Birthdays and pictures
I’m getting to that stage where birthdays aren’t quite the celebration they once were. If I’m entirely honest, the big 3-0 is pretty terrifying, and I’m trying to pretend that my ovaries are in some kind of Walt Disney-esque state of suspended animation, complete with bunny rabbits and singing flowers and dwarves and shit. But, I have a birthday approaching. Thankfully, it still starts with a 2. And I have relatives asking what I would like as a gift.
Things I would like as gifts: a guaranteed first-class degree when I graduate, clear skin, enough money that I never have to work again, to be able to run a marathon in 2.5 hours, lifelong happiness for myself and my loved ones, a LibDem government that sticks to its manifesto, death to Rupert Murdoch.
My auntie’s pretty great and everything, but I really needed to ask her for something that will be easy to post from Bournemouth. I’m considerate like that.
So, with a new intention to expand my visual art horizons, I asked twitter for some arty book suggestions, which then developed into some pretty great suggestions for work to investigate further. Here are some of the best:
Gregory Crewdson
Like abandoned Desperate Housewives sets strewn with dead people. AMAZING.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle
IT’S THE POMPIDOU CENTRE’S WATER BIT FROM WHEN I WAS LITTLE. One of my first family holidays involved a couple of days in Paris when I was 2. I went mental for the sculptures at the Pompidou Centre (I always did have a well developed aesthetic sense) but only realised they were the artists the other day. I even went to Paris with mates in 2008 and I made my friend Clare walk about a gazillion miles because I wanted to see “the weird shit in the water”.
Paula Rego
Some of her stuff looks quite like Lucian Freud’s, with the big brushstrokes and even bigger thighs, but I quite like how ugly she makes all her subjects.
I actually asked Ellan for a book about Andy Warhol though, because Andrew Graham Dixon waved his hands around EXTRA LOADS when talking about the Campbell’s Soup prints on Art of America recently and I think Andrew Graham Dixon is mega-sexy.
Thanks to @ellie_meg, @AlexanderKelly, @notmetaltax, @ClaudetteDoom, @andybolton, @xkylet, and @probablydrunk.
