Post-Operative

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective opened at the Tate Modern last week. A similar love of comic books inspired us to create some 'post-operative' graphics for New York's Met Opera -

MeTube: August sings Carmen 'Habanera'

We love this video from 'MeTube', showing Carmen in a fresh light. That is fresh in the old-fashioned sense of the word... Have a look, go on, we dare you.



We are currently developing our new range for Glyndebourne Opera so watch this space. Last year we created the 'Quercus Operatica' graphic - an Operatic family tree with Glyndebourne-founder John Christie at the base.

Black Maria

Gruppe and Richard Wentworth's collaboration is not quite as permanent as the Pergamon Altar, but still a good place for gods and fallen angels to congregate and celebrate their differences. 

Read more here.

Monday Portrait: Richard Artschwager

This week sculptor and painter Richard Artschwager who died this weekend. 

Table With Pink Tablecloth, 1964

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch. 

Richard Wentworth at the Lisson Gallery

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (detail) 

Richard Wentworth's latest exhibition is now on at the Lisson Gallery. Open until 9 March, we highly recommend a visit. See products we have made with the artist in the past here.

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (installation view)

What Kit had to say -

This latest work by Richard Wentworth is something between a drawing and a sculpture, very chicken and egg, I don't know which comes first. The chains flirt with the floor like a line does the edge of a page. These pictures don't do it justice - just go, settle in, and let it work its message.

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (installation view) 

The Square Holes, 2013 

Apologies for Magritte's appearance in the reflection of this photo, a set of four, but sort of a good accident: you can list all the individual elements in the photos but together they are rather unsettling - I have been thinking about them for two weeks.

Found in the office: Richard III

Rooting around the office yesterday we found this illustration Kit did in the late seventies for Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library. 

Monday Portrait: Blank Elizabeth

This is not strictly a portrait but a product we made for the National Portrait Gallery a few years ago. It is a wipe clean memo board so you can decide how the monarch is feeling.


Image taken from an original portrait of Elizabeth I in the National Portrait Gallery collection by an unknown Netherlandish artist c. 1525.

Monarch of the Glen

Kit: Last weekend I went to  a viewing of Wes Anderson's film, Moonrise Kingdom, which was full of period detail, pretty much in sync with my own childhood. In the scoutmaster's (Ed Norton) tent hangs a painting of a stag in the wilderness.
There was always a copy of the same painting in my grandfather's house. It has a hole which we decided was the gunshot that killed the stag so he could be put in a painting. My grandfather's came with him from Maine and was probably painted between 1860-1880. It is a terrible, but charming copy. I was curious to find the original that had spawned an apparent Victorian repro business and dropped the image into google image search. Up popped the Landseer original, whose fate appears to be to have been made for appropriation. It was wonderful to discover the Peter Blake take on it, then Peter Saville's version of Blake's version of Landseer's original.
I have my Monarch close to me in my London studio. As an epilogue, this morning I walked past one of my favourite buildings on Giltspur Street, just near St Barts. Over the door is a huge stag's head, very similar to the Landseer… I had never realised why that building gave me so much pleasure until now- a cross Atlantic palimpsest of the best kind.

Original: Monarch of the Glen 1851, Edwin Landseer

Giltspur Street stag

Korean bojagi

Beautiful examples of Korean bojagi - silk squares traditionally used to wrap and carry virtually anything. In Modern Korea bojagi (also pojaki/bojaki) are primarily used to wrap presents.

The first image is a print by South Korean artist Sookang Kim, 2004.

Monday Portrait: Vivienne Westwood by Juergen Teller

Vivienne Westwood No 3, London, 2009

This week we have chosen a portrait by German photographer Juergen Teller to mark his upcoming show at the ICA. 'Juergen Teller: Woo' opens Jan 23 at the ICA and both his Fine Art and commercial work will be exhibited.

Greater Shakespeare

The tube is 150 today! Our local station Farringdon has been gearing up for weeks.  A few years ago we co-designed the Greater Shakespeare map for the RSC (with a lot of help from Cambridge academic Dr Hesters Lees-Jeffries).  Have you seen it before?

Large version here.

As we're looking at the tube, here are a few great old tube posters.




'Keeps London Going'  designed by Man Ray in 1938


































David Booth's 1986 poster for the Tate

Dover Street Market

This Christmas we swooned at all six floors of Dover Street Market; there are few shops that summon unadulterated admiration (and greed) from everyone at Kit Grover.




Where else would you find T-shirt vending machines, a giant Octopus sculpture and portaloos - albeit repurposed as changing rooms - under the same roof? On January the 26th DSM close for their biannual 'Tachiagari' during which they redesign the space, creating installations and making room for new designers. This exercise ensures that the concept store is constantly evolving - as fashion has seasons it makes perfect sense that a fashion store should too. So much sense that we can't work out why all of them don't do it...

A 'Tachiagari' for our office may also be in the pipeline.

See a comprehensive report by the Clothes Whisperer on the SS11 Tachiagari here.

Monday Portrait: Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz

Aside from the warm sepia tones, the colour scheme of this Monday Portrait reminds us of early January mornings in London.


Gelatin silver print, 1920.

See a later portrait of O'Keeffe taken by Ansel Adams here.

Oblique Strategies

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Image c/o www.gourmet.com

On the first day back after the Christmas holidays Kit rediscovered Oblique Strategies on his desk.
This deck of cards created by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975 will help break through a creative block. Though produced with musicians in mind, this selection of aphorisms can be applied to most creative practices.

Each card offers a strategy to overcome a creative block.
Ideal for those deciding on their New Years resolutions or needing to resolve a dilemma.


A random selection of Oblique Strategies:

Give way to your worst impulse
Question the heroic approach
What would your closest friend do?
Is there something missing?
Use 'unqualified' people
Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Christmas Gift Guide: Part 3 of 3

Mark Titchner at Tate
UP! Badge £4






















Bob and Roberta Smith at Tate
Blocks £30

Royal Shakespeare Company
Hamlet pencil 85p

Richard Wentworth at Tate
Meniscus glass £8.95

Spotted! Duro Oluwu umbrella

Spotted! The Duro Oluwu umbrella brightening up a very rainy Farringdon last week.

We made the umbrella for OFT (the collaboration between Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Frieze and the Tate) with print designed by Duro Oluwu.

Read more about the umbrella on the Swelle Life blog, and the rest of the range at kitgrover.com.

The umbrella is available now from the Tate Modern shop.

Monday Portrait: Cover girl Frida Kahlo

Not strictly a portrait but still - Frida Kahlo on the cover of Vogue Mexico's November edition.

Kit Grover Christmas Gift Guide: Part 2 of 3

STOCKING FILLERS

Sir John Soane's Museum
Inside Out bag £16






























Whitechapel Gallery
Richard Hamilton This is Tomorrow Apron £25

The Royal Shakespeare Company

Brevity. Soul. Wit notebook £5.99

Julian Opie
Flipbook £8.50

Monday portrait: Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama with her 1963 work 'Compulsion Furniture'. Above image c/o the Saatchi Gallery.