Going home

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry in conversation with Charlotte Higgins, Stephen Feeke and Jill Cook  

on  Art in the Ice Age at The British Museum.  

Since the opening of the exhibition, much has been written about what these artefacts reveal about the 'modern' mind and its instinct to make drawings, sculptures, images of many kinds. A member of the audience made an interesting point about another possible purpose of these objects: at the time they were made, man was living in an incredibly hostile environment and perhaps they also represented a way of gaining control over one’s environment. The idea of art as a way of holding on to the world seems like a very plausible one. At a time when man was intensely aware of being at the mercy of predators and natural forces, making images of his direct experiences would have been one way of meeting the world head on.

Brainstorming

My mornings start with a one hour commute into London. I enjoy having this time to reflect both at the start and at the end of what is a long day of drawing at The Prince's Drawing School. I usually read but sometimes I sketch as well. I can't resist scribbling a few lines when I see a curious character sat opposite me or watching the train carriage that was fairly empty when I boarded the train, slowly being crammed full of people as it gets closer to London Bridge. From my comfortable seat I can watch the spectacle of everyday life! 

The Cafe' at Foyles, Tottenham Court Road (2)

Breakfast

Listening to Richard Dawkins interview on BBC Radio 4

The Cafe' at Foyles, Tottenham Court Road

Morceaux Choisis (Paris)

Le weekend (Paris)

Travel Sketchbook from 5 day trip to Paris.

reading / eating crisps

I was very pleased to stumble upon an exceptional survey of Lucian Freud’s drawings while in London last Friday. Spread across two floors, the works on display consist of the most comprehensive survey of works on paper by Lucian Freud (b.1922 – 2011).

Beginning with a drawing made when the artist was only 6 years old and spanning the whole of his career, concluding with an un-proofed etching plate he was working on shortly before his death, the works on display vividly demonstrate Freud’s versatility for mark-making and the centrality of drawing to his art practice.

Freud always prided himself on his drawing, and curator William Feaver believes that the ‘interplay between the works on paper, both drawings and etchings, and the paintings of the past 70 years’ was crucial to his artistic achievement. The curator emphasises that he has aimed ‘to accomplish not so much a retrospective overview as a study of Freud’s development from prodigy onwards.’

The works range from the intimate, including portraits of his mother and father, his children and close friends - among them the painter Francis Bacon - to landscapes and studies of animals. Etchings, watercolours, gouaches and works rendered in chalk, charcoal, pastel, conté, and pen and ink, are to be interspersed with oil paintings, constantly interrelating.

Encompassing more than seven decades, the works in this exhibition have been borrowed from museums, as well as from friends and private collections. Taken as a whole, the selection illuminates an aspect of Freud’s oeuvre that was often overshadowed by his painting, the truth being that to him, drawing was the essence of his practice from first to last.

Lucian Freud: Drawings at Blain Southern continues until 5 April 2012. It coincides with a major retrospective of Freud’s paintings at the National Portrait Gallery, London, curated by Sarah Howgate, which will then travel to Fort Worth, Texas, 2 July – 28 October 2012.

Watch a short film about the exhibition here.

Drawing of me drawing Christine drawing

Just thought it would be funny to put the word ‘drawing’ three times in one sentence.

La Chiesa non si tocca.

Tobias Jones and Richard Lloyd Parry in conversation with philosophy writer Julian Baggini.

Foyles Bookshop, Bristol

In the summer of 2000, Lucie Blackman stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo and disappeared forever. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, has followed the case since Lucie’s disappearance, delving into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime – Joji Obara, described by the judge as ‘unprecedented and extremely evil – and wrote about it in People Who Eat Darkness: Love, Grief and a Journey Into Japan’s Shadows.

Writer on Italy and crime novelist Tobias Jones’s new book is Blood on the Altar, the true-life story of an Italian murderer, Restivo, protected by his family, as well as a doctor with links to organised crime, and a priest who had vices of his own. Restivo’s first crime took over eight years to solve.

This event was part of The Festival of Ideas. For more upcoming events click here.