Design: The Definitive Visual History

Design: The Definitive Visual History claims to be "the most comprehensive, inspiring, and accessible history of design ever." It features industrial design, ceramics, glass, furniture, jewellery, metalwork, textiles, and graphics, so it's comprehensive in that sense, though its coverage is broad rather than deep. Accessible often means simplified, which is the case with this and other DK books: the captions are largely descriptive, and the body text is limited to one or two paragraphs per page.

The book (written by Alexandra Black, RG Grant, Ann Kay, Philip Wilkinson, Iain Zaczek) is probably unrivalled for the quantity of its photographs: there are thousands of them, all in colour, though most are quite small. Its format is similar to Decorative Arts and the more concise The Look Of The Century (by Michael Tambini). Phaidon Design Classics has larger photographs, and profiles 999 objects.

Design covers the history of its subject from 1850 until today, and it's surprisingly up-to-date, including products from 2015. Each double-page spread covers a different aspect of design, and the most interesting are those that show the evolution of various product categories, including writing machines (from typewriters to computers) and telephones (from rotary dials to smartphones). It has no bibliography, though History Of Modern Design (by David Raizman), The Story Of Design, and the superb History Of Design are the most comprehensive narrative histories of design.

The Independent On Sunday

Today, The Independent On Sunday published its final print edition. Its masthead was changed to read "THE INDEPENDENT", and its supplement The New Review was devoted entirely to reprints of some of its best articles and a centre-page spread of memorable covers. Editor Lisa Markwell, writing on page three of The New Review, pointed out that "we are Fleet Street's smallest team," a recognition of her newspaper's lack of resources.

The Independent On Sunday was launched on 28th January 1990. It is now the first UK national newspaper to convert to a digital-only news brand. Its sister paper, The Independent, will publish its final print edition on 26th March. Ironically, the Independent titles were eclipsed by the i, which currently has a circulation five times higher than The Independent's.

Thailand Eye

Thailand Eye (ไทยเนตร), an exhibition of Thai contemporary art, opened at BACC in Bangkok on 18th March. The extensive exhibition catalogue features profiles of seventy-five artists, though only twenty-four are featured in the exhibition itself. (The participating artists were ultimately approved by the Ministry of Culture as the exhibition is part of the Ministry's Totally Thai project.)

Thailand Eye was curated by Serenella Ciclitira (who also edited the catalogue), Nigel Hurst (director of the Saatchi Gallery, where the exhibition was shown last year) and Apinan Poshyananda (Permanent Secretary for Culture). Apinan has curated many previous exhibitions, notably the large-scale survey Traces Of Siamese Smile, and one of his videos was shown in From Message To Media.

Kosit Juntaratip, the most interesting of the selected artists, is represented by photographs and video of Lily Ovary, a performance in which he married a blow-up doll. An installation by Sakarin Krue-On, previously shown at Imply Reply, is also included, as are some of Manit Sriwanichpoom's Pink Man photographs. A sculpture by Rolf von Bueren, with an intricate wooden body and a crocodile's skull, is similar to his crocodile sculpture from the 2012 exhibition Thai Trends. Thailand Eye will close on 7th August.

Visual Project: Very Thai

Every day this month, Bangkok's TCDC will screen three vintage Thai films as part of its Visual Project series. The screenings, titled Very Thai, include Wisit Sasanatieng's Thai New Wave cult classic Tears Of The Black Tiger. (Previous Visual Project seasons have included Woody Allen films, Picasso documentaries, and Creativities Unfold highlights.)

Wisit's film is a combination of 'spaghetti western' and melodramatic Thai lakorn elements, and it has a uniquely over-saturated colour palette. It has previously been shown at the Thai Film Archive in 2009 and 2010, and at BACC in 2012. Tears Of The Black Tiger was his debut feature, and his subsequent films are Citizen Dog, The Unseeable, The Red Eagle, and รุ่นพี่.

The Story Of De Stijl

The Story Of De Stijl: Mondrian To Van Doesburg, by Hans Janssen and Michael White, accompanies Mondrian & De Stijl (2011), a permanent exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. The book, published by Abrams, discusses geometric abstraction and the magazine that gave the movement its name (De Stijl, edited by Theo Van Doesburg), though it also highlights the wide range of activities of the De Stijl group. These include furniture design (such as Gerrit Rietveld's famous Red & Blue Chair), architecture, urban planning, fashion, and advertising.

The book is organised in "a fragmentary narrative style" with short chapters each discussing a specific event, theme, or artefact. As the Gemeentemuseum director explains in his foreword: "Telling a chronological story might contribute to a linear understanding of De Stijl, which is not emphasised here, but could not do justice to the movement's many facets". HLC Jaffe's De Stijl 1917-1931: The Dutch Contribution To Modern Art (1956) is a more conventional linear history of the movement.

100 Years Of Tattoos

100 Years Of Tattoos, by David McComb (a former editor of Bizarre magazine) is a history of tattooing since World War I. The book, published by Laurence King, includes hundreds of vintage photographs of tattoos from various countries, principally Britain, America, and Japan.

McComb describes the link between tattoos and the armed forces: "From the beginning of World War I until the end of World War II, Western tattoos - which for centuries had been intrinsically linked with seafaring and the military - were largely regarded as a sign of patriotism or a symbol of freedom." In the inter-war years, tattoos were novelty attractions: "Heavily tattooed sideshow performers... helped to popularise body art in the early- to mid-twentieth century".

After World War II, tattoos became socially unacceptable: "The reputation of tattoos took a beating in the mid-1940s, when photographs from Nazi concentration camps... showed emaciated prisoners tattooed with crude identification numbers". They were also associated with criminals - "Today's most popular tattoo style, black and grey, was born in the US penal system" - and Hells Angels: "the confrontational ink won by outlaw bikers and urban gangs also helped law-abiding middle-class citizens regard tattoos as a mark of deviance."

A tattoo renaissance began in the 1970s in San Francisco: "tattoos were adopted by a variety of subcultures... to show mainstream society that ink was no longer the preserve of bikers and criminals." Charles Gatewood documented this tattoo subculture in books such as Forbidden Photographs (1981; reissued in 1995 with a graphic cover), and the Re/Search book Modern Primitives (1989) was the first comprehensive guide to contemporary body art. The term 'Tattoo Renaissance' was coined by Arnold Rubin in his book Marks Of Civilization (1988).

100 Years Of Tattoos does not include a bibliography. Wilfred Dyson Hambly's The History Of Tattooing (1925; reissued in 2009 with additional illustrations) was the first anthropological study of global tattoo practices. Karl Groning's Decorated Skin (1997) is a heavily illustrated guide to tribal body decoration. Maarten Hesselt van Dinter's The World Of Tattoo (2005) is the most comprehensive account of historical tattooing, and Tatouers, Tatoues (2014) was the first major exhibition devoted to the history of tattoos. (The exhibition catalogue, Tattoo, was edited by Anne and Julien.)

Tears Of A Clown

Tears Of A Clown, the cabaret show Madonna performed last night at the Forum theatre in Melbourne, was the complete antithesis of a Madonna concert. Usually, every second of her live performances is meticulously choreographed, resulting in theatrical events with plenty of spectacle but little spontaneity. In contrast, Tears Of A Clown had no dance routines, costume changes, or choreography, and Madonna described it as "this work in progress, this rough rehearsal".

Madonna made her entrance on a child's tricycle, wearing a pink wig (like the one she wore while performing Like A Virgin on Top Of The Pops in 1984) and a clown costume. She began by announcing: "First of all, I wanna make a disclaimer, because if anyone thinks they came here to see a finished, final show, there's the door." (The audience - 1,500 Australian members of her fan club - had been waiting outside the theatre for four hours, so they were unlikely to leave.)

The show was an incongruous combination of corny jokes and melancholy. One song, Intervention, was dedicated to her son, over whom she's currently fighting a custody battle: "Everybody knows the saga of me and my son Rocco. It's not a fun story to tell or think about." Introspective moments like this felt awkward, with the crowd regularly shouting reassurance, and the concert was intimate though fairly shambolic.

Madonna seemed relaxed during the show, drinking cocktails between songs (most of which were ballads). She performed two cover versions (Send In The Clowns and Between The Bars), and the only song from the current Rebel Heart Tour was her traditional encore, Holiday. The full set list was: Send In The Clowns, Drowned World/Substitute For Love, X-Static Process, Between The Bars, Nobody's Perfect, Easy Ride, Intervention, I'm So Stupid, Paradise (Not For Me), Joan Of Arc, Don't Tell me, Mer Girl, Borderline, Take A Bow, and Holiday.

The Story Of Emoji

Art Of The Royal Court

Art Of The Royal Court: Treasures In Pietre Dure From The Palaces Of Europe, curated by Wolfram Koeppe, Ian Wardropper, and Annamaria Giusti, was "the most comprehensive presentation ever dedicated to the subject of pietre dure", bringing together almost 150 objects from Italy and other European countries. The exhibition, at New York's Metropolitan Museum in 2008, was accompanied by a catalogue edited by Koeppe. Giusti, who co-wrote the catalogue, is the author of the only other English-language studies of pietre dure (published in 1992 and 2006).

The catalogue's first 100 pages consist of eight essays on the history of pietre dure, followed by more than 300 pages of plates and detailed accounts of each item in the exhibition. The exhibits include decorative objects and pieces of furniture, notably the Farnese Table (decorated by Giovanni Mynardo, circa 1565-1573), described as "one of the most superbly executed and evocative pietre dure objects in existence".

The Sun

David Dinsmore, former editor of The Sun, has been found guilty of breaching the sexual offences act, in a case related to footballer Adam Johnson's conviction for sexual activity with a child. Dinsmore, who is now Chief Operating Officer of The Sun's publisher, News UK, was order to pay £1,000 in damages. The publisher was not prosecuted, as police mistakenly filed charges against News Corp, which is not liable.

The Sun published a photograph of Johnson and his fifteen-year-old victim on 4th March last year, two days after Johnson was arrested. The photo was taken from the teenager's Facebook page; her face was pixelated, though the court ruled that anyone who had seen the image on Facebook could have recognised it when it appeared in The Sun.

The photograph was heavily edited before it was printed, to the extent that it could plausibly be called a photomontage rather than a single image. Apart from the pixelation, the victim's face was airbrushed, her hair was artificially shortened and coloured, the lower portion was cropped, and the background was completely replaced. (The new background was taken from a photograph of Irish President Michael Higgins at a park in Dublin.)

The Sun labelled the photo a "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE", with a headline inaccurately describing the girl as someone Johnson had "bedded". The Sun's sensationalising of the photograph was inappropriate, and the newspaper removed the article and photo from its website following complaints from readers.

The day after Johnson was convicted, The Daily Telegraph also printed the photograph (3rd March, on page eight), almost exactly a year after The Sun did so. The Telegraph pixelated the victim's face and hair, though their photo was otherwise unaltered, with none of the changes made by The Sun. The Telegraph is not facing prosecution, despite publishing the photo after charges were brought against The Sun. Like The Sun, The Telegraph has also removed the image from its website.

Zaman

Turkish police yesterday used tear gas against approximately 500 protesters who gathered outside the editorial offices of Zaman, the country's most popular newspaper. A Turkish court ruled that Zaman must be placed under state control, though today's issue was printed before the judgement took effect.

Zaman's front-page headline today is "ANAYASA ASKIDA" ("constitution suspended"), denouncing the government's apparent disregard for constitutional guarantees of press freedom. Its English-language sister paper, Today's Zamat, has an equally damning headline: "SHAMEFUL DAY FOR FREE PRESS IN TURKEY".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of suppressing any criticism of his leadership. He filed lawusits against Cumhuriyet in 2004 and Penguen magazine in 2005. Artist Matthew Dickinson was charged with insulting Erdogan in 2006, and charged again shortly afterwards. Two Penguen cartoonists were convicted of insulting Erdoğan last year, and Nokta magazine was shut down following its Photoshopped image of Erdoğan.

The Art Of Instruction

The Art Of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts From The 18th & 19th Centuries is a collection of more than a hundred wallcharts from Germany, France, and Denmark. The charts (some of which are reprints rather than Victorian originals) depict their subjects with surprising beauty and clarity, and each one is lavishly reproduced as a full-page colour image.

As Katrien Van der Schueren notes in her short historical introduction, "The first educational wall charts were likely printed in Germany around 1820". The Art Of Instruction includes only biological and zoological examples, though there were charts produced for every academic subject. (Cartographies Of Time, for instance, discusses posters depicting timelines of historical events.)

Architecture In Wood

Will Pryce photographed brick buildings for Brick: A World History, which supplemented Pryce's photographs with text by James WP Campbell. For his similar survey of wooden buildings, Architecture In Wood: A World History, Pryce provided both the photographs and text. Pryce is an excellent photographer, simultaneously capturing the grand scale and intricate details of each building, though his text in Architecture In Wood lacks the historical scope of Campbell's in Brick.

As Pryce explains in his preface: "This is not an exhaustive study of wooden architecture's long history... Instead it is a selection of arguably the best buildings and those most representative of important regional traditions." These include two significant Japanese temples: Horu-ji in Fujiwara ("the oldest wooden buildings in the world. The very oldest is the Golden Hall, which dates from 677") and Todai-ji in Nara ("the largest building ever to have been made of wood, the Great Buddha Hall... remains the largest wooden building in the world").

In America, it was released with the alternate title Buildings In Wood: The History & Traditions Of Architecture's Oldest Building Material. The original cover featured the Church of the Transfiguration in Kizhi, Russia; the new edition, published this year, replaces this with a cover image of the To-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Turquerie

Turquerie: An Eighteenth-Century European Fantasy, by Haydn Williams, is "the first book to look at the artistic phenomenon known as turquerie." It begins with a definition of this little-known trend: "Turquerie is a term used to describe a European vision of the Ottoman Turkish world that was made manifest in a variety of art forms."

As the book's subtitle suggests, turquerie was primarily an eighteenth-century vogue, though Williams traces its pre-history following the Ottoman Empire's capture of Constantinople in 1453: "To galvanize opposition, propagandists worked hard to demonize the Turk." This continued until the end of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars: "The 'great fear' of the Turk in Europe gradually diminished after the failed siege of Vienna in 1683. Concurrently... turquerie in its varied forms reached its fashionable apogee. Europeans became fascinated by many aspects of the Ottoman world".

Turquerie was popular at the same time as another exotic trend, Chinoiserie (the Western imitation of Chinese decoration), though they were ultimately replaced by other influences: "By the middle of the 19th century in Europe the insouciant turquerie fantasies of the previous century had been displaced by others of equal fancy." One of these subsequent styles was Japonisme, which developed in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Williams examines the influence of turquerie on European painting, architecture, and interior design, all of which are illustrated in colour. The chapter on the applied arts is the most fascinating, with its lavish illustrations of enamelled boxes, Meissen porcelain, and clockwork automata.

Illusions In Motion

Illusions In Motion, by Erkki Huhtamo, is the first comprehensive history of the moving panorama, which, as the author demonstrates, was a significant departure from conventional static panoramas: "Instead of being surrounded by a stationary wrap-around painting, the spectators sat in an auditorium. A long roll painting was moved across... by means of a mechanical cranking system."

These events were early examples of multi-media spectacles: "The presentation was accompanied by a lecturer, music, and occasionally light and sound effects." In this respect, they were antecedents of Japanese kamishibai (performed by kamishibaiya), and silent film screenings in Japan and France (narrated by 'benshi' and 'bonimenteurs', respectively).

Moving panoramas were influenced by Chinese landscape scroll paintings (the most famous being 清明上河圖, reproduced in A World History Of Art) and Japanese 'emaki' narrative scrolls (discussed in Dietrich Seckel's book Emakimono). Illusions In Motion surveys a hundred years of moving panoramas, from their beginnings in the early nineteenth century (the hybrid 'peristrephic' panorama, with its concave display) to their demise: "After the First World War the moving panorama's era was over."

There have been previous studies of panoramas, notably Stephan Oettermann's The Panorama (1997) and Bernard Comment's The Panorama (2002; reprinted as The Painted Panorama), though they devote only a few pages to moving panoramas. (Huhtamo speculates that this is because Oettermann and Comment are both continental Europeans, while the moving panorama was primarily a British and American phenomenon.)

Huhtamo's book, like Oettermann's, contains only black-and-white illustrations. (Most of Huhtamo's photographs illustrate objects from his own collection.) Oettermann's book was the first English-language history of panoramas. Comment's work is less comprehensive, though it has colour illustrations and even fold-out panoramas.

Huhtamo discusses the moving panorama's relationship to other media and entertainment, such as theatrical performances (the mechanical Eidophusikon), magic lanterns, and dioramas. He also profiles the leading panorama artist of the Victorian era, Albert Smith: "Smith's Ascent of Mont Blanc (1852-1858) was arguably the most successful moving panorama show of all times, performed for seven years in a row at the Egyptian Hall in London."

Illusions In Motion is subtitled Media Archaeology Of The Moving Panorama & Related Spectacles, and Huhtamo uses his research into the moving panorama as a case-study of the 'media archaeology' methodology: "It will demonstrate a way of doing media studies I call media archaeology... the book is meant to be read as a kind of discours de la methode."

'Media archaeology' is derived from CW Ceram's book Archaeology Of The Cinema (1965), which was later used as the subtitle of Laurent Mannoni's comprehensive The Great Art Of Light & Shadow (2000). Ironically, Ceram was an influential archaeological historian, whereas later uses of the term are purely metaphorical. According to Huhtamo, media archaeology involves digging in archives and "excavating" artefacts, though isn't that what any good researcher has always done? I fail to see how media archaeology differs from conventional investigation of primary sources.

Huhtamo's wider intention, of challenging the conventional grand narrative of media history, is more interesting than his terminology, and he argues that media archaeology "reassesses existing media-historical narratives". His aim is to document the neglected media forms that fall outside the linear narrative of modern media development: "Media archaeology corrects our understanding of the past by excavating lacunas in shared knowledge."

The New Day

Trinity Mirror (publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People) has launched a new newspaper: The New Day. After the free first issue, it will be sold at 25p for a trial period. This makes The New Day the UK's second-cheapest national newspaper, after the 20p Daily Star, though neither The New Day nor the Star could sustain such low cover prices on a permanent basis. (The Star, which previously cost 40p, has been selling at half price since last October, in an unsuccessful attempt to restart the price war of the early 1990s.)

The New Day sets out its agenda on page two: "We know this can't be just another newspaper. It has to be a new type of newspaper." This sounds familiar, because the i similarly claimed to be "not only a new paper, but a new kind of paper" when it was launched in 2010. The New Day's editor, Alison Philips, writes on page five: "We want to make sure you are aware of the important things going on in this frantic, modern world" and again this echoes the i, which described itself as "designed for people with busy, modern lives... it's your essential daily briefing."

The i has successfully positioned itself as a concise digest of news and comment, though The New Day - judging from the launch issue - is dominated by features and lifestyle articles rather than news. Children, shopping, relationships, and animals are the dominant topics, implying a female target demographic. (The editor, deputy editor, section editors, and most writers are also female.) There is very little political or international news coverage, and most news stories are single paragraphs. Only the features and columns have bylines; uncredited content is presumably from agencies or Mirror staff.

The New Day looks appealing, and has high production values: it has full colour throughout, and it boasts on page two that its paper is "top quality, snow white and stapled". Its content is quite confusingly organised, though. Pages two and three have "today's news essentials" but there are more top stories in a "three minute update" on page twenty-four. Similarly, sports coverage is split over two sections: one on pages sixteen and seventeen, and another on pages twenty-six and twenty-seven.

Also, the first lead story isn't very promising: a report "seen exclusively by The New Day" (page six) was actually published online a week ago. (The report, Invisible & In Distress, appeared on the Carer's Trust website on 23rd February.) This is more like churnalism than journalism, and I wonder why a real exclusive wasn't available for the launch issue.

Manga Kamishibai

Manga Kamishibai: The Art Of Japanese Paper Theater, by Eric P Nash, is the first book about the history of kamishibai, the Japanese illustrated performances that were a popular street entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s. The book includes an introduction by Frederik L Schodt, author of the excellent Manga! Manga!, the first English-language study of Japanese comics.

Kamishibai involved a series of illustrated boards displayed consecutively in a 'butai' (wooden frame). Each board depicted the action of a particular scene, though there were no captions or speech bubbles: the story and dialogue were improvised by a 'kamishibaiya' (narrator, similar to the 'benshi' who narrated silent Japanese films).

Nash's fascinating book features many rare and evocative reproductions of kamishibai boards. The illustrations were sometimes inspired by Hollywood, such as an alien resembling those from This Island Earth (Demon Castle Of Outer Space). Kamishibai was also used as a propaganda tool during World War II, and after the American occupation it even dealt with taboo subjects such as the Hiroshima bomb (Genbaku No Ko).

Kamishibai's most famous character, Ogon Bat (Golden Bat), had a significant influence on subsequent American popular culture, as he was "one of the world's first illustrated super heroes". Golden Bat, created by Takeo Nagamatsu, wore a hero's cape, though he had a skull for a head. The book's jacket folds out into a poster of this caped hero fighting his arch enemy, an evil emperor: archetypes that have recurred throughout superhero comics and animation ever since.

ตอบโจทย์ ประเทศไทย

Police have reopened a lèse-majesté investigation into the Thai PBS television programme ตอบโจทย์ ประเทศไทย. Specifically, charges may be brought against one of the show's guests, former Thammasat University professor Somsak Jeamteerasakul, though he is currently living in France. (Sulak Sivaraksa, another participant, has been accused of lèse-majesté on several previous occasions.)

It was almost inevitable that lèse-majesté charges would be brought against the programme, though why the case is being reopened after three years is unclear. The controversy relates to five episodes broadcast in 2013, in which the issue of reform of the monarchy was explored as openly as is possible within the strict confines of Thailand's lèse-majesté law.

The first four episodes, shown from 11th to 14th March 2013, provoked considerable public debate, as this legally and culturally sensitive issue is rarely discussed in the media. Thai PBS initially withheld the final episode, though it was eventually broadcast on 18th March 2013, after which the entire series was cancelled.

Star Wars IV:A New Hope

Bangkok Open Air Cinema Club’s inaugural screening in 2014 was Star Wars IV: A New Hope, and they will be showing the film again tomorrow. The outdoor screening will take place on the roof of The Hive in Bangkok.

Thailand's Vicious Cycle

The NCPO has produced a wrap-around advertising supplement in today's Bangkok Post, setting out its plans for "the Hope, Happiness & Harmony of the people". The same supplement was included in The Nation on Tuesday.

Page one begins with an illustration of "Thailand's Vicious Cycle", claiming that the junta prevented Thailand from becoming a failed state. Chai-anan Samudavanija's book The Thai Young Turks (1982) included a very different model of Thailand's vicious cycle, which features a word entirely absent from the NCPO's supplement: 'coup'.

The supplement also includes a guide to the differences between "Pseudo-Democracy" and "Genuine Democracy", effectively a criticism of Thaksin Shinawatra and Pheu Thai's policies. To say the least, it's profoundly ironic that a military junta would presume to explain the concept of democracy.

Finally, a list of "11 Policies" features only three policies, ending with "access to gover" [sic] and two empty bullet points. The supplement folds out into a poster showing a hierarchical diagram of the NCPO's agenda, though it's so dense, and printed in such a tiny font size, that it's impenetrable.

The Bangkok Post's editor, Pichai Chuensuksawadi, has written a note in the newspaper about the NCPO supplement. He explains that its inclusion was a commercial decision: "The advertisement that wraps today's newspaper, placed by our advertising department, does not represent the Bangkok Post's editorial position."

"PROVOCATIVE NEWAND COMPLICATED IDEAS..."

An exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York will include pre-production materials from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. To The Moon & Beyond - Graphic Films & The Inception Of 2001: A Space Odyssey opens on 4th March and closes on 14th August.

The exhibition features concept sketches and correspondence from the Museum's Lester Novros archive. (Novros founded Graphic Films, whose Cinerama film To The Moon & Beyond was one of the inspirations for 2001's 'stargate' sequence.) One of the documents on display is a telegram from Kubrick to Con Pederson, who created some of 2001's special effects.

"I've come up with a couple of ideas..."

The Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum has acquired the papers of Arthur C Clarke, who died in 2008. Last year, his correspondence, notes, and manuscripts were transferred from his home in Sri Lanka to the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. The archive includes a three-page letter to Clarke written by Stanley Kubrick, discussing their work on the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Monotype

Carla Esposito Hayter's book The Monotype: The History Of A Pictorial Art describes "the birth and evolution of the monotype and... the historical and artistic circumstances that led artists to adopt this medium for four centuries." The book was first published in Italian, as Il Monotipo.

Monotypes are "a technique midway between printing and painting", and indeed the first historical survey of monotypes was titled The Painterly Print (1980). Fritz Eichenberg's excellent The Art Of The Print (1976) also includes a chapter on monotypes.

The Monotype and The Painterly Print both examine the origins of the monotype in the 1640s, and its revival in the 1870s. As Hayter explains: "The birth of the monotype is generally dated from the time of... Benedetto Castiglione". Castiglione's experiments with the technique began in 1640, and he had perfected it by 1645.

The modern appreciation of the monotype dates from its adoption by Edgar Degas in 1874: "Degas produced... a corpus of extraordinary scale that is still unmatched for its importance and influence right up to the present. It was in fact Degas that inaugurated the modern use of the monotype".

The Painterly Print remains the most significant and influential study of monotypes, though The Monotype is also important for its more extensive treatment of the post-war and contemporary era. An obvious example is the Abstract Expressionist monotype (1946) by Jackson Pollock on its cover, though there is also coverage of the monotype's "extraordinarily accelerated development over the last thirty years".

The Telegraph

This week's issue of The Telegraph is the final edition of the weekly version of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. The conservative tabloid newspaper was established in 1998 as The Weekly Telegraph; its title dropped the definite article in 2005, and it became The Telegraph in 2011.

Of course, the closure of The Telegraph is another example of the recent decline in print journalism. Next month, two British national newspapers - The Independent and The Independent On Sunday - will also cease print publication. The Telegraph's liberal competitor The Guardian Weekly, founded in 1919, is now the only weekly British newspaper for an international audience.

สวัสดีปีใหม่ 2559

Calendars featuring photographs of Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck were banned last month by the governor of Roi Et, a province in northern Thailand. There have been similar reports in other areas of the country, and police prevented Yingluck herself from distributing ten of the calendars in Khon Kean, another northern province.

The calendars, available in two different versions, both feature the message "สวัสดีปีใหม่ 2559" ("happy new year"; 2559 is the Buddhist equivalent of 2016), above short handwritten notes from Thaksin and Yingluck. Former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck were both removed from power by military coups (in 2006 and 2014 respectively).

Sticker City

Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art, by Claudia Walde, is the first book to examine the use of the sticker as an artistic medium. After a short history of "adhesive art, a subset of the booming street art scene", Walde profiles twenty-six sticker artists. As she acknowledges, sticker art is closely associated with other forms of urban art, and the book also features early examples of graffiti and 'pochoir' (stencilling). (The first book on street art was The Faith Of Graffiti, from 1974.)

Sticker City begins with a legal notice: "The publisher and the author in no way endorse vandalism or the use of graffiti for the defacement of private and state-owned property." Despite this over-cautious disclaimer, the publisher (Thames & Hudson) has released several other books on graffiti, including Subway Art (Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, 1984), Spraycan Art (Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, 1987), and Stencil Graffiti (Tristan Manco, 2002).

Istakhdem al-Haya

Egyptian author Ahmed Naji has been sentenced to two years in jail on a charge of public indecency, after an excerpt from his novel Istakhdem al-Haya (استخدام الحياة) was published in the state-owned literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab. The magazine's editor, Tarek al-Taher, was fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds (equivalent to over 1,000 US dollars).

The author and editor were charged in August 2014 after one of the magazine's readers complained to police that the extract (chapter five of the novel) was immoral. The charges were dropped last month, though that acquittal has now been reversed following an appeal by the prosecution.

In 2009, Magdy El Shafee's graphic novel Metro was banned under the same Egyptian law. It was published in America (translated by Chip Rossetti) in June 2012, and an Arabic edition was finally published in Egypt two months later.

Thailand Eye

Thailand Eye: Contemporary Thailand Art is (at least, according to its sponsor, Prudential) "the first and most comprehensive publication on the Thai contemporary art scene." Steven Pettifor might disagree: his Flavours (2003) was a turn-of-the-century guide to contemporary Thai art.

Thailand Eye may not be the first publication on contemporary Thai art, though it is the most comprehensive, at almost 400 pages. While Flavours profiled only twenty-three artists, Thailand Eye features seventy-five. Thailand Eye is primarily a visual resource, with little analysis or criticism, though it has a detailed appendix listing the previous exhibitions of each artist. In contrast, Flavours has no such lists, though it includes double-page essays on each artist.

The artists profiled in Thailand Eye include Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (images from her video The Class, which was shown at Crossover and Dialogues), Anupong Chantorn (his painting Perceptless and other works painted on saffron robes), Manit Sriwanichpoom (This Bloodless War, his consumerist parodies of Vietnam War photographs), Prasert Yodkaew (his installation Angel), Thunska Pansittivorakul (stills from his films Middle-Earth, KI SS, This Area Is Under Quarantine, Reincarnate, Supernatural, and The Terrorists), and Kosit Juntaratip.

Of the seventy-five artists, twenty-four were selected for a Thailand Eye exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London last year. (The exhibition will be shown at BACC in Bangkok from 18th March to 7th August.) The exhibition was curated by Serenella Ciclitira (editor of Thailand Eye and other books in the Eye series on Asian contemporary art), Nigel Hurst (director of the Saatchi Gallery) and Apinan Poshyananda (Permanent Secretary for Culture), though the twenty-four artists were ultimately approved by the Ministry of Culture as the exhibition is part of the Ministry's Totally Thai project.

As a result, some of the more provocative artists in Thailand Eye were not selected for the exhibition. Thunska Pansittivorakul's film This Area Is Under Quarantine, for example, is banned in Thailand, so it had little chance of being included. Likewise, Montri Toemsombat's granite carving Bangkok Art & Coup Centre (a pun on the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre) would presumably have irritated both BACC and the NCPO.

Kosit Juntaratip is the most interesting of the twenty-four selected artists, and the book is a rare opportunity to see photographs of his performances in which he painted with blood flowing from a vein in his arm. Sakarin Krue-On, whose installations were featured in Imply Reply, is also included. Apinan Poshyananda has curated many previous exhibitions, notably Traces Of Siamese Smile (whose 300-page catalogue acts as another broad survey of current Thai art).

Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design

Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design, by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, features 120 “landmark designs” manufactured from plastic since 1925. There are full-page colour photographs of each product, and concise essays on their design and significance. The book comes in an orange plastic slipcase designed by Edson Matsuo.

The 1930s was “the First Modern Plastic Age”, due in part to the Great Depression: “The rapid expansion of plastics usage that occurred during this period was, of course, inextricably linked to the constrained economic climate of the 1930s.” Highlights from this era include beautiful Art Deco appliances such as the DBH 1001 telephone, the Kodak Baby Brownie camera, and the Ekco AD-65 radio, all made from Bakelite.

Plastic’s second golden age was the 1960s, when “a vast range of synthetic polymers and moulding processes were available to designers.” Sixties plastic products include the single-moulded Panton chair (“one of the most important chairs of all time”) and the Valentine portable typewriter (“a quintessential Pop design that celebrated the Plastics Age of the 1960s”).

Like Plastic Dreams, Slyvia Katz’s earlier book Plastics also included an introduction tracing the history of plastic design, and a plates section illustrating products chronologically. Katz’s book was the first history of plastics in industrial design, though Plastic Dreams benefits from larger photographs, a bibliography, and coverage of more recent products such as the Apple iMac.

Plastic Dreams was published twenty-five years after Katz’s Plastics, and the two books reflect shifting attitudes towards plastic. Katz writes in her introduction: “This book is a celebration of plastics.” She argues that plastics “make modern life richer, more comfortable and convenient, and also more fun.” Her enthusiasm is unqualified, and sometimes excessive: “Plastics are truly magical because they are created by pure alchemy.”

Like Katz, the Fiells acknowledge the value of plastics: “they are simply one of the most important and useful materials known to man.” However, they also recognise the problems plastic creates: “our use of plastics is still too often marked by wastefulness”. They conclude that, “although ambivalence surrounds the use of plastics both in design and in our everyday lives, it would nonetheless be difficult to conceive of a world without them”.

On its back cover, Plastic Dreams is described as “the definitive guide to plastics in design.” It’s certainly the most authoritative and attractive survey of plastic as a design medium. The Fiells have co-written numerous design books, including Modern Furniture Classics, Industrial Design A–Z, Design of the 20th Century, and The Story of Design. Plastic Dreams is the first book from their independent publishing house, Fiell.

“The draft charter is retrogressive...”

The Constitution Drafting Committee has announced the completion of proposed new constitution, which will be put to a referendum later this year. Meanwhile, the prospect of an election continues to recede, as the Bangkok Post noted in an editorial on 1st February: “The roadmap produced shortly after the May 22, 2014, coup promised elections would be held in 2015. A subsequent roadmap promised elections in mid-2016. That then became 2017...”

The proposed constitution is a replacement for the previous draft, which was controversial as article 260 authorised an unelected committee to seize power from the government in an emergency. That draft was rejected by the National Reform Council last September, and Meechai Ruchuphan was appointed to lead a new CDC. (Meechai is a distinctly pro-military politician: he led the tribunal that exonerated Suchinda Kraprayoon after ‘Black May’ in 1992, and he was President of the National Legislative Assembly following the 2006 coup.)

Democrat Party leader (and former PM) Abhisit Vejjajiva told the Bangkok Post: “The draft charter is retrogressive compared to the 2007 charter”. Abhisit was even more critical last year, when the CDC’s first proposed charter was being drafted: “This is a step backward for democracy. It will snatch democracy away from the people”.

One of the main points of contention is that, under the proposed new voting system, constituency and ‘party list’ MPs will appear on a single ballot paper. Under this system, the main political parties would have a reduced overall share of the votes, potentially making it harder to gain an outright majority in parliament. (Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck are the only leaders to win overall parliamentary majorities, and they were both deposed by coups aimed at ending their political influence.)

The draft constitution’s provision for an unelected Senate (article 102) is equally controversial. It specifies that senators will be selected from a series of committees, a reversal of the changes made in the 1997 constitution. (After the 2007 constitution, the Senate was 50% elected; an attempt to restore a 100% elected Senate was rejected by the Constitutional Court.) The unelected senators will also be given votes on the appointment of a new prime minister.

The proposal also allows political parties to nominate prime ministers who are not elected politicians, and confirms the Constitutional Court as the final arbiter in disputes over issues not covered in the charter (article 207). This replaces the vague article seven from the 2007 constitution, though the Constitutional Court’s political neutrality has been repeatedly questioned, after it disqualified Thaksin, Samak Sundaravej, and Somchai Wongsawat.

Needless to say, like all post-coup charters, the constitution also includes an unconditional amnesty for the coup leaders (article 270). This is carried over from the interim constitution, and is arguably the most contentious element of the entire document.