Back to school
Some new oil tools
Theatres of paper
Childhood escapers
Let's head downstairs
See some gallery shares
London and Kassel
A pleasure, not a hassle
Some rooms and a corridor
In October, there'll be more...
...Let's go downstairs at Pollock's Toy Museum in Fitzrovia to see what I'm doing there! For my residency at Pollock's Toy Museum I'm designing and making a paper theatre for the 1001 Nights.
I'm focusing in particular on Pollocks’ amazing historic collections of toy theatres and archives. Variously known as model theatres, miniature theatres or paper theatres, toy theatres hold a special place in my heart as paper and stories come to life. I'm using my miniature manuscript painting training in combination with Pollock’s toy theatre expertise to make a theatre for the 1001 Nights that will contain the potential for all 1001 stories.
Although popular stories associated with the Nights such as Aladdin and Ali Baba were firmly placed in the toy theatre tradition, attempting to encompass all 1001 tales is to our knowledge something that has not been done before. I believe that Indo-Persian miniatures inspired many of the golden age illustrators of the Arabian Nights and I'll marry the knowledge of this unique painting tradition with the toy theatre tradition to create my own hybrid, updated form.
I'm very excited to be combining several of my interests in this piece and residency which will culminate in making my unique wooden toy theatre and designing smaller published paper versions for you to make at home in both black and white and full colour, in the old style of ‘a penny plain and tuppence coloured’...
...Above are some examples of toy theatres. Pollock's is the oldest toy museum in the UK and the foremost collection of toy theatres, being directly linked to the publishing house who originally printed them. It's amazing to make and reinvent something in this tradition. I used to make toy theatres as a little girl and I'm fascinated by the feelings of wonder and power children have in small world play. A small child at heart myself, I also love toys in general and what Virginia Woolf described as the ‘cathedral of childhood’.
Below are Dara Shikoh and a lady of Jahanara's time. Dara Shikoh was Jahanara's brother, they were very close - it is amazing how much we know about the Mughals, they were fastidious recorders - and they both have the same deep muddy green background to their portraits. So far nobody likes it! So when we paint Jahanara in class (upcoming in October), we'll change it, as we can always iterate in my classes...
…Above are Sultan Baybars Quran (the 'wrong' page! I wanted to see a different one, but oh well!) and Sultan Uljaytu's Quran, which will wind their way into future classes. They are so magnificent, as is the Medieval treasure binding with inset cabochons below. 2023 looks like it is also going to be my own year of the book! (And paper, with the theatres.) A question for you: In the written double page (Arabic calligraphy), do you know why there are random dots and designs scattered over the page? Answer at the bottom!
I have posted my entire collection of pictures I took at the British Library's GOLD exhibition over at the Forum: https://www.miniaturepaintingforum.com/forum/news-and-announcements?origin=notification and you'll also find more toy theatre images there too. Below is a document entirely in gold, literally written on gold itself. It's beyond gold leaf and is essentially a hammered gold bar made into a golden page. Yum! And next to that is a house of corks seen in Documenta Kassel. Gold and cork, sacred and... practical? This house would float!
I love little houses. Old maps were often drawn with individual houses too, such as these made by Matrakçı Nasuh of Istanbul. They had their own kind of perspective and it's not 'wrong' - it's many kinds of correct! Come paint a map in October too...
And for something completely different, paint a MAP!
…paint a map, yes, but not with these new brushes, just launched! It's back to school, so time to work hard again. These brushes are good for oils. They are strong and sturdy yet soft - but not too soft - just perfect for yoking your paint to make the pictures in your mind's eye. Here: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/product-page/the-young-ox...
Yoke your ox - and more brushes and tools here
...and now follow a lot of images I took in various galleries and museums. It was just on the right side of overwhelming and I didn't tip over the edge. I saw SO MUCH ART in September. By the end of it, I looked a bit like this startled owl on the right...
...or maybe I felt more like this pelican, soaking it all up, absorbing it and literally eating all the inspiration, aaaaaaaa...
...the inspiration gathering was a lot of fun. There will be another gathering, another mega painting party in November: Attar's Conference of the Birds series. We'll paint the 30 Birds of the poem in the 30 days of November....
…and to round up September, enjoy some images from all the art I saw. I caught the last of Documenta Kassel. The kids' section was mind-blowing. It was not actually a 'kids' section', but we're so used to saying that. It was a kids' area incorporated so seamlessly into the 'adult section' that it was all a glorious whole. Kids' art is art. They are the best artists too. It was the most happening place in the entire Documenta - and actually all of it was just buzzing. I was so happy to be there. They had a creche - a nursery where you could drop off your baby for real - as an artwork. They had kids' events as artworks. They had an amazing concept of lumbung - Indonesian for a sharing barn where leftover rice is stored and distributed among the community for those in need - and participatory, gloriously non-commercial, totally free and raw art. It was SO inspiring. Hats off to the Indonesian artist-curators ruangrupa! An Indonesian performance with humour and a cardboard TV that the presenter sometimes poked his head out of. Traditional hand-pierced and painted leather floats or placards used in performative pieces. A chair that is also an instrument (hands up who has always wanted to do that?! Me too!) Wangechi Mutu's raw and powerful woman and Hew Lock's commanding man-horse statue - in London's Hayward Gallery, a fantastic show called In the Black Fantastic. Imagining a fictional alternate history where Black people were not oppressed, and designing a future accordingly. Nick Cave's spacelike costume to hide in, and - back in Kassel - an 1855 self portrait by Caroline von Der Embde (1812-1867). I love portraits by female artists .She looks so relaxed. Her skirt is just grazing her as-yet unpainted canvas. I wouldn't be able to wear something like that when painting. I have too many bad habits. A bad habit I don't have, though, is utilising inherited or formal or conceptual languages to justify my art praxis. I also make art, not content. (Phew!) These were big, bold statements from Documenta. They showcased the University of Baroda's (now Vadodara, India) art program as it once was, using traditional techniques to make contemporary art. A pop up Bangladeshi store with contents made entirely out of ceramic. And for me, something I will never forget, a triple-storey gigantic party of a painting celebrating Gypsy/Romani culture by a Roma artist herself, a single woman and cleaner who started painting at the age of 43. THIS is what she did. 43 years of preparation and I was privileged to witness the party. She wanted to showcase Gypsy culture in all its glory, as she saw it. It was one of the biggest highlights in Documenta and created such a bang in the room that my photo doesn't do it justice (my video is better, but this is an email newsletter!). WOW!!!...
…below is another party of a painting, my Art of Attention: Court of Gayumars piece in progress. It's 67-68% done. I like to come up with very specific percentages of done-ness. I have yet to do most of the trees with all the details of every single leaf...
...have a look at the fine fine detail of this tree, in oils. In many ways the two mediums of miniature painting and oils are not that much different. If you want the detail, you gotta just paint the detail. Notice in the photo how you can also see the surface texture of the canvas itself... and then you switch your gaze to the leaves and suspend your disbelief once more and are plunged back into the tree, or into a magnificent reddish sunset by Carl Rottmann...
...or plunge into the Marianne North gallery in Kew Gardens and gawp at someone who has possibly painted 1001 paintings... I think she's done it!! This is potentially what it feels like to be surrounded by 1000 different paintings. Mostly of plants and nature as she was a naturalist. At the end of 2022 we'll paint our own plants, make our own books of poison and healing plants. Not thousands, just enough to fill a little book. A little book that could be held by a little child who could be held by a giant Amazonian waterlily...
...Don't plunge into the pool of the waterlilies. All the giant waterlilies in a small pond have enough space to breathe and coexist. I invite you to coexist and breathe with other miniature painting lovers over at our Forum and in our monthly meetings. The Zoom link is via the Forum https://www.miniaturepaintingforum.com or here's the direct link:
OCTOBER MEETING
Vaishali Prazmari is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Vaishali Prazmari's Monthly Miniature Meeting 18.10.22 6-7pm London time Time: Oct 18, 2022 18:00 London Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88492425801?pwd=U0ZmbWUvY3V4RlZOZk1BTUx4NUdVQT09
Meeting ID: 884 9242 5801 Passcode: 286135 Join by Skype for Business
https://us02web.zoom.us/skype/88492425801
… And a couple of last exhibitions to end this email. Pop candy at Kew on the right, and less candy but no less humour in the Cosmic House. I've got much more to say about this, so a couple of first impressions now: it felt so whole, so integral in terms of design and concept. Charles Jencks the architect-designer had a grand epic vision of a house and it felt like a dream, but really exists - and people really lived in it! Unmissable collection of scholar's rocks too - the Chinese rocks that are worn away by time and erosion and result in natural artworks. My friend, artist Alexa Seligman, kindly took me there and regaled me with stories of when she used to go there as a child. Now we have our own children and I also thought - since Maria Montessori said that the environment is also a teacher - this is the perfect homeschooling house! The 52 stairs are the 52 weeks of a year - and so, so much more (so it'll be research!)...
...Grimmwelt - Grimm's World, the museum of the Brothers Grimm, in Kassel was similarly a wonderfully designed place for fairytales to live in. A life-size gingerbread house...
...and a room that was designed around the letters of the German alphabet, with each entry leading off into a small corridor and exhibit. The Brothers Grimm also attempted to compile a German dictionary. I learned so much here and would like to visit again, with my children (perhaps next Documenta). Finally, the museum of modern art in Kassel had a very classical design - no less inspiring. In fact I like classical design so much that I've incorporated it into my app for the 1001 Nights... let these last images of endless white corridors serve as a sneak preview to October's reveal of the app... Inspirationally yours,
Vaishali Prazmari
Answer: these motifs are not merely 'decorative', they had a memorial function, ie. it aids memory and helps in recitation and finding your place again when you're reading. So there is an integral use to them and they are not just 'floaters'. I'm also working on carpet pages, which again, have a lot of symbolism in them and are there to remind us of different things, as well as being beautiful. The uses and functions of paintings! There is a whole piece of research I have done/am doing on this for my PhD, and it was nice to see an open book in the British Library to jog my own memory!