Blog Retirement

After nine years of writing, informing, selecting, presenting, crimping and cropping, the blogs are heading into retirement. Quite nice for the blogs, really, but perhaps not for you. Though don't worry, any interesting information or events will now be posted on Twitter for your consumption!

Take care out there.

Bauhaus BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 have recently broadcast a short piece on the influential Bauhaus school - 

'Neil MacGregor focuses on the Bauhaus school of art and design, founded in Weimar in 1919.
Our cities and houses today, our furniture and typography, are unthinkable without the functional elegance pioneered by the Bauhaus'

Home to influential figures like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinksy and Walter Gropius (among many others),  the Bauhaus was founded on the idea of creating a "total" work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design and architectural education.

If you would like to know more, the Library has over 100 books related to the school, that you can take out at your own pleasure (though not all at once).

Oliver Postgate DVDs are Available!

 Ivor the Engine

Following on from Ivor the Engine's 55th Anniversary, the Library now has the complete Ivor the Engine (in colour!), as well as the complete Clangers and Bagpuss. The Clangers, if you don't know, are a family of whistling mouse-like creatures that live on a small, mysterious moon in the far reaches of outer-space. Their days are filled with activities like planting music trees, building helicopters, and fishing for junk.

Clangers

Bagpuss, on the other hand, is a raggedy, baggy old cloth cat that mostly sleeps in a shop window belonging to a little girl called Emily. Emily is obsessed with the detritus of capitalism (!) - she likes to find lost objects in the street so Bagpuss and his friends can figure out what they used to be - usually by telling wondrous stories and singing pretty songs.

Bagpuss

All DVDs are now available to take out from the top floor of the Library, in the DVD section.

The Continuation of a Fanzine Collection

Following on from our last post, here is another contribution to the new fanzine collection we are developing in the Library.

Engawa is an architecture fanzine from Spain which includes essays, photographs and illustrations. The zine takes its name from the Japanese word 'Engawa', meaning the space between the interior and exterior of classic Japanese architecture - a transitional space suggesting invitation or welcome, but also projection and opening.

Look out for more fanzine posts as they come into the Library. And if you would like to contribute to the collection, email Benjamin Ellis at b.ellis@gsa.ac.uk

The Beginning of a Fanzine Collection

We are building a collection of fanzines over the coming year as part of a new section of the library.

 This contribution from Benjamin Critton, entitled, 'Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films', addresses the association of villains with modernist architecture in films such as Blade Runner, L.A. Confidential, Diamonds Are Forever, The Damned Don't Cry, and several others. The fanzine contains essays and photographs on the topic, and will be made available to students in the near future.

 

Keep an eye out for blogs on new fanzines as they come into the Library - and if you would like to make a contribution to the new collection with a fanzine of your own, email Benjamin Ellis at - b.ellis@gsa.ac.uk

MoMA to Digitise Hundreds of Andy Warhol Films

As reported by the Guardian, New York’s Museum of Modern Art is partnering with the Andy Warhol Museum to digitise the artist’s considerable archive of film, making work available to the public that has rarely, if ever, been seen before.

The massive task, featuring around 500 films, will take several years to complete. It involves taking over a thousand rolls of 16mm film and scanning them frame by frame, then converting them to the high-resolution 2K format. This is work that Warhol filmed between 1963 and 1972, the most intense and celebrated period of his creativity.

 

If you would like to know more about Andy Warhol, why not take out some books about him from the Library. You could even watch his famous screen-tests...

The Mac Photographic Archive

'The unfortunate fire at Glasgow School of Art on 23rd May 2014 destroyed much-loved parts of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building on Renfrew Street. In an attempt to document the building for posterity, The Mac Photographic Archive allows students, alumni, staff, and tourists to upload their personal record of the school.

A current Google search will return a myriad of images of the exterior of the building. However, it is the intention of The Mac Photographic Archive to concentrate on gathering a comprehensive record of the interior of the building, from the people who have used it since its completion in 1909.

Users can tag their photos with the floor and room in which the photograph was taken, estimate the date and annotate accordingly.

Any suggestions or corrections are welcome, please contact:

mail [at] the-mac-photo-archive [dot] net.'

The Iconic Design of Penguin Books

Last night at the student's union, David Pearson gave an interesting and inspiring talk about his work as a junior designer for Penguin.

'Penguin books, first published in 1935, were the first mass-market paper-backs in Britain. The vision of Allen, John and Richard Lane, Penguin began life as an imprint of The Bodley Head, republishing existing works of fiction and non-fiction... the appearance of the classic Penguin cover design has so ingrained itself in the nation's consciousness that today, seventy years later, everybody thinks they know what a Penguin looks like.' (Penguin By Design, Phil Bains, pg. 6).

With their early tri-partite colouring, as well as the graphic illustration of their later covers, Penguin created a very original and precious graphic patrimony for generations to come.

If you would like more information about Penguin and their book designs, you can take out Penguin By Design, Puffin By Design, Penguin 75... and a few others, all to be found on the ground floor of the Library.

Raymond Loewy

 Ever wondered who was responsible for designing Americana? French-born American industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, can take a lot responsibility.

Initially a window designer for New York Department stores, Loewy went on to design Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives, Air Force One presidential airplanes, Studebaker automobiles, Coca-Cola vending machines and bottles, Lucky Strike cigarette packs, Greyhound buses, the NASA Skylab space station, and... a pencil sharpener.

He also designed a few other things, besides.  

If you would like more information, the Library has a number of books on Loewy, located in the main collection on the ground floor.

The Abstract Art of 1950s Fashion Print

After browsing through a new purchase request, '1980s Fashion Print' by Marnie Fogg (available in the Library soon!), we looked up another book in the series by the same author, '1950s Fashion Print', and were struck by the abstract beauty of the designs, which could easily be exhibited as artworks in themselves.

Abstraction was intrinsic to 1950s print design, with designers (in parallel with the painters of the day) using creatively organised shapes, forms and colours which had no counterparts in nature.

Take out '1950s Fashion Print' , available on the first floor of the Library, and be inspired for your next project.

Celebrating Ivor the Engine's 55th Anniversary

Ivor the Engine was a British children's animation series created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin for their SmallFilms company in 1959. Ivor follows the adventures of a little locomotive in the top left-hand corner of Wales, along with his cheery, rosy-cheeked driver, Edwin Jones. Ivor has a number of friends in his village, including the grumbly station master, Dai, as well as Bluebell the Donkey, Idris the Dragon, and many others, besides. Made with watercolour-painted cardboard cutouts, and animated using stop-motion techniques, the series was originally made for black and white television in 1959, before being picked up by the BBC in 1975 and remade in colour.  

For more information about Ivor the Engine, Oliver Postgate and SmallFilms, why not take out our DVD, 'Oliver Postgate: A Life in Small Films', available in the DVD collection on the second floor of the Library? You could also look at the SmallFilms website, too!

Strategic Questions - New Display at the Library

As you may have seen from our Twitter account, there is a new display on the second floor of the GSA library.

Based on Strategic Questions (curated by Gavin Wade, 2002) - an on-going project to develop forty projects in response to forty questions written by architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Each project is an artwork or combination of artworks developed in relation to forty different publication scenarios. Each project tackles one question (such as, 'What is intellect?', 'What is wealth?', etc.) and is placed into an existing magazine, journal or other publication vehicle (or a new publication is developed in response to a specific site and context).

These strategic questions were written by R. Buckminster Fuller as part of a statement to a leading figure in the world building industry. The statement is called Design Strategy (1966), and was published in Fuller's Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity (1969, p.352). It is Fuller's proposition that to achieve total success for all humanity until the end of time, all interested parties must agree upon the answers to these strategic questions before they can successfully combine their efforts.

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If you'd like find out more about the project, then please follow this link. You can also find a full bibliography for everything on display on the library VLE site.

Artists U: a Movement for sustainable art practice

Artists U are a movement originating from America questioning the current cycle of unsustainable exploitative practices in the field of art and trying to offer an alternative.

Their mission statement is as follows:

Artists U is a grassroots, artist-run platform for changing the working conditions of artists.
Make art. Don’t starve.
We want to change the conversations artists have in our heads, with each other, and with the world.
We push artists to build lives that are balanced, productive, and sustainable.
We are skills-based, not need-based: we work to empower artists to create their lives and their art.
We don’t give advice. We don’t do things for you.
Everything we do is artist-to-artist and free for all participants.

Artists U have now produced a book, which is available to buy online, but also free to download as a PDF, called Making Your Life as an Artist. They are aiming to get 100,000 artists to read this book (and have reached 57,882 downloads so far). Follow this link to download a copy for yourself.

This is Make Works: a curated directory of Scottish industry

Ever had a great creative idea, but couldn't bring it about because you could source your materials of manufacturing processes locally? Well, hopefully, this no longer needs to be the case thanks to the Make Works directory of local Scottish fabricators, material suppliers and facilities.

This website isn't your usual bland and anonymous directory, MakeWorks have personally gone out and visited each facility listed on the directory in order to gather information, photos and videos of the processes and materials involved, providing a rich picture of what each place can offer. You can also find expert production guides and articles covering a whole range of subjects.

Make Works is a great source of information for students, researchers and makers alike and it is continuously adding new content. To find out mare about Make Works, visit their website or sign up to their newsletter online.

The Times Digital Archive now available on campus!

I'm sure you'll all be happy to hear that the GSA Library can now give you access to the entire digital archive of the Times newspaper from 1785 to 2008. The Times Digital Archive offers access to 220 years of The Times as full-text facsimile. It's a great opportunity for students and researchers to explore the context surrounding the period of time covered by their research.

The Times Digital Archive is accessible on campus only via the GSA Library catalogue. Follow this link to try it out today.

New online resource: Arts Search

As some may know, the GSA Library lost a great number of its pre-1985 journal collections in the fire of the 23rd of May, including seminal publications such as The Studio and Dekorative Kunst, which were of great interest to researchers at the art school.

We're currently working on rebuilding those collections in print, however meanwhile, we're happy to inform you that we have subscribed to Arts:Search, an online journal database which contains many of the most important decorative and fine arts journals published in Europe and the USA during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, making them available for the first time in a searchable form online.

Arts:Search also offers the opportunity to access Arts+Architecture ProFiles (AAP), a biographical dictionary of modern designers, craftspeople, artists and architects, and Design Abstracts Retrospective (DAR), a new ongoing abstracting and indexing service that aims to cover many of the most important design and applied arts journals and annuals published during the twentieth century.

Access to this online resource is available via the GSA Library Catalogue, on campus only.

Artists' Books and Multiples...

Looking for a bit of inspiration or maybe some contextual research relating to Artists' Books? Look no further than the Artists' Books and Multiples blog hosted by Dave Dyment. It's a mine of resources, articles and features on Artists' Books and includes lots of images for your pleasure!

Dave Dyment is an artist, writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-editor of "One for Me and One to Share: Artists Multiples and Editions" (YYZ Books, 2012). He has been keeping this blog since 2008 and built it up to be an undeniable resource on the topic of Artists' Books. 

Intellect Journals: Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education

As previously announced, the GSA Library are now taking an electronic subscription to the ground breaking collection of Intellect Journals. We'll be telling you about the various journals included in the subscription over the coming months and today we're highlighting Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education:

How can art, design and communication aid teaching? Do these teaching methods work better in certain fields of study? Focusing on arts and media-based subjects, and encompassing all areas of higher education, this journal reveals the potential value of new educational styles and creative teaching methods.

This journal has had 30 issues published to date and it's a great new resource for anyone interested in Art Education as well as other disciplines. It's accessible electronically through our catalogue, following this link. Access off-campus will require an institutional login using your GSA login and password.

Intellect Journals: Craft Research

As previously announced, the GSA Library are now taking an electronic subscription to the ground breaking collection of Intellect Journals. We'll be telling you about the various journals included in the subscription over the coming months and today we're highlighting Craft Research:

The aim of Craft Research is to advocate and promote current and emerging craft research, including research into materials, processes, methods, concepts, aesthetic and style. This may be in any discipline area of the applied arts and crafts, including craft education.

This journal is currently in its 6th publication and a great new resource for anyone interested in Craft and Process-based Work as well as other disciplines. It's accessible electronically through our catalogue, following this link. Access off-campus will require an institutional login using your GSA login and password.

Blown glass by Bocci

We came across this video today of Canadian lighting company Bocci's creative director Omer Arbel describing the process of glass blowers making the bubbles in some of the company's recent creations and we simply had to share it with you... Bocci are famous for their glass designs including the masterful chandeliers exhibited in museums such as the Victoria and Albert in London. We hope you enjoy the show!

Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home

A stunning feat of aerial architecture, Do Ho Suh continues to explore the themes of home, displacement and cultural exchanges with his latest work at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.
In this piece, he has created an exact architectural replica of his LA home in fabric and placed within it a replica of his family's traditional Korean home, creating a surreal juxtaposition. Follow this link to read more about the installation.

Intellect Journals: Art & the Public Sphere

The GSA Library are happy to announce that they have taken out an electronic subscription to the ground breaking collection of Intellect Journals. We'll be telling you about the various journals included in the subscription over the coming months and today we're highlighting Art & The Public Sphere:

Art & the Public Sphere provides a new platform for academics, artists, curators, art historians and theorists whose working practices  are broadly concerned with contemporary art's relation to the public sphere. The journal presents a crucial examination of contemporary art's link to the public realm, offering an engaged and responsive forum in which to debate the newly emerging series of developments within contemporary thinking, society and international art practice.

This journal is currently in its 3rd publication and a great new resource for Sculpture/Environmental Art and other disciplines. It's accessible electronically through our catalogue, following this link. Access off-campus will require an institutional login using your GSA login and password.

The Internet Detective: Improve your internet search skills

Were you disappointed with the mark on your last essay? Did you get pulled up for using the wrong mix of sources or poor quality sources? Maybe you need to brush up on your internet search skills with the Internet Detective, a free online tutorial geared towards academic writing.

This online tutorial will take you through examples of good and bad sources and citations and explain the difference between the two. It also has little quizzes to test your knowledge as well as information on referencing and copyright law.

British Pathe on Youtube

British Pathe have been around ever since the birth of the moving image industry and brought news, information and culture to our cinemas from the time they first opened. With such a wealth of footage and newsreels, we're delighted to find out that British Pathe have now made available online their entire footage archive via youtube.

You find footage here of the Hindenburg Disaster, Arnold Schwartznegger winning the Mr Universe Contest, footage of the First World War and much more rare and precious footage.

Upcoming seminar: Work of mutual interest - Galleries and artists engaging with audiences

Engage are presenting a great new seminar next week at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in Edinburgh, on the 23rd of April. Places are free but must be booked in advance.

THE NATION // LIVE - FAITH

Recent projects such as Collective's All Sided Games, the National Galleries Scotland's The Nation//Live and Tramway's Albert Drive will be the main topics of debate and discussion, along with talks and presentations from the following artists: Anthony Schrag, Arpita Shah, Daniel Warren, Kevin Reid and Martin O’ Connor.

Albert Drive Project, Tramway

Follow this link to find out more about how to book a place on the seminar.