Fascinating putting it together. Three different perspectives on producing secret art.
Thanks to David Bailey, Pete Fowler and Maggi Hambling for sparing their time. And to Sue at the RCA for helping to make it all happen.
I thought I'd share a few more photos of Maggi and Pete taken by the ace Katja Medic.
And here are a few bits that didn't quite make it into the article...
Maggi Hambling on being an art student in 1960s London: "Telling people you're a painter can be so tedious. I used to say I was swimming pool attendant at Tooting Bec lido."
Pete Fowler on the lightbulb full of water on his studio ceiling: "I think I'm going to keep it!"
Finally, from Bailey, the Lennon/McCartney postcard:
PS If you're going to the show, look out for the Alys card below. By chance, one of this year's submissions is a torn half of the card given out at Alys's Tate exhibition.
At the end of the exhibition, cards will be sold off for £45 each. Post purchase buyers find out who made their cards.
Photo of the RCA Secret from 2011
Of late, I've been reading Jeremy Cooper's Artists' Postcards, an excellent compendium of how the postcard has been used by different artists since 1900. It's quite a book. And I bet more than a few RCA artists refer to it as they create their cards for 2013.
At a pace, Cooper takes you through the canon(?) of postcard art: René Magritte's postcard magazines, Gilbert & George's Post Card Sculptures, Paul Morton's Thatcher Therapy (a dot-to-dot postcard suggesting you draw a pencil mesh over a photo of the ex-PM), Joseph Beuys' wooden postcards, Rachel Whiteread's hole-punched cards...
Two cards stood out, though. It's always the personal connections ultimately, isn't it?
The first, a 1908 Donald McGill postcard titled "In the Asylum". The image shows a red-nosed man, grinning from behind the bars of a cell door.
Above him is a sign:
CAUSE: Picture-postcard collecting
CONDITION: Up the pole
REMARKS: Thinks he's a Gibson Girl
How cruel Donald!? How cruel.
The second card was made by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs. I first came across Alÿs when a friend showed me this film of him painting a line in the middle of a road in Panama. I love it.
The card caught my eye, not just because it was made by Alÿs but because of the contrast with a Rough Sea postcard I bought recently.
The Rough Sea series was one of the most popular in Edwardian Britain. Published by Tuck's, some say it tapped into Britain's island psyche, others that the cards have a deep erotic charge.
While I really like Rough Sea cards, I resist collecting them. One thing I have learnt is that to avoid ending up in McGill's collecting asylum you have to set some limits.
Rather than buying it for the image, I bought it to add to my collection of old postcard messages. Specifically, I bought it to add to a new category of cards I've noticed: empty postcards, postcards without written messages.
Increasingly, I'm coming to think of them as secret postcards.
RCA Secret opens on Thursday 14 March at the Dyson Building in Battersea, London. The sale takes place on Saturday 23 March. If you're going, good luck!
