Max Klinger: A Glove

A Glove, or Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove, is a series of ten etchings produced by the German artist Max Klinger in 1881, when he was twenty-one. The sequential series tells the story of the artist himself finding the glove of a young woman at a Berlin ice rink. The seeming normality of the narrative soon descends into nightmare and obsession as the artist imagines losing the glove at sea, retrieving it again, only for it to be stolen by a winged beast.

The ten etchings, titled Place, Action, Yearnings, Rescue (pictured, top), Triumph, Homage, Anxieties, Repose, Abduction (above) and Cupid, have a dream-like logic and display a mastery of the techniques of engraving, etching and aquatint, especially for one so young. They were an immediate success when first exhibited, and Klinger would go on to produce further narrative cycles of etchings, but none matched the darkness and desire of A Glove.

The etchings, created towards the end of the 19th century, seem to prefigure numerous 20th century concerns, such as surrealist (see Max Ernst and Dali) and metaphysical (see Giorgio de Chirico) art, fetishism, materialism, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and the graphic novel.

See them all here.

Notes on Ilse Breit

Not much is known about the Austrian artist Ilse Breit (1908-1992) except that she painted lovely pictures of girls being attacked by cheeky farmyard animals. This one, a lithograph called Goose Girl or Girl Beset by Geese, was painted when Breit was a young teenager. She was taught, along with many other children, by Frank Cizek in Vienna. A portrait and landscape painter, Cizek was also a pioneer in art education. In 1897 he established art classes for children, called Jugendkunstklasse, at the School for Arts and Crafts in Vienna.

Dr Mary V Gutteridge, a contemporary teacher, describes walking into one of Cizek's classrooms in 1929 thus: "...most striking was the riot of colour springing from every wall, desk, and easel, and even from the floor. Against the drabness of the walls, the wet and smeary windows and murky November light, there seemed to be living color and form in paintings and art objects."

And: "No restrictions, no orders, and, it appeared, no instruction was given. The children, painting as they felt and as they wished, looked as if they had entered heaven."

Cizek's teaching methods would still be considered controversial today, let alone over a hundred years ago. He advocated minimal teaching for children, encouraging them to foster their own imagination and express themselves freely. His classes became famous the world over, with exhibitions of his students' art shown at home and abroad in England, America and Australia. Poster reproductions of the students' paintings were popular in nurseries, schools and peoples' homes.

Yet there's something slightly sad about all the wonderful illustrations and paintings that came out of Cizek's classes: there's no biographical information about any of the artists (though there's plenty about Cizek). Ilse Breit and her sister Herta, Berta Zuckermann, Gretl Hanus, Steffi Krauss, Grete Blatney, Hansi Bauer and many others (mostly girls) were all accomplished artists by their early teens. Many of their works are now owned by the V&A Collections. But what became of the young artists? Presumably none went on to become prominent artists, otherwise there would be information about them.

Nevertheless, Cizek and his ideas were influential on many educators and theorists, and his teachings left a legacy for the child art movement and art therapy.

The art of the shop front

 

High Street (pictured, top) is a beautiful children's book from 1938 illustrated with lithographs by Eric Ravillious with text by architectural historian J. M. Richards. Even back then, Richards bemoans the homogeneity of the high street with its bland chain stores taking over, and goods being factory-produced.

Ravillious' shops were actual London shops (and amazingly, two are actually still around) – not all found on the same street but dotted around the capital. Some were already obsolete when the book was published: Coach Builder, Harness Maker, Naturalist and Submarine Engineer are unfortunately no longer found on the extremely boring British high street (shops in foreign cities seem to have retained some individuality). Ravillious made his shops look as enticing and exotic as possible with lovely architectural features, dramatic lighting, quirky details and rich patterns and textures.

The 1950s were a heyday for British illustration, with the talents of teachers and students from the Royal College of Art largely leading the way. High Street sort of set the template for how shop illustrations should look. Barbara Jones (Croydon opticians, middle) and John Griffiths (deli, bottom) both drew shop fronts in the 1950s and they both studied at the RCA; Jones was taught by Ravillious. The influence is obvious but both have their own wonderful style. Jones' opticians picture was included in her 1951 book, The Unsophisticated Arts, which chronicled the vernacular of British life, from fairgrounds and tattoo parlours to seaside piers and high street shops. In 1959, issue three of the art magazine Motif carried Griffith's illustrations of quirky shopfronts.

And the tradition continues: last year illustrator Eleanor Crow (who also, incidentally, illustrated Pebbles on the Beach, which I read last year) released her book Shopfronts of London, which beautifully records London's cafes and food shops. Her criteria for a good shopfront wouldn't be that different from Ravillious' some eighty years ago: “great typography and signage, striking colours, nice tiles, lots of good architectural detail.” Unfortunately yet typically, many of the businesses have closed down in the decade Crow has worked on the project.

(I've written about the death of the high street previously, so won't dwell on it here. Interestingly, though, there's been a revival of the art of the hand-painted shop sign. Unsurprisingly, it seems to be mainly in London's East End, where hipster types love all things authentic, traditional and handmade. Nevertheless, I take it as a good sign. Both The Guardian and Eye magazine had features on handpainted signs in 2015.)

Further reading / looking
• Blog Quad Royal has posts about both John Griffiths and several about Barbara Jones.
• The Unsophisticated Genius of Barbara Jones is at James Russell's blog.
• Motif magazine: The World Made Visible by Rick Poymor in Design Observer.
• The always excellent Spitalfields Life has photos of boarded-up East End shop fronts from 1988 here and here, and also featured Eleanor Crow's pictures of cafes back in 2013.

Previously on Barnflakes
Verve magazine, 1937-1960
Illustrated children's books (for parents)
Not for all the tea in China
Death of the High Street
Proud to Serve

Notes on Brian Rice

Not to be confused with Brian Rice, the footballer.

From geometric patterns to archaeological and aboriginal influences, the abstract art of Brian Rice is a joy of shapes and colours. The retrospective at the Royal Albert Memorial Mueum in Exeter surveys Rice's art over the last sixty years.

Born in Somerset in 1936, Rice studied at Yeovil School of Art before moving to London in time for the swinging sixties, hanging out with the likes of the Rolling Stones and David Hockney. Eventually finding London not for him, he bought a farm in Dorset and became a farmer, all but abandoning art. Inspired by local archeology and the marks of prehistoric man, by the 1990s he had returned to painting and printmaking.

A lovely (and free) exhibition in a great little gallery and museum.

Brian Rice: 60 years of Paintings and Prints is on at the ramm (Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery) until 3 May.

Previously on Barnflakes
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter

Notes on Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer's (1805-1881) early works suggest a prodigious and precocious talent – he exhibited at the Royal Academy, aged fourteen – but little more. It wasn't until meeting William Blake in 1824, when Palmer was an impressionable teenager, that his work takes on the 'visionary' aspect that he is famous for (Tom Luddock in his book English Graphic gives a witty exploration of that difficult, vague and often unhelpful term 'visionary').

by his early twenties Palmer had moved to Shoreham, ostensibly for his poor health, and there produced the most imaginative art of his career, his so-called visionary pictures, inspired by Blake, the Bible and the countryside around him. He lived in a run-down house nicknamed Rat Abbey and hung out with a bunch of like-minded artists called The Ancients, a brotherhood all believing in an idealised rural past and worshipping their seer, William Blake.

Look at the riot of springtime, above, painted in 1829 in Shoreham, Kent. Visionary or kitsch (for visionary I might say hallucinatory)? A gloopy, bubbling candy floss tree found in Willie Wonker's Chocolate factory, maybe. Palmer's intense, impressionistic landscapes have often been compared to Van Gogh's (1853-1890).

I've never been that moved by the epic quality of Turner's landscapes or the chocolate box countrysides of Constable. But Palmer's landscapes draw the viewer in, partly due to their small, intimate size. Palmer's pastoral paintings and in particular his pen and ink drawings of either moonlit, early evening or morning scenes (above, 1825) hum with a magic realism imbued with a mystical feeling. All the elements of nature feel interconnected and alive. Contrasts are deep and shadows are long.

When Palmer returned to live in London in 1835, after a decade in Shoreham, his paintings lost a lot of their unique 'visionary' quality and became rather conventional. Only a few late works, such as 1879's etching titled The Lonely Tower, managed to recapture that paradisal mysticism of the Shoreham years.

Previously on Barnflakes
William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham 
Notes on Kent
Edward Burra, 20th century man
Christopher Wood, English painter

The moon and the earth

Artist Luke Jerram's stunning Moon and Earth have been touring Europe for several years now. The moon model, six metres in diameter, is currently at the Natural History museum, London. Gaia (Greek for earth), seven metres in diameter, hangs above the citrus grove in the Mediterranean Biome of the Eden Project, Cornwall. Both contain detailed NASA imagery and are on display until tomorrow (Sunday 5 January).

Alfred Wallis grave in St Ives

 

Alfred Wallis, mariner and painter, lost both his children and his wife before taking up painting late in life to keep himself company. Wallis’s naïve style of painting, with flattened perspectives and scale based on importance, was ‘discovered’ by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, painters of the St Ives School, as they were passing by his house one day in 1928. They loved his paintings and Wallis became part of the progressive St Ives school of painters in the 1930s.

Despite influencing a generation of painters, it almost goes without saying that Wallis died penniless, in Madron Workhouse (a place for the orphaned, elderly, poor and disabled, that sounded like something between a jail and a concentration camp; after closing in 1948 with the advent of the NHS, the building became a meat processing factory. It’s now derelict), just outside of Penzance.

Still, at least the St Ives School paid for his tomb, created from Bernard Leach tiles, in Barnoon cemetery, situated above the lovely Porthmeor beach next to the Tate St Ives, where many of Wallis’ paintings are kept. His pictures nowadays don't go for huge amounts, but still, I'm sure he would have appreciated one of his crayon drawings selling for £10,000 and a painting for £30,000, or even a fraction of that, during his lifetime.

Previously on Barnflakes
Cornwall's master and slave shared gravestone

Verve magazine, 1937-1960

I hadn’t even heard of Verve magazine until the other day, when I was asked by Oxfam to value some early issues of the magazine which had come into the shop. I had a quick look at them and was gobsmacked by the content. I was looking at half a dozen of the early editions, from 1937-39, which had colourful covers by artists including Matisse and Bonnard. Inside were unique, beautifully-produced lithographs by the likes of Matisse, Braque, Klee and Kandinsky. These were contrasted with – say – brilliant black and white photos of nudes, medieval manuscript illuminations and texts (in French) by writers such as Hemingway, Joyce and Satre. We were talking a high-quality art journal whose content was a cornucopia of seemingly surreally random yet beautiful and striking imagery and text.

Published in an imposing size of 11x14 inches, the journal sought to showcase the works of modernist, surrealist and avant-garde artists to a wider audience. Only 38 issues were published between 1937 and 1960 and each one was obviously produced with loving care. Verve was the brainchild of Efstratios Eleftheriades, a Greek art critic and editor who moved to Paris in 1915 (actually to study law) and went under the more manageable nom de plume Tériade.
 
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Overheard in Oxfam
"I got the Apple Mac off my sister – she didn't want it anymore! She got a new one. The one I got has 27 functions! 27! I only know how to use two! My sister got a new one because she needed more than 27 functions!"

"Five years now, it's been five years since my daughter hung herself in the garage. She was 55. She had debts, which she could never be able to pay back. £1000. It's good to talk about these things, isn't it? My daughter never talked about what was wrong with her."

Talking about Victorian fire stations…

Which I was: the one in Redruth (here and here), sold at auction for £59,000 the other day, way over its £20,000 estimate. It will be converted into a house (yawn; still, better than it remaining derelict). My vision for it becoming a gallery and letterpress workshop, etc, will have to wait (I'd also had the brainwave of having Poldark pole dancing dark nights, but would have to insert a fireman's pole first as it didn't have one when I looked inside the building).

But good news for a London derelict Victorian fire station – it has been converted into an art gallery. The former Peckham Road fire station had been nelgected for many years. I’d passed and noticed the boarded up fire station – next to the boarded up Kennedys Sausages factory – many times, and thought it looked lovely behind its hoardings.

In 2014 an anonymous benefactor gave the fire station to the South London Gallery (which is across the road) and it’s due to open later this month, courtesy of 6a Architects. The fire station is twice the size of the original South London Gallery, and will include a more experimental arts programme and educational space.

If this sounds like a press release, fine. I'm over the moon when an old building gets a new lease of life, especially as an arts space (rather than soulless flats). I don't believe old, disused civic, commercial or religious buildings should really be turned into flats or houses; they should continue life as being of benefit to the community.

Saatchi gallery barngains

It's a shame when the gallery or museum shop is more stimulating than the exhibits on show, but such was the case at the Saatchi gallery this weekend, whose current exhibition, Known Unknowns, failed to excite me or my daughter. The gallery shop, however, was full of wonders. Aside from charity shops, gallery and museum shops are my favourite kind of shops. I'd like to see a whole shopping centre of them, largely to save having to visit the galleries themselves, and to buy all my Christmas presents in one fell swoop. Imagine, shops of the British Museum, Tate, V&A, Natural History museum, etc, all under one roof. Retail and cultural bliss combined.

The Saatchi gallery shop has lots of reduced books, including The Field Guide to Typography: Typefaces in the Urban Landscape, a neat book which informs you which fonts are which in the city, from shop signs to train station signage. Reduced from £16.99 to £6.95.

In the gallery itself, French Lebanese artist Mouna Rebeiz has gone to town on the freebie front. Her exhibition The Trash-ic or Trash in the Face of Beauty, is giving away lavish A3 catalogues of the exhibition, as well as an English edition of the French art magazine connaissance des arts (usual price: £7.80), which features – yup – her exhibition. I don't know who's paying for this free promotion for Rebeiz (presumably not her). Finally, Saatchi's surprisingly consistently boring gallery magazine, Art  & Music, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, was also picked up for free. Oh, the gallery is also free to visit, should you feel the need to go.

I don't know, I just figured as my daughter (almost 12) is into girl power, she might like the exhibition of 17 female artists. I didn't think it would be exploring mainly adult themes – spurting bodily fluids, sex, human trafficking – and my daughter wasn't impressed. Some of it actually looked quite interesting, but we had to rush through it – there was a shop to get to.

Barnflakes goes Cornwall

I had a delightful week in Cornwall recently (thanks Helen!), where I took a selection of my wares – photos, postcards and greetings cards – to sell at two craft fairs, one in Lostwithiel and one in St. Ives. Some things sold, and I had a great response to my work. I took the remaining stock to Make Industries, an art and crafts shop in Penzance, and they took the lot! I also took my illustration of the Art Deco cinema in St. Ives, above, to the cinema and asked if they wanted to use it for promotional purposes. I'm having an exhibition of my photos in the Art Cafe in St. Ives early next year. Watch this space!

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:

Cornwall photos on Flickr

Lookalikes #39: Henry Darger and Marcel Dzama

I've written about Henry Darger previously; Marcel Dzama is a contemporary artist who also works in scultpure, film and collage. His paintings have adorned album covers, he's had books published. Henry Darger, outsider artist, was a caretaker and hermit, creating his deeply personal art in his apartment at night. I love both Darger and Dzama, but almost can't imagine Dzama's art existing if it wasn't for Darger.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Lookalikes #12: Feels and Henry Darger

Around Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

From top to bottom: the new Cabinet gallery; Ashley Bickerton Bali painting; staircase, Newport Street gallery; Pacman Ghost on side of pub, Lambeth High Street; terracotta and glazed tiles, Southbank House

The last time the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens contained any kind of pleasure – of a legal, civilised kind anyway – was round about 1850. Since then it’s fallen into despair but, lo and behold, the area is being regenerated. We visited on a fine afternoon, the day before St George's Day, and there was a St George's festival on and it felt like a village fete, with a Punch and Judy show, sword fighters and stalls. There were donkeys on display, come from Vauxhall City Farm on the other side of the gardens. Old style jazz was billowing out of the lovely Tea House Theatre cafe (which blissfully doesn't serve coffee), where a slice of their stale cake sets you back £5 (worth having once for the experience).

I’d been earlier in the week to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to visit Cabinet, the gallery having recently moved from east London and now residing below offices in a purpose-built structure on the corner of the gardens. Though I was none too inspired by Pierre Guyotat's childlike sketches of figures with huge dicks, it's nice to see another gallery in the area. Five minutes walk out of the park in a converted Victorian building, once a school, is Beaconsfield Contemporary Art gallery on Newport Street. We popped in to see their current exhibition, Meditations on the Anthropocene, which consists of huge black and white screens in large dark rooms, slowly animating, with discordant, creepy music. In other words, a Disney horror movie shot by Tarkovsky (perhaps). There's a nice vegan cafe downstairs.

Damien Hirst's Newport Street gallery is at the other end of the road. My usual stock response to being asked about his gallery is the staircases are better than any of the art, but I thoroughly enjoyed the playful new Ashley Bickerton exhibition. The shark in a strait jacket on the exhibition’s website homepage does no justice to Bickerton’s work which encompasses sculpture, photography, sculpture and graphic design. My daughter naturally preferred the scary monster heads with bird of paradise flower tentacles coming out of their heads, but I loved the lurid Bali paintings with their ornate wooden frames depicting traditional Balinese life, whilst the painting themselves show a kind of psychedelic modern Bali.

An interesting interview with Bickerton by Paul Theroux (how has his talentless son, Louis, eclipsed his father, one of the best travel writers of his generation? Oh yes, because pa writes books and son is on TV. Louis' recent film, My Scientology Movie, is a Nick Broomfield-esque textbook documentary about failing to make the documentary you intended; Tickled, by contrast, a recent documentary about competitive tickling, is a fascinating piece of investigative journalism where both you and the filmmaker start off thinking it's going to be about one thing, only to discover it's about something else entirely) can be read on the Guardian website.

On the corner of Lambeth High Street and Black Prince Road is the spectacular Southbank House, the only remaining example of the Doulton pottery complex in the area. This Grade-II listed building is being turned into flats, of course, but the ornate exterior will presumably remain. The outside is covered with reliefs, glazed tiles, moulded terracotta and polychromy, all to show off how great Doulton were at pottery (read a better description here, with photos). Nearby is the huge art deco Fire Brigade Headquarters on Albert Embankment, which has fine reliefs. A quick look at White Hart dock, across the road, concluded our tour. The dock was made around 1868, and used as an emergency water supply during the Second World War. Anyway, we were hungry by now and went to get lunch in a nearby cafe.

Really, I enjoy London's art and parks more than anything else in the city. I quite like the area around Newport Street – there's hardly any people or cars compared to the mayhem around Vauxhall.

Moomins in London

2017 seems to be year of the Moonins in London. Over Easter Kew Gardens are hosting Moomin Adventures, with the creatures hiding among the flowers, and there’s an Easter Trail and craft workshops too.

There’s still a few weeks to go to see the South Bank’s ‘immersive, interactive’ Adventures in Moominland exhibition which I think I enjoyed more than my daughter. Entering through a large Moomin book cover, we entered different Moomin and Tove Jansson environments, from tents and rocky islands to snowy forests and cabins, with rare illustrations and insights into Jansson’s life along the way. Appropriately situated under the stairs in the Royal Festival Hall’s Spirit Level. Thoroughly recommended.

Still a while to wait for the Dulwich Picture Gallery to house the first major retrospective of Tove Jansson’s art in the UK. Beyond the Moomins will showcase newly discovered artwork by Jansson from 25 October 2017 to 28 January 2018. If that's not enough, the magical Moomin shop in Covent Garden is one of my favourite shops in London.

Frank Cottell Boyce, writing in the Guardian, sums up Tove Jansson's unusual life pretty well: “Jansson was an upper-middle-class bohemian lesbian, living on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland”. Unfortunately when I was in Finland, I wasn’t able to go to the island where Jansson lived, but managed to fill my bags up with as much Moomin memorabilia as I could get. I probably own more Moomin stuff than a grown adult ought. Yes, I have some books of course, but also, erm, a mobile (no, not a phone, but you know, the 'type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium' – Wikipedia's useful description), pillow covers, towels, notebook, a soft toy and a pack of teabags.

I had a great dream about Moomins when I was in Finland. They were riding on the back of a giant hare through the snowy streets of Helsinki at night. You had to be there, obviously.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The start of basic income for the Finnish
Illustrated children's books (for parents)

Top ten museums/galleries*

World
1. The Hermitage, St. Petersberg

2. The British Museum, London

3. The Prado, Madrid

4. The Louve, Paris

5. The Uffizi, Florence

6. Musee d'Orsay, Paris

7. V&A, London

8. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

9. Guggenheim, Bilbao

10. Tate Britain, London

UK

1. British Museum, London
2. Natural History Musuem, London
3. Ashmolean, Oxford
4. National Gallery, London
5. Tate Britain, London
6. V&A, London
7. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
8. National Media Museum, Bradford
9.  Bristol Art Gallery and Museum
10. Isles of Scilly Museum, St Mary's, Scilly Isles

London
1. Horniman Museum, Forest Hill
2. Sir John Soane's Museum, Holborn
3. Geffrye Museum, Hackney
4. Grant Museum of Zoology, Euston
5. Serpentine Art Gallery, Kensington
6. Saachi Art Gallery, Chelsea
7. Cinema museum, Kennington
8. Whitechapel Art Gallery, Whitechapel
9. Dulwich Art Gallery, Greenwich
10. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Euston

I love galleries and musuems (and possibly their shops even more!) but sometimes the big, blockbuster ones can be overwhelming. We spent an entire day, 9-5, in the Hermitage in St Petersberg, and though the experience was amazing, we emerged dazed and knackered, not remembering anything we'd seen or read. It can become a bit of a ticking exercise: Leonardo? Check. Matisse? Check. We watched the Asian tourists do just this, taking photos of every exhibit and painting without even looking at them. The smaller museums and galleries can be more interesting, specialised, intimate, unique, memorable... and less crowded. 

*That I've been to.

Previously on Barnflakes:
A guide to photography for tourists 
Top 3 new (and free) art galleries
Banksy vs Bristol Museum
H for Horrific

Random Film Review: Big Eyes

(Dir: Tim Burton | USA | 2014 | 106mins)

Big eyes may be Tim Burton's most conventional film yet, albeit one with the most extraordinary but true story. The film concerns Margaret and Walter Keane. In the 1950s Walter Keane became rich and famous for his 'big eye' paintings – pictures of young, waif-like girls with abnormally large eyes. Prints of the paintings were cheaply mass-produced and sold in their millions (similar to other 'kitsch' artists of the time, such as Vladimir Tretchikoff* and JR Lynch), making Walter a celebrity and household name. Only it wasn't Walter who painted the pictures – it was his oppressed wife, Margaret. She eventually left her husband and took him to court in 1970 – where the judge asked them both to paint a 'big eyes' painting in the courtroom. Walter could not – citing a shoulder injury; Margaret produced one in less than an hour.

(Obviously Walter taking credit – and money – for Margaret's work was wrong and he deserved to be punished, but there's a part of me feeling sorry for him. Up until his death – in 2000 – he insisted on his original story that he painted the big eyed pictures. As well as being a heavy drinker, he, unsurprisingly, suffered from delusional disorder. But the thing is, if it hadn't been for Walter's savvy marketing techniques, mousy Margaret would have no doubt remained languishing in obscurity.)

The story of Margaret and Walter reminded me vaguely of another film – the classic noir Scarlet Street (1945) directed by Fritz Lang, starring Edward G Robinson and Joan Bennett. Robinson plays a retired, unhappily married man and amateur painter. He falls in love with a beautiful blonde (Bennett). When Robinson's paintings start selling for large sums, Bennett's abusive boyfriend makes Bennett pose as the painter, selling them in her name. Anyway, a case of life imitating art.

* Have I mentioned my vision of a Technicolor film of Tretchikoff's life – filmed as a lush, lurid, kitsch MGM Vincente Minnelli musical-cum-thriller-cum-romance? I have? Okay.

Just another brick in the wall

Proclaimed by CNN as one of the 'ten must-see exhibitions in the world' and being a keen Lego fan, I was looking forward to The Art of the Brick exhibition, cleverly located on Brick Lane, East London, and running until 12 April and way over-priced. My daughter loved it – but she's eight. I was less than impressed and thought there was something of the Emperor's New Clothes about it. I wouldn't have minded so much if it didn't pitch itself so persistently as being ART. In the press, in interviews, in the plaques next to each piece, and of course in the title itself, The Art of the Brick, the exhibition consistently informs us it's ART, made by an ARTIST, Nathan Sawaya. Indeed, on the website it goes as far as to say:

Nathan Sawaya has earned a top position in the world of contemporary art and has created a new dimension by merging Pop Art and Surrealism in awe inspiring and ground breaking ways. His art consists of playing with the material, colour, movement, light and perspective.

Really? To me, the exhibition had nothing whatsoever to do with art (it lacks feeling for a start), unless it's the Daily Mail idea of art (which Jonathan Jones in the Guardian wittily explained a while ago in an article called Why does the Daily Mail love to hate art?) – ie bridges made out of matchsticks, ie CRAFT. Anything remotely thought-provoking, challenging or disturbing is dismissed by the Daily Mail (ignored if they don't understand it; shocked and outraged if it's disturbing). The work in the Lego exhibition is undeniably, technically adept, but let's not call it ART.

It copies ART. Literally. There are Lego reproductions of paintings by Van Gogh, Klimt, Munch, Michelangelo and others. They're technically well done, mostly. But the pieces that make up the rest of the exhibition, the pieces that the artist plummeted the depths of his soul to create, the pieces that are 'awe-inspiring' and 'inspired' looked to me like nothing more than clichéd business stock image photography.

For example:

Clichéd business stock image photograph.

Clichéd business stock image Lego exhibit.

There are loads of them just like this – all clichéd conceptual crap not seen since 1990s business magazines. I appreciate the work that's gone into the exhibition (over 1m bricks!), but come on, it's time to grow up.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Legoland wildlife
Lego Architecture
Star Wars Lego

Watts in Compton*

Watts Mortuary Chapel (above) is a beautiful Grade I listed building in Compton, Surrey. Designed by artist and sculptor George Frederic Watts' wife, Mary Watts, it was built at the height of the Arts and Craft movement, between 1896 and 1898. Involving all the village residents in Watts, it's a gem of a chapel with highly decorative art nouveau and celtic influences. Aldous Hexley is buried in the chapel grounds. Near the chapel in Compton is the Watts Gallery, a charming builiding housing hundreds of Watt's paintings and sculptures. Opened in 1904, it was Britain's first gallery to be dedicated to one individual artist.

Many of Watts' symbolist paintings can be seen in the Tate gallery in London but it's his Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice in Postman's Park near St Paul's that remains his most moving testimony. Its wall of tiles tells the tales of 'ordinary' people who lost their lives saving others. Some of the tiles are designed by Willem de Morgan (including the one below) and later ones by Royal Doulton.

*My, how I struggled to come up with an amusing pun on Watts and Compton – both being rough neighbourhoods in South Central L.A., and Compton, UK, being in sleepy Surrey (and Watts being in Compton). Watts (in L.A.) is also home to the Watts tower, an amazing series of sculptures, one of the most extraordinary pieces of 'outsider art' ever created.

A Life In Art

I really don't have a problem with (say) Tracey Emin not being able to paint or draw. So what? When she declares that there's no separation between her life and her art, she reveals herself to be a true artist. So, if she can do it, why can't all of us?

It occurs to me I will probably never have enough room to display all my stuff. And it occurs to me I want to display My Life Of Crap. I want it out there. In public. Maybe just for a week or two (I'm not that much of an egotist). I'd been to see the Chris Marker exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery. He'd died recently and I thought the exhibition was like a celebration of his life, with his films, photos, travel guides but also letters, notebooks, sketches. This is how I want my stuff displayed in a similarly sized gallery. A huge space to display my life's work: paintings, drawings, sculptures*, films, photographs, sure, but also newspaper clippings, books and magazines, records and CDs, posters, clothes, toys, bric-a-brac. But I actually want to be alive when this happens, and curate it. Everything will be for sale (there would be barngains galore).

The idea of preserving an artist's or writer's room exactly as it was, ie Charles Dickens' or Thomas Hardy's study or Lawrence of Arabia's house, is how we should all be remembered. I've written about this before; that a gravestone is essentially a boring, impersonal reminder of a person's life, and far more intimate and relevant would be a recreation of the dead person's living room or bedroom with all their stuff. This is us now, right? Our stuff? (Even if it's digital stuff, it's still stuff.)

*Someone will have to recreate the giant plug switch I made out of leaves and grass and the huge cardboard light switch, the mini cinemas, palace of mirrors, etc.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Head in the Clouds
The Museum of Everyone

The cherry orchard

How many fruit trees make an orchard? To be classified as a serial killer three murders is the minimum, but it takes just two trees to make an orchard. Like the National Gallery's recent once-in-a-lifetime display of two Van Gogh sunflower paintings side by side, this is similarly a rare opporutity to see my daughter's three cherry tree paintings – each painted at least a year apart – side by side. And they're just as beautiful as Van Gogh's.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Martha's Robot Paintings
The Cherry Tree