Re. Flux

Fluxus
Thomas Kellein
Thames & Hudson, London, 1995

Robert Filliou, General Semantics A-Z, 1967

Fluxus Collective Editions, 1961-5

Fluxkit, after1964

Performance of Philip Corner's Piano Activities, 1962

Joe Jones, Mechanical Fluxorchestra, c.1966

Robert Watts, Events, 1964

La Monte Young, The Tortoise: His Dreams and Journeys, 1964

Rowland Emett

Rowland Emett will be familiar to many as the designer of Caractacus Potts' inventions in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was the creator of automata and an accomplished cartoonist, a cross between Ronald Searle and William Heath Robinson, perhaps with Wilf Lunn as his idiot bastard son.

Emett designed the trains on the miniature railway that operated at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

His work is primarily concerned with a jokey visual entertainment rather than serious artistic endeavor, but there is always room for humour in art. He produced a number of public artworks and this collaboration with Honeywell computers that appeared at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition:

 

Emett is currently the subject of a nice looking exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which can be seen during installation here:

The Rowland Emett Society have very kindly provided the delightful soundtrack to the exhibition on Soundcloud. 

Smells Like Brahman Spirit

Nirvana
Vijay Raghav Rao
Mumbai (Bombay), India, 1977

Forget about the eponymous noisome Seattle longhairs and put away the Fender Jaguar, we're talking ragas not grunge. Pandit Vijay Raghav Rao (1925-2011) was a revered Indian composer and master of the bamboo flute, and like his friend and collaborator Ravi Shankar he spent much of his career touring and in America. 

Rao also wrote fiction and recently I was lucky enough to pick up one of his poetry books in my local charity shop. The cover design and illustrations are by the artist Badri Narayan, who also illustrated editions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

There is a sense of space and time in this music, words and images that gently shifts one onto a different plane of thought.

Contemporary Distractions

Another boon I recently discovered on the British Pathé News archive was this short feature on artist Sam Smith at his 1958 exhibition 'Contemporary Distractions' at the Primavera gallery in Sloane Street, London. Usually labelled 'toys for grown ups', his work developed from simple folk art toys to elaborate singular sculptures.

I should have liked to have found this film late last year when I organised an exhibition of Sam's work but it was completely unknown at the time. Very pleased to see it now and especially love the piece Reader/Drinker at 01.35. 

The proto-psychedelic mood of Sam's work seems evident in the clip and enhanced by the vivid film stock colours. The anarchic and surreal humour in Sam's work anticipated much of the British Pop Art and music explosion that was to follow. Ten years later it seems that Pathé were producing bona fide psych-pop videos or 'promotional films' as they were called then. Let's join The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in London's Speakeasy club.