Last chance to see Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings at the Royal Academy of Arts

Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings installation view, 2018. Photo: David Parry.

Last chance: see the Royal Academy of Arts’ uplifting architecture exhibition, Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings, in the New Year.

This January, escape into the world of Renzo Piano, the inspirational architect behind The Shard in London, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the 1.7-kilometre-long Kansai Airport in Japan. During his 40-year career, Piano has made a huge contribution to the modern city centre, not least on his own hometown of Genoa, where his regeneration work truly transformed the industrial harbour into a public space.

This stirring exhibition is like walking into one of Piano’s architectural logbooks. Daylit, bright and airy, the gallery houses 16 tables filled with original sketches, technical drawings, detailed models and in situ photos of some of his most important projects. Highlights include the first sketch of The Shard (which Piano drew on the back of an envelope in a restaurant), as well as 1:1 mock-ups of engineering elements, which his 150-strong team produce to test their scale and surface.

Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings installation view, 2018. Photo: David Parry.

Each of these reveal the vision and invention behind Piano’s pioneering constructions, and the truly global scale of his work. Designed and curated in close collaboration with Piano himself, join us for the first exhibition in London to put the spotlight on Piano in 30 years.

At the centre of the exhibition is a darkened room screening an intimate documentary with Piano, as well as the most imaginative object in the show: a metropolitan ‘Island’, created by Piano and his team, which brings together over 100 of his buildings at a 1:1000 scale into one landscape.

Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings installation view, 2018. Photo: David Parry.

Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings is open until 20 January 2019. 

Book now

Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with Renzo Piano Building Workshop and the Fondazione Renzo Piano.

Oh Comely readers can enjoy 20% off tickets using the code ARCHI18.

*This is a sponsored post*

Anni Albers

Anni Albers in her weaving studio at Black Mountain College, 1937.
Photo: Helen M. Post, Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina

Innovative textile artist Anni Albers is currently being celebrated at London’s Tate Modern. As a female student at the radical Bauhaus art school in Germany, Albers was discouraged from taking up certain classes. She enrolled in the weaving workshop and made textiles her key form of expression. The exhibition explores the artist’s creative process and her engagement with art, architecture and design and displays the range of her work, from small-scale ‘pictorial weavings’ to large wall-hangings and the textiles she designed for mass production. We spoke to curator Ann Coxon to discover more about this pioneering artist – and why her work remains so relevant to today.

This is Anni Albers’ first major UK exhibition. Why do you think it’s taken so long?

It’s because of the media. Because Anni Albers was first and foremost working with weaving. Because the art that she made was made with thread. She stopped weaving when she was older, because it was quite physically demanding, and started printmaking. Quite late in her life, she made some comments about how when you’re working on paper it’s considered art but when you thread it’s considered craft.

That legacy of dividing into art and craft has continued, even though the ethos of the Bauhaus – where Anni Albers studied – was to bring design, craft and art together. Even though that happened 100 years ago, I think we’re still just catching up! It’s really important that Tate Modern is showing that textile can be used as a fine art medium and putting it centre stage.

Black White Yellow 1926 / 1965, original 1926 (lost), re-woven by Gunta Stölzl in 1965, cotton and silk, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Everfast Fabrics Inc. and Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1969 / Art resource / Scala, Florence © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

Could you tell us a bit about the weaving workshop in the Bauhaus?

At the Bauhaus, students took a preliminary course, then chose a workshop. We don’t know exactly how it came about but we do know that the weaving workshop became known as the women’s workshop. That women both gravitated towards it and were encouraged to take it up and discouraged from certain other disciplines. For various reasons, weaving wasn’t her first choice, but she took it up and really fell in love with it when she found her creative outlet there. And so this incredible thing happened at the weaving workshop, when these women were exploring weaving as a form of modernist art making.

The Bauhaus disbanded in the mid-1930s with the rise of National Socialism and Anni, and her husband Josef, were lucky enough to be offered to be offered teaching posts at Black Mountain College in the United States. But some of her peers were not so lucky. Otti Berger, a contemporary of Albers at the Bauhaus, unfortunately died in Auschwitz. Anni was of Jewish heritage as well. In the 1960s, she got back in touch with Gunta Stölzl, who was head of the weaving workshop, or Gunta Stölzl reached out to her, and together they recreated some of the beautiful wall-hangings from the Bauhaus era that had been lost during the war.

Going around the show, you really get a sense of how naturally experimental Anni Albers was.

I think the interesting thing about weaving is that you’ve got this quite rigid format, with the vertical warp threads that are set up on the loom, then the weft threads get woven across and through and so you’ve got this grid framework really at the heart of the endeavour. What Anni Albers’ was interested in exploring is: what can I do with that? What are the variations? What happens if you twist the warp threads? What happens if you use this technique? Or this one? She was really thinking about how to push all the possibilities.

I’d previously seen her work as photographic reproductions and it’s amazing how different they look when you see them in person.

That’s something that really comes through in textile media. We tend to privilege the visual and the optic. What comes through with textile art is that there’s this tactile and haptic register: not just what’s seen but also felt. I think Anni Albers’ work really makes you think about the tactile. She was very vocal in saying – even at the time that she was writing in the 1960s – that we were starting to lose touch with what it means to make things with our hands and she gave the example of when you go out to buy your sliced bread, it’s very different to kneading the dough to make the loaf of bread.

Study for Unexecuted Wallhanging 1926 The Josef and Anniversary Albers Foundation © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

There’s something of a recent revival in weaving. Do you think it’s that desire to get back in touch with our hands?

Everything is very visual and the touchscreen fills our day. More and more, we’re all glued to our phones. Everything is communicated very visually and perhaps it’s that longing to get back to something a bit more tactile, literally a bit more homespun. Certainly, lots of a younger generation of artists seem to be making reference to Anni Albers’ work or beginning to use textiles again as part of a multimedia practice, such as Sarah Sze – whose work has recently come into the Tate’s collection.

The exhibition also emphasises Anni Albers’ wide range of cultural influences. 

When Josef and Anni came to North Carolina in the 1930s, they travelled by road down to Mexico, and they both fell in love with Mexico and Mexican culture, history and making and they made several trips to different Latin American countries, such as Peru. Anni Albers  referred to the Peruvians as her “great teachers”. She was very interested in pre-Columbian textiles, unpicking them to see how they were constructed and fascinated by the way that weaving was really the most ancient form of communication, of technology, of civilisation. To take that, to inspire her to make weaving a modern project. She’s really taking that ancient art form and making it modern.

Anni Albers, Six Prayers, 1966–1967. Cotton/linen, bast/silver, Lurex. 1861 x 2972 mm. The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of the Albert A. List Family, JM © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

What would you say is Anni Albers’ masterpiece? 

The very beautiful work, Six Prayers. It was commissioned by the Jewish Museum in New York as a memorial to the holocaust. It’s beautifully constructed. There’s a kind of light that shines out of it – it really is a masterpiece.

Anni Albers is at Tate Modern until 27 January 2019. Read about a stay at the Bauhaus here.

Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde

Photographer unknown, Rodchenko and Stepanova descending from the airplane. (for the film The General Line by Sergei Eisenstein), 1926. Courtesy Rodchenko and Stepanova Archives, Moscow

words: Victoria Rodrigues O’Donnell

With institutions like the Tate and National Gallery becoming more vocal about collecting and exhibiting works by women alongside projects like Katy Hessel’s The Great Women Artists Instagram account (featured in our current issue), the new exhibition at the Barbican, London, challenges our understanding of art history and women in Modernism. Showcasing the works of over 40 artist couples, ‘Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde’ seeks to reassess modern art and the influence of intimate collaborations on its development from the late 19th to mid-20th century. Little did I know that I would end up spending the next three hours walking through the space in enthrallment.

The modern couples in question vary from sexual orientation to location as well as artistic style and each room is dedicated to either a pair or group whose relationships inspired their creative output. It’s an understatement to call this an ambitious project, but I felt it succeeded most in shedding light on the works of women that have largely been overshadowed by their male partners and contemporaries. They even quote a reporter writing for the New York Evening Sun in 1917: "Some people think that women are the cause of Modernism, whatever that is."

Friedrich (Fritz) G Walker, Emilie Flöge in Chinese Imperial costume from the Qing Dynasty in the Gardens of the Villa Paulick in Seewalchen at Attersee 13 or 14 September 1913, 1913. IMAGNO Brandstätter Images, Vienna

Firmly established in the canon and soon to be celebrated in an exhibition at the Royal Academy, Gustav Klimt is joined here by his lifelong partner Emilie Flöge. While most of us are familiar with the legacies of Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, Flöge’s contributions to fashion design and success as an entrepreneur remain virtually unrecognised. In 1904, Flöge opened the couture house Schwestern Flöge with her two sisters where they would sell the latest in women’s fashions and accessories. Photographs of Schwestern Flöge on display show its changing rooms decked out with designs from the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) – a style that would go on to influence Art Deco and Bauhaus. Flöge’s daring designs for modern women are perhaps best encapsulated by her free-flowing kaftan-esque smocks which rejected the rigidity of a corseted silhouette.

Sonia Delaunay, Stroll, 1923. Collection of V. Tsarenkov

Other women who worked with fashion and textiles as part of their oeuvre were Sonia Delaunay and Varvara Stepanova. The latter was a key figure in Constructivism, the Russian avant-garde movement better associated with her partner, Alexander Rodchenko, while the former is known for her colourful concentric paintings and patterns. Like Klimt and Flöge, these couples were advocates of art and design being integrated in all aspects of life. Although he dabbled with Neo-Impressionism, Robert Delaunay’s committed revolt against conventional painting methods and interest in colour theory would ultimately impact on his wife Sonia’s approach to designs for other mediums such as textiles, theatre and interiors.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Stepanova and Rodchenko were similarly dedicated to design that would be both decorative and functional. In the words of their collaborator and friend Vladimir Mayakovsky, “the streets shall be our brushes, the squares our palettes”. Not content with the limited reach of creating book covers, posters or photomontages, Stepanova moved her focus onto designing clothes for the everyday proletariat, concentrating on flexibility and dynamism – think bold colours, geometric shapes and chevron. 

Queer love, particularly between women, is at the centre of a section entitled ‘Chloe Liked Olivia’. Referring to a line from Virginia Woolf’s seminal essay A Room of One’s Own, this ‘exhibition within the exhibition’ is devoted to the female artists and writers drawn to Paris’ Left Bank in the 1920s. The display features personal letters, photographs and publications capturing the intellectual and erotic exchanges between the women who moved within these circles. For over 60 years, Natalie Clifford-Barney, nicknamed ‘the Amazon’, ran a weekly literary salon frequented by the likes of Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, and Djuna Barnes as well as Colette, Jean Cocteau and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Paintings by Romaine Brooks, her long-term partner, line the walls of the circular space and epitomise her distinct use of a monochrome palette. 

Claude Cahun, Self-portrait (reflected image in mirror, checked jacket), 1928. Courtesy of Jersey Heritage Collections

The significance of Woolf’s Orlando and its dedication to her lover Vita Sackville-West are also explored in the display. Inspired by this affair, Woolf wrote in her diary that the novel is “a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando. Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other.” Moving fluidly throughout time and gender, Orlando continues to be just as transgressive as it was when first published 90 years ago.

Elements of the display reappear elsewhere in the exhibition, like the room dedicated to Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Spanning across 40 years, Cahun and Moore’s relationship was already established when Cahun’s mother married Moore’s father in 1917. The two would go on to challenge gender stereotypes via experimental photography and collage throughout the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. The importance of mirrors, queer desire and subverting traditional notions around female vanity feature heavily in the couple’s work and are echoed in Cahun’s surrealist autobiography: “I am one, you are the other. Or the opposite. Our desires meet one another.”

From the tempestuous and obsessive to the intimate and tender, I was still contemplating all the ways in which art and love weave into one another during my tube ride home. ‘Modern Couples’ is a superb celebration of what can arise when these two coalesce; forging new paths into the unknown and shaping modern art as we know it.

Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde is at the Barbican until 27 January 2019.

What we're loving: Whitstable Biennale

Water Bodies D1 Butoh Tyska

As if we needed an extra reason to head to the seaside this summer, the Whitstable Biennale is luring us with a fantastic programme of experimental and emerging art, taking place from 2 to 10 June. 

Featuring over 50 artists and 179 screenings, live performances, workshops, talks, walks and events, the work is embedded into the fabric of the town: artworks are located on the beach, in the sea, fish market, beach huts, boatyards, shingle harbour and alleyways. From a Victorian Sea Scouts Hall to Whitstable’s only DVD/Comic shop, the biennale will take over curious buildings and unusual spaces.

Taking its title from Deborah Levy’s Booker-shortlisted novel Swimming Home, many of the works respond to the rhythms of the tide or explore ideas of where home might be. Deborah’s own inspiration was the book The Swimmer by John Cheever, later made into a classic film starring Burt Lancaster, which will be screened at the festival. Levy is also creating a new, limited-edition text for the biennale.

There are plenty of works that intrigue here: artist Sophie Lee’s sound work is inspired by a 12th century mystic and will be broadcast from the bell tower; Jude Crilly’s biodegradable sculpture will attract a mass of seagulls and Alice Theobald’s live performance with two choirs will be staged at the Oyster Indoor Bowls Club. Meanwhile, Hannah Lees will be working with art and food, transforming the town’s Horsebridge café with new décor and new dishes.

We’re also up for the artist-led walks, taking visitors through hidden alleyways and marshy edge lands or combine with discussions in The Walking Reading Group. Visitors are invited to go foraging with local bird experts or join a surreal dining experience in a restaurant in the Labour Club. But we advise you to also leave space for some fish and chips – it wouldn’t be a visit to the seaside without it. 

Take a look at their programme for full information

Culture Monday

Anna Meredith, who plays the Simple Things festival this week. Portrait: Lauren Maccabee for issue 33. 

Another week, another opportunity to throw yourself into our cultural picks. From photography to film, music to MADE, there's masses on this week - the problem will probably be deciding where to start! Do let us know what you get up to, and if there is anything you think we really should be checking out ourselves...

Art

Unveil’d Photography @ various venues, Exeter (20 to 23 October)

Helen Marten: Drunk Brown House @ Serpentine, London (until 20 November) 

Quentin Blake: Inside Stories @ National Museum Cardiff (until 20 November 2016)

Film

Cambridge Film Festival @ various venues, Cambridge (20 to 27 October)

Aberdeen Film Festival @ various venues, Aberdeen (17 to 26 October) 

Music

James Vincent McMorrow @ The Roundhouse, London (17 October) 

The Duke Spirit @ Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol, London (17, 18, 19 & 20 October). Read our interview with Leila Moss in Oh Comely issue 31.

The Simple Things festival @ various venues, Bristol (22 and 23 October), featuring issue 33 interviewee Anna Meredith 

Slow Club @ Brighton, Bath, Leicester (20, 21, 22 October) 

Theatre & Comedy

Lost in the Stars @ Union Chapel, London (17 to 19 October) 

Bridget Christie: Because you demanded it @ Leicester Square Theatre, London (19 & 20 October)

Cathy Come Home @ Bristol, Southend, Luton (21, 22, 24 and 27 October) 

Books

Undiscovered Islands @ Stanfords, London (19 October)

New Writing @ Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London (24 October) 

Events

Bloomsbury Festival @ Bloomsbury, London (19 to 23 Oct)

MADE London Marylebone @ One Marylebone, London (20 to 23 October)

How To Hygge Festival @ The London EDITION, London (22 and 23 October) 

Battle of Ideas 2016 @ Barbican, London (22 & 23 October)

Show us where you've been and tell us what we should include in next week's round-up via our Twitter or Instagram.

Culture Monday

Georgia O’Keeffe, Abstraction White Rose, 1927.

Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 (91.4 x 76.2). Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Gift of TheBurnett Foundation and Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation ©Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

The nights are getting longer and the days cooler so even more good reason to throw yourself into all things cultural. To inspire you, here are our pick of events happening this week, ranging across art, film, music and books. One strong piece of advice, if you can get yourself to London - don't forget to visit the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition before it closes at the end of the month - as the curator told us in issue 30, it's a once in a generation chance to see the artist's work in Britain. Enjoy! 

Art

Georgia O’Keeffe @ Tate Modern, London (Until 30 October). Read our interview with the exhibition's curator in issue 30. 

Jeff Koons @ Newport Street Gallery, London (until 16 October)

Lie of the Land @ Gallery 40, Brighton (until 22 October)

Girl Town @ St Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green, London (until 1 November)

Music

Wild Beasts @ The Junction, Cambridge (10 October)

Sussex Songfest @ Snape Maltings (15 October), featuring issue 33 interviewee Anna Meredith. 

Hackney Wonderland @ various venues, Hackney, London (15 & 16 October)

Mystery Jets @ Coventry, Cambridge, Bath, London (11 to 15 October)

Film

London Film Festival @ various venues, London (until 16 October). Our associate editor, Jason, recommends: 

• American Honey, directed by Andrea Arnold @ Odeon Leicester Square (11 October)
• Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt @ Embankment Garden Cinema and Hackney Picturehouse (12 & 13 October)
• Prevenge, directed by Alice Lowe @ Haymarket and Picturehouse Central (13 & 16 October) 
• A United Kingdom, directed by Amma Asante @ Curzon Mayfair (11 October)
• Heal the Living, directed by Katell Quillévéré @ Prince Charles Cinema (14 October)

The Greasy Strangler @ general release (requires a strong stomach!)

Books

London Literature Festival @ Southbank Centre, London (until 16 October)

Birmingham Literature Festival @ various venues, Birmingham (until 16 October)

Waterstones presents Vivienne Westwood @ St James’ Church, Piccadilly, London (14 October) 

Workshops 

Plant Life Drawing @ Ace Hotel, Shoreditch, London (11 October) 

Wool weaving workshop @ Wool BnB, De Beauvoir Town, London (12 October)

Show us where you've been and tell us what we should include in next week's round-up via our Twitter or Instagram.

Brighton Art Fair / MADE BRIGHTON 2016

Fancy some creative inspiration this weekend? Brighton Art Fair / MADE BRIGHTON is happening from Friday 23 to Sunday 25 September at Corn Exchange at the Dome, Church Street, Brighton.

Tutton and Young are hosting a joint art, craft and design fair, featuring fifty each of the best contemporary artists and designer/makers from the UK and abroad. Showing and selling their work directly to the public, they promise an inspiring balance between established and emerging artists and makers. 

Tickets are £7.50. Find out more and buy your tickets here. 

Drawing on the Landscape: Meet Guest Illustrator Padhraic Mulholland

With his website listing his inspirations as “adventure, bikes, the outdoors and folk history”, Northern Irish illustrator Pádhraic Mulholland was destined to paint the pages of issue 31. Watch his time-lapse video below, as he breathes life into the magazine in under a minute, and read on for his influences and tips for wannabe explorers. 

Portrait by Ragnhild Jaatun.

Tell us about your style.
I like to draw quirky characters and lots of nature and landscape. I use a mix of painting, drawing and collage, something that  developed out of necessity. When I went  travelling to Norway I hadn’t quite found my style yet. Without my computer I had to work with what I had, which was acrylics from the local shop. I find traditional processes very relaxing and enjoyable. It’s nice having my computer to be able to fix things though! 

You studied in Falmouth. Did Cornwall  influence your work?
Definitely. I went not particularly interested in the outdoors, although I’d virtually grown up outside! I had lots of freedom growing up in Northern Ireland but didn’t realise how that differed to other people’s childhoods. I began to ride a bit more, and discovered an active community of swimmers and cyclists. 

Tell us about where you live now. 
I’m on the north-east coast of Northern Ireland. I’m seeing it with new eyes. It’s a landscape of glacial glens, upland bogs and lush green fields, leading down to the sea. It’s really special. In Norway, people are inspired by the landscape and that motivated me to start making things, just using what’s around me to the full. 

Who inspires you? 

My grandad is a massive inspiration. He was very active, and took our family to do things such as walking or bird watching. After he died, I realised the family didn’t do that as much anymore. He’s partly why I decided to have my own adventure after my first year of university. I had £100 and four days and I wanted to get as far into the Hebrides as I could. There was lots of rushing to catch  ferries and so many different things to see. I became hooked. 

How do you reconcile your love of the  outdoors with the necessity of sitting at  your desk and working? 
I do a pretend commute. Working from home, I’ve no commute so I always make sure I go out for a half an hour run or a cycle each day. And I try and use the weekend to switch off and go out into nature. Part of the reason I decided to be a freelance illustrator was to give myself the freedom to do that.

Any advice for aspiring adventurers?

Something I learned in Norway: never leave your house without a pair of gloves and a hat. 

See more of Padhraic's illustrations in issue 31, out now.