Simon Rae
Happy communicating with people online, after all, as the great New Yorker cartoon puts it, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Location Near Milton Keynes
Activity
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Simon Rae made a comment
I’ll post this here as well as the other place that I’ve posted it… there is an interesting short article about Peter Blake “HOW SIR PETER BLAKE BECAME BRITAIN’S PREEMINENT POP ART STAR” by Andy Battaglia in the art journal Art in America with some nice pictures. It takes a very quick look at Blake’s work from the heady days of Pop in the 1960s right through...
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If anyone makes it this far… there is an interesting short article about Peter Blake “HOW SIR PETER BLAKE BECAME BRITAIN’S PREEMINENT POP ART STAR” by Andy Battaglia in the art journal Art in America with some nice pictures. It takes a very quick look at Blake’s work from the heady days of Pop in the 1960s right through to his current...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Not the perfect Pop Art course … little content but loads of references.
I had been looking forward to finding out what the wonderful Centre Pompidou made of Pop Art, how they thought it began and developed, a different perspective on an art form usually associated with the UK and the US. What I got was links to other people’s (mostly UK and US)...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I wrote a comment about this album earlier in the course, it seems apposite to repost it…
As a fan of Warhol and the Velvet Underground since the late 60s, I remember seeking out a copy of Songs for Drella when it was released in 1990. Conceived of and performed by Lou Reed and John Cale, ex-band members of the Velvet Underground and house band of Warhol’s...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I’m getting to the point that I’m glad that I haven’t paid anything for this course … this video did nothing to enhance my knowledge or appreciation of Andy Warhol or of Pop Art.
I found it colourful and slick but empty of any understanding of the times and culture that Warhol existed in. I guess that some may say “well, it’s empty because Andy’s work and...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Problem with thinking out of the box… as soon as you do the box morphs to include what you have thought, and a new box is defined.
When a new art form is defined ‘outside of the box’, the box adapts to accept the new form. Braque and Picasso thought outside of the box and Cubism was born, within a decade the art world (artists, agents, buyers etc) had...
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I remember reading some very nasty reports of the legal and copyright machinations that have surrounded Robert Indiana's painting… I can't remember the details but suspect that he lost his copyright of the work at some point and was sued for reproducing it? Or some such nonsense! (See "The Surprising History of Robert Indiana's "Love" Sculptures"...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I love it when Hamilton says of his collage ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ in the interview … “the idea of that was to take a whole lot of elements which I regarded as representing or symbolizing modern life. I made a list: “what is today?.” I wrote, at the top of my list, “men and women” as being the basic, the starting...
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Simon Rae replied to John Mullin
I’m beginning to agree with you. I wonder though if I’m being a bit unfair. I’m 70 and have been to more galleries than I can remember. I did a couple of years at Art College in 69/70 and I already know something of Pop art having grown up during it (and I bought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Velvet Underground when they came out). If I knew...
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I think the date would be one pointer, Pop Art seemed to be the thing in the 50s and 60s whereas neo-expressionism is later, in the 70s and 80s. From the look of them, Pop Art looks very smooth and shiny with very clean lines and often a manufactured look. Neo-expressionism looks far more painterly, you can see the paint and the brushstrokes.
But that’s...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I would like to have seen the show. It looks huge. I’ve seen lots of Warhol’s work over the years and even bought a short fairytale book that he illustrated. He was a great draftsman.
As a fan of Warhol and the Velvet Underground since the late 60s, I remember seeking out a copy of Songs for Drella when it was released in 1990. Conceived of and performed...
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Simon Rae replied to Lynn Hilditch
@ValentinaFacilitator @LynnHilditch I think the time period and location of the two are important as well. My understanding of Dada is that it started during and responded to the terrible social upheaval of World War One when everything, especially in Central Europe, was being violently changed. Many of the artists involved were or became stateless and the...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Hi, I’m Simon. Retired. Too much time on my hands. Love art. All art. Want to see how a French view of Pop Art will be different. Interested to see their version of the history of Pop Art: where and when it started, who started it, and how it fits in with what I think I know about it.
I’m looking forward to having my histories changed!
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Simon Rae made a comment
Nice video…
To my way of thinking though, looking back over the 50+ years since art went Pop, it wasn’t that “Pop art artists took themes, images and references from popular culture and brought them into the fine arts and paintings” but it was that Pop artists took the techniques and commercial structures of fine art and paintings and brought them into...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Hi, I'm Simon and I'm looking forward to seeing what the Centre Pompidou's version of Pop Art is and what a more European perspective will add to my UK and (less of) US appreciation of the art.
I'm looking forward to finding out who started Pop Art or where it started if it wasn't in the US!
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Simon Rae made a comment
Another final comment… an article about "Fallism and restitution: Removing racist statues and returning looted art objects" by Dan Hicks (Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum) and Nicholas Mirzoeff (Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU).
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Simon Rae made a comment
One final comment after finishing this course a little while ago…
This article appeared in my Twitter thread today, it presents a view of art that meshes with what I've learned...
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Interesting point… @EF And no, I’ll often/usually walk past piles of bricks on building sites.
No, for me it’s the installation of the bricks (or metal plates or railway sleepers etc) in the gallery environment that focuses my attention … having said that, if a building site is redefined as a ‘gallery space’ by an artist then I’ll happily put on my...
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Simon Rae replied to Michèle Bethke
@MaryR Might that book be next to his copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979) (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)? One of those books that I've started many times but never managed to either finish or grow tired of. I seem to recall that Hofstadter filled in for Gardner with puzzles for...
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Simon Rae replied to Michèle Bethke
@MaryR @EF @MaryMac My contribution to the Alice thread is media based. I was half watching the 1949 film: Vote for Huggett on TalkingPicturesTV. The action revolved around the candidate knocking on the door of three elderly ladies to ask for their votes - lovely scene, so I googled the elderly actresses involved. Isa Bowman...
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@SharonWells @EF @InekeFioole et al… Fairly sure that the OpenLearn courses don’t have discussion threads like this. As I remember they are mostly short courses trimmed out of full-length OU courses and presented as simple web pages that you can just work through at your own pace and on your own… or you can download them as a Word document or a .pdf and...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I was listening to a program - Work of Art (Fons Americanus Part 1: Introduction), the first of a mini-series discussion in which art historian Alice Procter (https://www.theexhibitionist.org/) examines U.S. artist Kara Walker’s Tate Modern Hyundai Commission 2019, Fons Americanus...
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Simon Rae replied to Michèle Bethke
@EF @MaryMac @MichèleBethke @SharonWells @InekeFioole @LindaMatthews @MarkJackson … I’ve been lurking on the course this last week and I just wanted to say how much I have been enjoying your conversation in this thread. So, my apologies for reading your group thoughts and comments (not all to do with Modern Sculpture), and thank you.
One thing in...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Another issue informing Art Historical critical reading of art since I did any study of AH with the Open University back in the 70s/80s is decolonization, not just an issue in AH but across the curriculum, from primary school through university study.
I came across this paper recently: Decolonizing Art History by Catherine Grant & Dorothy Price, Jan 2020...
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Simon Rae replied to Carole Garner
@MarkJackson I once saw a Malevich for sale in a gallery in Old Bond Street, very small - a sheet from a child's drawing pad with a Suprematism drawing done with bright, primary colour crayons; nice. How much is the Malevich I asked the stylish receptionist … Oh very reasonable she replied, £25… my heart missed a beat, I could afford that (the wife wouldn't...
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Simon Rae replied to Brian Baker
@SharonWells If you're feeling adventurous while you are up in Scotland, do try for the Lost Gallery. We were gently motoring from one B&B to another and we saw this sign pointing to the Lost Gallery which we thought we try and find (we wanted a coffee as well). Four miles later, the last up an almost 1 in 1 single track road, we found it on top of a small...
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Simon Rae replied to Brian Baker
There is a monumental precident for honouring cartoon characters, in Dundee at least. That city boasts statues of Desperate Dan and Wee Willie among others, plus more 'normal' ones of Queen Victoria and to a soldier of the Black Watch. Plus, if you're ever that far north, Dundee is home of the V&A (Northern branch, outside London)...
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@SaraF Not sure how many Art Students there are at the University of York, lots of History of Art students but no Art practitioners. But my point was more that Sculptors have usually trained and worked hard at their profession and that I’m not sure that students could do it … ie if I ever have to have open-heart surgery I’d prefer to be operated on by a...
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@AnnBridgwood I had to attend a weekend workshop once in Newcastle and I knew Schwitter’s Merz Barn was somewhere there. I spent most of the afternoon going round the city centre asking likely people where it was (this was pre-internet-on-your-Smartphone days). I finally found out that it was in a gallery space in the same building complex that my workshop had...
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@ChrisRooney Isn’t this a bit like asking the students to create the financial accounts for the colleges? Sculptors and Accountants would see themselves as professionals, and that training and experience play quite a large part in any success in their work. And asking students to give up time from their studies to create a statue … I can see the headlines in...
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@SusanDunn The concrete Cow's at Milton Keynes make for an interesting case study in both animal sculptures and in public art … https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Cows …MK's Cow's are not accurately realistic like Friesian Calf calf, although they certainly read like a small herd of cow's from the road or train when going past, but they have worked...
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Simon Rae replied to Brian Baker
I remember them from the 60s as well, but I didn't think of them as sculptures then, they were signs advertising the new Bull Ring shopping centre. My, my, don't attitudes change!
And I agree with comments on the new Bull, too shiny, too smooth and a bit too Disney for me, I'd prefer to have one of the original ones in my collection!
I wonder if there's...
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Simon Rae replied to Alison Bole
Ahh… @PamelaHumphreys I knew that there had been some changes. Pity it was down the very commercial route :-(
@AlisonBole They still do some free courses though, the OpenLearn facility offers a range of free courses: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue (I can recommend the 'Art and life in ancient Egypt' which I did some work on back...
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@marionk Belatedly, yes Fritz was a memorable art teacher. He afforded all of us at the school (a very minor, all boys, public boarding school) the opportunity to do ceramics using the local, very rough Stourbridge fireclay which was great for making huge slab or coil pots but hand-ripping for throwing on the wheel (literally), welding, lost-wax (actually...
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@LesleyB As you say, some artists are aware, others not so… and people are patronised.
The target audience need not be confined to museums & galleries though, now that we have 'social media' to spread the word. A tweet is a quick way to register concern to all your followers (and more).
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Simon Rae replied to Alison Bole
@AlisonBole Some time ago I did some Art History courses with the UK Open University which I found excellent. Their tutoring & presentation methods have changed a bit since then (now ‘blended’ ie online and set reading/books) but not the quality of the teaching & learning materials: http://www.openuniversity.edu/.
However, I do have to admit bias, some time...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Thank you York, I really enjoyed the course.
I started the course thinking that it might touch on the politics of public art illustrated by some Yorkshire examples, eg the Hull Three Ships mural destruction: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-humber-50515763, the Sheffield City Centre Artwork:...
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I've always enjoyed looking at paintings, any paintings, but usually walked past sculptures to get to the pictures :-)
This course has raised my level of interest/respect for sculptures and sculptors.
Next time I'll look at the sculptures before walking round them.
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@PaulGarwood Oh yes… One of the ongoing themes when I used to research Open University student use of the Block Texts they received was did they write in the wide academic margin that was designed in for that purpose or not…
I still have to force myself to do it though - is it an age thing do you think?
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Simon Rae made a comment
Yes, Art can help change minds and can play a big part in educating the public about important issues like climate change and the environment. Although I have to say that I'm not convinced that big expensive projects like Cape Farewell are the best way, not sure how well it relates to ordinary folk, other than along the lines of a big jolly sending lucky...
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I always feel a bit sad when I see books used for anything other than reading @ClareMaloney - seems a sacrilege to me. But I agree, there are some very clever uses of old books, and very powerful messages. (But I just want to read them …)
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What fun, the #29 Bicycle-Built Cycle Sculptures reminded me of one I prepared earlier… at school we had access to oxyacetylene welding kit and I collected a lot of discarded bikes and welded them together, with one at the top rearing up looking like a galloping horse/breaking wave. Unfortunately one of the other boys laid claim to one of the junked bikes and...
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Simon Rae made a comment
All three highlighted sculptors are new to me, thank you.
I love the upside down tree!
Is the ecological aspect of the work used as a justification though, or as an inspiration? Work of previous generations of sculptors might 'come from the same place' but not be sold on such a ticket. Schwitters work carried similar messages of reuse and recycling but...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I'd like one of Bruce Lacey's Robots https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bruce-lacey-1452
something by Kurt Schwitters https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kurt-schwitters-1912 (part of his Elterwater Merzbarn?)
and one of Fritz Steller’s ceramic panels http://www.fynevue.co.uk/sdtown/library/fritzsteller1.html because he was one of my teachers
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Simon Rae made a comment
I think that the University of York has an obligation to acquire and exhibit work from artists and sculptors who represent the diversity, the homes, the places, spaces, age and gender of their students. (As I’ve said before.)
And I suspect that the current collection will need a lot of revision in terms of gender, diversity and homes of the students; yes...
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Simon Rae made a comment
And I guess another issue is insurance. Presumably the collection is insured, and presumably the premium depends on the perceived worth of the art works. This presumably alters from year to year as the value of each work is reassessed in the light of the ‘Art Market’? A nightmare for your university’s finance department :-)
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Bit of a downer here, but I’m not sure that art can help out here.
The University’s Founding Principles are probably worded so that future needs can be accommodated without too much trouble, and, if they do need to be ‘massaged’ to allow post-COVID distance education & working from home (or shed) then they will be. There’s probably a pedagogy out there...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Satisfaction guaranteed!
It was nice carving the little figures out of the clippings I had. As I released each one, carving them out of the material, they started telling me about themselves. One was a drummer in a reggae band before she lost both arms in an unfortunate accident, one developed a footballing trick to rival the Cruyff turn...
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@LynB @MaddieBoden @Nancyj Is this becoming common practice? I used to work at Walton Hall, the HQ of the Open University - when one of the huge, centuries old cedar trees in the grounds died they commissioned a tree artist to create a sculpture out of the trunk:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nican45/22088913741/in/photostream/Much though I like the...
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Simon Rae made a comment
For those that look, perhaps Hodgson’s tree sculpture might feed into a sense of place and belonging, and it might resonate with the student’s heritage. Standing monuments appear all over, a common way for people to record their presence, mark their territory, link with the environment or link spiritually with their...
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@marionk the ancient Greeks cast some very fine life-sized statues which drove the Romans and then the renaissance to continue the tradition of bronze casting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_sculpture) … but that’s just Europe. The Chinese were at it as were the Indians and the Benin bronzes are still a bit of a thorn in the side of the British Museum,...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Dad always got a lot of pleasure? satisfaction? relaxation? out of making bespoke garden furniture out of the branches that he’d pruned out of the trees… 6” and oval headed nails (to stop the wood splitting), hammer and saw. Bish, bash, bosh and there would be a new chair fitting snuggly into a corner. This was in the 60s, before such things were saleable...
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@CarolKellas Yes, you're probably right… I was too young and full of myself.
But they also say catch them while they're young - as you know, and from my experiences since dropping out, I know the benefits of having someone give a bit of help or the 'hand on the shoulder' to guide…
It was such a waste as well, of the group that I went with none of us...
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I said in Section 3.5 that I think the University of York has an obligation with respect to the university’s collection to acquire and exhibit work from artists and sculptors who represent the diversity, the homes, places, spaces and gender of their students. If this was the case then I don’t think the university would need to consult on every new acquisition...
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Looks like both student newspapers are providing a good training ground for our UK media! Nice in-depth articles reporting issues of concern in a well researched, balanced and objective way, but a missed opportunity perhaps, the Gryphon article mentions ’equal pay for women’ but doesn’t (in the quote at least) mention that the artist is a woman.
The cost of...
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@NoeleneBeckettCrowe.. I’m not sure where democracy come into it. Ultimately, art is for the artist who creates it, it’s something they have to do.
I once copied out a quote from Henry Moore, he'd been asked if he minded that the 'man in the street' had said that he didn't understand Moore's work and he said (& I'm summarizing here from a 40 year-old...
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@marionk is it to do with size and function perhaps? Bronze has such a long tradition and history in sculpture, it seems to be the material that sculptors move into when they get public commissions. Ceramics has more of a history in utensils, although I know of one sculptor who used ceramics to monumental effect:...
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@DavidStephen Thanks … it’s only 35 years but I can still remember their brooding masses. Beautifully clipped and maintained. But an awful lot of duck poo on the ground in the morning!
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@GervaisFrykman @StuartYoung I like The Floor Planers by Gustave Caillebotte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_raboteurs_de_parquet - it reminds me of the work and sweat of sanding the pine floor in one of our bedrooms.
I like Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring by Laura Knight https://www.wikiart.org/en/laura-knight/ruby-loftus-screwing-a-breech-ring-1943 -...
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Dryad - by an artist that I was unaware of. But from the biographical information given in the course he seems to have been an interesting cove, albeit a bit of a reclusive individual, lucky and supported enough to be able to pursue his art.
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Simon Rae made a comment
The Friesian Calf reminds me of the loss of a way of life, I grew up in the country, my father’s job took him (and sometimes me) to farms and cattle markets and we lived for a time near a calving field where the farmer put the pregnant cows in just before they gave birth. All gone now. The farms I visited all merged together to form ‘economic units’, the...
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I applied to Leeds College of Art to do a Diploma in Art & Design with a group of fellow students in 1969. We were applying as a group, we had been working as a group during our Pre-diploma year and we were asked to interview. We were apprehensive, not least because of some of the stories we had heard of the college. Bruce Lacey...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Imagine, you walk into a courtyard, you become aware of a small sculpture positioned in the centre of the space and you become aware of a sense of awe (or was that ahhh?) from others nearer the work. When you get close enough you see that the sculpture is a realistic representation of (1) a life-sized newborn Friesian Cow by Sally Arnup or (2) a life-sized...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I was at York University in 1985 attending the HT2 Computing Conference, I don’t remember much about the conference other than one of the keynote speeches given by Ted Nelson, a visionary computer guru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson) who came up with the term ‘Hypertext’. There are parallels between Nelson and Wright, both were well educated...
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Simon Rae made a comment
At this distance from the cast of Single Form (Antiphon) outside the Music Room at York University it is difficult to assess much about this sculpture. The image indicates a slender form twisting upward from a solid rectangular footing. The weight of the piece is gathered at the base, anchoring it to the ground but pierced by a hole that joins right to left, a...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Lovely film, quite took me back to the days when TV was slow and sonorous and black&white and the camera work gave one time to ‘see’ the artwork! And the short section showing Hepworth’s drawing technique was tremendous (as someone who does a bit now and then). But I’m not sure that I could visit though, so many lovely objects, like a greedy kid in a sweet...
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@MaddieBoden Is there perceived to be a difference, from an Art Historical perspective, between multiple copies of sculptures resulting from the casting process as in the example of the Hepworth statue we have been discussing and multiple copies of sculptures where that is one element of the concept?
I remember back in the late 60s/early 70s going to an...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Barbara Hepworth was one of the first sculptors that I became aware of. Not sure what age I was or where I saw her work - one of her stringed sculptures, smooth polished wood, egg shaped, hollowed core, white carved surfaces, not big, a sculpture not too big to intimidate, natural forms, but worrying - how did she know where to place those holes? I’m probably...
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I think that the University of York has an obligation to acquire and exhibit work from artists and sculptors who represent the diversity, the homes, places, spaces and gender of their students.
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Simon Rae made a comment
The course has been great, the opportunity to look at, think about and talk about aspects of art with the added bonus of gentle guidance from the course resources… super!
It’s like seeing a painting in a gallery. I love being able to see the whole picture from a distance, to get a sense of size, structure and presence, and then to be able to get really...
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This may be of interest, a short video “about the making of a life sized bronze figure called 'Homage to Prisoners of War'“ by Josie Spencer, an American sculptor living in London. “This film shows the process of making a bronze sculpture from the moulding of the finished clay figure in the studio to the foundry where the process of creating the final figure...
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Simon Rae made a comment
This may be of interest, a short video “about the making of a life sized bronze figure called 'Homage to Prisoners of War'“ by Josie Spencer, an American sculptor living in London. “This film shows the process of making a bronze sculpture from the moulding of the finished clay figure in the studio to the foundry where the process of creating the final figure...
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Simon Rae made a comment
"Art history relies on direct encounters with works of art, actually going and seeing objects in person. Art historians have to deal with artworks firsthand and in person." Surely this is potentially a problem at the moment for any inspiring Art Historians what with lockdown and everything - or someone living in Orkney, or even someone in Buckinghamshire...
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Oh yes, @MarkJackson I’ve been in so many of those! One ends up commenting on the quality of the latest repaint job :-) And my story did play out in a ‘white wall gallery’ albeit a municipal public art gallery that offers all sorts of art in all sorts of shows. My sorrow is @RaymondT, that this sort of engagement doesn’t help to ‘grow the audience’. If you...
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@RaymondT I’m in complete agreement with your first paragraph, but I have slight reservations about the second.
Doesn’t engagement imply or require an element of ‘conversation’? Some measure of to-and-fro between the, shall we say, learner on one side and the teacher on the other? The text of the ‘lesson’ might be a course like this, an article in an art...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Strange thought… the nearest that most people will get to a sculpture made by Lucas or Bellmer is through the flat medium of photography, and unless first names or gender information is provided, who will know the sex of the artist or how the sculpture feels?
A lot of art appreciation/study/criticism is based, in effect, on hearsay. Unfortunately most...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Strange isn’t it, I remember playing with Möbius bands and cutting them up way, way back when first at school, then at art college and lastly while doing Maths Teacher Training. At first I looked at the paper strip as a clever mathematical problem (probably off Martin Gardner’s Scientific American pages), then as a neat opportunity to play with paper and...
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Simon Rae replied to Alan Holley
I agree @AlanHolley, it doesn’t remove them from history, but don’t you think that some statues can give offence? If you were aware of your own history, a history that had been blighted by the activities of whoever the statue in memorialising, wouldn’t you prefer the statues to be removed from their location?
Putting them into some sort of park...
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Simon Rae made a comment
This one's a bit different, it's an anti-memorial to the COVID-19 death toll:
https://twitter.com/leilazadeh/status/1281537093773254657?s=19
"Someone's formed 44,602 stones into the figure 44,602 on Brighton seafront, each stone individually numbered. #RIP #NeverForget #COVID19"
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Simon Rae made a comment
Rodin was a great sculptor in the classic traditions who made Impressionism and Symbolism solid and three dimensional.
Duchamp set us all free and gave us the right to be artists (if we want to be).
I'm becoming much more interested in how sculptures made of the new materials will last and be conserved and curated. For example, how will concrete or...
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@AngelaD @HelenMorrissey Wishing to shock the establishment was probably part of the whole undertaking I'm sure, but what an establishment it was around the early years of the 20th C… wars, politics, suffrage, religion, anti-semitism - not unlike now really, no Brexit or COVID-19 perhaps, although the Spanish flu killed millions in 1918/19 - but a lot of...
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Certainly Rodin 'was the progenitor of modern sculpture and his sensual, expressive and emotive work continues to captivate viewers', and his Gates of Hell are (is?) a monumental work but in a way he was continuing a grand tradition of very 'male' sculptors. The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier,...
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Simon Rae made a comment
There's a useful tool for analysing the use of language that searches though all the Books that Google has digitised and displays how often and in which books a specified phrase has been used, it's called Google Ngrams (see: https://books.google.com/ngrams or https://books.google.com/ngrams/info for detailed information). I used it to see when people started...
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Simon Rae replied to Rosana Gil
@RosanaGil I'm interested in what you mean in your first statement. I can go with the idea of Modern Art being a European phenomenon, growing out of the prevailing academic art traditions primarily located in Paris, France in the mid to late 1800s and driven by artists such as Manet, Courbet and Cezanne, but I'm not clear where the Industrial Revolution comes...
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The Whisper by Andre Wallace from 1985 sits on a scaffold tube fence outside the Central Milton Keynes Library slightly to one side of the main entrance. The slightly larger than life sculpture shows two realistically depicted young women engaged in a conversation, one of the women has her arm around the sholders of the other and is whispering behind her...
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As a sculptor where would you want your statue displayed? Choose between:
1) a prime spot in the middle of London where millions of people go past and OK only a small % actually look at it but that's still a lot of people AND it would be known as a tourist attraction or
2) a field where a few people climb up on it when the sun is shining?If I was making...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I hadn't known that Robert Smithson (1938-1973) and Nancy Holt (1938-2014) were married, I knew of Spiral Jetty but the Sun Tunnels are new to me, so thank you.
It's interesting that your text suggests that Smithson's work has 'relevant political contexts too' in terms of environmentalism but not Holt's work. Both works comment on the land, on people's...
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Simon Rae made a comment
I love it when bronze statues, or parts of them, become polished by people rubbing them… there's one in Parliament, I think of Churchill, whose toecap is regularly touched by members on their way to the chamber to give them good luck. And there's a statue of Juliet in a courtyard in Verona below her balcony where the breasts are brightly polished by countless...
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I was wandering through Budapest with my partner while I was on a weekend research/study meeting 20 odd years ago… we had walked past walls pockmarked with bullet holes from the 1956 Hungarian revolution/invasion/liberation and we were looking for somewhere to get a coffee. We turned a corner and came across an astonishing sculpture of a silver willow tree in...
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Over and above considerations of money and access I think that most collections are made by individuals or organisation who believe that they have a point of view that is worthy enough to be thrust upon those without the money or access.
It's a power trip essentially. By showing others what the collectors deem suitable a process of education and...
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I have grown up with Moore's work. He has, by and large, had a very good press in the UK and has been revered as one of 'our' world-class artists (by those who value reputation, value and nationalism as well as, or perhaps in place of, artistic merit). But of late he has disappeared a bit, replaced in the national consciousness perhaps by David Hockney,...
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Simon Rae made a comment
And also other percentages that would be of interest.
What % of the collection is:
By BAME artists;
By women artists;
Tainted by 'colonial relocation';
Tainted by slavery?And, in these respects, is this collection any different from other collections?
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Simon Rae made a comment
What percentage of the collection is on show in spaces that the public can access them?
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@InekeFioole I think that I saw it as part of a tour by a group of theatre professionals/technicians that my partner belonged to … we got to see inside and some of the ‘backstage’ areas of the new building.
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Simon Rae made a comment
Fascinating to read the comments… especially the ones concerning living conditions (ie inside toilets etc) in the 60s. We really do forget quickly don’t we? But I guess it’s 50+ years ago so I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’ve always thought of WW2 as history, but in fact it was only 10 years before I was born.
I think that the architecture of the new...
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Yes… I can imagine the committees that would have had a say in how these panels would or should look and the negotiating that the artist, the architects, the builders and the university would have been engaged in… I think they ended up with some panels that are entirely suitable for the building.
And as an artist I think Fred Millett would have jumped at...
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@SueJansons @MarkJackson @SheilaV @CarolKellas I'm guessing that the truth is a bit of both, that the artist knew about use using concrete although possibly not on the scale that this new university offered, and that no-one really understood how concrete would weather over the next half century (was acid rain a thing in the late 60s, I remember mentioning a...
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Simon Rae made a comment
While I find this history of York University and its initial, very laudible aspirations interesting I'm not convinced that their ideas would have worked. While I suspect that students, primarily first years?, would have welcomed a collegiate 'home from home' to begin with and merrily eaten, drank and played with anyone that they passed in their corridor or...
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I so agree @AnnegretFrings. Unfortunately I think that most of art and most of education, at least in the UK, are or have become irrevocably elitist. Not that they are not open; more and more people are encouraged to enter Higher Education and art, but as soon as they do an air-lock closes behind them and barriers appear between their new persona and the one...
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Simon Rae made a comment
Two interesting videos. @MaddieBoden, in the first introductory one, was the decision to use the garden shed as the background made intentionally to suggest the modular build of the university? It looks more temporary than a building...
I'd not come across the CLASP building method before, but the lego-like supply chain anonymisation of the process...
