Britain’s best-known painter meets the world’s best-known scientist. The outcome is a dazzlingly intimate birthday portrait of the wheelchair- bound Prof Stephen Hawking, captured in February at his office in Cambridge looking serene and fascinating with strangely luminous violet eyes. Today’s Science Museum blog reports:
“ IMAGINE BEING ABLE TO SEE the British artist David Hockney create a new work, stroke by stroke, before your very eyes. Now imagine this work is a portrait, providing an insight into the way Hockney composes his famous likenesses. Even better, the subject is none other than the distinguished Cambridge University cosmologist, Stephen Hawking.
For the next three weeks the Science Museum will display an animated version of Hockney’s portrait, running on the artist’s own iPad for more than three minutes and showing exactly how it was created. Visitors can see how his skill has evolved since he was first introduced to the Apple iPhone in late 2008 and then the iPad. Hockney draws with an app called Brushes which removes the need to cart around supplies, easel and palette… It is exhibited alongside a rarely seen Hockney line-drawing, dating from 1978, owned by Hawking’s first wife, Jane… ” / continued online
Ubermensch 1995, by Jake and Dinos Chapman: Hawking as Fiberglass “Superman”
➢ Thin line between art and hate: is this the most repellent work of modern art? “The Chapman brothers’ sneering sculpture of Stephen Hawking sickened me in 1995, and still does now. What do you think is the most hateful work of modern art?” — Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones writing in January … and Jones again today: “Hockney’s portraits of Hawking are important documents of what really mattered in the culture of our time. Like Epstein’s Einstein, they will still be looked at when much art that makes headlines is utterly forgotten.”
❚ 40 YEARS AGO AN ART CRITIC TOOK A STANLEY KNIFE to a Botticelli masterpiece in the National Gallery, and cut the head of Venus out from the canvas. (No, not the real painting, but a reproduction, obviously.) And what he held in his hand was the typical picture postcard by which many of us know this beautiful and all-conquering goddess. The critic and iconoclast John Berger was making a point that it is through reproductions that most of us view the world’s great art. He argued that paintings had been stripped of their context to raise money through sales of reproductions.
“With the invention of the camera, everything changed,” he said, meaning the ways our perceptions shifted. “The days of pilgrimage are over. It is the image of the painting which travels now. The meaning no longer resides in its unique painted surface which it’s only possible to see in one place and at one time. Its meaning has become transmittable. It comes to you, like the news of an event.”
This is how Berger launched Ways of Seeing on Jan 8, 1972 — four pioneering TV films which themselves were extended into a Penguin Modern Classic (set entirely in a heavy Univers font for a reason the author explains), and itself in turn is considered a seminal university-level text for current studies of visual culture and art history.
Yesterday’s BBC radio strand Archive on 4 made exciting listening of judicious extracts. Titled The Politics of Art, it teased out Berger’s then revolutionary way of discussing paintings as commodities, under the themes of society and context, the nude, the power of money and advertising.
The historian Tim Marlow, currently director of exhibitions at White Cube, shows how Ways of Seeing was provocative and up-to-date in seeking out the opinions specifically of women and children. He believes the politics still matter. Berger challenged 600-year-old notions of ownership. “Previously art celebrated wealth and power: gods, princes and dynasties were worshipped… But the European oil painting served a different kind of wealth. It glorified not a static order of things, but the ability to buy, to furnish and to own.” In the late 20th century Berger subjects art to a Marxist critique that reminds us of the role of the makers. Being naked, he argues, is to be oneself. But a woman posing nude “is to be seen as an object”.
Berger’s phwoarr factor: charisma and intellect
Marlow asks how far the message of this series is pertinent again today. As a powerful corrective to glibness in much contemporary culture, The Politics of Art is well worth catching on the radio iPlayer, for Berger’s own bluff opinions, and those of several pundits, including the British novelist Marina Warner who is hooked on his phwoarr factor as well as his intellect: “Physically he was a powerful, beautiful man. And then his Mick Jagger-like charisma: he’s a thrilling performer. It’s a shame this kind of sexual magnetism is rarely seen now on TV — because it’s not permissible”!
There’s also a priceless sequence where the patrician connoisseur Lord Clark (of Civilisation, the earlier landmark TV survey of Western art) confesses to incomprehension before Picasso’s gigantic anti-war painting, Guernica, which invokes the aerial bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish civil war in 1937. Then Berger the passionate ideologue gives an assured deconstruction of the images of slaughter, its screaming civilians and symbols of freedom.
Now aged 85, Berger said recently of his TV series: “The programmes seem as urgent now as then. That’s because what’s happening in the world hasn’t changed very much — it’s only got more extreme. This political approach was prophetic about the world today.”
Adam Ant: intensely serious. (Photograph newly posted at Facebook)
➢ Adam Ant, Dandy in the Underworld is a retrospective photographic exhibition at Proud Galleries in London, being launched with a charity performance by Adam and band on March 6, 2012. Hence a superbly considered interview with Decca Aitkenhead in today’s Guardian about surviving stardom, dealing with bipolar disorder and stuff…
“ Ant still gets annoyed when anyone muddles him up with the early 80s New Romantic scene: “Cos New Romantic was nothing to do with Adam and the Ants. The Ants was a punk band, or a post-punk band if anything, and so historically it’s inaccurate. New Romantic was basically, in my mind, clubbers with too much makeup on with stupid clothes. I never set foot in any of their clubs, so I find it quite distressing to be nobbled into New Romantic, cos it was just a load of guys who looked like they’d had a row with their girlfriends’ makeup. There was nothing tough about it, nothing dangerous about it, it was soft electro stuff and it just looked a bit wet. And I didn’t like being associated with it.”
A man of 58 who still cares this much should probably come across as faintly ridiculous, but the intense seriousness with which Ant deconstructs these arcane distinctions conveys an impression of almost heartbreaking vulnerability… ” / continued online
“ I never set foot in the f***ing Blitz [club]
– I WOULD HAVE BOMBED IT ” Adam Ant drawing his line in the sand with
the New Romantics
(Clink magazine, 23 March 2011)
Instinctive punks, 1977: Adam and Jordan at the premiere for Jubilee
“ Shapersofthe80s has always drawn a clear distinction between Adam Ant and the New Romantics. As does Marco Pirroni, the Ants guitarist and co-writer of many of their hits. “Adam is glam-punk,” he told me emphatically at the bar of the Wag when Ant’s first solo single Puss ’n Boots was storming the chart in Oct 1983. “Americans don’t understand he was never a New Romantic.”
As if proof were needed, just gawp at the way Adam goes hoppity-skippiting through the video to Antmusic. The rent-a-crowd extras must have been the least stylish Londoners within earshot of the Blitz club. Gawp again at how these kids can’t dance either!
Yes of course Kings of the Wild Frontier went on to become one of the great slapstick albums of its time. No dispute. And with characters like Prince Charming and Puss ’n Boots, Adam treated us to year-round pantomime. ”
ENGINE Nr1 by Marcin Potoczny (2001, oil on yarn) is priced at $6,400
❚ THIS MONTH DURAN DURAN DRUMMER Roger Taylor became a curator at Saatchi Online, where he has selected ten works of art “for your viewing pleasure”. Here we see one of them by the Polish artist Marcin Potoczny who was born in Krakow but lives and works in London. He graduated with an MA in painting from the University of Fine Arts in Krakow and in digital graphics at LCC. ENGINE Nr1 (2001, oil on yarn) is priced at $6,400, with prints also available from $51.
Potoczny says: “Engine Nr1 is the first painting from my new series titled ENGINES. The way we memorize, what we memorize, and why certain images or situations are stored in our mind to become content of our dreams later are just a small part of my current research…” / continued online
Posing for the press: Sue Tilley, whom Lucian Freud painted in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping 1995 (left), seen at the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition this week at the NPG. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)
❚ YESTERDAY SHE WAS QUIETLY CHUFFED on her Facebook page. This morning she’s a hot topic in the national papers. And for the next four months Sue Tilley is all over the National Portrait Gallery in a retrospective exhibition of the British painter Lucian Freud, who died last year. The 80s nightclub doorgirl known as Big Sue is famously the subject of Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, the most valuable painting ever to be sold by a living artist. Freud’s nude portrait of Sue — since promoted from benefits supervisor to manager of a Jobcentre Plus in central London — acquired its unique status after it went under the hammer for $33.6m (£17.2m) to Roman Abramovich, the ninth richest person in Russia, at Christie’s New York in May 2008.
She said at the time: “My life’s changed overnight. I’m beside myself, but then lovely things are always happening to me. Still, I’m not surprised — in a way, I always thought this might happen. I love that painting.” There are four paintings of Sue in the new exhibition. She said: “I like two of them, I don’t mind one of them and I hate one of them.”
London clubland knew Sue from vetting the door at Taboo, Leigh Bowery’s now-fabled one-nighter, on Leicester Square from 1985 to 87, as well as the Abba night off Hanover Square. After Bowery — a performance artist and “an icon of outrage” — had become a model for the painter Freud, he introduced them and Sue also posed for a series of portraits in the mid-90s. After Bowery died of Aids in 1994, she was invited to write his obituary for The Guardian, which directly inspired his biography, Life and Times of an Icon, which was published by Hodder in 1997.
SUDDENLY ON FACEBOOK
The first most of us knew of this new round of fame was an uncharacteristic namedrop on Facebook about 9pm on Weds… Sue Tilley I just met Kate Middleton and she was completely lovely. Michael D Herbage She just texted the Queen with excitement at meeting you! Claire Lawrie Was she signing on? David J Deaves She didn’t pose naked for Lucian, did she? Alison Atkinson Maybe you could ask her to hook you up with her brother-in-law! Amanda Foxley Wow — just saw u on tv here in Australia, fantastic! Tami Longhurst Hi Sue, Just saw you on the evening news at the National Portrait — they said that Kate met Sue Tilley Lucian’s “most famous sitter”. Fantastic.
Crying out for speech bubbles: Sue Tilley meets Kate aka Duchess of Cambridge, with NPG director Sandy Nairne. (Photo by Jorge Herrera/WireImage)
Finally Sue couldn’t resist posting the photo of herself talking to the Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate Middleton, wife of Wills, our future king.
Facebook Thurs 4pm… Sue Tilley Right… now I’m really showing off. [Posts the above pic, wow!] Charlie Condou Kate’s saying, “Didn’t we meet once in the loos at Kinky Gerlinky?” Sue Tilley Charlie, you’ve hit the nail on the head… Then she said, “Do you wanna come up Trannyshack afterwards?” I asked her where she got all the jokes she puts on Twitter! Dean Bright I saw you on News at 10. Emma Peake Thrilled to see your Christmas necklace making its royal debut — a vicarious delight! Sam McKnight She’s eyeing your do. Mark my words the “Big Sue” will be the new Pob! Gary Irwin Is that Sven Goran Eriksson? David Power Sue, are you inviting her to Taboo?
Laters… Sue Tilley After all yesterday’s excitement I’ve now got to spend today finishing packing… It is a bit weird that tonight will be my last night in this flat I have lived in for 30 years… a lot of ghosts are going to be rattling about… Just paid maybe my last visit to Camden Town as a resident… Saw Rob the handsome contestant from the last British Bake Off, then a fabulous tranny and then a gorgeous lorry driver shouted “I saw you on the telly yesterday” … I’m going to miss the funny old place.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was bought by Roman Abramovitch, the Russian tycoon and Chelsea FC owner, for a record £17.2 million. Freud died last summer, aged 88, and Miss Tilley described him as “a marvel, really, a complete one-off”. She said: “Do you know, there wasn’t one bad moment sitting for Lucian, excepting the painting when I was lying on the floor — that wasn’t overly comfortable. But it was such an interesting experience. He’s a person you’ll never meet again. Really, he did what he wanted and that was that. I think that’s a trait to be admired. I wish more of us were crazy enough to do that. ”
➢ Duchess of Cambridge carries out first public engagement
without Wills “ The 30-year-old duchess is taking advantage of the prince’s controversial six-week deployment to the Falkland Islands in order to make her mark as a working member of the Royal Family. [Kate] studied history of art at St Andrew’s University, where she met Prince William, coming away with an eminently respectable 2:1. ” (The paper noted she was wearing Jimmy Choo “Cosmic” heels.)
➢ Lucian Freud Portraits runs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Feb 9–May 27 — 130 paintings and works on paper loaned from collections throughout the world, from the 1940s right through to his last, unfinished work. Born in Berlin, he was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, and moved to London to escape Nazi oppression in 1933, though Sigmund did not flee until 1938. Lucian was known for his intense portraits, especially of nudes, and Time magazine critic Robert Hughes proclaimed him “the greatest living realist painter”.
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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