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Thought I’d take you on a typography sightseeing tour of our house. Come this way! This postcard sits on top of a framed London map from 1801, just as you enter the house. I can’t remember where I bought it, but it was somewhere in London, relatively recently. Can you all see alright? It’s a bit of a squeeze here I know.

As we enter the kitchen from the front room, to our right, above the bin, you can see this abc letter bunting (purchased online years ago from the Netherlands I think). I’m not one for positive affirmation posters and the like, so this is my piss-take of one. Makes me feel good everyday.

If we now turn around and face the window above the kitchen sink, we can see this card, purchased in Amsterdam a few years ago. I guess this is more of a positive affirmation type thing actually, but we could also imagine it being said in a stern voice, as in “You, yes, you! Pick up your dirty socks off the floor!” etc etc.

Walking back out into the corridor, on the way out from the kitchen, we can walk up to this ampersand postcard just before the stairs. It was bought in Labour & Wait a while back. It rests on an amazing painting by my father in law, of a room he used as a studio in the house that Mr Famapa grew up in. Maybe we should come back one day with a tour of his art that we have hanging in the house? What do you think?

Right, so as we come up the stairs and double back on ourselves we arrive at Oomoo’s room. When I saw this O poster on PLTY’s webshop around the time we moved into this house, I knew it would be perfect for his room - for obvious reasons.

On the opposite wall to where we are standing now, we can see this Fine Little Day poster above Oomoo’s bed that I won in a competition on Elisabeth’s (founder of Fine Little Day) old blog, when the Oomster was just a baby. So handy to have the Swedish alphabet on display, even though after 10 years the little man still mixes up his Å,Ä and Ö <3

Right, Let’s all walk into the master bedroom of the house next. This linocut, hanging up together with lots of other pictures and posters above our bed, was a made by a very talented friend of ours, who’s one of those people that I want to shake into becoming an artist full time - don’t most of us have a person like that in our lives? Anyway, this miss-spelling and miss-pronunciation is how Oomoo said “Phew” when he was younger, and is how we as a family now always say “Phew”. Phewf.

And lastly, on our way back out, before we leave, we can see this poster, also purchased in Amsterdam. I’d seen this years before in the V&A gift shop, but didn’t buy it. However, in the Airb’n’b we stayed in, on that particular Amsterdam trip, this print was hanging on the wall in their staircase, and we bought it as a memory from that trip (now also hanging in our staircase), as well as realising how true it is for us, as everyday is a O HAPPY DAY with Oomoo in our lives. Hope you enjoyed this little sightseeing tour. I plan to make more of them - hope you’ll join me? Right then, close the door on the way out. Bye bye now!

Strange priorities

A couple of weeks ago, when you could sense the approaching lockdown in the air, I made my way to the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy. I knew that it might be the last chance to see it (and the gallery did close the day after I went), as who knows what exhibitions will still be parked in the same place after the lockdown lifts. I’m not a huge fan of Picasso; I don’t mind his art per se, and I do realise how talented he was and why he is one of the greats, but the guy was an A-HOLE in his private life and caused a lot of people nearest to him a lot of pain, to say the least.

Anyway, you can’t deny that the man was an extraordinary artist. I had only heard great things about this particular exhibition that showed work spanning his whole career that was linked to his use of paper (sometimes a bit tenuously). I especially liked his drypoint etchings. There’s something about the simplicity of the delicate lines that really speaks to me.

Picasso did these little paper cut outs when he was eight or nine years old. Just amazing!

He also looked a bit like Prince in his blue period, don’t you think?

This dry point - gaaah. I should’ve just picked this off the wall and walked off with it. But then I guess I would be in prison now.

It wasn’t that busy in the gallery, as most people had stopped travelling into the centre of London by this time, and the over 70’s had been told to self-isolate. Seeing these two, in their matching outfits, still out, prioritising a last dose of art before keeping safe, cheered me up no end.

This cut-out was only visible if you held it up to the light, and so it was lit up from behind so you could see the hidden artwork inside.

This drawing of Jean Cocteau, Olga (his first wife), Eric Satie and Clive Bell was my fave. My favourite paintings and drawings seem to be of interiors or people just doing normal things, like a snapshot, if you know what I mean. A snapshot as a photograph is not really a surprise, but to see how much time and effort someone has put into painting or a drawing of a fairly mundane scene is pretty special.

Picasso made the costume design for Jean Cocteau’s 1917 ballet ‘Parade’ (which Eric Satie made the music for - I mean, just wow!), and this is one of them. Love the colours.

A paper collage of a guitar - again in a pretty tasty colour palette.

These heads/skulls were torn out of paper.

And this huge collage was made of left over wallpaper scraps.

I loooooove woodcuts (and linocuts), and this is such an amazing example. I’d love to have the actual woodcut up on the wall, in fact in my next life I’d like to come back as a woodcut/linocut artist please. I’m not patient or skilled well enough with my hands to be one in this one :)

Hello naked lady! This would be a really good lockdown thing to do; cut shapes out of cardboard and then make something like this out of them. But we’ve stopped buying stuff now, so there is no packaging for us to use. I’m not complaining! It’s actually really liberating to no longer be a consumer - but I digress.

They showed such a cool film at the exhibition too, ‘Le mystére Picasso’ by Henri-Georges Clouzout from 1956, which you can rent or buy on YouTube, which I’m definitely going to do asap.

In the clip I watched, they showed how Picasso made this piece of art, ‘Visage: The head of a faun’, and it’s fascinating. To see how he keeps changing it, but also how he searches the paper with his eye and then makes his marks with such conviction is kind of breathtaking. You can watch that same clip here.

There are so many great cultural and arty things to get involved with, or listen to/watch on online at the moment - and this link list from The Modern House journal has some interesting suggestions.

Last week's art outing

Last week I went to see the Léon Spilliaert exhibition at the Royal Academy, and rather brilliant it was too. He was a Belgian artist who lived and painted at the turn of the 20th century, who unfortunately suffered from insomnia, and so would wander the streets of Ostend at night when he couldn’t sleep. Many of his artworks reflect the eery night, and I love his unconventional framin and the unfamiliar dark and empty street and seascapes. There’s something about the art from this period that feels so modern and appealing, and it’s amazing how contemporary they feel even now - over a hundred years later. I’m so grateful to the curator at the RA, as I also saw amazing exhibitions there last year by two unknown to me European artists from roughly the same period; the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, and Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (who’s exhibition I went to three times - a record for me!). I promise I’ll post my pictures from those soon. This Spillieart exhibition also travels on to Musée d’Orsay later this spring, if you can’t make it to the Royal Academy before the 25th of May.

Colour fix ** might cause migraines **

Firstly I want to say thank you to those of you who took the time to comment on my previous post! It’s so nice to know who you are, and that the blog is still something that you enjoy - I sure do; posting here and reading other blogs is such a nice way to have a little break from the everyday. So, without further ado, here’s today’s post.

Back in January I went down to the Hayward Gallery to see the Bridget Riley exhibition before it ended. Even though I’ve been to an exhibition of hers before, it’s always nice to be able to revisit an artist’s work, as there’ll always be stuff that one hasn’t seen before, and over the years you appreciate different things, as well as maybe see things differently.

I would’ve liked to have brought Mr Famapa with me, but stuff like this triggers off a migraine for him in seconds. It’s crazy to think that someone (Riley or maybe one of her many assistants) painted these squiggly lines by hand. I wonder if they got migraines from it?

This was my favourite section, displaying the sketches before they were made into big paintings.

This “sketch” had little handwritten notes about what colours should go where, which is fascinating, as to the eye it all looks so random. It’s clearly anything but.

These drawings were from her days at art school. It’s mind blowing to see how far an artist can move away from the basics, knowing that they all more or less start from the same point - drawing.

I liked this lady’s colourful jumper, I wonder if she picked it specifically for the day?

This one moved as you walked along it - like waves, of course. I was convinced I’d leave the exhibition with a headache, but I didn’t. Found this old documentary on YouTube, but I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing yet, looks very interesting though, and I do love me an old 70’-80’s doc (especially the slow pace and how un-slick they are!)

P.S. I hope you liked this one Tess ;)