Alexander Archipenko-Master of Modernism?

Alexander Archipenko's work at first glance and to fresh eyes of the 21^st century seems cliched and old hat.

This is because, like many artists such as Mondrian and numerous others that we thought of as modern, it has been copied over and over again by plagiarists.

So why does his name stand the test of time and be linked with some of the greats?

And where from where did his inspiration occur, was it original?

But in asking this question, we must remember that in the age it was made, there was a seed change that reflected a modernity, before the word had been invented.

Nobody was aware what would last at the time.

And this environment was fighting with the old.

Put in context of the Glasgow school with its entrallic and linear forms of new art or Art Nouveau, it is as if from another planet.

The Vienna Secessionists were moving the art nouveau of old and making the link to the Bauhaus.

Early in the century there were several experimentalists such as Picasso and Braque who were adopting new styles and these along with other modernists fed into each other and inspired all those who came around them.

Paris was the hub of the impressionists, but almost nothing could have seen this coming if you look at art from a decade earlier.

Much has been written about how they all may have tried to capture the primitive art of tribal masks and oceanic totem, with or without knowing what they were doing.

Picasso collage of 1912 “Still Life With Chair Caning” is tipped in, as the first time collage on paper was used.

The multi layered use of collage may have inspired Archipenko. Will we ever know?

Alexander Archipenko was born in Kiev in 1887. He died in 1964.

He studied in Kiev Art School from 1902 to 1905 but in 1906 he went to Moscow.

Archipenko left for Paris in 1908 where he visited the great museums.

He studied for a year in the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris where he started exhibiting, but his first one man Exhibition which was held in Hagen in 1910.

He also exhibited in Berlin and several other German cities.

Archipenko's work, it is said was a form of constructivism based on cubist forms and the parring down and streamlining of shape and form. His sculpto painting shows us a understanding of the inner phsyce. So it has been said.

Archipenko's grandfather was a Icon painter.

By inspiration he used a brilliance of colour, in his work. Deep reds, orange and gold which are dominant colours of the Novgorod School from where his inner inspiration probably came. His interpretation of these ancient forms into the secular makes his work seem even more provocative.

But also this shows us that it is those who believe, in image and who absorb the image of an icon, whether it be religious or secular are possibly accepting something similar in reflection.

Like his contemporaries such as Brancusi, who preceded him to Paris and Jacques Lipchitz who left Lithuania to study in Paris, but returned to Russia for Military service in 1912, he entered adventurous paths that had opened up for budding artists with the desire and dedication to succeed.

He replaced form with hollows and concave materials in these sculpto paintings that it was said he invented in the early twenties worked by incorporating and using metal and glass.

His use of cut conical shapes made the concavity that he desired.

This also worked in convex and his use of perspective was sometimes made simply with painted lines.

In 1914 he travelled to Nice where he saw out the war.

During this time his work was entrusted in storage to his friend Ferdinand Leger who was conscipted.

Though with his absence and lack of care for them, moisture entered the shed in Paris and his paper mache constructions were ruined.

In a separate storage some of his work that had been exhibited in America at the Royal Armoury show in New York were destroyed by long range German bombardment.

He was often ridiculed in France, as were quite a lot of the adventurists who we now see as pioneers of modern art.

Though when hostilities ceased he sent a lot of this accumulation of work to Germany and Switzerland.

He opened a school in Paris and taught others how to interpret his use of the experimental.

In the 1920's his work in Germany was thought akin to that of Picasso's, and his work entered numerous museum and gallery collections such as Essen, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Berlin.

His execution of a series of brilliantly coloured lithographs were produced by the Ernst Wasmuth publishing house.

In 1921 he closed down the Paris Atelier and moved to Berlin marryng a German sculptor Angelica Bruno-Schmitz.

In the same year Kandinsky arrived to the new 'hub' from Moscow and Chagall from Paris.

His work was amassed by collectors such as G. Falk from Geneva inculding polychromed plasters and terracotta sculptures along with work in Bronze.

Another misfortune destroyed a lot more of his work the “Entartete Kunst” exhibition of 1936 opened by Hitler and Goebbels that triggered a vast confiscation of works deemed degenerate. Thousands of works of art during this period were destroyed and lucrative works made auctions. Not many of Archopenko's work found its way onto the market and was lost.

He had moved to America in 1923 with his wife and on the voyage on the S.S Mongolia, with them were trunks laden with his work.

A lot of this work would be acquired by the Gugginheim Museum in 1956.

A second fortunate act was kind to his work when his patrons Mr and Mrs Goeritz who had bought a huge amount of his work, when new, sent it to Tel Aviv then in Palestine and thus it escaped the ravages of World war II. So did Archipenko, as there is no doubt what fate he would have met if he was still living in Germany when the Nazis came to power.

In 1955 and upto the death of Goeritz it was held in almost obscurity in vaults awaiting the family to gift most of the collection to Tel Aviv museum and in 1971 it finally opened with these works going on display.

In 1970 a retrospective of Archipenko's work was organised by Alfred Barr Jr and was held in the Museum of Modern Art. This cemented his role in modern sculpture.

I feel you have to look at the works in a different place inside your mind and take out all those works which have subliminally copied his, to see if it has any worth.

Yes I know art, like music is a culmination of what has gone before it and Archipenko himself absorbed much around him either by stealth or by default, but we still need to ask questions.

It is obvious that he believed in himself and needed to make a name for himself, either during his lifetime or at a later date.

So is he one of the most important artists of the first half of the twentieth century?

Or only one of the pieces in giant jigsaw?

That we are only still piecing together and will not understand the full picture for some time but in the meantime the Tel Aviv museum continues to display his work from the period 1910 to 1921 having over 30 pieces. So he is assured the continued attention, and maybe its fitting. 

This month February 2015 sees a pair of his paintings go on sale in New York.
 Portrait of a Woman with an estimate of $75,000 to $90,000, and Nude Torso,with a $75,000 to $225,000.

I myself look at these in image form in the catalogue and think, well its all in the name. And that name is Archipenko, and someone or some institution will probably pay the money.
Maybe the Tel Aviv institution may add them to their collection.

One think is certain, that his name will continue to be around for a long time.

But Modern Master......well I am not sure too about that.

Liverpool Antiques Roadshow 2015 Lutyens Crypt Transmission Dates

Filming in Liverpool at Lutyens Crypt for the Antiques Roadshow went well and there will be two programmes that should go on air 22nd March and 29th March respectively.
Among items discovered will be a World War One Death Plaque.
Oh and some glass panels.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/antiques-roadshow-what-amazing.html


Further Reading;
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dead-mans-penny-edward-carter-preston.html

Signature Bespoke Has Opened In India Buildings.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Signature Bespoke.... now of India Buildings who have just opened here this week.

 They are to bring their own brand of made to measure tailoring to the beautiful Travertine Marble Holts Arcade of  India Buildings.

http://www.signaturebespoke.co.uk/

A UNIQUE TAILORING EXPERIENCE

Signature Bespoke's Haute couture service offers a unique tailoring experience, which allows you to create the look that expresses your personal style. The care and effort devoted to the tailoring of these hand made suits is what makes our garments so special. All our suits are examined continuously during their production while careful attention is given to each and every detail.

I wish them every success, the shop looks great.

Update; Though I offered them a warm welcome. I quickly found that the owner of the business could not sew a button on. They are what should be called Custom Tailors. Meaning they take the measurements and get the suit made abroad somewhere like China or Greece. 
This is all smoking mirrors. My ex girlfriend was a time served Tailoress with City and Guilds qualifications. This is an insult to word tailoring in my opinion.
 If you want to be fleeced well you had better get down there and see Coco. 
This is the worst sort of bluff. 

Ships At Anchor by Richard Parkes Bonington-One Of My Favourite Things.

This is one of my most favourite pictures.
Yes I know I love modernism and 20^th century art, but in a round about way this is the forerunner to those modernist pictures that we are all, now, so familiar with.
To my eye this may be a 19^th century work but it is as fresh, and bright, as if it had been painted last year.
Why?
Because most of being an artist is not just about being able to paint.
It is about being able to see.
You cant have one without the other.
I recall how after studying of an evening with life drawing for over a year, and then one day, as if by magic.
 I could see where I was going wrong.
(I threw all my previous work away).
Now, that to me is more important than seeing where one is going right.
Put into context I could suddenly see the shadows.
No not the light that is easy to see, but the shadows where light does not fall.
This is a very important time for an aspiring artist, and only studious practice will enable this talent to be captured on paper, or canvas.
Richard Parkes Bonington sees it all, in this small but beautiful oil painting, arguably the best in Liverpool Museums collection.
Then he adds a little bit of extra colour, which as if a magician, by slight of hand, he turns your gaze in a direction that he wants it to go, with a little dab of red here and there.
A lot can be said against modern art and its excuses for talent.
 But I still do not want to linger in the 19^th century for too long.
 A sheep on a hillside will mostly convey, well a sheep on a hillside to me.
Though as long as masterpieces like this are around I may cancal my taxi back to the 20^th Century, till a later hour.
I first discovered it at the now, ruined Sudley Art Gallery in Mossley Hill Liverpool. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html
It was, at that time, hung next to a Turner and I was at that age wondering what all the fuss about Turner was. (I went to see the film Mr Turner a few weeks ago. Didn't it go on a bit.)
I know what how all the theory about Turner has been played out.
Usually written by people who couldn't emulsion a wall I may add.
But where is all the fuss about Boningtons work.
Some of his work is a trifle sentimental, but its what he may have achieved that this, one of my favorite things, portrays.
Yes a ship at anchor on a becalmed sea, the sort of whimsical painting we all know.
But this to me has always touched me deeper than that. The way the light falls on the water and the way the composition is laid out is by the hands of a budding master. A painter who is completely self motivated to discover his own personal journey through light and shade.
Who knows where he would end up, would he challenge Turner or be thought more highly than John Constable, a national treasure. Or would he fizzle out to nothing. Over 200 years later we are still talking about the brush master and the small taste of what talent he had to offer in his short existence. And his impressionistic style.


Richard Parkes Bonington was born 1802 in Nottingham.
His father was the governor of Nottingham Jail who had strong political views and when he was arrested for riotous and disorderly conduct he had to step down.
He set up a ladies school that did not succeed later he set up a lace-making business. Nottingham of course was the countries lace making capital.
The factory was smashed up by Luddites who saw the coming of the industrial revolution as a risk to the way of life and saw the machines as a direct threat to their livelihoods.
Bonington senior seemed to have more in common with French views of life.
 France had gone through its own Revolution and the family headed there.
Richard Parkes Bonington began drawing at the age of six. At the age of sixteen he was painting Bologne Harbour in a way that does not show his young age and seems more from the hand of a mature artist than a teenager.

He took lessons.Thomas Gerten was an influence, I was recently shown an image of his water colour of Lindisfarne Priory. This was not a common occurrance that an artist of that date would use, a water colour, as a way to show off his skill, as a finished work and not a sketch that would be later used as a study for a oil painting.
In 1819 the Bonington family moved to Paris where Richard studied with Jaque Loiuse De Bead . He had taught Grull and his teaching was in the classical form.
Richard was off, here there and everywhere, it seems that every time he had a chance he painted.
He painted Churches in Normandy and then he would work them up in watercolour.

Bonnington made a brief return to England where its understood he saw work by Turner and returned to France in 1818. He seemed restless after this visit and he recorded that he was arguing with his tutors.
Around the same time Delacrioux.........who had also seen works by Turner was painting in a romantic style. Jerico............who painted The Raft Of The Medusa had seen The Fields Of Waterloo with Gods light bathing the soldiers on the field of battle some of who had perished.
This was turning a painting into a beacon of emotion.

In 1824 Boningtons painting Fishermen Near Bologne was exhibited at the Paris Salons.
Next to this work was a painting by John Constable entitled The Haywain.
Both won Gold medals along with another British artist, Anthony Van Dyck Copley Fielding. You could only be an artist with that name!!

One of my favorite things in the whole wide, is Richard Parkes Boningtons “Ships At Anchor” a small oil once owned by George Holt and now owned by Liverpool Museums, and on display at Sudley House.
Now a former shadow of itself. It seems the more money NML spend, the worse job they do under the leadership of its current director, this once hidden gem is now a pale shadow of its former self.
 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html


It is known that Bonington and Turners lives were in paralell and Richard went to Venice at 24 years of age where he seems to come under the spell of Canalettos work.
His studies of The Rialto Bridge are not by a simple hand but an accomplished and steady application of art.
He paints The Ducal palace with its religious procession but my opinion He that this period he loses his freedom and freshness and although he gains confidence of brush.
 Though I would need to study his art a bit more before making any definite decision on this.



He literally meets Eugene Delacroix in a gallery and they become friends.
You can see the influence of both artists on each other.



In 1828 he gets sunstroke from working outside too often. John Lang, his quack physician sends him to Britain to get some air as this would be better for him than the south Of France.
He was not aware that he had tuberculosis and its  in Britain that he died at the age of 26 leaving behind a legacy of amazing work and a real sense of what could he have achieved if life had not dealt him such a cruel hand.
His influences are not always reported but for several decades later we would see the fashion of French painters depicting simple peasant folk with the same degree of skill as great leaders and hero's.



The French Impressionists would unknowingly or unwillingly be influenced by British Art. Boningtons legacy was great.
He at least that he helped to influence the seed change in France that changed the world.

He died so young and like James Dean, or Marilyn Monroe, we always wonder just what their talent could have achieved. 

See it hanging in the hall at Sudley Art Gallery.

India Buildings-Holts Arcade. Is This The Best Christmas Decorations In The City?

At the time of updating November 2022 The building with its beautiful arcade, enjoyed by many, is closed to the public and is solely for use by the HMRC

All the HMRC staff had been told not to come into work due to a massive leak. Which will have done great damage to the structure. This is what happens when greedy people who are only interested in money are in charge.

All the care and attention that was given to the building. The Architect of this historic structure Herbert Rowse will be definitely turning in his grave. What a complete and utter mess.

INDIA BUILDINGS HAS BEEN BUTCHERED BY LEGAL AND GENERAL (THE DEVELOPMENT ARM OF THE FAMOUS INSURERS).

THEY PURCHASED THE BUILDING FOR AROUND £120,000,000 FROM MARWEES LTD. A BRITISH VIRGIN ISLAND OFFSHORE BASED COMPANY WHO PURCHASED IT FOR £17,000,000. MAKING A MASSIVE PROFIT.......THAT THE TAXPAYER WILL ULTIMATELY PAY FOR! 

As soon as they purchased the building MARWEES set about evicting all the tenants in a disgraceful act of greed. 

People who had run businesses there were evicted as if they were dirt. Read More Here.

MARWEES  employed a pair of Henchmen. Father and son duo Brian and Mark Rabanowitz of Shelborn Asset Management.

They subsequently slid around, behaving like gangsters, ruining the lives of many of the tenants.......for the HMRC. Read More Here

Update November 2022 And its now closed to the public

Well most people who walk through the magnificent Holts Arcade seem to think so.
You can see their faces light up.
Its tough times out there but the landlords Green Property have kept the Xmas spirit alive with the wonderful festive decorations, through the recession and we can thank them for that.
The Capricio Singers  http://www.capriccio.org.uk/ will be visiting, only for half an hour this year unfortunately.
That will be on the 18th December.
Where they will no doubt fill the barrel vaulted arcade right up to the ornate painted ceiling with lovely Xmas music.
Look forward to seeing them.

Japanese Ikebana Bamboo Basket-Piece of the Week.

We tend to think of baskets as dreary objects that we put things in, well people did in the 60's anyhow.

Baskets were always carried to the shops by old spinsters who would buy strange things from another age. They would put flowers and jam jars in them and there were even stretchy covers to pull over the edges, some even had hinged flaps that opened from the centre outwards.

They tended to be the same mass manufactured type that became common place in the shopping centres that sprung up through the 70's.

I first became aware of the beauty of the basket weave of the Japanese by an antique dealer who became a friend who, lived in Chicago. I would often meet him in France.

While staying with me here in Liverpool we visited the Bluecoat Bookshop, which was then in the Bluecoat on School Lane, where he found a small amount of books on the subject, he bought the lot.

You see I love it when I am enlightened by someone who knows more about a particular subject than I do. With there being so many shows on the TV these days, that are full of so called experts, it is easy to think that we all can just switch it on and know about everything. But its not like that in real life, we can only have a small amount of knowledge in reality on antiques in general and then specialise off on a specific genre. I would like to see more so called experts who say, “I don't know much about that” or “You have opened up a subject that I did not know anything about and therefore my life is richer for it”. An admission, is nothing to be ashamed of, you cant know everything, its impossible, its not wrong to own up to it, its right.

Steve had been collecting baskets for a while and although new to me, when I glanced through the books he had purchased, I was taken by the beauty of some of the simple baskets, that turned them, in my mind, into works of art. In this country basket making, though skilled, is thought of as a handicraft practised in the country by people who will never make it pay.

Japan has a steep mountainous environment and a lot of goods were transported by people. Some baskets were made to shape into certain parts of the body. They could be strapped to the waist carried on the back, and even strapped or carried on the head. So baskets will require a different shape and a different weave.

This makes the versatility of bamboo as a ideal choice of material.

Its lightweight and its strength give it such a versatility. And of course its beauty.

The baskets were made for flowers and also utilitarian objects such as sieves and strainers.

Its quick growth means that the material bamboo, is readily available and available for use within a few years of planting.

The Japanese culture would, in my opinion take the art of making a simple object into a piece of beauty, this would run into all the elements of their existence.

So when the likes of William Morris was proclaiming everything around you should be of functionality and of beauty. (He was rich enough to say that)

The Japanese had been doing this for a long time.

The chained country of Japan or SAKOKU were the orders of the edicts of 1633-1639, in that it was laid down that no foreigner could enter the country, or no Japanese could leave. This remained in effect until 1853 when Black Ships of Commodore Mathew Perry forcibly opened Japan.

In 1864 the Americans were preoccupied with killing themselves in the American Civil War and trade was relinquished to Great Britain who by this time controlled 90% of Japanese trade with the western world.

http://www.shikokuhenrotrail.com/japanhistory/edohistory.html

When the Japanese trade borders were forcibly opened in the1860's after what we now know as gunboat diplomacy on the part of the western powers.

In 1865 nine foreign warships into Osake Harbour and demande that the Baufu pay, by the end of 1866, for the Choshu attackson their warships in the Shimonoseki Straights.

This was only one incident of many that kept the tension on the Japanese. The west wanted their goods ideas and history and they would not stop until they had it.

It now made it easy to trade and the explosion of art in Great Britain was to be influenced forever by the mastery of design, and the customs that the Japanese had become to take over them, as their existence.

So how did this object of such innocuous piece become to be there at the back of an antique shop, languishing lonely and forgotten and described as a Chinese basket, luckily for me.

I couldn't leave it behind.

It needed me, or someone who could see the skill and craftsmanship by which it was made.

And recognise the intrinsic value contained within, what after all is a vessel that carried not only flowers, but tradition.

But, more than all that, it has an essence about it, that makes you want to hold it. Like a piece of furniture you want to stroke it.

The bamboo has a patina making it look like it was smoked, and the way the highlights of where it has been touched, for probably a hundred years just shines through.

It was probably made quickly, with a slight of hand. Though that slight would have taken decades to get right.

You do have to be so careful our far eastern friends have also become of forgery, but this is dead right.

Its mine now and its taken me on a little journey that has heightened my understanding a little more of ancient cultures and their influences, and on the British who then showed the world the Arts and Crafts movement.

Christopher Dresser would visit Japan and take design notes collecting samples for Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Despite the writing of Violet de Luc, the French John Ruskin, It was the Japanese who would educate the western world even Van Gough would physically touch a woodblock print, of the Hokasai wave.

The Wave was used to adorn the music for Claude Debussey's LA MER in 1905.

Both artists would have respective disciplines of style over realism and would focus on brilliant colour and energy. One with touch and grace of a brush, the other the keys of a piano.

We owe a lot to the everyday symbolic rituals of a nation that, 150 years ago, and not unlike China, was a secret to the world.

That they turned an everyday object into a glory.

See more baskets here  http://www.jcollector.com/Japanese-Baskets-s/2.htm

Mintons Secessionist Art Nouveau Vase-Piece of the Week.

Sometimes a design or a colour scheme on a piece of pottery just works. We have all had that feeling where you can't put your finger on it, but it reminds you of something.

Whether it appeals to your subconscious mind, your primeval or just that they remind you of a flower you once held.

Designers and decorators are usually picked for their ability to recognise these signals to the senses, before they pass them on to us.

I grabbed at a small vase as it came out of a dealers box, just as he was putting it on his stall. I had to have it. “I have just got it from a house clearance I did this week” he told me.

“Its mine” I parted with my cash.

The first thing one thinks is how close the tube lined design is to another by Archibald Knox, even though there is no evidence of him designing for Mintons, and this is, obviously a Mintons vase from a mile away.

Leon Solon (1852-1957) who joined the company in 1895, aged 23, probably will have designed this pattern..

The shape no is 3543, most secessionist pieces are in the 3000's. The pattern is no 46.

In 1905 Solon left the company and John Wadsworth took over and many of Solons work continued though Wadsworth brought in new colour schemes.

This is a slip cast vase that is tube lined. I love the way the glaze drips or slumps into one another creating a further pallet.

Leons father Louis Solon had worked for Sevres and the colour of this vase is almost a Sevres blue.

I have seen it decorated in red, which does not work as well.

The difference between a good Mintons Secessionist (the term derived from the continental) and a average one can be quite close, and sometimes there are pieces that don't work, but this works, on all levels

. Marked on the base with its pattern number and its incised shape. I am struggling to part with it, for..... money.

Mintons, the name Minton, without the 's' was changed in 1873.

In 1870 when the art pottery studio was opened in South Kensington it was directed by W.S Coleman.

It was not rebuilt when destroyed by fire in 1875.

I always think as Mintons secessionist as an entirely different company, a style of its age, but still with the old quality. 

Its designers absorbed all the Art Nouveau influences around it, and in doing so led a unique and exiting trail that is most attractive and highly collectable today. 

Still a little under-ated. This vase though small some 7 inches high should be worth £180. 

If its not then its cheap. I love this vase. 

http://www.classicartdeco.co.uk/ceramics.php