Blog – Page 47 – Inexpensive Progress

Edward Bawden – Early War Paintings.

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 6th August 2016

This post is a light introduction into Edward Bawden’s early war work and paintings, before he was stationed to the Middle-East.

Edward Bawden – In an Air Raid Shelter, Dunkirk – Bombs are dropping, 1940.

On Thursday, 7th March, 1940, three days before his 37th birthday, it was announced in the British papers that Edward Bawden and Barnett Freeman were to become Official War Artists on behalf of the British War Office.

Newspaper with the small announcement under ‘War Artists’.

In the first days of April, Ardizzone (Edward) and Bawden took rooms for a while in the hotel Commerce in Arras, fussed over by a shared batman. They enjoyed the local wine and hospitality, before being billeted separately. Arras was dour, small and grey, It was also the GHQ for the British Army in France. †

Edward Bawden – Boys Serving Coffee, Dunkirk, 1940.

From the outset Edward Bawden had wanted to be close to the action: ‘Mr Bawden … would like to get to the front and live in close touch with the RAF.’ In the event he began his time in France with the 2nd Northampton Regiment, rather than the air force.The Northamptons, he found, were ‘nice, simple fellows … who tear about wagging their tails, fetching sticks and retrieving balls.’ †

The war artists found themselves being toured around by a Conducting Officer, who would choose the suitable sites and subjects. Once, Bawden was placed under arrest as he was painstakingly drawing a gun. On another occasion he was able to sit in on a court martial and sketch. †

Edward Bawden – A Court-Martial, Halluin, 1940.

On his way to Dunkirk, Bawden has rolled up his paintings in a cylindrical tin which he clutched under his arm. †

Edward Bawden – Embarkation of Wounded, May, 1940.

Approaching the port, he ditched all his equipment except his art materials (what would the Germans have done with them?) Marching into the town, they ran the gauntlet of ragged French soldiers jeering them. It discomforted him, as did the looters sweeping like locusts through abandoned houses. †

Edward Bawden – The Quay at Dunkirk, 1940.

He reached the quayside in the company of a Canadian major, and they watched with dismay the frantic self-preservation of a group of British generals on the Dunkirk quayside, the swagger sticks pointing at likely boats bound for England. He turned to the major, with a wry smile. ‘Rats always go first’ he said. †

Edward Bawden – Embarkation of Wounded, Dunkirk, May, 1940

After Dunkirk, Bawden found himself off to Iran and Iraq in 1943. The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) found itself in review mid-war, with the pay and styles of the war artists coming into dispute. It was taken over by F.H.Dowden.

Edward Bawden – The Entrance to an Air Raid Shelter, Dunkirk, 1940

Dowden has previously been an art inspector with the Board of Education (war art otherwise had almost nothing to do with the Home Division), but those credentials did little to facilitate a happy fit between the WAAC and its new minder. Among other things, he vetoed the allocation of funds to pay for the depiction of themes that seemed to him superfluous. ‘There is too much repetition of subjects which are historically unimportant,’ he objected, ‘and it may quite well be that the Committee are more concerned with finding work for artists in whom they are interested, than they are about making a record of the progress of the war.’ As a result of Dowden’s interference the WAAC’s decision to send Edward Bawden to Ian and/or Iraq in 1943 earned Home Office agreement only with difficulty, while a plan to give Stephen Bone an open contract to record subjects of his own choosing was rejected as an irresponsible use of public funds. ‡

Below is one of the paintings from Bawden’s time in Iraq. It was editioned as a print by the Curwen Press in 2008 in a limited number of 145.

Edward Bawden – Preparing to Entertain, 1944

† The Sketchbook War by Richard Knott, 2013
978-0752489230
‡ War Paint: Art, War, State and Identity in Britain by Brian Foss, 2007. 978-0300108903 p168.
◦ Images c/o the Imperial War Museum, London.

Tags barnett freedman, british art, edward ardizzone, Edward Bawden, great bardfield, War Art, WW2

Footprints

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 4th August 2016

Joyce Clissold – ‘Footprints’ c.1928 for Footprints Ltd.

The Footprints workshop started life as a printing press for dress and furnishing fabrics using traditional hand-block printing. It was set up in 1925 by Gwen Pike and Elspeth Little in Durham Wharf, Hammersmith and supported by Celandine Kennington (the wealthy second wife of the artist Eric Kennington). The name, Footprints, was chosen because of the foot pressure used to create most of the block prints.

Originally the Pike and Little partnership was one of artist and business; Elspeth Little owning a shop called ‘Modern Textiles’ and Gwen Pike being the artist / designer of ‘Footprints’.

Modern Textiles was opened in 1926 by Elspeth Anne Little, who had studied painting at the Central and Slade Schools. She had become involved with textiles and block printing by being employed in a theatrical workshop after leaving college.♠

Elspeth Little was taken on in 1923 as an apprentice at ‘Fraser, Trelevan and Wilkinson’ – the theatrical workshop run by Grace Lovat Fraser, widow of the designer Claude Lovat Fraser. The pressure of work meant that Elspeth Little soon became an employee, not a trainee, and as such she was involved in printing fabrics for theatre sets and costumes.

Encouraged by Paul Nash, she opened a shop to sell a variety of craft made goods. It was the intention of Modern Textiles to promote superior design and production as an alternative to what were seen as the “hackneyed and exhausted” offerings being mass-produced repetitively by many English manufacturers. This was emphasised in the shop’s publicity which stated that:

“The object of “Modern Textiles” is to sell work of good design, principally fabrics of various kinds. A few people already know that well designed materials are being made by one or two artists, but the promoters of “Modern Textiles” believe a very much larger public than is generally supposed would be eager to buy stuffs of individuality and beauty, whether for dresses or furnishing, if there were better opportunity for selection”. ♠

Joyce Clissold – fabric print for Footprints Ltd. c1930s

Elspeth Little sold lengths of fabric, scarves, shawls, cloaks, dressing gowns, velvet jackets and other small ready to wear items, plus some ceramics. Block printed linens and velvets by Phyllis Barron and Enid Marx and batiks by Marion Dorn were offered along side painted and printed fabrics by Miss Little, and artists Paul Nash, Eric Kennington and Norman Wilkinson.Miss Little had a workroom behind the shop where she printed her own textile designs from lino blocks. However, the majority of printing for Modern Textiles was carried out by Footprints, a workshop established to supply the shop. ♠

Doris Gregg – ‘Welwyn Garden City’, 1930. Lino block print. Footprints Ltd.

The Footprints workshop became the longest-lasting block printing enterprise of the 1920s and continued (despite the break up of the Pike-Little partnership) until after the war. It was predominantly a female workforce. Workers would enter the studio as an apprentice, working making dyes and assisting with printing before designing their own work, this made sure that all the staff were competent in the main processes of the studio.

Doris Scull – ‘Sheep’ for Footprints Ltd.

The most recent group of designers and engravers on linoleum for producing textile patterns is that established by the energy and resource of Mrs. Eric Kennington (nee Edith Celandine Cecil), in a workshop by the river at Hammersmith. The chief craftswoman here is Mrs. Gwen Pike, a most experienced and able engraver and printer. The works, known as Footprints, reproduce patterns by their own staff, and also designs contributed by independent artists. ‡

Joyce Clissold – Fabric designed for Footprints Ltd with the original lino block below.

Joyce Clissold arrived in two years into Footprints life in 1927, and continued Footprints when Pike and Little split in 1929. Clissold studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, learning wood engraving and lino cutting in the printing rooms. When she started working at Footprints she was a student and it was a small printing workshop on the Thames outside London, she is mostly to credit for turning it into a viable business. She focused most on the creative input of designing and block cutting but helped Footprints establish their own set of shops independent of ‘Modern Textiles’ after 1929.

Footprints Studio, Brentford, 1934-35

In the mid-1930s she relocated Footprints to enable her to live and work on the same premises. The new situation reflected the tradition of textile production by women at home. Household and workshop activities intermingled. The kitchen became known at the “lab”. But the domestic setting belied the fact of an effective business. In its heyday there were 40-50 employees involved in the production, making up, distribution and sale of printing fabrics. The first Footprints shop opened in New Bond Street, London, in 1933 to sell dress and furnishing fabrics; it moved to a more stylish location in 1936, near, near to furriers, milliners and gown markers. An additional shop was established in 1935 in fashionable Knightsbridge. Footprints’ textiles provided interesting alternatives to predictable modernist trends and appealed to artistic customers such as Gracie Fields and Yvonne Arnaud. †

Paul Nash fabric design. Printined by Footprints Ltd.

The Footprints shops and represented artists like Paul Nash, Eric Kennington and Marion Dorn. Footprints used a much wider colour range than Barron and Larcher. Block printed fabric was very much the desire of the Avant-garde and influential. Without machines the fabrics were hand printed, this was a slow process. These fabrics were exclusive and expensive with the average price of hand printed fabrics, at 12 shillings per yard, while manufacturers such as Warners could produce printed textiles for 6 shillings per yard.

In 1940 Clissold had to close the shops due to the lack of essential supplies and the female employees being required for war work. The workshop managed to re-open after the war, but with fewer printers and a more modest range. †

Paul Nash – Two variations on ‘Big Abstract’ printed by Footprints Ltd.

Other clients included Deitmar Blow, the architect to the Duke of Westminster, and the stylish and fashionable decorator Syrie Maugham.

† Dictionary of Women Artists by Delia Gaze, 1997. 9781884964213
Modern Block Printed Textiles by Alan Powers, 1992. 9780744518917
‡ The Woodcut No.1 An Annual, 1927.
♠ Printed Textiles: Artist Craftswomen by Hazel Clark, 1989

Tags british art, Celandine Kennington, Doris Gregg, Elspeth Little, Eric Kennington, Fabric Design, Footprints Ltd, Gwen Pike, Joyce Clissold, Paul Nash

Moore’s Encounter

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 31st July 2016

Following my post on Henry Moore’s cover for Poetry London, here is another cover Moore did, this time for Stephen Spender’s Encounter Magazine – The 100th Edition. As a magazine cover I think this rather futuristic for 1962. Pink with blue ink over and a wax resist for the text. Sadly this isn’t worth as much as Poetry London – it’s not lithographically printed for one, also Encounter had a larger audience and thus a bigger print run.

The magazine is full of illustrations and poetry, in this post I have picked out Auden and Spender’s poems below with some of the illustrations.

A drawing by Andre Masson

A Change of Air by W.H.Auden

Corns, heartburn, sinus headaches, such minor ailments
Tell of estrangement between your name and you,
Advise a change of air: heed them, but let
The modesty of their discomfort warn you
Against the flashy errands of your dreams.

To grow a sailor’s beard, don monkish garb,
Or trade in an agglutinative tongue
With a stone-age culture would be mollycoddling:
To go elsewhere is to withdraw from movement;
A side-step, a short one, will convey you thither.

Although its chaffinches, maybe, have learned
The dialect of another river-basin,
A fault transformed the local building stone,
It has a priest, a post-mistress, an usher,
Its children know they are not to beg from strangers.

Within its average elsewherishness
Your name is as a mirror answers, yourself
How you behave in shops, the tips you give :
It sides with neither, being outside both,
But welcomes both with healing disregard.

Nor, when you both return (you will, of course)
Where luck and instinct originally brought you,
Will it salute your reconciliation
With farewell rites or populate your absence
With reverent and irreverent anecdote.

No study of your public re-appearance
Will show, as judgement on a cure demands,
A sudden change in love, ideas or diet :
Your sojourn elsewhere will remain wordless
Hiatus in your voluble biography.

Fanatic scholarship at most may prove
That you resigned from a Committee, unearth
A letter from the Grand Duke to his cousin,
Remarking, among more important gossip,
That you seem less amusing than you were.

A drawing by Eduardo Paolozzi

The Generous Days by Stephen Spender.
His are the generous days that balance
Soul and body. Should he hear the trumpet
Behind the sun that sends its thinning ray
Penetrating to the marrow –
At once one with that cause, he’d throw
Himself across some high far parapet,
Body die to soul down the sheer way
Of consummation in the summons.

His also are the days when should he greet
Her who goes walking, looking for a brooch
Under broad leaves at dusk beside the path
– And sidelong looks at him as though she thought
His smile might hide the gleam she sought –
He would run up to her and each
Find the lost clasp hid in them both,
Soul live to body where they meet.

Body soul, soul body, seem one breath,
Or the twined shadows of the sun, his will,
In these his generous days, to prove
His own true nature only is to give.
Wholly to die, or wholly else to live!
Body to soul, and let the bright cause kill,
Or soul to body, let the blood make love.
Giving is death in life and life in death.

After, of course, will come a time not this
When he’ll be taken, stripped, strapped to a wheel
That is a world, and has the power to change
The brooch’s gold, the trumpet scarlet blaze
– The lightning in the bones those generous days –
Into what drives a system, like a fuel.
Then to himself he will seem loathed and strange
Have thoughts yet colder than the thing he is.

A drawing by Ghika

A drawing by Sidney Nolan

An advert for Guinness by Edward Bawden to the left

An advert for the Everyman series with the logo, designed by Eric Ravilious

Tags Eduardo Paolozzi, Edward Bawden, Encounter Magazine, Eric Ravilious, Henry Moore, Sidney Nolan, Stephen Spender, W H Auden

The Dunmore Pineapple

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 26th July 2016

The tropical pineapple was first grown in England in the reign of King Charles II, and a painting was made of the royal gardener, John Rose, presenting the first one to the king. Perhaps at that point, the two distinct forms, the pine-apple (cone) and the pineapple (tropical fruit) were merged into a single emblem. London architects of the post-Great-Fire period used the pine-apple freely. †

The Dunmore Pineapple is an 18th century summerhouse building with a giant stone pineapple as its central architectural feature. It is located in Dunmore Park, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, and has been described as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest follies, and ‘the most bizarre building in Scotland’.٭

Illustration of Dunmore’s Pineapple with the house-houses.

The two-storey building contained a hothouse along the lower front level and was built around the time of 1761 by John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore. The hothouse was used, among other things, for growing pineapples which were considered to be exotic fruit that travellers to the Indies and America would bring back as trophies.

Built into a hill, from each side they appear to be on ground level. The south side (as depicted by Barbara Jones) had the hothouses lining the edge of the building, backing on to the walled orchard and gardens. The north side (as depicted by Ed Kluz) has the top of the Pineapple folly.

South Elevation of the Dunmore Pineapple by Barbara Jones.

The pineapple is around 14 metres high and is intricately carved in stone to form an elaborate cupola on top of an octagonal pavilion. Conventional architraves put out shoots and end as stone-shaped ‘prickly leaves’. According to its intended purpose as a hothouse, the walls are of double construction with a cavity for the circulation of hot air for the old greenhouses.

North Elevation of the Dunmore Pineapple by Ed Kluz.

† Sacred Architecture of London by Nigel Pennick, 2012. 9781904658627
‡ The Pineapple: King of Fruits by Francesca Beauman 2006 p117 9780099469445
٭ Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland – p22, 2000 9780007103539

Tags Architecture, barbara jones, Dunmore Pineapple, Ed Kluz

Coronation Lithographs

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 25th July 2016

For the Coronation of Elizabeth II, a group of artists were invited to create lithographs for the Royal College of Art. Following the success of the Schools Prints series and Contemporary Lithographs, these prints were sold in limited editions and helped boost the RCA’s skills at reviving lithographic techniques. They were exhibited at the Redfern Gallery from April – May, 1953.

Most of the prints are held in Government collections and gain large prices at auction. It’s one of the least known lithographic collections but showcases some of the best British Artists of the mid twentieth century.

Leonard Rosoman – Two Pipers in the Sunlight, 1953

Michael Ayrton – Kettledrums, 1953

Kenneth Rowntree – Country Celebrations

Bernard Cheese – Drum Major

Edwin La Dell – Bandsmen in the City

Edwin La Dell – Horse Guards Parade

Alistair Grant – Hampton Court

Julian Trevelyan – The Mall

Robert Austin – Heralds

Barbara Jones – Prepairing the Coronation Coach

John Minton – Horseguards in their Dressing Rooms at Whitehall

Edward Bawden – Horse Guards

Ceri Richards – Costers Dancing

William Scott – Busby

Charles Mozley – Buckingham Palace Guard

Peter Downing – Celebration Dancers

Michael Rothenstein – Night illuminations

John Bowles – The Royal Barge

Tags barbara jones, Bernard Cheese, Ceri Richards, Charles Mozley, Coronation, Edward Bawden, Edwin La Dell, John Bowles, julian trevelyan, lithographs, lithography, Michael Rothenstein, Peter Downing, RCA, Royal College of Art

The Cotton Mechanical Music Museum

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 25th July 2016

The Mechanical Music Museum has an extensive collection that includes gramophones, music boxes, street pianos, fairground organs, street pianos, fairground organs and polyphones, as well as the marvellous Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ.

It also has an extensive collection of Victorian and Twentieth Century gaudy and barge ware china. It seams like a place where Barbara Jones or Peter Blake could have been enchanted. This post is more about the decorative items – rather than the organs, but it was just my love of extreme collections that inspired it.

Above is is the traditional painted style of a street organ and below are a set of novelty music boxes and music box discs.

From the late 1950s, Robert Finbow ran a house clearance and furniture business in Finningham. During house clearances, Robert occasionally obtained musical boxes and street pianos. Other pieces of memorabilia which caught his eye were quickly acquired and stored away.

Over the years he amassed a sizeable collection, but there was nowhere to show these treasures to the public. The Museum was built to house Robert Finbow’s collection of automatic instruments and David Englands collection of cinema memorabilia. It opened on Sunday 10th of October 1982.

Below are some of the antique Tobacco jars on display.

A mechanical mannequin, in this case a clown playing a piano, and below a banker at a table with a safe of money.

The roof beams of the barn are decorated with shellac records.

In the picture below you can see in the mirror a very small part of the extensive teapot collection they have at Cotton.

The paintings below are by a local artist and in a native style. Today it would be called ‘outsider art’.

A screen decorated with cigarette cards is one of the main things that made me think of Peter Blake, as they are all of ‘Empire’ images of famous icons of the age.

Their website can be seen here.

Tags Cotton, Music Boxes, Photography, Suffolk

Bartlow, Cambridgeshire

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 21st July 2016

Bartlow is one of two churches in Cambridgeshire with a round tower, the village is on the edge of a county border with Essex, so these boundaries have fluctuated over the past hundred years between Cambridgeshire and Essex. It’s listed in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments book of Essex, 1911 and in the 2014 Pevsner guide as Cambridgeshire.

Churches with round towers are almost exclusive to East Anglia, especially Norfolk and Suffolk. The other church in Cambridgeshire with a round tower is Snailwell and that is on the border of Suffolk and likely was once part of Suffolk too. Why these churches where built with round towers is a mystery; there was once the suggestion it was to be a defence against Viking raiders, but many of the churches where built long after the age of the Vikings.

Below are two strange pieces of graveyard furniture. One is a Greek omphalos decorated in a Georgian style, and below it a rather beautiful, tall, grave marker cast in metal.

The In spite of the belief that Bartlow church was built by King Cnut near the site of the battle of Ashingdon (Assandun) in the early 11th century, no documentary references to the church have been found earlier than the 13th century, and the building dates from the late 11th or early 12th. †

Inside the church, the stained glass windows seam to have a jumbled amount of completion.The tops of the windows however are almost all complete and feature these Lions.

The Lions faces to me are comic and fun. I am unsure whom they are depicting. They are designed like a burning sun, but the representation is likely to be God even though it could be more abstract than that, it could be Richard I, or the reigning monarch or the country’s spirit. They are usually represented either side of a Saint or Jesus portrait.

Above is the shadow of George and the Dragon, though only the base paint of the dragon remain with a few details of flowers and crosses. With the wave of puritanical iconoclasm during the sixteenth century, all the beautiful paintings and details of churches where whitewashed over. Today with luck and careful restoration these are being uncovered. Below on the opposite wall of the church is a better preserved wall painting.

Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child

Saint Christopher was a man of great size and strength who devoted himself to Jesus by helping travellers cross a dangerous river. One day a child asked to ride on Christopher’s shoulders across the river, but the infant seemed to grow heavier and heavier with every step. When they arrived on the opposite shore, the child identified himself as Christ, telling the holy man that he had just carried the weight of the world. Saint Christopher became one of the most popular patron saints for travellers in the Middle Ages.

I would guess the organ is a restoration project as it is highly decorated all over, from the ornamental pipes at the front to the boxing holding the mechanism.

An angel blows the wind at the base of a wall plaque.

To the rear of the church is the rest of the graveyard and the way to the roman hill burials. Below is a picture of the wall sundial and the carving and wall painting from it.

† A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 6.

Tags Cambridge Churches, Cambridgeshire, Churches, thatartblog

Edwin and Edward

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 14th July 2016

In writing the previous post I thought how Edwin Smith’s photos looked like some of Edward Bawden’s Linocuts. This isn’t to strike a claim of copycat, it’s just by chance. A nice chance and so here are three instances.

Edwin Smith – West Smithfield, 1953

Edward Bawden – Smithfield Market, 1967

Edwin Smith – Limetree Cottage, 1953

Edward Bawden – The Road to Thaxted, 1956

Edwin Smith – Post Office Underground Railway, 1957

Edward Bawden – Post Office Tube Railway, 1935

Tags Edward Bawden, edwin smith, great bardfield, Lintocut, Photography

Edwin Smith in Pompeii

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 14th July 2016

It seams more and more in ‘second hand books’ that the photographic content and illustrations are boosting prices more than the topic of books themselves – easy examples are High Street by J. M. Richards, or anything with an Edward Bawden or John Minton dust jacket, it’s a mad rush for any artistic ephemera. But it extends to what were cheap magazines with articles by John Nash or Graham Sutherland, once they were disposed in the bin, now they are rare and so are getting expensive. Times past, there were high class standards like Verve or Derrière le miroir but a copy of The Country Life Cookery Book from 1937 can now equal those prices.

This week I bought a book of ‘Pompeii and Herculaneum’ by Marcel Brion. Noting what I wrote above, I am more interested in the artistic content of the book rather than the subject matter, but happily I am interested in history and archaeology too. This book is full of the photography of Edwin Smith.

As it happens, books with the photos of Edwin Smith seam to be very cheap, due to how popular he was in the 1950s and 60s. There were many reprints and print runs so you can find good copies on Amazon for 1p, or £2.81 with postage – but still a pittance. There are a Thames & Hudson series of books co-written with Edwin Smith’s wife Olive Cook too; English Parish Churches (1952) and English Cottages Farmhouses (1954) being the most popular and thus, cheap to buy. I bought ‘Pompeii and Herculaneum’ for £2.99 in a charity shop.

In the introduction Brion writes ‘I am indebted to Mr. Edwin Smith for his photography which I trust the reader will find as brilliantly evocative as I myself do’.

Edwin George Herbert Smith (15 May 1912 – 29 December 1971) was an English photographer. He was born in Canonbury, Islington, London, the only child of Edwin Stanley Smith, a clerk, and his wife Lily Beatrice. After leaving school he was educated at the Northern Polytechnic, transferring to the architectural school at the age of sixteen. He then won a scholarship to the Architectural Association, but gave up his course and worked as a draughtsman for several years.

He became a freelance photographer in 1935, working briefly for Vogue as a fashion photographer. However he concentrated his artistic efforts on subjects such as the mining community of Ashington in Northumberland, the docks of Newcastle, and circuses and fairgrounds around London.

Smith was also a prolific artist. He produced water and oil paintings, drawings, linocuts and woodcuts throughout his life, and in later years at Saffron Walden, he drew up architectural plans for local properties.

He became ill in the spring of 1971, but cancer was not diagnosed until a few weeks before his death on 29 December. It was only after his death that exhibitions of Smith’s work appeared, with a monograph finally being published in 1984.

After Cook’s own death in 2002, her papers and some of those of her husband were placed in Newnham College Archives, Cambridge.

A collection of over 60,000 negatives and 20,000 prints were given by Olive Cook, Smith’s widow and collaborator, to the Royal Institute of British Architects Library. From urban scenes documenting British social history to evocative landscape images and atmospheric interiors, the images displayed reveal the genius and breadth of his work.

Edwin Smith was also an avid collector and creator of Toy Theatre. On his wife’s death, the collection passed to the Pollock’s Toy Museum Trust. A collection of his paintings, woodcuts and photographs is held by The Fry Gallery.

Tags edwin smith, fry gallery, great bardfield, olive cook, Photography, Pompeii

Christopher Wool

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 12th July 2016

Since leaving university I have found my tastes have changed in many things, mostly in decor, some life choices; like shortly after leaving university I became a vegetarian (and still am).

Another thing that hasn’t changed is my love for Christopher Wool’s work. In Cambridge we were lucky enough to have a bizarre book shop called Galloway and Porter, it was fantastically cheap, mostly for paperback books but they had sections on everything. It was in there I bought a set of books on the painter and photographer Christopher Wool.

His artworks seam remarkably simple at first when viewed in a book, but only when you see them in real life you acknowledge the scale of some of the pieces. Many of the paintings are on white enamelled aluminium.

Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stencilled letters on white. Wool began to create word paintings in the late 1980s, reportedly after having seen graffiti on a brand new white truck of the words SEX LUV. Using a system of alliteration, with the words often broken up by a grid system, or with the vowels removed (as in ‘TRBL’ or ‘DRNK’), Wool’s word paintings often demand reading aloud to make sense.

Many of the paintings and prints use repeating patterns and motives. Such a patterned painting roller, spray paint and black blotches. When these are all merged together the parts fight for attention with areas of it erased and degraded, over stencilled and destroyed.

Wool was born in Boston to Glorye and Ira Wool, a molecular biologist and a psychiatrist. He grew up in Chicago. In 1973, he moved to New York City and enrolled in Studio School studies with Jack Tworkov and Harry Krame. After a short period of formal training as a painter at the New York Studio School, he dropped out and immersed himself in the world of underground film and music.

Tags American Art, Christopher Wool, From My Collection, Paintings