Kathryn Hockey OCA Learning Log: Le Weekend: Art Everywhere

I was lucky enough to spend a recent weekend in Paris, and was bowled over by the visual delights.

The Book Launch
I went to Paris primarily for the launch of the book 'Google- volume 1' by King Zog; a visual dictionary which contains the first image generated by googling all the words in the Oxford pocket dictionary.

King Zog members Ben West and Felix Heyes are recent graphic design graduates from Kingston University who came up with the idea during a group brainstorming session while they were still students. Ben's brother Sam wrote a computer programme so that they didn't have to generate each image 'by hand' and to eliminate personal bias based on previous web searches from the selection, they printed them off and hand bound the pages into a huge brick of a prototype with a beautifully marbled cover commissioned from another artist.

The French publisher Jean Boite Editions then picked up the book, printing a limited edition of 1000 copies.

What I love about this project:

the simplicity of the idea- a visual dictionary, of course! Googling images, of course again! - the really clever part is that they followed through, overcoming (nearly) all the practical conundrums
the democracy - there's no filter for the tastefulness, appropriateness, quality or sometimes even the relevance of the images
the fun - looking through the book is like a parlour guessing game, the urge to refer to the list of words at the back becomes irresistible for those tricky pictures that you just can't name
the diversity - technical diagrams, plush publicity photos, snap shots, logos, cartoons, masterpieces, medical drawings, porn, it's all there, cheek by jowl
the potential for evolution - the words included in dictionaries are updated periodically thereby generating new images and the corresponding google images for those unchanged words will alter over time
the attitude - Ben and Felix are delighted and a bit baffled that their student project has captured the imagination of proper publishers and the public (more than it did for their tutors). They are a modest and good humoured pair, each keen to deflect the credit. 21 graphic design colleagues from their year at Kingston came to the launch showing great camaraderie, with not a hint of jealousy at their early success.

Click for another review here

There seems to be an art gallery on every corner in Paris, besides those there are the shops whose windows seem to bulge and beckon with beautifully posed and crafted objects; for gifting or everyday use, then there are the works of street art which jostle for attention on the outsides of the buildings.

Here are a few snaps of my some of the things which caught my eye:

Street Art

Repeats of an evocative stencil piece layered with tags and collaged posters

Wonderfully complex and elegant, gravity defying art work in subtle colours

Huge and beautifully rendered, a masterpiece of scale, 2D texture and mood

Subtly coloured, elegant and well drawn, this green line work poster piece jostles for position

A retro-pop-art style block work and cartoon collage piece in a limited palette trying to ignore the penile daubs of an unsolicited 'collaborator'

Jolly cartoon cow and cat

Bright and crude, this cartoon Venus happily rides her purple dream dog

Shop Windows

Cavorting ponies with magic carpet saddles fly across a clothes shop window

Antique soda siphons and lace combine to enhance each other's delicacy

Evocative and simple silhouette lamp shade beckons through the dark

Sculptures in sugar admire their reflection while they await their appointment with the consumer

A framed rainbow of spectacle frames

'Readymades' reclining in a light shop window

Exquisite painting on bone and dissection model in a fragrance shop

Creepily beautiful big bug in a lace crinoline

Festively opulent Prada display rotating in Printemps department store

Cartoon Fair

There were a huge number of stalls representing an enormous range of graphic styles, some of the artists were present and drawing....

Two students from the Jean Trubert school of Graphic Arts exhibiting their skills

Pompidou Centre

It's not aging well in my opinion, close up it looks tatty and dirty and the views from the top floor are partially obscured by grimy windows. The gallery and commercial spaces feel overly separated by the need to revert to the escalators accessed externally.

It is refreshing however to be able to take photos inside the galleries.

I didn't have the time or energy to visit all the galleries but I did spend a good while with the surrealist sculptures, making some notes on my guide

Some of my favourite pieces:

Dali's iconic Lobster Telephone sneakily photographed from a distance

Mimi Parent's succinct 'Masculine Feminine'

Meret Oppenheim, elegant, clever, funny

Philippe Mayaux's Reconstruction 2000-12; a delicious confection of body parts

Selfie with a disconcertingly realistic mannequin in the semi-dark gallery

Victor Brauner's Loup Table effectively depicts the prison of self loathing

Duchamp's 'Readymades' resonated with me while perusing the shop windows documented above but I have to disagree with his opinion that "aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided", quoted by Grayson Perry during his recent Reith Lectures. I do seek aesthetic delectation, even in the ugly or disturbing, and I strive to achieve it in my own work. For me it is a sign of transcendence, something beyond intellectualism, 'True Art'. I suspect that Duchamp (and this article may back me up) lacked the dedication and craft skills to achieve aesthetic delectation in his own work and resorted to devaluing the concept in a self conscious effort to excuse his shortcomings.

Pierre Huyghe's exhibits certainly lacked enough aesthetic delectation for him to be taken seriously as a contemporary artist.

I enjoyed parts of his Antarctica film but was otherwise unmoved

Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel

Their huge tapestry featuring a lobster, a dressing gown, a corgi and a shoe was very impressive in a textural sense for the mammoth size of the yarn used.

Gallery Windows

Some of my favourite pieces exhibited in gallery windows seemed to follow the cartoon and collage theme of the weekend (unfortunately I didn't get names and titles)