Is anyone else really into chairs?

I’m pleased to say that at the grand old age of 24, I visited Brighton for the first time this weekend – I felt like I’d found my spiritual home, all sunny café terraces, vibrant market stalls, a fabulous clean (by British standards) beach, and those mesmerising north and south lanes with their clusters of dream shops.

After sunning it up for a while on the beach, I took myself to the Pavilion and the Brighton Museum where I discovered the city’s small but exceptional collection on 20th century art and design. I remember once reading (I’m a little foggy as to where) that the one object which every designer hopes to make his own is a chair. The distinction between one chair and another is sometimes negligible, mundane even, but living as I do with a real chair enthusiast (furnishing 1 small living room = 8 random mismatched chairs, and counting) I’m starting to understand the nature of this fascination, helped along by Brighton’s collections.

The amazing thing was to see the influences of each time and each movement discussed manifested into the chairs. The arts and crafts movement’s deliberating craftsmanship in sweeping organic curves, the roaring twenties’ glistening decadence in art deco’s tasteful classicism, and the incorporation of industrialism in modernism’s clean bent wood and metal. Maybe the chair is the best representation of civilisation, of a society’s values, preoccupations and aims, but these elements can be seen in the objects all around us, our teapots and our lemon squeezers, our cabinets and our lamps, as well as our paintings and our sculptures.



Various fluctuations between form and function serve to distinguish the pragmatism of modernism, from the flights of fancy represented in the surrealist collections. The distinction between art and design and its increasingly confused boundaries is something that we recently discussed in depth with Peter Saville and the visit to Brighton’s museum, showcasing art along the 20th century’s trailblazers of design, emphasised the intertwining between the two. It reminds me of the juxtapositions in women’s fashions, and the medium’s own encroachment into areas reserved for the visual arts through creative visionaries at the helm of the world’s top labels.



My ideal chair? I love the stark metal mesh of Eames’s DKR-2, an existing element of my flat’s collection, but I’d like to combine it with the frivolity of a rocking chair, still on bent metal, but with the bikini cushioning, or maybe something a bit more sixties in fibreglass… I can see how this fascination can grow…



It’s a joy to notice the intricacies and the details of the things around us, the tiny little minutiae which makes something a pleasure or a pain to use. Collections like Brighton’s allow us to stop and take note of the everyday beauty around us, the pieces which have experienced hours at the hands of exacting designers, and if you find yourself with time to spare, I’d recommend a visit.

[Image credits: courtesy of Brighton Museum at http://www.virtualmuseum.info/]

Hopefulness through photography

With all the recent furore over the Iranian elections, I was pleased to discover an alternative, more positive aspect on the country through the artist Sara Shamsavari, who moved to the UK after spending her first two years in revolutionary Iran. Shamsavari’s images capture a hopefulness uncharacteristic of so much coverage today, and they reflect the artist’s mixed cultural heritage and increased awareness of art’s responsibilities as leaders in spiritual and social progress.

Shamsavari’s work reminds me of Martin Parr, and she has the rare gift of capturing how the light strikes a face to illuminate it in hope. Standing in stark contrast to the almost nihilistic, magic realism of Roger Ballen, or the readily packaged nostalgia of MoMA’s recent Into the Sunset Exhibition, Shamsavari looks forward rather than back and presents us with an alternative view of reality. It seems apt that Shamsavari was recently selected as one of the exhibiting artists at the ICA’s Love in the Sky. The exhibition asks us to imagine – what would we do if our aim was a world based on love, and serves to reach for the kind of positivity which seems to be evading many of our contemporaries.



For more information, visit Shamsavari's flicker page.

Images (c) Shamsavari

Stephen Deuchar appointed the new Director of The Art Fund

The Art Fund has just announced today the appointment of Dr Stephen Deuchar as the new Director. Currently the Director of Tate Britain and Chairman of the 2009 Turner Prize, Dr Deuchar will start at The Art Fund in January 2010.

David Verey, Chairman of The Art Fund, said: “Stephen Deuchar is passionate about art and artists, and in giving the public the opportunity to experience great art in all its forms – which has been The Art Fund’s charitable purpose for more than 100 years. It is wonderful that he will be joining The Art Fund as our new Director. A great arts professional, Stephen Deuchar will bring a wealth of expertise and exceptional achievement to The Art Fund. We are all very excited for the future of The Art Fund under his forthcoming directorship.”

Stephen Deuchar said: “I am simply thrilled to have been offered the opportunity to direct the UK’s leading art charity. Its vital support of art galleries and museums across the UK, and the role it plays in galvanising support for the visual arts in Britain, make it a truly exceptional organisation. I cannot wait to start work.I am very proud of my time at Tate Britain, and to have been entrusted with the task of being its founding director. I feel privileged to have worked alongside many inspirational colleagues, especially Nick Serota. But The Art Fund represents an important new chapter for me and an exhilarating challenge.”

Dr Deuchar was appointed to the Tate in 1998 after 12 years as a curator and exhibitions director at the National Maritime Museum. He oversaw the creation of Tate Britain in 2000 at Millbank, home of the original Tate Gallery, and the opening of its Centenary Development galleries in 2001. Under his leadership Tate Britain has acquired an outstanding international reputation for the quality of its exhibitions, drawing 60% more visitors over the past eight years. He led the campaign to secure Rubens’s Sketch for the Banqueting House Ceiling last year, and worked closely with The Art Fund on the campaign to acquire Turner’s Blue Rigi in 2007. Dr Deuchar succeeds David Barrie who stepped down at the end of May after 17 years in the post.

With the recent exhibitions at Tate Britain bringing exceptional art and contemporary thought to the forum, it will be exciting to see what Stephen Deuchar will bring to the Art Fund, and consequentially to our galleries and museums across the UK. It’s hard to believe that the Art Fund give grants up to £5 million per year to help enrich collections across the UK.

Image credit: © Marcella Leith