‘I’ve always liked what Goethe said: “The greatest thing a person can achieve is astonishment”.’
Derek Boshier

This is a delight. The magus Derek Boshier giving a Tate masterclass in life drawing from 2013:

Rethink/Re-Entry, the monograph of Boshier’s life’s work I am editing, is published this autumn by Thames & Hudson.

Tags: Rethink/Re-entry, Tate, Thames & Hudson

//The simulation of the Seditionaries facade in industrial materials provided the entry and exit point for models on the runway today//

//With rings representing the positions where designer Ben Kelly exposed air conditioning vents to view, Kim Jones replaced the diagonal bar which occupied the central square over the door with the trademark Vuitton ‘V’//

//Ben Kelly’s portfolio shot of the facade he designed and installed at 430 King’s Road in December 1976//

Amid the references to the late Christopher Nemeth in today’s Paris show of the Louis Vuitton A/W 15 menswear collection (see my last post), artistic director Kim Jones used the staging to pay subtle homage to the two great maverick figures of London street culture – namely Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and specifically their 70s punk store Seditionaries.

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Tags: Ben Kelly, Catherine McDermott, Christopher Nemeth, Covent Garden, Judy Blame, Kim Jones, London University Of The Arts, Long Acre, Louis Vuitton, Mark Lebon, Nellee Hooper, Paul Howie, Vivienne Westwood

//Heroes by Mark Lebon for i-D Bible 1988. Styling by Judy Blame and Christopher Nemeth//

I’m looking forward to participating in ShowStudio’s live broadcast discussion of today’s Louis Vuitton A/W 15 menswear show in Paris.

Vuitton artistic director Kim Jones has been trailing the show on his Instagram feed with tantalising hints as to the direction and content. Jones’ A/W 15 collaborators include Judy Blame, Nellee Hooper and Mark Lebon – all names associated with the late shoemaker John Moore’s magical 80s north-east London art/fashion space The House Of Beauty & Culture.

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Tags: Christopher Nemeth, Commes des Garcons, John Flett, John Moore, Judy Blame, Kasia Maciejowska, Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton, Mark Lebon, Nellee Hooper, Richard Torry, The House Of Beauty & Culture, The Selby, Tokyo

//Malcolm McLaren in a previously unpublished shot wearing original 50s George Cox Bingley D-ring brothel creepers to match his detail-perfect Teddy Boy garb. Photo taken inside Let It Rock, 430 King’s Road, January 1972. (c) David Parkinson//

//Left, Saint Laurent point-toed patent brothel creepers, A/W 2014. Right: George Cox Buckle Diano made to the 1950s last//

Last season’s foregrounding by Saint Laurent of the pointed brothel creeper is just one of a run of examples of fashion brands plugging into the purity of this quintessentially British rock & roll style minted in 1949 by the UK independent footwear company George Cox.

Among the first stylistic innovators to take the design out of Teddy Boy revivalism and apply it to contemporary fashion was Malcolm McLaren, who had been selling creepers for a couple of years at Let It Rock, the boutique he operated with Vivienne Westwood, by the time he visited the Cox factory in Northampton in November 1973. Here he ordered samples for six styles, some of which went into production for sale at 430 King’s Road.

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Tags: Adam Waterfield, Commes des Garcons, Fred Perry, Ganryu, George Cox, Jamie Reid, Let It Rock, Ray Stevenson, Saint Laurent, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, The Bingley, The Diano, Vivienne Westwood

//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

What is Metamodernism?

In the 90s and the early 2000s it’s fair to say we grew up with a particular outlook on life, one of irony, of deconstruction and cynicism. This was noticeable in the music of Nirvana and Radiohead, in the books of Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis, and we saw it in the arts with the YBAs and Jeff Koons. This is very much a sensibility that spoke to us, that we embraced.

That time was summed up by a sense of boredom in culture. This is it? And what now?

Throughout the 2000s we began noticing – as many people did and many have written about this – slight changes. First you get the complete reappraisal of writers such as David Foster Wallace, who started in the 90s but suddenly became big in the early 2000s. And you had sincere movies by Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry. This was all very different from the kind of stuff we grew up with. Something was changing. The irony of Nirvana, the desperation of Radiohead, the cynicism of Michel Houellebecq were replaced by something that was at once still cynical, still ironic and had an acknowledgement of how the world worked, but at the same time seemed to want more.

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Tags: Bret Easton Ellis, David Foster Wallace, Fredric Jameson, Guido van der Werve, Miche Gondry, Nirvana, Postmodernism: Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Radiohead, Robin van den Akker, Seinfeld, Stedelijk, The Simpsons, Timotheus Vermeulen, Wes Anderson

//Malcolm McLaren, 1973. Photo: David Parkinson. Bryan Ferry, 1976. Photo Richard Wallis//

A couple of years back I showed examples of photography by the late David Parkinson to car-nut graphic design maestro Jules Balme; I knew he would be interested in the incorporation of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado in a 1973 Let It Rock fashion shoot.

What drew Balme’s eagle eye was not the car fin detail, but the fact that Malcolm McLaren in the shot below sported a tie of the same distinctive Atomic-style 50s pattern as worn by Bryan Ferry in the video clip for his 1976 solo hit Let’s Stick Together (and subsequently on the sleeve of the compilation of the same name rushed out to capitalise on the single’s success that year).

//McLaren and models in Let It Rock attire – right are examples of the so-called “Alan Ladd” and “Jazz” suits – photographed in Acre Lane, Brixton for Club International by David Parkinson, summer 1973//

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Tags: Acme Attractions, Bryan Ferry, Chris Spedding, Club International, EG, Jules Balme, Let It Rock, Paul Thompson, Petticoat Lane, Polydor, Richard Wallis, Steph Raynor, The Golden Age

//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

“More than anyone, Malcolm McLaren bursts the definitions as to what exactly constitutes an artist.”
Yves Aupetitallot, curator at Magasin, the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, in the introduction to Art In Pop

Due to popular demand, the run of Art In Pop – the French exhibition about the intermingling of artistic practice with popular music where the main space is dedicated to the work of Malcolm McLaren – has been extended by a month.

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Tags: Alix Lambert, Bow Wow Wow, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Genesis Breyer P. Orridge, Goldsmith's, Grenoble, Hiroshi Fujiwara, John Armleder, John Miller, Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton, Magasin, Marco Pirroni, Paul Burgess, Sex Pistols, Ted Polhemus, Vivienne Westwood, Young Kim, Yves Aupetitallot

//Watched by the crowd, writers/poets/frontmen Robert Calvert and Michael Moorcock (left), drummer Simon King and bassist Lemmy prepare for lift off, August 25, 1973. Photo: Dave Walkling//

//Detail of pic above showing Bubbles’ drumheads and speaker designs//

Following my post of photos from the free music festival at Windsor Great Park to the west of London in 1973, attendee Dave Walkling has sent a couple of sharp images which capture the anticipation in the crowd just before Hawkwind’s set.

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Tags: Dave Walkling, Hawkwind, Lemmy, Michael Moorcock, Nik Turner, Robert Calvert, Simon KIng, Windsor Free Festival 1973