Peter Nencini

Post-Midcentury-Modern

2009-11-29T11:09:00.001-08:00

Midcentury Modern happened a couple of Sundays ago. Sally and I showed the chairs we've worked together, alongside her knits and my new, modular, woodblock prints (upcoming post). This one is our favourite. Needs a better photo but you get the idea. Each chair carries a narrative, out of its source or use or time and place of making. This one was fed by our Summer in County Down, so named the Tyrella chair. I make the drawing, Sally stitches and re-upholsters. We enjoyed this one because it flowed quickly out of a set of sketchbook ideas and was then drawn directly onto the fabric.

We are looking intently at stitch and line interrelationships. Better knowledge of stitch informs the drawing. More options for stitch better translates the nuance of drawing. Studying books such as Thames & Hudson's very useful Textiles: A World Tour and looking forward to Elsie Svennas' A Handbook of Lettering for Stitchers (1973) to arrive, if Royal Mail allows.

Some more shots of the Calligraphic Chairs as a complete set.

And our first collaboration, the Standing There Chair, from a poem by our daughter Sadie. We are now working on a commission for a couple who really 'got' the language and narrative aspects of this process.

Next stop is Kids.Modern in February, also at Dulwich College. We are sourcing and working with small wooden children's chairs; key again is that each chair provokes its own little language.

New to New York

2009-11-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

So, a disclaimer. I'm new to New York City. I hold an amalgam of clichés with a hope that they are kind of true. This opening scene, from Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979) summons the feeling most efficiently. Very excited. We leave tomorrow morning.

Calligraphic Chairs

2009-10-22T15:08:00.001-07:00

Sally and I are working towards Midcentury Modern, happening next month. Nearly completed a set of four c.1960s dining chairs, restored, reupholstered and hand embroidered by Sally from my drawings, shown below.

Interesting to anticipate the quality that will come with the handwork. We discussed CNC embroidery technologies, direct from the drawings. But too many memories of sample blouson jackets emblazoned with mind-melt-motifs coming in from the supplier in Sally's fashion days put pay to that. She is just beginning to use something of the shift and variety possible in hand-stitch and we are studying a growing shelf of reference books to understand and incorporate a wider scope of stitch. For me too, to anticipate types of stitch when drawing.

Here's the original drawings. They work aligned horizontally as a set, with motifs drifting from one chair into the next.

A funny amalgam of not-so-esoteric and long-loved and digested visual matter feeding the language used. The consistent is something of a space between images and words. That's why they're named Calligraphic.

So, some (only some) of the cues. Cornelius Cardew's scores...

...Unknown Pleasures...

...Pastoral Pylons...

...Striped Socks...

...and Miró's colourfield paintings, particularly Blue II (1961).

Also Catalan Lanscape (1923/4). His paintings of this nature really broke typography for me in college; the behaviour of the elements, their mutable character and line. Illusion and abstraction. All in one undersea-overland picture.

I, Me, Mine

2009-10-21T06:54:00.001-07:00

It's Nice That invited me this week to write an article for their feature 'Weekly Discussion'. Saying 'I, Me, Mine: do we specialise too soon?' Go, read and tweet your thoughts. It's live until next Monday, I think.

Somehow the point I'm attempting to make is evidenced (albeit from then, not now) in the work of Max Bill. Each of these projects is borne of intimacy with material, use and unfettered thinking. The result is a work which often synthesises two previously discreet functions or habitual forms.

Bill's applied, tactile understanding of the behaviour and limitations of process and materials in no way hampered his ability to think laterally.

(via Kultur + Kontext, cianomagentagiallonero, V&A, thebestoftime)

Joint Effort

2009-10-03T07:15:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we reassembled 32 studio tables, originally built last year to Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione plans, published in 1974. The open-source, self-design logic and aesthetic uses cheaply available timber (2 x 1) and arrives at an object that, as he says, does not 'seem' but simply 'is'.

During the reassembly, Autoprogettazione Revisited opened at the Architects' Association.

Invited designers have been asked to develop plans for furniture, responding to, yet adapting, the originals in the book. Round-table public discussion next Friday with Himself.

This, however, is a direct translation by AA student Korey Kromm, via Wallpaper.

There was pleasure in the lack of skill required to cut and build such a volume of the tables. But the junction points have a kind of basic certainty, equivalent to, but without the finesse of this beautiful shaker joint, via An Ambitious Project Collapsing.

Some parallel with Max Lamb's stool, for Reference Library / Apartamento Magazine's Everyday Life Objects Shop; and that of the Ulm Stool, shown in a previous post.

As seen at Richard Lamb's The Everyday Life Collector show, during Design Week. Son Max responsible for the shelving. Family resemblance to the stool.

Mr. Lamb was very interesting and welcoming. An RAF man, with 15 years of collecting studio pottery, mostly rooted in Cornwall. His folder-bible of magazine clippings was great. More meaty and indispensible than a blog. Weird time for Ceramics. Beautiful newly refurbished galleries at V&A; threatened courses throughout the UK. At a time when there is so much exciting work.

Such as this, by Jochem De Wit. Saw his work round the corner, also during Design Week.

Back on the joints. Allan Wexler's Crate House (1991). Out of my most-treasured, now-hard-to-get, twice-lost-and-found book, Custom Built (as designed by Daniel Eatock and Andrew Blauvelt. Wexler's vocabulary is 2 x 1 timber...

... and 8 x 4 sheet. Permutation out of limitation. Often with misalignments and overlaps highlighted in a flat colour paint.

The almost-isometry and jointed configurations above, call to mind Oscar Reutersvärd's Impossible Figures (via Galleri Bergström).

Immortalised as Swedish stamps in 1982, with granular, hatched tints that, for me, surpass the flat washes of the originals.

Finally, Sam Windett's Cup with Sticks 2 (2008), via The Approach. Somehow fusing the structures and vessels above.

Sorry- also Claire Barclay's Untitled (2007), via Stephen Friedman gallery. If you can, go see her work. Rewards you if you stand back. And if you look very close.

What I Saw On My Holidays: Afterlives

2009-09-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

Battersea Park, London.

Aglou, Morocco.

Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.

Aglou, Morocco.

Tyrella, Northern Ireland.

Tyrella too.

And again.

Forms and Permutations

2009-09-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

Quietly collecting, thinking about form, permutation, material. Helps with drawing sensibility but there is an itch to make, that has yet to be scratched.

Three experiments here for cupboard-door-pulls, each a take on the same act. I like very much the ergonomic of early tractor seats, bicycle handle grips,... where the body is mechnically and somewhat cartoonishly mirrored.

Somehow, having these cut, themselves inform judgements on radius, tangential contact points and rhythm back into in picturemaking.

Somewhere Between Orange and Red

2009-09-17T01:41:00.001-07:00

Petrol pump attendant, Mirleft, Morocco.

Skip Dive Tile, Camberwell, London.

Dick Bruna's Poppy (1975).

Papaver, Dulwich, London.

U-Bahn, Berlin.

Persona

2009-07-31T07:47:00.000-07:00

Just completed this image to Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966), referring to the convergence of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. The film has an extraordinary title sequence.

The Bergman Foundation's site includes an interview where he talks about his intention here to make a 'poem in images': "I reflected on what was important, and began with the projector and my desire to set it in motion. But when the projector was running, nothing came out of it but old ideas, the spider, God's lamb, all that dull stuff...". On the images of, for example, the burning monks' anti-Vietnam-War-protest: "At most I can read about such atrocitites with a kind of greed – a pornography of horror. But I shall never rid myself of those images. Images that turn my art into a bag of tricks, into something indifferent, meaningless." And "gradually the precise word I'm looking for comes into focus".

On the Bone, under the Skin

2009-07-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

Plastered skulls, c.7000BC, from the Neolithic 'Ain Ghazal site near Amman, Jordan. The plaster-mix was applied to skulls, once cleaned of soft tissue, as part of a funerary process. The function was to preserve a likeness. It seems that it is the 'visage' which is rendered, rather than the entire volume, sometimes stopping above the mouth.

Cowrie shells were used for the eye, bitumen for the pupil. First saw and drew specimens in the British Museum. I hear there are others at the Ashmolean in Oxford.

Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960), directed by Georges Franju.

A toad's shed skin. Recourse to flatland, as seen in Edward R. Tufte's seminal Visual Explanations.

John Stezaker's Mask II (1991-2), via The Approach.

Card Kit, Cake Sale

2009-05-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

A Card Collage Kit for my kids' Christmas School Fair last December. The interchangeable modules allow for Pious or Pagan takes on the season. Of course, the children's cut-and-pastes that resulted surpassed my expectation, imagination and ridiculous linear logic. My favourite, consigned to memory, was an apocalyptic reindeer skull.

Gelb

2009-06-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

Overhauling, updating, uploading to my site with new work, such as this. Gelb is a growing image kit, a kind of ode to Berlin. Only been once but it crept up on me in a way which had nothing to do with museums, landmarks and other city fodder. Much more to do with U-Bahn rides and E-Bloc buildings.

A Shared History of Play

2009-05-23T07:57:00.001-07:00

I'm giving a talk next Saturday with Marie O'Connor; A Shared History of Play. The invitation to talk came from Europa, who designed this invitation and exhibition graphics to the show History Repeats Itself by Winchester School of Art Graphic Arts programme. Looking forward to the other talks by Roland Früh of Hyphen Press, James Goggin, Sarah Gottlieb and åbäke.

Bits of Brutalism

2009-05-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

The forms and language of Brutalism have always inspired, especially the internal structures, radiuses and shuttered imprints. This image (via Tumble) gives a detail of St. Peter's Seminary in Cardross, near Glasgow. The building, commissioned in 1966 and designed by Metzstein and MacMillan (of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia), is now a ruin having been abandoned in 1980. Even in its graffitoed delapidation friends tell me of the magic of it's aspect emerging out of the now overgrown site. In 2003 Ruaridh Nicoll argued in the Observer for its world-class status but also bemoaned public distaste for the restoration of such a form.

A long-coveted bible of Brutalism from Camberwell's library, also born in 1966. Featuring a beautiful kindergarten with a white-brick cylindrical den on recall, which I must review. The austere, gravity-laden typesetting and grid totally at one with the subject matter.

A Stephen Russ Penguin Poets jacket from 1967. His designs for the series throughout the 1960s carry a real signature quality. The premise for the series, sustaining an abstract-pattern-interpretation to the content, is something I always wish could carry through more to prose fiction jacket commissioning. I guess Picador got close with Russell Mills' images for Ian McEwan's early novels.

Star City

2009-04-20T15:14:00.001-07:00

Two from a series just completed for a visual essay on Star City, to be published in Visual Communication. This was the Cosmonaut training camp through and since the Soviet era, revitalised under Putin and income from space tourism.

The training environments, a mix of cramped simulators, vomit-comet-centrifuges, submerged replicas pertain to the Salyut, Mir and now the International Space Station. The process seems as much to be about desensitisation to nausea, claustrophobia, weightlessness and ‘negative emotion’ as the acquirement of skill. Will post the others once it's in print.

Inside Outside

2009-03-17T01:56:00.000-07:00

A gap since the last post, finishing projects. Back now with the intent to post drawings with frequency. They run in threads and this should become apparent as they arrive. Always interested for example in an inside-outside head structure.

Exoskeletal, elemental Furniture

2009-01-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

Charles & Ray Eames' adjustable jig to to 'determine the seat and back angles of the molded-plywood chairs' (c.1945) (via Library of Congress).

Ulm stool by Max Bill, Hans Gugelot, Paul Hildinger (1955) (via the Ulm archive).

Lisa Lapinski's Nightstand (2005) (via Johanna Koenig).

Martino Gamper's Gallery Furniture (2007) (via Arttattler, photo © Francis Ware), as seen in Wouldn't It Be Nice recently at Somerset House.

The Goblin Spider

2009-01-14T16:00:00.001-08:00

An exquisite, one-eyed goblin character from The Goblin Spider, a Japanese fairy tale of 1899, printed from woodblock with characteristic colour gradient backgrounds. The translated version by Lafcadio Hearn. See the complete book at the New York Public Library's site.

Mary Ellen Bute

2009-01-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

Mary Ellen Bute's Dada (1936).

I forgot about Steven Wright

2009-01-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

'I went to the hardware store and I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house.'

White Goods

2009-01-09T15:26:00.001-08:00

Karin Ruggaber's Relief 67 (2008). Materials: plaster and pigment. Via Greengrassi.

Tightly-fitting network of catametric elements (1961–62). School: Ulm. Student: Klaus Schmitt. Tutor: Tomás Maldonado. Via Ulm Archive.

Eduardo Paolozzi's Kardinal Syn (1964). Materials: plaster and twine. Via Tate.

Thomas Houseago's Large Striding Figure (2007). Materials: Tuf-Cal,hemp, iron, graphite and wood. Via David Kordansky.

Cy Twombly's Untitled (1976). Materials: cardboard tubes, cloth, house paint, paper tape.

'Gypsum is a crystalline mineral of hydrated calcium sulphate (chemical formula CaSO4 • 2H2O). Gypsum is colorless or white, is not highly water-soluble and is not at all hard. A mixture of gypsum and water can be poured; the gypsum hardens as the water evaporates. In art gypsum is mainly used in the partly dehydrated form of plaster of Paris (2CaSO4 • H2O) to make casts of objects or works of art in sculpture (moulds). The process entails making a negative form, of a sculpture, for istance, which is then coated with plaster of Paris. Plaster of Paris models of sculpture were widespread in antiquity and the practie was revived in the Renaissance. From the late 17th century plaster of Paris casts were made for art academy study and model collections (plaster cast collections), which were taken up by museums and art historical and other institutes in the 19th century.' Via Kettererkunst.

Tablewear

2008-12-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

Anna and Bernhard Blume (via pablosanz). New to me but found through looking again at the 'file notes' to Camden Arts Centre's early 2008 show Strange Events Permit Themselves the Luxury of Occurring. Sometimes I miss a show I should have seen and this one still haunts. It's such an interesting premise and choice of people. 'A peculiar kind of... Modernism'.

Thinking quite a bit about the figure 'disappearing into the fabric of the building'. Somebody said this revelatory thing at a strange, arid conference in a Holiday Inn and it woke me up. Also abstract movement in, and delineation of, spaces like kitchens and workshops.

Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Linking to the Blumes in its use of domestic but really as a concrete, generic yet claustrophobic space in the way she uses corners, stairs, doorways. And the rhythm struck up by the edit and the beautiful score by Teiji Ito.

Arthur Bispo do Rosário

2008-11-21T02:57:00.000-08:00

Marie O'Connor has sent me this, of an astonishing garment by Arthur Bispo do Rosário. From 1938, in Rio's psychiatric hospital Pedro II, he created a 'minature universe' of works to be presented at Judgement Day. The thread used was unpicked from his inmate uniform.

There is an unintentional visual tally, on the top left of the garment as seen, with the Admiral logo so chunkily applied to c.1975 football kits. Most spectacularly, Coventry City, Wales, Leeds United.

Also reminiscent of Scouting/Guiding 'camp blankets' (via Earth Water Fire Ice), traditionally a record of camping, 'jamboree', hike.

Sally Makes Does

2008-12-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

Created this for Sally's line of bags, dolls, cushions. She sources vintage fabric and the odd mix-clash of late 1950's angular hand-cut geometries, granular textile halftones, salt-and-vinegar blues, bulbous early 1970's flora (...) inspired the vocabulary for the image. A 'kit' of elements to make more compositions continues to grow.

Tree Votive

2008-11-11T15:43:00.001-08:00

Exhibiting this in 'A3', an exhibition happening this weekend at Notting Hill Arts Club, curated by Dan Freeman from the lovely Crystal Vision collective. It's a kind of votive.

Then I happily discovered this Hand of Sabazius today, in the Age of Enlightenment room at the British Museum. It's Roman, from the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The object-symbols of frog, tortoise, pine cone, cymbal, snake are grafted abruptly onto the hand surface. I especially like the talons teetering on the forefingers.