A new painting has entered the collection. Its creator was a fascinating and eccentric artist with a refined taste for fine fabrics and costume.
June Black loved clothes and fashion, wrote about them and created new ways to think about them. In her journal writings the artist entered thoughts about materials and clothing, and, having become a notable ceramicist and artist, used costume to identify the pieces in her first solo exhibition in 1958, The Search for the Fabulous Idea; e.g. Costume to Simulate Audacity’ and ‘Mask to be Worn in the Face of Indifference.
In her second show the following year, The Intellectual Fashion Show, June continued to explore the idea of costume, writing a catalogue of short plays about each work in the show, and instructing the viewer how to approach the exhibition.
The Intellectual Fashion Show 2016 was based on June Black’s writings about costume, collated by her daughter, Sheridan Keith, with the costumes interpreted by creatives and contemporary artists.
The painting (above), now in the collection, is a portrait Dr D Landall, painted in 1957. On the back of the painting is this note:
Dr D Landall
composer and famous for his musical attempts to bring the Pitch of Joy to that of Despair (was left behind at the River of Memory).
20 guineas
J Black.
More reading: https://www.academia.edu/40495668/Janie_van_Woerden_MA_thesis
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