Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the work of Maria Neurath who designed science books for children. Neurath devised a way of analysing complex information and distilling it into concise explanations using words and pictures in a technique called Isotype. The style was devised in Vienna in the 1920s with her husband Otto before she fled to England in 1942. Otto died in 1945 but she carried on her work. A lot of the books and illustrations on show did look familiar. The books were a little early for me but I think I was recognising a style which is now fairly common place. She used repetition of an image with slight changes to explain a concept or use large double page pictures to show complex structures such as an underground station. I loved the way her “The Wonder World of Nature” series were shown as open books, two to a frame, showing them off like art. I also liked displays which showed a work from initial idea to published books. ...

Delightful exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the work of the cartoonist/graphic novelist Posy Simmmonds. I’ve been a Posy Simmonds fan since her work on the Guardian Women’s Page and have all the novels so it was wonderful to revisit her work and see her gentle satire of British life. I was laughing out loud from the first cartoon I read! It was lovely to see her childhood drawings which already parodied school friend style magazines and the show showed how her style changed as printing methods developed. It looked at her books for children as well and included a sketchbook for her book about the old Cat “Fred”. The last room was dedicated to her latest book “Cassandra Darke” and had the complete layout around the walls with lots of sketchbooks and preliminary drawings to show how the ideas developed. This was the first book she had produced digitally but it was reassuring to see that all the drawings were still hand done and her husband still typesets...

Strange installation outside the House of Illustration by Jonny Hannah.   Hannah has invented an alternative coastal town called Darktown peopled by pin-up girls, jazz artists and tattooed sailors. He has worked out the various shops, cafes etc in the town. This decorated taxi was created as a response to the lack of individuality on the modern UK high street and Hannah imagines it driving up and down Darktown’s Main Street. I admit I don’t really understand but it was a fun object to have in this outdoor space over the summer. I loved the detailed paintings of aspects of the town and it’s motto of “From A to Z and back again”.   Closes on 31 August 2018

Lovely exhibition at the House of Illustration of work by John Vernon Lord.   The show looked at recent work by Lord illustrating three books by Lewis Carroll and two by James Joyce. I loved the inclusion of his note books in the show so you could see how ideas developed. The Carroll books used a lovely colour palette with lots of turquoise. They don’t show Alice herself but concentrate on what Alice can see. I loved the picture of the rabbit hole as it was full of little bookcases and cupboards.   In the Joyce books he saw the illustrations as a bridge of communication to the reader to illuminate the dense text. In his Ulysses pictures he includes a row of small illustrations along the bottom like a praedella on an altar piece. My favourite picture in the show was of Plurabelle from Finnegan’s Wake where he’d drawn her face on the surface of the sea. The detail was stunning. There was also a wonderful piece where Lord did a drawing a day throughout 2016, ...

Small exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at illustrations by Quentin Blake for two editions of the Cyrano de Bergerac book “Voyages to the Moon and the Sun”.   This book is seen as the first science fiction classic published in 1657. In it the main character travels to the moon, is imprisoned on earth, escapes to the sun and is put on trial by birds! OK I’m not rushing out to buy a copy but Blake was attracted to the work for the variety of subjects to draw.   As there were illustrations from two editions I’d have liked an indication on the pictures of which one they came from a bit more about the text which went with the pictures as I didn’t know the story. Some were easy to work out from the brief synopsis but others were a more obtuse.   I liked the fact these were the original drawings and some had notes to the publisher on them such as “Delete this monkey.” Closes 30 September 2018  

Fascinating exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the illustrations and design work of Enid Marx.   Marx was at the Royal College of Art with Ravillious, Bawden, Hepworth and Moore but moved into design work in the 1920s. She specialised in abstract repeat patterns and there was wonderful wall of her utility designs from the Second World War. Most famously she designed some of the iconic London Underground fabrics and there was a good display on this talking about how the material has to be patterned so it doesn’t show the dirt.   Marx also designed and made hand printed pattern paper for the lining of book covers and there lovely examples of this both in books and as rolls of paper. From 1929 she moved into book illustration as well specialising in covers for Chatto and Windus and later for the King Penguin series and well as producing her won children’s books.    There was a also a nice display on her stamp designs including the Christmas st...

Interesting exhibition at the House of Illustration which had invited the illustrator Laura Carlin to work in ceramics. There were some nice objects in the show but it didn’t fill the space very well and they looked a bit sparse. I liked a work with large white figures being looked at by tiny figures called “Statues in the Museum” and a Noah’s ark which began with animals drawn on the blind behind it morphing into ceramic animals. My favourite piece thought was marge mural made of 650 tiles showing a history of London. I liked the way the scenes flowed into each other and took up different shaped spaces. There was a lovely train over a line of tiles but other scenes, liked the Norman Conquest, took up a rectangle of tiles. Most of the mural was in muted brown but a lovely terracotta fir of London which cut through one section. I hope this finds a permanent home somewhere. How about the new Museum of London? I hope they’ve seen it! Closes on 5 February 2017

Nice little exhibition at the House of Illustration of work by Quentin Blake illustrating a book by Beatrix Potter. Potter had sent the words for the book to her publisher in 1916 but only completed one picture. The text was rediscovered 100 years later in the Victoria and Albert Museum archive and Quentin Blake was commissioned to illustrate it. The pictures were very distinctive Blake and there were some lovely witty images. It would have been nice to have the text with the pictures as it was hard to piece the story together just from the pictures. There seemed to be odd images such as the cat shooting crows which I am sure fitted in but looked odd out of context. I did fall for a lovely picture of a line up of three sheep and book plate incorporating other Beatrix Potter characters.   Closes on 27 February 2017  

Delightful exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the life and work of Edward Ardizzone. I knew Ardizzone’s work from his illustrations for children’s books and his work as a war artist in the Second World War but didn’t know anything about his life. I got the impression of a very hard working artist with a huge diversity graphic design work. I particularly loved the birthday telegram he’d designed in 1967. I liked his early work drawing and painting working class subjects around Maida Vale. I was interested to see that the Tate bought a work by him in the 1930s but that his work hadn’t sold well. I loved his war pictures. He seemed to bring a gentle human quality to the work. Even though most of the figures had indistinct faces their bodies were really expressive. There was a lovely picture in an underground shelter which had a feeling of the solidity of the Henry Moore pictures of the same scene. Most moving was “A cup of tea for the burial party” with fr...