Richard Sarson

The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope photograph, which is stranger than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image marks the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into Earth orbit.

I am sure you have, by now, seen the awesome image that NASA released to mark the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the Hubble space observatory. Happy Birthday Hubble, which has observed more than 30,000 celestial targets and has more than a half-million pictures in its archive!

"Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Last year's space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society." (www.hubblesite.org)

Today marks the start of the first contemporary graphic art fair in the UK. Pick Me Up at Somerset House in London is a two week show of print and illustration:

The fair will bring together the most exciting graphic artists working today, giving you the opportunity to buy limited edition, affordable graphic art, illustration and design. (www.somersethouse.org.uk)

I am excited to have my work involved amongst a selection of talented individuals and groups including (deep breath):

Alex Trochut Andy Gilmore Charlie Duck Claire Scully Edvard Scott Erin Petson Hvass&Hannibal HelloVon James Joyce Jess Wilson Jesse Auersalo Job Wouters Lorenzo Petrantoni Mathis Rekowski Melvin Galapon Mr Bingo Natsko Seki Patrick Gildersleeves Paula Castro Pierre Nguyen Rosie Irvine Siggi Eggertsson

There are also print workshops, talks and film evenings planned over the duration of the fair so definitely worth paying a visit if you are in the neighbourhood:

"Art and design collectives and galleries, including Concrete Hermit, Le Gun, Nobrow and Peepshow will set up shop at Somerset House selling specially commissioned work. With graphic prints, drawings as well as T-shirts and fanzines on sale, there will be something for everyone."
(www.somersethouse.org.uk)

(As part of the event I was asked to produce a one-off print which will be on sale at Pick Me Up, that hopefully explains the above image.)

"This is even better than we could have dreamed." (project scientist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center)

Yesterday NASA released the first images of the sun from their SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft which is on a five year mission to help scientists better understand our closest star. The SDO will provide images 10 times more clear than a high-definition television and will send 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth each day:

"Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths." (www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/)

You can view a super-detailed version of the above image here and there is also some video of a solar prominence eruption taken by the observatory on March 30, 2010. Very exciting and one to keep an eye on:

"These amazing images, which show our dynamic sun in a new level of detail, are only the beginning of SDO's contribution to our understanding of the sun," said SDO Project Scientist Dean Pesnell of Goddard.
(www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/)

Reynolds' new works hold out the possibility of spatial success contained within the photographic archive, but pictorially they also generate their own failure or disruption. (www.seventeengallery.com)

UK artist Abigail Reynolds has a show on at Seventeen Gallery until the 29th of May. I am looking forward to seeing it. Her work is unsettling because it displaces the viewer. She presents historical, often well-known views of cities and buildings taken from old guidebooks and cuts through them (literally) to offer a new fictionalised space and time. I am not sure whether it is the aesthetic of her pieces or the ideas behind them which I like most, it is probably a combination of the two…her archive of previous work is also well worth checking out (especially Mount Fear).

"Strange Attractor is Reynolds' second solo exhibit for the gallery, and in a number of tangential developments from her previous work she employs a series of differing strategies for the display and manipulation of images originally created as bookplates. The preferred imagery centres around interiors of buildings culled from guide books. The approaches Reynolds takes in handling these artifacts are more complex and also simpler than in previous work, ranging from the presentation of unaltered pages, the simple joining of two images, to an intricate splicing of four or five sheets."
(www.seventeengallery.com)

A group of London-based photographers is staging an open-air exhibition to demonstrate against the increasing restrictions being placed on British street photographers. (I ♥ Street Photo)

Anyone at a loose-end in London tonight should tag along to The Book Club at 100 Leonard Street. They are hosting an I ♥ Street Photo event by a 30-strong collective of MA Photography students from the London College of Communication called ‘So Shoot Me’:

"The So Shoot Me photographers are staging the event to object to new guidelines being issued by the Information Commissioner's Office under section 51 of the Data Protection Act 1998. The regulations will all but ban professional photographers from working in public places, with the stipulation that a photographer must ask the permission of all people who appear in their photographs to avoid illegally possessing 'personal data'." (I ♥ Street Photo)

The event will begin at The Book Club and then travel to locations around London including Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Hoxton Square. It is a one-night guerilla exhibition of street photography, which will be projected onto groups of people holding large white boards to act as a canvas. The projections will show street photography taken by the group ‘So Shoot Me’ within the UK. Seems like a worthy cause for anyone interested in protecting creative rights.

It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel. I believe it will be worthy of London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, and worthy of the greatest city on earth. (Boris Johnson, Mayor of London)

The unfortunate timing of this week's unveiling of London's 2012 Olympic Park monument / sculpture led many to suspect an elaborate early April fool's joke. The product of a collaboration between Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond is a 120 metre-high towering, twisting steel spiral:

"One of the references was the Tower of Babel. There is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible. A procession, if you like. It’s a long winding spiral: a folly that aspires to go even above the clouds and has something mythic about it." (Anish Kapoor)

At 22m higher than New York's Statue of Liberty and with the Eiffel Tower cited as a direct inspiration, the construction is perfectly dividing opinion:

"Great. JUST what London needs, a giant squiggle. ArcelorMittal Orbit, Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond’s Olympic tower, is a gift to the tabloids. What’s a better physical representation of a waste of money and potential Olympic disorganisation than a giant Mr Messy?" (Tom Dyckhoff, Architecture Critic, Times UK)

The sculpture is following in an emerging theme of the forthcoming Games; being brave. A lot has been said about how London can hope to top the extravagance of Beijing two years ago, yet if the infamous logo and this proposal are anything to go by, London 2012 is going to be one to remember.

Originally from East Sussex, Rebecca graduated from Bath Spa University in 2004 with a BA Hons in Fine Art Painting. In 2007/8 she went travelling across America, Canada & Mexico from which she takes much of her inspiration. (rebeccatelford.com)

I took a look at the work of Bristol-based Rebecca Telford the other day, you should too. It is a collection of nice and fresh household emulsion paintings and prints mainly focusing on buildings but some move into more abstract territory. I like the colours she has used.

"Rebecca’s work is influenced by architecture, pattern & colour. Her screen prints are all hand cut stencils on rubylith, and the paintings are hand rollered, and scalpel precise." (rebeccatelford.com)

David James Associates have been quietly defining the aesthetic of the zeitgeist for over twenty years. (davidjames-outofprint.co.uk)

'Under the radar' may be something of an understatement for the public profile of UK designer David James. But if the name is unknown to you, his studio's body of work won't be (for those who take even a passing interest in the world of fashion / typography / design). He has finally decided the time is right to showcase an archive spanning over 20 years of extremely considered, minimal and beautiful creative work:

"This is the first and only time that James's body of work has been shown back-to-back in chronological order, and the fact that it is exhibited online is indicative of his readiness to engage with the broadest possible audience." (davidjames-outofprint.co.uk)

The website is structured as an exhibition with nice delicate touches and some real depth to the archive also. I am hoping it will not close its doors after the stipulated show dates (15 March 15 May) because it is a great example of how effective 'less is more' can be, especially in an industry so taken to rewarding those who shout the loudest.

"This diverse gallery of seductively cryptic typography, strikingly unique fashion layouts, provocative artists' monographs and groundbreaking record sleeves – created for some of the world's most illustrious clients – boldly announces his intention to spearhead the multi-dimensional creative design revolution of the 21st century." (davidjames-outofprint.co.uk)

It’s a great day to be a particle physicist. (CERN1 Director General Rolf Heuer)

The hunt for the Higgs boson took a huge leap forward today as CERN's Large Hadron Collider smashed together two particle beams with a combined energy of 7 TeV for the first time – ever:

"…I'm in the ATLAS control room, fifteen minutes after the first high energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. The physicists have been waiting for this moment for more than a year and are still jumping up and down about it. It's been a long day for everyone – the journalists got here before 6am – but a lot of the scientists were here all night. A lot of delirious grins." (Hannah Devlin, Science Reporter for The Times, UK)

With over an hour's stable data to pour over now after a few shaky false-starts it looks like the LHC is finally coming good on its promise to 'revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe'. And for those breathing a sigh of relief at the lack of all-consuming black holes generated, today's experiments will be doubled in intensity to 7 TeV per beam after a year-long shutdown in 2011.

"We’ve all been impressed with the way the LHC has performed so far, and it’s particularly gratifying to see how well our particle detectors are working while our physics teams worldwide are already analysing data. We’ll address soon some of the major puzzles of modern physics like the origin of mass, the grand unification of forces and the presence of abundant dark matter in the universe. I expect very exciting times in front of us." (Guido Tonelli, spokesperson of the CMS experiment)

The fragments constitute what the researchers say is the "earliest evidence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations. (Kate Wong Scientific American)

Last week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the US published a report detailing research on an archaeological finding of 270 pieces of engraved ostrich eggshell at Diepkloof in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The ornate shell pieces were once believed to have been used as containers for day-to-day storage of liquids. Their standardised decoration is seen as an early example of individual or group graphic communication dating back 60,000 years ago:

"The lines are crossed at right angles or oblique angles by hatching. By the repetition of this motif, early humans were trying to communicate something. Perhaps they were trying to express the identity of the individual or the group." (Dr Pierre-Jean Texier from the University of Bordeaux, Talence, France)

The shells are not the earliest recorded examples of symbolism, shell beads found at another site in South Africa; Pinnacle Point, date to around 165,000 years ago. They are, however, notable for how many have been unearthed and the fact that they point to a system of symbolic representation:

"Here we've got something that we can compare with later material that clearly does have important signalling value in the populations. It's a very nice link between the Middle Stone Age, the later Stone Age and even recent populations in South Africa. One question now is whether this is a special site, or as we excavate more sites will we find this material is more widespread?" (Professor Chris Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum)

Nature, well it's a godsend. It just has so much in it. And I think nature wants to express itself in the sense that we are nature. Humans are of the universe. The universe is in our mind, and our minds are in the universe. And we are expressions of the universe. Basically as humans, ultimately being part of the universe, we are kind of the spokespeople or the observer part of the constituency of the universe. And to interface with it, with a device that lets these forces that are everywhere, act and show what they can do, giving them pigment and paint, just like an artist, you know, it's a good ally. It's a terrific studio assistant. (Tom Shannon)

Got a spare 13 minutes and 22 seconds? Then might I recommend an intriguing and inspirational short film from the excellent TED. Artist Tom Shannon speaks to John Hockenberry about the process that goes into making his Pendulum paintings. The works he creates are a combination of the precision of machinery guided by natural forces and the unpredictable quality of traditional painting materials.

"There is something very appealing about the exactitude of science that I really enjoy. And I love the shapes that I see in scientific observations and apparatus, especially astronomical forms, and the idea of the vastness of it, the scale, is very interesting to me." (Tom Shannon)

A journalist with no scruples and a pair of Danish comedians travel to North Korea with a mission to use humour to uncover the truth behind one of the world's most notorious regimes. (BBC)

Now and again the BBC show some cracking documentaries which remind you what television should be like. One series that never disappoints is Storyville. Their collection of films presented over the last 10 years, which has managed to fly under the radar of more mainstream schedules and used to be found in the early hours on BBC Two, now has a home on BBC Four. For those able to watch content on the iPlayer (think it is UK only) I must recommend Storyville's latest offering, Mads Brugger's documentary "Kim Jong Il's Comedy Club":

"On the pretext of being a small Danish theatre troupe on a cultural exchange, the filmmaker was granted permission by the North Korean government to stage a performance for a select audience in the capital. In reality, the troupe was comprised of an unscrupulous journalist, Mads Brugger, and two Danish/Korean comedians, Jacob and Simon, of whom the former is handicapped. Their goal is to use humour to expose the intricate effects of an oppressive regime." (BBC)

There was a time when energy was a dirty word – when turning on your lights was a hard choice. Cities in brownout, food shortages, cars burning fuel to run. But that was past. Where are we now? How did we make the world so much better? Make deserts bloom? Right now we're the largest producer of fusion energy in the world. The energy of the sun, trapped in rock, harvested by machine from the far side of the moon. Today we deliver enough clean-burning Helium 3 to supply the energy needs of nearly 70% of the planet. Who'd have thought, all the energy we ever needed, right above our heads. The power of the moon, the power of our future. (taken from Moon, 2009)

The Nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards were announced yesterday with a notable omission (in my worthless opinion) for British science fiction-psychological thriller Moon:

Moon is a superior example of that threatened genre, hard science-fiction, which is often about the interface between humans and alien intelligence of one kind of or other, including digital. John W. Campbell Jr., the godfather of this genre, would have approved." (Roger Ebert)

With a couple of BAFTA nominations on the way, a BIFA award and critical praise not only for the film's production and direction (the debut feature of director Duncan Jones) but also the excellent solo performance by Sam Rockwell, I am sure its not too big a disappointment on the Oscar front. Plus the good news is Moon is hoped to be the first part of a trilogy with the follow-up (an epilogue to Moon) tentatively titled Mute.

It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands. (Steve Jobs, yesterday's iPad launch)

If you haven't already been notified, yesterday Apple unveiled to the world a device that had been years in planning and development and one which it hopes will change the way people connect with technology – the iPad:

"Imagine being able to page through websites, write an email, flick through photos, or watch a movie. All on a big, beautiful, Multi-Touch screen. With just the touch of a finger." (www.apple.com)

Plugging that previously unseen gap between a smart-phone and a laptop, the minimal pad is generating more discussion surrounding what has been left out rather than the potential it offers. No flash support, USB port, multi-tasking or pressure-sensitive screen. Add to that a reliance upon 'apps', a decision to surround the screen in a rather large bezel and the suggested difficulty in positioning the object for use, you get an unclear picture as to how Apple's new invention will perform in the market-place. To see the alternative view, the iPad could be viewed as all these devices ultimately are – a stepping-stone onto the next model. The price-tag is very competitive and the hands-on factor is probably what will be the deciding blow as to whether or not it is a success:

"…other analysts say they have heard similar criticism before — once aimed at the iPhone, which has now been bought by more than 42 million people around the world. These believers say Apple’s judgment on the market is nearly infallible. "The target audience is everyone," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research firm. "Apple does not build products for just the enthusiasts. It doesn’t build for the tens of thousands; it builds for the tens of millions." (Brad Stone, New York Times)

The hype for touch-screen was certainly used up three years ago with the launch of the iPhone / iPod Touch and maybe because of that their new bigger brother has a harder task to delight the masses. All I am hoping is that it signals the end of the mouse and keyboard as we know them and brings about something more intuitive, time will tell if that happens but the iPad is a promising indication of what is to come.

Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth. (from Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy, 1858, Karl Marx)

The chopping tool above is the oldest humanly made object in the British Museum, over 1.8 million years old in fact, it is the Olduvai stone. It is also one of the first artifacts that document man's relationship with (or even dependence upon) his 'objects'.

"Louis Leakey, the flamboyant Kenyan-born fossil hunter and champion of the importance of Africa for human evolution, was 28 when he found this stone tool. Not everyone believed that they were ancient artefacts and he had to wait another thirty years before it could be scientifically proven." (Professor Clive Gamble, Archaeologist, Royal Holloway University of London)

The reason I am telling you this? A few days ago The British Museum and BBC Radio Four launched 'A History of the World in 100 objects', an attempt to highlight the treasures in the museum's collection and their link to social development in the world:

"Telling history through things, whether it's an Egyptian mummy or a credit card, is what museums are for, and because the British Museum has collected things from all over the globe, it's not a bad place to try to tell a world history. Of course, it can only be "a" history of the world, not "the" history. When people come to the museum they choose their own objects and make their own journey round the world and through time, but I think what they will find is that their own histories quickly intersect with everybody elses, and when that happens, you no longer have a history of a particular people or nation, but a story of endless connections." (The British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor)

the Olduvai stone chopping tool is at number two in the list and there are 99 other equally fascinating object waiting to be explored on the website, at the museum or In the 15-minute broadcasts, weekdays on Radio 4.

"Usually I throw away what I don't get right the first time." – Kenneth Noland

A pupil of Joseph Albers and a leading American abstract painter of the last century, Kenneth Noland died of cancer at the start of the year aged 85:

"Noland became celebrated in the 1950s for his series of concentric circles in a dazzling array of colours; not, like the paintings of Jasper Johns, targets, but circles as a simple geometric form that could demonstrate an infinite number of colour combinations. Next came circles with blurred edges, like blazing catherine wheels, diamond shapes, diamonds within circles, chevrons and stripes. The message was colour, usually pure and always simple."

His official site is a treasure-trove.

"In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the after effects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word Twitter stands above all the other words. " – Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor

It is quite a difficult task to sum up something in a word because you have to get it spot-on. So now think of how hard it must be to sum up the year 2009 in one word. Well actually there is no need to, the internet can (as usual) do that for you. In fact, several different groups purporting to be the official experts on words have, in the last few weeks, offered their take on the top words of 2009. First up, The Global Language Monitor, an Austin, Texas-based language trending company, revealed their top word as 'Twitter', top phrase as 'King of Pop' and their top name as 'Obama':

"To us it's kind of a surprise that Twitter came up as number one rather than Obama, but that tells you how big Twitter is globally. The success of the word is not just because social media are "taking the world by storm," but because it's "a fun word" which has spawned a whole vocabularly of tweets, twictionaries and even twitterature. It's like Obama – you don't have a lot of play on the word Gordon Brown, or George W Bush – whereas you do with Obama, and you can with Twitter."

Perhaps more creatively however, the New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year was announced as 'unfriend'. They also gave a special mention to 'deleb' (a dead celebrity) and 'sexting' (the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone):

"It (unfriend) has both currency and potential longevity," notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. "In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most "un-" prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar "un-" verbs (uncap, unpack), but "unfriend" is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of "friend" that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal."

If you were feeling a bit disappointed that social-media has claimed all the best words of the year then an announcement from the Hsu Yusn-chih Memorial Foundation in Taiwan a couple of days ago may lighten your spirit:

"After an extensive vote by the public, Taiwan has chosen the word "Hope" as the word of the year for 2009.(...) After suffering from the ravages of typhoon Morakot and the global financial turmoil in 2009, many Taiwanese are hoping to emerge from the confusion and embrace a brighter future. Said one man in the street: "I hope to go back home soon and rebuild my house." "I hope Taiwan's economy will pick up quickly. I hope everyone will have a better year in 2010," said another man in the street."

"There are known knowns… we also know that there are known unknowns… There are also unknown unknowns." - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002

As we near the end of of this eventful decade of unknown name (or at least an awkward one; the 'Noughties' tag) there are countless lists emerging in the last few days and weeks with their own specific take on the last ten years in review. In fact, there are so many that, there are even lists of the lists (I am hopeful someone will compile these all up at some point...).

Visually, I will be surprised if anyone collates a set of more succinct 'iconic images' than The Boston Globe's 'The Big Picture':

"Call it what you will, "the noughties", "the two-thousands" or something else, the first decade of the 21st century (2000-2009) is now over. Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs, it becomes clear that it was a dramatic, often brutal decade. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and wars were by far the most dominant theme. Ten years ago, Bill Clinton was ending his final term in office, very few had ever heard of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq – all that and much more has changed in the intervening time. It's really an impossible task to sum up ten years in a handful of photographs, but below is my best attempt at a look back at the last decade."

"Since this planet is so close to Earth, Hubble should be able to detect the atmosphere and determine what it's made of," said Charbonneau. "That will make it the first super-Earth with a confirmed atmosphere – even though that atmosphere probably won't be hospitable to life as we know it."

A few days ago, a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that a group of astronomers from the MEarth Project had discovered a 'super-earth' 6.5 times the mass of the Earth, 40 light-years away. What makes the finding so extra-special is that the planet and its host star, GJ1214 were found using a set of 'small ground-based telescopes' giving hope to amateur star-gazers everywhere:

"Astronomers found the new planet using the MEarth (pronounced "mirth") Project – an array of eight identical 16-inch-diameter RC Optical Systems telescopes that monitor a pre-selected list of 2,000 red dwarf stars. Each telescope perches on a highly accurate Software Bisque Paramount and funnels light to an Apogee Alta U42 camera containing a charge-coupled device (CCD) chip, which many amateurs also use."

"Since we found the super-earth using a small ground-based telescope, this means that anyone else with a similar telescope and a good CCD camera can detect it too. Students around the world can now study this super-earth!" said David Charbonneau of CfA, lead author and head of the MEarth project."

(If you have a spare 50mb, the time-lapse movies of dancing telescopes at the bottom of this page are well worth a watch.)

The newly-discovered 'super-earth' is super-hot – about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, it is believed to be made up of three-fourths water, and one-fourth rock. There are also hopes that the planet could have a gaseous atmosphere:

"When astronomers compared the measured radius of GJ1214b to theoretical models, they found that the observed radius exceeds the model's prediction, even assuming a pure water planet. Something more than the planet's solid surface may be blocking the star's light – specifically, a surrounding atmosphere. The team also notes that, if it has an atmosphere, those gases are almost certainly not primordial. The star's heat is gradually boiling off the atmosphere. Over the planet's multiple-billion-year lifetime, much of the original atmosphere may have been lost. The next step for astronomers is to try to directly detect and characterize the atmosphere, which will require a space-based instrument like NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. GJ1214b is only 40 light-years from Earth, within the reach of current observatories."

"It is only by letting go of your reserve and giving time to a work of art that looking at it becomes a truly rewarding experience."

Alison Watt is a Scottish painter, born 1966. She began her career in the UK with a commission to paint a portrait of the Queen Mother. Slowly her work began to focus less on the figure and more on the material surrounding it and in 2000 she exhibited a series of works 'Shift' which had material as their sole subject:

"12 large works, each depicting swathes of fabric alone. These exquisitely painted canvases edge further towards the abstract yet had a strange, almost sexy quality which suggested a human presence, or at least absence."

Her work has stuck in my mind since seeing her exhibition 'Phantom' at London's National Gallery. The paintings appeared at first to be an experiment with scale but up close they were incredibly colourful and intense. There is a great video of Alison talking about the exhibition here.

"The work on show in Phantom demonstrated a deep fascination with the possibilities of the suggestive power of fabric. Alison Watt made a childhood trip to London to visit the National Gallery, which resulted in a lifelong admiration for Ingres’s portrait 'Madame Moitessier', a picture that has been a constant source of inspiration for her."

"My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake.. to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt."

On a customary visit to Tate Modern today, I stood mesmerised by these beasts from the brush of American artist Cy Twombly. Exhibited in a tight space, they are huge works which draw you in through the sheer size alone.

"These three paintings take Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, as their subject. ‘To paint involves a certain crisis, or at least a crucial moment of sensation or release,’ wrote Twombly earlier in his career, ‘…it should by no means be limited to a morbid state, but could just as well be one ecstatic impulse.’ This impulse has made regular appearances in his work, often personified by Bacchus, whose rites were celebrated with orgies and animals being torn to pieces and their raw flesh consumed, acts reflected in the colours used here."

"The title of the series – Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos – refers to the dual nature of the god, encompassing both sensual pleasure (psilax) and violent debauchery (mainomenos). This contrast is echoed in the paintings’ combination of euphoric loops that soar upwards and sanguine floods of paint that ooze and cascade down the canvas. Red is the colour of wine, but also of blood and these works are some of the most liquid that Twombly has painted. The unfurling folds of these paintings were made, like Henri Matisse’s works in old age, with a brush affixed to the end of a pole, which lends them their vitality and scale."

"I want people to know what it is they're looking at. But at the same time, the closer they get to the painting, it's like going back into childhood. And it's like an abstract piece.. it becomes the landscape of the brush marks rather than just sort of an intellectual landscape."

Jenny Saville (born in Cambridge in 1970) is an English artist. Known for her larger-than-life paintings of the human form, Saville came to prominence in the 90's due to her association with Young British Artist movement:

"Saville does not meet the usual public perception of the YBAs as she has dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings."

I really love the form and urgency Saville's paintings have and the fact that they sit somewhere between abstract and figurative. When seen in real life they confront you head-on, Its easy to see the often-made comparisons to Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

"I don't like to be the one just looking or just looked at. I want both roles."

"If I were able to "insist" on anything at all, it would be that the meaning of any work will always exceed what its author intends, because of both the author's own unconscious and the differences between readers. The only "hidden meanings" in my work are those hidden from myself."

Victor Burgin was born in Sheffield, UK in 1941 and has spent the last 50 years teaching, exhibiting and creating work primarily in the US and the UK.

His work often deals with social and individual identity, semiology and gender politics. His approach is constructed of subtle layers of meaning which slowly unfold leading to repeat viewings and imagery that tends to stick in the mind. For example, 'Photopath', conceived in 1967 and physically realised in 1969 is a very simple act, or instruction for an act, which situates the work in between the viewer and their environment:

"Burgin affixed large black and white photographs of wood flooring to the floor itself, so that the images appeared "perfectly congruent with their objects." Presented at the London ICA’s version of the landmark exhibit When Attitudes Become Form in 1969, the work is an extension of classic minimalist concerns with site and context, foregrounding the viewer’s apprehension of the object through a decidedly post-minimal embrace of ephemerality and self-effacement. As Burgin notes, "(i)t was a piece of ‘sculpture’ in as much as it was material on the floor of the gallery, and had no other function than to be looked at by an art audience. It was very ephemeral at the same time – just paper – photographs that only showed what was already there." The very redundancy of the images – showing what was already there – made the work a pointed reflection about photography and the act of looking."

I like the idea in Burgin's work that the viewer is an integral part of the piece and if I was to pick out a perfect illustration of this it would be 'Marlboro' from his 1986 publication 'Between'. The text that overlays the iconic image on a worn out billboard reads:

"FRAMED: A dark-haired woman in her late-forties hands over a photograph showing the haircut she wants duplicating 'exactly'. The picture shows a very young woman with blond hair cut extremely short. The hairdresser props it by the mirror in which he can see the face of his client watching her own reflections. When he has finished he removes the cotton cape from the woman's shoulders. 'That's it', he says. But the woman continues sitting, continues staring at her reflection in the mirror."

"I arrived by ship to New York as a teenager, an immigrant, and like millions of others before me, my first sight was the Statue of Liberty and the amazing skyline of Manhattan. I have never forgotten that sight or what it stands for. This is what this project is all about."

I thought I would top-off a trilogy of skyscraper posts with a mention to Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind and in particular his masterplan for 'Memory Foundations'. The figure-head of his design 'Freedom Tower' which is now going by the name of 'One World Trade Center' has not been without its critics and, as a result, has been through numerous revisions over the last few years. These issues have affected Libeskind's original intentions somewhat:

"The sky will be home again to a towering spire of 1776 feet high, an antenna Tower with gardens. Why gardens? Because gardens are a constant affirmation of life. A 1776 foot skyscraper rises above its predecessors, reasserting the pre-eminence of freedom and beauty, restoring the spiritual peak to the city, creating a building that speaks of our vitality in the face of danger and our optimism in the aftermath of tragedy. Life victorious."

I have to say that Libeskind's poetic and delicate approach appears, in this instance, to have a really modern and fitting feel. I also admire his resilience as displayed in this fascinating interview. Completion of the site is due 2013.

"We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself. New materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make it."

Yesterday I posted on the "Shard of Glass" in London, it reminded me of one of my favourite buildings that never got the chance to be realised (the best ones never do):

In 1919 German architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe submitted a proposal to build the world's first glass walled skyscraper in Friedrichstrasse, Berlin. The structure was to be revolutionary:

"Miess' design called for three towers, each shaped like the tip of a spear, joined by a central core. This unique building envelope enclosed 753,000 square feet of floor space. Its high ceilings and liberal use of glass also allowed light to penetrate deep into the center of the building. Mies’s proposal was passed up in favor of a more conservative design, but the winning entry was left unbuilt because of Germany’s economic troubles in the years after World War I."

Its easy to see what the competition committee were possibly taken aback by the entry and also how Miess' was seeking to interpret culture into his early work. He would later settle in Chicago, Illinois, and in New York in 1958, realise his early dreams with his Seagram Building, a monolith which many, if not all, regard as the definitive glass skyscraper.

A rare day of great weather in London today had everyone looking up into the pure blue sky and the thing most notable is the amount of cranes and construction work going on in the city.

After a turbulent couple of years the proposed glut of skyscrapers are now finally taking shape in the run up to 2012 and the Olympics coming to town. Judging by the speculative images created by unofficial skygazers, it looks like London's going to take on a theme-park alter ego. All the high-risers come with their own superhero names too: there's 'The Pinnacle', 'City Pride', 'Columbus', 'Heron Tower' and perhaps best of all 'The Cheese-Grater'. The big daddy though is 'The Shard' also known as 'London Bridge Tower' also known as 'Shard London Bridge'. At a height of 310 metres, its going to be (when completed) the biggest of all buildings in the UK, although interestingly, still not the tallest structure in the UK. Anyhow, you could fit two Shards into one Burj and still have room for a Big Ben. Case closed.

I like the idea that the Shard is intended by its architect Renzo Piano to become a beacon for everyone:

"I see the tower as a small vertical town for about 7,000 people to work in and enjoy, and for hundreds of thousands more to visit," explains Piano. "This is why we have included shops, museums, offices, restaurants and residential spaces. The shape of the tower is generous at the bottom and narrow at the top, disappearing in the air like a sixteenth century pinnacle or the mast top of a very tall ship."

You can keep up with all the latest developments on London's skyline here and here or if you are in the city, keep your eyes pointed upwards.

"Isn't this the sexist spaceship ever?" said British billionaire and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, who partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan on the venture.

This is you, in space, $200,000 lighter. A couple of days ago Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic proudly unveiled 'SpaceShipTwo' (alloneword), the world's first commercial spaceship. It is hoped after 18 months of rigorous testing that Virgin Galactic will start offering sub-orbital space flights to the paying public. Actually first to go will be Sir Richard himself:

"Branson, who is spending between 250 million and 400 million dollars on the space venture, also said he planned to be on the craft's first passenger flight some 18 months from now, accompanied by his family and the US designer of the space ship, Burt Rutan."

A lot of the credit for the fact that Branson's team is so far ahead of the competition has to be laid at the door of American Aerospace engineer Burt Rutan:

"Rutan’s solution for the single most dangerous and technically challenging part of any spaceflight — reentry into the atmosphere — was equally creative. His so-called shuttlecock design pivots the wings of the spacecraft up for reentry. "The key is a low ballistic coefficient," Rutan says, referring to the ratio between weight and drag. "Think of the difference between a bullet and a feather." A streamlined bullet screams heavy and fast through the atmosphere — it has so little drag that it generates huge amounts of heat. A feather, on the other hand, has a lot of surface area, and it’s so light that it floats slowly, lazily through the air. By building the wings of the lightweight carbon-fiber capsule so that they pivot into a 65-degree angle of attack, Rutan has a very light craft with a lot of drag and low aerodynamic loads — just like a feather. His spaceship can reenter the atmosphere safely, routinely, without the pilot ever having to touch the stick. Once the ship gets closer to the ground, the wings flatten out again for a gentle glide to the runway."

"To make sure we remain faithful to those brand values and to make sure twenty-something Eurbanites could relate to the car saw us deviate from the polished ’bells and whistles’ mainstream campaigns normally used to launch new models."

I ran across the website of Boris Hoppek – 'Full Service' the other day. He has some very playful and cheeky street art on there. Turns out his work was employed to design the dolls/puppets for the recent Adam Opel GMBH campaign entitled C'mon. The media press release for the adverts reveal the aims behind said campaign:

"The twenty-something market is defined and controlled by the individual. Today’s twentysomethings regard the products they purchase as extensions of their own personalities – they mix and match brands to create their own individualistic, distinctive look. Credibiltiy and Authenticity are key factors that any brand needs to consider when communicating with this target. Opel’s strategy in marketing the new Corsa was to give the car a clearly identifiable twentysomething (male and female) appeal that is spirited, dynamic and fun, positioning the car as a "must have" for this target audience."

Basically, a fictional band was created complete with merchandise, fake documentary on MTV and hit singles (produced by a real band - 'The Outcomes'). I have to say, I enjoyed the adverts and equally, the idea that an artist held on to some element of control of his original work in the process. Every puppet gets his share right? Then I got sad, so what happens when the campaign's over and no one wants to play anymore? My mind conjured up a furry (slightly dusty) yellow creature- his name is Eric.

Flat Eric (or stephanie if you are french or have a long memory) was the darling of the media in 1999 – 2000 thanks to a Levi's advertisement starring Eric and his human friend Angel (Phillipe Petit) on the run from the law. Again it turns out Eric was a commercial animal, he was officially a muppet, having been created by Jim Henson's studios in the shape of Kermit and his rights are owned by his creator and music maker Mr Oizo (French Electro house musician Quentin Dupieux).

Strikes me Eric is on a hiatus, but 9 years is a long hiatus. I hope he is doing ok.

"One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find."

The american Minimalist Dan Flavin is perhaps best known for his Monuments to V. Tatlin fluorescent tube constructions which he worked on between 1964 – 1990 (Less so for working with paper, as in the top image).

"The material Mr. Flavin fastened on, the fluorescent light fixture in its many colors and lengths, was at once sensuous and austere, straightforward and celebratory. He was perhaps the first artist to employ electric light in a sustained way, and he remained one of the best. In retrospect, its presence seemed appropriate to a former Catholic altar boy who recalled being "curiously fond of the solemn high funeral Mass, which was so consummately rich in candlelight, music, chant, vestments, processions and incense."

Flavin died on November 29th 1996. The Dan Flavin Art Institute in New York exists as a permanent installation of Flavin's work set in a renovated firehouse, once used as a church.

"What is important is that the immobility of a sculpture is a tense immobility, the eternal moment of the sculpture is something slightly stretched, like trembling. For example, lyrical trembling, trembling before discomfort."

Victor Alimpiev is a Russian artist whose work deals with the figure, or groups of figures, in a surrounding space. I caught up with his work a few weeks ago at his show To Trample Down An Arable Land at the Ikon gallery in Birmingham, UK. There is an uncomfortable quality to his films that I really like. One in particular, 'Summer Lightnings', I think I could watch again and again just for its beautiful simplicity. He exhibited at last year's Frieze Art Fair and they had this to say:

"Victor Alimpiev’s videos are experiments in controlled spontaneous behaviour. Whether providing a close-up view of a singing exercise in which one woman instructs another on proper breathing techniques (My Breath, 2007) or juxtaposing a group of schoolgirls rapping on their desks with the ragings of a summer storm (Summer Lightnings, 2004), Alimpiev reveals our concomitant proximity to and distance from the natural world. The desperation implicit in his attempt to align the rational and the irrational is echoed in the camera’s tight frame and abrupt interruptions. The resulting tension derives from both the exhilarating effort to master nature’s rhythms and the manifest impossibility of achieving this task."

Take one empty room and fill with a helping of Jarvis Cocker. "Further Complications" is the new single from Jarvis's similarly-titled album which came out in May this year to generally positive reviews. The video to accompany it is by Partizan director, Stephanie Di Giusto (interview) who has some equally lovely films over on her website.

I used to think that people all chose the lives they led
But so many different choices that you've got to make instead
Don't write a novel – a shopping list is better
It's a complicated boogie and I don't know any better baby…

Oh…your life is just a carrier bag
Overfill it and the straps will snap

Astronomers, using a camera on the Subaru Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have published an image of what they beleive to be the coolest planet outside our solar system to be pictured directly (bright dot in the bottom-third of top image).

"First observations with the world's newest planet-hunter instrument, HiCIAO, have revealed a faint companion to the star GJ 758, resulting in what could be the first image of a cool extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star. With an estimated mass of 10 – 40 times Jupiter's mass, GJ 758 B is either a giant planet or a lightweight brown dwarf. Its orbit is somewhat larger than Neptune's, and its temperature of 600 K makes it the coldest companion to a Sun-like star ever resolved in an image."

However, there is a distinct possibility that the finding might turn out to be a brown dwarf star:

"Knowing the age as well as the temperature of GJ758B will help determine exactly how massive it is, and thereby if it is in fact a planet or a brown dwarf."

The team will continue its measurements on the parent star and investigate a second candidate found in the image – GJ 758 C, in spring 2010.

It makes perfect sense to me that an Ed Fella resumé is done in an Ed Fella kinda way. His website is, refreshingly, another true representation of his unique style.

"I don't like to use terms like "good," "bad," "beautiful," "ugly," because they continually take on different meanings. The eighteenth century thought that beauty was in the eye of the beholder, but it's in the culture of the beholder. Every culture has its own standards of beauty. Design has opened up to accept the high culture and the low culture, the vernacular, amateur art, outsider art, so-called primitive art and just about everything else you can identify or catalog: it's all part of the mix."

If the world was flat, less than 10 miles long and had no traffic-lights then I would strongly consider riding a fixed-gear cycle. Bertelli is a website showcasing fixed and single speed bicycles assembled by an Italian guy in New York city. It also exhibits some extremely beautiful images of those machines. However, I like most of all the attitude and obvious passion of its owner:

"I combine brand new parts with "new old stock" and vintage parts found at flea markets, old bikeshops, collectors and from my trustworthy suppliers. The final result is that you won't find exactly the same combination in any other bicycle out there. And your bicycle will be unique."

Yesterday's post on Anish Kapoor got me thinking about another master of colour – Yves Klein. Now, you have to have a special kind of ego to sign the sky and create your very own shade of blue, but my favourite Klein story is a tip on how to stay in your audience's minds long after the performance:

"The Void was diabolically simple: Klein completely emptied the Iris Clert Gallery except for a single bare display case, painted it a single shade of glossy white, and called it art. A blue cocktail was also served, a combination of gin, Cointreau, and methylene blue, which, much to Klein's surprise and delight, caused his patrons to urinate blue the next day."

There are only 12 days left to witness Anish Kapoor's 'Shooting into the Corner' exhibit in his show at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. If you want to get a taste of what a large cannon loaded with a canister of crimson pigment-wax being fired every 20 minutes at the gallery's walls looks like, there's a webcam for that.

'Svayambh' on the other hand looks like a much more steady form of controlled demolition:

"Svayambh, Sanskrit for "self-generated", made its first journey in 2007, at the neoclassical Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, where it evoked French revolutionary rivers of blood. Proceeding to Munich's Haus der Kunst, built to show off Hitler's Nazi art, its resonances turned inevitably to the Auschwitz deportation trains. At the Royal Academy, slavery, colonialism, and the oppressive splendour of the Raj come to mind. But so does "Svayambh"'s status as abstraction. For the train is a massive paintbrush, smearing abstract strokes, playing with ideas of artistic accident, twinning creation and destruction."

If the promo video for 'United Snakes' by Massive Attack and United Visual Artists is anything to go by, then I am looking forward to the forthcoming album in February 2010.

"The new Massive Attack album is Heligoland. The name, tracklisting and what appears to be the final cover art (designed by Robert Del Naja and Tom Hingston) were unveiled by MassiveAttack.com earlier today. The date as speculated here before is set for February 8th next year. The American market will recieve the album the following day. Coincidentally this date is almost exactly 7 years from when 100th Window, the last proper studio album from Massive Attack was released."

"What is important to me in not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality."

Anne Truitt, an American artist (1921-2004) who was important to the minimalist and colour-field movements in the 50's and 60's, is currently the focus of a major retrospective at the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.

I would love to experience it, I am sure her work really comes to life in the context it was intended for.

Somehow I found my way, a few days ago, to the work of Johan Prag, a Swedish Art Director living and working in Tokyo. His delicacy of line and subtle compositions (especially in his 'Sun' font, designed for UA's 'Sun' album) are really great.

NIOTD is always inspiring – particularly so, less than a day before space shuttle Atlantis is due home.

"The thin line of Earth's atmosphere and the setting sun are featured in this image photographed by the crew of the International Space Station while space shuttle on the STS-129 mission was docked with the station."

"A typeface in which something of the original written form cannot be discerned may be rightly called degenerate."

Emil Ruder. A rectangular edition published in 1988 is dissected over at Designers Books.

"God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is at least for me an abuse of paper." Alvar Aalto.

Very few designers consistently make you say "why didn't I think of that!?"
Astrid Stavro is one of them: Studio Astrid Stavro.

'Pursuit of Happiness' (You Tube).

Wonderful – The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.

Every year I stare at a blank postcard wondering what to do with it. My card will be hiding in the greatest 'who did it' in the art world: RCA Secret.

"RCA Secret is an annual exhibition and sale of original postcard-size art, made by professional artists, designers and illustrators, plus the Royal College of Art's current postgraduate students. This year's exhibition of over 2,000 pieces include work by the renowned artists Gerhard Richter, Bill Viola, Julian Opie and Grayson Perry. Open at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU from Friday 13 November – Friday 20 November 11 to 6pm, 11 to 8pm on Thursday 19 November. All proceeds go to the RCA Fine Art Student Award Fund, which supports student artists during their training at the Royal College of Art."

Another US related piece of news: Jason Polan has an exhibition running for the month of November at Lump in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you're in the area please check it. How can you not trust someone drawing such incredible giraffes?

A new type illustration I was asked to create for the 'On Language' column in Today's NYT Sunday Magazine. I love little challenges like these, I was inspired by the sleek elegance of the vehicles, the authority associated with the word's place in history and cars like the one above.