Spencer House gets Hammered

Spencer House in St James's Place has a new temporary sculpture on the terrace.

It is Hammer (Blue) by  Michael Craig-Martin. You can see it from the western end of St James's Place or from The Green Park. The work has been displayed here by the New Art Centre, more about them here.

Michael Craig-Martin has also curated the sculpture galleries for this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. More on him from his website here.

The Royal Academy Coloring Book

Yesterday morning Jeff Koons' "Coloring Book" arrived to take centre stage in the Royal Academy's Annenberg courtyard in Piccadilly, London.

It was very gently unwrapped and given a final polish.

Coloring Book by Jeff Koons

It arrived fresh from the Metropolitan Museum in NYC where it was displayed on the rooftop sculpture terrace.

It is an enormously heavy, 6m high work, made from mirror-polished stainless steel. The transparent gloss paint has then been applied onto this surface. This high tech paint finish is apparently more advanced than the best paintwork on a Rolls Royce, as painting on a “mirror” gives the paint absolutely no "tack", nothing to cling to.

The work seems to be a high tech homage to Leonardo Da Vinci who used to build up a canvas by first applying multiple layers of varnish, then he applied pigment in thin layers to build an image and then finished each work with more varnish. Light hitting the surface would pass through the outer varnish and the pigment layers to be reflected back out by the varnished base layer, giving a luminescent effect, this was particularly noticeable and effective on faces. Faces literally glowed from the back lighting. No extant Leonardo shows this effect in full, most have had the top layers of varnish, if not the pigment layers below as well, badly damaged by cleaning.

The work certainly catches and engages the eye. Not only do the colours genuinely glow but displayed in the centre of the symmetrical courtyard, the reflective surfaces give an illusion of the whole work being transparent.

Anyway, yesterday morning the weather was quite grey, I will return on a sunny day to see and snap the full effect.

The Rainbow Division Reach the Royal Academy

This very impressive new statue has arrived at the courtyard of the Royal Academy in London's Piccadilly. I thought at first it it must be by Charles Sargeant Jagger, but somehow it seemed too contemporary.

The new work  is actually by James Butler RA and has only recently been cast, though its subject and style are much older.

It is a memorial that has been commisioned in honor of the Alabama 167, the Iowa 168th and the 42nd Rainbow Division  for their deeds in the WWI Battle of the Marne, July 25-26, 1918 in which the Germans were defeated and compelled to retreat.   The Croix Rouge Farm Foundation, Montgomery, Alabama, sponsored the statue. It will be dedicated on November 12, 2011 at the Croix Rouge Farm memorial, in France.

The Rainbow Division, full name the 42nd Infantry Division,  is still a division of the National Guard and United States Army. Douglas MacArthur, once Chief of Staff of the 42ID, is often credited with the naming it. Regiments from 26 different states were rapidly drawn together in August 1917 to form the Division and  MacArthur said "Fine, that will stretch over the whole country like a rainbow." More here.

As the work will only be temporarily available to view in London, as part of The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, it is well worth making the effort to see it soon. If you do miss it, there are several other permanent James Butler's in London, including the Memoria lto the Fleet Air Arm's Daedalus on The Embankment and his statue of James Greathead, the Grahamstown born, tunnelling Pioneer in Cornhill, or I would suggest it is well worth getting the Eurostar on, or after, November the 12th..

Update: 18th May For a full history and many more photos of the sculpture's creation visit the Croix Rouge Farm Foundation Pages here.

Wheeler's Greatest Challenge

I was recently given a copy of "High Relief" the autobiography of Sir Charles Wheeler the sculptor. The cover shows him working on "Earth", one of his massive figures at the Ministry of Defence in London.

The biggest challenge of his career was not carving the monumental MOD figures but rather producing two far more modest lion heads, that support the balcony at India House in Aldwych.

They were carved from Swedish black granite and he writes "So hard was the stone that I kept a boy running from studio to smithy so that my chisels could be remade after a dozen or so blows for they then became quite blunt."

High relief: The autobiography of Sir Charles Wheeler, sculptor

K2 Uncovered!

With the main gates of the Royal Academy in Piccadilly closed against protestors, there was a rare chance to have a clear view of this significant phone box.

This is Giles Gilbert Scott’s wooden prototype of  his classic K2 design. The very one that won the 1924 competition organised by the General Post Office &  Royal Fine Arts Commission.  It is the forerunner of all those familiar red phone boxes.

Normally with the RA gates open,  this little listed building is hidden, although it does still work and is unusually clean. 

The other RA phone box, which stands opposite and to the east, is a regular production version of the K2.

For in-depth information on all telephone box related matters see: 

http://heritage.elettra.co.uk/phonebox/history.html