Hiatus

Have you noticed the gap? The one of time between this post and my last post? Since April 2012, I have helped build the brand new fashion website Never Underdressed and become the Editorial Assistant at stylist.co.uk. While the aim of the blog is still very close to my heart, I've been pretty busy down at stylist.co.uk. But I aim to be back in January 2014. See you next year!

THE DECORATIVE FAIR, Battersea Park

Put an Ikea book shelf in your room and you'll call it furniture. Put an antique, bizarrely unique chest in the same room and hey, it's statement art. We don't tend to go for cool pieces of furniture any more (mostly because of the price) but I remember growing up and playing in my elderly neighbour, Auntie Milly's house. It was a wondrous treasure trove of unique lamps, beautiful cupboards and quirky little things like a weather barometer. It's a way of decorating without planting a painting on your wall.

I went along to this Decorative Fair in Battersea Park (which just so happens to run three times a year) because an advertisement in the Evening Standard offered one free entry. It's with no doubt one for the posh folks. Visitors can bring their dogs along and you'll see them wondering around having minor feuds with other pretty little dogs. But don't let that stop you from going. If you like the pictures below there's more where that came from.

Fair information
Name: The Spring Decorative Arts Fair
When: 23 - 18th April 2013
Where: Battersea Park, London, SW11 4NJ
Room Count: 1 with around 140 exhibitors
Standard ticket price: £10 each on the door, includes a catalogue which allows free re-entry

GEORGE BELLOWS: MODERN AMERICAN LIFE, Royal Academy of the Arts

A picture taken from my trip to New York, January 2013 

New. York. Just take a second to remember it. Have you got a tingling sensation? A creeping and sudden burst of excitement for no apparent reason? I think George Bellows shared the same sentiment. He could feel there was something special about the city. It was the place to be. So as a 22-year-old in 1904 he moved to New York City and over the course of two decades he logged it like a journalist with a paintbrush.

He recorded the raucous gatherings on election nights in Times Square (named after the leading – and my favourite – newspaper after it moved to the site). He captured brutal and gritty fights that were organised by private clubs when the state declared a ban on public boxing. If Raging Bull (film released in 1980) is the greatest boxing movie of all time, then Bellows is Martin Scorsese's painting predecessor. Just like today's movie makers, he had a fascination with telling the story of gritty New York. He repeatedly painted tenement life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in front of a backdrop of skyscrapers. Though it was a turbulent time, he could see the strength of the urban poor and that New Yorker resilience. The exhibition starts with this, so you won't want to turn back.

By early 20th Century, New York was the cultural capital of America and Bellows tried to capture the full range of its diverse society. He started to paint the relaxed, fashionable and middle-class who spent their leisure time in New York's parks. There's an oil painting called Summer Night, Riverside Drive (below), where a couple walk down a pathway with their dog in semi darkness. It's in stark contrast to Bellow's darker paintings of New York, but it's equally amazing. I might be bias because I'm a sucker for light captured in a painting, and here the street lamp is like a full moon at night. You can almost feel the evening chill; smell the thickness of the trees and hear the water rippling.

The thing you need to know about Bellows is he was almost obsessed with painting like an Old Master (the great textbook artists we've all heard of). Aside from doing illustrations for news magazines for an income, he tried to do a bit of Matisse with the way he painted in small and short brushstrokes, a bit of Manet by using limited and opulent colours and he was inspired by Titian's famous Sacred and Profane Love (1514). He took what was loved by the old and brought it into modern day New York, almost making himself a master of the new. The New Master.

You're guaranteed a good story at most exhibitions at the Royal Academy (bar the Summer exhibition – come back on 10 June). They don't expect you to figure out what on earth is going on or why you should care about an artist. They invite you into that artist's world. And what makes this one better is it's a city we are still in love with.

Exhibition information
Name: George Bellows (1882-1925): Modern American Life
When: 16 March - 9 June 2013
Where: Royal Academy of Art, The Sackler Wing of Galleries, 2nd Floor, Burlington House.
Room Count: 6
Art Count: 21 works – 38 paintings, 14 drawings, 17 lithographs
Standard ticket price: £10 each

Stag at Sharky's by George Bellows, 1909, The Cleveland Museum of Art

Men of the Docks by George Bellows, 1912, Randolph College

New York by George Bellows, 1911, National Gallery of Art Washington

Love of Winter by George Bellows, 1914, The Art Institute of Chicago

Summer Night, Riverside Drive by George Bellows, 1909, Columbia Museum of Art

North River by George Bellows, 1908, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

"Try everything that can be done. Be deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking. 
Be abandoned and impulsive. Learn your own possibilities" 
- The New York attitude as said by George Bellows in 1920.

RCA SECRET SALE 2013

JO MALONE'S LIMITED EDITION ART BOTTLE

The bottle wanted in on the vampire trend

Jo Malone's Red Roses perfume has been re-imagined as a pop art collector's piece. The hand decorated, limited edition bottle has been designed by stylist extraordinaire Charlotte Stockdale, who has worked with Karl Lagerfeld and David Bailey.

AFFORDABLE ART FAIR, BATTERSEA 2013

Painting by Candice Tripp as featured at the Affordable Art Fair

It's true, art fairs aren't exactly the most inviting. In my fantasy land they would be places of paintings and candy floss; a place where everyone smiles and buys art. In reality they are somewhat like a dentist's waiting room. A little cold, lots of white, and not so many smiles. But the Affordable Art Fair is in town to brighten the scene and prove it all wrong.

I didn't expect it to be so fun. It's packed with all sorts of art – prints of vintage spoons, giant photographs of scenes from around the world, moving portraits and those pieces that make you laugh or   frown. If there was ever a place where every taste in art could be satisfied it's this. The other amazing thing is I could easily talk to gallery owners about any piece I liked.

It's set in an awkward location – Battersea Park, although it also pops up in Hampstead and Bristol over the year – but a shuttle bus service from Sloane Square makes you feel like Knightsbridge royalty. This is what makes it physically accessible. Financially, everything is between £40 to £40,000 so in theory it's for big shots and small pockets. But I'll say that anything with a $40 price tag is a reproduced print the size of a post card. So unless you have a slice of wall that could just do with a sliver of art, the fair is worth going to for a day or afternoon out. The down-to-earth organisers hold regular quick-fire tours to give you an idea of what's on show and how to approach art. Each stop takes you to a different gallery stall, where the managers are given a minute to explain what they're selling and why. There's also artisan food and drink. It all seems pretty posh, but the nice part is, it's really not.

Kitchen perfection. This would look great near a dining table.

The books had been on the shelf for so long the words in their titles travelled onto other covers.

Be so good they can't ignore you

You are my sunshine...

They wished their £1000 purchase didn't look like a Next sale