October 2009 – Page 7 – { feuilleton }

Bridget Riley Flashback

Movement in Squares (1961).

Continuing the Sixties theme, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool has an exhibition running whose title, Bridget Riley Flashback, alludes to the connection between Riley’s vibrant Op Art and the psychotropic concerns of the decade which brought her to the world’s attention. Riley’s works nearly always look very clean and mechanical in reproduction which can tend to defeat their purpose as paintings. The actual pictures are paint on canvas, with each square or line carefully applied by hand (not always by herself it should be noted; she had assistants), and present a deliberate contradiction in their rigid formalism and hand-crafted production. Their large size also gives them substantially greater visual impact.

A seminal work in the show is ‘Movement in Squares’, which was purchased by the Arts Council collection in 1962, the year after it was made. Consistently exhibited in retrospectives of her work, she credits the work as the beginning of her breakthrough into abstraction. This shows an insight into the role of the Arts Council collection in supporting British artists and collecting the art treasures of the future.

Bridget Riley Flashback runs until December 13, 2009.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Design as virus #4: Metamorphoses
• New Bridget Riley

Michael English, 1941–2009

left: The Soft Machine Turns On (1967); right: UFO Coming (1967).

This was a bitter blow coming at a time when I’ve been working on something inspired in part by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, the 1960s design duo comprised of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. The two artists, together with associate Martin Sharp, are indelibly associated with the London psychedelic scene of the late Sixties. Whereas Sharp’s posters were often loose and dramatically bold explosions of shape and colour, the Hapshash posters were more carefully controlled in their curating of disparate elements borrowed from Art Nouveau—especially Mucha and Beardsely—comic strips, Op Art, Pop art and fantasy illustration. Their work perfectly complemented the very distinctive atmosphere of the capital’s psychedelic scene which, for a couple of hectic years, saw an explosion of new bands (or old bands in new guises) fervently engaged in a lysergic exploration of Victoriana, childhood memories and frequent silliness. UK psychedelia is generally more frivolous than its US equivalent which had the Vietnam War and civil disorder to deal with; English and Waymouth’s graphics captured the London mood.

top left: Coke (1970); top right: Toothpaste (1974).
bottom left: Leaf Falls (1972); bottom right: Red no. 3 (1978).

In the 1970s English refashioned himself as a hyper-realist painter of foodstuffs and other consumer goods, and his meticulous airbrush style led to work as an advertising artist. Those paintings are beautifully rendered but often leave me feeling slightly queasy. I much prefer his work from later in the decade which depicted equally meticulous close-up views of oil-smeared buses and trains. Paper Tiger published a book collection in 1979, 3D Eye, which gathers the best of his work from the poster art on.

• Obituaries: Guardian | Times
• Hapshash poster galleries here and here

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Look presents Nigel Waymouth
• The New Love Poetry

The art of Raphaël Freida

Illustrations by Raphaël Freida for a 1931 edition of Thaïs by Anatole France. I hadn’t come across Freida before and it’s impossible to say more about him or his work, information being frustratingly scant. The site where these are from has other editions of the same book illustrated by Georges Rochegrosse and Frank C Papé.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Philip Pullman ranked second on US banned books list

Luke Jerram’s Glass Microbiology

Large E-Coli.

Or art as virus…. Just because micro-organisms can make us seriously ill doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful. Luke Jerram‘s glass renderings of some of the most deadly examples are on display at the Smithfield Gallery, London, until October 3rd.

The sculptures were designed in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol using a combination of different scientific photographs and models. They were made in collaboration with glassblowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch. (More.)

Avian flu.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Andy Paiko’s glass art
• The art of Josiah McElheny
• The art of Angelo Filomeno
• IKO stained glass
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• Glass engines and marble machines
• Wesley Fleming’s glass insects
• The art of Lucio Bubacco
• The glass menagerie