The Art of Colour: Georgia O’Keeffe

A year in art, music, cinema and literature features and there have been some fascinating, thought-provoking pieces on everything from banned books to cinema in Berlin. For your reading pleasure, we’ve rounded up the best of best; a look back over Culturelle in 2011…

Brits and the Boards: Women in UK Theatre

Alice Stride edits a go-to guide to the brightest and most brilliant women working in British theatre today: an inspiring must-read for any budding theatre-luvvies out there.

The Enigmatic Artists

Plum Woodard takes a look at five of music’s most enigmatic female artists, from rock and pop, soul to blues – and from ceaselessly out there to near on unknown…

The Art of Colour

In considering the works of celebrated artists, the exploration of the expressive use of colour can unveil ardent sensitivity and insight into some of the great masters in history and how they inspire us, even today. Kaiti Vartholomaios looks at the art of colour.

Ten of the Best… Historical Novels

As a fun and engaging way to learn about the past, historical novels offer more than your average ‘airport’ read. Viola Levy noses through ten of the best.

Street Art Now

Spray cans at the ready; SJP takes a look at the progression of street art, key artists and where you can see the best tags, bombs and burners…

Banned Books: The Novels You Weren’t Supposed to Read

Banned by governments, Brogan Driscoll presents an edit of some of the most famous outlawed titles – and a few that might surprise you.

Brushstrokes and Bitch Fits: Women who Changed Art

It’s certainly not that female artists don’t exist – it’s simply that they’re not given the wall space that their male counterparts are. Sandra Smiley considers ten key female figures from the art world…

Magathèque: Volume 20

It’s your final Magathèque and the best ever yet! To conclude two years of short film exploration,  Pippa Rimmer reminds you of some of the best shorts we’ve profiled…

On Location: Greece

It’s been a long time since Greece was one of the globe’s greatest exporters of culture, but that hasn’t stopped international production companies from turning its landscapes into cinematic starlets…Kaiti Vartholomaios explores the Greek cinematic landscape past and present.

Upper Class Reads

The fictional – and not so fictional – adventures of the rich and fabulous have fascinated readers for centuries, and it is hardly surprising, thinks Katie Byrne.

Running in Heels: Jasmine Cullingford – Artistic Director

Alice Revel  takes a peek behind the curtains and meets the lady who makes the on-stage magic happen at one of the UK’s most inspiring, eclectic arts venues.

Meet Diana Athill 

Speaking to Harri Sutherland-Kay , the legendary, award-winning British writer and editor adresses the important themes of writing, political activism, feminism, education, religion and the afterlife.

The Ex Factor Playlist

SJP presents your essential guide to the best break-up tracks of all time. Grab a bar of chocolate, arm yourself with tissues and press play to listen to the Ex Factor…

Work by artist Yolanda Dominguez

A Space to Write

Monique Rubinslooks at how a woman needs time, a means to live and her own space if she is to find form for the muddled – but wonderful – ideas that for too long have been buried somewhere at the back of her brain.

Blogging in Heels: Katy Evans-Bush – Baroque in Hackney

Alice Revel quizzes fascinating books and culture blogger Katy Evans-Bush about her sharp, witty musings on literature and London.

Bitches of the Big Screen

Audiences love them, actresses love playing them, the only question is why don’t we see more of them?! Victoria Todd give you our best Bitches of the Big Screen.

Meet Yolanda Domínguez

Jem McCarron meets the young Spanish artist, whose ground-breaking work investigates and challenges our gender conceptions through new, innovative art forms.

Cinematic Cities: Berlin

Continuing your cinematic journey of Europe, Francesca Robson takes you to a city which has inspired some of the most dedicated depictions on celluloid: Berlin

Beach Reads: The Guilty Pleasures

Unfold your towel, settle into the sunshine and enjoy the dog-eared pages. Alexia Healy chooses some of the best literary junk food for snacking pleasure!

Meet Rose Balston

Fran Harris talks classical treasures, architectural anecdotes and bringing London’s artistic heritage to life with the young, passionate founder of Art History UK.

Five of our Favourites… Northern Soul

Not so familiar with the genre? Plum Woodard takes a look five of top Northern soul tracks that are bound to get you spinning on your heels in no time…

The Magic of Writing: Patricia Duncker

Literary doyenne and idea aficionado Patricia Duncker speaks to Deirdra Eden Keane about love, suicide cults, literature festivals and everything in between…

One of our five Northern Soul picks, Dobie Gray’s Out On The Floor

Lipstick and wine: Here Come the Girls

It is immediately apparent on entering Agnew’s Gallery on London’s Albemarle Street that a woman’s hand is behind the work in front of you; a chandelier of cascading wine glasses hangs from the ceiling. Each glass is stained with lipstick and on a nearby wall is the title, Here Come the Girls. This transformation of a feminised everyday object into something else, with all its ironic and humorous references, appears to be a common feature of the work of British artist Susie MacMurray.

Starting out her professional life as a classical musician (a bassoonist to be precise), MacMurray turned to art in the late 90′s, graduating with an MA in Fine Art from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2001. Since then, her rise up the art ranks has been impressive. She has exhibited in major galleries all over the world and currently has a piece showing at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of its exhibition, The Power of Making.

At her debut solo show in London, The Eyes of the Skin, the whole remit of her work – installation, sculpture and drawing – is represented. There are sketches, pen ink on paper, of hairnets and bandages and sculptures made from balls of Clingfilm or wax and fishhooks. From a distance the works have a strange, mysterious quality; you can’t quite tell what they are or you mistake them for something else; the Clingfilm balls in Feast, for example, look like balls of translucent silk thread. As one gets nearer, the reality reveals itself. This can be confronting, sometimes causing a ripple of shock or disgust or disbelief. Often the object embodies opposites: beautiful and grotesque, extraordinary and mundane.

The choice of material is central to the work. Although MacMurray claims that what she creates is by no means gender-specific, the domestic items she works with and what she transforms them into do, inevitably, make references to gender and sex and directly link her work to certain ideas about femininity. This is particularly overt in A Mixture of Frailties, where inside out rubber gloves have been sewn together and hung from a tailor’s dummy to create a meringue-shaped wedding dress. In this unusual couture creation there are numerous implications regarding the role of women within the patriarchal structure of marriage. The dress is also a fine example of craftsmanship, with the durability of the gloves subtly juxtaposing with the delicacy of the structure. It is not the only time that MacMurray has played with the idea of fashion either: in 2009 she made Widow, a life-sized evening dress from 43kg of dressmaker pins stuck into a black leather skin.

It’s fair to say that MacMurray’s art, with its surrealist and Dada influences, is not always easy to define, sometimes it is difficult to decipher what it is or even what it is made of, yet this is exactly what makes it interesting. Imagine, if you will, Maiden, hanging in a discreet corner of the gallery’s ground floor. At first you barely notice that the framed sheet of cream paper has anything on it, you could walk past without stopping so delicate are the small fishhooks and the strands of fair human hair that are looped through them. On closer inspection, however, the recognition is instant, this ‘maiden’ is the woman as ‘a catch’; this ‘maiden’ is also the woman using her wily female charm, her beautiful locks, to ‘hook’ a man. It’s funny and it’s clever, and it is telling that this small, seemingly simple piece of art can say so much.

Susie MacMurray’s The Eyes of the Skin is on show at Agnew’s Gallery until December 4th. For more information, see the gallery’s website.

A Mixture of Frailties displays the numerous implications regarding women's role within the patriarchal structure of marriage...

The snare drum featured in Answer Me

Winner of the Young Artist award at the Venice Biennale in 2001, Anri Sala has long been pegged as one of the world’s most promising leading contemporary artists. The 37-year-old Albanian originally turned heads back in 1999 with Intervista. This film installation opens with Sala’s discovery of 16mm newsreel footage of his mother giving a speech at a Communist Party conference. The footage has lost its sound so the young artist goes on a mission to decipher what his mother said. Finally, thanks to a lip reader, he is able to show his mother the film with the speech subtitled and she is, for the first time, confronted with her own history, a version of the past she had consciously or subconsciously forgotten.

If the absence of sound propelled Sala’s first work, the presence of sound has been pivotal to a number of his works since, as the artist puts more and more emphasis on the relationship between what we hear and what we see. This exploration certainly lies at the heart of his current exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London: a multi-sensory installation in which musical performances are either the starting point or the potential outcome of each piece of art.

Tucked away in a rabbit warren of dark rooms, three large screens play four films on a loop. Two of these, shown simultaneously in different rooms, pull apart then reconstruct The Clash song Should I Stay or Should I Go. Two more, Answer Me and Long Sorrow, are played alternately on the same screen and feature, respectively, a set of drums and a saxophone. Punctuating the screenings is 3-2-1: a 30-minute live improvised performance by the saxophonist Andre Vida, in which he ‘duets’ with the film Long Sorrow. Confused? You might well be but stick with it because it doesn’t take long to succumb to the cacophony.

The films are beautiful in themselves. Frames are exquisitely composed; some shots are still like paintings, others are rooted in movement and the medium of film. In Long Sorrow, for example, different parts of musician Jemeel Moondoc’s face is held in close up: his forehead wrinkling, his bulging eyes flickering and his lips contorting around the mouthpiece, moving in time with the rhythmical scat of his saxophone. The camera then pans out and we see Moondoc suspended on the window ledge of an 18^th floor apartment in a public housing block. In this instance, as with all the films here, the location forms a visually arresting backdrop. Other locations featured include a derelict, graffiti-covered concert hall in Bordeaux, ruins in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City and an abandoned surveillance station dome in Berlin.

Although the concept of the work may sound rather abstract and serious, it is, in fact, full of humor and light touches. Perhaps this is most evident in Answer Me, which depicts a woman trying to talk to a man who only responds by banging his drums. “Answer me,” she says. He bangs. “It’s over,” she persists. He bangs. In the exhibition’s entrance a snare drum plays along to the inaudible low frequencies of the film, extending the rhythm further into the exhibition space. In a similar play with sound and space, holes have been cut into the Serpentine’s walls, which allow the noises from inside the gallery to merge with the noises from the park outside and vice versa. The holes replicate those of the musical score for the barrel organ featured in the film Tlatelolco Clash.

These connections and overlays between image and sound, what we hear and see and where, multiply in this relatively small art space; for some, it will create a fascinating mix whilst for others it will be an unwelcome assault on the senses. Either way, it is worth seeing (and hearing) with your own eyes (and ears). The rigorous choreography of the screenings and overall effect of the event is impressive, although be prepared to spend at least an hour in the space if you want the full impact.

Anri Sala is showing at the Serpentine Gallery in London until November 20th. For more information, see the Serpentine Gallery website.

Part of Anri Sala’s video installation Le Clash 2010

'Poses' questions the nature of fashion

You can see the original version of this interview on Women’s Views On News.

Yolanda Domínguez is a Spanish artist who investigates and challenges our gender conceptions through art. Born in Madrid in 1977, Domínguez describes herself as a visual artist and performer. She studied Fine Arts and has a Masters in Art and New Technologies and in Concept and Creation. In 2010 she received a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for the Promotion of Spanish Art abroad.

Yolanda also teaches in Spanish women’s institutions and associations, lecturing on “Art as a tool of social transformation” and “Creativity”. She challenges the viewer with her art through “Livings”, explained on her website as “experiences in which the spectators find themselves involved, while they are taking a walk, shopping or going to a restaurant.

Your video entitled ‘Poses’ took an ironic look at the positions in which models are photographed in the name of fashion. How does this ‘fashion obsession’ affect women in Spain?

It’s amazing how many blogs about fashion and trends exist on the Internet, it’s a social phenomenon. The excessive value given to physical appearance coupled with the consumer desire of developed countries is generating a new kind of people who only live for fashion. Wanting to be beautiful and attractive is natural (and necessary for the reproduction of the species!) but is really reaching worrying limits and Spain is no different to other countries.

My ‘Poses’ piece arose precisely from the need to question where the line that separates the healthy from the absurd of this “ideal” world they sell in the magazines lies. Increasingly the models are younger, thinner, with more unhealthy postures. Is this what we want to emulate? Is this art, as some consider in fashion editorials and so acceptable or does it have wider consequences?

“Livings” are a great concept, challenging art that involves the audience. Do the reactions of your audience ever surprise you?

Almost always! It’s wonderful to take your concerns and expose them through this medium and see how others react. I learn so much from the participants. Somehow it’s the viewer who becomes the creator of the work, without them the work is not active and depends on them to take one path or another. If in the project ‘Poses’ nobody cared about the actresses it would have been totally different, valid, but different. I never know what will happen … I just put in the ingredients and leave the rest to the viewer.

What are your formative influences, what prompted this particular focus for your work?

I began my studies at the University of Fine Arts but soon I looked for more contemporary mediums. I love painting but I think it had its moment and now no longer serves to make art. Art is directly linked to its time and ways to communicate today have changed, it will inevitably be reflected in art. Art is communication, feelings or emotions, but communication, there are posts and receivers so the language has to adapt to the times. Classical artistic languages: painting, sculpture etc. now only have an aesthetic function, without content.

Today I especially like the work of artists who not only have an aesthetic purpose but provide something to the viewer, which serves as a stimulus. Such as Santiago Sierra, Alicia Framis, Marina Abramovic and Maurizio Cattelan (I love irony and humor as a vehicle to discuss critical issues). In order to reach people I decided to do my work on the street or insert them into everyday life and language.

One of those new communication forms is of course the Internet and you created a blog under the pseudonym of Katy Salinas, documenting her obsession with staying beautiful no matter what the cost. How do you feel about this work in light of the recent anger generated by other ‘fake’ blogging characters, such as ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’?

Today the line between reality and fiction is virtually invisible in all areas and tends to fade more and more: what we see on TV, magazines, what we read, what we buy…how much is truth and how much illusion or manipulation?

Yolanda posing as blogger Katy Salinas

Art has always been a fiction that aims to reality. Film, theatre, painting … all always sought to be as real as possible to make the viewer feel more. Now the art is trying to sneak into reality through many strategies, such as street art and theatre set in private homes. It’s an area that has yet to be explored and is going to generate many questions, but it is unstoppable.

Does the end justify the media? That’s something each artist has to consider according to their ethics and of course with full responsibility for what they produce. That debate will undoubtedly be much discussed in the coming years.

Would you call yourself a feminist?

Sure, feminism is an ideology that advocates equal rights for men and women, everyone should be feminist. But my work has no feminist intention and arises only from the interest to know myself, to think about what happens to me and my worries as a human being and, of course, as a woman! I raise these questions and thoughts out loud through my work so I can share with others who are involved and see it.

You believe that art can be used as a tool for social transformation, how do you see this working in practice?

Art does not change things but it changes people and people change the world. In that sense art itself is involved in building the world around us. Anything we launch into the world (pictures, words or actions) are issuing messages and have consequences. Every time I create a piece of work I receive numerous emails from people who have formed some conclusion about what it means, what issues it raises and that is incredible. “Ever since I saw ‘Poses’ I do not see women’s magazines in the same way” …this is to change the world.

One of your stated goals is to challenge the established attitudes of women. What are these attitudes and who do you feel presents the greater challenge when it comes to change?

I think it is the job of each and every person to see what they can do to contribute to change. Many women talk about “patriarchy” and what is “imposed on us” and believe it is men who have to change whilst maintaining attitudes that don’t benefit or help that change.

Gender roles are not independent and must be modified in both directions. This added to the social changes (legal, cultural, ideological) will enable a movement. Everything counts.

For more information on Yolanda, see her website.

Women’s Views On News is the women’s daily online news and current affairs service, operating on a ‘not for profit’ basis. The site provides up to date news on all the major national and international stories of the day, in much the same way as any newspaper or online news service, but the stories featured are always about women.

Yolanda’s 2011 work Poses

Image by Danziger: Dzidza, Srebrenica

In the vast, high-ceilinged space of the Salle d’exposition, Quai Antoine Ier, 120 photographs hang against stark white walls. The images depict women in times of peace and war. The subjects are from different places – Columbia, Afghanistan, India, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia – they are at different stages of their lives and they are facing different problems yet all are linked by their innate sense of humanity and their struggle for survival.

Given the subject matter, the work of photographer Nick Danziger in the exhibition Guerre et Paix: Femmes dans le XXIème siècle would be powerful no matter where it was being shown. There is, however, something particularly profound when viewing it in Monaco, with the superyachts bobbing in the port outside. The contrast couldn’t be more appropriate: the world’s most poverty stricken and destitute sitting in the home of the world’s most wealthy and privileged.

The irony of his images hanging in the exclusive Principality is not lost on the acclaimed photographer and he admits that he was a little surprised when the Monegasque authorities agreed to back the show. It is the first exhibition of this nature to be put on in Monaco and its realization has particular resonance for Danziger, who has been resident in the tiny state for the last 16 years. “In the past my images on war have always been deemed not right for Monaco,” he explains, “and it’s been frustrating to have my work shown all over the world but not where I live.”

Geographically, the ground the exhibition covers is extensive yet the themes remain intimate; Danziger has visited a number of these women several times and he has recorded the changes in their lives over a period of years: “I try not to take a photo of someone and walk away. These are women that I have come to know. They are my heroes.”

The different stories weave together to create a patchwork of tragedy and bravery: a bereaved woman searching for husband’s and sons’ remains in Bosnia; a young girl in Cambodia lugging around a pair of weighing scales in a futile attempt to make a living (they broke); Bridget from Zambia, who contracted HIV after sleeping with men to fund her studies; Mariatu from Sierra Leone who had her arms hacked off when she was 13 and who Danziger found years later living in Canada. There are also moments of hope: a classroom of children desperate to answer a question in Uganda, a family in a remote part of Bolivia who are educating their children and improving their quality of life. The captions beside each image reveal each tale, often in the words of the subjects themselves.

First imbued with the spirit of adventure by Hergé’s Tintin, Danziger’s work has seen him travel to the most remote and problematic parts of the world. Documenting the lives of people in these places is the ground most familiar to him. In many ways, exactly where these people come from is not important because their stories are universal. Take, for example, a striking photograph of a tiny boy, perhaps no older than five, posing with a coat hanger that has been wound into the shape of a gun, his camouflage trousers adorned with a little ammo belt fashioned out of plastic bottles. My mind flicks through different conflict afflicted African countries: Rwanda; Sierra Leone; Somalia, the Republic of Congo… It turns out to be Ethiopia. It’s the only image in the show that is not directly about women and Danziger debated whether or not it should be included. It is right that it was, because in that little boy playing at being solider are the roots of so many of the stories of the women being shown around him.

Guerre et Paix: Femmes dans le XXIème siècle is showing until September 30^th

Salle d’exposition, Quai Antoine Ier, Monaco. Free admission.

Mariatu by Nick Danziger in Sierra Leone, 2001: "I begged them not to cut off my hands. I said: 'Kill me instead'. I was 13 years old."

Detail of The Three Glorious Enigmas of Gala

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art’s latest blockbuster exhibition brings works by Salvador Dalí housed in the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation in Figueres, Spain to the Russian capital. Organised as part of the Year of Spain in Russia cultural exchange, the exhibition takes Dalí’s Russian muse, and later wife, Gala as its central theme, showcasing some of Dalí’s most important works inspired by her. Dalí met Gala, born Elena Diakonova, in the Russian city of Kazan, in 1929 – the same year that Un Chien Andalou, a film Dalí co-produced with Spanish director Luis Buñuel gave the young artist his first taste of success.

Gala was married to artist Paul Eluard before meeting Dalí, but the pair moved in together in 1929. They later married twice, in a civil ceremony in 1934, and a Catholic one in 1958. Among the photographs displayed in the Pushkin Museum’s current exhibition is one of their second wedding, for which Gala (who had also married Eluard in a Catholic ceremony), had to get a dispensation from the Pope. Gala’s continuing ability to inspire the artist is reflected in the variety of images of her produced from Dalí’s early career until her death. Some of the more memorable images of her in the exhibition include ‘Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops in Equilibrium upon Her Shoulder’ from 1934 and ‘The Three Glorious Enigmas of Gala’, painted in the year of her death. Gala was a source of inspiration to Dalí throughout his career, despite her affairs with numerous people including her ex-husband Eluard, as well as with other artists. Gala passed away in 1982, and shortly afterwards Dali stopped painting, her death marking the end of his career.

The exhibition can be split into roughly three sections – paintings, illustrations and photographs. While Gala dominates the paintings, the illustrations include an impressive series made to accompany ‘The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha’. The collection of photographs reflects Dali’s fame and reputation during his lifetime as much for being an eccentric as an artist. The collection features earlier shots of the artist with Federico Garcia Lorca – artist and muse together – and a few dating from the Dalí’s time in Hollywood. Escaping the war in Europe, Dalí and Gala spent much of the 1940′s in Hollywood and photographs at the Pushkin exhibition include those of Dalí on set – painting, and with Hollywood film stars Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

Unfortunately a few organisational issues let the exhibition down. If you don’t have at least a reading knowledge of Russian, getting an audio-guide, which are available in English, French and German as well as Russian, is pretty much essential, as none of the paintings have English labels. Also be prepared to wait – on the Sunday morning of opening weekend, queues were running at two hours, with no option to book a specific time slot.

The exhibition runs until 13 October, 2011.

Photographs of Salvador Dalí with Hollywood film stars Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman during the golden era of cinema...

Rose Balston, founder of Art History UK

Standing in St Stephen Walbrook church, nestled behind Bank station and staring up at London’s first classical dome, I was intently listening to the ebullient Rose Balston, founder of Art History UK, tell me about the church’s architectural importance. Outside, Tuesday afternoon Londoners battled with their rain coats and free newspapers unaware that they were hurrying past an art gem.

Rose explained that the 1666 Great Fire “burnt the Square Mile to a crisp, making sixty five thousand people homeless and destroying 85 churches.” Sir Christopher Wren re-built 51 churches, most significantly St Paul’s Cathedral, to publicise Anglicanism. His dome at St Stephen Walbrook was a pre-cursor to the St Paul’s dome that continues to dominate the capital’s skyline.

Rose tells me: “St Stephen’s always surprises people and often knocks their socks off. It’s a very, very clever church”. She has been coming to St Stephen’s since she read the tale of “Lord Burlington met sculptor Antonio Canova while travelling around Italy looking at all the Palladian churches. Canova told him that he was wasting his time in Italy and that he should get straight back to London to see St Stephen’s. Back he went and went straight to the church and woke the nightwatchman to see it by candlelight.  I did rather the same after reading the anecdote – not by candlelight obviously!”

Rose Balston is herself a marvel in the, too often fusty, world of art history. She is 28, sparkles with wit and cites Charles II and DiegoVelazquez as two of her “ideal dinner party men”. Realising “how wonderful it was to be surrounded by beautiful things,” Rose studied History of Art at the University of Edinburgh (at the time that every other single, young lady was trying to enroll in History of Art at another university due to the presence of a certain Prince). After graduating, she headed to Spain, for six months, on the trail of Velazquez to learn more about the Spanish Baroque period.

Rose has spent the last four years, leading very small group tours around the art treasures of Italy; living out of a suitcase and camping on friends’ sofas when back in the UK. She particularly prizes Naples for the “authenticity” of its art, its “incredible food” – “never underestimate the power of a Neapolitan Tomato!” – and the “joie de vivre” that living in the shadow of Vesuvius seems to give the Neapolitans.

This year, she decided to recreate at home, in London, what she had been doing in Italy and set up Art History UK – focusing on intimate numbers, making the tours discussion-based and ensuring that all the teaching happens on site so that “people can have a physical relationship” with the subject. Her first audience was eight of her boyfriend’s mother’s friends, and the popularity of her tours grew from there, to the extent that, in the busy Spring and Autumn seasons, she is running two or three set tours a week in addition to private, tailor-made experiences. She explores themes as diverse as Georgian London, the architecture of Greenwich and the history of the Wren church that we were standing in.

A detail of the intricate classical ceiling of St. Stephen Wallbrook church; the precursor to Christopher Wren's St. Paul's

If you can’t make an Art History UK Tour, where would Rose recommend visiting in London?

The Foundling Museum

“This is one of the most underestimated museums in London. Founded after an extraordinary 17 years of petitioning for a charter in 1741 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram, the Founding Hospital was once a home, school and haven for abandoned children. Now the museum is a memorial to the thousands of children saved, as well as to the great sponsors and patrons of the time that included George Frederick Handel and William Hogarth.”

Leighton House Museum

“Frederick, Lord Leighton was one of the most influential artists and patrons of the 19^th century and an exponent of the ‘Aesthetic Movement’.  His opulent and luxurious house near Holland Park is a piece of art in its own right.  It vibrates with decoration, including an indoor fountain, a sensuous Arab Hall, and staggering Damescene tiles.  The house embodies the Victorian ideals of aesthetics: ‘art for art’s sake’. Having recently undergone a meticulous restoration it now shines out in all its former glory.”

The Soane Museum

“The Regency architect John Soane was a deeply introspective and somewhat neurotic character. Soane spent his career unravelling a new and extraordinary type of classicism, very personal and unique.  His own private house is the greatest exponent of this style, that at times seems creepy, melancholic and shocking as well as architecturally groundbreaking. Happily for us, as well as the fabric,  he left his entire (and vast) collection of paintings and artefacts for public display in his bizarre house. Nobody interested in interior design should miss this living museum.”

A small selection of the eclectic treasures and artistic artefacts on display at the astounding Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields

An image of Daryl Hannah by Newton

Walking into the space that is the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, one is greeted by five Amazonian women, completely naked except for the perfect pair of stilettos. Newton’s iconic Big Nudes sets the tone for a lot of his work: the female form in all its glory, in stances that are by no means flattering, nor feminine.

The Polaroids exhibit offers a a unique insight into this aspect of Newton’s oeuvre. His book, Pola Woman (1992) was the first semblance of his collection of polaroids, a medium which he used intensively. Newton’s need to know how certain shots would look, combined with his use of the polaroid as a idea sketch of composition and lighting, means that the collection on display in Berlin is merely, if you pardon the pun, a snapshot of the aggregate. A second book of polaroids has been released to coincide with the exhibit, demonstrating that these one-of-a-kind test shots are just as thrilling and beautiful as the end product.

Over 300 images have been chosen for the exhibition, with images dating from the 1970s all the way through to some of his final shots taken in the early 2000s. From exotic locations to famous faces and recurring assignments for names like Thierry Mugler and Yves Saint Laurent, the exhibition is a display not only of the artistic mind of Newton, but also of his jet-set lifestyle.

Many shots are taken in St. Tropez, where Newton and his wife had property. For example, the series of instants for US Vogue. It’s 1976 and Helmut is shooting in what looks to be the peak of summer. In true Newton style, tanned, pert breasts are in seemingly-endless supply and after a while, they all look the same regardless of who they belong to. Obligatory stiletto heels and a crocheted white top round out the ‘outfit’.

Moving from the 70s to the 80s, it seems Newton’s flesh-fetish gives way to a slightly more clothed look. One polaroid from 1985 has the world ‘Mungo’ scrawled under it, and is a perfect example of a Helmut Newton image. From the too-tight flesh-coloured swim suit, which digs in to the model’s skin, to her perfectly painted red lips and the aged tyre she leans against; even in polaroid form, Newton succeeds at his job – it makes you look twice, and then again.

Amazonian starlet, Daryl Hannah in a bikini, dripping in jewels, screaming baby at her feet. The shot, taken for US Vogue in 1984, is perfect. Seeing its blue-print polaroid twin is a magic moment, where the spontaneity and human element of the image shines through. The colours are accentuated, the looks of the models relaxed. It’s like being let in on secret, or allowed to watch a dress rehearsal. The exhibition is full of moments like these, and makes it well worth a visit.

The Helmut Newton Polaroids exhibition runs until November 20th 2011. For more information, see the Helmut Newton Foundation website.

Mungo (1985) and a shot for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris (1991). Images care of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin.

One of Tadic's otherworldly creatures...

Down a tiny alley in the harbour town of Starigrad, Croatia, there is an odd little gallery. You wouldn’t find it if you didn’t know it was there. But if you’re in on the secret, you’re in for a treat. Perched around the tiny, one-room Fantazam Gallery are the most surprising and creative works of art – the creatures of Zoran Tadic.

Created from seemingly obscure items Tadic finds on island walks, his figures come alive from beginnings as innocuous as burnt wood, feathers and fur (although he assures us no animals are killed for his art). Tadic also incorporates materials like beetle wings, teeth, bone, crab shells, insect legs and horns. The result each time is a unique animal with its own story, name and identity.

“It’s like getting to know a person,” Tadic tells visitors. “When you and I meet, we don’t know each other, but we get to know each other,” he says, explaining it is the same with his figures. His process begins with one piece – a piece of anything – which inspires the work and then, bit by bit, he builds.

“In 2001 I created my first sculptural pieces,” Tadic explains. “I am constantly in search of organic materials for my creations, making long walks along the coast of Dalmatian islands to find natural objects that inspire me. From my point of view, the material creates the beast. My entire range of materials is found naturally, collected on the beach, in attics, and from pub kitchens where I learnt the anatomy of fish heads. I take no living materials. In time, I started being gifted with raw material from all around the world – from friends and people who since entering my “World of Fantazam” stayed in touch with me.” The finished products range from cute to creepy but all are eerily lifelike.

A common theme of evolution runs through them as Tadic “fast forwards a few hundred years” to create animals as he imagines they might become – or even as they could have been hundreds of years ago. For example, the Birdy Num Num, a bird with horns which eats meat. “Science fiction and documentaries about the animal world fuel my imagination and serve as a source for my art,” Tadic writes. “Their style is a melange of prehistoric, futuristic and creatures of science fiction, difficult to anchor in any sense of time.”

 Visitors will also find a werewolf made of salvaged wood and fur, an octopus-like creature and mutantly-large flies and other hairy insects. Arguably the most striking creation sits perched just above eye level in the centre of the white gallery room. With its curled mermaid-like tail (fashioned ingeniously from a ram’s horn) it put me in mind of a majestic sea wizard. Its body is made of bone, netting sits over its black, glassy eyes and it sports dishevelled spikey hair. Tadic tells us this one is called Corporate Canabal, a name intended to express the “new kinds of monsters in the world today”.

Many of the creatures resemble an animal you might have seen, but at the same time are like nothing on Earth. When asked where he gets his ideas, Tadic simply raises his eyes to the sky and shrugs.

For more information, see the Fantazam Gallery website.

A look around the Fantazam Gallery in Hvar…

Gentileschi's Susanna and the Elders

There are few places where women are as underrepresented as they have been in the art world. In Europe, the means of production in art was the exclusive preserve of white men until well into the 20th century, rendering women about as likely to appear in the annals of art history as the Pope at a Rihanna show. Before the last century, a woman who became an artist was normally part of a clan of artists because that was only way she might be trained in a craft otherwise cordoned off to women.

Still, today, the art world is about as well-stocked with women as the audience of a cage-fighting match. It’s certainly not that female artists don’t exist – it’s simply that they’re not given the wall space or the massive commissions that their male counterparts are. Says author and sociologist Sarah Thornton, whose 2008 tome Seven Days in the Art World laid bare the foibles and frivolities of the trade, work by women artists remains rather low profile: in museums and galleries, only about 30 per cent of works are by women, and of the top 100 artists at auction in 2007, but four were of the fairer sex with the highest ranking at a lowly number 49. Though for decades, buyers have been coughing up tens of millions for the Klimts, Renoirs and Warhols, it wasn’t until 2004 that a living woman, Marlene Dumas, commanded seven figures for one of her works.

Some would suggest that the sphere of buying and selling art is particularly inhospitable to women. Like many others, it is an industry run largely by men, and so there’s something of a ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ element to it. “At the top end of the market, the people who can afford to spend a lot are entrepreneurial men,” says Thornton, “And they buy entrepreneurial artists – Warhol, Hirst, Koons – artists they perhaps identify with.” Others would even argue that it’s permeated by an outright antipathy to women – and even more deplorable, women who have chosen to be mothers. It’s a vitriol that was famously expressed by the writer Cyril Connolly: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” This sad, sarky soundbite was pulled from 1938’s Enemies of Promise, a bitter nugget on the attainment of the male creative perfection – and, as part of a delicious irony, is now Connolly’s claim to fame.

Indeed, those women who have made it into the Uffizi and been celebrated at exclusive cocktail parties are few, and are tokenised for their being female. Kahlo is more recognisable than Kandinsky, in all of name, art, and unruly eyebrow – and very scant is the new and emerging female artist who has Saatchi and the like convinced of the light-bearing properties of her derriere. It seems to further minimise their talents, then, to speak of these ten women having ‘changed art’ in light (or in spite) of their being female. They have little to nothing in common in terms of their historical contexts or crafts – all that unites them is their sex and their having done something broadly understandable as ‘art’. But despite the author’s reservations, here are ten artists who have made their mark on the art world, united here if for no other reason, so as to recognise and remind ourselves of their talents and achievements – again.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652)

Gentileschi was a most important painter in Early Modern Europe by dint of the excellence and originality of her work. Though marginalised in earlier art historical accounts of the period, Artemisia has been reassessed in recent years, particularly by feminist art historians, who have discerned a specifically ‘female’ feeling to her oeuvre. Having met with the kind of adversity Gentileschi was alleged to have been – extradition from the artistic community and sexual assault by your prof – you’d think the dominant ‘feeling’ of an artist’s work would be ‘pissed off’…

A floral still life work by Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch (1664 – 1750)

Her signature subject flowers, her style bright on black, Ruysch’s work could easily – from a distance – be confused with a kitsch velvet painting. That’s because she’s one of the greatest of all Dutch Realist artists, and has inspired legions with her unique style and subject. Ruysch specialised in still life painting, and with her lively and highly effective chiaroscuro effects, commanded some of the highest prices for flower paintings in Holland. Best of luck finding her stuff at a jumble sale – her pieces have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars

Angelica Kauffmann (1741 –1807)

Consider Kauffmann the Ikea of the Neoclassical era. Kauffman was one of the few artists whose stunning works were used to make ‘mechanical paintings’ – a process of colour reproduction invented in the late 18^th century for use in decorative schemes. Although Kauffman’s designs were widely used on walls, ceilings, porcelain and furniture, most of them were actually copied or reproduced by others or simply based on her style. Even so, the usefulness of her attractive neo-classical figures as decorative motifs sealed the deal on the popularity of the Kauffman ‘brand’.

Georgia O‘Keeffe (1887 –1986)

Though she is best known for her abstract works, there is much breadth to the O’Keeffe oeuvre. Her depictions of New York’s buildings have been recognised as among the most compelling of any paintings of the modern city; and because of her work painting Mexico’s people and places, the American Southwest become known as “O’Keeffe Country.” O’Keeffe took a wide array of subjects for her paintings, despite having become renowned for her large-sized and, some said, ‘labial’ paintings of blossoms.

Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)

Kahlo is perhaps best known for her self-portraits (and of course, that by Salma Hayek in the 2002 arthouse flick Frida). Kahlo has become something of a cult icon in the 60 years following hear death, and art critics around the world commend Kahlo for her eccentric style and scintillating visuals. Dig a bit deeper, some say, and you find within her works an incendiary subtext, questioning power relationships between first and not-so-first worlds, negotiating the role of women within a machist society, or attempting to bring together the East and West.

Eva Hesse (1936 – 1970)

A Germano-American sculptor, Hesse became known for her pathbreaking work with materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics and the anti-form trend in plastic arts. In short, Hesse was an artist much more interested in toying with shape and dimension than any fixed conventions, and during her short life, Hesse was one of a few artists to lead the move from Minimalism – if you can fathom it – to Postminimalism.

A post-minimalist sculpture by Eva Hesse

Marina Abramovic (1946-)

Abramovic is a New York-based Serbian performance artist. Her career, comprising approximately fifty works spanning over four decades has been one of unmatched – well, anything. Her sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances give the impression of an artist who is a fearless changemaker — a feeling to which anybody who’s ever had that naked dream can relate. Using her own body as a vehicle, pushing herself beyond her physical and mental limits, and at times risking her life in the process, Marina creates performances that challenge, shock and move us. Through her and with her, boundaries are crossed, consciousness expanded — and art as we know it is reborn.

Jenny Holzer (1950-)

Ohio-born Holzer is known best for the billboards, buildings and other affectations of modern life that she makes the canvases upon which she creates. LED signs became her most fancied medium – and many followed – though her diverse body of work includes bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, the web, and a Le Mans race car. Holzer’s work makes text, rather than image, the centrepiece of art, often addressing issues of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death.

Tracey Emin (1963-)

A British artist, but not just any. Emin is part of the amalgam known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). Using varied media — well, anything she can get her hands on, really — Tracey Emin has simultaneously disgusted and drawn in audiences with candid, confessional art. Like the rest of the YBAs, Tracey Emin is one of the first ‘celebrity’ artists, having shot to proper, Paris Hilton-style fame to the tune of Charles Saatchi’s organ-grinding – known just as readily for their personal finesse (or folly) than their artistic prowess.