{sculpture} – Page 61 – { feuilleton }

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art

Skull Vision by Michael Ayrton (1943).

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art: great title for an exhibition, a shame that it’s all the way down in Cornwall at Tate St Ives.

This group exhibition takes its title from the infamous 1962 book by St Ives artist Sven Berlin. It will explore the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on the development of art in Britain. Focusing on works from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day it will consider, in particular, the relationship they have to the landscape and legends of the British Isles. (More.)

Artists featured include Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ithell Colquhoun, Cecil Collins, John Piper, Leslie Hurry and John Craxton. Among the contemporary artists there are Cerith Wyn Evans, Mark Titchner, Eva Rothschild, Simon Periton, Clare Woods, Steven Claydon, John Stezeker and Derek Jarman. Austin Osman Spare is notable by his absence but then that’s no surprise, the major occult artist of the 20th century never rates more that a passing mention from the art establishment. One nice surprise is seeing Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) featured in her second major British exhibition this year. (Her work is also present in the Angels of Anarchy exhibition running at the Manchester Art Gallery.) Colquhoun was a contemporary of Spare’s whose work turns up in occult encyclopaedias or overviews of the minor current of British Surrealism but she’s still largely unheard of outside those circles.

The Tate exhibition may be awkward to visit but there’s an illustrated catalogue available featuring contributions from quality writers including Brian Dillon, Philip Hoare, Jon Savage, Jennifer Higgie, Marina Warner, Michael Bracewell, Alun Rowlands and Martin Clark. Michael Bracewell has a piece about the exhibition at Tate Etc while Brian Dillon has an excellent essay in the Guardian connecting John Dee’s mysterious obsidian scrying mirror with some of the works on display.

Untitled by David Noonan (2009).

• Artist of the week: David Noonan
• Ithell Colquhoun at A Journey Round My Skull

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
• A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman

Blast

Both issues of Wyndham Lewis’s avant garde art and literature journal can be found in a collection of similar publications from the Modernist years at Brown University here and here. I’ve always liked the bold graphics of Lewis and his fellow Vorticists, and BLAST 2, “the War Number”, is especially good in that regard. The MJP site reminds us that BLAST is still under copyright control outside the US and is also available in facsimile editions from Gingko Press.

BLAST was the quintessential modernist little magazine. Founded by Wyndham Lewis, with the assistance of Ezra Pound, it ran for just two issues, published in 1914 and 1915. The First World War killed it, along with some of its key contributors. Its purpose was to promote a new movement in literature and visual art, christened Vorticism by Pound and Lewis. Unlike its immediate predecessors and rivals, Vorticism was English, rather than French or Italian, but its dogmas emerged from Imagism in literature and Cubism plus Futurism in visual art.

The original BLAST was published by Aubrey Beardsley’s first publisher, John Lane, and it’s fascinating to see Lane advertising back issues of The Yellow Book in pages which include Lewis’s anti-Victorian polemic. Meanwhile I’m still waiting for copies of the Art Nouveau journal Ver Sacrum to turn up somewhere. If anyone runs across quality scans, please leave a comment.

Via Things Magazine.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Wyndham Lewis: Portraits

Jeppe Hein’s mirror labyrinth

Follow Me by Jeppe Hein. Photo by Jamie Woodley.

More mirror art. Yes, I really like this kind of thing, and this particular example, Follow Me by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, looks especially fine with the sunlight and trees reflected from its panels. Hein’s labyrinth is a new and permanent installation in the grounds of Royal Fort House at the University of Bristol; the grounds are open to the public so anyone can pay the work a visit.

The artwork comprises a square labyrinth of 76 vertical polished steel plates sited at the base of an incline leading down from Royal Fort House. Visitors will be encouraged to enter the labyrinth to experience the effect of the work. Once inside, the reflections of participants and surrounding plants and trees are multiplied.

Jeppe Hein was inspired by the University as a place of self-discovery, as well as by the history of the gardens – particularly the designs of 18th-century landscape gardener Sir Humphry Repton, who similarly sought to promote imaginative encounters. (More.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N
• The art of Josiah McElheny

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

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism

Le Bout du monde by Leonor Fini (1948).

Yes, I’ll definitely be going to see this one.

The first major exhibition of women artists and Surrealism to be held in Europe, Angels of Anarchy, opens this autumn at Manchester Art Gallery.

Featuring over 150 artworks by 32 women artists, the exhibition is a celebration of the crucial, but at the time not fully recognised, role that women artists have played within Surrealism. Paintings, prints, photographs, surreal objects and sculptures by well-known international artists including Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller will be exhibited alongside works by artists less well-known in the UK, such as Emila Medková, Jane Graverol, Mimi Parent, Kay Sage and Francesca Woodman. Manchester Art Gallery is the only venue for this exhibition, making it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the works of so many significant women artists displayed together, with many of the works on loan from international public and private collections.

Angels of Anarchy runs from 26 September 2009–10 January 2010 at Manchester Art Gallery, and it’s a paying event with tickets at £6 (concessions £4, free entry for under 18s and Manchester Art Gallery Friends).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Leonor Fini, 1907–1996
• Surrealist women