Alvar Aalto @ The Barbican

At long last, an exhibition devoted to one of Modernism's great hero's. Time Out

Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), is one of the masters of modernism, ranking alongside figures such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. In his first UK retrospective, Aalto’s work is presented through the eyes of contemporary Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.

The exhibition examines the development of Aalto’s architectural style, featuring models, drawings, photographs and artefacts from 14 of his key projects, built mainly in Finland, Denmark and across Scandinavia. Spanning six decades, featured projects include Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1929-33), Villa Mairea (1938-39), AA-System Houses (1937-1945), Experimental House (1952-53), North Jutland Art Museum (1958-72) and the development of the urban centre for Seinäjoki (1952-87).

Aalto was as concerned with the interiors of his buildings as he was with the structure, and the exhibition also showcases his wide-ranging product designs. These include his famous stacking stool and other furniture, as well as glassware, light fittings and textiles, many of which continue to be manufactured today by the renowned Finnish design company Artek, founded in 1935.

Aalto admired the commitment to craftsmanship and sensitivity to natural materials that he found in Japanese architecture, and 60 years later this influence comes full circle in the work of Shigeru Ban. The exhibition showcases many of Ban’s key works which acknowledge a huge debt to Aalto’s organic approach to design.

Ban is famous for his use of natural and recyclable materials such as cardboard, bamboo and wood, and the exhibition features celebrated projects such as his Paper Log House (1995), Japan Pavilion, Hanover Expo (2000) and his recent design for the new Pompidou Centre in Metz.

This fascinating exhibition which explores the themes linking these two influential architects who, despite spanning a generational and geographical divide, share a visionary approach to architecture.


Curated by Shigeru Ban in collaboration with Juhani Pallasmaa and Tomoko Sato. Organised by Barbican Art Gallery in conjunction with the Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä.

Supported by Embassy of Finland and The Japan Foundation.

12 BAR CLUB

London's small but intimate 12 BAR CLUB showcases around FOUR ACTS A NIGHT, 7 NIGHTS A WEEK, from solo performers through to full bands. That's a LOT OF MUSIC, and with the emphases placed on SONGWRITING, we feature artists from ALL OVER THE WORLD.As well as the MUSIC ROOM the club has a CAFE/RESTAURANT open from 10am until 9pm serving a diverse menu from tasty snacks through to full meals.Being centrally located, close to the intersection of Charing Cross Rd, Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd, we are well served by public transport. The nearest TUBE STATION is Tottenham Court Rd. - WHERE ARE WE? 12 Bar Club, Denmark Street, London WC2. Take a look at our mapOpening Hours - The 12 Bar Cafe opens at 9am till 9pm - The bar opens at 11amThe music venue opens:Monday - Thursday 7:30pm till 1amFriday - Saturday 7:30pm till 3am (may close earlier)Sunday - 7pm till 12.30pmPictures of the club's main bar, dining room and stage.A brief history of the 12 Bar Club.Andy's computer has just died, so there may be a little choas ahead !!Some photos from last years Tin Pan Alley Festival.Find out about our Open Stage Nights

The Metro Club

The Metro is a small basement venue on Oxford Street that hosts a great line-up of shows and clubs almost every night of the week, the central location making it one of the places to catch up-and-coming bands. The Metro Club is a Blow Up presentation.

history:
Blow Up took over the Metro in November 2001, before which it was known primarily for hosting clubs, not as a live venue. (The venue was originally called Oxfords years ago, not Plastic People which was a few doors down.) In January 2003, in a space of just over a year, the Metro was awarded Time Out Venue of the Year after playing host to some of the hottest shows in London in 2002. It's now one of the venues of choice for discerning gig goers too, who can see some of the most exciting gigs in town, making it a great place to see bands just before they explode. Gig highlights have included to name a few: Yeah Yeah Yeahs headline debut UK gig, The Kills, Kings Of Leon and more... Most shows are followed by clubs including long-running nights such Blow Up (Sat), Bedrock (Fri) and Beautiful People (Tues), and newer clubs such as The Bunker (Thurs). Club highlights so far have included: Courtney Love hitting the decks at Alan McGee's Death Disco, Jack and Meg White turning up to our very unofficial "We Love The White Stripes!" club in November 2001, an impromptu mid-club set from the Libertines, aftershows for Ladytron and The Bluetones, to just to name a few...

The decor is low-key to say the least, meaning our reputation is built on the shows and clubs alone, so there's no trendy minimalism here! - all making The Metro your subterranean rock 'n' roll venue of choice bang in the centre of town!

blow up:
Blow Up is involved in long running live and club promotions, including the legendary Blow Up club (heading for its 13th birthday this Autumn) and the label Blow Up Records. www.blowup.co.uk

Uncomfortable Truths @ V&A

Uncomfortable Truths will address the ways in which the legacy of slavery informs contemporary art and design in a display of a series of works throughout the museum’s public spaces. This exhibition of new and specially commissioned work will commemorate the bicentenary of the Parliamentary abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, seeking to reassess the human cost of slavery.

The exhibition will feature the work of artists from the United States (Michael Paul Britto and Fred Wilson), Britain (Anissa-Jane, Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper and Yinka Shonibare), Africa (El Anatsui, Tapfuma Gutsa, Romuald Hazoumé and Julien Sinzogan) and Europe (Christine Meisner).

A two-day interdisciplinary conference 'From Cane Field to Tea Cup: The Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Art and Design' will be taking place on 24 and 25 February 2007.

Klaus Thymann @ "All Records 99p"

I will be on at 8.30 PM for half an hour, so there will be plenty of time to chat and have a drink afterwards. The style will be Country-electro, please pop along and laugh at me trying to DJ.

Hope to see you

Klaus

K West

K West, designed by Noel Pierce of Pierce Design International, launched in Shepherd’s Bush in December 2001.

The modern glass exterior of the hotel creates a huge impact, allowing light to stream into the entrance lobby and the open-plan K Lounge bar area. In the bar, which is open exclusively to hotel and K SPA guests, a modern fireplace runs along the rear wall. Funky music creates a vibrant ambience.

In the sleek lobby area and corridors, micro television screens show a combination of BBC24 and moving art with sound. The technology behind the sound is so precise that the TV’s can only be heard within a half metre radius.

Located on the ground floor, the holistic K SPA offers unusual treatments such as the Dry Flotation Tank and E’SPA Oshadi Envelopment. It has also introduced the E’SPA Hot Stone Treatment, and is one of the few spas in the UK to have a Double Therapy Room (complete with its own private sauna) so that friends and partners can enjoy side-by-side treatments.

The Jacuzzi, eucalyptus steam room, lemon steam room, sauna, plus towels, toiletries, hair dryers, individual lockers and fresh fruit are all complimentary to hotel guests.

The 222 bedrooms feature a subtle colour scheme of taupe, brown and cream in leather, walnut and suede, alongside stainless steel and sandblasted glass. Wide screen TVs, DVDs, Hi-Fis and oversize beds are fitted as standard in deluxe rooms, while the sexy bathrooms feature Philippe Starck fittings against limestone mosaics.

PS 2’s are available from Room Service together with a library of CDs, videos and games for use in the room. The original artwork in every room has been specially commissioned by the hotel.

The light airy meeting rooms at K West can accommodate up to 60 delegates in boardroom or presentation style.

The price for an Executive Double starts at £205 per night (excluding VAT).

Concert listings

http://www.brixton-academy.co.uk/listings.php
http://www.islington-academy.co.uk/listings.php
http://www.shepherds-bush-empire.co.uk/listings.php

"Absent Without Leave" @ Victoria Miro Gallery

17 February - 17 March 2007

Dan Colen, Elmgreen & Dragset, Loris Gréaud, Jeppe Hein, Terence Koh, Kris Martin, Roman Ondák, Kirsten Pieroth, Michael Sailstorfer, Systems House, Andro Wekua, Jordan Wolfson, Andreas Zybach

Absent Without Leave examines the ways in which contemporary artists might use elements of performance as a material in the production (or reception) of their work. The diverse practices on display here re-imagine performance and filter it into something 'performative' - expanding gestures, actions, characters, and roles into works which incorporate performance as process.

Conceptual and performance artist Vito Acconci has discussed how, at a certain point in his career in the early seventies, he decided to appear less in his work, so that his presence was more of an absence. Absent Without Leave borrows the spirit of Acconci's decision and uses it to platform an investigation of the idea of the 'absentee performer' - an idea in which the 'performer' (the artist ) is relocated from a visible presence, to a presence which is recorded in the conceptual fabric of the art works themselves.

The exhibition features works in which: there is potential within an art object for action to happen, which may or may not necessarily occur; there is a live event without a performer; there is a physical trace of an event which in fact never occurred; or there is a possibility to read the environment as something staged, or as a set awaiting a narrative.

Absent Without Leave presents works by 12 international artists, with new commissions by Elmgreen & Dragset, Loris Gréaud, Terence Koh, Systems House, Andro Wekua, and Jordan Wolfson; an installation of 40 new paintings by Dan Colen; and projects by Jeppe Hein, Kirsten Pieroth, Michael Sailstorfer, and Andreas Zybach. A performance orchestrated by Roman Ondák will take place on the evening of the opening.

Absent Without Leave has been curated by James Lindon and Erin Manns.

Download Press Release (PDF).

Harrods shop’n’roll promotion silenced by angry neighbours

You can buy just about anything in Harrods, the venerable Knightsbridge store boasts. But when Mohamed Al Fayed, its owner, tried to add live rock’n’roll to his range of merchandise, local residents came down on him with all the force of a Brian May riff.

An optimistically titled instore promotion, Harrods Rocks, has backfired after neighbours complained about the noise.

Harrods said that it had received a call from an environmental health officer warning of complaints about noise levels during a gig last Thursday by the bands Love Minus Zero and the Roslins.

The performance was part of a month of live events including gigs by up-and-coming bands, and a plan to host 2,000 guitarists playing Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water.

A spokesman said that the store had decided to cancel further gigs that might cause similar offence. “We have a lot of out-of-hours events and a good relationship with our neighbours which we don’t want to damage but Harrods rocks on,” he added.

The store also hosted an appearance by Rick Parfitt, the guitar-toting Status Quo legend. More than 500 people turned up to his masterclass on Saturday at which he performed guitar solos.

Harrods is only allowed to put on twelve events a year and Kensington & Chelsea council said it had granted licences for five events this month.

A spokeswoman says she was surprised to learn that the planned events were not going ahead.

Born to Rock, an exhibition featuring classic guitars from rock history played by legends including Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and Muddy Waters will continue to run and a planned fashion show in aid of Jeans for Genes will still go ahead but without a live performance by Chris Hardman or “Lil Chris”, the winner of Channel 4’s Rock School reality show.

But gigs by up-and-coming bands including Idlewild, Enamel and Bowling for Soup have been cancelled.

The spokesman for Harrods said: “We are disappointed but encouraged by the level of enthusiasm for the exhibition itself.”

A celebrity auction of guitars personally customised by the likes of Bryan Adams, Patrick Cox and Phillippe Starck will also go ahead at the end of the promotion on March 1.

Hail! Trustafari! (AKA Toffs in Dub)

Now the dust has settled from David Cameron's Eton revelations, here's a weekend playlist for privileged potheads.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Eton school played host to "pot-fuelled parties" where Bob Marley was the soundtrack of choice, or that Tory leader David Cameron could be found joining in the tail-coated skanking. The man lives in Notting Hill, where the founders of the trustafarian faith set up camp some 50 years ago to sprawl on the (stripped wood) floor at the feet of High Priest and old Harrrovian Chris Blackwell.

Pretty much since the Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury in 1948, there has been a Jamaican presence in Notting Hill's crumbling old terraces, and it didn't take too long for word of illegal shebeens to spread down the Bayswater Road to Mayfair. Quite understandably, in post-war Britain gripped by licensing law lockdown, the notion of an after blues dance - complete with hard liquor and soft drugs - was far too attractive to pass up. Indeed when Lucky Gordon's "girlfriends" frolicked by Cliveden's pool in a run up to the Profumo Affair, this unlikely alliance of Jamaican subculture and English posh exploded into world consciousness. And away from that Buckinghamshire mansion, the action centered around Notting Hill.

Come the late 1960s and hippy Ladbroke Grove - or Ladbroke Groove as it was known - became one of London's counter culture hubs as trust fund-powered drop-outs gravitated to the large, inexpensive apartments, easy-going lifestyle and plentiful supply of hi-grade weed. During this decade, the Jamaican Blackwell based his fledgling Island Records in the area, and its roster of English underground rock (Fairport Convention, Traffic, Spooky Tooth etc) and imported reggae came to culturally define the area as it rolled into the 1970s.

As Rastafari took over reggae, so its central planks of peace'n'love, getting stoned, talking in circles, planning some sort of revolution at some vague point in the future, and calling people "man" slotted perfectly into the Notting Hill hippies' agenda. So did the music, as by now LA's Laurel Canyon gentle folk/rock scene had been hijacked by the Eagles and there was a huge, spiritually motivated, woozily arranged, spliff-driven hole in western popular music. Roots reggae fit the bill with the bonus of having a beat one could dance to once the collie had caught hold. The white people who made up a considerable majority of the audience for Bob Marley's lauded Lyceum concert in 1975 were well-heeled London thirty-something hippies.

Even if David Cameron was too young to have been a part of this generational and social demographic, it will certainly have had an effect on him and his Eton school chums. So what we've got below is a Privileged Pothead's Playlist, including roughly equal parts spaced out dub cuts, unity anthems and protest songs, which should appeal to all facets of what are, essentially, 21st century hippies - dope, peace'n'love, revolution.

1. Kaya (Lee Perry production) - The Wailers
A soothing, almost organic tribute to the herb superb, from Soul Rebel.

2. Children of Sanchez - Rico
Jazzy, woozy, superbly layered instrumental dub, from Roots To The Bone.

3. Storm Warning - Lyn Tait & His Comets
A transition from ska to rock steady showing how clever each style could be, from Ska After Ska After Ska.

4. Burn Babylon - Sylford Walker
Haunting, nagging, circular condemnation of state oppression, from Uptown Top Ranking 1970-78.

5. Social Living (12" version) - Burning Spear
Including the dub cut, this is seven minutes so deeply smokey it might make you cough, from Chant Down Babylon: The Island Anthology.

6. Feed A Nation - Big Youth
Youth's take on The Congos' Fisherman brings out the best of a roots classic, from Fisherman Style.

7. One Love - Bob Marley
A pan-generational anthem and no mistake, from Songs of Freedom.

8. Seven Seals - Matumbi
UK roots reggae at its most intelligent, from Seven Seals.

9. Country Living (1975 Jo Jo Hookim production) - The Mighty Diamonds
Joyous, uplifting hymn to a better life far away from west London, seven-inch single.

10. Umoja - Dennis Brown & Prince Jammy
Magnificent, spiraling, horn-heavy dub that manages to be both high stepping and laidback past horizontal, from 20th Century Debwise.

Stressed-out lawyer, 27, dies in late-night fall at Tate Modern

As a lawyer at one of the “magic circle” of leading corporate legal firms, Matthew Courtney was expected to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

He hoped that his efforts would eventually be rewarded with a partnership – and a £1 million salary.

But weeks after Mr Courtney, 27, and other associate lawyers at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer spoke to senior partners about their long hours and stress, he was found dead at Tate Modern, The Times has learnt.

"Face Of Fashion" @ National Portrait Gallery

Photograph that inspired "heroin chic" is selected for ultimate fashion show

09 November 2006, The Independent

The image features a waif-like Kate Moss posing suggestively against some fairy lights and it sparked a "heroin chic" movement of which the iconic model became a leading light.

The now infamous Vogue fashion shoot of 1993, which was denounced by some as a celebration of a model who appeared "paedophilic and almost like a junkie", will be part of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, telling the story of contemporary fashion photography through seminal portraits of the world's top models and Hollywood celebrities, taken by the fashion photographers Corinne Day, Mario Sorrenti, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott.

The show, Face of Fashion, running from 15 February until 23 May next year, aims to examine and subvert the idea of glamour, beginning with a portrait of a young Moss in one of her first shows for Face magazine in 1990. Other photographs will include an image of Lauren Hutton taken by Sorrenti with her leg in a contortion, a gothic pose of Nina Ricci by Mert & Marcus, with lipstick smeared on her cheek, a close-up of an ageing Catherine Deneuve and a picture of the pop star Justin Timberlake, with shaved hair and a nose bleed.

The architect David Adjaye, one of this year's Stirling Prize nominees, will be designing a "surprise installation" for the show.

Many of the 120 portraits include those originally produced for fashion houses, while some were commissioned for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Pop.

But others reveal intriguing insights into the inner life of the glamorous sitters. An intimate portrait by Klein of Angelina Jolie features the actress stretched languorously on a bed with Brad Pitt standing nearby, while another captures the unguarded facial expression of a model who is leaning against a wall during a break in a fashion shoot.

Susan Bright, the curator of the exhibition, said the work followed a tradition of portraiture in magazines by the likes of David Bailey and Helmut Newton.

"This is a look at the way we see things by taking these images out of the context of magazines and putting them in a gallery," she said. "Some describe the cross-over of glamour and anti-glamour. The five photographers work very differently... three of the five have taken pictures of Kate Moss and it is interesting to look at the different way she is presented. Corinne Day, for example, has a very beautiful, intimate approach to portraiture; she almost falls in love with her sitters, and you see these moments of friendship in the main body of her work."

Sandy Nairne, the director of the NPG, said following the success of the solo exhibition showing the works of the fashion photographer,Mario Testino a few years ago, this exhibition was the first of its kind to fully examine the "innovation and diversity" of current fashion portraiture.

"We have extracted the works of five fantastic photographers. Fashion surrounds us... its place in our society is undeniable. There have been many other exhibitions about the fashion field but this is the first time the focus is on portraiture," he said.

Mr Nairne also referred to changes within the stipulations for next year's BP Portrait Award, previously only open to younger artists, but now extended to those of any age.

The image features a waif-like Kate Moss posing suggestively against some fairy lights and it sparked a "heroin chic" movement of which the iconic model became a leading light.

The now infamous Vogue fashion shoot of 1993, which was denounced by some as a celebration of a model who appeared "paedophilic and almost like a junkie", will be part of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, telling the story of contemporary fashion photography through seminal portraits of the world's top models and Hollywood celebrities, taken by the fashion photographers Corinne Day, Mario Sorrenti, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott.

The show, Face of Fashion, running from 15 February until 23 May next year, aims to examine and subvert the idea of glamour, beginning with a portrait of a young Moss in one of her first shows for Face magazine in 1990. Other photographs will include an image of Lauren Hutton taken by Sorrenti with her leg in a contortion, a gothic pose of Nina Ricci by Mert & Marcus, with lipstick smeared on her cheek, a close-up of an ageing Catherine Deneuve and a picture of the pop star Justin Timberlake, with shaved hair and a nose bleed.

The architect David Adjaye, one of this year's Stirling Prize nominees, will be designing a "surprise installation" for the show.

Many of the 120 portraits include those originally produced for fashion houses, while some were commissioned for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Pop.

But others reveal intriguing insights into the inner life of the glamorous sitters. An intimate portrait by Klein of Angelina Jolie features the actress stretched languorously on a bed with Brad Pitt standing nearby, while another captures the unguarded facial expression of a model who is leaning against a wall during a break in a fashion shoot.

Susan Bright, the curator of the exhibition, said the work followed a tradition of portraiture in magazines by the likes of David Bailey and Helmut Newton.

"This is a look at the way we see things by taking these images out of the context of magazines and putting them in a gallery," she said. "Some describe the cross-over of glamour and anti-glamour. The five photographers work very differently... three of the five have taken pictures of Kate Moss and it is interesting to look at the different way she is presented. Corinne Day, for example, has a very beautiful, intimate approach to portraiture; she almost falls in love with her sitters, and you see these moments of friendship in the main body of her work."

Sandy Nairne, the director of the NPG, said following the success of the solo exhibition showing the works of the fashion photographer,Mario Testino a few years ago, this exhibition was the first of its kind to fully examine the "innovation and diversity" of current fashion portraiture.

"We have extracted the works of five fantastic photographers. Fashion surrounds us... its place in our society is undeniable. There have been many other exhibitions about the fashion field but this is the first time the focus is on portraiture," he said.

Mr Nairne also referred to changes within the stipulations for next year's BP Portrait Award, previously only open to younger artists, but now extended to those of any age.

By Arifa Akbar

Switched On London

When it comes to lighting festivals, Lyon and Frankfurt are the big boys but their success and growth have created sparks that have flown in all directions throughout the world. This prompted Mondiale Publishing to turn the spotlight on London and propose the idea of hosting a festival of light to showcase UK lighting design talent on its home ground.

Switched ON London is a seven night celebration of the relationship between light, architecture and the city consisting of temporary lighting installations and a series of light related events with an overall concept theme of 'theatre'. So, the 'Gods of Light' willing, London's first festival of light will run from the 8th to the 16th February 2007 in conjunction with ARC 07 at the Business Design Centre.

The festival is an extension of an established event which in 2006 attracted an audience of over 2500 UK and overseas visitors. The events will take place in the POOL OF LONDON, a natural amphitheatre within the city, encompassing the river Thames, bordered by Tower Bridge and London Bridge and including many famous landmarks. The Pool of London already recognises the importance of light in the city nightscape and has demonstrated commitment to urban improvement by commissioning a permanent lighting strategy for the area. Supported by The Pool of London, Visit London, the City of London, Southwark and New London Architecture, we aim to illuminate some of the rich and diverse examples of architecture in the area in theatrical splendour; The Tower of London, HMS Belfast, London Bridge, No 1 London Bridge, Customs House, The Scoop, Hay's Galleria, Hays Wharf, the North and South walkways and even the river itself with Kevan Shaw and Malcolm Innes 'Cygnus' concept - an installation based on the theme of Swan Lake. There is even a guerilla lighting event planned by BDP (no details yet!).

The Festival will also include special events such as an illuminated bike ride (open to all)and sustainable street lights powered by donkey dung! Arup Lighting present the Tallin light dome reworked for London alongside a new installation and Chetwoods 'Urban Oasis' makes a central London comeback. Switched On London aims to get the visitor thinking about the city nightscape; 'switching people on' to their environment' and gives the lighting industry a chance to promote the responsible use of light for urban improvement. Although we understand that energy use is a 'burning issue', we need light to live and as our lifestyles evolve, the benefits of good urban lighting are undeniable. The perception is that architectural lighting leads to wasted energy and light pollution. However, the majority of the lighting industry continually strives to tackle the issue of energy. From luminaire design that avoids light pollution to the promotion of lower energy and more efficient sources, the lighting industry is well educated in recycling, waste issues and the misuse of our natural resources. Our hope is that Switched On London will have value beyond simple decoration. It is an opportunity to use light to educate and perversely may even create the chance to switch parts of London off.

The team behind the proposal consists of Directors Paul James and Justin Gawne of Mondiale publishing, myself as Curator, Development Manager Stella Buchan-Ioannou (Deputy Director of the London Architecture Biennale), Project Co-ordinator Emma Cogswell of the International Association of Lighting Designers and a steering group made up of the following people; Tad Trylski (Erco), Bob Bohannon (Sill), Ian Stanton (iGuzzini), Mike Simpson (Philips), Helen Loomes (Blue Ridge Consultancy), Kevin Theobald (NDY Light/IALD), Peter Western (Martin Architectural), Harry Barnitt (Zumtobel) and Allan Howard of Mouchel Parkman as Technical Adviser. The IALD has invited a selection of professional lighting designers to become 'Design Directors' for the chosen sites. Each has been matched with the commitment of a manufacturer to provide equipment for the specific project.

Any concepts, which do not come to fruition, will be part of an exhibition at ARC 07 and will also be given the chance of realisation at the next Switched On London in 2008.We thank all those involved for their enthusiasm and belief. Although this project is suffering from a ludicrously tight timescale and numerous other obstacles, it is moving forward out of goodwill and the generous support of those who wish to be involved. The big idea is for 'Switched On London' to be an annual or bi-annual event with whatever is achieved in Feb 2007 being the beginning of something that we hope will expand as the years pass; 'from little acorns grow large oaks...'

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2007

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2007 will be awarded to a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made the most contribution to photography in Europe between 1 October 2005 ~ 30 September 2006. The four shortlisted photographers in this exhibition are: Philippe Chancel, Anders Petersen, Fiona Tan and The Atlas Group.

Philippe Chancel (b. 1959, France) nominated for the
exhibition DPRK, shown at the Arles Photography
Festival, France, 4 July - 17 September 2006.

Chancel has worked as a photographer for the last 30 years, investigating the shifting and complex terrain between art, documentary and journalism. Taken in North Korea in 2005, the crisp, colour photographs in DPRK provide a clinical and detached comment on the monumental, political narcissism that the country operates under. The exhibition features a selection of his large-scale photographs from DPRK in No 8.

David Crowley, historian and lecturer at the Royal
College of Art, has written an insightful essay to
accompany Chancel’s photographs in the exhibition
catalogue.

Anders Petersen (b. 1944, Sweden) nominated for
the exhibition About Gap and St Etienne, shown at the Arles Photography Festival, France, 4 July - 17 September 2006.

This series is the result of a residency in these southern French towns in 2005, and exudes a poetic sadness, restlessness and sense of urgency that is characteristic of all his photography. Petersen first became known for his seminal series Café Lehmitz (1978), a daily chronicle of a Hamburg coffee shop frequented by transvestites, prostitutes and harbour workers. Since then he has continued to explore the fringes of society with his camera. The exhibition features a selection from About Gap
and St Etienne in No 8.

Brian Dillon has contributed an illuminating and
engaging essay on Petersen’s oeuvre for the exhibition
catalogue.

Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon) nominated for the
exhibition The Atlas Group Project at Hamburger
Bahnhof — Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin, Germany,
22 September 2006 - 7 January 2007.

The Atlas Group, a project undertaken by Walid Raad between 1989 and 2004, researched and documented the contemporary history of Lebanon. However, the authenticity of the photographic and video documents in this archive is continuously queried, leaving the viewer uncertain how history — in particular one marked by the trauma of civil war — can be told and visually represented. The exhibition includes a selection from We decided to let them say, “we are convinced,” twice,a series of large-scale photographs taken by Walid Raad in the summer of 1982 of the Israeli Army’s invasion and siege of Beirut. Walid Raad/The Atlas Group can be seen in No 5.

Alan Gilbert, an independent scholar and poet based
in New York City, has contributed a thought-provoking
essay on Raad’s work to the exhibition catalogue.

Fiona Tan (b. 1966, Indonesia) nominated for the
exhibition Mirror Maker shown at Landesgalerie in Linz, Austria, 1 June - 20 August 2006.

Combining photography and film, the exhibition Mirror Maker included past and recent projects dealing with portraiture and the nature of photography. Central to Fiona Tan’s work is the human subject. She questions and explores the complexities of culture and place, and how these elements come to shape our individual identity. The Prize exhibition features two of her most recent projects. Vox Populi (Sydney), displays images from over 90 photo albums by Sydney residents. In the video installation The Changeling (2006), a Japanese school girl stares out of her portrait while she recalls, as an older woman, her mother and grandmother. Both works can be seen in No 8.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, critic, curator and Senior
Lecturer at University College Dublin, has contributed
a perceptive essay on Fiona Tan’s work to the exhibition
catalogue.

The exhibition catalogue is available from the Bookshop at the special exhibition price £16.99.

Press Release (PDF).

Jeppe Hein @ Barbican

Jeppe Hein
The Curve
1 February 2007 - 29 April 2007
The Curve

Part of 25th landmark events



Tickets: Free
Daily 11am-8pm
subject to availability





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Danish artist Jeppe Hein creates a dynamic site-specific installation for The Curve as part of Barbican’s new programme of commissions for this unusual space. Hein’s piece redefines the space of the gallery, involving and perplexing the viewer.

This young Danish artist has worked with fountains, moving walls and gravity-defying kinetic sculptures. His commission for The Curve is entitled Distance, and involves a very unusual roller coaster.

Jeppe Hein Talk
Why are you here and not somewhere else?
Tue 17 Apr/6.30pm
Admission Free
Don't miss this rare opportunity to hear this internationally renowned artist talk about his work.

The exhibition has been generously supported by Arts Council England, The Danish Arts Council Committee for International Arts, The Embassy of Denmark & ARUP.

RESTAURANTS > Hakkasan

Address 8 Hanway Place, W1T 1HD
Tel 020 7927 7000
Price £65.00 Wine £24.00 Champagne £44.00
Opening Hours Mon-Sun 12N-3pm (Sat-Sun -5pm) 6-11.30pm (Wed-Sat -12.30am)

After five years, the moody-blue, multi-million-pound interior is looking a little worn, though most who visit still claim to feel ‘transported’ the moment they step into Hakkasan. The ‘amazing atmosphere’, that’s ‘great for people-watching’, & ‘sensational’ cocktails succeed in winning enthusiastic fans. And, generally, the ‘innovative’ food is deemed ‘delicious’ & ‘superb’, too. Hot & sour soup is a must try: light in colour, it tastes exactly as it should (not how it does in most other restaurants) with the heat coming from white pepper, not an abundance of chilli. Braised organic pork belly in five spice also impresses: large squares of tender pork stewed with whole garlic cloves & wood ear mushroom. Pipa duck is another popular choice, as are the excellent dim sum. Here & there, however, we do hear complaints of dishes that are no better than ‘an ordinary, local Chinese’ & many more chime in with the grumble that it’s all ‘overpriced’. Most gripes, though, are reserved for the issues of table-turning – ‘their enthusiasm for you to vacate your table is an irritant’ – & service. While some laud waiters for being ‘attentive’ & ‘good’, others claim they are ‘snotty’, ‘unfriendly’ & ‘rude’. Still, dive into the wine list & you’ll find reasons to be cheerful.

Wine Notes: A brilliant list that is always ready to champion new regions & countries if they work with Hakkasan’s spicy food. So look out for English sparkling wine & Greek whites. Of course, the regular classics also feature, but many of the unusual selections are also the best value.

"Encounters" @ Nolias Gallery

An exhibition of new photographic work by four female artists: Carole Evans, Marilia Fiuza, Denise O'Brien and Maria Stott.

private view 6 pm Thu 8 February and continues from the 9 to 13 February, 1 to 6 pm.

Nolias Gallery at Great Suffolk Street / 60 Great Suffolk Street SE1 0BL.

Massive Attack @ Carling Academy Brixton

Massive Attack

WEDNESDAY 7TH & THURSDAY 8TH FEBRUARY
TICKETS SOLD OUT - (Box Office Cash Sales - Charges Apply To Other Sales)

Massive Attack are back. And right now, at a time when anodyne celebrity obsessions and endless Popstars juggernauts are monopolising the cultural landscape, we need Britain's most influential band more than ever. Massive Attack have consistently pushed the boundaries of both their own sound - twisting their soundsystem roots into the complex, insistent guitar layers of Mezzanine - and constantly surprised with their inspired collaborations and groundbreaking art direction. Even now, many years after they first inked a deal with Virgin to release the landmark Blue Lines, promising artists are still referred to as 'the new Massive Attack'. They've stamped their mark on British music, shaping and shifting dance music, pop, British hip hop, drum & bass and rock.

Massive Attack formed in 1987, around their influential and legendary Dug Out club and Jamaican-style soundsystem. They have made four albums to date (a fifth one on the horizon), each one extraordinary in its own right. 'Blue Lines', 'Protection', 'Mezzanine' and '100th Window' all pushed musical boundaries and made their mark.

With these critically acclaimed albums clocking up 9 million sales, a clutch of awards they released a Massive Attack 'Best Of' in 2006, an apt reminder of their musical legacy to date. The album, entitled 'Collected', featured tracks chosen by the band, including such gems as 'Unfinished Sympathy', 'Safe From Harm', 'Protection', 'Teardrop' and 'Angel'.

Massive Attack are now releasing their fifth album, 'Weather Underground', with long time cohort and co-producer Neil Davidge.

Alan Fletcher @ Design Museum

Alan Fletcher
Graphic Designer (1931-2006)
Alan Fletcher: fifty years of graphic work (and play)
11 November - 18 February


The Design Museum is saddened at the news of the death of Alan Fletcher on 21 September 2006. Alan Fletcher had already made a very generous donation of his archive to the museum, and was very much involved in the planning of a retrospective exhibition here. The exhibition Alan Fletcher: fifty years of graphic work (and play), scheduled to open on 11 November 2006, will go ahead as planned, and will celebrate the remarkable life and work of this influential figure of British graphic design.

Synthesising the graphic traditions of Europe and North America to develop a spirited, witty and very personal visual style, ALAN FLETCHER is among the most influential figures in British graphic design as a founder of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill in the 1960s and Pentagram in the 1970s.

Designed to be opened at random, The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher’s 2001 book, is an unfailing source of wit, elegance and inspiration. At over a thousand pages, it is a spectacular treatise on visual thinking, one that illustrates the designer’s sense of play and his broad frame of reference.

While designers and design students rifle through its pages for ideas, others enjoy its gently provocative mind-teasers. Assembling the most ambitious of settings for his work, against a background encompassing art, design and literature from pre-history to the present day, Fletcher constructs a convincing argument for graphic design’s role in the course of civilisation.

Alan Fletcher is one of the most influential figures in post-war British graphic design. The fusion of the cerebral European tradition with North America’s emerging pop culture in the formulation of his distinct approach made him a pioneer of independent graphic design in Britain during the late 1950s and 1960s. As a founding partner of Pentagram in the 1970s, Fletcher helped to establish a model of combining commercial partnership with creative independence. He also developed some of the most memorable graphic schemes of the era, notably the identities of Reuters and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and made his mark on book design as creative director of Phaidon.

Born to a British family in Kenya 1931, Fletcher came to Britain as a five year-old after his father became terminally ill to be bought up by his mother and grandparents in West London. During World War II he attended Christ’s Hospital, a boarding school in Horsham, where he wore a uniform that he later described as “a second-hand medieval costume”. Along with his classmates, Fletcher was destined for a career in the army, the church or banking. Being totally unsuited to any of these, Fletcher opted out of the rigid grooves of post-war British middle class life and took up a place at Hammersmith School of Art.

During the 1950s he attended four different art schools, each one more forward looking and cosmopolitan than the last. Leaving Hammersmith for the livelier environment of the Central School, he found himself in class with his future partners Colin Forbes and Theo Crosby as well as such other future luminaries as Derek Birdsall and Ken Garland. After graduating from the Central School, he spent a year teaching English in Barcelona and then won a place at the Royal College of Art, where his contemporaries included the artists Peter Blake and Joe Tilson.

Towards the end of Fletcher’s three-year stint at the RCA, the head of design Richard Guyatt exchanged places with Alvin Eisenman, his opposite number at Yale University. Fletcher suggested to Guyatt that, if professors were able to swap places, students should have the same privilege. The result was a travel scholarship awarded to Fletcher on graduation on the condition that he attend classes at Yale.

Before arriving in the United States, Fletcher’s vision of life there was informed by the movies: all Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and bright lights. Intending never to return to the 40-watt gloom of London, he married his Italian girlfriend Paola, acquired emigration papers as part of the white Kenyan quota and entered the US across the Canadian border in 1956. Over the next two years Fletcher absorbed as much of US graphic design as he could.

He was taught at Yale by the eminent US graphic designer, Paul Rand, and the artist Josef Albers. Fletcher also arranged visits to prominent graphic designers such as Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar in New York. He even won a commission to design a cover for Leo Lionni, art director of Fortune magazine, then a showcase for modern design and a client at the top of every aspiring graphic designer’s wish-list. After graduating from Yale, Fletcher set off for Latin America but stopped off in Los Angeles, hoping to earn money to finance the trip. He phoned the designer Saul Bass from the bus station and worked as his assistant for a few weeks.

Fletcher loved the US and would happily have stayed there, but his wife, Paola, was pining for Europe. After a brief, slightly disastrous detour to Venezuela – their arrival coincided with a revolution – the Fletchers returned to London via Milan. During their short stay in Italy, he had worked at the Pirelli design studio thereby enabling Fletcher to return with Pirelli as a client. In Fletcher’s eyes, London appeared as gloomy in 1959 as it had been on his departure. Fighting the urge the get the first boat back to New York, he settled in a corner of his friend Colin Forbes’s studio for a £4 weekly rent. Forbes had become head of graphic design at Central and Fletcher combined working for clients such as Time and Life magazine and Pirelli with teaching there for one day a week.

Two years later Fletcher and Forbes decided to formalise their working relationship and, with the US graphic designer Bob Gill, who had settled in London, they established Fletcher/Forbes/Gill. They pooled their clients, rented a studio in a mews house off Baker Street and became the most fashionable designers in town. The Fletcher/Forbes/Gill style is typified by an advertisement for Pirelli illustrating the grip of a tyre with elegantly swerving type. The idea is direct, the graphic elements are restrained and the composition is skilful. The fusion of type and image was unprecedented in British graphic design. Praised within London’s fledgling design community, Fletcher, Forbes and Gill were among the first graphic designers to make their mark outside it – notably being featured in Vogue magazine – and admiring clients clamoured for their services.

London was changing rapidly and the arrival of ambitious US designers such as Gill, Robert Brownjohn, Lou Klein and Bob Brooks was transforming the design scene. In 1963 Fletcher and several of his peers set up the Design and Art Directors’ Association – known as D&AD – as London’s answer to the New York Art Directors’ Club. They worked overnight to hang their first exhibition, a selection of the best of the year’s art and design, on the walls of a rented space in the Hilton Hotel. The clients who came to see the show were impressed and the participating designers and art directors were able to increase their fees by a considerable margin. It proved to be an important step in raising the profile of design among British industry.

In 1965 Fletcher/Forbes/Gill became Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes, when Bob Gill left and the architect Theo Crosby arrived. The impetus for Crosby’s arrival was a design project for Shell, which Fletcher and Forbes hoped to extend from corporate identity into the structure of garage forecourt. Another multidisciplinary commission was a comprehensive design programme for Reuters, the news agency, which ranged from its corporate logo to computer monitors. Inspired by the tickertape machines which were then used to transmit news internationally, Fletcher crafted an identity from the word ‘Reuters’ rendered in a basic grid of eighty-four dots to evoke the company’s trade. Simple and evocative, this logo survived until 1996 when it was ‘retired’ because the dots were barely visible on computer screens.

Other important clients in the mid-1960s included Penguin, where the art director Germano Facetti was introducing colour, illustration and photographic imagery to the covers of the books. Creating a house-style for each series, Facetti farmed out the design of individual covers to young graphic designers. Their collective aim was to design the most direct response to the contents of the text. Among Fletcher’s contributions to Penguin is a book about early 19th century printed communication dressed to look like a playbill from the period. Facetti’s great achievement was to allow the formerly sober Penguin list to compete with other paperbacks without losing its typographic integrity.

Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes continued to expand as the partners took on more ambitious, often multidisciplinary projects. Mervyn Kurlansky joined as a senior designer in the late 1960s and in the early 1970s, while working on the design of a petrol pump for BP, they enlisted the help of the product designer Kenneth Grange. Realising that they could not continue to add surnames to the company’s name ad infinitum, in 1971 they cast around for a collective title to reflect their structure. Fletcher hit upon the idea of a Pentagram, meaning a five-pointed star, one for each partner, after reading a book on witchcraft. Despite feeling slightly uneasy about the term’s associations with witchcraft, the partners went with it. Significantly it loosened the relationship between the company and the individuals, a strategy that has enabled Pentagram’s long-term survival.

Fletcher spent the next two decades at Pentagram, a period over which the firm grew from five to eleven partners and opened offices in New York and San Francisco. In the face of this expansion, he maintained the most economic of teams, usually employing between two and five people. This allowed him to combine large-scale identity projects, such as that for the Commercial Bank of Kuwait, with small-scale commissions that offered greater scope for his graphic wit and idiosyncrasy. Fletcher’s portfolio from these years – published in the monograph Beware Wet Paint – is a combination of carefully crafted logos and spontaneous graphic epiphanies. Nothing is heavy handed, and the sketches and doodles demonstrate his ingenuity and charm.

Much of Fletcher’s work from the Pentagram period survives. His logotype for London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, for example, has proved itself fit for its purpose and has thus transcended its era. Crafted from the classic typeface Bodoni, Fletcher’s design creates a single unit from the museum’s nickname – the V&A – by allowing the serif of the ampersand to stand in for the bridge of the A. Although Fletcher would not have used a traditional typeface such as Bodoni in this fashion in the early 1960s, the strength and singularity of the idea behind this design is consistent with his career-long approach. Similarly his logotype for the Institute of Directors, in which the initials of the title are scaled according their relative importance – a medium-sized ‘I’, small ‘O’ and big ‘D’ – appears more conservative than his earlier designs at first glance. Yet, in terms of rigour and restraint, it is utterly in keeping.

In 1991, Fletcher decided to leave Pentagram. Several of his important clients withdrew their business during the recession and trading at the Kuwaiti bank had come to a halt when Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. At the same time, Fletcher was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the schedule of corporate design. He felt caught in a cycle of taking on assistants to complete large projects and then needing to take on more of those same kinds of projects feed these new employees. In his own words he “closed my eyes and jumped”, selling off his share of the company and establishing a studio in a mews house that abuts his home in Notting Hill.

Fletcher built up a rewarding range of freelance clients. Among them, Novartis Campus, a large compound of pharmaceutical research and development buildings near Basel in Switzerland. Assuming responsibility for the visual identity of the project, he designed both two-dimensional material and environmental graphic features. As consultant art director at Phaidon, he not only set high design standards for its art, architecture and design books, but worked with a generation of younger designers as well as to tell his design story by publishing his own books.

© Design Museum + British Council

BIOGRAPHY

1931 Born in Nairobi, Kenya, the son of an English civil servant.

1936 When his father becomes terminally ill, the family return to England, where he lives in Shepherd’s Bush with his mother, grandparents and great-grandfather.

1941 Sent out of bomb-struck London to the Christ’s Hospital boarding school.

1949 Enrols at Hammersmith School of Art and later transfers to the Central School where he is taught by Anthony Froshaug with Colin Forbes as a classmate.

1953 Studies at the Royal College of Art.

1956 Wins an exchange scholarship to Yale University’s School of Architecture and Design, where he is taught by Alvin Eisenman and Paul Rand. Works for Leo Lionni at Fortune magazine in New York and at Saul Bass’s studio in Los Angeles.

1959 Returns to London via Milan, where he works briefly for Pirelli.

1960 Renting space in Forbes’ studio, he freelances for clients including Time and Life and Pirelli as well as teaching one day a week at the Central School.

1962 Founds Fletcher/Forbes/Gill with former classmate Colin Forbes and the US graphic designer Bob Gill. Clients include Penguin and Shell.

1965 Bob Gill leaves the company and Theo Crosby joins, forming Crosby/ Fletcher/Forbes.

1965 Designs a new identity for the Reuters news agency by spelling its name in lines of black dots to replicate the printing of its news reports.

1970 Designs the Clam plastic ashtray for production by Mebel in Italy.

1972 Forms Pentagram with Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes, Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky.

1974 John McConnell joins Pentagram.

1980 Designs the identity for the Commercial Bank of Kuwait.

1986 Develops the signage for the architect Richard Roger’s headquarters for the Lloyd’s of London insurance market and the corporate identity of Lloyds.

1989 Creates a new identity and signage system for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

1992 Leaves Pentagram and establishes an independent studio in his home in Notting Hill Gate.

1994 Becomes consultant art director to Phaidon Press

1994 Publishes the monograph Beware Wet Paint.

2001 Publication of The Art of Looking Sideways on Fletcher’s visual philosophy.

2003 Starts to develop the visual identity of the Novartis Campus Project in Basel, Switzerland.

2006 Alan Fletcher dies in East Sussex, England

© Design Museum + British Council

FURTHER READING

Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill, Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons, Studio Vista, 1964

Jeremy Myerson, Beware Wet Paint: Designs by Alan Fletcher, Phaidon, 1994

Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways, Phaidon, 2001

Alan Fletcher, 100 Maverick Postcards, Phaidon, 2004

For more information on British design and architecture go to Design in Britain, the online archive run as a collaboration between the Design Museum and British Council, at designmuseum.org/designinbritain

Robert Brownjohn @ Design Museum

Robert Brownjohn
Graphic Designer (1925-1970)
15 October 2005 to 26 February 2006
Design Museum Exhibition


Combining audacious imagery with ingenious typography, illustration and found objects, ROBERT BROWNJOHN (1925-1970) was among the most innovative graphic designers in 1950s New York and 1960s London, where he designed titles for James Bond films, graphics for the Robert Fraser Gallery and artwork for the Rolling Stones.

Throughout his life Robert Brownjohn loved music. Many of his closest friends were musicians and his most playful and inspiring work was related to music. When it came to designing an album cover for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1958, he fused his love of music and of typography by transforming blocks of disused wooden type and wooden bricks from his daughter Eliza’s playbox into a striking graphic composition which is also a commentary on the process of typographic production.

He did so by replacing the orderly arrangement of type by a skilled typesetter with a higgledy-piggledy collage of wooden blocks. The type on the sculpture runs from right to left, and, to make it legible, the photographic image was reversed. Witty and intriguing, the wooden collage typifies the intellectual rigour and underlying humour that characterised Brownjohn’s work. It also demonstrates the appreciation of the everyday objects that tend to be taken for granted that he had inherited from his teacher László Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940s.

Famed for his flamboyant lifestyle as well as for the quality of his design ideas, Brownjohn was an influential figure in graphic design in both 1950s New York and 1960s London before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1970 a few days before his 45th birthday. In his audacious choice of images – from the bare breasts on a poster for Robert Fraser’s Obsession exhibition, to the gold-painted female torso in his Goldfinger titles – Brownjohn captured the experimental spirit of the 1960s by introducing the progressive ideas of Moholy-Nagy to popular culture in inspired juxtapositions of type and image.

Born in New Jersey in 1925 to a British-born bus driver and his wife, Brownjohn’s artistic talent was encouraged by a teacher at his New Jersey high school, who helped him to win a place at Institute of Design in Chicago. Arriving there in 1944, Brownjohn became a protégé of Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus émigré who had founded the new Bauhaus, as the Institute of Design was first named, as a modernised version of the original Bauhaus in Germany. “The goal is no longer to recreate the classical craftsman, artist and artisan with the aim of fitting him into the industrial age,” opined Moholy-Nagy. “By now technology has become as much a part of life as metabolism. The task therefore is to educate the contemporary man as an integrator, the new designer able to evaluate human needs warped by machine civilisation.”

Despite the financial and administrative difficulties of the Institute of Design, it was a stimulating place to study and Moholy-Nagy was an extraordinarily inspiring teacher. Fired by the belief in “the interrelatedness of art and life”, Moholy-Nagy was intent on liberating modern design from commerce and infusing it with social and spiritual purpose. Determined to produce thoughtful and intellectually open students, he organised lectures on mathematics, science, philosophy and literature as well as art, design and film. Gifted and engaging, Brownjohn was among the most receptive students. For the rest of his life, his work bore many of the formal influences of Moholy-Nagy and he remained intellectually inquisitive, an avid reader with a love of film and music, particularly jazz, a passion he acquired in the clubs of Chicago’s South Side.

After Moholy-Nagy’s death in 1949, Brownjohn forged a similarly close rapport with his successor, the architect Serge Chermayeff, who appointed him as an assistant. Brownjohn combined his teaching at the institute with freelance design assignments and a stint at the Chicago Planning Commission as an architectural planner.

In 1950 Brownjohn moved to New York and spent several years financing a drug-infused, jazz-club-based social life with freelance employment for clients such as Columbia Records and the American Craft Museum. He forged friendships with the musicians Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and the artist Andy Warhol. Brownjohn only settled down when he married Donna Walters in 1956 and, the following year, teamed up with fellow designers Ivan Chermayeff, Serge’s son, and Tom Geismar to form Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar.

Renowned for its industrious but informal atmosphere, BCG began by designing book jackets, album covers and letterheads, but soon won more substantial commissions, often through Chermayeff’s architectural connections, including the US Pavilion at the 1959 Brussels World’s Fair. There they created a Streetscape inspired by their love for the vernacular graphic imagery of the New York streets by filling part of the pavilion with a three-dimensional streetscape. Many of the signs and symbols in the streetscape were found on exploratory outings to Coney Island with fellow graphic designers such as Tony Palladino and Bob Gill.

Among BCG’s most important corporate clients was the Pepsi-Cola Company, which commissioned Brownjohn to design the 1959 Christmas decorations for its imposing new headquarters designed by the architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. He created a spectacular over-sized ripple of Christmas tree baubles that filled the lobby and drew crowds of admirers on the pavement outside, day and night. Elaborately constructed from multi-coloured baubles embedded in an armature of chicken wire, the decoration formed a giant wave supported by pilotti to curl like ribbon for the full length of the lobby.

Brownjohn and his colleagues combined their commercial projects with experimental work, such as Watching Words Move, a series of typographic jokes inspired by the games they played during quiet moments in the studio, when they amused each other by constructing visual jokes from words and symbols. They pasted carefully selected letters and words by hand into this booklet in The Composing Room, the experimental typesetter used by BCG and other leading New York graphic designers of the era.

By the end of 1959 Brownjohn’s drug habit had caught up with him; BCG disbanded in 1960 and he moved his family to London hoping to benefit from the UK’s liberal approach to drug use.

His arrival in London was perfectly timed for the city’s fledgling graphic design scene, which was energised by the addition of US designers like Brownjohn and Bob Gill. Urbane and impeccably connected, he played an important role in making graphic design a glamorous profession and in commercialising modernist graphic concepts.

After spells at the advertising agencies J. Walter Thompson and McCann-Erickson, Brownjohn formed a film company with the producer David Cammell and director Hugh Hudson. His leap from print to moving image appeared effortless and bore the influence of László Moholy-Nagy. Simple, yet spectacular, Brownjohn’s first film sequences, the titles for James Bond’s From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, took audiences by storm. Moholy-Nagy had experimented by projecting light on to clouds; Brownjohn took this idea to the mainstream by projecting on to women’s faces and bodies.

As in New York, Brownjohn excelled at conceiving brilliantly simple graphic ideas, and executing them without frills or fussiness. In a poster for the Robert Fraser Gallery he used the nipples of a model’s breasts to represent the Os in the exhibition title, Obsession. The last work he completed before his death in 1970 was the Peace poster in which an Ace of Spades card is pasted between the hastily scrawled letters P and E, and a question mark.

BIOGRAPHY

1925 Born in Newark, New Jersey as the third child and only son of Herbert Brownjohn, a British-born bus driver, and his wife Anna.

1943 After graduating from the Arts High School in Jersey City he studies at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

1944 Enrols at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he studies under the Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy, who publishes one of Brownjohn’s student projects in his 1947 book Vision in Motion.

1946 When Moholy-Nagy dies, Serge Chermayeff becomes director of the Institute and appoints Brownjohn as an assistant.

1948 Joins the Chicago Planning Commission as an architectural planner.

1949 Returns to the Institute of Design. Within the US design community, his friends include R. Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Breuer and Mies Van Der Rohe.

1951 Moves to New York, where he works as a graphic designer for the furniture designer George Nelson.

1953 Works briefly at Bob Cato Associates and teaches at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, while designing freelance for Columbia Records, The American Crafts Museum and Pepsi-Cola.

1956 Marries Donna Walters and their daughter Eliza is born. Designs the American Jazz Annual for the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. His New York circle of friends includes Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Andy Warhol.

1957 Co-founds Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar with Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, where he continues to design for Columbia Records and Pepsi, while working on corporate identities and exhibition design projects including the US Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

1960 Leaves New York and Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar to move to London, where he becomes a creative director of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.

1962 Joins a rival agency McCann-Erickson. Donna leaves Brownjohn by moving to Ibiza with Eliza.

1963 Designs the title sequence for the James Bond film From Russia With Love. Begins a relationship with the fashion designer Kiki Milne.

1964 Creates the titles for the James Bond film Goldfinger.

1965 Works with the film makers David Cammell and Hugh Hudson, with whom he founds Cammell, Hudson and Brownjohn. Begins work on the five year series of ‘Money Talks’ cinema commercials for Midland Bank.

1966 Creates the titles for The Tortoise and the Hare film, directed by Hugh Hudson, for Pirelli tyres.

1968 Designs the artwork for the Rolling Stones’ album Let It Bleed. Plays a cameo role in Dick Clement’s film Otley.

1969 Cammell, Hudson and Brownjohn disbands and he forms Nagata & Brownjohn with the Japanese-American director David Nagata. Plays a cameo part in Dick Fontaine’s film Double Pisces, Scorpio Rising. Designs the Peace? Poster.

1970 Robert Brownjohn dies in London of a heart attack. Bob Gill organises a memorial service at the US Embassy in London.

© Design Museum

FURTHER READING
Emily King, Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography, Laurence King Publishing, 2005

For more information on British design and architecture go to Design in Britain, the online archive run in collaboration by the Design Museum and the British Council, at designmuseum.org/designinbritain

© Design Museum

Tomoko Takahashi @ Hales Gallery

Hales Gallery is pleased to announce Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi’s second solo show at the gallery. Takahashi will make a new installation in the gallery space over a 10 day period preceding the show. As with her installations, Takahashi starts with a set of rules that structure the overall composition. For this show the challenge is not to buy any of the objects that will be part of the work, relying on materials that she has hoarded over time. Her thoughts for this show are scrawled on the announcement card and have become a replacement for the regular pattern. For this exhibition Takahashi has divided the gallery into two separate rooms and has also split the works for sale and the installed piece.

Takahashi’s installations have been described as organised chaos. Each work is triggered by her response to a particular site or personal situations and is composed of unwanted and at times obsolete everyday objects. Trained as a painter at Tama Art University Tokyo and finishing her art education at Goldsmiths College of Art, London, Takahashi takes the entire space into account. She develops an internal logic which she uses to order and compose objects within this designated space. The resulting installations are like complex three dimensional collages, where the gallery serves as both the artist’s studio and a viewing space.

Takahashi’s ultimately ephemeral work creates platforms to view objects in a different light. She gives each element a new purpose and in her own words strives to ‘liberate things from imposed rules’. Takahashi is a collector of the most obsessive nature, but she is highly selective when hunting for materials for her work. Objects are chosen for their intended functions, others are chosen to help highlight and animate different aspects and ideas within the work. Rhythm is shaped by Takahashi in her work through repetition of colour, components and sometimes sound, created by the whirring and clanking of electrical components.

The use of every day and discarded objects as viable artistic material has recurred through out the 20th Century and has its roots in the work of pivotal artists such as Kurt Schwitters, particularly his Merzbau, 1923-37. Tomoko Takahashi continues this tradition and through her work challenges the viewer to see the world differently.

Tomoko Takahashi was born in Tokyo and has recently returned to London after spending the last 8 months living part of the time in Japan and the rest on a farm in Andalucía, Spain. Her work Drawing Room is currently being exhibited at Tate Modern as part of its permanent collection. She has had solo shows at The Mead Gallery, Warwickshire (2006), Serpentine Gallery, London (2005), UCLA Hammer Museum, LA (2002) and the Kunsthalle Bern (2002). In 2000 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Notable group exhibitions include No Money, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany (2004), Living Inside the Grid, New Museum of Contemporary Art, (2003).

Anselm Kiefer @ White Cube

Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra26 Jan—17 Mar 2007
Mason's Yard

White Cube Mason's Yard is pleased to present a new body of work by the internationally acclaimed artist Anselm Kiefer. The exhibition will be staged both at White Cube Mason’s Yard and the Royal Academy of Arts.

The title of the exhibition, Aperiatur terra, is a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, which translates as ‘let the earth be opened’ and continues ‘and bud forth a saviour and let justice spring up at the same time’. These contrasting themes of destruction and re-creation, violent upheaval and spiritual renewal underpin much of Kiefer’s work.

The focal point of the exhibition is Palmsonntag, an installation in the ground floor gallery comprised of eighteen paintings, hung as a single entity on one wall, with a thirteen-metre palm tree laid on the gallery floor. As its title suggests, the work evokes the beginning of Christ’s journey into Jerusalem prior to his arrest, Passion, death and resurrection. The paintings read almost as the pages of a book opened to reveal multiple layers and narratives. As is common in Kiefer’s practice, organic materials form the palette through which landscapes are created. These are then overlaid with texts which do not point to one single interpretation but rather suggest a rich, philosophically charged and resonant multiplicity of meaning and experience.

Palm Sunday has a pivotal place in Christian theology but has rarely formed the subject of major painting. It adds a further dimension to Kiefer’s already diverse and complex range of sources in his art, which have included Teutonic mythology and history, alchemy, Greco-Roman mythology, ancient Gnosticism and Kabbalistic mysticism. In the lower gallery, three epic canvases are hung to create a single installation. Each is a vast panoramic landscape whose visceral surface appears strewn with flowers or perhaps on fire, at once apocalyptic and redemptive. References are made to the poetry of Victor Hugo, the fall of Troy, the Nazi campaign on the Russian front and to the prophet Isaiah amongst others, a range of sources that suggest an ongoing pattern of veneration, degeneration and renewal.

As an extension of the exhibition at Mason’s Yard, the Royal Academy of Arts is displaying two of Kiefer’s monumental towers, entitled Jericho, for the first time in Britain. These five and six storey concrete constructions continue a series begun in the artist’s extensive studio-without-walls in Barjac, Provence. To some, these ‘twin towers’ evoke the precariousness and the bombast of great Empires past and present; to others they read as a bridge between the earth and the heavens. In his catalogue essay for the exhibition, the Royal Academy’s Exhibitions Secretary Norman Rosenthal quotes from Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut: ‘To build in fantasy, without regard for technical difficulties; to have the gift of imagination is more important than all technology, that always adopts itself to man's creative will today, a true architect really does not exist, all of us are only the forerunners of the one who will some time again deserve to be called architect, a name signifying Lord of Art, who will make gardens of the desert and will heap wonders to the sky.’

Anselm Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen in Southern Germany. He has lived and worked in Barjac in the south of France since 1991. Kiefer is regarded as one of the most important and influential artists working today. Exhibitions of his painting, sculptures, drawings and installations have been staged extensively over the past four decades and his work is included in the world’s most prestigious public and private collections.

A fully illustrated catalogue has been published by White Cube to accompany the exhibition. It contains essays by Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Anthony Bond, Curatorial Director at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and Graham Howes, Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Aperiatur terra will travel to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, 19 May - 29 July 2007.

White Cube is open Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm. For further information please contact Honey Luard or Sara Macdonald on +44 (0)20 7930 5373.

The Royal Academy of Arts is open Monday – Sunday 10am – 6pm (and till 10pm on Fridays). For further information please contact Catherine Mason on +44 (0)20 7300 8041.

Koen van den Broek @ White Cube

Koen van den Broek: Angle2 Feb—10 Mar 2007
Inside the White Cube

White Cube is pleased to present a new group of paintings by Belgian artist Koen van den Broek. In these works, van den Broek has made a series of minimal paintings with pared down, panoramic compositions that have moved away from the original source of their image – the photographic snapshot – to focus instead on the application of paint, the spatial effect of colour and the reduction of a motif to its barest possible form.

In these pictures, which present abstracted compositions taken from urban landscapes, linear structures are delicately marked out in primary, unnatural colours against great expanses of white ground, which seem to dominate the picture surface. The hard edges of these vertical and curving structures appear to dissolve and break up as if the reality of the image is being tested, creating a feeling of disconnection. The compositions are dynamic and yet the objects they depict are ordinary. Dirk Lauwaert has described this element of van den Broek’s paintings a ‘bottomless anonymity’ and sees his pictures as creating a ‘sense of loss in nonetheless attentively observed details’. In this way, van den Broek seems to ‘de-frame’ his original photographic subject emphasising the canvas as a container that presents a cropped and arranged view of a much more expansive subject.

Some of these new paintings are divided vertically in half by a white line, creating a doubling effect that gives the impression of images seen in succession on the pages of a book or in the strip of a film but also about how images are never seen in isolation but always relate to what the viewer has seen before or after. In these works, the motif is altered and only approximately repeated. In Rhythm, for example, everything seems the same, but the second image is simply a blurring of the first. In Display Disconnected there is the approximation of a curb – reduced almost to a sweep of the brush – and on the right hand side, a more careful rendition of it. Contrary to van den Broek’s earlier paintings, that created tension out of non-space – making shadows solid, for example, – everything here seems less fixed and more vaporous. In Cut Out, for example, the border dramatically moves from bottom to top in an unequivocal vertical, creating a dramatic composition. Half pink and half sap-green, the border seems to become more of an approximated building structure with a strip of blue barely marking the bottom right hand corner of the canvas.

Koen van den Broek was born in 1973 in Bree, Belgium, and lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2005) and Domus Artium, Salamanca (2004). His work has featured in group exhibitions including the Prague Biennale (2005), Kunsthalle Mannheim (2004) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003).

Christian Marclay @ White Cube

Christian Marclay: Crossfire2 Feb—10 Mar 2007
Hoxton Square

White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to present a new video installation and group of collages by Christian Marclay. Since the early 1980s, Marclay has been developing a distinctive body of work that explores the relationships between sound and image. Renowned for his exuberant and witty collages, Marclay has made use of everything from record covers to film clips to construct pictures, objects and installations.

The video installation Crossfire creates a charged, physical space in which the viewer is surrounded by four large projections playing a rapid montage of guns and gunfire. The gun is perhaps the most iconic image in the media, a constant presence in everything from newscasts about faraway wars and local crimes to its persistent role as a narrative device in movies. While guns always foreshadow violence, they also offer a false promise of safety from an outside threat. Marclay plays with this twin sense of dread and fascination. Crossfire features characters handling a variety of guns, from small pistols to unruly rifles – a man pulls back his jacket to reveal a thick handgun in a holster, fingers caress a steely gun barrel as if stroking a fetish object, a thumb pushes bullets into the cylinder of a revolver. When the shooting begins, the viewer is engulfed by a cadenced, pulsating violence that diminishes and intensifies with mesmerising rhythm. Although the viewer is under a continuous assault, Marclay’s precise arrangement of sound and image allows the gunfire to become a kind of percussion instrument, and Crossfire coaxes a strange music from the westerns, gangster flicks and war movies that the artist has used as raw material.

For the second part of the exhibition, Marclay has created a group of prints made from onomatopoeic words that he has torn from comic books and collaged before scanning and reprinting them at a large scale. Onomatopoeic words, with their huge letters and strings of unbroken vowels, blaze across the page at decisive moments in every superhero’s escapade, yet their forceful presence remains silent until interpreted and read aloud. Marclay treats these chunky words like objects, creating collages that emphasise the materiality of the paper and the ink of the original comic book. Removed from their narrative context, the words fizz with random violence and barely contained energy.

Christian Marclay has exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions. A mid-career retrospective began at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2003 and concluded at the Barbican Art Gallery, London in May 2005. “Christian Marclay: Replay” will be at the Cité de la Musique, Paris, from 9 March – 24 June 2007.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, with a text by Tom Morton.

London market a shopping and dining haven

On weekends Borough Market draws some 70 organic farmers, artisanal producers, world-class bakers and gourmet food importers from all over the world.

Brave the queue for the juicy venison burgers sizzling on a large grill at Westcountry Venison, which also produces a prizewinning venison terrine made with Madeira, brandy and juniper berries.

For fresh-pressed olive oils -- ranging from gold and mellow to green and peppery -- and cured meats (this is your chance to sample Ibérico ham), go to Brindisa Spanish Foods. Stop by Turnips, a produce stall that sells unusual fruits such as tangy plum-like greengages and Italian strawberry grapes, to add the finishing touch to a picnic hamper.

Gamston Wood Ostriches purveys all things ostrich, from meat to old-fashioned feather dusters.

Restaurants and bars
Roast (Floral Hall, Stoney St.; 44-207/940-1300; dinner for two $75), an airy, glass-enclosed space in the historic Floral Hall overlooking the market, with views of St. Paul's cathedral, packs seasonal organic ingredients into traditional British dishes (dressed Dorset crab; roast Herdwick mutton).

Rub elbows with City bankers and trendy East Enders at Wright Brothers Oyster & Porter House (11 Stoney St.; 44-207/403-9554; dinner for two $90), where ultra-fresh oysters are always on the menu, including the Duchy of Cornwall variety, farmed by proprietor Ben Wright at the Prince of Wales's oyster farm in Cornwall.

Set under Victorian railway arches, Brew Wharf (Brew Wharf Yard, Stoney St.; 44-207/378-6601; dinner for two $75), a cavernous microbrewery with mosaic tile floors, pairs house ales with solid brasserie fare such as braised pork belly and red cabbage. The tiny bar Rake (14 Winchester Walk; 44-207/407-0557) stocks more than 100 obscure brews drawn from every corner of the world, including Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a "smoked" ale from Bavaria, and Bière Darbyste, a Belgian wheat beer flavored with figs.

Shops
The arrival of Paul Smith (13 Park St.; 44-207/403-1678), which sells the British designer's colorful, sharply tailored clothes alongside vintage books and kitsch collectibles, may herald the neighborhood's evolution into a fashion as well as food destination. (London's best new shops)

With its soaring ceilings and massive open counter, Neal's Yard Dairy (6 Park St.; 44-207/ 645-3554) is a temple of cheese with 50 varieties on display, including British all-stars such as Montgomery's Cheddar and Colston Bassett Stilton.

Domestic goddess Nigella Lawson is a fan of the deliciously moist cakes (chocolate rum, orange lavender) and whimsically decorated pastries (boardshorts-clad gingerbread men) at Konditor & Cook (10 Stoney St.; 44-207/407-5100).

Taking on London's coolest hotel bars

BRING ON THE BLING

The Bar, The Dorchester, W1

The look: This intimate space has recently undergone a baffling refurbishment. A red and gold colour scheme looks trashy, and the huge red-glass stalagmites that pop up around the room are downright weird. A celebration of bad taste worthy of Dame Edna. Funky ambient music.

Glass of champagne: £13.50, Louis Roederer.

Cocktails: About £12, try a mulito (rum, lime, mint and lulo juice).

Free nibbles: Generous serving of nuts and crisps.

Perfect for: Entertaining your blingiest friends.

How’s the service? Impeccable.

Who goes there? Sir Philip Green; boob-job blondes.

What we think: Perfect service and delicious tipples are the only signs that you are drinking in one of the world’s great hotels - the aggressive, vulgar look of this bar doesn’t sit well with its pedigree, and it does a disservice to its polished, top-class staff.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Details: The Dorchester (020-7629 8888, www.thedorchester.com), Park Lane, London W1.

WAITING IN VAIN

The May Fair Bar, Radisson Edwardian May Fair Hotel, W1

The look: Large and dimly lit. A lot of black marble and black shiny surfaces make it feel more like a nightclub than a bar. Nobody came to assist us or show us to a table. We found one and ordered, but after a 20-minute wait our drinks had not arrived. We politely reminded one of the waiters, which produced no apology or reassurance that they were on their way. We left.

Glass of champagne: £9, Moët & Chandon.

Cocktails: £10.69 for a cosmopolitan.

Free nibbles: Pistachios.

Perfect for: Getting an evening off to a bad start.

How’s the service? What service?

Who goes there? Rowdy after-office crowds.

What we think: Try somewhere else.

Rating: 0 out of 10.

Details: Radisson Edwardian May Fair Hotel (020-7629 7777, www.radissonedwardian.com), Stratton Street, London W1.


DUPED AT DUKES

The Bar, Dukes Hotel, SW1

The look: Clubby and conservative, with plain leather chairs, small tables, antique oil paintings and blue Regency-stripe wallpaper.

Glass of champagne: £10.50, Ayala Cocktails: £14 for a Martini.

Free nibbles: Generous bowl of nuts, olives and crackers.

How’s the service? Desultory and offhand. Dirty glasses were collected and dumped on a table in the corner rather than whisked out of sight. Dukes’s signature Martini was indeed good, but at £14 a pop, served with a sneer, it needed to be.

Who goes there? Film stars, models, businessmen.

Perfect for: Negotiating your divorce.

What we think: An old-school bolt hole in St James’s, but don’t expect a warm welcome. Let’s hope that Gordon Campbell Gray’s makeover this year changes things.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Details: Dukes Hotel (020-7491 4840, www.dukeshotel.com), St James’s Place, London SW1.

KATE MOSS GLOSS

The Donovan Bar, Brown’s Hotel, W1

The look: An inviting, dimly lit bar adorned with Terence Donovan’s photographs. Book ahead to reserve the cosy cubicle for a party of eight.

Glass of champagne: £13, Taittinger.

Cocktails: Try a “Space Race” - Sputnik vodka, Cointreau, lychee liqueur, cranberry and guava juice (£11.50).

Free nibbles: Warm canapés, such as monkfish wrapped in parma ham and mini pizzas, handed round. Olives and nuts served with drinks.

How’s the service? Prompt.

Who goes there? Kate Moss, Alan Whicker, Al Gore, Clive Owen, plus well-heeled locals.

Perfect for: A first date.

What we think: Stylish.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

Details: Brown’s Hotel (020-7493 6020, www.roccofortehotels.com), Albemarle Street, London W1.

THE PLACE TO BBC

Artesian, Langham Hotel, W1

The look: The bar has a Chinese theme as well as two splendid lamps shaped like horse heads. There are high ceilings, big chandeliers and views across to Broadcasting House and All Souls Church. Elegant.

Glass of champagne: £12.50, Laurent-Perrier Brut NV.

Cocktails: Try a Brazilian Mule - rum, vanilla, lime and ginger beer . . . very refreshing.

Free nibbles: Canapés from 6-8pm: prawns and parma ham on crackers. Plus nuts and cheese sticks.

How’s the service? Attentive and full of suggestions when choosing cocktails.

Who goes there? Simon Schama, BBC bigwigs from Broadcasting House.

Perfect for: Celeb-spotting.

What we think: Stylish, but not ostentatious.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Details: Artesian (020-7636 1000, www.langhamhotel london.co.uk), 1C Portland Place, Regent Street, London, England, W1.

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DON’T FEEL GUILTY

Gilt Champagne Lounge, Jumeirah Carlton, W1

The look: All that glisters is gold at the new Gilt Champagne Lounge. The bar is in a small side room, with nooks and crannies for a tête à tête. Ostentatious and sexy.

Glass of champagne: £14, Pommerie Brut.

Cocktails: £17.50 for a Bellini.

Free nibbles: Nuts and olives; sushi from 6.30pm to 8.30pm.

How’s the service? Fast and friendly.

Who goes there? Martine McCutcheon, Alan Whicker.

Perfect for: Glamming it up.

What we think: Not many know about Gilt yet - great place for a date.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Details: Jumeirah Carlton (020-7858 7250, www.jumeirahcarltontower.com), Cadogan Place, London SW1.

NAMES ARE THE GAME

The Met Bar, The Metropolitan Hotel, W1

The look: Defiantly red in its colour scheme, the Met is still a busy, hip hangout, but its hard lines, uncomfortable seating and rather uneasy atmosphere date it. But then, it is ten years old and, notwithstanding a makeover, hasn’t caught up with today’s chilled vibe, where cool must always be comfortable. Only guests and members can visit the Met Bar -which still makes it an exclusive drinking hole.

Glass of champagne: £7.50, François Hemart Gran Cru Rosé. Cocktails: £10.50 for a mojito.

Free nibbles: Wasabi peas and olives.

How’s the service? Good-looking, efficient, bar staff dressed in black Armani.

Who goes there? Cameron Diaz, Boris Becker, the Black Eyed Peas, Arctic Monkeys.

Perfect for: Feeling like a rock star.

What we think: Poptastic, if that’s your sort of thing. Mildly stressful, if it isn’t. But if you’re paying top rates for a room here (which start at £429) why not try mixing with the rock crowd?

Rating: 6 out of 10. Details: The Metropolitan (020-7447 1000, www.metropolitan.co.uk), Old Park Lane, London W1.

TRENDY IN HOXTON

The Hoxton Grille, The Hoxton Urban Lodge, EC2

The look: Exposed air-conditioning vents, brick walls and a long US diner-style bar give the Hoxton Grille a distinctly West Side of Manhattan feel — you might be in a drinking hole in the hip Meatpackers’ district of New York. There’s an inner courtyard with small tables set around an olive tree. Popular with arty types. Glass of champagne: £7, Pommerie Brut. Cocktails: £6 for a blueberry Margarita.

Free nibbles: None.

How’s the service? Rather slow.

Who goes there? Callum Best, Keane, the Arctic Monkeys.

Perfect for: A lively drink after work.

What we think: Lots of fun, and full of energy - and rooms are about £100 if you want to stay and crash out.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Details: The Hoxton Urban Lodge (020-7550 1000, www.hoxtonhotels.com), 81 Great Eastern Street, London EC2.

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AMERICAN FRIEND

The Library Bar, The Lanesborough

The look: Clubby, extremely comfortable, and traditional with a heavy dose of showy American opulence - dramatic curtains, touches of gilt, lavish flower displays. You need to be on your best behaviour here: the bar’s elegant white-jacketed waiters are professional, polite and aloof, and glide around the room, trays aloft, like ice skaters - even the more portly ones. There’s nothing remotely trendy or left-field about this place. Your aunt would like it. And so will you.

Glass of champagne: £13, Taittinger.

Cocktails: £13.50 for a bullet-through-the-brain classic Martini.

Free nibbles: Ample serving of nuts and vegetable crisps.

How’s the service? Smooth as silk.

Who goes there? Madonna, Jay-Z and Beyoncé have all been spotted here.

Perfect for? A celebration; an evening with a special friend.

What we think: Glamorous and civilised (the two rarely go together these days). Worth every penny.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Details: The Lanesborough, Hyde Park Corner, London SW1X (020-7259 5599).

A BAR TO BEAT A CAR

Refuel, The Soho Hotel, W1

The look: Refuel is a vast improvement on its former life as an NCP car park. A super-long shiny bar, a colourful, jazzy mural and crowds of thin, chattering, flirting media luvvies make this place feel a lot glossier than most watering holes in loveable but louche Soho. The staff are busy, but work frenetically hard, so you won’t be left waiting long for your drink. It’s a big space, with tables and seats, but it gets very crowded.

Glass of champagne: £9.50, Beaumont des Crayères.

Cocktails: £9.50 for a Soho Passion/Over the Top.

Free nibbles: crisps.

How’s the service: Busy but switched on.

Who goes there? Charles Dance, Natalie Portman, Dennis Hopper, P. Diddy. Heaving with film and TV execs.

Perfect for: Giving soundbite interviews about your leading role in the new Tarantino movie; that flirty second date.

What we think: One day, all car parks will be like this. Noisy, fast, fun — and great for people-watching.

Rating: 7 out of 10 Details: The Soho Hotel, 4 Richmond Mews London W1 (020-7559 3000, www.firmdale.com)

ONE FOR THE SPRING

Roof Garden, The Trafalgar, SW1

The look: This open-air rooftop bar is dressed like an Iberian chill-out lounge — white leather sofas, white paintwork, olive trees in white pots, helped along by ambient sounds and lite soul. White bar stools lining the roof edge give spectacular bird’s eye views over Trafalgar Square — you’re practically face to face with Lord Nelson. It’s open May-September, though they are considering putting a marquee-style roof on the top to keep it open round the year.

Glass of champers: £9.50, Piper-Heidseck.

Cocktails: Not available.

Nibbles: No free ones, but there is menu of light bites, such as vegetable antipasti (£5).

Perfect for: A blind date — the amazing view will ensure all pregnant pauses are filled.

How’s the service? Relaxed and thoughtful. Blankets were handed out to women who felt chilly as the evening wore on.

Who goes there? A hotchpotch of upwardly mobile chavs and trendy thirtysomethings.

What we think: The Roof Garden isn’t big on sophistication, but it’s cheerful and laid-back — and with a view like this, who needs anything more?

Rating: 8 out of 10.

Details: Roof Garden, The Trafalgar (020-7870 2900, www.thetrafalgar.com), 2 Spring Gardens, Trafalgar Square, London SW1.

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IT’S A GEM

Mirror Bar, the Landmark, NW1

The look: Snazzy, upmarket, plush, plenty of cosy corners — and lots and lots of mirrors. The colour scheme is rich, with reds, purples and golds — no minimalist nonsense here. Feels a bit like drinking in a jewellery box.

Glass of champers? £15, Tattinger.

Cocktails: From £12.50 for a cosmopolitan.

Free nibbles: Japanese crackers, plus canapés from 5.30pm to 7pm each night.

How’s the service? Excellent. Staff are attentive, speedy and polite.

Who goes there? Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis.

Perfect for: An after work pick-me-up or a discreet chat.

What we think: Tables are far enough apart to have private conversations and it doesn’t get too busy. A good choice of champagnes and wine.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

Details: The Landmark (020-7631 8000, www.landmarklondon.co.uk), 222 Marylebone Road, London NW1.

FLYING HIGH

Galvin at Windows, London Hilton on Park Lane, W1


The look: Executive airport lounge — very beige, very Seventies — with an untidy seating plan. Comfortable and jolly, but rather uninspiring — has a businesslike air. A guitarist played forgettable, inoffensive music.

Glass of champers: £12.75, Pommery Brut Royal.

Cocktails? Bellinis are £12.95.

Free nibbles: Crisps.

Perfect for: Signing a deal — and drinking to its success.

How’s the service? Excellent.

Who goes there? Preppy, cigar-smoking American executives in pinstripes; middle-aged women on a girls’ night out.

What we think: Fantastic view, but without a ringside seat, you can’t really see much at night.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

Details: Hilton Park Lane, (020-7493 8000, www.hilton.co.uk), 22 Park Lane, London W1.