Here Comes the JCB - The reason why I applied to be on the plinth.
Thank You for watching.
Friday, 2 October 2009
The Final Selection
Here Comes the JCB - The reason why I applied to be on the plinth.
Thank You for watching.
201- 30
Eleven to Twenty
That speaks volumes to me - Who else but John Peel could say that of a recording of a lift in Debenhams. He's very sadly missed.
Ban Comic Sans - Just stop it. Use a proper typeface or ask someone who knows what they are doing. Link
He looks more German than French - When I first met my mother in law she was sure I was going to be French but I had bleached hair at the time so she thought I was probably German.
Is it the sparkplugs? - It usually is, or the fuel, or the ignition, or... The joys of classic car ownership.
Golf Sale - The inspiration for these signs Link
Tageous Todoso - An 80s band who never had the success they deserved. Probably because apart from an album title we never actually made any music.
This needs doing - I'm married to an excellent project manager.
You are clever - My mother says this pretty much whenever I've done something, usually to her computer.
Up The Arts - My favourite toast when drinking with fellow arts marketeers.
Great Lift Journeys of Norwich - A silly idea that got out of hand. The Anna Ford interview with Alpha 7 on the Today Programme was probably the highlight of the whirlwind of press we did for the CD. Link
Golf Sale - The inspiration for these signs Link
The First Ten Signs
Fun With Historical Projects - In 1970 my friend Margaret and I featured in a book of this title by the great Tony Hart. A huge inspiration to many, Tony not the book.
Registered
Has signed away his moral rights and is about to be interviewed for an oral history.
Then onto the JCB.
Then onto the JCB.
Reg Tubby on the Plinth
I am on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square today, 2 October 14.00-15.00.
I will be holding up 40 signs about things that mean something to or say something about me.
I will be posting here at 14.15, 14.30, 14.45 and 15.00 explaining what they mean. If you are interested.
I will be holding up 40 signs about things that mean something to or say something about me.
I will be posting here at 14.15, 14.30, 14.45 and 15.00 explaining what they mean. If you are interested.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
A year since it opened and an age since it closed a belated review of Cold War Modern
Unbelievably it is almost a year since I wrote this for Knight Rider Magazine. It never made it into print so here it is as a bit of a preamble to a forthcoming trip...
As the evenings draw in and there's a chill in the air, car shows begin to get a little thin on the ground and you begin to think that your weekends would be better spent in the warmth of the garage or undertaking indoor activities. For IFA Club UK members and, indeed, anyone with an interest in the Eastern Bloc and the Cold War the V&A in London has just the exhibition for you this autumn/winter.
Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70, is the first exhibition to examine contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era. It brings together over 300 exhibits from a Sputnik and an Apollo Mission space suit to films by Stanley Kubrick and Tarkovsky, models and architectural plans of iconic buildings and telemasts, domestic and industrial products with designs by Charles and Ray Eames and Dieter Rams, architecture and vehicles including an AWZ P70.
In museums the period after the Second World War and the Cold War that followed is usually shown in terms of the arms race and the nuclear threat and as a time of anxiety and tension. Often the emphasis, certainly in the West, is on the privations and austerity of life in the Eastern Bloc. But it was also a period of great optimism and unprecedented technological development. The seven sections of the exhibition examine how design was shaped by the Cold War period against the backdrop of the battle between communism and capitalism, the advances of the space race, and the international competition to be modern.
As you enter the exhibition you feel the chill of Cold War and fully expect to hear the sound of the iron curtains being drawn closed behind you as you are advised that you are leaving the American Sector. But as you head deeper into the gallery there is no smell of boiled cabbage. As this is an exhibition about design from 1945 to 1970 it is no surprise to find some classics from non Eastern Bloc Europe, and you could be forgiven for sensing a whiff of Italian coffee in the air as next to a 1951 Vespa scooter is an enormous coffee machine looking like a V8 engine. Although you may not notice these Italian beauties as they are placed next to a Messerschmitt KR200.
This first gallery also highlights the stylistic opposition of the East and West by comparing the monumental, classical plan buildings on Stalinallee in East Berlin with the Modernist housing schemes of Interbau in West Berlin by architects including Le Corbusier, Arne Jacobsen and Walter Gropius. The designers’ and architects’ visions for reconstructing Europe is followed by a section examining how artists and designers were drawn into the Cold War both willingly and unwillingly, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Amongst propaganda posters, artworks and designs and models of public monuments is a reconstruction of the 1958 screening of Poéme Electronique by Le Corbusier with music by Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse.
The next section of the exhibition highlights how the home and household consumer items became a key battleground of the Cold War, exemplified in the ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Nixon and Khrushchev, which took place at the American National Exhibition held in Moscow, 1959. Surrounded by the latest in American household goods, and the world’s media' they argued about differences in ideology and the quality of life for the average citizen in both countries. Nixon said “Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets? Is that the kind of competition you want?”
On display are many of the experimental projects and visions produced in the Eastern bloc including Polish textiles, graphics and plastic furniture, Czech glass, East German consumer goods, Soviet architecture and a concourse condition AWZ P70 Coupé an early model of the Trabant. For those of us used to seeing our Eastern Bloc vehicles in the more natural habitat of the road, or possibly a motor museum, it is refreshing to see the P70 being treated as a beautiful work of art in the context of a gallery. The concept of the P70, a communist ‘sports’ car, is an anachronism, but like many of the items on display it is an example of designers encouraged to contribute to the ‘building of socialism’ through the development of new products using new and innovative materials.
If you can tear yourself away from the car be sure to watch the ballet projected on the opposite wall. ‘Cheremushki’ is a light-hearted musical about the dream of new housing based on an operetta by Shostakovich. In the scene shown in the gallery a young couple imagine a new apartment furnished with contemporary furniture and appliances. It is a shame that we only see this one scene depicting the promise of modern domesticity in the Khrushchev era. I may well be making a purchase of the DVD of the full 87 minutes of this Gerbert Rappoport film.
From the domestic environment and the hope of the Khrushchev modernism we move away from ‘thaw’ to a decidedly more chilly cold war. With Dr. Strangelove, The Ipcress File and Goldfinger being shown, the spectre of the nuclear war is clearly present. You’ll also find the new technologies that emerged out of the Cold War and includes computers and radios rendered in modernist forms by designers such as Dieter Rams and Eliot Noyes working for Braun and IBM. There’s also a small presence of some espionage gadgets.
We are now half way through the exhibition and move onto a gallery featuring the space race and hi-tech triumphs. It highlights the first space mission by Yuri Gagarin aboard a Vostok space capsule and displays designs of interiors for NASA space craft by Raymond Loewy and experimental spacesuits as well as many examples of furniture, architecture, art and fashion inspired by the space race. However the stars of this gallery aren’t in space, they are very much down to earth but reaching for the sky. Amongst the many technological achievements of the period, a new and distinctive form of architecture emerged, the telecommunications tower, including the Post Office Tower in London and Moscow’s Ostankino Tower. A specially commissioned model of the latter towers over the visitor whilst elsewhere you will find more models, architectural plans and designs for staff uniforms.
It is the model of the Czech Ještěd tower that caught my imagination. Not only is this 1963 designed telecommunications tower perched atop a mountain an hour north of Prague one of the most extraordinary architectural achievements of the entire Eastern Bloc but it is also a hotel! Check out www.jested.cz to see why you should be filling your tank with fuel and heading East for a truly amazing Cold War holiday experience.
We now move away from the east/west comparisons to look at revolution across the globe with the tumultuous events of 1968 in Paris and Prague. But for me the highlight here is, again, a film. This time it is Mikhail Kalatozov’s film, Soy Cuba. This 1965 film presents an idealised image of the Cuban Revolution, the making of which was funded by the Soviet government in an attempt to promote international socialism and is exceptional for its amazing long tracking shots. Watching the single take that starts on the roof and travels down the building to the street is simply breathtaking.
The final section of the exhibition examines how architectural groups such as Archigram, Coop Himmelblau, Haus-Rucker-Co, Utopie and Superstudio exploited Cold War technologies in the creation of socially liberating, mind expanding, visions. It shows the imagined futures of inflatable, expendable, mobile habitats in which technology would become an extension of the human body, as seen in Walter Pichler’s ‘TV Helmet’. Above you as you enter the gallery is a full-scale reconstruction of Oasis 7, a giant inflatable environment by Viennese architects Haus-Rucker-Co, that was originally suspended on the exterior of the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel for the Documenta Art Fair in 1972. This section also examines the continuing fears of nuclear and ecological devastation and how artists imagined life in extreme environments such as Japanese architect Arata Isozaki’s photo-montage Re-Ruined Hiroshima, 1968 and Slovak art group VAL’s Heliopolis project of 1966-7.
As you leave the exhibition you are advised that you are now entering the retail sector. There are plenty of opportunities to spend your cash and I came away £40 lighter having purchased a pile of books and a ‘Kitchen Debate’ tea towel.
Cold War Modern has been in planning for four years and includes many objects that have never been on display in the UK before and some that have never been on public show. Visitors without a specific interest in the Cold War will find the art, architecture and design engaging and I suspect children will be wowed by show too, after all who isn’t impressed by a real spacesuit or a TV you wear on your head?. I spent over two hours in the exhibition and feel that there is still more I could get from it, I only glanced at some of the exceptionally well sourced films and skimmed most of the object labels. I didn’t try the audio guide but I am sure it will be up to the usual high V&A standards and give further insight into the exhibits. I will be returning to get more from this exceptional show.
To continue the Cold War theme we left the V&A and walked the short distance to Thurloe Street, near South Ken tube, and lunched amongst elderly Poles at Café Daquise. With the smoking ban this restaurant, which opened in 1947, has lost some of its authentic Polish ambience but remains very old school. We dined on potato pancakes and stuffed cabbage washed down with a Zywiec beer and imaged that we were in the seats where Christine Keeler met regularly with Yevgeny Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Russian Embassy in the early 1960s. Café Daquise also played a small part in the downfall of Polish communism as the unofficial headquarters of Edward Raczynski, the Polish President-in-Exile from 1979-86.
As the evenings draw in and there's a chill in the air, car shows begin to get a little thin on the ground and you begin to think that your weekends would be better spent in the warmth of the garage or undertaking indoor activities. For IFA Club UK members and, indeed, anyone with an interest in the Eastern Bloc and the Cold War the V&A in London has just the exhibition for you this autumn/winter.
Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70, is the first exhibition to examine contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era. It brings together over 300 exhibits from a Sputnik and an Apollo Mission space suit to films by Stanley Kubrick and Tarkovsky, models and architectural plans of iconic buildings and telemasts, domestic and industrial products with designs by Charles and Ray Eames and Dieter Rams, architecture and vehicles including an AWZ P70.
In museums the period after the Second World War and the Cold War that followed is usually shown in terms of the arms race and the nuclear threat and as a time of anxiety and tension. Often the emphasis, certainly in the West, is on the privations and austerity of life in the Eastern Bloc. But it was also a period of great optimism and unprecedented technological development. The seven sections of the exhibition examine how design was shaped by the Cold War period against the backdrop of the battle between communism and capitalism, the advances of the space race, and the international competition to be modern.
As you enter the exhibition you feel the chill of Cold War and fully expect to hear the sound of the iron curtains being drawn closed behind you as you are advised that you are leaving the American Sector. But as you head deeper into the gallery there is no smell of boiled cabbage. As this is an exhibition about design from 1945 to 1970 it is no surprise to find some classics from non Eastern Bloc Europe, and you could be forgiven for sensing a whiff of Italian coffee in the air as next to a 1951 Vespa scooter is an enormous coffee machine looking like a V8 engine. Although you may not notice these Italian beauties as they are placed next to a Messerschmitt KR200.
This first gallery also highlights the stylistic opposition of the East and West by comparing the monumental, classical plan buildings on Stalinallee in East Berlin with the Modernist housing schemes of Interbau in West Berlin by architects including Le Corbusier, Arne Jacobsen and Walter Gropius. The designers’ and architects’ visions for reconstructing Europe is followed by a section examining how artists and designers were drawn into the Cold War both willingly and unwillingly, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Amongst propaganda posters, artworks and designs and models of public monuments is a reconstruction of the 1958 screening of Poéme Electronique by Le Corbusier with music by Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse.
The next section of the exhibition highlights how the home and household consumer items became a key battleground of the Cold War, exemplified in the ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Nixon and Khrushchev, which took place at the American National Exhibition held in Moscow, 1959. Surrounded by the latest in American household goods, and the world’s media' they argued about differences in ideology and the quality of life for the average citizen in both countries. Nixon said “Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets? Is that the kind of competition you want?”
On display are many of the experimental projects and visions produced in the Eastern bloc including Polish textiles, graphics and plastic furniture, Czech glass, East German consumer goods, Soviet architecture and a concourse condition AWZ P70 Coupé an early model of the Trabant. For those of us used to seeing our Eastern Bloc vehicles in the more natural habitat of the road, or possibly a motor museum, it is refreshing to see the P70 being treated as a beautiful work of art in the context of a gallery. The concept of the P70, a communist ‘sports’ car, is an anachronism, but like many of the items on display it is an example of designers encouraged to contribute to the ‘building of socialism’ through the development of new products using new and innovative materials.
If you can tear yourself away from the car be sure to watch the ballet projected on the opposite wall. ‘Cheremushki’ is a light-hearted musical about the dream of new housing based on an operetta by Shostakovich. In the scene shown in the gallery a young couple imagine a new apartment furnished with contemporary furniture and appliances. It is a shame that we only see this one scene depicting the promise of modern domesticity in the Khrushchev era. I may well be making a purchase of the DVD of the full 87 minutes of this Gerbert Rappoport film.
From the domestic environment and the hope of the Khrushchev modernism we move away from ‘thaw’ to a decidedly more chilly cold war. With Dr. Strangelove, The Ipcress File and Goldfinger being shown, the spectre of the nuclear war is clearly present. You’ll also find the new technologies that emerged out of the Cold War and includes computers and radios rendered in modernist forms by designers such as Dieter Rams and Eliot Noyes working for Braun and IBM. There’s also a small presence of some espionage gadgets.
We are now half way through the exhibition and move onto a gallery featuring the space race and hi-tech triumphs. It highlights the first space mission by Yuri Gagarin aboard a Vostok space capsule and displays designs of interiors for NASA space craft by Raymond Loewy and experimental spacesuits as well as many examples of furniture, architecture, art and fashion inspired by the space race. However the stars of this gallery aren’t in space, they are very much down to earth but reaching for the sky. Amongst the many technological achievements of the period, a new and distinctive form of architecture emerged, the telecommunications tower, including the Post Office Tower in London and Moscow’s Ostankino Tower. A specially commissioned model of the latter towers over the visitor whilst elsewhere you will find more models, architectural plans and designs for staff uniforms.
It is the model of the Czech Ještěd tower that caught my imagination. Not only is this 1963 designed telecommunications tower perched atop a mountain an hour north of Prague one of the most extraordinary architectural achievements of the entire Eastern Bloc but it is also a hotel! Check out www.jested.cz to see why you should be filling your tank with fuel and heading East for a truly amazing Cold War holiday experience.
We now move away from the east/west comparisons to look at revolution across the globe with the tumultuous events of 1968 in Paris and Prague. But for me the highlight here is, again, a film. This time it is Mikhail Kalatozov’s film, Soy Cuba. This 1965 film presents an idealised image of the Cuban Revolution, the making of which was funded by the Soviet government in an attempt to promote international socialism and is exceptional for its amazing long tracking shots. Watching the single take that starts on the roof and travels down the building to the street is simply breathtaking.
The final section of the exhibition examines how architectural groups such as Archigram, Coop Himmelblau, Haus-Rucker-Co, Utopie and Superstudio exploited Cold War technologies in the creation of socially liberating, mind expanding, visions. It shows the imagined futures of inflatable, expendable, mobile habitats in which technology would become an extension of the human body, as seen in Walter Pichler’s ‘TV Helmet’. Above you as you enter the gallery is a full-scale reconstruction of Oasis 7, a giant inflatable environment by Viennese architects Haus-Rucker-Co, that was originally suspended on the exterior of the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel for the Documenta Art Fair in 1972. This section also examines the continuing fears of nuclear and ecological devastation and how artists imagined life in extreme environments such as Japanese architect Arata Isozaki’s photo-montage Re-Ruined Hiroshima, 1968 and Slovak art group VAL’s Heliopolis project of 1966-7.
As you leave the exhibition you are advised that you are now entering the retail sector. There are plenty of opportunities to spend your cash and I came away £40 lighter having purchased a pile of books and a ‘Kitchen Debate’ tea towel.
Cold War Modern has been in planning for four years and includes many objects that have never been on display in the UK before and some that have never been on public show. Visitors without a specific interest in the Cold War will find the art, architecture and design engaging and I suspect children will be wowed by show too, after all who isn’t impressed by a real spacesuit or a TV you wear on your head?. I spent over two hours in the exhibition and feel that there is still more I could get from it, I only glanced at some of the exceptionally well sourced films and skimmed most of the object labels. I didn’t try the audio guide but I am sure it will be up to the usual high V&A standards and give further insight into the exhibits. I will be returning to get more from this exceptional show.
To continue the Cold War theme we left the V&A and walked the short distance to Thurloe Street, near South Ken tube, and lunched amongst elderly Poles at Café Daquise. With the smoking ban this restaurant, which opened in 1947, has lost some of its authentic Polish ambience but remains very old school. We dined on potato pancakes and stuffed cabbage washed down with a Zywiec beer and imaged that we were in the seats where Christine Keeler met regularly with Yevgeny Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Russian Embassy in the early 1960s. Café Daquise also played a small part in the downfall of Polish communism as the unofficial headquarters of Edward Raczynski, the Polish President-in-Exile from 1979-86.
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