I suppose if the surrealists had been running the Surreal Sunday Challenge then all of the six pictures would have been genuine, or alternatively, they all would have been fakes. However, I am no surrealist and therefore I stuck to the rules. So here are the results of the challenge.
Picture No. 1 is by the British artist Lawrence Atkinson (1873-1931) and was part of the "British Surrealism in Context" Exhibition. Atkinson was originally influenced by Matisse and the Fauves and specialised in landscapes. However after he was introduced to Wyndham Lewis his style changed to the style represented by this picture. GENUINE.
Picture No 2 is by the artist Reuben Mednikoff (1906-1972) who worked throughout the thirties and forties with Grace Pailthorpe. They were very interested in the theories of Sigmund Freud and experimented in painting styles which brought repressed memories to the surface. In the 1940s they were both expelled from the British Surrealist Group as their views on the scientific analysis of art went against the views of other group members. GENUINE.
Picture No 3 is by Arthur Jackson Hepworth (1911-2003) a cousin of the sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth. He was a leading member of the British modernist movement and maintained a detailed photographic record of the work of many of his more famous fellow artists. GENUINE.
Picture No 4 is by Alan Burnett (1948-2057), an untrained artist who would happily admit to anyone who would buy him a pint of real ale that he had the artistic talent of an elephant fly. He would often go to exhibitions of modern art and say things like "Good grief, I could have painted that on the kitchen table" `until one day he tried it and found out that it was a lot more difficult than he thought. FAKE.
Picture No 5 is by John Piper (1903-1992) who is perhaps best known for his picturesque, architectural and landscape paintings but who also produced dramatic abstract works. In the 1950s he branched out, creating designs for stained glass, pottery, textiles and stage sets. GENUINE.
Picture No 6 is by the British artist Patrick Heron (1920-1999) who after studying at the Slade School worked as an assistant to the potter Bernard Leach in St Ives. Later in life he worked as a teacher and as art critic for the New Statesman. GENUINE.
The vast majority of people voted for No 3 (my apologies to the late Arthur Jackson Hepworth) and nobody voted for either No 1 or No 5. My congratulations go to the one person (Jenny Freckles) who got the answer right and also to AngelMay who came very close indeed. It has been an interesting experiment which has left me with a greater admiration for artists who work in styles that I may not immediately like or appreciate. I found my fake very difficult to produce and I will not be saying things like "I could do something like that" again in a hurry.
We will be away this weekend. I will tell you all about the trip on my return but if you want a clue as to what we are up to (seeing as you like competitions so much) you can try and dissect the above collage. And if you would like something to read whilst I am away, you could do worse than to turn to the October Issue of Evelyn Yvonne Theriault's excellent Festival of Postcards which concentrates on the theme "quadrupeds".
I will publish the results of the Surreal Sunday contest when I return on Sunday evening and then tell you all about the weekend away early next week. Have a good weekend everyone.
So here they are, the six entries in my Surreal Sunday challenge. Remember the nature of the challenge. : five of the following pieces of art are taken from the catalogue of the British Surrealism in Context exhibition and the sixth was created by someone without any artistic skill or ability (me) on their kitchen table. The challenge is to spot the fraud. All you need to do is answer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. The answer to this surreal conundrum will be posted this coming Sunday.
A nice adventure today, the start of which was randomly picking out a postcard for my weekly postcard slot. The postcard was from the collection of my mothers' Uncle Fowler and dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century. It is a real photograph of the New Jerusalem Church, Devonshire Street which - like so many of the cards in Fowlers' collection - is in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley.
Intrigued by the origins of the New Jerusalem Church, I tried checking it out on Google but came up with very little other than a reference to the New Church movement and the religious beliefs of the eighteenth century scientist, philosopher and theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg. They were a rather strange sect who rejected the approach of mainstream Christianity in relation to the Holy Trinity : in their view Jesus Christ, God and the Holy Spirit were all the same thing. The sect seemed to attract some fairly heavyweight followers during the nineteenth century, and William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Ralph Waldo Emerson were - at one time or another - influenced by the writings of Swedenborg. In the 1780s small churches dedicated to the teachings of Swedenborg were established, first of all in England and later in America. The churches were known as New Churches or New Jerusalem Churches and one of the very first to be established was in the then village of Keighley. By the end of the nineteenth century the New Jerusalem Chapel in Keighley had become too small for its growing congregation and a new church was erected in fashionable Devonshire Street. It is this church - built in 1890 - that features in the photograph on the postcard. I was anxious to see if the church still existed and - the day being unseasonably pleasant - I drove over to Keighley to search for it. And much to my surprise I found it. The New Church movement declined in popularity during the twentieth century and it seems that the building was sold about fifteen years ago. It was bought by the Roman Catholic Society of St Pius X : a group that still conducts services in the original latin and believes in "uncompromising fidelity to Catholic Truth and Tradition".
Confused by all this doctrinal debate and argument I limited myself to trying to reproduce the original postcard photograph which was taken over 100 years ago. As you will see, there have been changes but not as many as you might have expected. With thoughts of the Trinity and the Latin Mass still intoxicating my soul, I walked down the hill into Keighley and had a pint at the Boltmakers' Arms. If only all religious conflicts could be solved this way.
As I mentioned the other day, I have started a project for my own amusement : working my way through the entire catalogue of Billie Holiday recordings. Occasionally I will stop off and share one of the recordings with blog readers. The postings are designed to be neither authoritative nor comprehensive - they are simply dips into the barrel and a chance to share some wonderful music and glorious singing. Perhaps the only logical thing about this new mini-series is the starting point : 27th November 1933 and the first known recording session by Billie Holiday.
When Billie first set foot in the recording studio she was just eighteen years old. Nevertheless she had already suffered more from life than most people would expect in a lifetime. She had experienced grinding poverty, she had been raped at least twice, she had been driven to work in a brothel and she had been imprisoned for solicitation. She has also started to earn tips by singing in the night clubs of Harlem and it was there that in 1933 she was discovered by the jazz writer and producer, John Hammond. Hammond managed to arrange a recording session with the Benny Goodman Band (Goodman led one of the few racially integrated jazz bands of the period) and this led to two tracks being cut on the 27th November 1933. The first of these - the first recording by Billie Holiday - was a song that was currently featuring in a show called "Blackbirds of 1933", a song written by the husband and wife partnership of Mann Holiner and Alberta Nichols, "Your Mother's Son-In-Law"
Billie made slight changes to the original lyrics to make some kind of gender sense - changing "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" to "My Mother's Son-In-Law". As she sings it the lyrics are as follows:
You dont have to have a hanker
To be a broker or a banker
No siree, just simply be
My mothers son-in-law.
Neednt even think of tryin
To be a mighty social lion
Sipping tea, if youll be
My mothers son-in-law,
Aint got the least desire
To set the world on fire
Just wish youd make it proper
To call my old man papa
You dont have to sing like Bledsoe
You can tell the world I said so
Cant you see youve got to be
My mothers son-in-law.
You dont have to sing like Jessel
You can tell the world I said so
Cant you see, youve got to be
My mothers son-in-law.
For those, like me, who are intrigued by lyrical references, "Bledsoe" was Jules Bledsoe a famous baritone, one of the first African Americans to work on Broadway and the original Joe in the musical Show Boat before Paul Robeson took over the role. "Jessel" was George Jessel, another star of Vauderville and the star of the Broadway show "The Jazz Singer". When Warner Brothers decided to adapt the show as the first "Talking Picture" they refused to meet Jessel's salary demands and Al Johnson was brought in to play the part instead.
But what is memorable about this first recorded performance by Billie Holiday is not the song or the detail of the lyrics. It is that voice, that combination of lightness and emotion, that cavernous depth of feeling that would be a trademark of her singing for the remaining 25 years of her life.
It would seem quite suitably surreal for the Surreal Sunday feature this week to be published on Monday. The lad has been home this weekend and things have been busy so my apologies for the late post. This is the last of the six pieces. I will provide a quick reprise of all six in a couple of days time and then the answer next Sunday.
In an experiment to determine whether or not surreal art can be produced by someone without any artistic merit or skill, I am currently featuring six works of art. Five of the works featured recently in the British Surrealism in Context Exhibition . The sixth work of art will have been produced by someone without any artistic ability or experience (me) on my kitchen table in less than an hour. Your task is to spot the surreal fraud. You can comment as we progress through the six works or wait until the end to give your verdict.
The painting - called October XI - features the distinctive lozenges of bright colour that were favoured by the artist. The colours reflect the predominant moods and flavours of October.
Does anyone else have problems with music these days? I am not referring to the calibre of music : enough of a back-catalogue has been built up over the last 80 years to get over any temporary crisis of quality. Nor am I, per se, referring to the vehicle by which music is delivered : I take no specific stand in the shellac versus vinyl versus CD versus MP3 debate. I have always been comfortable running with the crowd and therefore these days I get my musical fix via i pods and MP3 files. But the delivery mechanism does impact on both what we listen to and the way we listen to it - and that is what I am having trouble with.
When I was young the records I was familiar with were a limited collection of 78's kept within the Formica confines of an old radiogram. Records had two sides and, in most cases, that meant two tunes by one artist. Usually the record would have been bought for the "A" side but the limited availability of records meant that you would also become fairly familiar with the "B" side. Even when I started buying records the choices and options tended to be the same although the two tracks were now delivered via a 45 RPM vinyl disc. If you were a keen music fan you might buy a record a week and - rather like the animals entering the ark - your record collection would grow two-by-two.
I only started buying LP's when I was working - in those days expenditure on a Long Playing record represented a considerable investment of disposable income - but with the acquisition of LPs came the idea of a greater range of songs from a particular artist. Listening habits changed and the range of tracks available meant that you had to become more discriminating. Nevertheless, if you liked a particular artist and they had produced a good record you would, over time, become familiar with all the tracks on it. CD's didn't in themselves bring any major changes other than quality and convenience - you still bought musical lumps of twelve or fifteen tunes. It is with the development of downloadable digital media that the sea-change has come. For the first time since the pre-shellac recorded cylinders, music is available in individual tunes or songs and this, I think, challenges the way in which we tend to listen to music.
Although I have always tended to download my music in CD collections I never listen to it in this way any more - I will either listen to a playlist I have constructed myself or use the shuffle setting on my MP3 player. But just downloading individual tracks seems somehow too haphazard and the scale of choice available is enough to stimulate a form of musical paralysis. The need for adventure and discovery is partly addressed by blogging : the range of types of music and new performers I have become acquainted with because of the recommendations of fellow-bloggers is considerable. But I am the kind of person who also needs some structure and form to my listening and therefore I fiund myself yearning after a new approach to listening.
And so I have started an experiment. With the excellent Billie Holiday Discography as my companion I have started working my way through the 330 studio recordings and 229 live performances of one of my favourite performers of all time. With over 550 distinct tracks to sample (and that is with no duplications) and limiting myself to a digestible two or three tracks a day, it will take me most of a year to work my way through the lot. Just occasionally (and starting tomorrow) I might use the blog to focus on a particular recording. It should be fun and it will make a pleasant change to postcards, surreal art and moaning.
The subject for Theme Thursday this week is "Traffic". So let us start out with a look at what traffic would have been like 100 years ago. The postcard comes from my collection and was published around 1904 or 1905 by Birn Brothers (BB) of London and it shows Regent Street which - for anyone unfamiliar with London - is one of the main shopping streets of the capital. The engraving shows almost exclusively horse-drawn vehicles although, by the time it was published, there must have been a number of automobiles driving through the streets of London. It does, however, clearly illustrate that traffic jams are not new and perhaps that congestion could be even more of a problem when you were sat behind a horse rather than horse power.
Let me complement the postcard with a shot I took this evening which shows traffic conditions on the M62 motorway which runs a few hundred yards away from where I live. Dusk was just falling and therefore all you can see is the light-trails of the vehicles. If you look in the centre-distance you can see how the motorway snakes over the foothills of the Pennines.
You can see other Theme Thursday contributions by following this LINK
My Archive of the Week this week is the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas in Austin. According to its' website, the Centre "advances the study of the arts and humanities by acquiring, preserving, and making accessible original cultural materials". In previous generations one could be rather disapproving about collections of original documents and historical papers being sold to the highest bidder and then been transported off to some air-conditioned vault on the far side of the world. With the advent of the Digital Age the results of such an international trade in source documents need not be so irksome : if the acquiring institution makes digital copies available they can positively contribute towards the wider availability of source material to all students, researchers and browsers, wherever they may be.
The Harry Ransome Centre has a truely wonderful collection of documents and artifacts covering subjects such as literature, history, philosophy, religion and art and it seems to be making a reasonable stab at making them available through a series of digital exhibitions. Currently such exhibitions are limited to certain topics and the available material represents only a small selection of what the Centre obviously has available. But it is a start and it should be encouraged and therefore it received my Archive of the Week Award.
The collection I looked at in some detail was the collection of papers and photographs of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll). There is some fascinating material about a man who appears to have had more levels of complexity than an onion skin. Author of "Alice in Wonderland", pioneer of photography, prodigious letter-writer, lecturer in mathematics and logic at Oxford University : Dodgson managed to fit a lot into his lifetime. Many of these elements are represented in the digital exhibition and you get the distinct impression that Dodgson would have approved of the digital dissemination of his papers. Indeed, one suspects, that Dodgson would have been an enthusiastic blogger.
The wonderful thing about old postcards is that you can just pick one from your collection and happily while away an entire rainy afternoon by searching for the story behind it. Take the above card which was published by the fine art publishers Landeker and Brown of Worship Street London sometime between 1903 and 1905. The title is "Group of Japanese Boys and Girls" and it is No. 137 in the Ellanbee Japanese Series. This does not help very much as it would appear that all the cards in the series were given the number 137! The card was used and the postmark is May 3rd 1905. The message is somewhat unforthcoming and simply says "Too-do-loo" followed by five kisses. It is addressed to Miss E Wilson of 57, Denby Dale Road, Wakefield but there is no senders' name. So who sent it and where were they going to? And strangest of all why isn't either Miss Wilson or the address recorded in the census records of either 1901 or 1911. Indeed if you track down where 57, Denby Dale Road would have been it seems that it is halfway across a bridge over the River Calder. Don't you just love such mysteries. I do.
In an experiment to determine whether or not surreal art can be produced by someone without any artistic merit or skill, I am currently featuring six works of art. Five of the works featured recently in the British Surrealism in Context Exhibition . The sixth work of art will have been produced by someone without any artistic ability or experience (me) on my kitchen table in less than an hour. Your task is to spot the surreal fraud. You can comment as we progress through the six works or wait until the end to give your verdict.
This work is entitled "Forms On A White Ground". It shows a variety of forms on a white ground. Simple really.
Picture No. 1 is by the British artist Lawrence Atkinson (1873-1931) and was part of the "British Surrealism in Context" Exhibition. Atkinson was originally influenced by Matisse and the Fauves and specialised in landscapes. However after he was introduced to Wyndham Lewis his style changed to the style represented by this picture. GENUINE.
