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architecture, painting, lifestyle, music, society, theory

architecture, painting, lifestyle, music, society, theory

Bauhaus 1919-1933

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modernist design movement

Bauhaus was a design movement which sprang up in Germany in post 1914-1918 as a reaction to the efflorescent curlicues of la Belle Epoque. It emphasised (particularly in theory) rectilinear practicality, function over form, and a political element of art for the masses rather than a privileged few. Most of its designers were of course middle-class artists who were caught up in the revolutionary fervour of the Weimar Republic – but its greatest strength in terms of enduring design is that many of its creations are still in production today. Wallpapers are still in print, vintage retro table lamps are either being reproduced at exorbitant prices, or are trading on eBay for not much less.

Bauhaus 1919-1933This is an excellent presentation of the work done there – for a number of reasons. First, it shows a wide range of products – from paintings, furniture, and architecture, to photography and household effects. Second, the illustrations are fresh and well researched. There are illustrations here I have never seen before in books on the subject. And third, there is plenty of historical depth and context, including original photos of the Bauhaus studios and the people who taught there.

The staff list is like a roll call of modernism at its highest – architects Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, designer Herbert Bayer, painters Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Joseph Albers, and Lionel Feininger, artists El Lizitsky and Moholy-Nagy, plus the constructivists Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. I was also glad to see that the book included work by the wonderful and much under-rated product designer Marianne Brandt.

marianne brandt

The format of the book is simple and effective. Double page spreads are arranged with explanatory text on the left and colour illustrations on the right. Just the right sort of proportion for this type of book. Full details of each item are provided, and there are links to further information in the appendices.

The range of items is quite astonishing. There are buildings (the Bauhaus workshops themselves) designs and photos of completed architectural projects, furniture, wall hangings, paintings, advertising posters, household objects such as electric lamps and tea sets, rugs, children’s toys, and photographs.

However, form and function were not always harmonised as successfully as they might have been. It has to be said that even a design ‘classic’ such as Gerrit Ritvelt’s armchair (1918) looked as modern as modern could be in 1918 – but as design critic Victor Papanek observes

These square abstractions painted in shrill primaries were almost impossible to sit in; they were extremely uncomfortable. Sharp corners ripped clothing, and the entire zany construction bore no relation to the human body

But the overwhelming impression one takes from a collection like this is of design inventiveness working at all levels – from architecture, interior and furniture design, through fabrics and furnishings, down to graphics and typography.

In fact much of today’s architectural design is directly attributable to the influence of the Bauhaus designers. Rectilinear buildings, minimalist interiors, walls made from glass bricks, bentwood furniture, ceiling to floor windows, uncarpeted hard surface floors. Moreover, the spirit of Bauhaus functionality lives on in the products and styles of stores such as Habitat and IKEA.

I got an email only the other day offering copies of the famous Barcelona chair (Mies van der Rohe 1929) for a mere $3000 – only they called it the ‘Madrid’ chair just to cover themselves. So the spirit of the Bauhaus is definitely alive and doing commercially well today thank you very much.

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© Roy Johnson 2009

Andrew Kennedy, Bauhaus, London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2005, pp.384, ISBN 184451336X

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Bloomsbury Art and Design

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painting, illustration, ceramics, interior design

The Bloomsbury Group included a number of painters and designers who had an important influence on the visual and decorative arts during the period of English modernism (1905—1930). The group included artists Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell; the artist and critic (and Vanessa Bell’s lover) Roger Fry; the artist (and Vanessa Bell’s lifetime companion) Duncan Grant, plus painters Dora Carrington and Mark Gertler. Bloomsbury art and design was never a coherent movement with an agreed set of theories: it was a close-knit group of friends who shared an interest in aesthetics.

The following publications deal with the amazingly wide range of their art in its pure and applied manifestations. These range from easel paintings, public commissions, interior designs, book illustrations, furniture and tapestries, plus the celebrated wall decorations at Charleston.

Bloomsbury Art and DesignThe Art of Bloomsbury features the paintings and drawings of artists Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant – three of the central figures of the Bloomsbury Group. There are entries on two hundred works of art, all illustrated in colour, which bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting – domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France. The volume also features the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. There are portraits of family and friends – from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignBloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity is a scholarly study which traces the development of Bloomsbury’s domestic aesthetic from the group’s influential Post-Impressionism in Britain around 1910 through to the 1930s. Christopher Reed makes detailed studies of rooms and environments created by Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, and he puts them into the context of aesthetic debates of the period. His study challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from orthodox modernism. Whatever you think of the book’s theoretical arguments, it’s a beautifully illustrated production, full of fascinating paintings, fabrics, decoration, interior design, and original graphics.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignThe Art of Dora Carrington At the age of 38, Dora Carrington (1893-1932) committed suicide, unable to contemplate living without her companion, Lytton Strachey, who had died a few weeks before. The association with Lytton and his Bloomsbury friends, combined with her own modesty have tended to overshadow Carrington’s contribution to modern British painting. She hardly exhibited at all during her own lifetime, and didn’t even bother signing her own works. This book aims to redress the balance by looking at the immense range of her work. She produced portraits, landscapes, glass paintings, letter illustrations and decorative work – all illustrated here in full colour. It also acts as an introduction to the artist herself, with rare photographs helping form a fuller picture of this fascinating woman.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignThe Bloomsbury Artists: Prints and Book Designs This volume catalogues the woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and other prints created by Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant – with various colour and black and white reproductions. Of particular interest are the many book jackets designed for the Hogarth Press, the publishing company established by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. Also included are ephemera such as social invitations, trade cards, catalogue covers, and bookplates. Many of these were produced as part of the movement for modern design established by the Omega Workshops.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignVision and Design is a collection of Roger Fry’s best articles and writings. It had a significant impact on the art world in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike many critics and scholars of the time, Fry expanded his discussion on art outside of the Western world, even to the degree of contending that primitive sculpture surpasses that of the West. As well as Western art, the book examines the use of form and aesthetics in ethnic art from Africa, America and Asia. It reinforced his position as a critic and it is still recognised as an extremely influential work in the development of modernist theory.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignCharleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden by Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicolson encapsulates the artistic sensibility of the Bloomsbury Group. It is an illustrated record of the farmhouse at Charleston in Sussex which Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant treated as a blank canvas in interior design. In doing so, they created a treasury of Bloomsbury art. The book provides family memories and anecdotes drawn from a lifetime’s experience. Each room links the interiors with some of the leading cultural figures of the 20th century, plus guests such as Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. Specially commissioned photographs portray the essence of the Bloomsbury style both throughout the house, with its painted furniture and walls, plus decorative items, paintings, and objects in the garden.
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Bloomsbury Art and DesignThe Art of Duncan Grant In addition to being a central figure in the Bloomsbury group, Duncan Grant played a leading role in the establishment of modernist art in Britain. His principal works were easel paintings, but he also produced murals, fabric designs, theatre and ballet work, illustration and print-making, and commercial interior decoration. Throughout a long life Duncan Grant continued to experiment with and adapt to new styles and techniques, and this book offers an opportunity to grasp the extent of his achievement. It examines the influence that people and places had on him and demonstrates, with more than a hundred illustrations of his work, the range of his talent. It’s been said that he was as polymorphous in his work as he was in his much-discussed private life.
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Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

© Roy Johnson 2000-2014

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Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington

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Art, love, and Bohemian life in Bloomsbury

Dora Carrington was a painter, an early feminist, and a figure who flits in and out of the lives of several members of the Bloomsbury Group, of which she was a significant member. This is the (so far) definitive biography of her troubled existence, which covers her day-to-day life in great detail – much of it based upon her voluminous correspondence. She grew up in a stiflingly conventional home in Bedford, loving her father and hating her mother.

Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington With a talent for art, she was glad to get away from home at seventeen and spread her wings at the Slade, living in Gordon Square, right in the heart of Bloomsbury. Her style of painting and drawing was firmly traditional, and it fitted with the aesthetic of the Slade.

She was unaffected by the craze for Post-Impressionism which followed Roger Fry’s famous 1910 exhibition at the Grafton Galleries which Virginia Woolf claimed changed human nature that year. She cut her hair short in a style which became famous (‘crop head’) and two of her fellow students, ‘Chips’ Nevinson and Mark Gertler, promptly fell in love with her. This resulted in the first of her many love triangles, plus a form of unhappiness for all concerned. Although she behaved in a provocative manner, she refused to choose between them, or to have a sexual relationship with either of them.

In 1914 she met D.H. Lawrence and David Garnett, joined Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop, and was moderately successful in her decorative art work. Then in 1915 she spent a weekend amongst the Bloomsbury Group at Asheham which was to change her life. Lytton Strachey (who was in love with Mark Gertler) made a sexual pass at her, and she immediately fell in love with him.

Although she had kept Gertler at bay for five years, she gave herself to Strachey from the outset – then ended up having a sexual relationship with both men at the same time, even though Strachey was really a homosexual. [Remember – this is Bloomsbury.] Eventually she set up home with Strachey at Tidmarch Mill House and found her first sustained period of happiness.

Dora Carrington nude

Yes – that’s Dora Carrington

However, with a twist which typifies relationships in the Bloomsbury Group, they moved Ralph Partridge in to live with them. Carrington shared his bed, and Strachey fell in love with him. She then moved to live with Partridge in Gordon Square when he was given a job at the Hogarth Press, and then married him in 1921, even though she claimed she was still in love with Strachey – who with characteristic generosity paid for their honeymoon, and even joined them on it.

Not long afterwards she started an affair with her husband’s best friend, Gerald Brenan – around the same time that Partridge moved his new lover Valentine (actually Gladys) Dobree into their family home at Tidmarsh.

It is commonly assumed that Carrington sacrificed her artistic possibilities to the effort of looking after Strachey and Partridge, but Gretchen Gerzina argues that on the contrary, she was at her most productive when her domestic and personal life were settled and untroubled by romantic entanglements.

But the level of emotional masochism in her life is remarkable. Whilst her husband took his new lover Frances Marshall on holiday to Paris, he forbade her to even write to Gerald Brenan. She distracted herself from this humiliating position by starting an affair with Henrietta Bingham, the daughter of the American ambassador, a foray into Sapphism which made her regret she hadn’t started earlier. And this didn’t stop her sleeping with Gerald Brenan as well – so by this time she had certainly got rid of her earlier sexual reluctance.

Almost all the evidence for this personal narrative comes from letters. These people were super-communicative on paper. But the correspondence needs to be carefully interpreted – because they often wrote knowing that third parties might read what they said. Partridge not only banned Carrington from writing to Brenan, but insisted on reading all her correspondence. So she developed the strategy of inserting personal messages into secret addenda – which were nevertheless sometimes intercepted. And she was much given to reading other people’s private mail too.

As the menage she helped to create with Strachey and Partridge began to fall apart, she consoled herself with Bernard (Beakus) Penrose [brother of Sir Roland] in one last romance. But it was Strachey who remained her most lasting affection, and when he died (of undiagnosed stomach cancer) in 1932 she felt that she could not live without him. So she shot herself – aged just thirty-nine.

© Roy Johnnson 2012

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Gretchen Gerzina, Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington 1893-1932, London: Pimlico, 1995, pp.342, ISBN 0712674209

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Twentieth century literature

Charleston Saved 1979-1989

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restoring a Bloomsbury decorated house

Charleston is a farmhouse near Lewes, Sussex which was once the home of Clive Bell, his wife Vanessa, and her lover Duncan Grant. Leonard and Virginia Woolf were frequent visitors from their own country property at Monk’s House in nearby Rodmell. Other members of the Bloomsbury Group such as Lytton Strachey, David Garnett, and Maynard Keynes were regular visitors.

Charleston savedIt is most famous for the fact that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant covered the entire surface of the house – walls, fireplace, cupboards, tables, chairs – with their decorations and paintings, an impulse that was also part of the Omega Workshops movement initiated by Roger Fry around the same time during the first world war. [A subsidiary purpose of the house was to act as a refuge for conscientious objectors to the war.]

The house was famously damp and rather uncomfortable, but Duncan Grant went on living there until his death in 1978 – at which point it was in a state of neglect and dilapidation. This book is an account of the restoration project made to bring the hopuse back to life – ‘from the Broncoo toilet paper to the Bakelight electrical fittings’. Indeed throughout the whole project there was a constant debate over the relative merits of re-creating the original or saving what was left, which was a very expensive option.

There’s a great deal of fund-raising by the great and the good, but the real interest of Anthea Arnold’s account is in how a decaying over-decorated farmhouse can be pulled back from the brink of disintegration whilst preserving its spirit and integrity. There was much to be done against death watch beetles, mold, dry rot, and general decay.

At some points the narrative becomes a somewhat bizaare mixture of raffle prizewinners at fundraising events sandwiched between detailed technical accounts of replastering walls using goat’s hair bonding agents.

Charleston - fireplace and overmantle

Chapters are ordered by the objects and materials being restored – furniture, ceramics, fabrics, stained glass, pictures, the garden – and most problematic of all, the original wallpaper. Yet desite all the nit-picking over minor details of wallpaper pattern repeats and curtain fabrics, the house was re-opened to the public without the fundamental problem of rising damp having been solved. Plaster had to be cut back to the bare wall more than once.

There was quite a lot of disagreement over the wisdom and accuracy of the restoration. Why spend tens of thousands of pounds preserving rotting wallpaper when the original designs could easily be reproduced? In the end, the argument for authenticity prevailed – so long as there were sufficient US-funded endowments to sustain it.

Anyway, the project finally succeeded, and Charleston is now a thriving visitors’ centre, and the location of an annual arts festival. So – Bloomsbury fans apart, this is a book that could appeal to public relations buffs and fundraisers, or to fans of Grand Designs or property restoration specialists.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Anthea Arnold, Charleston Saved 1979-1989, London: Robert Hale, 2010, pp. 144, ISBN: 0709090188

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Charleston: Past and Present

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official guide to one of Bloomsbury’s cultural treasures

Charleston is the country house in Lewes, Sussex which was established as a family home by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. She was married to Clive Bell at the time and had children by both men, but this was how things were done in the Bloomsbury Group. They lived in the house for over fifty years, covering the walls and furniture with their paintings, designing ceramics, making rugs and wall hangings, cultivating the gardens – and generally forming what became a unique collection of domestic and interior design.

Charleston: Past and Present The house also became the country retreat for many of the Bloomsbury Group. Vanessa raised her children Julian, Quentin and Angelica there, and she was visited by her sister Virginia Woolf, as well as by her ex-lover Roger Fry, and at weekends her husband Clive Bell and his lover Mary Hutchinson. These people in turn brought their friends such as John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, E.M.Forster, and David Garnett. Their personal lives and relationships were rather complicated, but this joint artistic venture was one that helped cement their common interests in design, decoration, painting, and domestic arts.

The Bloomsberries were great supporters of modern art, and many of them had made judicious purchases long before the artists became well known. Consequently, the walls of the house came to be decorated not only with their own paintings, but with works by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and Modigliani.

The main part of the book is the official guide to the house and gardens, written by Bloomsbury expert Richard Shone. This contains details of the contents of all the main rooms, and is well illustrated by colour photographs of their principal features and objects.

The latter part of the book is a collection of letters and memoirs, written by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, who was his sister but who didn’t know that her father was Duncan Grant until she was eighteen. Quentin Bell’s memoir is of an idyllic childhood, spent with his brother Julian, largely unsupervised by semi-absent parents. He gives a Swallows and Amazons type of account.

His sister Angelica’s is more seriously thoughtful and reflective. It combines observations on Vanessa Bell’s fabric designs with psychological analyses of her relationship with Charleston and its other inhabitants. She captures the spirit and the development of the house as if it were a living being. She also draws an interesting socio-political contrast with her Christmas visits to the conservative house at Seend, which was the home of Clive Bell’s parents:

Even though it was at Seend that I celebrated my birthday – a birthday that belonged by rights to Charleston…the atmosphere of Victorian constraint could not have been tolerated for longer than the three or four days we spent there … it did not contain, as Charleston seemed to, the secret of creativity and renewal.

It’s also a paean of appreciation for her mother, as the presiding spirit of generosity and creativeness that permeated the house. This chapter is an interesting addendum to the account of her childhood that she provides in Deceived with Kindness.

Miraculously, the house survived the second world war and was kept in more or less its original condition. Quentin Bell (who grew up there) describes the practical difficulties and strategic frustrations of restoring the property. Fortunately for the historical records of English modernism, the house was completely refurbished, then purchased from its original owners, and is now governed by The Charleston Trust.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Quentin Bell et al, Charleston: Past and Present: The Official Guide to One of Bloomsbury’s Cultural Treasures, London: Harvest Books, 1988, pp.180, ISBN 0156167735

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Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

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biographical outline of a musical Odyssey

This is not a conventional biography but a study of the development of John Coltrane as a major figure in American musical culture in the two decades of major creativity that embraced his tragically short life. Ben Ratliff bases his study on a combination of interviews and his analyses of the recorded legacy – and he does this in a non-hagiographic manner. Indeed he seems almost over-critical of some of Coltrane’s early performances with Miles Davis, such as the Prestige sessions which were not under his control but part of the contractual obligations that Davis knocked out as quickly as possible (no planning, no rehearsals) in order to fulfil and escape his contract for the more lucrative one he had signed with Columbia.

John ColtraneRatliff takes the story from the early recordings Coltrane made whilst he was still in the navy through his work in rhythm and blues bands to his seminal work with Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, and then to his own quartet which made such an impact with Giant Steps – which turns out to be in this account the ne plus ultra of harmonically-based jazz music.

Ratliff is very good at explaining just why Coltrane’s music was so exceptional – his profound sense of musical structure, his grasp of harmonic sequences, his compositional imagination, and his ability to completely transform musical sequences into something nobody had ever heard before. Think of how he re-shaped a banal show tune such as My Favourite Things into a thundering anthem of black cultural affirmation.

There’s quite a bit of musical theorizing, and the weakness of basing judgements on interviews is that asking any artists what they think they are doing is that first of all they might not know themselves, and even if they say they do, they might not be able to articulate it properly. Their claims might not even be true. Music is an abstract art form. It doesn’t actually mean anything, even though it is a very powerful emotional force.

The two common approaches to musical analysis point in opposite directions. The formal approach says ‘Eb7 modulates into C#6’ which might be accurate and true, but tells us nothing about the nature or effect of such transitions. The other essentially romantic approach says ‘the heart-stopping modulations in the final eight bars resolve themselves into a majestic finale which express a surge of joy’. One approach seems dry as dust, the other is just subjective and emotional. Ratliff bravely attempts to combine the two.

The late 1950s and early 1960s were the high point in Coltrane’s creative life – and it might be significant that this was a period when he seemed to be free of drug addiction. After that, though Ratliff tries his best to make a case for the discordant, non-harmonic and unstructured music Coltrane produced towards the end of his career, it’s rather uncomfortable reading to be reminded of the descent into chaos that this ‘development’ represents (and I speak as someone who saw some of these concerts on his European tour with Eric Dolphy).

In the second part of the book he turns from biography to an essay on Coltrane’s influence on other musicians and a study of the development of his style. Placing this very firmly in a cultural and historical context, he reminds us that many other lesser names were more popular at the time. In the same year that Coltrane released My Favourite Things (30,000 copies sold), Atlantic’s best-selling jazz albumn was Les McCann and Eddie Harris’s Swiss Movement (500,000 copies). There are some excellent gems about the economics of night clubs and how much musicians were paid for their performances.

Coltrane’s influence is traced in the work of other jazz musicians, in the music of rock and pop groups, and in the social influence drawn from his music in the writings of jazz critics – most of whom were themselves understandably baffled by the ‘developments’ of the early 1960s onwards. Ratliff doesn’t shirk the fact that Coltrane lost a big percentage of his audience when he embraced the ‘free jazz’ movement which was so obviously both then and now a dead end. It’s also sadly possible that Miles Davis’s claim that Coltrane died from taking too much LSD might be true.

In fact the loss occurred at a time when the material ground in which jazz took root began to disappear. Night clubs, jazz clubs, and dance halls closed as popular culture in America changed in the late 1960s, and most jazz musicians found themselves out of work. Superstars made occasional rock-concert-like appearances, but many regular musicians either took up teaching or went back to jobs in the factory.

What makes this study much more than a conventional biography or appreciation is that Ben Ratliff takes his subject even beyond Coltrane’s death to examine both the continuation of his influence and the state of jazz in the last few decades. The prospects are fairly bleak, but he sees a small glimmer of hope in Coltrane’s influence as a successful leader of bands. Let’s hope it turns out to be the classic quartet or quintet at most – and not the noisy conglomerates in which he finished his career.

There’s an excellent bibliography to the book, and a full range of notes on all his sources, but no discography. However, he does make reference to a work in progress which has since been issued as surely the most authoritative account of Coltrane’s recorded work – Yasuhiro Fujioka and Lewis Porter’s monumental The John Coltrane Reference Work.

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© Roy Johnson 2011

Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, London: Faber and Faber, 2007, pp.250, ISBN: 0571232744

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Contemporary Art: a short introduction

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New movements in art 1989—2005

Contemporary art has hardly ever been as notorious as it is today. We need all the help we can get in understanding sharks pickled in formaldehyde, unmade beds, paintings which feature elephant dung, and people having live cosmetic surgery as a form of performance art. Julian Stallabrass clearly knows this world and what is going on in it, and his book is a spirited attempt to situate and explain work which is breaking every known boundary. You’ll have to be prepared for an introduction which is largely devoted to a study of contemporary politics and economics, because he clearly believes that these have a direct effect on art via the close connections between art galleries, museums, and exhibitions and investors from the corporate world.

Contemporary Art: a short introductionThese are the people he believes are controlling the art world today. He covers performance art, painting, sculpture, installations, and mixed media, no matter how bizarre. But the problems is that he tends to analyse works in relation to what motivated the artist – political protest, social outrage – making no attempt to say how valuable they are artistically. And most of his argument is posed in the form of abstract generalisations. This has the effect of holding the reader a long way off, remote from the art itself.

One of his central arguments is that art is gradually merging with fashion and advertising. But this claim is founded on two weaknesses. The first is that he takes the claims of all the artists at face value without any attempt at critical evaluation. The second is that he doesn’t make any attempt to place his examples in any sort of historical perspective.

The latter part of the book deals with the relationship between art and money, and the current state of art criticism. He has some interesting revelations to make about price fixing, corporate investment, and secret deals as a means of inflating reputations – and we feel no shame in the schadenfreudliche thrill of learning that some speculators have lost their shirts to the tune of 99 percent on their original investment.

One other feature struck me as odd or unconvincing. It’s that many of the examples he discusses are ‘projects’ which are clearly forms of political activity. Not just propaganda, but demonstrations, protests, and even theoretical discussions masquerading as works of art.

I was glad to see that he concluded with examples of Internet art, but once again, because of his bias in favour of protest, most of the sites had been closed down by the time I came to check them.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.154, ISBN: 0192806467

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Dada: The Revolt of Art

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Modernism 1915—1925

Dada is one of those movements in modern art which had an amazingly short life but a lasting influence. It flourished for not much more than the decade between 1915 and 1925, yet some of its legacy is still with us. It’s amazing to think that this influential movement sprang up in the middle of the first world war – though there were pre-echoes of it in the work of abstract expressionism and Russian futurism which just preceded it.

DadaTristan Tzara might have thought up the name Dada, but I doubt that anyone reads a word of what he wrote these days. However, the work of visual artists such as Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber still speaks as something of lasting value, almost 100 years later. Dadaism was certainly what we would now call a multimedia phenomenon. It involved painting and sculpture, poetry, typography, theatre, and performance art. At one point it even included a boxing match between Jack Johnson – first black world champion – and Arthur Cravan, a poet-boxer Dadist who was the nephew of Oscar Wilde.

What came out of it that will be of enduring value? Well, certainly the use of montage in graphic design is still with us, as is production in what we now call ‘mixed media’. The work of Raoul Hausmann, Georg Groz, John Heartfield, and Kurt Schwitters still seems fresh today – though Schwitters was actually refused membership of the ‘official’ Dada group, to which he responded by setting up his own one-man movement, called Merz.

As a ‘movement’ (though it was never coherent) it spread quickly from its birthplace in Zurich to Berlin, Paris, and even New York. But its principal adherents were forever disagreeing with each other or even repudiating their own former beliefs. By the early 1920s Dada was ready to be swept up by the much stronger forces of surrealism.

This monograph is beautifully illustrated and it ends with a collection of the key declarations and manifestos of the period for those who want a taste of what was thought to be radical protest in art at the time. There’s also a very good bibliography. Pocket size in format and price, it’s an excellent introduction to the subject.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Marc Dachy, Dada: The Revolt of Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 2006, pp.127, ISBN 0500301190

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Digital Art

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illustrated survey of contemporary digital art forms

Digital technology has revolutionized the way art is now produced and viewed. Traditional forms such as painting, photography and sculpture have been transformed by digital techniques. Entirely new forms such as software art, digital installations, and virtual reality have emerged, and they are now collected by major museums, institutions, and private collectors. Christiane Paul’s book surveys the developments in digital art from its appearance in the early 1990s right up to the present day. It’s difficult for books like this to keep up with what’s being developed on the Internet, but she makes a good stab at it. She starts out with a rapid survey of the period 1940-1990, in which the foundations were laid. Then came the world wide web, which opened up the Net to Everyman.

Digital ArtAfter this comes her first main section, which deals with the digitisation of the two-dimensional surface. This yields computer-generated images which look like paintings, photographs which look like web sites, and collages which look like a combination of both – some of them even digital images which have been transferred onto canvass, to complete the illusion. There are lots of examples, all of them illustrated in full colour. It’s a visually rich book.

Most of the time her exposition is clear and straightforward, but now and again it does keep slipping into the style of Art School gobbledygook to which commentators on modern art seem irresistibly drawn:

Suggesting antagonisms, the project explores the concept of different poles in dataspace and the ways in which various forms of information can materialize in a dynamic matrix.

Whilst it is unfair to judge these complex works from a text description of them on the page, plus a screenshot, it seems that many of them go down tempting but false avenues of discovery and innovation.

Randomness, interactivity, or simultaneously viewing events from different points of the globe have no intrinsic connection with art – though it is understandable that people should want to exploit such possibilities. ‘Allowing the viewer to select/mix/choose’ is a false avenue.

Works of art are almost always the finished products of one person which we are invited to contemplate. Exploiting the possibilities of the Web and Flash animations seem much more promising routes to me. Time will tell.

Real artists will be grappling with these new digital possibilities right now – musicians making symphonies in their back bedrooms, Flash animators making the next generation of films.

The last part of the book deals with the various forms in which digital art is popularly manifest – artificial intelligence, telepresence and robotics, data visualisation and mapping, hypertextual narratives, and of course gaming.

She includes an excellent lists of artists’ web sites, digital arts organizations, networks, museums, and festivals, plus a select bibliography.

Despite any reservations I might have expressed here, this is an extraordinarily wide-ranging and thorough investigation of what is going on in digital art right now. She discusses all the key artists and works, as well as issues such as the collection, presentation and preservation of digital art, the virtual museum, and ownership and copyright. Very good value.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Christiane Paul, Digital Art, London: Thames and Hudson, revised edition 2008, pp.256, ISBN: 0500203989

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Digital Art History

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Teaching and learning art using IT

This is a collection of academic conference papers which look at the ways in which digital art history and the use of computers is affecting the ways in which art is both taught and studied. The papers cover issues such as the storage, access, and searchability of images; ownership and copyright. iconography and classification, and the analysis of art works using Computer Aided Design. There’s an account of a multi-media project for instance, Colour and Communication in 20th-Century Abstract Art, which teaches issues of tone, tint, and hue by making comparisons with music which are included as audio files alongside interactive exercises.

Digital Art HistoryNext comes a web-based project called The Cathedral as Virtual Encyclopedia – a virtual panoramic tour of Chartes cathedral. The really interesting and ambitious feature here is that the authoring team, lead by Stephen Clancy, have been digitally manipulating the panorama shots using Macromedia Director to produce a thirteenth-century version of the tour.

This is followed by an account of creating a multimedia database of the source materials archived by Georg Morgenstiern, professor of Indo-Iranian languages at the University of Oslo, Norway. The resulting collection of photographs, sound recordings, and movie clips can be seen at www.nb.no.

There is a short encomium for computer gaming which could safely have been left out of the collection. More interesting is an account of experimental new media art at the University of the West of England in Bristol – though the emphasis is on problems of curation rather than the ‘exhibits’ themselves. This is also true of an essay on the creation of a visually searchable database of images at London Guildhall.

The centrepiece of the book shows how computer graphics and visioning techniques can be used in the scientific analysis of paintings. Once the examples have been digitised using CAD software, new versions can be generated from different points of view; partly occluded objects can be completed; shapes and objects can be analysed; and a 3D version of the scene can be generated.

They show an amazing three dimensional reconstruction of Masaccio’s Florentine fresco, The Trinity. This paper is the work of three scholars in art history and engineering science working collaboratively at the University of Oxford and is probably the highlight of the collection.

As an e-learning author myself, I would sometimes have welcomed a little more technical detail, but there’s certainly enough here to stimulate anybody who want to see what’s possible in harnessing the power of IT to the teaching and learning in visual arts.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Anna Bentkowska-Kafel et al (eds), Digital Art History, Bristol: Intellect, 2005, pp.118, ISBN 1841501166

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