//From Print’s 75th anniversary issue, illustrations (clockwise from top left): A section of Bubbles’ design for the sleeve of 1979 LP Armed Forces lines up with work by Ruth Ansel, Andrew Loomis, Ladislaw Sutnar, Cipe Pineles and Paul Bacon//

For its 75th anniversary issue, US visual culture publication Print has selected Barney Bubbles as one of six “unsung heroes of design”.

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Tags: Andrew Loomis, Angela Riechers, Cipe Pineles, Harper's Bazaar, Ladislaw Sutnar, Paul Bacon, Print, Ruth Ansel, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair

//Portfolio shot of the newly completed Seditionaries, 430 King’s Road, London SW10,  December 1976.
(c) Ben Kelly//

Interior Design: Dead Or Alive is the title of the symposium being organised by the prominent British designer Ben Kelly at London’s Institute Of Contemporary Arts on March 14.

I am a contributing speaker alongside writer/curator Michael Bracewell, designers Fred Deakin, Ed Barber & Jay Osgerby and Peter Saville, artists Lucy McKenzie and Bridget Smith and David Toop of the London College Of Communications and Tate Britain’s Andrew Wilson.

“We’re going to be taking stock of the ways in which iconic interiors affect and influence the direction of popular culture and the wider world,” says Kelly, who is putting the event together in his capacity as professor of interior design and spatial studies at the University of the Arts London.

//Portfolio shot of the freshly installed Seditionaries name plaque, December 1976. (c) Ben Kelly//

Among Kelly’s designs was the November 1976 transformation of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Sex at 430 King’s Road into Seditionaries. Knowing that I have researched and produced a substantial document on the history of 430 King’s Road, Kelly has asked me to address this little space with a big impact in terms of its importance as a cultural hub and incubator of often radical ideas.

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Tags: Alfred Withers, Andrew Wilson, Bridget Smith, David Toop, Ed Barber, Fred Deakin, Hung On You, ICA, Ida Docker, Jay Osgerby, Lucy McKenzie, Michael Bracewell, Michael Roberts, Mr Freedom, Paradise Garage, Peter Saville, Peter Schlesinger, Seditionaries, Sukita Matayoshi, The Hacienda, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Vivienne Westwood

//Rug c.1929 by Francis Bacon. 212 x 126 x 1.5cm. Private collection currently on loan to Tate Britain. © The Estate Of Francis Bacon//

//Stool, c. 1930. Painted and laminated wood 40.5 x 51.5 x 38cm. This appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2013 – the owner explained that her  grandparents bought it from Bacon after he was featured in The Studio magazine//

//Invitation to 1929 selling exhibition, from Richard Shone’s article on Bacon the furniture designer in The Burlington magazine, 1996//

I’m fascinated by the modernist furniture and interiors produced by Francis Bacon before his emergence as “Bacon Agonistes”, in critic John Richardson’s memorable phrase.

This occurred in 1933 with the selection of Bacon’s painting Crucifixion by Herbert Read for his 1933 survey Art Now: An Introduction To The Theory Of Modern Painting And Sculpture; tellingly, the work by the 24-year-old was juxtaposed in the layout with Picasso’s 1929 Female Bather With Raised Arms. Picasso was the only 20th century artist who “fully captivated Bacon”, wrote his biographer Michael Peppiatt, while the artist said he decided to abandon furniture and interiors when he saw an exhibition of Picasso’s Dinard paintings at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s.

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Tags: Art Now, Crucifixion 1933, Daniel Farson, David Sylvester, Douglas Cooper, Eileen Gray, Female Bather With Raised Arms, Fernand Léger, Francis Bacon, Gustave Miklos, Herbert Read, Ivan da Silva Bruhns, Jean Shepeard, John Richardson, Majid Boustany, Michael Peppiatt, Pablo Picasso, Patrick White