Am I in Heaven .... or Am I in Miami?

Pamela Anderson attending Art Basel Miami Beach last year.

When I was an undergrad at Yale, the graduate drama students (who included Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, and Sigourney Weaver) would blow off steam at the Yale Cabaret performing sketches and singing songs. One particularly funny song titled "Am I in Heaven .... or Am I in Miami?" always comes to mind as I drive in to Miami - where I'll be for the next week as I'm showing at Art Basel Miami Beach. (It was a particular act of brilliance to schedule an art fair just as the weather turns cold up-country.)

For anyone in the vicinity - I'm in Booth D41, but you'll need all the stamina you can muster plus a good map to find me as the fair is truly MASSIVE!

Anyway, I'll try to post from the fair, although I doubt I'll have much time to view too many of the peripherals. But if you don't hear much from me, that's what I'm up to this week.

The Trailblazing Royal Society

Today (30th November) is the start of the Royal Society’s year long celebrations, to mark the 350th anniversary of its founding.

To honour this, an audio slideshow appears on the BBC’s website illustrating a number of seminal moments from the Society’s history. Also launched today is Trailblazing, an interactive timeline tracing the development of the world's oldest science academy from 1660 to the present day.

Both of these websites include visual content drawn from the collections of the Wellcome Library.

For more on the Society’s 350th anniversary, see the dedicated pages on their website.

Exploring the Invisible

Back in July, we promised we would pass on more details when Exploring the Invisible - a Wellcome Trust funded collaboration between artist Anne Brodie, microbiologist Dr Simon Park and curator Dr Caterina Albano of Artakt – was installed at the Old Operating Theatre, St Thomas Street, London, SE1.

This event is now scheduled for 4th – 8th December, culminating in a live installation, with human photographic projections appearing on the Old Operating Theatre’s ancient operating table.

Using photography lit by bacterial bioluminescence – and drawing on the personal papers of Joseph Lister held in the Wellcome Library - Exploring the Invisible investigates the complex ties between human health and microscopic bacteria. From the project's publicity:

Lister was an early pioneer of the use of antiseptics in surgery and the connection between bacteria and infections, together with the modern application in biomedical research of the bacterial gene responsible for emitting light, made it particularly fitting that bacteria should help to shed light – quite literally – on Lister’s life and work.

For more details, please see the Old Operating Theatre’s website.

Aesthetica's December - January Issue Out Now

Exploring the creative zeitgeist, Aesthetica editorial is engaging and offers new perspectives on contemporary arts, looking at the art in relation to the social, political and economic.



Issue 32 of Aesthetica explores many of these topics; from the V&A’s major exhibition Decode: Digital Design Sensations looking at how raw code can be used to create art. Also a follow-up on the Lyon Biennale looking at Hou Hanru’s has curated The Spectacle of the Everyday. Barbara Kruger’s retrospective, Paste Up opens in London, which provides a timely reappraisal of her early works and wry social commentary of vast consumerism and the making of identities. Finally, a look the imagination of Tim Burton, a show at MoMA showing over 700 images of the filmmaker’s work, exploring the cross-pollination of art forms.

In film a chat with, Yojiro Takita on his Oscar-winning film Departures, a tender look at the universality of the human condition. The Brothers McLeod share their hints and tips in a practical two-part series providing a step-by-step guide to becoming an animator. As well as a Q&A session with film programmer, Philip Ilson about this year’s London Short Film Festival. In theatre an exclusive preview of I am Yusuf and This Is My Brother, opening at the Young Vic this winter, looks at the personal vs. the political.

While in music, an examination into the creative strategies that bands employ to get ahead today, and a catch up with A.A. Bondy on his new album. And to conclude, a chat with Simon Robson and an extract from the fantastic new book Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray. With all the best exhibitions, productions, music and new releases of the coming months, Aesthetica considers the creative exploration of today’s most exciting artists.

Christmas Gift Subscriptions Are Now Available
http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/shop.htm




Also available, the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual



Championing new talent in the genres of visual arts, photography, poetry and fiction, the Aesthetica Annual is a publication, which will stir your imagination.

Whether you're a budding poet, superb sculptor, storyteller or an arts enthusiast, the Aesthetica Annual provides a platform to gather inspiration and to get those creative juices flowing.

The Aesthetica Annual reflects art's greatest power: to comment, debate and analyse the times in which we live. Inside this collection there are 96 artists and writers that span nationality and age, offering a true insight into the creative zeitgeist of our times.

Item of the Month - November 2009

The journals of Arthur Wellington Clah (1831-1916) – Christian missionary and First Nations hereditary Tsimshian chief – are perhaps one of the more unexpected treasures of the Wellcome Library. Written over fifty years, from 1859 to 1910, they comprise a uniquely personal meditation of social change drawn from the tumult of European imperial adventure.

Clah grew up on an islanded bay on Canada’s northwest coast. Dense forests of cedar and pine massed behind, cut through with rivers that flowed from the glaciers of the mountain interior. These were the heartlands of the Tsimshian people, who had first come into being when the trickster, Raven, stole the light of the world from the Great Chief of the Sky and lifted darkness from the land. They grew rich on the natural wealth of their forests and waterways, and developed astounding artistic and ceremonial traditions. However, by the nineteenth century, this wealth had begun to attract the attention of European traders and in 1831 – the year of Clah’s birth – the Hudson's Bay Company founded a trading station in the bay where Clah came to live. Named Fort Simpson, its arrival transformed the Tsimshian.

The above painting by Frederick Alexcee, a Tsimshian contemporary of Clah, shows Fort Simpson as it was three or four decades after the arrival of the Hudson's Bay Company. Around the Company’s white fort the large wooden houses of the Tsimshian cluster, each decorated with painted fronts and carved totem poles. The majority of Tsimshian tribes had soon moved to Fort Simpson, to take advantage of the trade opportunities close proximity offered. Groups that were scattered now competed for social position. The greatest status was granted to those who could give away or destroy the most goods in public feasts named potlatches, and in the clamour for position increasingly extravagant potlatches came to be held. Victorian observers, shocked by such apparent waste and perturbed by lavish ceremonies involving the manifestation of animal spirits, decided the higher blessings of civilization should be called upon. And so in 1857 a young English missionary named William Duncan arrived, eager to bring the Word of God to the benighted of the world.

Clah became a native language instructor to Duncan and, in turn, Duncan taught Clah to read and write English. Clah was one of the first converts of Duncan’s hugely successful mission, which was to lead to the founding of a separate Tsimshian Christian community in Alaska named Metlakahtla that still exists to this day. Clah took up missionary work himself, preaching to villages deep in the forests of Canada and far north in the Alaskan tundra. Such ventures are recorded in his journals, which take the form of a highly personal history of the Tsimshian people. Everyday observations of the weather and of town life in Fort Simpson and Metlakahtla sit alongside reflections upon his faith and the transformation of the beliefs and practices of the Tsimshian. He writes of the banning of the potlatch and traditional winter ceremonies, and of the interweaving of these customs with the newly adopted Christian religion. Indeed, the old and the new entwine in his words – the light of God carrying the echo of Raven’s wing, the traditional spirit quest robed in the search for salvation – as he seeks to find a place for the Tsimshian in a world unravelled and created anew. [1]

After his death, Clah's journals were purchased by Henry Wellcome, founder of the Wellcome Library. Wellcome had been a committed supporter of Metlakahtla and regarded Clah's journals as something of a protogenic testament to literate cultural progress. What is certain is that, in the words that Clah set down, the great changes the Tsimshian experienced are given powerful and lasting voice.

[1] Susan Neylan, The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003), p.174.

Book Choice --- Laurel and Hardy: From The Forties Forward

Here’s the conundrum. Back when I discovered Laurel and Hardy, there was plenty to watch but little to read. Now there is abundance to read and virtually nothing to watch. Fans middle-aged and past have kept this fire burning as television bailed long ago on the team (and Our Gang, and W.C. Fields, and The Three Stooges, and …). Cable/satellite finds them only at TCM, not often, but isn’t that the fate of increasingly more last century stuff? Pretty soon we’ll all have widescreen sets whose owners won’t tolerate square pictures any more than they did letterboxes. It’s natural enough to want every square inch filled on expensive screens you buy. As for the best of Laurel and Hardy on DVD, I’ll be posting from Saturn before those are available. Just out, however, is a terrific revised and expanded second edition of Scott MacGillivray’s (I bet your name’s misspelled as often as mine, Scott) Laurel and Hardy: From The Forties Forward. The first printing was in 1998. I read that flying home from Los Angeles. It was so good that, had the plane begun plunging earthward, I would have finished the paragraph I was on before uttering final prayers. Author MacGillivray covers distribution, reissues, television release, and exhibition of L&H shorts and features, expanding on his theory that the team’s Fox/MGM wartime features have been unfairly neglected and maligned since the forties. In other words, I think he wrote it for me, even if we’d not corresponded at the time. Those who’ve tolerated Greenbriar for these nearly four years will adore this book. It is what any of us would want to have written given MacGillivray’s level of talent and initiative. Whatever you think you know about Laurel and Hardy, you’ll find many times that in revelations poured forth here. The author has done fine work in the past on Castle Films and Gloria Jean. This one represents his summit.

I’ve posted before on the comedies Laurel and Hardy did for 20th Fox. My problem with these is geographical. I’m just uncomfortable with the Boys off their home lot. Hal Roach was where they began and prospered as a team. Elsewhere the act seems out of place. Streets they walked/ran/chased in Culver City are as essential for me as L&H being there. You get to know that town’s landmarks for repeated use. Laurel and Hardy were as much about a place as times they represented. Books have tracked Roach locations, but few went exploring where Fox pitched cameras for the team. Music too was an essential. Take away Roach generated cues and L&H seem no longer themselves. My first picks collecting 8mm sound were their subjects with wall-to-wall incidental themes --- The Perfect Day, Brats, Hog Wild. Fans watch beyond perpetuity at least in part for music that is, for me at least, forever. Pondering why they declined is partly explained by loss of that accompaniment. This plus undeniable fact of Laurel and Hardy getting older. Hal Roach probably turned the duo loose as much for that as for fact he was moving toward other late 30’s direction. Stan got heavier as he aged. You see it as early as Swiss Miss and Blockheads. Babe’s was no longer the solid (if portly) athletic weight maintained on golf courses. Their increased schedule live touring and (minimum) nine-to-fiving at Fox gave him less time to counter evening cocktails with healthful traverse over the links. What age did to their appearance made Stan and Oliver’s act seem exhausted, but no team possessed such reserves of a public’s good will. Pressure was less during road tours, for merely seeing Laurel and Hardy was thrill a-plenty for customers who’d loved them since the 20’s. Stan wrote a sketch or two they’d perform with little more than a desk and a couple of chairs, knowing perhaps that just being there got the job well enough done. Theatre ads I’ve found for Laurel and Hardy in the forties generally find their Fox/Metro comedies playing second on double bills. Ones shown here represent Chicago first-runs for Air Raid Wardens, The Dancing Masters, and The Bullfighters. In terms of revenue, MGM’s features during this period, Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble, performed well below half of what Abbott and Costello delivered with three they did for that company (for instance, Lost In A Harem earned a worldwide $3.6 million to Nothing But Trouble’s $1.5).

Movies were tougher for L&H because competition was faster and, here’s a key word, bawdier. Abbott and Costello were aggressively co-ed. So was Bob Hope and patter types like him. They brandished (comparative) youth and sex overdrive to constantly remind wartime patrons of what everyone was really fighting for. A&C had transitioned from burlesque stages to filmmaking ones. I’m a Baaad-Boy Lou spoke the language of audiences reading between comic lines for smarmy jokes underlying. Funnymen at war were expected to be girl crazy and ever alert for the score. Bumbling Costello was never so much so as to abandon his wolf whistle. It was wrongest timing for an essentially asexual team like Laurel and Hardy. Not reliant on cheesecake or leg art before, now they were garlanded with it. Fox campaigning sat the team beside ingenues less associated with the films than necessity of skirts upraised and body profiles shifted sideways. Laurel and Hardy were slaves to fashion by other means incomprehensible to present-day fans and DVD purchasers. For us, there’s no accounting for Dante the Magician as billed-above-the-title co-star in A-Haunting We Will Go, his name and image sharing unearned prominence with Laurel and Hardy. Had the studio got round to elevating L&H to an A picture, I’ll bet it would have been in support of players then perceived as more important (Jitterbugs coming a year later might have found them listed below Vivian Blaine). Maybe it’s as well that Laurel and Hardy finished with Hollywood by the mid-forties. Were it possible to change the course of careers sixty-five years hence, I’d have at least put more songs into L&H Fox/MGM comedies, for there’s much dead air in ones we have. And I don’t mean tunes by guest artists. Laurel and Hardy were well up to singing and dancing. That was demonstrated in features for Roach and The Flying Deuces. Music plus the old routines would have easier carried the day, even if it wasn’t beloved Hal Roach themes we were hearing. So where do I come off trying to rewrite increasingly ancient history? Chalk it up to endless fascination of Laurel and Hardy, I suppose. We either love these two or are utterly indifferent to them. Ones among you who’ve stuck out this post should be well rewarded with purchase of Scott MacGillivray’s book. He has exhaustively covered what I’ve merely touched on here. Laurel and Hardy: From The Forties Forward represents the best scholarship I’ve come across about this team.

Enthusiasm

No rain is going to dampen her spirits.

Visiting the Big Trees

It seemed that everyone was behind a camera on this particular trip. It is a lot of fun to share hobbies with your children and photography seems to be a interest for all my kids.


We picnicked, we hiked, and we craned our necks to see the tops of the sequoias.


Here are the bottoms of some sequoias.



Here are some tops.



It is our tradition to take a family photo in this particular part of the forest. Using a tripod, we set up the camera with the timer. We did get some great family shots with the six of us, but I think this one is my favorite shot of all the kids.



Here she is. The grown up girl having a little time with her brother's camera.

At this time of year, the forest is a delightful place to take a hike and spend family time. As my family grows up, I am appreciating more and more the time we all spend together exploring and making memories.

Thanks for the fun day everyone.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Wellcome Library Workshop

This week’s free Wellcome Library workshop is:

Medicine and Literature
Whether you're interested in Love in the Time of Cholera or scaling The Magic Mountain, this workshop will help you explore the relationship between medicine and literature, through the resources of the Wellcome Library.
Tuesday 1 December, 2-3pm

Our programme of free workshops offer short practical sessions to help you discover and make use of the wealth of information available at the Wellcome Library. Book a place from the library website.

Author: Lalita Kaplish

Time Out

Taking a rest from the Parade

Notebooking Pages Reminder

If you didn't already know, NotebookingPages.com has all their products on sale for 35% off until Monday, November 30th.

This might be a good time to pick up those nature study pages you have been thinking about purchasing to have on hand for when the opportunities come up with your children.


I highly recommend the Bird Study Notebook Pages to go along with the Bird Challenges.

If you purchase them during the sale they are $1.92 and you can't beat that price.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Note: Just so you know...I am an affiliate for NotebookingPages.com and if you do purchase any pages using the above links, I receive a small commission. I only recommend products that I have personally reviewed and used for at least six months with my own family.

Soldier

Continuing with the Lord Mayor's Parade.
A soldier waves to the crowd.

Owen Jones and the Ornament of Nineveh and Persia

Illustration: Nineveh and Persian Ornament, from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, (1856).

In his 1856 book entitled The Grammar of Ornament, Owen Jones produced a chapter on the ornamentation of the ancient Assyrians and Persians. The fact that he placed this particular design style at chapter three, sandwiched between that of Egyptian decoration and Greek, says much about where Jones saw these two particular cultures in the grand history of decoration.

Jones made the assumption that Assyrian art and design work was somewhere between a copy and a degeneration of the Egyptian original. The fact that it didn't occur to him that the two styles were independent and bore no real relationship to each other, can be partly explained by an examination of the early days of Victorian archaeology. Information was not as profuse as it is today and it is perhaps understandable that wrong assumptions were drawn in the nineteenth century, as no doubt future generations will be understanding as to our own assumptions and conclusions concerning the ancient history of the Middle East. There was also a certain biblical prejudice against the Assyrians in particular that as Christians the Victorians would have possessed as part of their own cultural makeup. This would have perhaps been reflected within their overall view of Assyria, even if unconsciously.

Illustration: Nineveh and Persian Ornament, from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, (1856).

Jones in some respects purposely sandwiched Assyrian decoration between what he saw, and many of his fellow Victorians fervently believed, as the innovative and individual cultures of Egypt and Greece, both of which produced their own styles of decoration and ornamentation. Placing the derivative style of the Assyrians between the two was perhaps an opportunity to give us a lesson in creativity versus the uninventive. The fact that Jones was fundamentally wrong does not negate the interesting, but unproven chapter listing.

Interestingly Jones also tied ancient Persian decoration and ornament to that of the Assyrians, even though the cultures were separated by time, region and tradition. Because there were certain similarities in decorative motifs and colour does not necessarily tie them to the same cultural root, even though there was some reuse of decorative work between the cultures. Later on in the book, Jones gives Islamic Persian decoration a much higher profile.

Illustration: Nineveh and Persian Ornament, from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, (1856).

The fact that Jones assumed that the Assyrian, and through association Persian, decorative styles were borrowed rather than indigenous and owed nothing to the dynamism of the Assyrian and Persian cultures that we recognise today, is disappointing. In so many other chapters of his book Jones shows a confidence in his belief in the indigenous genesis of many of the cultural styles he highlights, even where there was little or no evidence to prove his point.

To be fair this belief in certain cultures being pale imitations or degenerate offspring of other worthier cultures was rife in the Victorian world and was often seen as a standard and irrefutable truth. Admittedly there are some today who still have the same beliefs, but we are perhaps much more aware today, or should be, that every culture on the planet has a uniqueness and a legitimacy all of its own and while cross-fertilization of cultures is a rich part of the complex patchwork history of humanity, it is only a part of the story and no culture can or should claim domination of identity over another.

Reference links:
The Grammar of Ornament: All 100 Color Plates from the Folio Edition of the Great Victorian Sourcebook of Historic Design (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
The Grammar of Ornament
Grammar of Ornament: A Monumental Work of Art
Ornamental Wall Painting In The Art Of The Assyrian Empire (Cuneiform Monographs)
Monumental Art of the Assyrian Empire: Dynamics of Composition Styles.(Review): An article from: The Journal of the American Oriental Society
The chronology of Neo-Assyrian art,
The Persian Empire
History of the Persian Empire (Phoenix Books)
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire
The Persian Empire From Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I
Splendors of The Persian Empire (Timeless Treasures)
The Luck of Nineveh: In Search of the Lost Assyrian Empire
Royal correspondence of the Assyrian Empire. Translated Into English, With a Transliteration of the Text and a Commentary. Parts I, II, III, IV
Ornamental Wall Painting In The Art Of The Assyrian Empire (Cuneiform Monographs)

A Friday night curry

We are what we eat. This is most obviously true in the physical sense, but also culturally: our diet expresses our society and encodes a wide variety of cultural influences. Not only does our food say who we are now as a society; it also tells us of where we have been, of the history of our society and its encounters with other cultures, other gastronomic spheres, over time.

This is National Curry Week in the United Kingdom, and it would be hard to find a better example of food as a route into social history. The dominance of curry in the British diet – the Roast Beef of Old England is now eclipsed by Chicken Korma as a favourite dish – is of course the result of Britain’s encounters, by trade and then imperialism, with the Indian Subcontinent. As curry was assimilated into the British diet, it was transformed and becomes a cultural hybrid, located somewhere between the two culinary cultures. The delicate flavours that come from using fresh spices are eclipsed when the nearest fresh cumin is several thousand miles away and the cook is working with dried powders or paste: instead, we end up with a thicker, hotter sauce which becomes, at its most extreme, the brick-red paintstripper favoured as a rite of passage by the weekend beer monster.

It can be a surprise to see how early curry recipes begin to appear in domestic recipe books: long before Britain had a formal empire in India and long, long before mass immigration from the Subcontinent. One of the most influential early cookery books, Hannah Glasse’s The art of cookery, made plain and easy (1748), contains recipes for curries and pilaus:

"To make a Currey the India Way"
TAKE two Fowls or Rabbits, cut them into small Pieces, and three or four small Onions, peeled and cut very small, thirty Pepper Corns, and a large Spoonfull of Rice, brown some Coriander Seeds over the Fire in a clean Shovel, and beat them to Powder, take a Tea Spoonful of Salt, and mix all well together with the Meat, put all together in a Sauce-pan or Stew-pan, with a Pint of Water, let it stew softly till the Meat is enough, then put in a Piece of Fresh Butter, about as big as a large Walnut, shake it well together, and when it is smooth and of a fine Thickness dish it up, and send it to Table. If the Sauce be too thick, add a little more Water before it is done, and more Salt if it wants it. You are to observe the Sauce must be pretty thick.

This is no isolated exotic recipe: below it are two recipes for Pellow (pilau). Each ends with a note of hard-won, presumably bitter experience: the first one reads

"You must be sure to take great Care the Rice don't burn to the Pot."


By the nineteenth century, the British love affair with curry is well established. Recipe books in the collection such as MS.7111 contain instructions on how to mix spices to make curry powder. The powder might be applied to a wider variety of meats than we now expect, as we learn from the Johnson family recipe book (MS.3082) compiled during the 18th and early 19th century: on page 148 of this, we read

"A curry may be made of Meat, a Rabbit, Fowl or Lobster, cut in limbs or cucumbers. First [fry?] them a light brown, then put it in the Gravy to stew with the Juice of a Large Lemon, a little Salt and one Onion chopt small when almost finished stir in it nearly a large Spoonful of curry powder … Either dish your Rice up by itself or put it on a Dish & put your Curry in the middle – You may Thicken the Gravy with a few Blanchd Almonds."

It is doubtful whether this would be recognised as curry by anyone east of Suez, but such recipes added variety to the native diet and hinted at the great networks of trade and empire that fanned out from Britain at this time. Within this country, recipes would be exchanged and disseminated. One of the Library's quietly evocative items is a collection of loose recipes collected by a Mrs Turnbull in the mid-19th century (MS.5853): internal evidence suggests that in the 1820s she had been in India, but was now resident back in Surrey. The recipes, for things such as Dhall Bhât (MS.5853/86) or "Colonel R's curry" (MS.5853/91), speak of old India hands swapping recipes and of memories of the Subcontinent kept alive by cookery. It can surely only have been nostalgia that led her to preserve the recipe for a lethal compound to be spread on furniture as a preservative against termites, which has as one of its ingredients "1 quart of the worst Bazar Mustard" (MS.5853/85); unless Surrey has changed beyond all measure in the last 150 years.

The top illustration shows the frontespiece to Hannah Glasse's The art of cookery, made plain and easy, in an edition dating from c.1770. The lower illustration shows a curry powder recipe from MS.7111.

First permanent artwork for London Underground since 1984

Full Circle by Knut Henrik Henriksen (b 1970, Oslo) was unveiled today in King’s Cross St. Pancras Underground Station. This is the first permanent artwork to be installed on the network since Paolozzi’s mosaics at Tottenham Court Road in 1984. Let's face it with the amount of time that we spend underground, these type of aesthetic pleasures do more than enhance the surroundings, but transform spaces.



Full Circle has been created as an integral part of the King’s Cross station upgrade. It references the impressive contemporary architectural setting of the modernised Tube. The size and form of Henriksen’s sculpture is frequently defined by such architectural specificities as the height, depth and materials of a given location. These become starting points for his work and in this case the circular end wall of the concourse tunnel is the origin of his concept. The circle is truncated where it meets the floor, implying a ‘lost’ segment of circle beneath. This segment has been ‘reinstated’, conceptually exhumed by Henriksen, and mounted as an integral architectural feature of the end wall. It is fabricated by the station upgrade contractor from the same material (shot-peened stainless steel) as the wall itself. The effect is of a minimalist relief: a subtle, elegant work in metallic grey.



Henriksen’s practise is underpinned by a preoccupation with and critique of key Modernist principles - form fitting purpose and truth to materials; minimal embellishment.

In the 1930s, London Underground’s Managing Director Frank Pick, fired up by European Modernist ideals, championed a unifying principle of the Tube network, which became known as Total Design. Through this concept such elements as the Roundel, the Tube map, the Johnston typeface, artists’ designs for posters and station designs, exemplified by the work of architect Charles Holden, have combined to become central to London Underground’s world renowned identity. Henriksen’s Full Circle brings this vision up to date, seamlessly becoming part of the Underground’s tunnels and passageways.

The installation at King’s Cross St. Pancras is just one of a number of significant permanent artworks commissioned by Art on the Underground for key stations on the network over the coming years. For example, Daniel Buren will create a dramatic new work for the Tottenham Court Road Tube station, which is undergoing a major upgrade.

Incidentally, I am interested to know what you think about these types of public art projects? Do you think it's worth it? How do we define the value this creates?

For more information about Art on the Underground, please visit www.tfl.gov.uk/art



Image credits
Knut Henrik Henriksen, Full Circle, 2009
King’s Cross St Pancras Underground station
Courtesy the artist and Art on the Underground
Photo: Daisy Hutchison

Proud

As promised the next few days will be pictures of the Lord Mayor's Parade.
Here a glimpse of the traditional finery.

The Attu Basketry of the Aleutian Islands

Illustration: Types of Attu and Atka basketry work.

The Aleutian Islands are the long string of islands that travel in an arc along the bottom of the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. There are a number of communities throughout the archipelago that have been producing basketry for home consumption and outside markets for generations.

Illustration: Attu drawstring basketry design (detail).

All the basketry techniques and styles were unique to each island community; most of the baskets shown in this article derived from the western most island of the Aleutians, and indeed the westernmost point of Alaska, namely the island and community of Attu.

Attu basketry was famous from the nineteenth century onwards, particularly with a number of collectors. In some cases basketry from other islands in the Aleutian chain were mistakenly tagged with the name Attu. It is thought that this was a common mistake rather than a deliberate mislead, as the markets in the mainland US were so far away from the Aleutians that mistakes and mislabelling was common. However, many experts in the US were well aware that Attu basketry skills were probably the best and most authentic in the islands. Whether this had anything to do with the fact that Attu Island was the furthest point from American 'civilization' is an interesting one.

Illustration: Attu basketry construction.

Traditional Attu basketry used wild rye grass that grew everywhere on the islands. Harvesting, which took place in the short Alaskan summer, was not an easy process, as the grass had to be harvested meticulously as not all grass blades were suitable for basketry purposes. The grass was then slowly dried and then had to be separated into grades from coarse to fine. The grass was then dried again until ready to use. By careful harvesting and using a number of different drying techniques, different shades of grass could be used in the basketry process, thus adding an element of pattern and decoration without the need to dye the grass. Interestingly silk and worsted threads were traditionally used as part of the process of decoration, but these materials would have had to have been traded, as the islands had no domestic flocks of sheep, and certainly no direct access to silk.

Illustration: Attu basketry weaving (detail).

Most of the basketry weaving work was produced in the winter when communities were less active and there was more idle time to be filled. Although the basketry for domestic use was usually, if not totally, of a practical nature, those items for export to the US and beyond could take the form of anything from a basket to a cigarette case.

Illustration: Attu basketry cigarette case (detail).

In some respects, Attu basketry was deemed desirable because of its remoteness from the rest of the US, but this on its own would not have been enough to explain its popularity. It was also very well made, the accumulated skill of generations of basketry makers, which made the products that reached the larger external world all the more attractive because of the skill and professional finishing that was involved in this traditional craft.

Illustration: Attu basketry weaving (detail).

All of the images in this article were taken in the first decade of the twentieth century and therefore are probably closer to the uninterrupted traditional lifestyle and craft techniques and skills that made the Attu so attractive to outsiders.

Illustration: Attu basketry construction.

Basketry is still produced throughout the Aleutians. An interesting selection of which can be seen on the Museum of the Aleutians website, along with a number of other museum exhibits. The website can be found here.

There is also a website run by the people of Attu, which gives information on the human and natural history of the island. Their website can be found here.

Further reading links:
Museum of the Aleutians
Attu Island Website
Basketry of the Aleutian Island
Baleen Basketry of the North Alaskan Eskimo
Spruce root basketry of the Alaska Tlingit
Photo Native basketry 1900
Alaska Indian Basketry (Shorey Indian Series)
Alaska Basketry (1917)
American Indian Basketry: Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut Basketry of Alaska: Vol II, No 2, Whole Issue No 6)
Aleut Basketry Collection of the Alaska State Museum (Technical paper number 10. October 1999)
American Indian Basketry (Magazine): Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut Basketry of Alaska. No. 6 (II)
Emmons's notes on Field Museum's collection of Northwest Coast basketry (Fieldiana)
A proposed glossary of spruce root basketry terms (Concepts, technical paper)
Spruce Root Basketry of the Alaska Tling
Sitka spruce roots used in basketry: By A.S. Harris (Concepts, technical paper)
The basketry of the Tlingit (American Museum of Natural History. Memoirs)