V&A Prints on tour

The V&A has an extensive collection of fine art prints and related material. The range of the modern holdings is clear from their 2001 publication, Impressions of the 20th Century, and these have been drawn on to send Modern Masters: Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Warhol on tour this year to Lincoln, Plymouth, currently Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery and soon Inverness. Visitors to the show should be able to find something of interest from all four artists in the form of prints, books and other items.

The works by Picasso spanned most of his career from 1904 to 1957. I liked the portrait of the dealer Ambroise Vollard (1937, below left) and The Sleeping Woman (1947, below right):

There were also four of the sugar-lift aquatint and drypoint etchings from the portfolio of Buffon’s L’Histoire Naturelle, including The Lizard (1942, below left), which were printed during the Occupation, and Skull of a Goat on a Table (1952, below right):

The Matisse exhibits included both the print (image unavailable) and the wood block (1905, below right) for Nude in Profile on a Chaise Longue. The lithograph Interior, Reading (1925, below right) is of a subject he painted on various occasions:

Visitors to the recent Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern may have come away with the impression that his later work consisted only of cut-outs. Not so, as demonstrated colourfully by Marie-Jose in a Yellow Dress (1950, below):

Curiously, Salavador Dali was omitted from Impressions of the 20th Century. I hadn’t seen before any of the six posters which Salvador Dali designed for the French railways (SNCF) in 1969, two of the four on display here:

Andy Warhol’s work like Marilyn (exhibition poster above, three of the ten colour ways of this print are on show) is, as they say, iconic and also ubiquitous to the point of over-exposure (in a week I came across him in shows in Bath and Blenheim and at the NPG) but this colour offset litho poster from 1978, based on two of his Self Portraits from 1966, was striking:

This Louisiana is the Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark which, from its website, seems well worth visiting, although like many British people I’m deterred by the prospect of Danish prices. However, as the website states “DINNER BUFFET IN LOUISIANA CAFÉ EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT FOR DKK 149”, which would be just under £16 (US$26), perhaps I ought to think again.

Modern Masters in Print Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Warhol ends in Bath on 23 November 2014.

Long distance information

It would be rash to predict the outcome of the current crisis over Russia, Ukraine and Crimea but no-one seems to be doubting its seriousness. Perhaps with an eye to reassuring the public that “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”, photographs have been appearing of world leaders on the phone to each other discussing what should be done. The first seems to have been of Obama’s call from the Oval Office to Vladimir Putin:

Obviously the Russian equivalent of NSA and GCHQ wouldn’t be interested in listening to that one, but Obama’s call to David Cameron – well, they would if they could:

This was released via Twitter and subsequently generated numerous parodies with bananas and other surrealist substitutes. François Hollande was at work in the splendours of the Elysée when Obama rang:

who was on the line from Florida:

This is an interesting image - the others only show handsets whereas this shot includes the phone base station:

The LCD screen isn’t as easy to read as the coffee cup, but it also seems to carry the Presidential Seal. The base station and the handsets have some similarities to those of the Cisco VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phone which appears on Wikipedia:

Now, what at auction would be a really expensive phone, Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone, c 1938: