For the past few weeks I have been attending a short course of classes at Exeter Phoenix on modern art 'Isms'. It's only a couple of hours a week for 5 weeks and so is inevitably selective. The course is run by Nicci Wonnacott, whose work includes performance stuff like this:
Before Xmas I did a one-day life class which Nicci tutored (advertised by the Phoenix as a chance to explore the face - so a couple of us were a bit surprised to find it was a full life-drawing class) and the discussions with her and the other artists from various backgrounds - all competent artists - were really interesting.
Richard Hamilton
The discussions in the 'Isms' class are, of course, part of its appeal. Those attending include some who are studying art, some who are doing or have just completed art degrees, and others who have art experience or simply have opinions - sometimes strong ones.
Marcel Duchamp
In the first three weeks we covered a lot of ground. Highlights included: Constructivism, Jenny Holzer, Kurt Schwitters, Barbara Kruger, Shepard Fairey, Dada, Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim, Dali, Man Ray, Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, The Stuckists, Rita Donagh, Gee Vaucher, Fluxus, Mark Wallinger, Jeff Koons, Abstract Expressionism, Neo Dadaism, Joan Miro, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and so on ...
Meret Oppenheim
Last week - week four - we covered almost as much again. Nikki is keen to redress the under-representation of the role women have played in developing art in the 20th century and one of the interesting things for me is that previously I was unaware of the work of many of the women we have considered.
Barbara Kruger
There have been a few other things that have surprised me. Such as the important role that the Constructivists had in the 20th century revolution in art. I went to the Rodchenko and Popova exhibition at Tate Modern in 2009, which was pretty comprehensive, but it is not until you put each movement into the wider context that you can appreciate the true impact.
Rodchenko
I am also a little surprised to find how directly derivative the work of some of our 21st century artists is. As we know, little is new under the sun, and most art references back to Art History, whether knowingly or not. Nevertheless, for example, work by the Faile and Jacques Villegle appears very closely related:
Jacques Villegle
Faile
And some of Sarah Lucas's work seems thin and derivative when you look at similar work produced by Dorothea Tanning in 1967:
Dorothea Tanning
Sarah Lucas
And don't get me started on Damien Hirst - just refer to the Stuckists ...
Damien Hirst - Toy or Art?
Earlier this week the tour guide at Tate St Ives told us that conceptual art is on the way out and figurative art is the future! Our final class is coming up this Thursday - I'll let you know how it turns out ...
Incidentally, if you can't get to art classes at the Phoenix you could always try this book: Isms - Understanding Art by Stephen Little which I came across in the Tate shop. It does a pretty good job of covering art movements in a few paragraphs, from the Renaissance to Neo-conceptualism, and is well illustrated with examples. A snip at £7 from Amazon.
When I started this blog I was worried that I may not have enough to write about. The reality is that, despite regular blogging, I’ve struggled to keep up with events - a sign of scraping the barrel bottom, perhaps?
Which is why I am only now writing about Towel Day. This day, the 25th May, marks the untimely death in 2001 at 49 of Douglas Adams, best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The name "Towel Day" comes from the Guide, which defines the towel as the most important item a hitchhiker can have and then goes on for a page or so extolling the virtues of the towel and all the uses to which it can be put. The Towel Day website shows how widely Adams is read and, incidentally, shows people celebrating with their towels ...
Douglas was in my year at school and, although I did not know him at all well, he seemed a nice enough guy – although he was on a different intellectual plane to me and most of my classmates. At a careers fair he was the one earnestly discussing a career at the BBC, while I was meandering aimlessly from stand to stand, picking up bits of promotional stuff and wondering what job two mediocre A levels would equip me for.
I haven't read much of Hitchhiker’s Guide recently. I did watch the 1981 BBC adaption (Douglas’s overtures to the BBC had paid off) with some admiration – more for the cleverness of his constructed alternative world than anything else. I’ve only seen snippets of it since, but it does feel a bit dated – which is generally not good for a piece of science fiction, even a humorous one.
The film in 2005 still appeared dated but also lacked the warmth of the TV production.
But I did enjoy the adaption of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency that the BBC showed last year. Critics said that this wasn't very close to the original and I'm sure that the cast - Stephen Mangan, Helen Baxendale, and Darren Boyd - contributed much to its success. Nevertheless, I'm glad to say that the BBC is now filming a further three episodes, and these will appear on BBC4 later this year. Here's a link to the BBC preview to the pilot episode.
Incidentally, other luminaries from my year at school included Charlie Thomson of the Stuckists - who was in my class but I don’t recall being very ‘arty’; and Griff Rhys Jones (actually in the year below, although we probably overlapped in the sixth form) – who I don’t recall being especially 'funny'.
Tracey Emin, Charlie Thomson and Billy Childish
(before they fell out and Tracey became rich and famous)
Both seemed nice enough guys then, and they haven't done badly since. Griff got a share of £62m when he sold Hat Trick Productions, and Charlie is a fairly (in)famous artist - although he seems more than a little nerdy in this video on the Stuckists website.
Anyway, to get back to Douglas Adams: Although he achieved a lot in his life, the biggest impact on me was to make me think – pretty much for the first time – that we are all getting older and are all mortal. Heavy, man ...
