#contextualstudy

Vivienne Westwood began her career in the seventies when in 1971 she opened ‘Let It Rock’ with husband Malcolm McLaren on king’s road London.  A once primary school teacher now saw herself as a fashion designer leading the way in innovative trends.

The shop began as let it rock but It would soon make way for its now ego, Sex. Sex was completely different from the beige fashions of the time it offered an oasis of black materials, and it became acceptable to wear a rubber suit. The interior was sprayed with pornographic graffiti, hung with rubber curtains and stocked with sex and fetish wear.

The 1980’s saw Margret thatcher at the helm of Britain’s government Margret thatcher was quoted in saying that “fashion is important because it raises the quality of life when people take the trouble to dress and it also provides employment for many many people.”  However despite her widespread support of fashion Margret thatcher did not see Punk on the horizon. Punk was an all too evocative expression of the economic stagnation and rising unemployment of Margret Thatcher’s Britain. Margret Thatcher can be said to be one of the most controversial prime ministers Britain has ever seen. A fierce conservative Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979. She was an advocate of privatising state-owned industries and utilities, reforming trade unions, lowering taxes and reducing social expenditure across the board. This left a large amount of public discontent and anxiety. This was soon reflected in anti-establishment fashion: punk. 

Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky, born 16 December 1866 – and died 13 December 1944. He was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited for painting the first abstract work. At the age of 30, he started his paintings, life drawings and sketching.

In 1921, Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most famous art. Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art. Kandinsky was interested in Monet’s work at the time an artist who's work has had a profound impact on many others.  Kandinsky was fascinated by the impressionist artist's style, as he had never before seen paintings, which did not perfectly imitate reality.  Kandinsky studied in Munich, under Anton Azbé, sketching, anatomy and life drawing.  He then studied under Franz von Stuck, then moved on to found and the avant-garde Phalanx exhibiting society, and wrote about art.  His “administrative” skills served him well as director of the Phalanx exhibiting society, while his writings about spirituality had prepared him for his works about color theory.

Kandinsky was a “synaesthete”, meaning that he could see sound as color, and vice versa.  His writings on color theory sometimes bordered on his own interpretations and visual impressions, which took on paranormal qualities.  In 1906, Kandinsky settled in Paris with his mistress, and Gabriele Münter, who was also a talented art student.  A year later, the two were separated, and Kandinsky suffered a nervous breakdown, and relocated to Bavaria, so he could lead a quiet life, and concentrate on his art.  Kandinsky experimented with color and minimal composition, blocking reality from his work.  Like music, his paintings reflected his emotional states, and so by looking at them, you can feel the emotion through his work. Kandinsky's work was shown in galleries across Europe, and people would find them shocking, as the abstract nature of his work would stir controversy. 

Kandinsky returned to Munich in 1908, and a year later, he founded the New Artists Association of Munich. He created many abstract glass paintings based on musical elements.  He also published another book on Spirituality that relates to art, and he wrote several plays and poems.  Along with New Artists Association, Kandinsky was also a member of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), which he founded with an artist called Franz Marc, and was also a member of the Bauhaus movement with composer Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Klee.  Kandinsky was involved in many movements, learning and experimenting with words, music, and painting.

During the First World War, Kandinsky moved back to Russia, where he took an interest in the burgeoning constructivist movement, which was based on hard lines, dots and other geometric shapes.  While in Russia, he also married a young art student and he immersed himself behind the scenes as well as in the spotlight, becoming a key player in the administration of several educational, and government run art programs, helping to create the Institute of Artistic Culture and the Museum of Pictorial Culture in Moscow. A few clashing views with some of the other artists made him return to Germany, where he taught at the Bauhaus school, this time focusing on introductory art, and Murals.  There are very few remaining examples of the work Kandinsky produced in Russia, but many of the paintings he created in Germany have survived.  

  As years went by, Kandinsky participated in several solo and group showings around the world, which earned him the admiration and support of Solomon Guggenheim.  In 1933, Kandinsky was granted German citizenship, but the rise to power of the Nazi party would mean the closing of the Bauhaus school, forcing him to relocate once more. He then went to Paris where he settled down in a quiet suburb, where he continued to work on his new paintings.  Kandinsky was granted French citizenship, and he remained in France for the remaining years of his life.  Even in his last years, Kandinsky still managed to shock the art world.

His work ‘Cossacks’ in 1910-1911 is a oil painting on a canvas and very abstract. As it states at the Tate Modern “Kandinsky believed that abstract paintings could convey spiritual and emotional values simply through the arrangement of colours and lines. Cossacks was made during a transitional period, when he retained some representational elements, such as the two Russian cavalrymen in tall orange hats in the foreground of the painting. Kandinsky considered these as points at which the images could be registered, rather than the true content of the painting.”

Another piece of his work is ‘Swinging’ in 1925. It is another oil painting on a board and again this is what it states at the Tate modern about his work; “The title of Swinging conveys the painting’s sense of dynamic movement, suggestive of the rhythms of modernity. One of the pioneers of abstract painting, Kandinsky championed a mystical approach to art. His treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1911, argued for art that was purified from all references to the material world. He felt that colour in particular was essential for liberating art from naturalistic appearances.”  His work always seemed to show a message or a picture of what he has seen or has experienced and so he reflects in his own way by painting abstract. The colours he uses in both paintings are very colourful and have a vast variety of colours throughout his work.

Thomas Heatherwick

Thomas Heatherwick is an English designer who established his studio in 1994. His innovative designs and ideas have given him the name ‘Ideas engine’. He studied at the Royal College of Art and this is where he met renowned designer Terence Conran.

Conran decided to mentor Heatherwick after seeing his plan for a gazebo made of two 6m high curved stacks of birch plywood, and made its construction possible by inviting Heatherwick to work at his country home. Conran continued to mentor Heatherwick and eventually described him as "the Leonardo da Vinci of our times”.

Since the studio has been founded, the studio has worked with a range of design disciplines, such as; architecture, engineering, transport and urban planning, furniture designing, sculpturing and product design. The studio itself is known for its elegancy, integrated design solutions and dedication to materials, research, prototyping, industrial collaboration, texture and form-making.The studio's work expands to commercial and residential building projects, masterplanning and infrastructure schemes as well as high profile works of public art.

 Having a wide range of skill which are clearly see at the Heatherwick Studio is actually a reaction to Heatherwick’s frustration at "sliced-up ghettos of thought" of sculpture, architecture, fashion, embroidery, metalwork, product and furniture design, all in separate departments. When designing, he considers all the designs in a three dimensional way. All his work has a certain element to it, which is seen in his work ‘Bleigiessen’ and ‘Barnards Farm Sitooterie’. They are very large pieces of his work and both have a very similar element to it which is that they both are very structured, and very geometrical.

The Bleigiessen was made for a Welcome trust-a biomedical research charity. They commissioned the studio to design a sculpture for the atrium of its new headquarters. The actual site for the sculpture was within an eight-storey high atrium space above a pool of water. The sculpture was commissioned after the building was complete as it had to fit through a standard sized front door. By using the space and utilising it well, the presence of water suggested the idea of exploring ways of capturing the dynamic shapes of falling liquids. After conducting several experiments such as pouring molten metal into water was found to create extraordinary and complex forms in a fraction of a second. Over four hundred of these were produced before a five centimetre piece was created and selected as it was felt it would work well with the building and the final thirty metre project. The original piece was exactly replicated using 142,000 glass spheres suspended on 27,000 high tensile steel wires; 15 tonnes of glass and just under a million metres of wire. The spheres were made in Poland in a spectacle lens factory, were the result of a collaboration with Flux Glass, their shifting colour and brightness coming from a layer of dichroic film set between the two hemispherical lenses that make up each sphere.

  Heatherwick Studio does not have a fixed style and tends to focus on problem solving. Like he has said: “It is more like solving a crime. The answer is there, and your job is to find it. So we go off and do bits of research that essentially eliminate suspects from the enquiry. And then you follow up leads and gradually narrow down the potential solutions. Ultimately what you’re left with is the answer.”

The other piece of work is the National Malus. Crab-apple Collection commissioned the studio to design a permanent pavilion to sit within their grounds. The structure is a cube, 2.4m in dimension, punctured by over 5000, 18mm square hollow aluminium staves that act like miniature windows with tiny glazed ends. The staves form the structure and texture of the building and suspend the cube 1m above the ground. The cube was machined, by an aerospace company, from 15mm anodised aluminium and bonded together using special high-strength adhesive. The aluminium staves are arranged radially, the origin point being the centre of the cube. A single light source located at this central point emits light at night through every tube, causing the windows to glow. Seating is created by elements that extend into the cube to support a machined aluminium surface.