#topolski

On Wednesday the 10th of October we met to begin our day of drawing at Buckingham Palace. 
We promptly headed down the Mall towards the Palace to witness the changing of the guard. This event proved to be very challenging to record as the procession moved quickly. Our drawing had to be fast to document the fleeting moments of the marching band, guards and horses as they passed us by.

We then split up as a group to draw the immense crowd and the police officers who were managing the roads. There was a great energy about the crowd and it was interesting to catch snippets of overheard conversation. Our interactions with the police as reportage artists were varied. One officer was wary of us drawing. She advised desecration as drawing, she said, could be interpreted as a suspicious activity potentially linked to terrorism. Other officers in comparison seemed to enjoy being drawn, one policeman exclaiming; ‘make sure you get my hat in!’

We began focussing on documenting the exterior of the Palace. Moving around the building and changing angles of perspective to capture an essence of place. As we observed and drew the Palace we began to draw in a crowd ourselves. A large school group from abroad began to take photos of our work, gathering around us to see what we were doing. One us got completely surrounded and had no choice but to draw the onlookers.  This brought up interesting questions about drawing as performance and what it means when the observers become observed. 

At 2pm we began our guided visit inside Buckingham Palace to draw from Topolski’s Coronation Mural. We were all very excited and felt honoured to have the opportunity to draw inside the Palace. Isobel Muir led us through the mural painting pointing out the variety of moments Topolski had chosen to capture from the rubbish sweepers to the famous and important dignitaries. In contrast to our hectic morning of drawing in wide open spaces our drawing session in the Palace corridor was one of calm and quiet doing studies in a confined space.  

Memoir of the Century (a.k.a. Topolski Century)

Feliks Topolski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907. After completing studies at Warsaw Academy of Art, he travelled across Europe and eventually settled in London in 1935. His skill as an artist was quickly recognised, and he was soon chronicling of London’s social and cultural scene, illustrating books, and designing costumes and sets. During WWII, Topolski became an official war artist, and later drew the Nuremburg Trials.

Topolski travelled extensively after WWII, including visits to India, the Holy Land, China and America, and rubbed shoulders with many influential and famous faces of the 20th Century, such as Gandhi, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Alec Guinness and Laurence Olivier. His travels and meetings were documented in Topolski’s Chronicles, broadsheet-style drawings of his travels produced on cheap brown paper.

His most ambitious work, though, was probably the Memoir of the Century, which Topolski painted onto 15 ft-high hardboard panels in a studio located in the railway arches of the Hungerford Bridge. Beginning the work in 1975, Topolski completed it nine years later and donated it to the nation. The work, some 600 ft in length, showed the key events and figures of the 20th Century, all in a fluid and expressionist style – which can make it hard to identify most of the subjects.

On Saturday 21st October, we took the train down to Gravesend with reportage artist Olivier Kugler to document the spectacle of the shipping ports and vast horizon the landscape has to offer. The day was cold and wet, coinciding with the bleakness of the environment. 

It was interesting to compare how each of us captured the landscape in our drawings. Whether they were bare, quiet and desolate, or busy, chaotic and energetic.

Our lunch stop was quick, at a small fish & chip shop in town. We were all glad to warm up and reenergise for the afternoon’s drawing around the town and back at the coast. 

We ended the day in the pub (classic). With some interesting locals around us, perfectly captured by Luca and Holly.