UBS Openings: Art from the 80's

A while ago I visited an exhibition of work from the 1980's at Tate Modern, and I'd completely forgotten anout it until today! The paintings were all from the UBS collection, and represented an incredibly prosperous time for the art world. The Stars of this scene included well known artists like Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Schnabel and Basquiat are two of my favourite artists, and I've never seen their work shown in the UK before, so I was pretty eager to catch this exhibition. My favourite painting in the (admittedly rather small) exhibition was the one painting included by Basquiat, Tobacco Versus Red Chief, which I had never seen before, and was incredibly striking in the flesh. Basquiats in particular are quite rare in this country, but there's a chance to see a Warhol collaboration that he painted, not his finest moment but certainly worth a look, it's at Tate Modern's 'Pop life' exhibition if you get the chance. It closes very soon though so get in there while you can!

'Art is what you can get away with'

There's currently an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, of a lot of interesting Andy Warhol work. Paintings, prints, film, TV, audio, interviews, drawings and plenty of other weird and wonderfully things created by the Artist in his lifetime are on display. It was like being submerged in his subversive and beautifully celebrity obsessed world. Here's an interview I found, in which Andy Warhol talks about his 'painting' process. Its hilarious to see how confused the interviewer is when Andy mentions that he doesn't paint his own paintings.

Mark Rothko Exhibition

As i mentioned before i was planning on visiting Tate Modern to have a look at the current Rothko exhibition. I did, and it was jaw dropping. Here's a short clip of the exhibition's curator, talking about Rothko's work.

Conversation about the film 'Basquiat'

Director Julian Schnabel and musician David Bowie, who plays Andy Warhol, being interviewed about the film and the artist. This film came in for a lot of criticism when first released, but its one of my favourite films and its nice to see such an intellectual discussion between artists.

Mark Rothko at Tate Modern

From 26th September until 1st February Tate Modern have an exhibition of works by Mark Rothko. He's one of my favourite artists so I'll definitely be going. The paintings are all works from the Seagram Murals series which were originally commissioned for The Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building New York, some of which could already be seen at Tate Modern in the Rothko Room. These works, in my opinion, are some of the most powerful paintings ever produced by the artist.

Bob Forrest

I've noticed that Bob Forrest has been getting a lot more recognition recently due to his work as a drug councillor on the celebrity rehab TV show. I find this really weird because I've always known him as a singer/songwriter, and a damn fine one at that. From his early days as the singer of Thelonious Monster in the late 80's and early 90's, through his critically acclaimed album released under the guise of 'The bicycle thief', to the most recent solo work, he has always been more disarmingly honest and soulful than most songwriters who are a thousand times more well known than him. He was always fighting his various addictions up until the mid to late nineties when he helped himself by helping others with similar problems. So i guess that's how he ended up on the show, and I hope that it turns more people on to his beautiful music. Here is a clip of him being interviewed and performing 'Body and Soul' with Thelonious Monster at a festival in Holland in 1993. He was a bit of a mess at the time, but still manages to give a very insightful interview.

Charles Bukowski

Bukowski is one of those artists who is almost too real. Luckily he is just real enough for me, and his poems and stories are always a great source of inspiration for my art. Again, he is one of those people who is notoriously difficult and controversial, much like his creative output. He is best known as a writer, but he has also made some paintings, so below is a little video of him reading some of his work, as well as a painting. All his paintings can be found at bukowski.net/paintings.