As the West focuses ever more intently on doing business with rising superpower China, attention is also turning to Chinese art. It would be unfair to call China ‘emerging’ artists, since the nation’s practitioners have been creating highly sophisticated art for a lot longer than Europe.

But it must be admitted that when we think of British art, images by – or possibly of – Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin will probably spring to mind, while when asked to think of Chinese art, our mind’s eye will conjure up a Ming vase. In fact, China has been busy creating contemporary art for a several decades, although it is only in the past ten years that Europe and the US has started to focus on such works.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly fa la la la la la la la…… What makes you feel Christmassy? Is it the transformation of familiar space into a winter wonderland? Decorating the tree, putting up lights, hanging a wreath, making paper chains – these are the rituals of Christmas, the traditions that centre us down the years. The whole family or office or class participates in making over their surroundings, bonding as they do. Then there’s the food. To you, Christmas might taste of mince pies and turkey. It might smell like pine. It could feel like an itchy jumper. Christmas is a familiar feast for the senses.

But the sensual worldof a 21^st century Christmas is a rather new invention. What told the Jacobeans or the Georgians that it was the most wonderful time of the year? What were their traditions? Neon reindeer and the X Factor single didn’t feature. A seasonal show at the Geffrye Museum of the Home celebrates British Christmas traditions in Christmas Past: 400 Years of Seasonal Traditions in English Homes. The museum’s eleven period rooms are painstakingly decorated and marvellously evoke long gone Christmas aesthetics.

One room shows a feast in the hall of middle class London family in 1630.  The table’s set with the second course, comprising sweet and savoury foods. Sugar was an expensive commodity in the 17^th century, so the family might have looked forward to this meal all year. Some sweets were made to look like boiled eggs, bacon and walnuts instead. You can also see crystallized fruit and a silvery chequerboard of leach, a milk jelly sweet not unlike Turkish Delight. Ancient pagan traditions still informed many of the major Christmas celebrations at this time. For example, Britons used to celebrate the end of Christmas at Twelfth Night with elaborate games and role-reversal. Cooks would prepare a Twelfth Night cake containing a bean and a pea. The lucky man and woman who discovered the hidden prizes became the King and Queen for the night, served by the other revellers.

The 1695 room looks rather different. Christmas was banned by the Puritans between 1644-60 and many ancient customs had fallen out of favour. Celebrants munched anchovies and olives and drank punch as they listened to flute music. One pagan symbol of eternal life had survived the Puritans – decorating with evergreen branches.  By 1745, Christmas was still an austere affair. People drank cordial, received guests and went to church instead of holding raucous feasts. Christmas presents became popular during this time, supplanting the earlier practice of giving alms to the poor. A 1790s parlour is also on display, but with no turkey and stuffing in sight. The traditional Christmas meal of this period was roast beef served alongside plum pudding.

In the 1830 room, you can tell that the Victorian era saw a revival of the old customs. For example, there’s a pack of Twelfth Night cards. Celebrants picked a card at random and played the character on it, turning the role-reversal into a game similar to today’s charades. The Twelfth Night cake has become an elaborate Christmas cake, decorated with a sparkling crown and plaster of Paris.

Then you come to the 1870 room, which the viewer recognizes immediately. Many of our modern-day Christmas traditions come from the Victorian era. Although Britons had always decorated with evergreen, it took Queen Victoria’s German husband to popularize Christmas trees. Christmas cards are often on display, written in beautiful copperplate handwriting. Parents used to send them out as proof of their children’s penmanship, not unlike today’s parents displaying their charming offspring in card form. It would take another thirty years for the Dutch tradition of leaving out stockings to reach Britain by way of America.

Christmas Past is a fabulously nostalgic exhibition. As we bustle into the next few days of chocolate and Downton Abbey, it’s interesting to look back on how much we’ve changed. Merry Christmas from blur. And if you want a historically aware piece of artwork, you could be choosing pitches before Twelfth Night if you brief the Exchange.

Baby, it’s cold outside. For centuries, the harsh beauty of wintry weather has inspired artists. Here are our favourite winter artworks.

Avalanche in the Grisons Here, Turner shows us the awesome power of winter. Tonnes of snow cascade down the mountain, ripping up trees and smashing boulders. The pine trees give us some idea of the scale of the avalanche. Turner is well known for his depictions of the sublime, extreme forces of nature, which I explained earlier. The snow is moving at such a steep angle that it looks as if it’s coming directly out of the sky, about to crush the viewer. A stimulating antidote to twee winter scenes.

Piss Flowers When it snowed, Helen Chadwick didn’t roll snowballs or build snowmen. She made sculptures. Chadwick urinated into deep snow and made casts of the melted spaces. It’s a rather disgusting methodology, immediately bodily. But the resulting forms are abstract and beautiful, like alien fungi or underwater growths. Even if you don’t how they were made they’re recognizably organic. A great example of how art can make the familiar strange.

Blotter I’ve been a fan of Peter Doig ever since his 2008 exhibition at the Tate Modern. Doig is fascinated by reflections in water and ice. This painting shows a typical Canadian winter scene. See more here. But Doig puts his own unsettling twist on the composition. Off-kilter horizontal lines dominate the composition, with clashing patterns in between. There’s no easy place for the eye to ‘rest.’ The horizon is also unusually low, forcing our attention on the lake. Although the boy appears to be standing on the lake, ripples run out underneath him. Is the ice solid? Is the boy about to fall through, or could he be walking on water? Doig’s paintings toe the line between fantasy and realism, so anything is possible.

Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch Clearly, Rev. Walker takes skating very seriously. No slipping or flailing for him. He skims along in perfect balance, arms folded in, looking off into the distance. The indistinct wilderness in the background emphasizes the precision of his clothes and movement. Henry Raeburn transforms the fun and comical act of skating into a controlled meditative exercise. Guardian critic Jonathan Jones wrote that this reverend represents the Scottish Enlightenment, the triumph of Protestant reason over Catholic superstition.

Lavacourt Under Snow What colour is snow? You’d probably say white. But in this painting, Monet shows us how colourful snow can be. Amazingly, there’s no pure black or white here. Instead, Monet uses blues and pinks and greens to pull out the different tones and shapes of a country snowscape. His impression of the frozen Seine, the bleak sky and shuttered cottages make the viewer feel cold over a hundred years later.

Do you need seasonally-inspired artwork? You can have a piece before springtime when you Brief the Exchange.

Swoon has captured our imagination with her decaying street art. She’s not a graffiti artist, rather she prints her works on paper before hand-painting them and pasting them onto walls. The pieces decay after a while, becoming ragged and faded. Eventually they disappear completely. Right now, her installation ‘Murmuration’ is on display at Black Rat Projects in Shoreditch. We’d encourage you to go.

Swoon, real name Caledonia Dance Curry, is worlds away from more traditional street artists like Banksy. There’s something macho about Banksy’s graffiti work. He uses stencils to quickly spray cheeky or shocking images onto walls and bridges, often touching on political themes. Rats often appear in his work, and he filled his exhibition in Notting Hill with over 100 live ones. We’re Banksy fans, but we have to admit his work his impactful rather than subtle.

By contrast, Swoon draws ordinary people, often women and children. The images are large-scale reproductions of her drawings with the pencil lines clearly visible. They retain that hand-drawn feel, meaning they feel intimate despite their size. Swoon also hand-paints each image, after printing them using a linoleum block. You can watch a video of Swoon putting up a piece and explaining her methodology here.

It’s clear that Swoon puts a lot of thought into her images. The woman she pastes up in the video is her vision of Thalassa, an ancient Greek water goddess. Swoon came up with the drawing in New Orleans, where she worked after Hurricane Katrina. She sketched her friend Naima, a performer in a show called Hurricane Season. The original print was over 3m and formed part of an installation at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

We often associate street art with political statements. And some of Murmuration’s images like this one could be interpreted as political. It shows a cut-out of a fat and evil-looking man towering over a woman adjusting her headscarf. The woman’s dress shows the corrugated rooftops typical of a refugee camp. Other drawings could be inspired by Swoon’s time living and working in post-earthquake Haiti. She doesn’t belabour the point though, allowing the viewer to reach his or her own decision.

So who is Swoon? Her real name is Caledonia Dance Curry and she grew up in Florida. Like countless aspiring artists she was drawn to Brooklyn, where she fell in with other hippie types. She wandered the streets and papered the walls before becoming interested in working collectively to tackle bigger projects. Her band of helpers is now known as the Toyshop Collective. They’ve built houses from local materials in Haiti and New Orleans. More famously, they created performance art by sailing down the Mississippi and up the Venetian Grand Canal in ragtag collections of handmade boats.

Swoon is pushing the boundaries of street art. Do you need a groundbreaking piece of art? Let our artists help – brief the Exchange.

Silvio Berlusconi resigned this month, ending a turbulent political career marred by scandal and outlandish antics. He was best known for his ‘bunga-bunga’ parties and cannibalization of the Italian economy, though he remained a prominent political figure for 17 years. We’d like to mark the occasion of his resignation with four pieces of Berlusconi-related art.

Artist Gianni Motti attracted attention in 2006 when he displayed a bar of soap ostensibly made from Berlusconi’s own body fat. Motti claimed he obtained the fat from a plastic surgery clinic in Ticino, Switzerland where Berlusconi received liposuction. Berlusconi’s penchant for plastic surgery is well documented, so it’s not entirely implausible. The work was named Clean Hands after a 1990’s campaign to eliminate political corruption in Italy. Many politicians were jailed and some parties fell out of existence altogether. Berlusconi entered the world of politics during this period, quite possibly to avoid investigations of corruption in his own businesses. Ironically, this most corrupt of politicians rose to power at a time when the public were highly focused on ending corruption. The soap’s an interesting political comment, whether or not it’s 100% Organic Silvio.

Berlusconi’s enthusiasm for plastic surgery apparently extends to classical works of art. In 2010, Berlusconi stirred up controversy in the art world when he ordered a replacement penis for a Roman statue of Mars. The 1,835-year-old statue of Mars and Venus was damaged at some point, leaving Venus without a hand and Mars without a member. It was on loan to the Prime Minister’s office from the Baths of Diocletian Museum in Rome. Berlusconi had the missing parts re-carved and attached with magnets, at a cost of £60,000 to the Italian taxpayer. The international press gleefully reported the incident.

One of the earlier Berlusconi sex scandals involved a young TV presenter and former topless model called Mara Carfagna. Berlusconi told her on TV that he’d marry her if he weren’t married already, and was forced to publicly apologize to his then wife. He then appointed Carfagna to his Cabinet and asked her to stand in for his estranged ex-wife at the G8 conference. In response to this very Italian drama, artist Filippo Panseca created an oil painting in the style of the Old Masters. It shows Berlusconi and Carfagna as winged nude angels, with Berlusconi’s modesty protected by a drifting scarf. He’s about to whisper in her ear while she keeps her eyes on the prize.

Berlusconi doesn’t just inspire art, he creates it. Free of the burden of leadership he recently released an album called ‘True Love.’ The former cruise-ship singer has serenaded many lucky world leaders, although his voice isn’t heard in the new album. Mariano Apicella sings 11 songs written by Berlusconi during his time in office and you can listen to some samples here. Perhaps Berlusconi’s real talent lies in music rather than politics. We envision him representing Italy in 2012.

Do you want a piece of political art? Our artists can create anything you like – including a nude portrait of you and your mistress. Brief the Exchange.

Earlier, we wrote about Egyptian protest design and now it’s time for China. Artist Ai Weiwei has mobilized his supporters to strip naked to show their opposition to the government’s ongoing vendetta against him.

Ai is an internationally renowned artist, famous for works like Sunflower Seeds where he filled Tate’s Turbine Hall with 100 million ceramic replicas of sunflower seeds. He also openly criticises the Chinese government’s approach to human rights and democracy, unusual in a tightly censored country. As an example, he investigated government corruption in places like Sichuan, where 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed in the 2008 earthquake. Ai blamed corrupt local officials who cut corners on construction for the deaths of thousands of children. This didn’t go down well with the government.

Chinese authorities are now clamping down on Ai, trying to find a reason to jail the artist. They detained him for 3 months this spring and eventually accused him of economic crimes. He was ordered to pay £1.5 million in overdue tax but his persecutors were flummoxed when supporters sent in at least one-third of that. So last week they accused him of spreading pornography with works like One Tiger, Eight Breasts, which shows four nude women giggling around a nude Ai.

The charge of pornography is nonsensical in a few ways. Ai is hardly a pinup, and the women in the photo are equally ordinary looking. The photo isn’t sexually charged. Chinese artists have been photographing themselves nude for years with not a whisper from the government. Real pornography is also widely available online in China. In Ai’s words, “If they see nudity as pornography, then China is still in the Qing dynasty.” It’s quite clear to the Chinese public that the government is pursuing a vendetta against Ai, and they’re hitting back online.

Ai’s supporters are tweeting nude photos of themselves in a bid to show the government that nudity is not pornography. The photos have been collected on a photo blog here, with the tagline “Listen, Chinese Government. Nudity is not Pornography.” The Huffington Post has a good selection. The fans are getting creative. Some have covered their parts with pictures of Ai or stuffed animals while another posed like Michelangelo’s David. One man put up several pictures of himself smoking a cigar in his bath. Look elsewhere for titillation because these photos are defiantly unsexy. In their saggy glory, China’s citizens present an eloquent argument that nudity is not pornography.

We sincerely hope Ai’s supporters can tweet him to freedom. And if you want some nakedly political art, brief the Exchange.

Painting blur, that is. The epic retrospective of his work at the Tate Modern features Richter’s lifelong love affair with paint, and affinity for its manipulation. Even as Tacita Dean mourns the loss of film, Richter laughs in the face of those who proclaim paint a dead medium. He’s done a lot of interesting politically motivated work on subjects like the Baader-Meinhof group and Germany’s Nazi past. But for me, at least, the variety of his painterly tricks was the best part.

Consider this stunner, Negroes. Richter projected a found photograph of a Sudanese tribe onto canvas in order to perfectly replicate it. He then dragged a dry brush across the wet paint to create a blurred effect, one of his stylistic signatures. Paradoxically, the blur suggests hyper-realistic movement while simultaneously emphasizing the physical nature of paint.

Richter’s very well known for abstract works like this, Abstract Painting. He uses a squeegee to push the paint around the canvas and revealing hidden layers of paint. It’s easy to take a look at this paltry reproduction and proclaim “bah! I could do that.” But when you behold it in its full glory it’s surprisingly affecting. Richter masterfully plays with scale and layering here, so you can’t tell which layers are on top and which are peeking out. You can only create this kind of image using paint, and Richter reminds us that it’s a living, breathing medium.

In Lilies Richter quite literally takes a swipe at cliché. Flowers are a centuries-old symbol of mortality and decay, particularly the traditionally funereal lily. Richter originally painted the flowers with photorealistic precision, but found the resulting image “unbearable,” and blurred it into ghostliness. As a result, the lilies are a more effective memento mori.

A surreal, claustrophobic Seascape. Richter cut the sky out of two photos of the sea before turning one upside down and pasting it above the other. He then painted the photographs in the familiar blurry/crisp style. This is a good example of his contemporary engagements with Europe’s great painting traditions. Seascapes are traditional material for painters, but Richter introduces the more recent technique of collage. Interestingly, although this work dates from 1970, it reminds us of today’s Photoshopped images.

Many reviewers have marvelled at Richter’s range. This small-scale intimate portrait of his wife forms a strong contrast to the big abstract canvases. Reader is a tribute to Vermeer’s iconic painting. Richter depicts light like the Dutch genius but brings the subject into the 20^th century by showing her reading a news magazine rather than an enigmatic letter.

I’d love to talk about all the exciting paintings in the exhibition, but we’d be here all day. Go see it, if you can. And if you want a squeegeed abstract piece, brief the Exchange.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that everyone who has ever had a job interview will always remember THAT question.  And by this I mean the one that induces the sweating/stuttering/speechlessness resulting from the thought, ‘I really have no idea how to answer this’.

For me, this question was, ‘If you could hire any brand to represent you, which would it be and why?’ and my answer constituted a great deal of mumbling, several ‘ums’ and a fair few ‘ahhs’, before I came to the swift realisation that I would have to settle with a defeated smile and an attempt at some form of light-hearted humour.

If I were to be asked the question again now of course I would reply – with an air of smug self-satisfaction – that the brand would be Absolut Vodka (and no, it’s not because I am a university student and have a particular fondness for the product…)  

Why?

Absolut is…CREATIVE

As the tagline states, ‘It all starts with an Absolut Blank’ – but it is clear that Absolut’s newest marketing campaign did not stay that way for long.  Launched in July 2011, and comprising of 18 artist collaborations from a variety of different specialities including drawing, painting, print-making, film-making, sculpting and digital art, the Absolut Blank campaign seeks to ‘inspire artists all over the world by turning their iconic bottle into a blank canvas to be filled with creativity’.  Among the artworks are collage imagery by Mario Wagner, light installations by UVA, colourful graphic design by Aesthetic Apparatus, paintings by Dave Kinsey and mural work by Good Wives and Warriors.  Adam Boita, Marketing Manager at Pernod Ricard UK stated, ‘We brought together artist collaborators from a variety of disciplines and watched the journey from pure white canvas to exceptional pieces of art. The result depicts how artists and creativity are inspired through Absolut’. Watch the TV advert here.

Absolut is…INNOVATIVE

Last week, the company launched its free Absolut Blank app for iPhone 3GS, 4 and iPad2.  Using the camera and microphone, the app creates images and sounds inspired by the content that it has been fed with by the user – to produce an evolving piece of art.  The creation can then be uploaded to the Absolut Blank App Gallery and shared with friends on Facebook.  As Mark Hamilton, Global Marketing Director at Absolut, asserted, ‘The Absolut Blank app is both highly innovative and very addictive, it really changes your surroundings’. Want to see for yourself? Download it here and let us know what you think!

Absolut is…COMMITTED

This is not the first time Absolut has turned to artists when it comes to marketing campaigns. The company has a long history of dedication to contemporary art, with Andy Warhol (a teetotaller, he allegedly used Absolut as cologne!) being one of the first artists to paint for the brand in 1985.  According to Anna Malmhake, Vice President of Global Marketing, ‘It’s not about temporarily sponsoring something for one year, it’s 30 years of history’.  And, as a way of demonstrating this long-term commitment to creativity, the Absolut Art Award has been in existence since 2009.  Malmhake described the annual €30,000 prize as a small way for Absolut Vodka to show their gratitude to the world of contemporary art, presented to ‘an artist that we think is doing something really new and exciting and pushing the boundaries’.

It is at this point, of course, that I’m given a pat on the back by my interviewer for giving an excellent answer to such a tricky question.  Either that or I’m showed to the door and sent in the direction of Stockholm, the location of Absolut’s head office…

Looking for original artwork for your latest campaign like Absolut?  Submit a brief to the Creative Services Exchange today!

In a world that seems increasingly beset by gloom, doom, and general darkness the work of Nick Cave stands out with it’s bright colouring and distinctive shapes.

Nick Cave’s first Soundsuit was created from twigs, but now they’re made from pretty much anything that he thinks will work including dyed human hair, sisal, plastic buttons, beads and feathers. Each suit is a riot of form and colour, as you’d expect from someone who was  the Chair of the Fashion School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cave is predominantly a performance artist, each Soundsuit is designed to fit him and he trained as a dancer. The Soundsuits are visually compelling when they are in repose, as Cave sometimes exhibits them. But it is when they have an inhabitant that they come alive. The movements of the wearing are exaggerated by the suit, resulting in a cacophony of of expression. The wearers view is restricted by the construction of the suit, so they must rely on it and the viewer to interpret their gestures.

This symbiosis of putting on anothers skin can be interpreted in many ways, not least because Cave is both black and gay. But the aspect of putting on anothers skin suggests that you are unhappy in your own, but there is no darkness in Cave’s work. Each suit is a riot of colour and speaks on an almost animal nature to us, each person will interpret it differently but for each I suspect that it will hark back to a less civlised time in their life. Like in Where the Wild Things Are, in which the wild things look like the inspiration for a Soundsuit, Cave’s art harks back to a time before rules, before you grew old, before you were tied down by the constraints of modern life. A time of joy when you were able to dance without caring.

Nick Cave currently has two shows on in New York at the The Jack Shainman Gallery and at the Mary Boone Gallery.

Need original artwork for your campaign? Why not submit a brief on the Creative Services Exchange.

Museums have been developing new ways to make exploring exhibitions more interactive, educational and collaborative.  Sure, we’ve all used headsets to listen to audio guides, but now, with smartphones and the gamification of social media, museums are getting more involved.  The modern museum experience extends to gaming, augmented reality, social media and even a meet-up service for visitors.

Gamification

Do you ever skip the permanent collection at museums and go straight to the most recent exhibition?  Well, now there’s a way to spice up the experience of visiting the permanent collection.  The Tate Modern launched Tate Trumps, an iPhone app that turns a visit to the permanent collection into a game.  Visitors are invited to form teams and decide if they want to view the gallery as different ‘players’: Battle mode, Mood mode or Collector mode.  Each ‘mode’ encourages viewers to respond or interact with the artworks in a different way.  The players choose artworks that they believe will bring them victory in their ‘mode’.  They then meet to play the game to discover who uncovered the best examples from the collection.

Educational

The The Museum of Modern Art’s app helps users with their entire experience of visiting the museum – from planning to finding a specific work of art.  Visiters can learn about current exhibitions, browse works, take a “multimedia tour” and read biographies about specific artists or information about works.  Users can take photos of artwork to share with friends.

Making artwork social

The American Museum of Natural History launched an app that allows users to share their experiences through social media.  Users can also share insight and photos with other dinosaur lovers who have visited the museum.

There are many more museum apps out there – in fact, it would be difficult to find a museum that doesn’t offer some sort of multimedia experience.  These apps are engaging with a younger audience and are encouraging those of us who may get bored in museums to look at artwork in a different way.

Need original artwork for your next campaign?  Submit a brief and get started today!