Bass Styles

Tile designs by Saul Bass, as featured in Motif, issue 8, 1961.

"In considering the problem of how to approach a surface, there
seem to be several key elements involved. One is colour, another
is pattern or decoration, and still another is the use of the sculptured
or raised surface. When I was asked by Pomona Tile Company
to participate in their design programme, it was this latter
possibility, the sculptural approach, that seemed to demand exploration in relation to tiles.

What resulted is a group of designs that present the possibilities
of treating the tile wall in contemporary terms as a bas-relief.
Since the forms of these tiles are described and delineated by
light, one of the qualities that emerged was that they appeared to
change, as the direction and intensity of the light changed.

The designs have many possibilities in application ranging from
individual tiles sprinkled on a wall; massing in sections; complete
walls; to exterior as well as interior use in areas not normally
considered tile areas. It was my intention that all of these possibilities would occur as a result of a group of designs that would be simple, and yet permissive of a high level of individuality in each of its varied applications."

SAUL BASS

Monkeys on Bicycles

I would like to draw your attention to this short film report from British Pathé News from October 1957 (who now allow embedding via YouTube!).

You will notice that it's our friend artist William Green again. What's not to like about this? - jazzy soundtrack, nonsensical RP narrator, Green's green beatnik jumper, wooly socks and Hush Puppies, and a sit-up-and-beg bicycle. Let's all have a jolly good laugh at the crazy artist.

I particularly like his pal who wanders in (enter, stage rear) at 1.42 - a real artist sporting neat beard and proper palette, whom I like to imagine dispenses some platitudes and goes back to puffing his pipe at his easel again thinking "Poor old Greeny, what a loony!"

And there's more here at 1.39:

Green's bicycle made a big impression in the often cynical British media and became symbolic of all that was silly about modern art. Sadly, British attitudes remain largely unchanged. The bike was recycled a few years later in a scene from The Rebel (1961), Tony Hancock's masterpiece which says so many serious things about art and life by the funniest means possible.

Everyone should see this film, particularly all artists. I saw it first while I was at art school and it had a great impact as l could recall many of the scenes for years after, especially that bicycle.

Slip, slop...

Slap!

I attended a lecture on Danish artist Asgar Jorn a few weeks ago and was presented with this image of the artist creating a gigantic ceramic sculpture with a Lambretta in Italy in 1959 (27 meters long and three meters high), which immediately made my think of Hancock.

Could Jorn have been the inspiration for Galton and Simpson?

Possibly, but reading Art & The 60s the image of Green and his bike leapt out as being a more likely candidate; no fancy continental scooters here, thank you - the Mods were still a few years away - just a good old bicycle, mundane, domestic, a quotidian approach to revolutionising modern art. How very British.

Green was first filmed some months earlier by a young Ken Russell for BBC's Tonight programme in a short film called 'How to Make an Action Painting'. As an admirer of Russell's early black and white photography I would dearly love to see this but have not been able to locate it online. Let's enjoy the classic film from the BBC's Monitor series 'Pop Goes the Easel' instead:

Russell points his camera at the 'gang of four' of the British Pop Art scene: Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier. This seems a slightly artificial grouping and I doubt they were much of a gang in reality, perhaps more social than intellectual.

If you don't have time to watch the whole piece do please have a peep at the magnificent closing party sequence at 36.42, if not to admire the delectable Pauline Boty then at least to see that Peter Blake was once surprisingly nimble at the Twist. The 60s had begun to swing, daddio.