FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
O, You Pretty Thing: The Wonderful World of Andrew Logan
12.20.2010
09:44 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
I once met the artist, sculptor and jewelry-maker, Andrew Logan at a Divine concert in Edinburgh, circa 1984. He was charming and delightful and showed me a selection of his jewelry designs, including a ring with a tiny book attached. He told me there was nothing written in it yet, and full of youthful enthusiasm, I offered to write him something. I did, but never sent it. A pity, for opportunity only ever comes once.

Andrew’s work mixes Pop Art with Neo-Romanticism, and a pinch of English eccentricity. He is the only living artist with a museum in Europe, of which music maestro Brian Eno said:

‘Andrew’s work doesn’t offer that much to the would-be catalogue mystifier: if you start saying anything too pretentious about it, it sort of laughs in your face. It’s hard to place, because it doesn’t really quite belong anywhere, guilelessly straddling a number of heavily contested boundaries - such as those between art and craft, between art and decoration, between pop and fine, between the profane and sacred. But I don’t think this straddling is some sort of ideological position that Andrew has contrived - it’s just where he happens to find himself when he makes the work he wants to see.’

While the art critic and writer John Russell Taylor said:

‘Logan has achieved something beyond the reach of any other 20th Century British Sculptor, even Henry Moore: he has managed to open his own museum, dedicated entirely to his own work and carried it off with showbiz flair.’

Born in Oxfordshire in 1945, Andrew studied to become an architect at the Oxford School of Architecture, graduating in 1970, he then gave that all up to start a career as an artist, believing:

“Art can be discovered anywhere.”

He mixed with Duggie Fields, and Derek Jarman, and became an influence on Jarman’s early Super 8 films, which documented the social scene around Logan and Jarman’s studios at Butler’s Wharf.

In 1972, he started the now legendary the Alternative Miss World, a creative, free-reign competition, which was more about transformation than beauty. The event was filmed and made Logan rather famous.

But his work as an artist continued, and he was acclaimed for his beautiful and fun jewelry, used by such fashion designers as Zandra Rhodes; while his fabulous sculptures celebrated classic form with whimsy. 

Logan has generally found himself near the front of cultural developments. In 1976 his studios were the setting for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Valentine Ball, at which the Sex Pistols made their debut.

Since then, Logan has exhibited his sculptures and designs across the world - from London to St Petersburg, California to Baltimore.  His lifesize horse sculptures, Pegasus I and Pegasus II were displayed at Heathrow Airport, and his Icarus sculpture hangs in Guy’s Hospital. His jewelry was presented by Emmanuel Ungaro in Paris, and more recently it inspired designs for Commes Des Garcons.

This short documentary from Channel 4’s 1980s series Alter Image gives a delightful introduction to the wonderful world of Andrew Logan. Enjoy.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
12.20.2010
09:44 pm
|
Tea With Duggie Fields
11.06.2010
02:48 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Tea With Duggie Fields is a beautiful and fascinating short film by Federico Fianchini, in which the Genius of Earls Court talks about his life, his art and his influences.

Fields has painted from the age of 11, when his earliest work, an abstract painting, was entered into a local exhibition amid incredulity that a child could paint so brilliantly. With an interest in structure and design, Fields briefly studied architecture, before he attended the Chelsea School of Art, between 1964 and 1968.

In the late sixties, as he established himself as an artist of note, Fields shared a flat with Pink Floyd’s crazy diamond, Syd Barrett. During the 1970s, he developed his brilliant day-glo style that inspired Marc Bolan, Stanley Kubrick, Derek Jarman and David Bowie, who was snapped with William Burroughs wearing Fields’ portrait of Malcolm McDowall.

Fields’ paintings have been variously described as Pop Art, Post Modernist and Minimalist, but in essence, Fields is very much his own art movement, one he termed MAXIMALism - “Minimalism with a plus plus plus.”

Iconic, unique and startlingly original, his work ranges from portraits of Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Monroe, Zandra Rhodes, the artist Andrew Logan, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, to potent images of sexual intercourse, landscapes and his own distinct interpretations of his favored artistic influences (Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian).

Today, the Genius of Earl’s Court continues with his brilliance as painter, digital artist, musician, writer and photographer.
 

 
Bonus clips including Duggie Fields on Syd Barrett plus ‘I Wonder Why’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.06.2010
02:48 pm
|
Derek Jarman: A Film by Steve Carr
11.01.2010
05:36 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Derek Jarman died too soon, and his loss has been immeasurable to world cinema.

I first met Derek in 1989, when he was interviewed about his work, by Richard Jobson, on a BBC lunchtime magazine program. It was a coup to get him, more so as he openly discussed AIDs, and his own HIV status, at a time when large sections of the media were spouting hatred and bigotry against the gay community. At the time, Jarman was in Glasgow for an exhibition he was presenting at the Third Eye Center, the show consisted of homophobic front pages culled from tabloid newspapers, plastered on the walls around a tarred and feathered, barbed-wire cage, inside which, two young men lay naked on a bed. The effect was powerful and moving.

Steve Carr, a film-maker and on-line content editor, has made this excellent new short film about Jarman, and as he exclusively tells Dangerous Minds:

The film was part of a work related project. We were asked to produce something that has or had a huge influence in our own life/lives. Derek Jarman’s work influenced my interest in queer art in the late 80s at a time when Britain was dominated by anti-AIDS rhetoric and a Thatcherite run government. My short film is composed of clips from many of Derek’s films and documentaries, compressed into a 10 minute short about his life and the difficulties people had from finding funds to show their work. Derek, being a film maker and being HIV positive was an example of the prejudice he faced in this right-wing Britain of the time.

 

 
Bonus clip of Jarman’s Super 8 footage after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.01.2010
05:36 pm
|
Derek Jarman films Duggie Fields: Rare Footage
09.30.2010
06:26 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Derek Jarman films artist Duggie Fields at home, in this rare Super-8 footage from 1975.

Jarman was an artist before he started his film career as a production designer on Ken Russell’s masterpiece The Devils. Jarman designed the now legendary, pristine white-tiled city of Loudon for the film. The design was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s description of the interrogation of the possessed nuns, taken from his novel The Devils of Loudon, as like “a rape in a public toilet.”

Working on The Devils proved a turning point for Jarman, as he discovered the medium through which to best express his artistic vision. From 1970 onwards, he experimented with a Super-8 camera, filming his friends in short home-made movies, which later provided him with a visual lexicon for his films.

At Home with artist Duggie Fields (1975) is more in the style of Kenneth Anger, than Russell, for as Jarman once told me:

I learnt how not to make films from Ken Russell; and how to make them from Kenneth Anger

 

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
09.30.2010
06:26 pm
|
Beyond Abbey Road
09.25.2010
09:18 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Abbey Road is pop culture’s most iconic location.  It served as the title and backdrop to The Beatles’ eleventh studio album, and is the site of the world’s best known recording studios.

Scots photographer Iain Macmillan was given ten minutes with George, Paul, Ringo and John, to capture one of the most famous and most imitated album covers ever.  Now, a live webcam, allows Beatle fans and road lovers everywhere the chance to watch that legendary zebra-crossing 24/7.
 
More on Beyond Abbey Road after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
09.25.2010
09:18 am
|
Derek Jarman’s ‘Sebastiane’: When Rocky met Punk
09.22.2010
06:37 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Here is a moment of pop culture history from Derek Jarman’s 1976, Latin romp Sebastiane. Blink and you will miss Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell and Peter Hinwood from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Punk icon Jordan (in stockings and suspenders) as Mammea Morgana, sprawled between Hinwood and the multi-talented artist Duggie Fields.  Also, hovering around in this scene are sculptor, Andrew Logan, dancer and actor, Lindsay Kemp (who taught David Bowie mime), and designer, Christopher Hobbs.

Sebastiane was Jarman’s first film, co-directed with Paul Humfress, and caused considerable outrage with its exquisite scenes of gay love-making, images of an erect penis, and the fact the film’s dialogue was entirely in schoolboy Latin, where the word “Oedipus” was translated as “Motherfucker.”  The music for the film was composed by Brian Eno.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
09.22.2010
06:37 pm
|
Marianne Faithfull: Broken English
10.27.2009
02:59 pm
Topics:
Tags:


The greatest music video ever filmed? Perhaps, perhaps. Marianne Faithfull sings. Derek Jarman directs.

Another warning to the youth of today from the regal statesmen of the counterculture.

Aaaand with that I believe that the Dangerous Minds Stones Quota has officially been broken.

Posted by Jason Louv
|
10.27.2009
02:59 pm
|
Page 3 of 3  < 1 2 3