Vivian Maier's story

Yesterday the film Finding Vivian Maier was released, and I'm very keen to see this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zya5kG_9cFw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er8-Vq__cRE

In 2007 John Maloof bought a mysterious box of  30,000 negatives for $380, hoping to find some photos of Chicago for a history book he was writing. What he discovered he'd bought was the amazing work of an unknown photographer, who amassed her collection mainly while working as a nanny, from 1949 to 2009 when she died. So bowled over was he that he has since tracked down the other lots which he failed to buy at the auction, now owning 90 per cent of her work. The remaining lot had been bought by another collector, Jeff Goldstein, who also produced his own Vivian Maier archive, touring exhibition and a book called Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. All of this despite the MoMA showing no interest when Maloof aproached them for a professional opinion.

Maloof himself began by posting some of the pictures on his blog to garner opinions, and on Flickr discussions went viral. He turned detective, tracking down acquaintances, discovering she was born in the Bronx in 1926 to parents of French and Austro Hungarian extraction, documenting all of his findings, until he joined forces with the filmmaker Charlie Siskel, who comments 'It would be a great story even if the work was ok, but the fact that the work is so good is what gives it its staying power.'  But also what seems to give it depth is the obsessiveness of Maloof's investigations framing the unorthodox and eccentric story of Vivian.

Nowadays her prints are available through the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and profits have enabled Maloof to set up The Vivian Maier Scholarship to assist young photographers in need of financial support. Maloof insists 'We wanted to give back.'  and 'I still do feel a responsibility to Vivian'
http://vivianmaier.blogspot.co.uk/

Barbie to Michelle

Who is to say a childhood playing with Barbies is wasted? This was how Jason Wu spent his young years in Vancouver; and for his tenth birthday his Taiwanese parents bought him a sewing machine to make the dolls clothes, and hired a sewing teacher to  help him improve his skills. Now he makes gowns for the First Lady and film stars attend his shows.
Not sure where I went wrong, as I spent years making clothes for Barbie and Sindy, and further years copying Jackie fashion sketches, then inventing my own. Possibly I could blame my school for pushing me down the academic route, added to which my form teacher bullied me into doing GCE Domestic Science instead of art because I'd already done more of the former!?!  I did make a last ditch final stand by taking a foundation art course years later, and I must say my cooking has never amounted to much!
But anyway, all praise to Jason Wu's parents for such encouragement. And apparently he still makes high-end fashion doll lines, many of which are collected.

souvenir -Voice Project

Summer has kicked in with a vengeance, but I think my summer started this year with  'Souvenir', the Voice Project's latest contribution to the Norwich festival, using the grand scale grounds of Holkham Hall in Norfolk. I always try to view/hear what Sian Croose has produced, and of late she has gone from strength to strength by focusing on making the most of both external and internal spaces, while breaking down the usual limits and barriers of performers on stage, audience in the auditorium. On this occasion I attended the middle performance, which I suspect was the most beautiful, with the benefit  of the golden hour creating magical shadows, an atmosphere that seemed to conjure up a cross between a Seurat and a Magritte painting. The last performance in the evening probably gave a fair challenge with sunset, dusk and twilight to challenge the warm glow of the afternoon, but I am still happy with my choice. Although if it had been on again the following weekend, I would have wanted to go again, so who knows which I would have chosen then....
http://voiceproject2.wordpress.com/
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/review_and_photo_gallery_souvenir_at_holkham_hall_1_3607192

Masterpieces or Misspieces

I have left it til last minute and went to the Masterpieces exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA, today. In part this is a celebration of fifty years of the University of East Anglia, part celebration of East Anglia itself.
http://www.scva.ac.uk/masterpieces/
 
 I wasn't quite prepared for the scope of it, spanning the whole of history looking for the roles played in all walks of life by the area and people of East Anglia .  While I can imagine some visitors being disatisfied with the obvious thin spreading of such a wide remit, I enjoyed it perhaps because it was a reminder of many people I had already  heard of, a visual ticklist of all the talents of the region.

It was encouraging how many female artists were included, with one of Olive Edis's photos on the gallery guide. Olive served as a war artist in World War One, and was famous for portrait photography and autochrome photos. She took many photos of Norfolk fisherman, including the one on the guide and in the  exhibition.
But the first work you can't help but notice is the grand piece by Ana Maria Pacheco, an operatic arrangement of people on a boat, The Longest Journey (seen here in another space). I've already experienced a whole barn full of her work near to where I lived in Iken. Pacheco was Head of Fine Art at Norwich Art School for 1985 to 1989, and the boat she used for this piece was from Wroxham.Downstairs, in the first room and last room there are a couple of Marys!
Going back to the 17th Century, Mary Beale was a portraitist heavily influenced by Peter Lily. She was born in Barrow, Suffolk; her self-portrait is included in the exhibition.

Mary Newcombe's art was inspired by the small farms she lived on in the Waveney valley; she is seen as a visionary artist who first trained as a scientist and drew birds at Flatford Mill Field Studies Centre.A couple of her very fine detailed paintings featurehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/mary-newcomb/paintings/slideshow#/5

I was already familiar with Elizabeth Frink's work, but according to the exhibition, her fascination for winged men, falling figures and birds originated from her childhood in Suffolk during the war years when she witnessed planes that had crashed there.



Another favourite of mine, Barbara Hepworth, was also featured: I have already seen an exhibition about the visits in the 1930s to Happisburgh in Norfolk by Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore, around the time of the beginning of Hepworth's relationship with Nicholson.
Another person connected with Nicholson and the St Ives group was Margaret Mellis, who from 1976 until her death in 2009  lived in Southwold, collecting driftwood from the beach there for her constructions, one of which is featured. I met her a couple of times while working in a gallery, and was very impressed with her enthusiam and joie de vivre, not realising who she was until I happened to see her on a tv programme.

In Kathleen Hale's Orlando books, the Iona a beached ship at Aldeburgh becomes the marmalade cat's holiday home; in the exhibition there is also a Lowry painting of the same wreck. In the exhibition it points out that Hale was Augustus John's secretary; she also became friends with Vanessa Bell (a painter and sister of Virginia Woolf).


The exhibition finishes tomorrow with a talk by Maggi Hambling, one of whose North Sea paintings is featured.Hambling is perhaps best known for her sculpture Scallop, a tribute to Benjamin Britten on Aldeburgh Beach