Boris Johnson is keeping his promise of reenacting the hop on hop off buss in London. The new bus, in service from early 2012, is inspired by the much-loved Routemaster and will use the latest green technology. Officials say it will be the most environmentally friendly bus of its kind, equipped with the best hybrid technology. The new bus, reminiscent of the iconic Routemaster, has undergone very extensive design and testing for the last few month, ready for eight initial buses to operate from February this year. Depending on the route and location the rear doors can be opened, ensuring a hop on and hop off service, especially handy for busy commercial streets, such as Oxford or Regents Street.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

So if you happen to visit the Frieze by Underground you will pass her works in the tunnels!

Commissioned by Art Below, this October Eleanor Lindsay-Fynn has taken over the advertising space on Platform 1 of the Bakerloo Line in Regent’s Park Tube to showcase provocative images from her ‘Yellow Face’ project during Frieze Art Fair.

Says Ben Moore of Art Below:

‘We are really excited to work with Eleanor on this project, no one will understand her work more than Frieze goers and if they don’t understand it on their way to Frieze they will definitely understand it on their way back!’

The exhibition will run till the end of October and is backed by Crunch Art Festival and Quintessentially.

For a full set of images click HERE

Do I Really want to be in the World? The ‘Yellow Face’ project turns the view of the art world onto itself and, more specifically, people at Frieze. Inhabiting the images are the instantly recognisable members of the London art world – in one image we see Richard Wentworth, Matthew Collings, Louisa Buck, Sir Norman Rosenthal, Jasper Joffe, and Matthew Slotover (Co-Founder of Frieze) speaking at the debate Art Fairs are about Money not Art, in the Saatchi Gallery. Do I Really want to be in this World? These figures have been painted ‘yellow-faced’ by Eleanor, adding something she feels is missing from a standard photograph. The ‘yellow face’ captures a kind of alienation we all feel at places like art fairs: a sense of just how odd cultural events are. This is not a wake-up call. Rather, ‘Yellow Face’ demonstrates the autopilot we switch on in order to cope with the huge quantity of information forced onto us.

 

 

Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park

 

 

Rebekah Poulain told The Sun that she meant to download an image of her daughter’s penguin painting to a folder on her computer, but “accidentally” uploaded it into a competition run by the Saatchi Gallery. It won a prize.

That’s so easy to do. I once tried to download one of my son’s pictures to my computer, but then — Woops! — he won the Turner Prize!

“It seems it happened because I’m an idiot,” said Rebekah Poulain.

No, Rebekah, it happened because whoever judged the Saatchi prize was wearing a blindfold at the time. Or because the competition was judged by a short-sighted hamster in dark glasses.

I’m sure Leila is a very clever girl. Like most 7-year olds, she likes to paint, and she has painted a very nice penguin. But that’s all it is — a typical child’s painting of a penguin, which has no particular aesthetic merit that sets it apart from the countless thousands of other paintings of penguins by 7-year olds all over the world.

If you’re seeking evidence of the impoverished aesthetic judgment driving the contemporary art scene, look no further.

Leila’s penguin will now hang in the Saatchi Gallery. As for the judges, hanging’s too good for them.

Dr. Tom Flynn

(Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

Architect Niall McLaughlin told The Architectural Review, that his decision to ‘quote’ the Marbles on the athletes’ block came after “researching the history and significance of the screen in architecture through the writings of Gottfried Semper and Karl Bötticher.”

In the event, the decision to use the Marbles was prompted by “a clandestine conversation with senior curator Ian Jenkins late one night in the British Museum.” Why clandestine?

“The last thing I want is for people to think it is to do with representing the origins of the Olympics,” said MacLaughlin. Okay. Got it.

God forbid that the Parthenon Marbles in London might be permitted to refer in any way to their Greek origins. After all, they are now what McLaughlin himself aptly describes as “deracinated”. (Deracinated, for those without a dictionary to hand, originates from the late 16th century French term ‘déraciner’ — to tear up by the roots.)

The most interesting and ironic aspect of this news is the British Museum’s willingness to make the Marbles available for digital replication for architectural purposes.

As I pointed out in my paper on the Universal Museum, ever since Lord Elgin instructed his goons to tear up the Parthenon frieze by its roots in the early nineteenth century, a central plank of the British Museum’s propaganda has been to efface the architectural history of the Marbles:

“As late as 1928, three leading classical archaeologists, John Beazley, Donald Robertson and Bernard Ashmole, had pronounced the Parthenon Marbles as primarily works of art rather than as architectural elements – ‘Their former decorative function as architectural ornaments, and their present educational use as illustrations of mythical and historical events in ancient Greece, are by comparison accidental and trivial interests.’”
(Quoted in Jenkins, Ian, Archaeologists and Aesthetes, British Museum Press, 1992, p225.)

In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the same Ian Jenkins who approved the translation of the Marbles into MDF replicas and thereafter into pre-cast concrete panels.

Early photographs of the romantically-named ‘Athletes Village Block N15′ (Byron eat your heart out) suggests that their use in Stratford will harmonise perfectly with the British Museum’s philistine display in Bloomsbury, which jumbles the Panathenaic frieze in such a way as to make it utterly meaningless.

The Parthenon Marbles belong in Athens. Send them back.

Dr. Tom Flynn

(Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

London’s Somerset House could not have arranged a more contemporary public exhibition than the one on display since beginning of this week. Ai Weiwei’s work is being honoured as the first ever to go on display in the historic courtyard of the institution. It is also the first major outdoor public sculpture installation by the artist in London. The monumental installation comprises 12 bronze animal heads, re-creations of the traditional Chinese zodiac sculptures which once adorned the fountain of Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

photocredit: Style.com

It seems as if this year’s fall is going to be more colour-and furful than it ever was before. Christopher Bailey has done great work once again and is additionally amending a lot of details, which we also recognized for this spring summer. What I exactly mean with this is immediately showing itself in the colourblocking part as well as the (okay more timeless) black and white combinations. I’m not convinced by the black and white coloured fur jacket and coat since it reminds me of wearing a very fluffly cow or being Cruella De Vil but when I continued clicking myself through Bailey’s winterwonderland 11/12, I started loving each piece more and more.
He perfectly picked up the pre-fall details like the fury sleeves on knitwear and his absolutely breathtaking coats, which give the outfit its classiness and meanwhile set a statement. Moreover, the MUCH beloved, classic dufflecoat is celebrating its revival in all imaginable forms. From midi-coats in duffle-design to duffle-closures – nothing is to be left out when it comes to this classy coat and its statement details.
Another recognizable detail are the XXLarge sleeves seen on various coats and the short cut cape-jacket (sorry I don’t find any other description for this amazing mixture of cape and jacket in red).
The show, which took place at Kensington gardens was opened and ended by Jourdan Dunn, which I immediately recognized. She seems to be the signature of Bailey’s show and stands for difference, pure beauty and recognition value. I’m simply amazed by her! Another great feature of this show are definitely the featuring music and my absolute favourite is Someone Like You by Adele. I didn’t like her at first but I fell in love with that song not later than the model walked down the runway.
My personal likes are definitely the dark blue double-row coat with its fury collar and the details on the sleeves (worn by Caroline Brasch Nielsen), the brown fur coat combined to the redwine-coloured skinny trousers (worn by Linnea Regnander) and obviously the duffle-jacket in armygreen Cara Delevingne is wearing.

Anna Theresa Winkler for Pulcinella

(Anna Theresa Winkler is an independent fashion blogger and has worked for a major german fashionblog ‘lesmads.de’, while attending fashion shows all over the world. Her attitude to fashion is: “classy, fury & puristic”)

Visit her blog

How time flies just comes up to mind by thinking about New Year’s Eve, which is more close than I have expected. But what makes things even more scary is the fact that I’ve already discovered the pre-fall collection for 2011 again. So what will next year’s fall look like?

Having had a look at Chanel’s collection at first, I must admit that I’m not pretty sure about the whole collection yet. Of course some parts of it are fabulous and classic as we are used to, but I don’t know if I can deal with style.com‘s heading “Paris-Bycance”. Sure, the collection clearly indicates its theme for next year’s fall and therefore also settles its mood, the atmosphere how it will be presented and above all will give an insight how classic can be mixed with oriental details. Maybe I’m still a bit critical because of the fact that I’m not that kind of oriental-clothing type. I guess that is reinforced by my whole appearance of being the light skin – strawberryblonde-type, which already presses the “not-matching” button when it comes to certain oriental-indicating prints or some tones.

In contrast, Hervé Leger impressed me once again with Max Azria’s wonderful, body-accented dresses. Moreover Elie Tahari’s collection seems to get one of my pre-fall’s favourites as well as Temperley London. An absolute favourite is Jason Wu’s combination of the black silk trousers, the classic highheels and the elegant blouse, which has a clean chic-effect on the outfit. The oversized black bow is stressing the silky trousers and lets the model appear in a classic, wanne be karl-lagerfeld light. i like!

Here are all my favourites from the above mentioned designers (the first row of pictures are the fabulous dresses by Max Azria for Hervé Léger, the last two pics on the left are from the Oscar de la Renta collection, the other two are Jason Wu’s).

Anna Theresa Winkler for Pulcinella

(Anna Theresa Winkler is an independent fashion blogger and has worked for a major german fashionblog ‘lesmads.de’, while attending fashion shows all over the world. Her attitude to fashion is: “classy, fury & puristic”)

Visit her blog

Adel Abdessemed, Habibi,
2003, Resin, fiberglass, polystyrene, and airplane engine turbine, 1700cm
© Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York

Opening:
Tuesday 21st September 18:30 – 20:00

Adel Abdessemed: Silent Warriors
Curated by: Ziba Ardalan
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
14 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
United Kingdom

Event details