NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 1 THE THING OBSERVED BEN NICHOLSON VICTOR PASMORE AUSTIN DESMOND FINE ART

Transcription

1 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 1 THE THING OBSERVED BEN NICHOLSON VICTOR PASMORE AUSTIN DESMOND FINE ART

2 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 2

3 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 3 BEN NICHOLSON 1 Café Robinson, St. Remy Pencil on paper 30.5 x 38cm

4 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 4 The Thing Observed: Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore William Packer In their very different yet oddly complementary ways, Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore were two of the dominant figures of English painting of the mid-20th century. We are living now through a time, which no doubt will pass, in which the currency of contemporary painting hardly holds the pre-eminence it once enjoyed, almost as of right. To look back now barely 40 years, in the light of modern received opinion, we might well come to the conclusion that there were Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, and David Hockney perhaps, and no one else of any significant interest whatsoever. The reality was very different, and it is salutary to remember quite the extent to which Bacon in particular, major figure that he already was, was nevertheless by no means held as first among his equals. With Freud in critical limbo, and Hockney still with so much to prove, Sutherland, Vaughan, Scott, Davie, Hitchens, Heron and the rest were all there or thereabouts. And, as with all of them, any new exhibition by Nicholson or Pasmore was an event. 4

5 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 5 BEN NICHOLSON 2 Aug (Corinth) 1954 Pencil and oil wash on prepared board 47 x 29.5cm

6 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 6 BEN NICHOLSON 3 Carlisle Jug 1964 Pencil and oil wash on paper, on prepared board 35.5 x 31.8cm 6

7 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 7 VICTOR PASMORE 1 Linear Development in Three Movements 1969 Oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm

8 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 8 Perhaps even more so: for each in turn, and in his particular way, had come to be quite consciously a radical modernist thorn in the side of critical expectation. By his self-identification with the Parisian avant-garde of the 1920s, and his early flirtations with abstraction in the 1930s, the young Nicholson had seemed quite deliberately to set himself against all his distinguished father William had ever stood for. For Pasmore, only the slightly younger man, having made his name with his Euston Road intimism of the war years, it was his turning to a more formalistic manner in the later 1940s that seemed to many of his supporters a betrayal. Pasmore Goes Abstract may not quite have led to questions in the House, but it made the headlines. Nicholson was born in 1894, Pasmore only 12 years later, in 1908, and both lived into a great and still productive old age, Pasmore dying at the age of 90, Nicholson at 88. Near contemporaries that they were, however, there was 8

9 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 9 VICTOR PASMORE 2 Projective Painting in White, Black and Umber 1969 Projective painting, oil, wood on board 40.5 x 40.5 x 7cm

10 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 10 BEN NICHOLSON 4 Variation I (Paros with Moon) 1966/7 Gouache and ink over etched paper 13.3 x 26.3cm 10

11 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 11 BEN NICHOLSON 5 Azetaio (Variation on a theme) 1966 Gouache and ink over etched paper, on prepared board 22.2 x 18.5cm

12 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 12 never to be any particular association between them in their careers, neither in critical nor practical terms, both of them fiercely independent within the generally prevailing modernist milieu, and Nicholson in particular ever jealous of his avant-garde seniority. Mutual respect may have been one thing, but neither of them was ever likely to admit an influence. Yet here, in this closely focused exhibition, we find them together at last, Pasmore for the most part in his 60s, Nicholson in a somewhat broader span from his late-50s to his 80s, each presented in a concise body of small-scale, more or less contemporaneous and, in its essence, intimate work. And for all the obvious differences between them, there is yet a decided and perhaps unexpected current of sympathy to be found running between them. It is a question, perhaps, of the moment, albeit an extended moment, at which we catch them in their careers. For while each is by now, far more than established, indeed secure in international reputation, each seems to be moving on again, through a 12

13 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 13 VICTOR PASMORE 3 Linear Construction 1969 Oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm

14 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 14 BEN NICHOLSON 6 Chapel in Greece 1967 Pencil and oil wash on paper 43.8 x 61cm 14

15 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 15 BEN NICHOLSON 7 Four Forms 1970 Pencil and oil wash on paper 51 x 37.5cm

16 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 16 passage of reflection and questioning in the development of their work. And in that questioning, in formal terms at least, they do seem to have been preoccupied with closely similar things. It is a truism not so much of criticism as of common observation, that, whatever superficial shifts and changes may be apparent over any long career, an artist s underlying preoccupations and formal interests tend to remain uncannily the same. The same image, the same form, the same structure, the same fundamental approach, are returned to again and again, not by any conscious design but by instinct. That very point is most forcibly made here by anchoring, as it were, the principal group of Nicholson s much later drawings upon a single drawing from the early 1930s, of the Café Robinson at St Remy. 16

17 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 17 VICTOR PASMORE 4 Abstract in White, Black and Umber 1970 Projective painting, oil, wood on board 41 x 41 x 5.5cm

18 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 18 There is to it the unmistakeable sense of having been made on the spot, the handling loose and spontaneous in character, the incidental detail of a sort born only of actual and direct attention. Yet there is to it too a countervailing sense of a more formal approach, selfconscious and considered. The selective economy of the description amounts at times to a flirtation with abstraction, with a quality of line, by turns cursive, decorative and wilfully idiosyncratic, that has more to do with formal effect on the page, in the making of the image, than with taking note of incident or view. The mark itself, and the quality and rhythm of the mark across the surface, are ever the more important. So to move on some 40 years, to the medieval Gateway drawing of 1973 for example, is, plus ça change, to come to an image and a work that could be described in almost exactly the same terms, word for word, with only the wash of body colour, and a somewhat sharper, tighter line, to point a difference. 18

19 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 19 BEN NICHOLSON 8 Mirror 1971 Pencil and oil wash on reverse of etched paper (Paros) 34 x 37.5cm

20 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 20 VICTOR PASMORE 5 Blue Image Relief, oil on plywood 41 x 41cm 20

21 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 21 VICTOR PASMORE 6 Linear Development in Two Movements 1971 Oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm

22 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:11 Page 22 What informs this whole body of Nicholson s work is not the primacy of the thing seen, but what may be made of it as Art. Any irregular scrap of paper will do as a support, its very contours often setting the matrix and rhythm of the composition then improvised upon it. And any old implement to hand will do the job, even the felt-tip marker-pen of the last drawings, if only to discover just what kind of mark it makes, and to exploit the effect to which it may be put. Each sheet carries an image with a recognisable source in the external visible world landscape, architecture, still-life but not all are local or circumstantially specific. Did he take that jug off the shelf and place it just so, or is it simply now the jug of jugs, an ideal, abstracted construct of all such remembered jugs? Were those columns and arches set in quite such profile, quite so offbalance, and the distant hills beyond quite so neat? Did those carafes impinge upon each other, just so, on the 22

23 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 23 BEN NICHOLSON 9 Victorian Glass 1972 Ink, pencil and oil wash on paper 41 x 30.7cm

24 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 24 café table? Such simplification leads inexorably to the ultimate simplicities of pure geometry, and to the thought it throws back, that even the most complete and formal of Nicholson s major abstract works, with their blocks and circles, were rooted, if only at the most tenuous remove, in something seen. It is at least a possibility, and one which Pasmore proposes rather more directly than Nicholson in the works here. For Pasmore too was from the start a painter of the visible world of the landscape, the figure and the domestic interior and still life and if that principle of essential consistency holds good, so he remained, whatever the appearance to the contrary. By the time we find him here, however, in the late 1960s and early 70s, the visible world as such is but a faint visual echo, no more than a residual hint or suggestion in the work, schematically achieved by barely more than a wandering line, a stripe of paint on the surface, or the fall of a shadow. 24

25 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 25 BEN NICHOLSON 10 Untitled (Stoppered Vase and Goblet) 1972 Ink drawing with oil wash on paper 41 x 30.7cm

26 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 26 VICTOR PASMORE 7 When the Star is Fixed 1972 Oil on board 41 x 41cm 26

27 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 27 VICTOR PASMORE 8 Immagine Incognita 1972 Oil and gravure on board 40.5 x 40.5cm

28 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 28 But quite what is it now: painting or sculpture? Again, and even more so than with Nicholson, its sheer physicality is clearly Pasmore s first, or at least most obvious consideration what the thing is in its material presence and the way it is made. He sets one slab of wood upon the parent panel. He scratches a line lightly across the surface, then scores another deep into it. He identifies the protruding block with a simple dab or stripe, the paint transgressing each separate surface, across and up the side and across again. Painting? Sculpture? It may certainly be taken as Relief, that debateable territory between the two: for even where nothing is added beyond the mark or line, each panel is presented proud of its larger supporting board set within its frame. These things are manifestly things in themselves, objects to be taken as they are, for what they are. Yet there they are, hung four-square against the wall, and clearly meant to be seen from that single point of view. 28

29 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 29 BEN NICHOLSON 11 Two Forms 1972 Pencil and oil wash on paper 49.8 x 48.5cm

30 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 30 And so we face the eternal paradox of the Relief, that material object that invites us into an illusory pictorial world. The inferences and suggestions keep creeping in unbidden, naughty thoughts of immaterial things, and other worlds. A horizontal line divides the panel, and immediately an horizon is set as being, well, an horizon, with space before it, and infinite space beyond. A line wobbles towards it, and up and over it, and paths appear before it, and hills beyond. In several of the later pieces, a rather squashed melon-like oval form articulates the surface, moving across each distinct level in formal balance with the other elements, yet, with a couple of dots here and a vertical or lateral stroke there, it is inescapably suggestive, Picasso-like, of a pudding head and face. Sometimes the image appears more cosmic than terrestrial, a nebulous form held like a visual charge of energy between two elements, or focused upon a single nodal point. And sometimes, in an unspecific way, such 30

31 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 31 VICTOR PASMORE 9 Abstract in White, Black and Umber 1972 Projective painting, oil, wood on board 41 x 41 x 5cm

32 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 32 BEN NICHOLSON 12 Earth and Moon 1972 Pencil and oil wash on paper 27.3 x 26.7cm 32

33 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 33 BEN NICHOLSON 13 Madingly Pencil and oil wash on paper 49.5 x 59.5cm

34 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 34 vaguely organic forms are more earthily suggestive, even frankly sexual, in their connotations, whether intended or not. Sometimes indeed, the hint may taken all ways at once are those clouds in the sky or pendulous breasts; is that a female bottom or a black hole deep in space? Yet even as we give in to such imaginative temptation, Pasmore raps our mental knuckles, as it were, with a formal stroke a sharp vertical here, a crisp angle there, a lateral emphasis or a central vertical point of balance - to bring us back to the surface, and to earth. For Pasmore in particular, this was a period of transition, in which the harder, more schematic formalism of the 1950s and earlier 60s, founded upon near-architectural models, lay-outs and plans, was giving way to the more fluid and intuitive manner that was to characterise his later years. The physical emphasis begins to fall away with the return of a more painterly engagement, with the paint itself thinner and the surface sprayed or wiped. 34

35 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 35 VICTOR PASMORE 10 Linear Development (Brown) in Two Movements 1973 Oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm

36 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 36 BEN NICHOLSON 14 Lambousa Pencil and oil wash on paper 36.8 x 52.8cm 36

37 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 37 BEN NICHOLSON 15 C.W. Gateway 1973 Pencil and gouache on paper 48 x 56cm

38 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 38 And the imagery begins to settle into that final habit of the broad and generalised organic form held in check by the sharp particular mark. Nicholson we see thoughtfully recapitulating ideas, images and approaches that had always engaged him, even as a young man. And what unites them here is the central issue with which they both engaged, of reconciling in their work the essential opposition between the formal mark and the inferred reference, no matter how oblique, to the real world on the one hand the line on the surface, and the nature and quality of the mark: on the other the thing observed, the sensation felt, light and space, form and structure. William Packer March

39 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 39 BEN NICHOLSON 16 Bocaccio 1975 Pencil and oil wash on paper 75.1 x 55.2cm

40 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 40 VICTOR PASMORE 11 Immagine Incognita 1974 Oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm 40

41 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 41 VICTOR PASMORE 12 Linear Image 1975 Relief, oil and gravure on board 40.5 x 40.5cm

42 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 42 BEN NICHOLSON 17 Two and One 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper 40 x 8cm 42

43 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 43 BEN NICHOLSON 18 March (Still Life, Maggiore) 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper, on prepared backboard 62.9 x 76.2cm

44 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 44 VICTOR PASMORE 13 Linear Image 1976 Relief, oil and gravure on board 40.5 x 40.5cm 44

45 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 45 VICTOR PASMORE 14 Linear Image 1976 Relief, oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm

46 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 46 BEN NICHOLSON 19 Florentine, March 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper 28 x 14.5cm 46

47 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 47 BEN NICHOLSON 20 Glass and mountains Ink and oil wash on paper 63.1 x 40cm

48 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 48 Catalogue BEN NICHOLSON ( ) 1. Café Robinson, St. Remy Pencil on paper Signed, titl ed and dated verso 30.5 x 38cm Exh: Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris Annandale Gallery, Sydney 2. Aug (Corinth) 1954 Pencil and oil wash on prepared board Signed, titled and dated on backing board 47 x 29.5cm Prov: Ruthven Todd, Martha s Vineyard, USA Gimpel Fils, London New London Gallery, London 3. Carlisle Jug 1964 Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated on backing board 35.5 x 31.8cm Exh: Annandale Galleries, Sydney Bernard Jacobson, London 4. Variation I (Paros with Moon) 1966/7 Gouache and ink over etched paper Signed, inscribed and dated Nicholson variation 1 (Paros with Moon) on the verso 13.3 x 26.3cm 5. Azetaio (Variation on a theme) 1966 Gouche and ink over etched paper, on prepared paper Signed, dated, and titled verso; signed, titled and dated on back of masonite panel 22.2 x 18.5cm (panel size) Prov: Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York Miriam Gantz Field 6. Chapel in Greece 1967 Pencil and oil wash on paper, on prepared backboard Signed, titled and dated verso; signed, titled and dated on backing board 43.8 x 61cm Prov: Waddington Galleries, London 7. Four Forms 1970 Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 51 x 37.5cm Prov: Annandale Galleries, Sydney Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland 8. Mirror 1971 Pencil and oil wash on reverse of etched paper (Paros) Signed, titled and dated verso 34 x 37.5cm Prov: Private Collection, Ireland 9. Victorian Glass 1972 Ink, pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 41 x 30.7cm Exh: Galerie Bayeler, Basel 10. Untitled (Stoppered Vase and Goblet) 1972 Ink drawing with oil wash on paper Signed, dated and inscribed drawing verso 42 x 32.8cm 11. Two Forms 1972 Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 49.8 x 48.5cm Prov: Galerie Beyeler, Basel Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London 48

49 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page Earth and Moon 1972 Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 27.3 x 26.7cm Exh: Galerie Beyeler, Basel Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris Jacobson Howard, New York 13. Madingly Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 49.5 x 59.5cm Exh: Galerie Marwin Hoss, Paris Annandale Galleries, Sydney Bernard Jacobson, London 14. Lambousa Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 36.8 x 52.8cm Exh: Blum Helman, New York Bernard Jacobson, London 15. C.W. Gateway 1973 Pencil and gouache on paper Signed verso 48 x 56cm Prov: Mr and Mrs Henry Brandon Waddington Galleries, London Annandale Galleries, Sydney Exh: Tate Gallery, Ben Nicholson: Drawings, 1974, No.34 Ref: Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, 1993, No.375, illustrated 17. Two and One 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated on reverse of back board 40 x 8cm Exh: Waddington Galleries, London Blum Helman, New York Bernard Jacobson, London 18. March (Still Life, Maggiore) 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper, on prepared backboard Signed and titled verso, initialed and titled on reverse of backing board 62.9 x 76.2cm Prov: Waddington Galleries, London New Art Centre, London Commodity Finance Inc. Ref: Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, 1993, No.410, illustrated 19. Florentine, March 1979 Ink and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 28 x 14.5cm Exh: Waddington Galleries, London 20. Glass and Mountains Ink and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 63.1 x 40cm Exh: Waddington Galleries, Ben Nicholson: New Work, 1982, No Bocaccio 1975 Pencil and oil wash on paper Signed, titled and dated verso 75.1 x 55.2cm Prov: Waddington and Tooth Galleries, London Ref: Waddington and Tooth Galleries, Ben Nicholson: Recent Paintings on paper, 1978, No.3, illustrated 49

50 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 50 VICTOR PASMORE ( ) 1. Linear Development in Three Movements 1969 Oil and gravure on board Signed verso 41 x 41cm Prov: Coll. Martin, Milan Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Marlborough Fine Art, London 2. Projective Painting in White, Black and Umber 1969 Projective painting, oil and wood on board Signed, titled and inscribed VP 69/03 verso; signed, titled and inscribed VP 69/03 on backing board 40.5 x 40.5 x 7cm Exh: Galleria Lorenzelli, Victor Pasmore, 1970, No.28 Galleria Lorenzelli, 9 Maestri Della Pittura Contemporena, 1973 Prov: Ref: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.440, illustrated 3. Linear Construction 1969 Oil and gravure on board Signed on backing board 41 x 41cm Ref: Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.449, illustrated 4. Abstract in White, Black and Umber 1970 Projective painting, oil, wood on board Initialed verso 41 x 41 x 5.5cm Ref: Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.462, illustrated 5. Blue Image Relief, oil on plywood Signed and dated verso 41 x 41cm Prov: A Milanesi, Milan Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan 6. Linear Development in Two Movements 1971 Oil and gravure on board Signed lower right, signed verso 41 x 41cm Prov: Ref: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.473, illustrated 7. When the Star is Fixed 1972 Oil on board Signed lower right 41 x 41cm Exh: Marlborough Gallery, Rome, 1974, No.21 Ref: Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.517, illustrated 8. Immagine Incognita 1972 Oil and gravure on board Signed, titled and dated verso 40.5 x 40.5cm Prov: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Ragines Gallery, Rome Dott. G. Di Veroli, Rome Exh: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan, 1974, No.18 Ref: Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.564, illustrated 50

51 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page Abstract in White, Black and Umber 1972 Relief painting, oil, wood on board Initialed verso 41 x 41 x 5cm Exh: Marlborough Gallery, Zurich, 1973, No.19 Gentofte Radhus, Copenhagen, 1978 Ref: Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.513, illustrated 14. Linear Image 1976 Relief, oil and gravure on board 41 x 41cm Prov: Ref: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.620, illustrated 10. Linear Development (Brown) in Two Movements 1973 Oil and gravure on board Signed lower right 41 x 41cm Prov: Marlborough Gallery, Rome 11. Immagine Incognita 1974 Oil and gravure on board Signed, titled and dated verso 40.5 x 40.5cm Prov: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan 12. Linear Image 1975 Relief, oil and gravure on board Signed and dated lower right; signed and dated verso 40.5 x 40.5cm 13. Linear Image 1976 Relief, oil and gravure on board Signed in pencil verso 40.5 x 40.5cm Prov: Ref: Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Alan Bowness/Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, Thames and Hudson, 1980, No.619, illustrated 51

52 NichPass_text_New:Layout 1 10/3/08 13:12 Page 52 Austin/Desmond Fine Art Pied Bull Yard Great Russell Street UK - London WC1B 3BN (t) +44 (0) (f) +44 (0) (e) gallery@austindesmond.com (w) Mon Fri 10.30am 5.30pm Sat pm (during exhibitions only) IBSN? Exhibition curated by David Archer Catalogue photography by Colin Mills Introductory essay by William Packer Catalogue design by Peter Gladwin Printed by Creative Group London March/April 2008