Long overdue

Michael Clark by Michael Bracewell and Suzanne Cotter

Violette Editions 7th June, 2010


Notorious for his continually subversive takes on classical dance, Michael Clark is without doubt one of the most important dancers and choreographers of our time. He has created some of contemporary dances finest productions, often using leftfield rock music (most famously in his fantastic collaboration with The Fall, I Am Kurious, Oranj). Situated at the heart of the British post-punk art scene, Clark is much admired for his judicious choice of collaborators, such as designers Bodymap and Hussein Chalayan, artists Cerith Wyn Evans, Leigh Bowery, Charles Atlas and Sarah Lucas, film director Peter Greenaway (Clark played Caliban in Prosperos Books) and bands The Fall, Laibach and Wire. This monograph, the first on this major artist, celebrates the whole of Michael Clark's career to date, from the late 1970s to the present. Rich in visual and archival material, it contains new essays on Clark's work, reprints of key texts and journalism, photography by Nick Knight, David LaChappelle and others, plus interviews with many of Clark's collaborators from the worlds of dance, art, fashion and music. A protege of Richard Alston and Karol Armitage, Michael Clark set up his own dance company in 1984, at the age of 22. He immediately won the admiration of Rudolf Nureyev, who commissioned ballets from Clark for the repertoire at the Paris Opera. Clark has also been the subject of numerous films and documentaries, including the fictional biography Hail the New Puritans by Charles Atlas and The Late Michael Clark, directed by Sophie Fiennes. Michael Clark's new ballet opens in June at the Biennale in Venice, and travels to Edinburgh, Stockholm, Paris and, in late October, to the Barbican in London.










Michael Clark in collaboration with Leigh Bowery


Now playing: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - More News From Nowhere

Worlds end

Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

Ferrymen

A 19th-century depiction of Charon ferrying newly departed souls across the River Styx.

Gone but not forgotten

Frusen Glädjé coffee ice cream.


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Now playing: Bread - Everything I Own
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More ways to waste time

Apartment Zero (1988), starring Hart Bochner and Colin Firth, with Dora Bryan, Liz Smith, and Fabrizio Bentivoglio.

Stylish thriller, set in modern day Buenos Aires, that centres around the relationship between Adrian LeDuc (Firth) and his lodger Jack Carney (Bochner). Adrian, a repressed and unbalanced loner, becomes emotionally dependent on the beguiling Jack, who in turn is a (hot, which is key) mercenary sociopath.


Jack, there is only one rule here and that is avoid the neighbours... They have been trying to find a way into me like dirty little worms...Not because they care, not because they like me, it's just to satisfy their morbid pointless curiosity...





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Now playing: Wham! - Bad Boys
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Come into my life bonny Jean

11 Montpelier Street was my first port of call when I began my decorating journey. I had hoped that their charming chintz would lend a certain polish to a decidedly unpolished client. At the time they also had the most exquisite collection of plains, small patterned monochromatic chintz, that were produced exclusively for them. Sadly, those are now nothing more that a memory.

In 1961 Jean Monro, daughter of the famous London Decorator of the 1920s Mrs Geraldine Monro, decided to reproduce and market the favourite designs her mother had used over the years, some of which were already being produced exclusively for the decorating company. Thus Jean Monro Ltd. came into being.

In 1998 Jean Monro Ltd was acquired by Turnell & Gigon.


JUBILEE
Taken from a wood-block design of 1853, this design has been given a fresh, naturalistic colouring. The original was so dirty as to make the colours unworkable for such a brightly-coloured flower as the Sweet-Pea. This fabric was named to celebrate 75 years of fine decorating by Mrs Monro Ltd.


HOLLYHOCK HANDBLOCK
A very handsome, large-scale bouquet of Hollyhocks, hand-blocked on heavy 100% linen. The original printer's "fent" was a hideous colour and has not been reproduced. Probably mid 19th century, 73 block applications are needed per repeat of this design.



AMELIA
A climbing design of Roses and Plumbago on a stippled and striped background. Very little alteration was made to the original document
This is a particular favourite in the pink/tan colourway. Which I recently used on a deep buttoned chaise lounge.


POLYANTHUS
The first design to be produced after the founding of the Company and still a "signature" today. Clearly there was an error in the naming of this design as the flowers shown are Auriculas.
The moiré background of this print was typical of their exquisite collection of plains.


LILY/AURICULA
This beautiful design of 1855 is printed using some 24 blocks which have been used for over a century. 96 applications are required to complete one repeat of the design. For many years printed only with a blue ground, in 1983 scraps of 2 further colourways were found and the second colourway added to the collection.




HYDRANGEA/ROSE
Adapted from a block-printed chintz dating from the early 1840s when this type of climbing design was very popular. Roses and Hydrangeas were often featured in Victorian designs and the stippled ground was also a favourite.

Another favourite, which was the first chintz I ever used when I began decorating.

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Now playing: Kate Bush - Oh England My Lionheart
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The 80s through a rose tinted lens

The Line of Beauty (2006), the three part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize winning novel.
Oh, if it had only really looked like that. So pristine and perfect.



My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), directed by Stephen Frears and written by Hanif Kureshi.
Lest we forget what it was really like.

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Now playing: Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
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When just being was enough

The year was 1987. Margaret Thatcher was beginning her third term. Terence Trent D'Arby, ABC, Black, and Depeche Mode all had hits. None of us really had careers, just badly paid, but fabulous sounding jobs. Jobs that barely covered living, never mind the the necessities. The necessities being Gaultier, Johnny Moke, the odd bit of Westwood, taxis, and white shirts by Comme. White shirts by Comme that would come in very handy when waiting tables in order to pay for the necessities.


Stephen Tennant, Cecil Beaton, 1924

This was also the year that the Hon. Stephen James Napier Tennant died. The youngest son of the Scots peer, Lord Glenconner, and one of The Souls, the former Pamela Wyndham. And along with him, so too passed the last vestiges of an age, and a culture, where just being was enough.


The Wyndham Sisters (Madeline, Pamela, and Mary), by John Singer Sargent, 1897.


In the Wilderness, Stephen Tennant Modeled as St. John the Baptist for Rex Wilstler

Wilsford Manor


...the house was commissioned by Stephen Tennant's parents, Sir Edward and Lady Tennant. The architect Detmar Blow, his assistants and a dedicated band of masons and carpenters worked on the site of an older, much-altered farmhouse; in March and April 1904 the original structure was carefully dismantled in order to re-use its materials... on 16th May, the new foundation stone was laid by Sir Edward's mother-in-law, the Hon. Mrs Percy Wyndham, who had seen the building of her own house, nearby Clouds, during the 1880s.


The dining room with its cornice of pink plaster shells.


Youthful Edwardian good looks turned florid with age.






One of many ivory satin sleigh beds, this one in particular covered in silver tissue.

Stephen was the first to go all-white in the early 1930s, with the decorator Syrie Maugham. Later, he embraced a palimpsest of flock wallpapers headed by cornices of gold cake braid, not to mention straw suitcases everywhere bulging with Thai silks and carefully arranged journal pages, each written in a different-coloured ink and often containing beauty hints directed to himself: “No mascara for seven days. Rest the eyes completely.” - Emma Tennant

All images of Wilsford Manor from World of Interiors, October 1987.

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Now playing: Pet Shop Boys - Rent
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Moody Design

Today my horoscope read :
This particular astrological time period should come with a mandatory warning label to be worn by the temporary purveyor of said energy until the effects have passed. What might that label read? 'For your own safety, avoid irritating me -- and if you do, hide the scissors.
An understatement if there ever was one.


Stills from Blade Runner.

Is this less than charming mood responsible for the post-apocalypse look that I am contemplating for a new project ?
Possibly, but more likely it is an attempt to capture the mood of the mid 1980s.
I am of course speaking of the underground 80s, as reflected in the works of such film makers as Slava Tsukerman, Peter Greenaway, and Derek Jarman - not the vulgar hyper bourgeois 80s.
My vision is that of the world as seen through Jarman's lens -brutally barren, yet lush in its details. Details which are aggressively challenging both visually and intellectually.


Film posters for Derek Jarman's Jubilee


Chairs by Ron Arad