Atomic Bohm

Earlier today, I managed to swing by Manchester Art Gallery for a wander around their latest exhibition, A World Observed 1940-2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm.

Admittedly, it took me a while to get down there. This, in fact, was my third attempt. I went to the preview last week, but I didn't get to pre-view a lot due to the distraction of free Peroni and some rather in-depth discussions about the architectural practicalities of the glass structure linking the old art gallery building to its modern sister. (I noticed some shattered high-up panes today, actually.) Next, I promised to go on the show's first day open to the public, then found myself sidetracked by a nice new pair of pumps.

Anyway, better late than never, I say, and I'm actually glad I went under my own steam. Less crowds harping on about depth of field (I imagine), plus it's big. HUGE! There's so much to see, it's almost overwhelming. I'm so pleased it's running until 30 August as it gives me plenty of time to revisit and perhaps concentrate on the bits I liked best, namely the street photography Bohm took up in the late 1950s, firstly on black and white film and later using Kodak colour. While I agree with Bohm's own assertion that she prefers B&W because of "the abstraction of tones", her early Kodak prints prove that saturated colour holds its own subtleties.


Various themes run through the show (curated, incidentally, by Dorothy's daughter, Monica Bohm-Duchen), with definite categorisation: from the lovely "human interest" shots (mostly unposed, in direct contrast to Bohm's original portraiture business on Market Street; more about that on the Dorothy Bohm in Manchester blog) to the rather less intriguing still lives and snaps of billboard models. The final section is a study of modern-day Manchester, but I think it might well be the collection of reflections, shadow play and trompe l'oeil murals that I give more attention to on my next visit.

Image: St-Jean-de-Luz, France, by Dorothy Bohm © Dorothy Bohm Archive

Cheerio-ho-ho for 2009!

Words & Fixtures is taking a short break for the holiday season, but would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone everywhere a fantastic festive foray.

To see you through the snow and baubles, here's a suitably Christmas-related picture; La Vierge et l'Enfant (Madonna and Child) by kitsch French artists Pierre et Gilles. (When we were stuck in Lyon last year waiting for the waters to subside, we found a really great little cafe where the barman took a shine to us and proudly showed off a portrait done of him and his husband by P et G. On another occasion, we stumbled across an establishment where everyone was absolutely ratted and screeching along to Edith Piaf. I like Lyon. Or Lyons.)


Anyway, this Pierre et Gilles installation - which features French actress Hafsia Herzi as Mary, decked out in a frock by Christian Lacroix, and which could probably be construed as virgin (sorry) on the inappropriate or controversial - was on show earlier this year in l'Eglise St Eustache in Paris. Me and the Exquisite Corpse gang mentioned earlier this week used to walk past this Chatelet church (it's the one with the giant head and hand sculpture outside) to get to Le Chat Noir, complete with a traditional zinc horseshoe bar and Turkish toilet for true French authenticity, then later in the evening ran back again to catch the last RER home.

Pierre et Gilles, La Vierge et l’Enfant, 2008-2009. Modèles : Hafsia Herzi et Loric, Robe : Christian Lacroix. Tirage pigment sur toile, 200 x 134 cm. Coproduction Centre national des arts plastiques et les artistes. Courtesy galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.

Librarian chic all sewn up

I'm quite a fan of voluminous handbags (as a cyclist, writer and professional tight-arse, I have various lights, locks, waterproofs, gloves, spare shoes and socks, notebooks, pens, elastic bands and packed lunch boxes to lug about wherever I go).

These literary creations, however, stretch the concept of a bag with volume just that little bit further. If you want to show your affiliation to a particular author while also making a fashion statement, this is your chance to get the intellectual look covered. Each piece in this limited-edition collection of clutches and minaudières (called, jauntily, "You can't judge a book by its cover") is individually designed and crafted by Paris-based Olympia Le-Tan.

They're not available until January, so just miss the Christmas list, but if you've got a bit of cash (well, $1,600) to splash, you can book (groan) your place on the reserve list at Browns or Colette now. The lovely Tilda Swinton and Chloe Sevigny have (Chloe has apparently ordered Moby Dick)...

I found out about the tome totes from my librarian pal's blog, where she links to more pics (including of Mademoiselle Le-Tan herself) on the fabulously divergent We Love You So site linking to the work of Spike Jonze, director of Where The Wild Things Are, which, coincidentally, is out today.

A few little words about art

One of my Manchester Literature Festival chums has been busily adding to the Southbank Centre's GPS Global Poetry System project (to which we'll return at a later date), and her latest posting is most interesting to an arty-farty Francophile word lover like myself.


It's about an installation by the artist Ben Vautier, known simply as Ben, who lives in Nice en la belle France. It says "Il faut se mefier des mots", which means "beware of words". Well, I say.

So I've been doing a little wider reading on Monsieur Ben, who seems quite an interesting chap. There's a bit here on his life and work (nice ski goggles, Monsieur. My friend Julian has some suspiciously similar). I've learnt that some of his sculptures are not unlike Jean Tinguely's machines, an exhibition of which is on at Tate Liverpool right now and runs until 10 January: Joyous Machines: Michael Tandy and Jean Tinguely.

(When I first heard about this show, BTW, I got all excited because I thought it had something to do with the director of The Science Of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and, I just learnt, the first episode of The Flight Of The Conchords, although I was just saying yesterday how I'm not really into that, if I'm totally honest. Too much singing. Anyway, I was wrong, obviously. That's Michel Gondry. Obviously.)

So back to Ben, and you see a lot of cartes postales of his phrases on sale in trendy shops in Paris. They always remind me of Magritte's Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe, from The Treachery Of Images series (La Trahison Des Images 1928–29). Just thought I'd share that.

Suivez-moi en Twitter!

French speakers can now join the Twittering masses, the lucky people. According to the Twitter blog, more and more folk outside the States are Twittering (no way), so the organisation has been busy developing the social media resource in alternative languages to English. After introducing Japanese, and then, last month, Spanish, Twitter is now available in French, thus benefitting almost 30 Francophone countries (wow, so many?).

My favourite thing to come out of all this? The French word for Twitterers is "les twitteurs". Magnifique!


If you can read French, bob over to the Twitter blog post Nouvelle saveur: Twitter en Francais! for more.

Well red (or perhaps not...)

Sixty-four per cent of Spar shoppers are flummoxed by all that gubbins on wine labels. Fact.

Helpfully, 'so near so...' has found a way to get round this: printing labels in local dialect. Because obviously that's the solution. Not getting rid of all those airy fairy phrases or anything - 'plummy undertones', 'raspberry notes', 'goes well with curry dishes' - you know, that kind of thing. No, what Joe Public really needs is a description written in a really broad, really fake accent, targeted at the specific geographical area in which JP happens to live. Cor lummy bloimey, guvnor! Fuckh a duckh, mate! Hoots, mon!

(And what makes me really chortle is that they have only labelled up one wine: Merlot. Because that one particularly, out of all the wines in the whole of France - nay, the whole of the world - is the one that nobody's ever tasted before. FFS.)

Who does the work on this stuff? Did they misunderstand the brief about making the language easier to understand, but somehow the client thought it was great, cos it's, like, ironic or something? More to the point, are they looking for copywriters?

Keep on trucking

Alphabet Truck is the photographic work of Eric Tabuchi. He has done plenty more interesting stuff, including Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations, French Countryside Skateparks and Road Signs. See here. I used to have a postcard of one of his images, I now realise, but it fell down the back of the fireplace, dammit.

I've put this up for your delectation, because words are made up of letters so by default Words & Fixtures likes letters as well as words.


(Thanks to @MancLibraries, BTW, for flagging this up on Twitter.)