Welcome to Spring Term 2021! Another lockdown so another opportunity to really explore new artists, new skills and create new work.
I wanted to start this term with the artist Peter Blegvad. He created a series I was taken with called: 'Observed, Imagined, Remembered' and I thought since we are now often in the position of imagining and remembering this would be a great place to begin.
Born in 1951 in New York City. Blegvad created a name for himself as a musician, songwriter, cartoonist and writer. I first encountered his work in Atlas anthology III published by the Atlas Press. In this he discusses his Observed, Imagined, Remembered series of works as shown above.
Blegvad states: 'At work, I was often required to depict things that I could not, without recourse to a model, render 'realistically', but for which I could usually invent recognisable hieroglyphs (as a cartoon is a hieroglyph) by basing these on an eidetic approximation of the particular item which I could 'see' with that undissectible organ, the 'mind's eye. In my immaturity, I sometimes experienced a kind of vertigo when drawing, for a client, things purely imagined or remembered them to be.' (Brotchie A & Green M. 1985)
Blegvad also wrote a book (much later on) Imagine, Observe Remember - Here is an example page below
Blegvad : 'I wanted to be a poet and/or an artist, but I was very lazy (frightened of failure, I guess) and drank too much. I spent years in the Forty-second Street library planning a book about how to freeze time, and began an encyclopedia of everything in the world depicted thrice. That’s a project I’m still working on.' (Bruno F. 01/11/2009)
Why I find this work so interesting is that he created it out of not knowing how something looked and was interested in how things changed in your mind's eye after you had spent time away from it. There is a curiosity here and Blegvad has created many of these throughout his lifetime. The original images in the Atlas book were of Listz (the composer), Larynx, Loch Lomond and Louris.
Take a look at a couple of these here:
References
Heller S. (12/09/20) Design Observer, Imagine, Observe, Remember [Online] Available from: https://designobserver.com/feature/imagine-observe-remember/40364/ (Accessed 08/01/21)
Bruno F. (01/11/2009) The Believer, An Interview with Peter Blegvad [Onlne] Available from: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-peter-blegvad/ (Accessed 08/01/21)
Ed. Brotchie A & Green M. (1985) Atlas Anthology III. Atlas Press, London
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