about his latest book, Fierce Poise, an exciting ride through the 1950’s New York art scene, as well as a fascinating portrait of maverick abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. My Q&A is below:

• Helen and your life crossed paths but you never actually met, a regret, you write in your book about Helen and 1950’s New York. What would you most have liked to say to her, if you had met?

I’d like to tell her how much I enjoy her art. A feeling of life on the wing, momentary sensations. The direct fearless, ecstatic portrayal of our feelings and the world in combination.

• Helen’s father died when she was very young- age 11. You suggest in your fascinating book that his premature death may have been what led Helen to become a serious painter. Please elaborate.

I think art saved her, art was a lifeline. Perhaps her absolutely steadfast devotion to art, and her very unusual seriousness about pursuing a career as an artist which started when she began to emerge from a crisis in adolescence owes something to that, the tenacity with which she overcame the darkness, found that which was beautiful, that which was light, that which offered a feeling of the quiver and excitement of being alive owed something to her father’s death.

• Can you explain Jackson Pollock’s influence on Frankenthaler?

Walking into the exhibition at Betty Parson’s gallery of his big drip paintings, as Helen said, it was a real moment of revelation for Helen because it said, anything is possible. Your imagination can be let loose. You don’t need to inhibit your creativity by making imitations of Picasso. There is another outlet for what you have inside you. You could put it under the word genuineness or fearlessness-some  kind of art that would explode upon the eye, a ferocious, gorgeous immediacy that felt right and true to her.

As Helen said, it was like she suddenly landed in Lisbon and didn’t speak Portuguese but she wanted  desperately to learn the language.

• And why, do you think, Pollock’s death was a release for her?

Although people were horrified and saddened by Pollock’s death, his death opened up the field for a lot of these artists, where this very imposing figure was no longer around. Many artists, not just Helen, tended to make some pretty extraordinary work in the time that followed.  My favorite paintings of Helen’s are almost all of them from after Pollock’s death.

• What are some of your favourites?

In the book I talk about Eden from 1956, Jacob’s Ladder from ’57, Before the Caves ‘58, Mother Goose Melody ‘59. There’s something even more direct and memorable, grand and intimate in these paintings as compared with the paintings she made in the first half of the decade.

No painting (no creative effort of any kind) is good intellectually”- What did Helen mean by this?

If you or I go to a museum, we’re looking at some big 17^th c. painting of a hunt or a religious scene, we might want to read the label next to it, and nod our head, but that’s small change. The real thing is the blast of the thing on the eye where it knocks you back without you even knowing who painted it or what the subject is or theme.

You can’t take your eyes off the horse in the foreground with the white mane. Or the fox snarling while the man with the spear tries to stab it. You can’t believe the bristling fur on the fox’s back. Helen would say, ‘That painting is terrific.’ And her much more bookish friend Sonya Rudikoff would say, ‘No, I want to learn about the politics of the time, the story of the artist.’ That was their dispute. All that stuff that Sonya was interested in was secondary (to Helen).

Her charge was meant to stay and stay, to unfold itself  after repeated viewings and gradual contemplation.” What did Helen’s nephew Clifford Ross mean by that?

The stay and stay – a good work of art is one that you don’t get tired of looking at. A bad work of art is one that you feel like you get it already, you don’t need to see it ever again.

The trick in making something in that Pollock-like spontaneous way is that you’re constantly judging what you’re making, and one of the things you’re assessing is how fresh it is and how enduringly fresh it can remain.

A great poem or a great passage in a novel, these are the things that only increase in mystery the more we know them. Whereas the vast bulk of representations whether in the so-called fine art world or popular culture they’re meant to be consumed in a moment and there’s nothing left of them because we “get it”.

         Can you tell us something surprising about yourself? 

(The American photographer) Diane Arbus was my aunt.

Thank you so much Alex, and for the rest of you, the remainder of my Q&A with Alex can be found here on 26. Enjoy!

October, 2021

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This blockbuster of a show Their Mortal Remains at the Victoria & Albert is a psychedelic, audio-visual journey through time, showing the beginning, middle and end of this highly creative, technically brilliant and extremely private British band.

The successful cult group was catapulted into fame when its 8^th album Dark Side of the Moon came out in 1973. That album remains one of the world’s best sellers, selling over 7,000 copies a week to this day.

They could have joined the audience at one of their own gigs without being recognised, said the late John Peel, referring to the media-shy band members Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the late Richard Wright.

The group excelled at distracting attention from themselves by creating iconic imagery, surreal album covers,

ground-breaking theatrical stage sets, and new technically-produced sounds. Flying pigs, refracting prisms, a businessman on fire, seven hundred empty beds on a Devon beach and several other seminal images are all here. The headphones are a must – the music changes as one moves through the show.

Fans and newbies alike will love the enlightening back story; A stuntman had to be set alight 15 terrifying times on a Warner Bros. back lot to create the cover of Wish You Were Here. The infamous character ‘Teacher’ in The Wall refers to a teacher who used to cane Roger Waters, ex-band member Syd Barrett and long-time creative collaborator Storm Thorgerson when they were in school together. The exhibit includes both a 25-foot tall inflatable teacher and the original cane.

‘Mortal Remains’ ends at the end, with giant video screens on all four walls showing live footage of the group’s last performance “Comfortably Numb” in Hyde Park in 2005.

Next must-see is an 80^th birthday retrospective of Britain’s most celebrated living artist, David Hockney, at Tate Britain which closes this Sunday, May 29th.

Featuring more than 100 works, the show looks back at the Yorkshire man’s early student days in London in the sixties. These slightly gloomy, dark works provide a stark illustrative contrast to what comes next. Hockney bursts through the canvas in California. Sex, sunshine, blue skies and the bohemian lifestyle liberate Hockney and his work.

These formalised, flat pictures – the swimming pool series and portraits of art collectors, writers, artists, people you’d like to meet, are delightful – simple, colourful, witty and provocative.

Then he experiments with a camera, later video and Ipad. Regardless of how successful his later works are, Hockney is always challenging himself, always evolving and regardless of what medium he uses – paint, charcoal photography or video, Hockney is always distinctly himself.

And final stop on this London tour is Howard Hodgkin, a painter who used splashes, dashes, dots and stripes of color to evoke memory and feeling.

Absent Friends at the National Portrait Gallery shows 52 paintings and drawings, tracing the inventive, vibrant visual language Hodgkin developed over a career spanning more than six decades. He was apparently thrilled to be asked to show his portraits at the NGP.  Sadly, he died two weeks before the show opened, aged 84.

I find painting agony, he once said because of the effort required between the feeling and the mark on the canvas that would express that feeling.

Hodgkin painted what he felt and remembered about his friends, not so much the banalities of what they looked like. Memory, emotion and relationships depict Hodgkin’s approach to portraiture.  The last major painting in the show (below) is an abstract self-portrait of the artist listening to music.

This post is also appearing in an edited version in the membership-only travel site Indagare.

May, 2017

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and my second and third courses, very much unaccompanied at Brunswick House. And while I enjoyed Hix’s company a lot, don’t get me wrong, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed my own. I could concentrate on the food and flavours, people watch shamelessly, and when that got boring,  read my book. Normally, I’m so busy talking or listening that I slightly overlook the food (choked on a watermelon seed once from laughing mid-chew, the lung specialist suggested I not multi-task).

Back to Vauxhall, a concrete jungle apart from a few notable spots, one being Damien Hirst’s medicinally-themed Pharmacy 2 restaurant which opened last week. Pharmacy 2 adjoins Hirst’s sublime Newport Street Gallery. The casual restaurant, a  collaboration between Hirst and his long-time buddy Hix, is an edible upper, packed with a kaleidoscope of jellybean-colored pill counters, shelves and stools. Happy-time.

I stumbled upon Hix who was about to blind taste three versions of smoked bacon with a fried egg on top.

Would you like to join?

Let’s be clear, it’s a dish I would normally never order, but when in Rome or Vauxhall …

Good thing, you’re not kosher,

he joked.  Low and behold, it was delicious, especially versions one and two.Three was a bit salty.

 Mark was totally charming, considering that, like my youngest, smiling comes extra. Mark told me that he ended up in the restaurant business, of which he owns seven,  by fluke.

I left school at 16 and didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. I did cookery instead of metal work (the only two options offered). I didn’t do it because I liked cooking. I hated metalwork.

After polishing off bacon and egg number three, I was off to my next course at Brunswick House, an airy, light-filled restaurant that is housed in an old architectural salvage  building where everything is for sale apart from the staff.  I had the most delicious lunch surrounded by chandeliers, gilded mirrors, wooden  elephants, all available for purchase. My lunch companion:

I feasted on Confit Salsify (a root vegetable), Jerusalem Artichoke, Cavolo Nero and Ogleshied Crisp.

And when the fancy crisp was removed, le voila…

Next up, an equally sumptuous dessert of Jellied Rhubarb, Fennel Sorbet (who knew fennel could work as a sorbet?) and Mascarpone.

It was clearly my lucky day as I bumped into the talented and tattooed chef Andrew Clarke on my way out.

Vauxhall may not be on Conde Nast Traveller’s bucket list, but these two restaurants are definitely worth a visit.

 March, 2016

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I know, I know – there’s Masterpiece, Christie’s, Sotheby’s etcetera all vying for your attention. But they aren’t as much fun. There’s nothing quite as refreshing as seeing young talent on the cusp, while also watching them deal with a temperamental cash register, coffee runs, cigarette breaks and finicky customers. They are the opposite of jaded.

First time I went I got myself a trendy purpley-blue jean jacket.

Then I remembered I have kids so I went back and bought them some artist t-shirts and overalls (and myself a pale blue knitted top). And then my daughter wanted to see the pop-up herself so, yes, more damage was done.

Isn’t this dress fetching? It’s long in the back and short in the front – keep em guessing. 

And it can be dressed up to Grandma-approved standards …

Ettedgui, who registered the name Rail when she was 17, came up with the idea of showing vintage work clothes while driving through France looking for linen with her mother.

I found this old work-wear and thought it would work well  with the rest of the collection and the art. It’s the kind of clothes you’d wear in a studio or atelier. 

Resourceful Ettedgui then went on-line and spotted French antique clothing store Bazar des Poilus who has since created a collection of bleu-de-travail serge work-wear for Rail.

The dungarees above have already been snapped up, but there are plenty more jackets and trousers in washed out blues, utilitarian and cool.

Rail also collaborates with other artists.

We pick up people as we go along, a bit like a rolling stone.

Our vision is to curate a space where clothing and art collide and co-exist

First artist they picked up was Oisin Gallagher, a promising student from Edinburgh College of Art whose “Impractical Table”  won this year’s Astaire Art Prize. Rail has also collaborated with top Edinburgh gallerists Richard and Florence Ingleby to show artist David Austen (see below).

Or is it really just…

And these witty illustrations below are by Angelica Hicks.

 See ya there.

June, 2015 

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We three adventurers met at Paddington Station at the civilised hour of 11am, caught the express train to Castle Cary arriving by 12:30. The views from the train are lovely although we spent most of our time chatting and disturbing our neighbours. Never again will I book the ‘quiet car’ with Deezip in tow.

At Castle Cary we were met by the friendliest of  taxi drivers, David Guy, and whisked off to Hauser & Wirth. Castle Cary is a sleepy, rural station so I recommend booking David in advance (tel 01963 351 015). Swiss global art dealers  Iwan and Manuela Wirth have created quite the cool, arty hangout in the middle of gorgeous Somerset near where they live. Already more than 100,000 people have flocked here since it opened last July.

First things first- we needed the loo. How many loos inspire selfies? That’s how hip this place is!

Then we went outside and enjoyed Dan Graham’s S-Curve, a steel and two-way mirror that did wonders for our figures.

Enough looking at our reflections, the time had come to look beyond ourselves at non-reflective walls. I confess that I have many envies: I wish I could cook, paint my own fingernails, touch-type. The list is long. It just got longer – I want a barn. Correction. I want this barn.

I also wouldn’t mind owning one of Chinese artist Zhang Enli’s ‘Four Seasons’ with its vibrant images of water, leaves and trees. Nature comes inside.

A closeup:

We then strolled through the 1.5 acre Oudolf Field designed by Dutch gardener Piet Oudolf. He has designed both the Highline and the new Whitney Museum’s gardens in NYC amongst other high-profile projects. Perched at the top of Oudolf Field is Chilean artist Smiljan Radic’s white fibreglass pavilion.The Radic Pavilion was first unveiled as the Serpentine Gallery’s 2014 Pavilion.

Here’s a view from my favourite folly.

All this looking at ourselves and beyond can work up an appetite. So to the Roth Bar & Grill we went. It was designed by Bjorn and Oddur Roth, son and grandson of German artist Dieter Roth.

We met up with two creative, bohemian friends who have places nearby and told us what to order – buffalo mozzarella to die for, hamburgers delish, garden salad from the garden, sea bream brilliant and the Bloody Mary’s bloody good. In fact, they said, everything on the menu is good.

After lunch we had a quick espresso At the Chapel, another hip spot in nearby Bruton. Who did we spot there but stunning blonde Burberry model and actress (Endless Love) Gabriella Wilde with her heavily tattooed musician boyfriend Alan Pownall and baby son Sasha Blue. Sorry no pics – we’re too cool for that.

Reality and David the cab driver were calling. Time to head back to London. We almost missed our train when Deezip got distracted in the just-opened,  chic antique shop next to the train station – The Factory.

Oh Somerset, take me back

April, 2015

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