Review: The Playboy Archives, Proud Gallery, Camden.
I’m starting to regret this now. I’m sitting in the pub explaining to a friend why I am reviewing the Playboy archives and it’s all sounding a little…..sleazy. “It’s about design” I say none too convincingly. I give up asking anyone if they want to come see the show with me and end up going alone, furtively shuffling ‘round the exhibition with a notebook like a teenager with a Pamela Anderson obsession. Having said that, once inside, the Playboy Archives is considerably less revealing than you might imagine. It consists of a collection of covers from 1953 onwards, some stand-alone photographs of famous Playmates of the Month (including, bizarrely, Katarina Witt) and some framed interviews with famous men. There are also various pictures of founder Hugh Hefner in the exhibition, usually shown wandering the near mythic Playboy mansion wearing silk pyjamas.
Playboy is generally regarded as upmarket soft pornography. In fact it is read by the sort of people who might baulk at the term pornography preferring euphemisms such as ‘gentlemen’s entertainment’ or, worse, ‘erotica’. In this, it aspires both to be something other than a humble porn mag, and to elevate the porn element to a civilised hobby on a par with pipe smoking and vintage motor-cars. For a start it has writing in it, and not just of the “I never thought the stories in your magazine were true until…” variety. It carries interviews with famous men (not women) and fiction from serious writers. It also though, unarguably, has lots of pictures of naked women in it. These pictures are either, depending on your constitution, rather tame or more explicit than you imagined. It’s not Razzle but it’s not The Lady either.
Time has given the 1950’s and ‘60’s Playmates an inevitable period charm – today they seem as de-sexualised as a bit of What the Butler Saw Edwardian saucy-ness. The period hairdos, moustaches (on the men, mostly) and clothes draw attention away from what was originally the point. In fact, hair is a key component in porn: at least of the pubic variety. In the 50’s and 60’s it was generally not seen at all. By the ‘70’s it is there in all its glory. In fact, given today’s tastes for depilation, it is perversely the hair that tends to shock most. The ‘70’s were also an excellent period for unusual props. Horses were a favourite, with naked women shown leading them through lens flare improved countryside like a porno Sandy Denny. By the 80’s, the bodies had become harder and, of course, more hairless. They also started to be designed for the job, leading to the purpose built caricatures of Pamela Anderson, Carmen Elektra and Jordan. The ‘80’s also saw the rise of various famous photographers including Mike Figgis and Helmut Newton, both shown in this exhibition. Here, porn brushes up against art, but in a fundamentally rather naff way. As Susan Sontag has pointed out, if pornography has claims to art, then it is more through its potential for transgression than through arty composition or ‘classy’ imagery.
Alongside the excesses of today’s so-called Gonzo porn, Playboy seems relatively harmless: very much the product of a boy’s imagination that thinks new gadgets, well tailored suits, sexist jokes and, of course, lots of naked ladies, are the accoutrements of sophistication. All, of course, unthreatened by anything as troubling as sexual politics, female desire or un-airbrushed flesh. The spin-off from this veneer of sophistication was that there was a certain subtlety and inventiveness that went into the presentation. But, just as the bodies have become more designed the magazine has become less so. Whilst the covers of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s were often graphically striking in their own right, the latest ones merely list the magazine’s contents around yet another famous face. And, as the bodies themselves have become more ruthlessly exposed to the light, they have had to work that much harder to retain our attention: shaved, taped, pumped up and, finally, photo-shopped into a kind of freaky perfection,
See, it was about design. So, I return to the pub, suitably unembarrassed, but not before I have picked up some new silk pyjamas on the way.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Why Kiera Knightley Should Be Purchased By The National Trust
Review: Pride and Prejudice.
So, I’m in the Rio cinema in Dalston – possibly the most multi-cultural place in the world - and everyone here is white and middle class. Outside, the cars on Kingsland Road throb past with their neon glow and the kebab shops light up the street and yet, in here, all you can hear is the sound of horses hooves on cobbles and silver spoons clinking on china. The thought occurs: why would anyone want to make a film like this now? Isn’t it about as relevant as Quinlan Terry’s houses or Viscount Linley’s furniture? Well, I happen to have a soft spot for Quinlan Terry, but still, the whole idea of period drama is rather worrying: a curious fixation on a world of restrictive manners and social segregation. Is this what we should be thinking about in 2005?
Then there is the film itself. The whole thing is bathed in a honeyed autumnal glow. It begins with the sun rising over a misty swathe of English countryside and gets progressively more picturesque after that. This film is as stylistically intense as Sin City. The quality of light in it was so seductive that after it I felt like hiring a lighting crew to follow me around. What’s it all about? Well, basically, there’s the Bennet family who are farm people, a bit coarse but basically good sorts. They have five daughters and no son or heir, so the house and farm are due to be given over to a male cousin, who is, as Jane Austen put it, a bit of a knob. The father is an amiably sardonic farmer. The mother is a petty bourgeois social climber obsessed with marrying off her daughters to the highest bidders. The eldest daughter Jane is beautiful, honest and shy. The second eldest Elizabeth is beautiful, honest and sharp. Into this scenario rides Mr D’Arcy, an impossibly wealthy bachelor, and his friend, the only slightly less wealthy Mr Bigley. The Bennets and the two bachelors meet at the village disco – sorry, local dance - where Mr Bigley promptly falls in love with Jane, and Mr D’arcy and Elizabeth begin their tortuous and acerbic on-off courtship.
Most of the action – if that is the right word – takes place within a succession of house interiors where the manners are adjusted subtly according to location. The Bennet’s house is filmed in a succession of painterly scenes, somewhere between Breugel, Pieter de Hooch and the sort of sentimental pictures of young children chasing chickens that the Victorians used to hang in their nurseries. Pigs waddle in and out of shot, mud squelches underfoot and there is a rich choreography of honest farm folk and quacking wild fowl. The house, a mix of Queen Anne and Georgian with classical embellishment is lovingly pictured in all its flaking and scuffed glory: a sign presumably of both the Bennet’s near impoverishment and of our heroine Elizabeth’s straightforward honesty. Beginning with the girlish honesty of Jane and Elizabeth’s conversations at home, social interaction becomes ever more elliptical and strained as they move through a succession of ever grander residences. Basically, the posher the house the more mean spirited the people living in it. Except for D’Arcy who has the grandest house but also the best taste. In one scene, Elizabeth wanders through his copious hallways, her eyes lingering over the suggestive physicality of a series of Grecian statues. She is clearly the only other person in the film capable of appreciating such beauty.
Away from the claustrophobic civility of the interiors, Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for walking is seen as evidence of her free spirit. The countryside is depicted as free and natural – a naturalness, of course, that is mediated through the whole biscuit tin and tea towel world of the English picturesque tradition. When the camera is not focusing on the all round loveliness of the English landscape, it is focusing on the all round loveliness of Kiera Knightly. Her character is, of course, the moral heart of the story, showing that honesty and depth will win out over frippery and snobbishness. But, appropriately, her face is always perfectly made up, her ‘kohled’ eyes and flawless skin as ‘natural’ as the perfect countryside behind her.
Always a sucker for shots of rolling hills accompanied by swirling classical music, and entranced by Knightley’s triumphant goodness, I was utterly seduced by it all. Coming out, Kingsland Road was something of a shock. But, you know, in a good way.
So, I’m in the Rio cinema in Dalston – possibly the most multi-cultural place in the world - and everyone here is white and middle class. Outside, the cars on Kingsland Road throb past with their neon glow and the kebab shops light up the street and yet, in here, all you can hear is the sound of horses hooves on cobbles and silver spoons clinking on china. The thought occurs: why would anyone want to make a film like this now? Isn’t it about as relevant as Quinlan Terry’s houses or Viscount Linley’s furniture? Well, I happen to have a soft spot for Quinlan Terry, but still, the whole idea of period drama is rather worrying: a curious fixation on a world of restrictive manners and social segregation. Is this what we should be thinking about in 2005?
Then there is the film itself. The whole thing is bathed in a honeyed autumnal glow. It begins with the sun rising over a misty swathe of English countryside and gets progressively more picturesque after that. This film is as stylistically intense as Sin City. The quality of light in it was so seductive that after it I felt like hiring a lighting crew to follow me around. What’s it all about? Well, basically, there’s the Bennet family who are farm people, a bit coarse but basically good sorts. They have five daughters and no son or heir, so the house and farm are due to be given over to a male cousin, who is, as Jane Austen put it, a bit of a knob. The father is an amiably sardonic farmer. The mother is a petty bourgeois social climber obsessed with marrying off her daughters to the highest bidders. The eldest daughter Jane is beautiful, honest and shy. The second eldest Elizabeth is beautiful, honest and sharp. Into this scenario rides Mr D’Arcy, an impossibly wealthy bachelor, and his friend, the only slightly less wealthy Mr Bigley. The Bennets and the two bachelors meet at the village disco – sorry, local dance - where Mr Bigley promptly falls in love with Jane, and Mr D’arcy and Elizabeth begin their tortuous and acerbic on-off courtship.
Most of the action – if that is the right word – takes place within a succession of house interiors where the manners are adjusted subtly according to location. The Bennet’s house is filmed in a succession of painterly scenes, somewhere between Breugel, Pieter de Hooch and the sort of sentimental pictures of young children chasing chickens that the Victorians used to hang in their nurseries. Pigs waddle in and out of shot, mud squelches underfoot and there is a rich choreography of honest farm folk and quacking wild fowl. The house, a mix of Queen Anne and Georgian with classical embellishment is lovingly pictured in all its flaking and scuffed glory: a sign presumably of both the Bennet’s near impoverishment and of our heroine Elizabeth’s straightforward honesty. Beginning with the girlish honesty of Jane and Elizabeth’s conversations at home, social interaction becomes ever more elliptical and strained as they move through a succession of ever grander residences. Basically, the posher the house the more mean spirited the people living in it. Except for D’Arcy who has the grandest house but also the best taste. In one scene, Elizabeth wanders through his copious hallways, her eyes lingering over the suggestive physicality of a series of Grecian statues. She is clearly the only other person in the film capable of appreciating such beauty.
Away from the claustrophobic civility of the interiors, Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for walking is seen as evidence of her free spirit. The countryside is depicted as free and natural – a naturalness, of course, that is mediated through the whole biscuit tin and tea towel world of the English picturesque tradition. When the camera is not focusing on the all round loveliness of the English landscape, it is focusing on the all round loveliness of Kiera Knightly. Her character is, of course, the moral heart of the story, showing that honesty and depth will win out over frippery and snobbishness. But, appropriately, her face is always perfectly made up, her ‘kohled’ eyes and flawless skin as ‘natural’ as the perfect countryside behind her.
Always a sucker for shots of rolling hills accompanied by swirling classical music, and entranced by Knightley’s triumphant goodness, I was utterly seduced by it all. Coming out, Kingsland Road was something of a shock. But, you know, in a good way.
Monday, June 20, 2005
More Black, Vicar?
Exhibition Review: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
For two months of the summer, the Royal Academy is full, rammed to the rafters, with contemporary paintings: some by famous artists, many by Royal Academicians, hundreds of others sent in by amateur artists. The number on display is vast – there are 1333 works here - and in some rooms no wall space is left visible. This is the Summer Exhibition, arts equivalent of Wimbledon or Glyndbourne: very middle-class, very English and very popular.
What’s it like? Exhausting, mainly. After a while, the paintings of houses and hillsides and cats, and more cats, and coy nudes and impasto cityscapes and hazy Venetian canals meld into one vaguely hallucinatory experience that, coupled with the constant background hum of Posh People’s Voices, causes a strangely genteel form of sensory overload. By the half-way point - room 4, lot number 666 (which isn’t a picture of the devil but the Garden Pond, Mistley) - I was starting to suffer from burn-out. An afternoon in the Summer Exhibition feels like taking a tour of a thousand Islington front rooms via Cork Street whilst leafing through Modern Painters and a few copies of Country Life for good measure. It dawned on me, as I progressed, just how many artists there are in this country. I wonder if everyone is secretly off at the weekends, easel in hand, gauche in pocket, to the Lake District, or the Fens, or sketching their husband looking pensive in the front room.
Anyway, there are lots of paintings called things like: Storm Passing, Gulls Flying or Seated Model From Behind, and some excruciating puns such as The Man Who Drew Too Much. Various famous and redoubtable characters are included such as Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Gillian Ayres and the late Eduardo Paolozzi. There is a vaguely homo-erotic painting of a blue sailor painted by a Holly Johnson. Could it really be the Holly Johnson? Surely not. Anyway, it had sold one copy, hopefully not to Holly Johnson. Old RA veteran Anthony Green, who I remember from childhood trips to this exhibition, has his usual 117 pieces in and, I was greatly relieved to see, is still including saucy shots of his missus in them. If people aren’t out on the hillside capturing birds in flight they generally tend to be in the studio being vaguely salacious so, typically, David Mach contributes an enormous sculpture of a naked woman made entirely from Dominoes. And it’s called Dominatrix. No, really.
There is a smattering of more contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tracy Emin, and Mark Quinn. There are photos by Sam Taylor Wood and Andreas Gursky. Michael Craig Marin contributes a tricksy computer animation. And, I was just wondering whether Julian Opie would pop up, when lo and behold, he did. There is also a special room devoted to Ed Ruscha, who’s conceptually clarity and focus came as a startling shock in the context.
Finally, and with some sense of relief I found the architecture room. Home turf I thought. Mind you, even the curators seem to have given up by this point, professing ignorance of the contents of the room and of architecture in general. Traditionally, this room gives architecture something of a bad name with practices chucking in a couple of curling competition boards they had hanging around the office. There are also lots of antiseptic white models of urban plazas or perspex office blocks and the odd little sketch of a house in the country. At least you are safe from pictures of cats in here.
Worst thing in the room has to be Michael Manser’s proposals for Heathrow Terminal 5 which looks as horrible as you might imagine Heathrow Terminal 5 could look. There are some nice drawings by the late Ralf Erskine which speak very much of their own period. Other highlights include a huge model of Will Alsop’s ‘Chips’ building, which has plastic fish in it, and some very nice drawings by CJ Lim of a landmark proposal for the 2012 Paris Olympics.
Overall, the Summer Exhibition leaves you reeling with the sheer monstrous amount of it all, unable to make much sense of individual works. Like most classic English days out it seems to exist partly as an excuse to drink tea and eat a lot of cake immediately afterwards. I certainly needed to sit down. Possibly, at my own easel. Now, if I can just catch the quality of that passing Cumulo Nimbus…more black, MORE BLACK!!…..
For two months of the summer, the Royal Academy is full, rammed to the rafters, with contemporary paintings: some by famous artists, many by Royal Academicians, hundreds of others sent in by amateur artists. The number on display is vast – there are 1333 works here - and in some rooms no wall space is left visible. This is the Summer Exhibition, arts equivalent of Wimbledon or Glyndbourne: very middle-class, very English and very popular.
What’s it like? Exhausting, mainly. After a while, the paintings of houses and hillsides and cats, and more cats, and coy nudes and impasto cityscapes and hazy Venetian canals meld into one vaguely hallucinatory experience that, coupled with the constant background hum of Posh People’s Voices, causes a strangely genteel form of sensory overload. By the half-way point - room 4, lot number 666 (which isn’t a picture of the devil but the Garden Pond, Mistley) - I was starting to suffer from burn-out. An afternoon in the Summer Exhibition feels like taking a tour of a thousand Islington front rooms via Cork Street whilst leafing through Modern Painters and a few copies of Country Life for good measure. It dawned on me, as I progressed, just how many artists there are in this country. I wonder if everyone is secretly off at the weekends, easel in hand, gauche in pocket, to the Lake District, or the Fens, or sketching their husband looking pensive in the front room.
Anyway, there are lots of paintings called things like: Storm Passing, Gulls Flying or Seated Model From Behind, and some excruciating puns such as The Man Who Drew Too Much. Various famous and redoubtable characters are included such as Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Gillian Ayres and the late Eduardo Paolozzi. There is a vaguely homo-erotic painting of a blue sailor painted by a Holly Johnson. Could it really be the Holly Johnson? Surely not. Anyway, it had sold one copy, hopefully not to Holly Johnson. Old RA veteran Anthony Green, who I remember from childhood trips to this exhibition, has his usual 117 pieces in and, I was greatly relieved to see, is still including saucy shots of his missus in them. If people aren’t out on the hillside capturing birds in flight they generally tend to be in the studio being vaguely salacious so, typically, David Mach contributes an enormous sculpture of a naked woman made entirely from Dominoes. And it’s called Dominatrix. No, really.
There is a smattering of more contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tracy Emin, and Mark Quinn. There are photos by Sam Taylor Wood and Andreas Gursky. Michael Craig Marin contributes a tricksy computer animation. And, I was just wondering whether Julian Opie would pop up, when lo and behold, he did. There is also a special room devoted to Ed Ruscha, who’s conceptually clarity and focus came as a startling shock in the context.
Finally, and with some sense of relief I found the architecture room. Home turf I thought. Mind you, even the curators seem to have given up by this point, professing ignorance of the contents of the room and of architecture in general. Traditionally, this room gives architecture something of a bad name with practices chucking in a couple of curling competition boards they had hanging around the office. There are also lots of antiseptic white models of urban plazas or perspex office blocks and the odd little sketch of a house in the country. At least you are safe from pictures of cats in here.
Worst thing in the room has to be Michael Manser’s proposals for Heathrow Terminal 5 which looks as horrible as you might imagine Heathrow Terminal 5 could look. There are some nice drawings by the late Ralf Erskine which speak very much of their own period. Other highlights include a huge model of Will Alsop’s ‘Chips’ building, which has plastic fish in it, and some very nice drawings by CJ Lim of a landmark proposal for the 2012 Paris Olympics.
Overall, the Summer Exhibition leaves you reeling with the sheer monstrous amount of it all, unable to make much sense of individual works. Like most classic English days out it seems to exist partly as an excuse to drink tea and eat a lot of cake immediately afterwards. I certainly needed to sit down. Possibly, at my own easel. Now, if I can just catch the quality of that passing Cumulo Nimbus…more black, MORE BLACK!!…..
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