbai, Tokio, New York, Rio, Moscow, Paris, Vienna & London were featured.

The Art Press had given this a bit of a thumbs down. I tended to agree, too much attempted, without an obvious conclusion. Huge gaps in the time throughout the century.

But never-the-less, it had some extemely high points for me.

Vienna (1908-1918) was fantastic to see so many Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka & Richard Gerstl works for real for the first time for me.

Paris (1905-1915) This period has been unsurpassed in Art in my opinion. Brilliant !!!! Some delightful exhibits from Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Vlaminck, van Dongen, Severini & Brancusi.

	A few snaps off the wall with my digital camera. All Futurist

Moscow (1916-1930) Interesting posters in red, black, yellow and white. The people had taken over from the church in getting their message across.

Rio (1950-1964) Neoconcretism represented. Antonio Carlos Jobin was well represented (one of my favourite composers). We looked to strains of the Bossa.

Lagos (1955-1970) Interesting art and music

Tokio (1967-1973) Not particulary interesting

New York (1969-1974) Very boring work shown

Mumbai (Bombay) (1992-2001) Not a lot

London (1990-2001) A missmatch of stuff imo. Slightly humorous at times. The quote is "London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It is illimitable".

The video installations were awful. What's happened to the techno talent of Gary Hill and Bill Viola.....interactive video? The web is going interactive. The technology is available for artists to use. Our Britart stuff is just like an amateur movie. Gillian Wearing's video did not even use sound.

We've got to explore new boundaries, but are they getting it right? Creative in the fact that it is different?, but has it the beauty and talent seen from Vienna & Paris just after the turn of the 20th Century?

Only time will tell.