More than an artist, Duggie Fields has been an Art Movement over the past 5 decades. His paintings, films, animation, photography, music, and design, have been at the pioneering edge of British Art and Culture. And he has collaborated with the likes of Ken Russell, Stanley Kubrick, Derek Jarman, and Andrew Logan.
In the 1990s, Mr Fields devised a new Philosophy of Art - MAXIMALism, which he described as “minimalism with a plus, plus, plus” and “the individual use to create chaos out of order and vice versa”. As Mr Fields developed his MAXIMAList Art Works, he produced a series of short art films and music videos. This is one of those many gems, THE BIG RIDDLE from 1993, written by Fields, with music co-written with Howard Bernstein, and directed by Mark Le Bon.
Glitterbug was Derek Jarman’s final film, compiled from the many hours of Super 8 footage he had shot throughout his life. Originally made in 1994 for the BBC’s Arena. arts strand, Glitterbug is a visual journal that ties together aspects of Jarman’s life from the 1970s to 1990s.
The film opens with the artist awakened by the memory of dreams, of lovers, of friends, of place - Jarman’s lofts on Bankside, Upper Ground, the Thames River; of self, shaving, washing, breakfasting - those small rituals that prepare the day, the structuring of artifice and order. The world outside, My Tea Shop, the day-time existence, Jarman’s curiosity for the world around him. Then at night another world, we see preparation for Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, returning to day, a garden party, is this Andrew Logan singing as Little Nell Campbell dances? Duggie Fields watches, Jarman films.
The dreamer sleeps, travels to the country, Van Gogh fields, standing stones, the memory of place, absence of others, a white-washed cottage room, the creation of art, the structuring of order.
The dreamer awake, and we are now watching Jarman at work, Sebastiane, the sea flecked gold, the actors at play, legs entwined. An office, an apartment, ‘phone calls, then filming the artist Duggie Fields, his designs, his face, a prelude to Jubilee, a young flame-haired Toyah Willcox, The Sex Pistols, Jordan and a dress rehearsal for what will become The Last of England, as she pirouettes around a burning Union Jack, Adam Ant, hair-cutting, the Silver Jubilee.
Jarman is showing us the sketches for preparation, the themes he returned to throughout his life. Rome, ritual, the research for Caravaggio, punk, the art of mirrors, The Slits, William Burroughs, Gensis P. Orridge, Throbbing Gristle, Jarman’s fascinations and obsessions, his idols and co-conspirators. The ritual of sharing tea, sharing cigarettes, a shared communion, youthful faces, sun flecked, smiling in the sun, a future ahead, too often cut short by the frost, this the last summer they danced on the rooftop, ‘Here I am, here are my secrets,’ he is saying, as we plunder through his film diaries, Super 8 scrapbook, glittering trinket chest, memory is what makes us, what sometimes betrays us, what gives us the love we have to share, returning to the Thames, the friends, the lovers, those living, those dead.
Glitterbug Derek Jarman’s Super 8 films, with Andrew Logan, Duggie Fields, Tilda Swinton, Michael Clark, Adam Ant, Toyah Willcox, William Burroughs and Genesis P. Orridge. Music by Brian Eno, specially commissioned for this film.
In his essential book of collected rock music essays and profiles, The Dark Stuff, writer Nick Kent recounts how famed psychiatrist, R. D. Laing watched an interview tape of Pink Floyd’s genius and drug-addled leader, Syd Barrett and claimed the singer was incurable. Not long after, Kent saw the evidence for himself:
Less than five years earlier, I’d stood transfixed, watching [Syd] in all his retina scorching, dandified splendor as he’d performed with his group the Pink Floyd, silently praying that one day I might be just like him. Now, as he stood before me with his haunted eyes and fractured countenance, I was having second thoughts. I asked him about his current musical project (a short-lived trio called Stars…) as his eyes burned a hole through one of the four walls surrounding us with a stare so ominous it could strip the paint off the bonnet of a brand new car. ‘I had eggs and bacon for breakfast,’ he then intoned solemnly, as if reciting a distantly remembered mantra. I repeated my original question. ‘I’m sorry! I don’t speak French,’ he finally replied.
Perhaps Barrett just wanted to avoid the dandified Kent. Then again, when Kent “rubbed up against the likes of Syd Barrett” he astutley realized:
...these were people who’d gotten what they actually wanted, only to find out it was the last thing on earth they actually needed…
This isn’t to dismiss Barrett’s immense talent or achievements - for one, he took an average band and turned them into something quite incredible. And his importance was such that when he left, his bandmates went on to make music inspired by his absence.
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story was originally screened in 2001, as part of the BBC’s Omnibus strand as Syd Barrett - Crazy Diamond. The documentary gives a fascinating portrait of Barrett’s brilliant rise and tragic fall through a drug-induced breakdown. Contributions come from Roger Waters, Nick Mason, David Gilmour, artist Duggie Fields (who describes sharing an apartment with the Crazy Diamond), Robyn Hitchcock, and, of course, archive of Syd Barrett - who, incidentally, watched the doc, when it was first broadcast and enjoyed seeing the archive, though found the music “too loud”.
Duggie Fields is one Britain’s best and most influential artists, whose work hangs in galleries across the world and has influenced art, design, fashion, music, film, and now photography. Over the past few years, Mr Fields has been using his mobile phone to photograph and document the well-traveled streets and over-looked locations around his home in Earls Court. Now, he has collected these beautiful poetic moments together in a book called Just Around the Corner. Dangerous Minds contacted Mr Fields to ask him how the project started?
‘The photographs started a few years back once I got my first mobile phone that had a good camera and didn’t have to self-consciously think about taking a camera out…The phone was just always with me…So the frequency of taking photographs almost daily became a natural occurrence with no plan or scheme as to what…Like a diary of images, starting just around the corner in the area I live in and have lived in for over 40 years, and in which I constantly find things I haven’t noticed before, and still can find beautiful.’
Where did the title Just Around The Corner come from?
‘The title came because it was the description of where the first “Facebooked” were….I started putting them on Facebook as it is easy to do and easier to put there than my website. Soon they started getting followers ‘Liking’ them from all over, which encouraged me to put them together eventually for the book whose title was obvious.’
What inspires you and are there certain themes you find yourself returning to?
‘Themes started with the local architecture combined with the gardens, trees, plants of my immediate neighborhood but then spread to corners across London. Really just everywhere I happened to be going, from parks, to street-markets to car-boot sales. Varying also with the seasons from spring to summer to the snow. They have influenced my painting and are in turn influenced by them. Now from just around the corner they echo organically further in the digital world.’
First look at the new documentary film, The British Guide to Showing Off, which celebrates Andrew Logan, artist, living legend and creator of the outrageous, anarchic and always spectacular Alternative Miss World Show.
The Alternative Miss World Show, is a pageant and fancy dress party for grown ups, launched back in 1972, it has involved the participation from the likes of Derek Jarman, Divine, Duggie Fields, Leigh Bowery, David Hockney, Richard O’Brien Zandra Rhodes, Molly Parkin, Angie Bowie and Grayson Perry over the years
“In The British Guide to Showing Off, director Jes Benstock takes us under Logan’s glittering wing to take a joyous look at this most quirky and exotic subculture event.
“Raucous, liberating and sexually charged, The British Guide to Showing Off speaks to the outsider in all of us. For anyone who has ever wanted to break out.”
I once met the artist, sculptor and jewelry-maker, Andrew Logan at a Divine concert in Edinburgh, circa 1984. He was charming and delightful and showed me a selection of his jewelry designs, including a ring with a tiny book attached. He told me there was nothing written in it yet, and full of youthful enthusiasm, I offered to write him something. I did, but never sent it. A pity, for opportunity only ever comes once.
Andrew’s work mixes Pop Art with Neo-Romanticism, and a pinch of English eccentricity. He is the only living artist with a museum in Europe, of which music maestro Brian Eno said:
‘Andrew’s work doesn’t offer that much to the would-be catalogue mystifier: if you start saying anything too pretentious about it, it sort of laughs in your face. It’s hard to place, because it doesn’t really quite belong anywhere, guilelessly straddling a number of heavily contested boundaries - such as those between art and craft, between art and decoration, between pop and fine, between the profane and sacred. But I don’t think this straddling is some sort of ideological position that Andrew has contrived - it’s just where he happens to find himself when he makes the work he wants to see.’
While the art critic and writer John Russell Taylor said:
‘Logan has achieved something beyond the reach of any other 20th Century British Sculptor, even Henry Moore: he has managed to open his own museum, dedicated entirely to his own work and carried it off with showbiz flair.’
Born in Oxfordshire in 1945, Andrew studied to become an architect at the Oxford School of Architecture, graduating in 1970, he then gave that all up to start a career as an artist, believing:
“Art can be discovered anywhere.”
He mixed with Duggie Fields, and Derek Jarman, and became an influence on Jarman’s early Super 8 films, which documented the social scene around Logan and Jarman’s studios at Butler’s Wharf.
In 1972, he started the now legendary the Alternative Miss World, a creative, free-reign competition, which was more about transformation than beauty. The event was filmed and made Logan rather famous.
But his work as an artist continued, and he was acclaimed for his beautiful and fun jewelry, used by such fashion designers as Zandra Rhodes; while his fabulous sculptures celebrated classic form with whimsy.
Logan has generally found himself near the front of cultural developments. In 1976 his studios were the setting for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Valentine Ball, at which the Sex Pistols made their debut.
Since then, Logan has exhibited his sculptures and designs across the world - from London to St Petersburg, California to Baltimore. His lifesize horse sculptures, Pegasus I and Pegasus II were displayed at Heathrow Airport, and his Icarus sculpture hangs in Guy’s Hospital. His jewelry was presented by Emmanuel Ungaro in Paris, and more recently it inspired designs for Commes Des Garcons.
This short documentary from Channel 4’s 1980s series Alter Image gives a delightful introduction to the wonderful world of Andrew Logan. Enjoy.
The brilliant artist Duggie Fields supplied Dangerous Minds with this fabulous Holiday snap of a Christmas party with Divine and Larry ‘J.R.’ Hagman in the 1980s. As Duggie explains:
The photo was Christmas day at Zandra Rhodes’ in London Maybe a year or two after ‘J.R.’ was shot in Dallas - Andrew Logan was also there, Joan and Jack Quinn and Janet Street-Porter too….Lunch and afternoon rather than evening…..Larry is giving out his Christmas gifts to everyone of mini portable fans with his photo on - his Patented Anti-Smoking Device...!
Tea With Duggie Fields is a beautiful and fascinating short film by Federico Fianchini, in which the Genius of Earls Court talks about his life, his art and his influences.
Fields has painted from the age of 11, when his earliest work, an abstract painting, was entered into a local exhibition amid incredulity that a child could paint so brilliantly. With an interest in structure and design, Fields briefly studied architecture, before he attended the Chelsea School of Art, between 1964 and 1968.
In the late sixties, as he established himself as an artist of note, Fields shared a flat with Pink Floyd’s crazy diamond, Syd Barrett. During the 1970s, he developed his brilliant day-glo style that inspired Marc Bolan, Stanley Kubrick, Derek Jarman and David Bowie, who was snapped with William Burroughs wearing Fields’ portrait of Malcolm McDowall.
Fields’ paintings have been variously described as Pop Art, Post Modernist and Minimalist, but in essence, Fields is very much his own art movement, one he termed MAXIMALism - “Minimalism with a plus plus plus.”
Iconic, unique and startlingly original, his work ranges from portraits of Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Monroe, Zandra Rhodes, the artist Andrew Logan, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, to potent images of sexual intercourse, landscapes and his own distinct interpretations of his favored artistic influences (Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian).
Today, the Genius of Earl’s Court continues with his brilliance as painter, digital artist, musician, writer and photographer.
Bonus clips including Duggie Fields on Syd Barrett plus ‘I Wonder Why’ after the jump…
Jarman was an artist before he started his film career as a production designer on Ken Russell’s masterpiece The Devils. Jarman designed the now legendary, pristine white-tiled city of Loudon for the film. The design was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s description of the interrogation of the possessed nuns, taken from his novel The Devils of Loudon, as like “a rape in a public toilet.”
Working on The Devils proved a turning point for Jarman, as he discovered the medium through which to best express his artistic vision. From 1970 onwards, he experimented with a Super-8 camera, filming his friends in short home-made movies, which later provided him with a visual lexicon for his films.
At Home with artist Duggie Fields (1975) is more in the style of Kenneth Anger, than Russell, for as Jarman once told me:
I learnt how not to make films from Ken Russell; and how to make them from Kenneth Anger
