Hasta La Ideas

As a lame adult now too old to go out to raucous parties, but young enough not to have kids yet, this writer’s connection to Halloween has sadly become distanced. As such, he hasn’t really been on the lookout for much spooky, seasonally-appropriate pieces to share with you here. Fortunately, our pals over at Chicago’s iconic Art Institute have come through at the eleventh hour for us with their recent post to their Facebook page:

In honor of Halloween, we took an office poll: what’s the scariest/creepiest/spookiest work in the collection? Here are some of our picks.

Therein you’ll find ten decidedly scary pieces, like Francis Bacon‘s Figure with Mean (6 out of 10 on the creepy scale), Irving Penn‘s famous The Angel photograph (3 out of 10), and for those with a decidedly popular phobia, Bruce Nauman‘s video installation Clown Torture (8 of 10, regardless if you previously had a fear or not). A thanks to the Art Institute for bringing the high brow to a purposefully low brow holiday. We applaud whoever decided this would be a fun idea, because it most certainly is.

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Ambit issue 40, 1969

On until Sunday at the Raven Row gallery in east London is a marvellous show dedicated to the work of the late Eduardo Paolozzi…

Paolozzi, who died in 2005 aged 81, is well known as being behind some of the earliest examples of Pop Art to come out of the UK. His 1947 work, I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything, which was first shown in 1952, was a collaged piece that, notably, featured the word “pop” in the work itself.

Moonstrips Empire News: Secrets Of Internal Combustion Engine, 1967. Screenprint on paper. © The Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation

But Paolozzi also worked extensively on pieces for the art and literature magazine, Ambit, and much of the work on show at Raven Row is made up his output for the title.

Brought in by the magazine’s then prose editor JG Ballard in 1967, Paolozzi used the pages of Ambit to create striking collages and visual essays, pieces that often showed a more political side to his creative work. His work in Ambit tackled subjects such as the Vietnam war and the rise of mass advertising.

Why We Are In Vietnam, Ambit 40, 1969

Things, Ambit 41, 1969

It’s well worth a visit before the show closes – as gallery spaces go, Raven Row is a particular CR favourite – and in addition to the examples from Ambit, the exhibition has several of Paolozzi’s bronze works, prints and scrapbooks, and even some space age toys that he collected.

Four Corners Books, who are also based in the same building as Raven Row, recently published a facsimile edition of Paolozzi’s Ambit works, The Jet Age Compendium: Paolozzi At Ambit.

Raven Row
56 Artillery Lane
London E1 7LS

Exhibition views, Eduardo Paolozzi: The Jet Age Compendium, Raven Row, 2009. Photographs by Marcus J. Leith

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See more photos after the jump.

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Copenhagen- and Rotterdam-based architects Powerhouse Company have completed a spiral-shaped extension to a house in Burgundy, France. (more…)