On Affairs of Style & Sound

A fashionable digression today, in response to an article in yesterday’s Guardian on the subject of an admiration for & inspiration by the sartorial style of David Hockney, otherwise in the news for his current exhibition of landscapes, ‘A Bigger Picture’, at the Royal Academy.
As regards what he might be wearing rather than painting, however, in a related incident late last year Hockney appeared pictured in the November issue of ‘Artists & Illustrators’, resplendent in a knitted tie, thus following the style lead of TOoT as premiered earlier in the year & sported rather fetchingly since, in the contexts of both business & pleasure/leisure: something that perhaps, should be the preferred choice of artists & aesthetes, debonair yet with a certain bohemian air. The estimable Lord Whimsy too has been known to affect ‘the look’, or at least his own idiosyncratic take on it.


Hockney, indeed, has obviously had a thing for horizontally-striped ties (although not necessarily of the knitted variety, for all that the straight end of this illustrated example suggests it might be) since way back, if the drawing 'My Suit and Tie' from 1971 & which image graces the cover of the hardback edition of his 'Drawing Retrospective' volume is any sort of guide.


By one of those serendipitous coincidences that have occurred in these parts on previous occasions, I had only yesterday morning taken delivery of a fresh consignment of knitted ties, thus:


Also pictured is one of the ties as worn, without further ado, with shirt, at ‘wirk’ (note also the Duchampian object in the background – one has to find art where one can!): in such an affronting environment, one has to try & rise above the circumstances & the hoi polloi, not least through one’s apparel & devotion to one’s style…


Finally on the general subject of ties & art, some examples of Fabian Peake's painting from the early-to-mid 1980s featuring just such iconography can be found here, here & here.

Further to yesterday’s cultural matters, A & I were later privileged to attend a performance of Sounds Affairs’ musical accompaniment to 'Salomé' (a fabulously-designed treasure of early arthouse silent cinematic history), a compelling combination of live percussion (with four black-attired musicians arranged within a pair of two-tiered metal-framed open tower structures flanking either side of the screen) & recorded voices, the sonic & visual elements of the event mutually enhancing each other, an exhilarating experience indeed.



We also had the opportunity to peruse an extensive exhibition of the paintings, mostly large scale with some of smaller format also included, of Emrys Williams, of, one might say, imaginative spaces, interior & exterior, the imagery familiar in its details yet strange in their conjunctions & juxtapositions - indeed, depicting forms of both exterior & interior reality, 'topographies of the mind', to paraphrase the intriguing artist's own words, with a pleasing aesthetic dialogue between the structure of the drawing & looseness of painterly technique.

Also on view was an exhibition of photographic work by the members of North Wales-based collective Photernative: particularly enjoyable was a grid-format multiple-image piece by Ewart Hulse entitled 'Urban Forest', which can be seen in the photograph below (in the lower left corner), illustrating another exhibition context, featuring various examples of telegraph poles & pylons & the cables strung between, observed against the sky, very much up TOoT's formal & aesthetic street.

A Sign of the Ties...

In light of the slowness of properly creative proceedings hereabouts, as alluded to in a recent entry, today we take the opportunity to introduce a digression that is somewhat in keeping with the original intention of the blog, to include a broad spectrum of 'the life aesthetic' as lived & experienced, that has largely fallen by the wayside as a more focussed concentration upon the practice of drawing & the contextualization of the examples of such came to define its purpose over the course of the past four years. With this focus having blurred somewhat over the last few weeks, as the result of the demands of a physical relocation & the whole coming-to-terms with a new living & artworking environment, it seems important to maintain some form of regularity to the blogging process at least, thus presenting one such aesthetic interlude within the creative practice.

Photographically illustrated, then, is a representative selection of what the smartly dressed man about TOoT is currently, occasionally, sporting in the nature of accessorizing neckwear, having become attracted to - both conceptually, for their period stylings, & aesthetically, as objects-in-themselves - & invested in, specifically, ties of a knitted nature. Groovy.



As one might appreciate, the textures of the various weaves are rather fabulous, & wonderfully tactile, visually & palpably, as is the range of materials, including wool (that's an original 1960s Italian number to the left), silk, Terylene (for full period & retro effect) & more: this is most definitely the look & feel to pursue in the interests of style, idiosyncratic as it might be.

However, & unbeknownst, it would appear that such leanings of mine chime, coincidentally, with the times (or, perhaps, more traditionally, slightly behind them), as this online article might support.

Also, a recent encounter with a copy of George Best's autobiography 'Blessed' revealed a particular pictorial treasure, thus, with yer man himself stylishly attired in the fashions of the day (circa 1964), including what appears very much to be a knitted tie, with its telltale uneven edges & surface texture...


Needless to say, a purchase of said volume ensued.