Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983
Exhibition preview
FOR OVER thirty years, Giorgio Casali (1913-1995) photographed the work of the greatest post-war Italian architects and designers.
Although not a household name, Casali’s reputation as one of the most influential 20th century Italian photographers is assured through the striking imagery he produced for the monthly magazine Domus – Italy’s famous style bible.
This important exhibition, Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983, on display at the Estorick Collection from May 22 to September 8, 2013, presents a selection of works from the vast collection of Casali’s images in the Archivio Progetti, housed at IUAV University in Venice.
With their incredible subtlety and sophistication, these masterful images reveal why Casali’s vision came to be so valued by such important figures as Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass Jr.
Born in Lodi (Lombardy), Casali moved to Milan in 1928 where he worked as an apprentice in the Rambaldi photographic studio prior to establishing his own studio in partnership with Giovanni Muzzarelli. His career was to take a giant step forward in the early 1950s as a result of the images he took of Gio Ponti’s iconic Superleggera chair for Domus.
Casali’s compositions effectively conveyed the design’s key feature – extreme lightness – through the use of models holding the object with a single finger. These images bore the hallmarks that were consistently to mark his work over the following three decades, being defined by their economy, wit, great elegance and commitment to presenting the object or building in question to its best advantage.
Domus was founded by Gio Ponti in 1928, and quickly became an incredibly influential magazine, going on to play a key role in the international dissemination of the Made in Italy ‘brand’, which asserted a quintessentially Italian sense of style through the creative reinvention and reinterpretation of everyday objects.
Casali forged a collaborative relationship with Ponti that proved to be incredibly fruitful and which lasted until the early 1980s, his work charting post-war Italy’s growing self-confidence and position as a world leader in the spheres of architecture and design.
The images on display span forty years of creativity in both architecture and design, and are presented in four sections, three of which will examine different aspects of Casali’s work for Domus.
The first is devoted to a selection of the thirty stylish cover images he created for the magazine, while the second and third explore his photographic treatment of key design objects and buildings. These range from Ponti’s elegant Torre Pirelli (Milan, 1956) and extraordinary Cathedral for the southern Italian city of Taranto (1971) to Roberto Monsani’s Villa Brody (Greve in Chianti, 1973) with its jutting, angular forms.
Photographs of two celebrated lamps designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni – Arco (1962) and Ipotenusa (1975) – also feature, as do images of Gianni Pareschi and Umberto Orsini’s Poltrona Libro armchair of 1970, which resembles an open book.
Due to their iconic status, many of these design classics remain in production and examples of these will also be on display in the exhibition spaces, including Ponti’s Superleggera chair and a mushroom-shaped, blown-glass lamp by Angelo Mangiarotti, dating from 1966.
Alongside these works, the final section will present a series of vintage prints by Casali that are entirely unconnected with the worlds of architecture and design. These include pictures taken both in a professional context, such as wedding photographs, portraits and images of works by artists such as Fausto Melotti, as well as travel photographs and more intimate, private studies of friends and family members.
Such works, many of which have never been displayed until now, reflect the familiar aesthetics of post-war artistic photography in their concern with texture and tone, and their exploration of the relationship between abstraction and representation through an attention to the details of natural or man-made forms.
Casali’s work bore witness to the extraordinary explosion of creativity and innovation in Italian culture after World War II, making this exhibition of interest not only to scholars of Italian art, architecture and design, but also to a public that recognises the exemplary value of the photographic image in chronicling the historical evolution of design.
Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983 is organised in collaboration with IUAV University, Domus and the Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri, Verona, where it made its debut earlier this year.
The exhibition will not only enable visitors to discover the achievements of once-celebrated but now less well-known masters, but also to rediscover those of more familiar figures such as Ponti, Pier Luigi Nervi and Le Corbusier through the lens of this great photographer.
Curated by Angelo Maggi and Italo Zannier, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue containing scholarly essays on Casali’s life and work.
Complementing the exhibition will be a new film by the artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone which makes compelling use of two contrasting but related locations: Carlo Scarpa’s famous Gipsoteca plaster-cast gallery in the Museo Canova in Possagno, northern Italy, and the Venice-based plaster workshops of Eugenio de Luigi, one of Scarpa’s most important collaborators.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and entitled Everything Made Bronze, the film is particularly relevant to the exhibition as one of Scarpa’s works was also the subject of a Domus cover image taken by Casali in 1960. Filmed using a spring-wound camera, the work follows (and further illuminates) the extraordinary play of light in the Gipsoteca over a number of days producing a constantly fluid and changing environment for the appreciation of Canova’s plaster-casts. It will be shown from June 26 to August 4, 2013.
Everything made Bronze develops the artists’ abiding formal preoccupations – the camera’s ability to produce ambiguities of scale, depth or shallowness, transparency, and reflection, and the intersections of architectural planes, vistas, apertures and screens. In so doing, the film centres on the altered forms of attention, and the resulting intensity of looking, that comes from using the camera to magnify and study architectural details and fleeting atmospheric effects.
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1 2AN
The Spirit of Utopia - Whitechapel Gallery
Exhibition preview
TEN leading international artists and collectives speculate on alternative futures for society, the economy and the environment in the Whitechapel Gallery’s summer exhibition, The Spirit of Utopia (July 4 to September 5, 2013).
Including new commissions and works by artists, architects and designers Yto Barrada; Theaster Gates; Ha Za Vu Zu; Peter Liversidge; Ostengruppe; Claire Pentecost; Pedro Reyes; Superflex; Time/Bank and Wayward Plants, the exhibition features a series of installation and events which propose playful, proactive and creatively pragmatic models for social change.
The exhibition opens with Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ Sanatorium (2013), an installation evoking a temporary clinic offering participatory ‘therapies’, mixing art and psychology. Visitors are able to take part in a range of self-discovery sessions created by the artist.
Exploring teaching, skill and craft, US artist Theaster Gates’ installation Soul Manufacturing Corporation (2011- ongoing) has skilled potters training apprentices to throw clay on a wheel in a working pottery studio in the gallery space, producing utilitarian pots that will be displayed as they are created.
The exhibition continues with Improbable Botany (2013), a series of experimental greenhouses by the London landscape practice Wayward Plants which proposes new possibilities in food production – from futuristic seed gardens to sending plants to space.
Our relationship to the environment is also explored by US artist Claire Pentecost who draws connections between the health of local soil from urban farms to the health of the human body.
A platform for alternative economies is presented through an installation by Time/Bank. Founded by artist Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Time/Bank is an international project which creates micro-economies based on the exchange of time and skills. Their display including film, posters and the Time/Bank archive is complemented by a series of lectures by prominent theorists and academics who will utilise the archive for the duration of the show.
The Danish collective Superflex promote self-organisation and counter-economic strategies. Their film The Financial Crisis (2009) sees a hypnotist addressing the financial meltdown of 2008.
French-Morocan artist Yto Barrada’s installation explores the relationship between personal histories and bureaucracy by examining her experience as an artist within the historic context of colonial power. Playfully presented through a newly commissioned poster series titled Say Don’t Say, the posters use terms which subversively react to bureaucratic demands.
Other highlights from the exhibition include British artist Peter Liversidge’s series of written proposals, resulting in ongoing performances and events staged throughout the duration of the show, such as the creation of a fictitious exhibition archive and a public comedy night in the Gallery.
Turkish collective Ha Za Vu Zu will create a new film work on the history of the world, involving visitors taking part in a live performance, while Russian design lab Ostengruppe will create specifically commissioned posters for the exhibition.
Admission: Free.
Opening Times: Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm; Thursdays 11am – 9pm.
Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7522 7888
Website: www.whitechapelgallery.org/
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 - 1940 - RA
Exhibition preview
MEXICO: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will be on display in the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts from July 6 to September 29, 2013.
The exhibition will examine the intense thirty year period of artistic creativity that took place in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. The turmoil of the revolution between 1910 and 1920 led to a period of profound political change in which the arts were placed centre stage.
Comprising over 120 paintings and photographs, the exhibition brings together works from both public and private collections across the Americas and Europe.
In 1910, the outbreak of revolution brought to an end the long reign of Porfirio Diaz who had held the presidency since 1876. Once the turmoil had settled, the subsequent politcal change ushered in a period often referred to as a cultural renaissance.
Under state-sponsored schemes, artists were employed by the Ministry of Education to further the political aims of the revolution; art was embraced as symbolic of the inherent creativity and industry of the nation and was, therefore, seen as representative of the principles of the revolution.
Figures such as Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros (los tres grandes) were at the vanguard of this movement.
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will highlight an extraordinarily productive and diverse period in the history of Mexico; a time when Mexico attracted large numbers of significant international artists and intellectuals who engaged with the political changes taking place, and responded to the rich and varied country they found on arrival there.
For many, Mexico was an unspoilt land rich with history, stunning scenery and a diverse population; it heralded a sense of discovery and a promise of adventure.
Work by significant Mexican artists will be placed alongside that of individuals who were affected by their experiences in Mexico. These include Josef Albers, Edward Burra, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Tina Modotti, Henrietta Shore, Paul Strand, Leon Underwood and Edward Weston.
Highlights will include Roberto Montenegro’s Mayan Woman, 1926 (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Diego Rivera’s Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928 (Collection of Clarissa and Edgar Bronfman Jr); Tina Modotti’s Workers Reading El Machete, c 1929 (Throckmorton Fine A, Inc, New York); Jose Clemente Orozco’s Barricade, 1931 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)…
…Edward Burra’s El Paseo, c 1938 (Private Collection); Jose Chavez Morado’s Carnival in Huejotzingo, 1939 (Phoenix Art Museum); Robert Capa’s Women in truck with banners supporting presidential candidacy of General Manuel Avila Camacho, Mexico City, June – July 1940 (International Centre of Photography) and a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo (Courtesy Sotheby’s).
The exhibition concludes in 1940, a momentous year in Mexican cultural and political life. 20 Centuries of Mexican Art opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, an important exhibition that demonstrated the elevated position that Mexican art had attained in the US by this time.
In the same year, Andre Breton organised the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City. Robert Capa, who was commissioned by Life to cover the presidential elections, also reported the death of Leon Trotsky who, having sough political asylum in Mexico in 1937, was assassinated.
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will reveal a dynamic and often turbulent cultural environment that included some of the most seminal figures of the twentieth century reflecting on their interaction with each other and their differing responses to the same subject: Mexico.
Superpaintings - Transition Gallery
Exhibition preview
AN EXHIBITION entitled Superpaintings, featuring the work of James Connelly and Oliver Bancroft, will be on display at Transition Gallery from May 18 to June 19, 2013.
Superpaintings features eight new paintings made in collaboration, for the first time, by two old friends who met at art school in the late 1990s. It is a friendship that started because of a shared infectious sense of humour, a love of old-master paintings and a tendency for late night disco dancing. All of these traits are apparent in the new paintings.
The paintings re-enact a dance move from the 1981 cult hit song Superman by Black Lace. Dance moves include clapping hands, walking, swimming, skiing, spraying deodorant, sounding a horn, Macho Man, ringing a bell, and the Superman.
As society suffers cuts from tightening-of-the-belt austerity measures, one has to remember that, maybe, in the bigger picture Neitzsche and Black Lace were right after all.
The process of painting is no longer just something that painters share by talking and viewing the finished piece. Using cutting edge technology the artists add a new dimension to the discourse of painting by creating an augmented celebration of the superman.
The history of each painting will be able to be viewed in the gallery by holding a mobile device to the subject of the work thus unfolding the life and process of the artwork.
Superpaintings is one of a series of shows at Transition that examine ideas around collaboration. The subject is also examined in Garageland 15: Collaboration, published in April 2013.
Times: Friday to Sunday 12 – 6pm.
Transition Gallery, Unit 25a Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QN
Harry Cory Wright: Hey Charlie - Eleven
Exhibition preview
ELEVEN is presenting Hey Charlie, an exhibition of new work by Harry Cory Wright – from June 19 to September 14, 2013.
Hey Charlie is a celebration of over fifty years of Cory Wright’s involvement with a particular bend in a river and the field beside it. These joyful images are the culmination of a lifetime of experience of the place in which he grew up and to which he has stayed connected throughout his life.
The sense of the impulsive, and indeed mischief, is reflected in the title. Cory Wright calls his brother’s name – a child’s shout, an adult’s beckoning – to coax him into causing a stir in a place they know so well. They are allowed once again to be little gods. They create interruptions in the otherwise placid landscape; set off rockets into an evening sky; peer inquisitively into a haze of smoke creeping around a river bend.
These striking and transient impulses, and the photographs in which they are captured, were intended to shake off the burden of the past and of nostalgia, and to provoke the making of new memories; to re-imagine, reshape and reawaken a much-loved place.
Cory Wright has thus added a new dimension to the adventurous approach, reflected in his series Place in Mind (2010) and Journey Through the British Isles (2007), to uncovering the landscape and infusing it with prospect. This personal process has always involved the physical engagement with landscape in a way that echoes Richard Long while the jubilant, spur of the moment nature of the photographs recall the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue.
However, here Cory Wright’s playful tone has a new and heightened focus: how our views of a well-known place might change over time as life adapts and the place adapts with it – the feelings of the small child still contained within those of the adult. Opportunity is always there.
For many years Cory Wright has worked exclusively with the large 10 × 8 inch plate camera. In this new series, he mixes this approach with high end digital cameras that allow him to explore the opportunities afforded by post production and print. He sees these two approaches as complementary.
“The particular – and somewhat self-important – nature of the 10 × 8 inch negative has always elevated the picture taking process and given weight to the final piece. I have found that working with digital cameras has allowed me to retain the importance of ‘being there’ and the photographic element of ‘witness’, and to add a further distillation of those aspects in post-production. In this series, where there is such a blend of real and fantasy, this combination of working methods has been invaluable”.
Harry Cory Wright was born in 1963 and lives and works in Norfolk. His work was recently included in Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House (2013) which was curated by William A. Ewing, the noted photographic curator and historian, and also featured work by Darren Almond, Elger Esser, Hirsohi Sugimoto and Thomas Struth amongst others.
Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 11am – 6pm, Thursday 11am to 7pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm.
Eleven, 11 Eccleston Street, London, SW1 9LX
Tel: +44 (0)20 7823 5540
Website: www.elevenfineart.com/
Bonhams to sell John Lennon's first car - A Ferrari
Event preview
THE FERRARI, personally selected by Beatles singer/songwriter John Lennon as his first car, is one of the highlights of Bonhams’ auction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Chichester on Friday, July 12, 2013.
In February 1965, The Beatles recorded Ticket to Ride – a song that would become one of their biggest hits, topping both the UK and US singles charts. By happy coincidence, that same month, the news that Lennon had passed his driving test made headlines across the country.
Within hours, the road outside the security gates of his Kentwood home in Weybridge, Surrey, was jammed with Maseratis, Aston Martins, and the Jaguar E-type, as luxury car dealerships – hungry for business – spotted an opportunity to secure a high-profile client.
The singer, by then a father to 22-month-old Julian by his first wife Cynthia, strolled out to inspect the cars and chose a right-hand drive Ferrari 330GT 2+2 Coupé finished in Azzuro blue paint, with a blue interior, priced at £6,500 (equivalent to just over £110,000 in today’s money).
Motor vehicles were to become a passion for Lennon, no more so than this Ferrari, which he used for the best part of three years – until October 1967 – covering more than 20,000 miles.
By the late 1980s, this car (painted red and separated from its number plate) was with the famous Modena Ferrari dealership, from where it was acquired by its current owner. It has since been lovingly restored to its original specification.
Offered for sale by Bonhams with its original DUL 4C registration restored by the DVLA, this matching-numbers* motor car is one of only 500 of its type built and is estimated to realise between £180,000 and £220,000 at the auction. It is being sold with an extensive history file documenting its provenance and restoration, which also includes correspondence with Lennon.
Sholto Gilbertson, Senior Specialist in the Bonhams Motor Car Department, said: “It is a wonderful commentary on the early excitement generated by Beatlemania that John Lennon didn’t even have to leave his house to buy his first car. We are delighted to be offering a car associated with such an icon of contemporary popular culture at the first of our Goodwood series of auctions in 2013.”
*A matching-numbers motor car is one in which the numbers stamped on the engine and the chassis match, and are the same as those originally fitted by the factory during construction.
Fire Sale - Lazarides Gallery
Exhibition preview
ROBERT Del Naja aka 3D: Fire Sale, a unique retrospective of painting and design that have helped define Massive Attack over the past 20 years, will be on display at Lazarides Gallery from May 24 to June 20, 2013.
The exhibition will cover the pages of sketchbooks to 12 million record sleeves.
Previously unseen pieces created for Massive Attack’s latest album Heligoland (2010) will be exhibited alongside archival works painted and screen printed for the first time from 1991’s Blue Lines and 1994’s Protection.
Robert’s ongoing collaboration with UVA with whom he designed Massive Attack’s hugely influential live shows, are represented in digital mirror pieces.
Fire Sale will be the first and only time these pieces will be collected in one place: images have been hand-finished and are total one-offs – unseen images alongside those more familiar – enhanced and redacted especially for this show.
Under the tag 3D, Robert was a central figure in the Bristolian graffiti movement that would eventually spawn Banksy. Like his music, 3D’s art is modern and grounded, challenging and beautiful, industrial and ethnic. A vocal critic of the Iraq war, the conscious elements of the pieces are a reminder that Massive Attack have always been outspoken on social and international issues.
He has collaborated with many diverse organisations including The Hoping Foundation, Reprieve, Occupy and London’s Southbank Centre (where he co-curated on the 2008 Meltdown Festival). Robert is currently working on a major commission for Manchester International Festival with filmmaker Adam Curtis and a book of his artworks – 3D / The Art Of Massive Attack – is published later this year.
Admission: Free.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 7pm.
Lazarides Rathbone, 11 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1HR
Tel: + 44 (0) 207 636 5443
Website: www.lazinc.com/
David Shenton: These Foolish Things
Exhibition preview
DAVID Shenton: These Foolish Things, part of the AIRLOCK programme, is on display at Space Station Sixty-Five from June 1 to July 27, 2013.
Shenton’s cartoons are often camp but they’re not just camp, and they’re not that awful apolitical offensive camp, but a light, knowing, meaningful camp.
Their first task is to entertain and to make the audience laugh – and often they do much more because the liberation politics that informs his work means that with the laugh there is an acerbic point – a wry observation on how we live or a satirical comment about society and a wider political context, contained in the lives and musings of plausible and likeable characters. Or sometimes it’s just a silly joke.
Shenton was published regularly in the gay press from 1976, and irregularly in The Guardian over 12 years, where he gave the world the philosophical, and sometimes obscure musings of London pigeons. His work has been in many other titles such as Solicitor’s Journal and Optician, as well as illustrating several books including Oscar Wilde’s Salom.
The central character of many cartoons over four decades is the sweet but hapless Stanley, a moustachioed gay man whose heyday was the 1980s and who goes from frame to frame trying to cope with a world that is full of surprises and delights that often leave him baffled, though unhurt. Stanley reached his zenith in Stanley and the Mask of Mystery (Gay Men’s Press 1983).
These days Shenton’s cartoons can be found on Facebook where Been There, Seen That lets us glimpse scenes observed by the artist at meetings, marches, events, and in everyday life – both in London and the seaside town of Cromer in Norfolk. He and John, his partner of 17 years – who appears in a number of the Facebook cartoons – share their time between the two places.
These Foolish Things at Space Station Sixty-Five showcases some favourite cartoons from Facebook and some of his recent drawings.
Shenton has also been found providing seasonal works bigger than lifesize on the walls of the Joiner’s Arms, Hackney Road, E2. In books, newspapers, magazines, art galleries, on Facebook and on pub walls, his work is a remarkable commentary on gay life – and more – over four extraordinary decades.
Admission: Free.
Times: Thursday to Saturday 12 to 6pm. Weekdays by appointment.
Space Station Sixty-Five, Building One, 373 Kennington Road, London, SE11 4PS
Tel: 020 7820 112
Website: www.spacestationsixtyfive.com
The 14th Guest by Jonty Hurwitz - Savoy Hotel
THE STORY has it that in 1898 South African diamond magnate Woolf Joel held a dinner at The Savoy for fourteen guests and one cancelled at the last minute.
The dinner continued, but one superstitious guest announced that death would come to the first person to leave the unlucky table of thirteen. Joel took that gamble and a few weeks later he was shot dead in Johannesburg.
To avoid a repeat performance, The Savoy offered a member of staff to join tables of thirteen thereafter. Unable to discuss private matters or feel at ease, this proved to be unpopular with guests and thus, in a stroke of genius, Kaspar was born – a two foot high sculpture of a black cat, created in 1927 by British designer Basil Ionides to stave off bad luck.
For almost 90 years, The Savoy has been more than happy to oblige parties of thirteen with Kaspar’s company, whereby he joins in with napkin around his neck and a full place setting to ‘enjoy’ every course. Winston Churchill, who adored Kaspar, insisted that the cat join him at every gathering of The Other Club.
On May 2, 2013, The Savoy opened Kaspar’s, a new seafood bar and grill restaurant, named in honour of the hotel’s celebrated cat; and commissioned a new sculpture by Jonty Hurwitz as part of its contemporary art programme.
The 14th Guest, unveiled on April 30, 2013, is the latest work in Hurwitz’ Generation Pi series of anamorphic sculptures. Launched at Kinetica art and science fair in February 2013, this series has had unprecedented interest in the world’s media with over two million page impressions and 500,000 viewings on You Tube.
The subject of Generation Pi is the new relationship between today’s generation and technology.
Gold: Status and Glory - Moretti Fine Art
Exhibition preview
THE TIMELESS allure of gold will be celebrated in an exceptional exhibition entitled Gold: Status and Glory. The result of a collaboration between two dealers, Adrian Sassoon and Moretti Fine Art, it will be staged at Moretti Fine Art from May 2 to May 31, 2013.
Fabrizio Moretti explained: “As a gallery specialising in Italian Old Masters, we are constantly confronted with the magnificence of gold. This exhibition is an opportunity to examine this highly prized material in the contexts of decoration, devotion and drama.”
Gold: Status and Glory will present fifteen exquisite objects by the contemporary Italian goldsmith Giovanni Corvaja in the context of 14th and 15th century Italian gold-ground devotional paintings.
Giovanni Corvaja has been fascinated and inspired by metals, especially gold, since early childhood. His jewellery is represented in some of the most famous public collections in the world not only as jewellery for adornment but also, as the respected British jewellery specialist and author Geoffrey Munn OBE says in his catalogue essay for the exhibition, “as examples of miraculous contemporary craftsmanship and art”.
Munn continues “Ductile, malleable and incorruptible gold holds a deep fascination for Corvaja. However, the miraculous qualities of the metal, especially its unique beauty, can only be revealed by the experience and skill of the goldsmith. Although Giovanni Corvaja follows a very ancient tradition in his workshop in Todi in Italy, he has developed skills and techniques that have broken all previous bounds. Central to these is the ability to draw the precious yellow metal into threads hardly thicker than a spider’s silk”.
In ancient times, gold was collected by staking riverbeds with sheepskins rich in lanolin. The water drove tiny grains of gold across the surface of the wool where they were entrapped. The skin was then dried and burned leaving only pure gold behind. This is probably the origin of the legend of the Golden Fleece.
Its magic has inspired Giovanni Corvaja’s recent work in which he has woven gossamer strands of gold into the semblance of fur and wool and gathered it in frames and honeycombs to be worn as bracelets, brooches and pendants. Light and air pass freely through these sculptural jewels and sometimes, in the tradition of the Etruscan goldsmiths, tiny beads of coloured enamel heighten their unique effect, raising jewellery, once again, to the highest level of art.
After more than a decade of ceaseless application and research, this truly remarkable artist discovered a particular alloy of gold that was both a beautiful colour and unusually ductile allowing it to be drawn to a fineness of less than ten microns. For over 1,500 hours Corvaja wove this thread and produced an extraordinary cloth made from 110 kilometres of almost transparent gold wire, a masterpiece of tactile experience, being both cool and silky smooth.
It is possible to subtly change the hue of gold from buttercup yellow to fugitive shades of pink and green and even moonshine white by making an alloy with other metals. Giovanni enjoys experimenting and, for added magic, has created a warp made of threads, each composed of 291 wire fibres in a pale yellow 18 ct gold, while the weft is of a yellow-orange 22 ct gold alloy and has braided threads also comprising 291 wires. The result is a cloth that is almost pure gold in colour with subtle shimmering variations.
The fifteen exquisite pieces by Corvaja to be shown in this exhibition are each made from 18ct gold and include a Golden Fleece brooch, an elaborate gold cage bracelet with 950 platinum wires and coloured enamel, a sinuous necklace made with 19 alloys shading the gold from white to yellow and back to white again, and a Golden Fleece headpiece made of 18 and 22 ct gold cloth, comprising over five million single strands making a total of 200 kilometres of wire.
Giovanni Corvaja was born in 1971 in Padua and was educated in that city of goldsmiths where he was taught by the celebrated master goldsmith, Francesco Pavan. He began to work with gold in 1984 when he was just 13 and immediately recognised it as his métier. In 1988, he was awarded the Diploma di Maestro d’Arte and in 1990 the Maturità d’Arte Applicata.
In 1990, he enrolled in the Royal College of Art in London to continue studying art jewellery, graduating with an MA in 1992 when he returned to Padua. In 2001, he moved to Todi, a historical Etruscan town in central Italy, where he has restored a 15th century building, now his spacious workshop. His career has also been distinguished with four solo exhibitions and numerous group shows throughout the world.
The use of gold in Trecento and Quattrocento gold-ground pictures gave the illusion that the panels were made of solid gold, creating ethereal images with an illusion of heaven. The metal was meticulously handled to prevent cracks or faults when it was placed onto the bole (a prepared clay surface).
Among the eight fine examples of such works in this show will be St Lawrence in Glory with four angels by Neri di Bicci, (Florence, 1418-1492), one of the masterpieces in the huge corpus of works attributed to the artist. The fine painted decoration of the rear of the panel, with the monogram of Christ at the centre, is almost certainly contemporary with the image on its front and the little painting, outstanding for its exquisite workmanship and the richness of its decorative aspects, is one of the finest achievements of Neri di Bicci’s mid career in the early 1470s.
Crucifixion and Annunciation (pictured), dating from around 1380-90 by an unknown artist from Verona, is a rare example of a Veronese painting on panel for this period as frescoes were more usual.
The composition is constructed on three levels: in the foreground the mourners stand on the left while to the right soldiers are disputing the robe of Christ; behind them in the middle ground are surging ranks of horsemen, an idea deriving from Giotto; and in the upper part Christ is depicted between the thieves and the lament of the angels. The scene is remarkably animated with the many heads at the bottom, the variety of gestures and the frenetic interaction of the figures.
The Annunciation, painted with the Angel Gabriel in the upper left corner and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove flying towards the Virgin in the right, together with other stylistic elements, all point to the hand of a Veronese painter.
The Coronation of the Virgin, with Saints Nicholas of Bari, Anthony Abbot, John the Baptist, Francis of Assisi, Phillip and Zanobi, a beautiful work by Maestro Francesco (active Florence c. 1380 -c. 1400), was formerly in the collection of H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. She gave it to Christ Church, Victoria Road, London, in 1932 and it later belonged to the Chrysler Museum of Art, USA.
From the secular to the sacred, Gold: Status and Glory will offer visitors a remarkable experience which will show the timeless appeal and symbolism of gold as it was perceived in imagery of the Middle Ages juxtaposed with Giovanni Corvaja’s work, representing the finest craftsmanship of the 21st century.
Gold: Status and Glory Gallery
Moretti Fine Art, 2a – 6 Ryder Street, St. James’s, London, SW1
Right Content
Related Links
Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983 · 3 days ago by
FOR OVER thirty years, Giorgio Casali (1913-1995) photographed the work of the greatest post-war Italian architects and designers.
Although not a household name, Casali’s reputation as one of the most influential 20th century Italian photographers is assured through the striking imagery he produced for the monthly magazine Domus – Italy’s famous style bible.
This important exhibition, Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983, on display at the Estorick Collection from May 22 to September 8, 2013, presents a selection of works from the vast collection of Casali’s images in the Archivio Progetti, housed at IUAV University in Venice.
With their incredible subtlety and sophistication, these masterful images reveal why Casali’s vision came to be so valued by such important figures as Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass Jr.
Born in Lodi (Lombardy), Casali moved to Milan in 1928 where he worked as an apprentice in the Rambaldi photographic studio prior to establishing his own studio in partnership with Giovanni Muzzarelli. His career was to take a giant step forward in the early 1950s as a result of the images he took of Gio Ponti’s iconic Superleggera chair for Domus.
Casali’s compositions effectively conveyed the design’s key feature – extreme lightness – through the use of models holding the object with a single finger. These images bore the hallmarks that were consistently to mark his work over the following three decades, being defined by their economy, wit, great elegance and commitment to presenting the object or building in question to its best advantage.
Domus was founded by Gio Ponti in 1928, and quickly became an incredibly influential magazine, going on to play a key role in the international dissemination of the Made in Italy ‘brand’, which asserted a quintessentially Italian sense of style through the creative reinvention and reinterpretation of everyday objects.
Casali forged a collaborative relationship with Ponti that proved to be incredibly fruitful and which lasted until the early 1980s, his work charting post-war Italy’s growing self-confidence and position as a world leader in the spheres of architecture and design.
The images on display span forty years of creativity in both architecture and design, and are presented in four sections, three of which will examine different aspects of Casali’s work for Domus.
The first is devoted to a selection of the thirty stylish cover images he created for the magazine, while the second and third explore his photographic treatment of key design objects and buildings. These range from Ponti’s elegant Torre Pirelli (Milan, 1956) and extraordinary Cathedral for the southern Italian city of Taranto (1971) to Roberto Monsani’s Villa Brody (Greve in Chianti, 1973) with its jutting, angular forms.
Photographs of two celebrated lamps designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni – Arco (1962) and Ipotenusa (1975) – also feature, as do images of Gianni Pareschi and Umberto Orsini’s Poltrona Libro armchair of 1970, which resembles an open book.
Due to their iconic status, many of these design classics remain in production and examples of these will also be on display in the exhibition spaces, including Ponti’s Superleggera chair and a mushroom-shaped, blown-glass lamp by Angelo Mangiarotti, dating from 1966.
Alongside these works, the final section will present a series of vintage prints by Casali that are entirely unconnected with the worlds of architecture and design. These include pictures taken both in a professional context, such as wedding photographs, portraits and images of works by artists such as Fausto Melotti, as well as travel photographs and more intimate, private studies of friends and family members.
Such works, many of which have never been displayed until now, reflect the familiar aesthetics of post-war artistic photography in their concern with texture and tone, and their exploration of the relationship between abstraction and representation through an attention to the details of natural or man-made forms.
Casali’s work bore witness to the extraordinary explosion of creativity and innovation in Italian culture after World War II, making this exhibition of interest not only to scholars of Italian art, architecture and design, but also to a public that recognises the exemplary value of the photographic image in chronicling the historical evolution of design.
Giorgio Casali: Photographer/Domus 1951-1983 is organised in collaboration with IUAV University, Domus and the Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri, Verona, where it made its debut earlier this year.
The exhibition will not only enable visitors to discover the achievements of once-celebrated but now less well-known masters, but also to rediscover those of more familiar figures such as Ponti, Pier Luigi Nervi and Le Corbusier through the lens of this great photographer.
Curated by Angelo Maggi and Italo Zannier, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue containing scholarly essays on Casali’s life and work.
Complementing the exhibition will be a new film by the artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone which makes compelling use of two contrasting but related locations: Carlo Scarpa’s famous Gipsoteca plaster-cast gallery in the Museo Canova in Possagno, northern Italy, and the Venice-based plaster workshops of Eugenio de Luigi, one of Scarpa’s most important collaborators.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and entitled Everything Made Bronze, the film is particularly relevant to the exhibition as one of Scarpa’s works was also the subject of a Domus cover image taken by Casali in 1960. Filmed using a spring-wound camera, the work follows (and further illuminates) the extraordinary play of light in the Gipsoteca over a number of days producing a constantly fluid and changing environment for the appreciation of Canova’s plaster-casts. It will be shown from June 26 to August 4, 2013.
Everything made Bronze develops the artists’ abiding formal preoccupations – the camera’s ability to produce ambiguities of scale, depth or shallowness, transparency, and reflection, and the intersections of architectural planes, vistas, apertures and screens. In so doing, the film centres on the altered forms of attention, and the resulting intensity of looking, that comes from using the camera to magnify and study architectural details and fleeting atmospheric effects.
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1 2AN
The Spirit of Utopia - Whitechapel Gallery · 4 days ago by
TEN leading international artists and collectives speculate on alternative futures for society, the economy and the environment in the Whitechapel Gallery’s summer exhibition, The Spirit of Utopia (July 4 to September 5, 2013).
Including new commissions and works by artists, architects and designers Yto Barrada; Theaster Gates; Ha Za Vu Zu; Peter Liversidge; Ostengruppe; Claire Pentecost; Pedro Reyes; Superflex; Time/Bank and Wayward Plants, the exhibition features a series of installation and events which propose playful, proactive and creatively pragmatic models for social change.
The exhibition opens with Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ Sanatorium (2013), an installation evoking a temporary clinic offering participatory ‘therapies’, mixing art and psychology. Visitors are able to take part in a range of self-discovery sessions created by the artist.
Exploring teaching, skill and craft, US artist Theaster Gates’ installation Soul Manufacturing Corporation (2011- ongoing) has skilled potters training apprentices to throw clay on a wheel in a working pottery studio in the gallery space, producing utilitarian pots that will be displayed as they are created.
The exhibition continues with Improbable Botany (2013), a series of experimental greenhouses by the London landscape practice Wayward Plants which proposes new possibilities in food production – from futuristic seed gardens to sending plants to space.
Our relationship to the environment is also explored by US artist Claire Pentecost who draws connections between the health of local soil from urban farms to the health of the human body.
A platform for alternative economies is presented through an installation by Time/Bank. Founded by artist Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Time/Bank is an international project which creates micro-economies based on the exchange of time and skills. Their display including film, posters and the Time/Bank archive is complemented by a series of lectures by prominent theorists and academics who will utilise the archive for the duration of the show.
The Danish collective Superflex promote self-organisation and counter-economic strategies. Their film The Financial Crisis (2009) sees a hypnotist addressing the financial meltdown of 2008.
French-Morocan artist Yto Barrada’s installation explores the relationship between personal histories and bureaucracy by examining her experience as an artist within the historic context of colonial power. Playfully presented through a newly commissioned poster series titled Say Don’t Say, the posters use terms which subversively react to bureaucratic demands.
Other highlights from the exhibition include British artist Peter Liversidge’s series of written proposals, resulting in ongoing performances and events staged throughout the duration of the show, such as the creation of a fictitious exhibition archive and a public comedy night in the Gallery.
Turkish collective Ha Za Vu Zu will create a new film work on the history of the world, involving visitors taking part in a live performance, while Russian design lab Ostengruppe will create specifically commissioned posters for the exhibition.
Admission: Free.
Opening Times: Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm; Thursdays 11am – 9pm.
Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7522 7888
Website: www.whitechapelgallery.org/
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 - 1940 - RA · 6 days ago by
MEXICO: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will be on display in the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts from July 6 to September 29, 2013.
The exhibition will examine the intense thirty year period of artistic creativity that took place in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. The turmoil of the revolution between 1910 and 1920 led to a period of profound political change in which the arts were placed centre stage.
Comprising over 120 paintings and photographs, the exhibition brings together works from both public and private collections across the Americas and Europe.
In 1910, the outbreak of revolution brought to an end the long reign of Porfirio Diaz who had held the presidency since 1876. Once the turmoil had settled, the subsequent politcal change ushered in a period often referred to as a cultural renaissance.
Under state-sponsored schemes, artists were employed by the Ministry of Education to further the political aims of the revolution; art was embraced as symbolic of the inherent creativity and industry of the nation and was, therefore, seen as representative of the principles of the revolution.
Figures such as Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros (los tres grandes) were at the vanguard of this movement.
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will highlight an extraordinarily productive and diverse period in the history of Mexico; a time when Mexico attracted large numbers of significant international artists and intellectuals who engaged with the political changes taking place, and responded to the rich and varied country they found on arrival there.
For many, Mexico was an unspoilt land rich with history, stunning scenery and a diverse population; it heralded a sense of discovery and a promise of adventure.
Work by significant Mexican artists will be placed alongside that of individuals who were affected by their experiences in Mexico. These include Josef Albers, Edward Burra, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Tina Modotti, Henrietta Shore, Paul Strand, Leon Underwood and Edward Weston.
Highlights will include Roberto Montenegro’s Mayan Woman, 1926 (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Diego Rivera’s Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928 (Collection of Clarissa and Edgar Bronfman Jr); Tina Modotti’s Workers Reading El Machete, c 1929 (Throckmorton Fine A, Inc, New York); Jose Clemente Orozco’s Barricade, 1931 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)…
…Edward Burra’s El Paseo, c 1938 (Private Collection); Jose Chavez Morado’s Carnival in Huejotzingo, 1939 (Phoenix Art Museum); Robert Capa’s Women in truck with banners supporting presidential candidacy of General Manuel Avila Camacho, Mexico City, June – July 1940 (International Centre of Photography) and a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo (Courtesy Sotheby’s).
The exhibition concludes in 1940, a momentous year in Mexican cultural and political life. 20 Centuries of Mexican Art opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, an important exhibition that demonstrated the elevated position that Mexican art had attained in the US by this time.
In the same year, Andre Breton organised the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City. Robert Capa, who was commissioned by Life to cover the presidential elections, also reported the death of Leon Trotsky who, having sough political asylum in Mexico in 1937, was assassinated.
Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910 – 1940 will reveal a dynamic and often turbulent cultural environment that included some of the most seminal figures of the twentieth century reflecting on their interaction with each other and their differing responses to the same subject: Mexico.
Superpaintings - Transition Gallery · 6 days ago by
AN EXHIBITION entitled Superpaintings, featuring the work of James Connelly and Oliver Bancroft, will be on display at Transition Gallery from May 18 to June 19, 2013.
Superpaintings features eight new paintings made in collaboration, for the first time, by two old friends who met at art school in the late 1990s. It is a friendship that started because of a shared infectious sense of humour, a love of old-master paintings and a tendency for late night disco dancing. All of these traits are apparent in the new paintings.
The paintings re-enact a dance move from the 1981 cult hit song Superman by Black Lace. Dance moves include clapping hands, walking, swimming, skiing, spraying deodorant, sounding a horn, Macho Man, ringing a bell, and the Superman.
As society suffers cuts from tightening-of-the-belt austerity measures, one has to remember that, maybe, in the bigger picture Neitzsche and Black Lace were right after all.
The process of painting is no longer just something that painters share by talking and viewing the finished piece. Using cutting edge technology the artists add a new dimension to the discourse of painting by creating an augmented celebration of the superman.
The history of each painting will be able to be viewed in the gallery by holding a mobile device to the subject of the work thus unfolding the life and process of the artwork.
Superpaintings is one of a series of shows at Transition that examine ideas around collaboration. The subject is also examined in Garageland 15: Collaboration, published in April 2013.
Times: Friday to Sunday 12 – 6pm.
Transition Gallery, Unit 25a Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QN
Harry Cory Wright: Hey Charlie - Eleven · 7 days ago by
ELEVEN is presenting Hey Charlie, an exhibition of new work by Harry Cory Wright – from June 19 to September 14, 2013.
Hey Charlie is a celebration of over fifty years of Cory Wright’s involvement with a particular bend in a river and the field beside it. These joyful images are the culmination of a lifetime of experience of the place in which he grew up and to which he has stayed connected throughout his life.
The sense of the impulsive, and indeed mischief, is reflected in the title. Cory Wright calls his brother’s name – a child’s shout, an adult’s beckoning – to coax him into causing a stir in a place they know so well. They are allowed once again to be little gods. They create interruptions in the otherwise placid landscape; set off rockets into an evening sky; peer inquisitively into a haze of smoke creeping around a river bend.
These striking and transient impulses, and the photographs in which they are captured, were intended to shake off the burden of the past and of nostalgia, and to provoke the making of new memories; to re-imagine, reshape and reawaken a much-loved place.
Cory Wright has thus added a new dimension to the adventurous approach, reflected in his series Place in Mind (2010) and Journey Through the British Isles (2007), to uncovering the landscape and infusing it with prospect. This personal process has always involved the physical engagement with landscape in a way that echoes Richard Long while the jubilant, spur of the moment nature of the photographs recall the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue.
However, here Cory Wright’s playful tone has a new and heightened focus: how our views of a well-known place might change over time as life adapts and the place adapts with it – the feelings of the small child still contained within those of the adult. Opportunity is always there.
For many years Cory Wright has worked exclusively with the large 10 × 8 inch plate camera. In this new series, he mixes this approach with high end digital cameras that allow him to explore the opportunities afforded by post production and print. He sees these two approaches as complementary.
“The particular – and somewhat self-important – nature of the 10 × 8 inch negative has always elevated the picture taking process and given weight to the final piece. I have found that working with digital cameras has allowed me to retain the importance of ‘being there’ and the photographic element of ‘witness’, and to add a further distillation of those aspects in post-production. In this series, where there is such a blend of real and fantasy, this combination of working methods has been invaluable”.
Harry Cory Wright was born in 1963 and lives and works in Norfolk. His work was recently included in Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House (2013) which was curated by William A. Ewing, the noted photographic curator and historian, and also featured work by Darren Almond, Elger Esser, Hirsohi Sugimoto and Thomas Struth amongst others.
Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 11am – 6pm, Thursday 11am to 7pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm.
Eleven, 11 Eccleston Street, London, SW1 9LX
Tel: +44 (0)20 7823 5540
Website: www.elevenfineart.com/
Bonhams to sell John Lennon's first car - A Ferrari · 7 days ago by
THE FERRARI, personally selected by Beatles singer/songwriter John Lennon as his first car, is one of the highlights of Bonhams’ auction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Chichester on Friday, July 12, 2013.
In February 1965, The Beatles recorded Ticket to Ride – a song that would become one of their biggest hits, topping both the UK and US singles charts. By happy coincidence, that same month, the news that Lennon had passed his driving test made headlines across the country.
Within hours, the road outside the security gates of his Kentwood home in Weybridge, Surrey, was jammed with Maseratis, Aston Martins, and the Jaguar E-type, as luxury car dealerships – hungry for business – spotted an opportunity to secure a high-profile client.
The singer, by then a father to 22-month-old Julian by his first wife Cynthia, strolled out to inspect the cars and chose a right-hand drive Ferrari 330GT 2+2 Coupé finished in Azzuro blue paint, with a blue interior, priced at £6,500 (equivalent to just over £110,000 in today’s money).
Motor vehicles were to become a passion for Lennon, no more so than this Ferrari, which he used for the best part of three years – until October 1967 – covering more than 20,000 miles.
By the late 1980s, this car (painted red and separated from its number plate) was with the famous Modena Ferrari dealership, from where it was acquired by its current owner. It has since been lovingly restored to its original specification.
Offered for sale by Bonhams with its original DUL 4C registration restored by the DVLA, this matching-numbers* motor car is one of only 500 of its type built and is estimated to realise between £180,000 and £220,000 at the auction. It is being sold with an extensive history file documenting its provenance and restoration, which also includes correspondence with Lennon.
Sholto Gilbertson, Senior Specialist in the Bonhams Motor Car Department, said: “It is a wonderful commentary on the early excitement generated by Beatlemania that John Lennon didn’t even have to leave his house to buy his first car. We are delighted to be offering a car associated with such an icon of contemporary popular culture at the first of our Goodwood series of auctions in 2013.”
*A matching-numbers motor car is one in which the numbers stamped on the engine and the chassis match, and are the same as those originally fitted by the factory during construction.
Fire Sale - Lazarides Gallery · 12 days ago by
ROBERT Del Naja aka 3D: Fire Sale, a unique retrospective of painting and design that have helped define Massive Attack over the past 20 years, will be on display at Lazarides Gallery from May 24 to June 20, 2013.
The exhibition will cover the pages of sketchbooks to 12 million record sleeves.
Previously unseen pieces created for Massive Attack’s latest album Heligoland (2010) will be exhibited alongside archival works painted and screen printed for the first time from 1991’s Blue Lines and 1994’s Protection.
Robert’s ongoing collaboration with UVA with whom he designed Massive Attack’s hugely influential live shows, are represented in digital mirror pieces.
Fire Sale will be the first and only time these pieces will be collected in one place: images have been hand-finished and are total one-offs – unseen images alongside those more familiar – enhanced and redacted especially for this show.
Under the tag 3D, Robert was a central figure in the Bristolian graffiti movement that would eventually spawn Banksy. Like his music, 3D’s art is modern and grounded, challenging and beautiful, industrial and ethnic. A vocal critic of the Iraq war, the conscious elements of the pieces are a reminder that Massive Attack have always been outspoken on social and international issues.
He has collaborated with many diverse organisations including The Hoping Foundation, Reprieve, Occupy and London’s Southbank Centre (where he co-curated on the 2008 Meltdown Festival). Robert is currently working on a major commission for Manchester International Festival with filmmaker Adam Curtis and a book of his artworks – 3D / The Art Of Massive Attack – is published later this year.
Admission: Free.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 7pm.
Lazarides Rathbone, 11 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1HR
Tel: + 44 (0) 207 636 5443
Website: www.lazinc.com/
David Shenton: These Foolish Things · 13 days ago by
DAVID Shenton: These Foolish Things, part of the AIRLOCK programme, is on display at Space Station Sixty-Five from June 1 to July 27, 2013.
Shenton’s cartoons are often camp but they’re not just camp, and they’re not that awful apolitical offensive camp, but a light, knowing, meaningful camp.
Their first task is to entertain and to make the audience laugh – and often they do much more because the liberation politics that informs his work means that with the laugh there is an acerbic point – a wry observation on how we live or a satirical comment about society and a wider political context, contained in the lives and musings of plausible and likeable characters. Or sometimes it’s just a silly joke.
Shenton was published regularly in the gay press from 1976, and irregularly in The Guardian over 12 years, where he gave the world the philosophical, and sometimes obscure musings of London pigeons. His work has been in many other titles such as Solicitor’s Journal and Optician, as well as illustrating several books including Oscar Wilde’s Salom.
The central character of many cartoons over four decades is the sweet but hapless Stanley, a moustachioed gay man whose heyday was the 1980s and who goes from frame to frame trying to cope with a world that is full of surprises and delights that often leave him baffled, though unhurt. Stanley reached his zenith in Stanley and the Mask of Mystery (Gay Men’s Press 1983).
These days Shenton’s cartoons can be found on Facebook where Been There, Seen That lets us glimpse scenes observed by the artist at meetings, marches, events, and in everyday life – both in London and the seaside town of Cromer in Norfolk. He and John, his partner of 17 years – who appears in a number of the Facebook cartoons – share their time between the two places.
These Foolish Things at Space Station Sixty-Five showcases some favourite cartoons from Facebook and some of his recent drawings.
Shenton has also been found providing seasonal works bigger than lifesize on the walls of the Joiner’s Arms, Hackney Road, E2. In books, newspapers, magazines, art galleries, on Facebook and on pub walls, his work is a remarkable commentary on gay life – and more – over four extraordinary decades.
Admission: Free.
Times: Thursday to Saturday 12 to 6pm. Weekdays by appointment.
Space Station Sixty-Five, Building One, 373 Kennington Road, London, SE11 4PS
Tel: 020 7820 112
Website: www.spacestationsixtyfive.com
The 14th Guest by Jonty Hurwitz - Savoy Hotel · 13 days ago by
THE STORY has it that in 1898 South African diamond magnate Woolf Joel held a dinner at The Savoy for fourteen guests and one cancelled at the last minute.
The dinner continued, but one superstitious guest announced that death would come to the first person to leave the unlucky table of thirteen. Joel took that gamble and a few weeks later he was shot dead in Johannesburg.
To avoid a repeat performance, The Savoy offered a member of staff to join tables of thirteen thereafter. Unable to discuss private matters or feel at ease, this proved to be unpopular with guests and thus, in a stroke of genius, Kaspar was born – a two foot high sculpture of a black cat, created in 1927 by British designer Basil Ionides to stave off bad luck.
For almost 90 years, The Savoy has been more than happy to oblige parties of thirteen with Kaspar’s company, whereby he joins in with napkin around his neck and a full place setting to ‘enjoy’ every course. Winston Churchill, who adored Kaspar, insisted that the cat join him at every gathering of The Other Club.
On May 2, 2013, The Savoy opened Kaspar’s, a new seafood bar and grill restaurant, named in honour of the hotel’s celebrated cat; and commissioned a new sculpture by Jonty Hurwitz as part of its contemporary art programme.
The 14th Guest, unveiled on April 30, 2013, is the latest work in Hurwitz’ Generation Pi series of anamorphic sculptures. Launched at Kinetica art and science fair in February 2013, this series has had unprecedented interest in the world’s media with over two million page impressions and 500,000 viewings on You Tube.
The subject of Generation Pi is the new relationship between today’s generation and technology.
Gold: Status and Glory - Moretti Fine Art · 17 days ago by
THE TIMELESS allure of gold will be celebrated in an exceptional exhibition entitled Gold: Status and Glory. The result of a collaboration between two dealers, Adrian Sassoon and Moretti Fine Art, it will be staged at Moretti Fine Art from May 2 to May 31, 2013.
Fabrizio Moretti explained: “As a gallery specialising in Italian Old Masters, we are constantly confronted with the magnificence of gold. This exhibition is an opportunity to examine this highly prized material in the contexts of decoration, devotion and drama.”
Gold: Status and Glory will present fifteen exquisite objects by the contemporary Italian goldsmith Giovanni Corvaja in the context of 14th and 15th century Italian gold-ground devotional paintings.
Giovanni Corvaja has been fascinated and inspired by metals, especially gold, since early childhood. His jewellery is represented in some of the most famous public collections in the world not only as jewellery for adornment but also, as the respected British jewellery specialist and author Geoffrey Munn OBE says in his catalogue essay for the exhibition, “as examples of miraculous contemporary craftsmanship and art”.
Munn continues “Ductile, malleable and incorruptible gold holds a deep fascination for Corvaja. However, the miraculous qualities of the metal, especially its unique beauty, can only be revealed by the experience and skill of the goldsmith. Although Giovanni Corvaja follows a very ancient tradition in his workshop in Todi in Italy, he has developed skills and techniques that have broken all previous bounds. Central to these is the ability to draw the precious yellow metal into threads hardly thicker than a spider’s silk”.
In ancient times, gold was collected by staking riverbeds with sheepskins rich in lanolin. The water drove tiny grains of gold across the surface of the wool where they were entrapped. The skin was then dried and burned leaving only pure gold behind. This is probably the origin of the legend of the Golden Fleece.
Its magic has inspired Giovanni Corvaja’s recent work in which he has woven gossamer strands of gold into the semblance of fur and wool and gathered it in frames and honeycombs to be worn as bracelets, brooches and pendants. Light and air pass freely through these sculptural jewels and sometimes, in the tradition of the Etruscan goldsmiths, tiny beads of coloured enamel heighten their unique effect, raising jewellery, once again, to the highest level of art.
After more than a decade of ceaseless application and research, this truly remarkable artist discovered a particular alloy of gold that was both a beautiful colour and unusually ductile allowing it to be drawn to a fineness of less than ten microns. For over 1,500 hours Corvaja wove this thread and produced an extraordinary cloth made from 110 kilometres of almost transparent gold wire, a masterpiece of tactile experience, being both cool and silky smooth.
It is possible to subtly change the hue of gold from buttercup yellow to fugitive shades of pink and green and even moonshine white by making an alloy with other metals. Giovanni enjoys experimenting and, for added magic, has created a warp made of threads, each composed of 291 wire fibres in a pale yellow 18 ct gold, while the weft is of a yellow-orange 22 ct gold alloy and has braided threads also comprising 291 wires. The result is a cloth that is almost pure gold in colour with subtle shimmering variations.
The fifteen exquisite pieces by Corvaja to be shown in this exhibition are each made from 18ct gold and include a Golden Fleece brooch, an elaborate gold cage bracelet with 950 platinum wires and coloured enamel, a sinuous necklace made with 19 alloys shading the gold from white to yellow and back to white again, and a Golden Fleece headpiece made of 18 and 22 ct gold cloth, comprising over five million single strands making a total of 200 kilometres of wire.
Giovanni Corvaja was born in 1971 in Padua and was educated in that city of goldsmiths where he was taught by the celebrated master goldsmith, Francesco Pavan. He began to work with gold in 1984 when he was just 13 and immediately recognised it as his métier. In 1988, he was awarded the Diploma di Maestro d’Arte and in 1990 the Maturità d’Arte Applicata.
In 1990, he enrolled in the Royal College of Art in London to continue studying art jewellery, graduating with an MA in 1992 when he returned to Padua. In 2001, he moved to Todi, a historical Etruscan town in central Italy, where he has restored a 15th century building, now his spacious workshop. His career has also been distinguished with four solo exhibitions and numerous group shows throughout the world.
The use of gold in Trecento and Quattrocento gold-ground pictures gave the illusion that the panels were made of solid gold, creating ethereal images with an illusion of heaven. The metal was meticulously handled to prevent cracks or faults when it was placed onto the bole (a prepared clay surface).
Among the eight fine examples of such works in this show will be St Lawrence in Glory with four angels by Neri di Bicci, (Florence, 1418-1492), one of the masterpieces in the huge corpus of works attributed to the artist. The fine painted decoration of the rear of the panel, with the monogram of Christ at the centre, is almost certainly contemporary with the image on its front and the little painting, outstanding for its exquisite workmanship and the richness of its decorative aspects, is one of the finest achievements of Neri di Bicci’s mid career in the early 1470s.
Crucifixion and Annunciation (pictured), dating from around 1380-90 by an unknown artist from Verona, is a rare example of a Veronese painting on panel for this period as frescoes were more usual.
The composition is constructed on three levels: in the foreground the mourners stand on the left while to the right soldiers are disputing the robe of Christ; behind them in the middle ground are surging ranks of horsemen, an idea deriving from Giotto; and in the upper part Christ is depicted between the thieves and the lament of the angels. The scene is remarkably animated with the many heads at the bottom, the variety of gestures and the frenetic interaction of the figures.
The Annunciation, painted with the Angel Gabriel in the upper left corner and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove flying towards the Virgin in the right, together with other stylistic elements, all point to the hand of a Veronese painter.
The Coronation of the Virgin, with Saints Nicholas of Bari, Anthony Abbot, John the Baptist, Francis of Assisi, Phillip and Zanobi, a beautiful work by Maestro Francesco (active Florence c. 1380 -c. 1400), was formerly in the collection of H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. She gave it to Christ Church, Victoria Road, London, in 1932 and it later belonged to the Chrysler Museum of Art, USA.
From the secular to the sacred, Gold: Status and Glory will offer visitors a remarkable experience which will show the timeless appeal and symbolism of gold as it was perceived in imagery of the Middle Ages juxtaposed with Giovanni Corvaja’s work, representing the finest craftsmanship of the 21st century.
Gold: Status and Glory Gallery
Moretti Fine Art, 2a – 6 Ryder Street, St. James’s, London, SW1