The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology ed. William Ewing and Barbara Hitchcock

This post is also featured at www.cellophaneland.com

Remember that time, not so very long ago, when we all rushed down to the local Boots to drop in our films for printing? From this frustration of impatiently waiting anything from an hour (for those willing to stump up extra) to a week, to see the results of all the careful holiday snapping, lays the foundation of the Polaroid.

Back in 1943 Edwin Land, having been asked by his young daughter why she couldn’t see her photo right away, immediately set to work. Within an hour he had conceived the technology and the story of instant photography had begun.

The Polaroid Project Timothy White, Untitled 1998

When the long and painstaking development process (no pun intended), documented in the book by prototypes, models and test images, had been completed, the result was not only scientifically groundbreaking but also heralded a new chapter of artistic expression. The New York Times proclaimed “There is nothing like this in the history of photography…”

Nowadays Instagram is the leading representative of the world of instant imagery. It should therefore not be surprising to know that prominent in the lobby of their California HQ sits a collection of Polaroid cameras, the most noteworthy being the 1977 OneStep featuring the rainbow logo appropriated by Instagram in its own design.

Land had in the seventies already predicted escalating use of cameras saying that they would soon be used ‘All day long…. like a telephone’, whilst probably not anticipating they would often be one and the same apparatus.

Polaroid Project S. B. Walker, Blocked out Polaroid sign, 2011

In this lay the recognition that the world, and people, had irrevocably changed; the barrier of subject and photographer had started to disappear in line with Barthes ‘Death of the Author’ and there was a continuous recording of lifes events and expansion of the ‘sharing’ experience. The almost instant sharing of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat seem to be a natural development of what began with the Polaroid.

Polaroid Project Dennis Hopper, Back Alley 1987

For the more artistic the new product was impressive but came with many built in limitations. Images were usually of limited size (save by using larger studio-bound cameras), fixed formats, limited camera adjustments. Laboratory colour and exposure manipulation were impossible.

Polaroid Project Barbara Crane, Private View, 1981

Despite, or perhaps because of, these very particular restrictions it invited users to become ever more inventive. Artists like Lucas Samaras and Bruce Charlesworth manipulated or separated the emulsion or used repeated exposures. David Hockey used multiple images overlaid or arranged in grids to increase dimensions. Other painted, drew or scratched on and around the developed image.

Polaroid Project Paolo Gioli, 2010

Andy Warhol took all his portraits with a Polaroid and incessantly snapped his way around New York, Others like Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Robert Rauschenberg and Chuck Close often used it, whilst film makers, commercial, advertising and fashion photographers found the instant images essential for planning their shots.

Polaroid Project Toshio Shibata, Untitled (#228), 2003

It’s colour initially put off many art photographers, black and white being up to then the choice for ‘serious’ practitioners. This however was the era of ever more portable 35mm cameras and also of  photographers like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore and Polaroid were in a perfect position to tap in to the wider acceptance of their casual colour snap-shot aesthetics.

Polaroid Project Mark Klett, Contemplating the view at Muley Point, Utah, 1994

The Polaroid Project leads us through this story via a series of essays that look for example at Polaroid’s foundation and history, the development of the technology, artistic developments and its relation to social networks and the selfie. They are interspersed with an impressive array of widely varied imagery with plenty of ‘how on earth did they do that?’ moments.

Polaroid Project Victor Landweber, Garbage Candy, 1979

The book is subtitled ‘At the intersection of Art and Technology’ and it is published to accompany a major touring exhibition, so it is not surprising to see that text and  illustrations are geared towards the artistic. Perhaps a future show and accompanying volume can show what the public, as well as industry and business, created with the technology – but that’s yet another story.

Polaroid Project Ellen Carey, Pulls (CMY), 1997

There is a frequent lament here to the death of Polaroid, tied to the winding up of the company and closure of the factories, but, as with vinyl, this seems hugely premature. Instant film lives on in Fuji and Impossible, as does the use of Land’s cameras. The Polaroid Project itself shows us that interest in this technology and its uniquely ‘authentic’ aesthetic is increasing, whilst here at CELLOPHANELAND* we even have a couple of cameras of our own and Polaroids pinned on the wall. The king is dead – long live the king!

The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology ed. William Ewing and Barbara Hitchcock, published by Thames & Hudson. To purchase (currently at a 20% discount) visit www.thamesandhudson.com

A touring exhibition organised by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography opens at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas June 3 to 3 September 2017 then travels to Europe. fep-photo.org/exhibition/polaroid/

Inside – Reading Gaol Open to the Public

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

For the very first time in its history, Reading Prison – formerly Gaol – has been opened to the public. The National Trust have teamed up with Artangel to allow visitors to tour the corridors and cells best known for incarcerating Oscar Wilde for two traumatic and life-changing years from 1895.

 

We visited on a warm summers day, with well-lit corridors and cell walls illuminated by bright shafts of sunlight. It was not the best time to experience anything of the misery that prisoners must have endured from the 1840’s right up until its surprisingly recent decommissioning in 2013, but it was not too difficult to imagine the hardships that were endured.

The core of the prison remains largely as it was built, in brick and cast iron, by George Gilbert Scott. As a renowned Victorian Gothic revival architect, he was chiefly associated with the design of churches and cathedrals, but was also architect of iconic buildings like the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

The influence of his church architecture can be seen in occasional gothic motifs and ceiling shapes that define the four brick-built wings. These are arranged in a (religiously influenced?) cross-shape so that the 19th century Governor could easily keep a beady eye on all four wings simultaneously from his central office area.

The prison chapel, most recently doubling as a sports hall, is suitably grand with high ceilings and leaded windows. It also features Oscar Wilde’s wooden cell door -carefully preserved it here stands monumentally atop a concrete plinth crafted to the exact dimensions of his cell. The space once had a sloping floor where the prisoners each had their own cubicle, banned from seeing or communicating with any other inmate. Total silence infact originally reigned throughout with prisoners locked 23 hours a day in single cells, banned from talking – or seeing – others and hooded when moved.

Those more dangerous or unruly were held in the handful of the ‘dark cells’ underground, isolated in the almost unimaginable privations of total darkness and silence. After taking showers in the adjacent area other prisoners were often given a two-minute taste of isolation as a, presumably fairly effective, warning of what would become them should they misbehave.

Wilde’s Cell A3.3 – actually now numbered A2.2 – can also be visited. Identical to every other it has enough space, just, for the single bed and desk that he was allowed. He managed to negotiate a supply of paper from a helpful warden – one sheet at a time – upon which he wrote the reflective De Profundis (From the Depths) – a letter to Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, the object of the reckless relationship that led to his eventual imprisonment. The brutal regime of Reading broke his will and contributed heavily to his early death.

Readings from De Profundis by, amongst others Patti Smith, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw will also take place, whilst writers including Ai Weiwei have also contributed letters that are on display in the cells.

Alongside the prison tours, arranged by the National Trust, is a very impressive exhibition of contemporary art. Organised by Artangel, who commission ‘art that challenges perceptions, surprises, inspires and wouldn’t be possible within the confines of a gallery.’ They have invited a formidable array of talent to produce work that reacts to the prison environment and its history.

Amongst many highlights are Robert Gober’s meticulously crafted sculptures – a waterfall within a black suit and a stream within the excavated floor of the prison, clearly expressing unfulfilled fantasies of freedom and nature.

Nan Goldin brings her raw and intimate portraits into an appropriately claustrophobic space. She occupies four cells with pieces including The Boy – a cell filled with images of a single male muse, that climb over walls and lay scattered on an iron bedstead,

Marlene Dumas has produced eight new canvases that include Wilde and Bosie as well as chronicling other troubled relationships such as between Jean Genet and two of his lovers and Pier Paolo Pasolini and his mother.

In the centre of the corridors you can help yourself to a free (yes free!) unlimited edition print by Felix Gonzales-Torres alongside cells where his curtains of dangling blue plastic beads (Untitled Water) cleverly subvert the entry to a couple of cells and a blue mirror (Untitled Fear) reflects a troubled interior.

Other thoughtful and interesting contributions come from great names like Wolfgang Tillmans, Richard Hamilton, Roni Horn, Steve McQueen and Doris Salcedo.

It is not often that architecture, culture, history, literature and contemporary art come together in a single event but here www have an exception collaboration between two giants of the arts and culture – the National Trust and Artangel, in a unique environment. They have created a wholly satisfying and integrated whole that should be most definitely experienced while it lasts.

HM Prison Reading is open for tours Friday 9 September – Saturday 29 October 2016

Artists and Writers by Artangel at Reading Prison run from 4 September to 30 October 2016

For more information visit www.artangel.org.uk

This article also appears in www.cellophaneland.com

Best Album Art – Art Vinyl Awards 2015

This post also appears on CELLOPHANELAND* arts and culture online magazine. Link here.

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the decline of the album, and to some extents the CD, has been the loss of the potential space for sleeve artwork. With the rise of vinyl sales during the last century, the artistic potential of the sleeves was not lost on the very best artists and photographers of the period, and many became involved contributing to a very memorable, if narrow, artistic genre.

Remember the great original Warhol covers for the Stones’ zippered Sticky Fingers and the banana for The Velvet Underground & Nico? The Beatles were of course involved too, with the Peter Blake photograph (not a collage by the way) for Sgt Peppers.

The Beatles drew in other Pop artists  – Richard Hamilton made his minimalist statement for the ‘White Album’ whilst for David Bowie, Derek Boshier created the striking Lodger designs.

Top photographers were there too. Robert Mapplethorpe’s image of Patti Smith provided the iconic cover for Horses, Richard Avedon took Simon & Garfunkel’s picture for Bookends and – here’s a little known nugget – Man Ray created a photo collage for Exile on Main Street (below), sadly unused.

This is to barely touch the surface of the phenomenon of album art, something that we thought had gone forever with the apparent demise of vinyl in the 1990’s. Fortunately the death of the album had been greatly exaggerated and sales are now booming again.

With this resurgence comes a new generation of album artists, designers, prize and inevitably, an awards ceremony. Art Vinyl have a competition that is actually now in its 10th year, with this year’s fifty nominations selected by a panel of music design experts and previous Best Art Vinyl Award winners. In co-operation with Belgraves Hotel they have just revealed the 2015 winners.

David Gilmour’s ‘Rattle That Lock’ album took the top prize with Drenge’s ‘Undertow’ second, and Tame Impala’s ‘Currents’ third. The winners and all of the shortlisted entries are now on display in the window at Belgraves until the end of April.

The artwork covered a wide range of creative disciplines, including fine art, photography, sculpture and computer graphics. Given the august history of album artwork we perhaps should not be surprised that the short list also included two Turner Prize nominees, Mark Wallinger and Jim Lambie (for Linden).

David Gilmour’s wining cover was created by The Creative Corporation, in collaboration with Aubrey Powell from the legendary Hipgnosis – a design studio that produced covers for the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and T Rex.

Petite Noire – La Vie Est Belle

Best Art Vinyl founder Andrew Heeps explains, “This is the first year such an established artist’s record has won Best Art Vinyl, but notably the design team have historically been responsible for so many iconic sleeve designs… It’s interesting that two of the top three are conceptual compositions, using photography as the core of the design.”

Bjork – Vulnicura

In January 2016, the winners of the Best Art Vinyl 2015 award will feature in exhibitions in London, Scotland, Italy, Germany and Hungary as well as on www.artvinyl.com.

You can check out the entries on www.artvinyl.com or visit the window installation at the Belgraves Hotel, London Belgravia from 7th Jan 2016

For more information and the 50 nominated Best Art Vinyl 2015 records with designer credits see Artvinyl.com

ten great artist album covers

Howard Finster – Little Creatures

My recent blogs on outsider art led me to recall the wonderful Howard Finster whose work was used for the Talking Heads Little Creatures  cover (he also had works used by TH and REM for Reckoning). Other covers then sprung to mind and I suddenly came over all nostalgic. I wonder if we all realised how much our latent artistic sensibities were inspired by the cover art that was surreptitiously brought into lives via this 12″x12″ piece of card?  The result is this brief, totally random and very incomplete post on some of my favourite ‘real’ cover art! 

To briefly elaborate I should say that I do not regard any colourful design put on an abum cover as ‘art’. I plan to here look at work created specifically by established artists or their appropriated artworks used for covers. I know that many would argue that a lot of album covers have become ‘works of art’ and achieved some sort of iconic position, but how much is the art, how much the band and their popularity?  London Calling by the Clash would spring to mind a perfect example of an iconic cover, but not ‘art’. The designer Ray Lowry, despite being an excellent cartoonist was actually a poor artist!

Let me pick the obvious ones first! Andy Warhol’s covers for the Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones are unforgettable. The Velvet’s banana cover says everything so effortlessly – the provocative little tag says ‘peel slowly and see’. Behind is a pink banana. With usual Warhol genuis the pared-down design makes a grand statement. Provocative, rude and erect, it is a big FU to the world.

The Stones’ Andy Warhol cover is of course Sticky Fingers – with its real zip. Aparantly at a NY party in 1969 Warhol casually mentioned to Mick Jagger that it would be amusing to have a real zipper on an album cover. The cover shrewdly moved the Stones away from their devil/evil thing and into a provocative sexual mode. Banned in some countries and stores, the album also debuted the famous logo: a caricature of Jagger’s lips and tongue.

Peter Blake’s cover for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a great piece of pop art (fortuitously allied with one of the greatest albums and the best band). What it is not is collage. It is actually a  staged photograph including life-size cardboard cut-outs, props – and the Beatles of course. It does not therefore exist as a ‘work of art’ other than possibly as the original photograph. Should it be in my list under my ‘rules’? Marginal, but in it is! Blake by the way also did Paul Weller’s Stanley Road cover amongst others, but none fitted with Blake’s significance as a ‘pop’ artist.

Robert Rauschenberg is not someone who springs to mind as a someone who would be involved with albums, but David Byrne of Talking Heads (again) persuaded him to create an artists edition of the Talking Heads’ 1983 album Speaking in Tongues. Actually the art is the LP rather than cover and was issued in a limited 50,000 copies complete with spinning plexidiscs and layered images. Showing Rauschenberg’s interest in collaged objects the coloured discs included photographs of bedrooms, number plates and car bumpers. It resembles his 1967 work Revolver, with similar motorised discs set in a concrete base with a motor to spin the prints. It’s interaction with the public matches Rauschenberg’s aim to work in the area between life and art.

Mike Kelley included music, performance and poetry within his art practice, being a member of the avaant-garde band Destroy All Monsters. In addition, as a long-time collaborator with with the band Sonic Youth, he designed the cover art for Dirty. It feature one of his disturbing stuffed animals – imaginary childhood toys that represent both repressed memories and hidden adult perversions.

Patti Smith’s 1975 album Horses is often cited as one of the top records of all time, an early influence of punk rock. It is certainly helped by the great cover shot by the NY photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It is an intimate, androgynous portrait of Smith against her (their) Chelsea Hotel apartment wall. Vulnerable yet  defiant it is one a many great images that Mapplethorpe took of Smith – another was used on the 1987 Dream of  Life.

Another great American photographer, Robert Frank, was commissioned by the Stones for their 1972 album Exile on Main Street. The cover is photograph of various circus freaks, is not a collage but a 1950 photo of a tattoo parlour wall somewhere on Route 66. The comparison to the notorious Stones – jet-setting tax exiles, cocaine-fueled satyrs and perpetual outsiders – is clear. To emphasise the point the back cover has an identical layout with his photos of the Stones themselves, shot on the seedy Main Street, LA.

The wonderful Hiroshi Sugimoto has provided the photograph for U2’s recent, and mediocre, No Line On The Horizon. Sadly U2 ruined the image by adding a strange ‘equals sign’ over its heart, but I have illustrated it without! These are zen-like images for contemplation, representing time and pondering existence. In his own words: ‘Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing’. Pity it is U2!

For my final image I have picked The Plastic Ono Band’s Live Peace album cover from 1969. It is actually Yves Klein’s Blue. Lennon and Ono added a single cloud: “John and I were being very artsy at that point in our lives. By us putting a cloud there it suddenly became the real sky – and the real world – as opposed to perfection.” Bless ’em!

Brilliant covers – but with insufficient ‘art’ pedigree – that I have not included, but wished that I could, include Zappa’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Little Feat’s Sailin’ Shoes, Led Zep’s Houses of the Holy, It’s a Beautiful Day, Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp, Blind Faith and King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King. More? Please send me your thoughts!

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• When pop art and album art collide… (albumartexchange.com)
• Sir Peter Blake: why I chose Pop over pot (telegraph.co.uk)
• Photo Gallery: Best Album Art of All Time (wired.com)
• Happy Birthday Andy Warhol! (pinkbananaworld.com)