The Sixties: Getaway People
(UK, Channel 4, 1982) 


Interesting (alright, mostly dull) documentary about the rise of car culture in Britain during the 1960s. Simple but effective title sequence, which finishes with 'The Sixties' in the same typeface as The Avengers tv series. Plenty of provincial town planners tempered with good archive footage. Well, it passes the time.

Particularly pleasing to see Reyner Banham in full ghetto-pimp clobber at 08:00, and adverts for Robochef and Ian Carmichael shilling for Paul Masson's California Carafes at the end of part one. Ah, memories!

Archigram! Archive! Ahoy!

Look!! An exciting new online resource has been launched recently, collecting much of the work produced by seminal architectural group Archigram (actually I'd prefer them to be called Archigram! with an exclamation mark, after Neu! or maybe Oliver!) which included Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Richmal Crompton, Warren Clarke, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch, and possibly a few others.

As a practice that planned so much and built so little, the archive is really the best place to appreciate the revolutionary ideas that Archigram's six members promulgated, a legacy that still provokes, entertains and inspires.

The Archigroup... and a woman!

Some important film and television projects are missing from this site for technical/copyright reasons, but there are many multimedia items to discover, and YouTube hosts plenty of Archigram interviews and insights - remember Justine Frischmann?!

Not that one.

Deakin

John Deakin
Photographs
Vendome Press, New York, 1998

Portrait of John Deakin by Luke Kelly, 1970

A few weeks ago I visited an exhibition of the work of John Deakin at the Photographers Gallery in London. Deakin is well known as Francis Bacon's Soho drinking associate, verbal punchbag, and creator of photographs that served as sketch material for some of Bacon's strongest paintings. I have admired his work for many years and this was the first occasion I have had to see a selection of work exhibited. Not a big show but enough to stimulate and satisfy.

Prunella Scales, 1954

His work reproduces well, as the images here attest, but seeing the original prints up close one truly perceives the marvelous skill with which they were created, every pore of his subjects' skin exposed for scrutiny.

Kenneth Tynan, 1952

Dylan Thomas, 1950

The portrait and fashion work is only part of the story as he was also an undervalued recorder of street life, following in the tradition of French photography, in particular Brassai, whose images of Paris graffiti - 'The Language of the Wall' - proved an inspiration for Deakin.

Rome, 1950s

Paris, 1950s

Paris, 1950s

Paris, 1950s

His incomplete or neglected photobook 'London Walls' would have been a great addition to his portfolio, but alas no publishers were interested and so the project atrophied with Deakin's terminal alcoholism.

Outside Over There

Art In America
Vol.56 No.5, Sept-Oct 1968
New York, N.Y.

A nice article illustrating some well known and lesser known practitioners of Outsider Art in America. The term Outsider Art is not a wholly adequate classification, and author Gregg N Blasdel prefers the nomenclature Grass-Roots Art.

Although the unruly genre of Outsider Art may not be fully commodified and absorbed into the mainstream artworld, it is well documented and widely admired. Jean Dubuffet was amongst the first to bring the 'visionary' work of Facteur Cheval and suchlike to the attention of the artworld in the post-war years, but naive art or folk art has been around for much longer. Perhaps it is helpful to consider Outsider Art as progressive environmental art? Strip away financial motivations and cultural norms of acceptability and it is interesting to consider the psychological compulsions that compel humans to creativity, whether 'artists' or 'outsiders'.

Armitage Shanks

Kenneth Armitage (1916-2002) was a British semi-abstract sculptor whose sense of humour enlivened his work in the 1950s and 60s, but this eventually prevented him from being able to let go of realism and his later works have a naff Pop quality that for me is far less successful.

These earlier works embody a playfulness that is just the right side of kitsch.

Linked Figures, 1949

Family going for a Walk, 1951

Children playing, 1953

Diarchy, 1957

Big Doll, 1969

Mouton Sun, 1959-63

Wall and Panderus, 1965

Slab Figure, 1961

The Sentinels, 1955-6

This Was Tomorrow

Chris Stephens and Katherine Stout (eds.), Art and the 60s - This Was Tomorrow, Tate, London, 2004.

Yes, you've noticed there's a barcode sticker obscuring part of the book cover. I bring home a lot of books from my univeristy library, where the cataloguing staff appear to be aesthetic vandals who take perverse pleasure in positioning stickers on book jackets so as to ruin their design wherever possible. I like good design and often judge a book by its cover, so this irritates me but it's not going to get in the way of this blog. No, sir.

Art & The 60s was a survey show at the Tate Britain gallery, looking at mostly London based artists from that revolutionary decade.

Allen Ginsberg at the Royal Albert Hall Poetry reeading (1965)

David Hockney, The Third Love Painting (1960)

Trellick Tower, Ladbroke Grove, Ernő Goldfinger (architect), 1968

Joe Tilson, Vox Box (1963)

Beyond the Fringe - Bennett, Cook, Miller, Moore (photo Lewis Morley) 1961

Up against it - Joe Orton (photo Lewis Morley) 1965

 

Alexandra Road Estate, Camden. Neave Brown (architect)

Peter Phillips, The Entertainment Machine (1961)

I like a bit of Pop Art but a personal highlight was a small essay on artist William Green, a figure who rose to notoriety in the late 1950s and by the end of the 60s had all but disappeared.

William Green and infamous bicycle

William Green, Untitled (1958)