CHRISTINE KEELER

My quintessential '60s British moment has always been the Profumo Scandal of '63, rather than the awful 'swinging sixties' hippie zeitgeist that followed. The notorious affair had all the hallmarks of a classic gutter press story...glamour, politics, international espionage, suicide and underage call girls all played out within the inner circle of the upper echelon of conservative British politics. These were the bunga-bunga parties of the early 60s, Christine Keeler's innocent beauty tempered by the cynical cock-teasing power of a young woman entirely cognizant of her female potency, particularly entrancing to powerful middle-aged Tory stiffs.  

London's Mayor Gallery in Mayfair featured these photographs from Keeler's personal collection at a small show in 2010. Classically beautiful studio portraits cut with seedy Soho bar glamour shots were balanced out by the fresh-faced naiviety of our herione playfully sunbaking in the rolling pastures of Albion. She must have loved these particular images herself, and my favourite is the one of Keeler tucking into a home-cooked chicken dinner on her first night of freedom from Holloway prison (below). The saucy minx. These photographs seem to symbolise some kind of end of an era of post-war British innocence, the beginning of the breaking down of conservative social conventions into the repugnant maelstrom of acceptable behaviour we take to mean civilisation half a century later. Keeler looks like shes having so much fun. Just good clean good time girl fun. Hooray!

PETE'S PIPE PICKLE...PETER DOHERTY, ARTIST, COB GALLERY LONDON

I know...I couldn't believe it either, is there no end to this bohemian oaf's talent? A difficult one to defend I won't deny but I maintain my respect for Doherty's determination to live life entirely on his own terms - two fingers to the red tops and dreary suburbanite haters, (styled by Primark, engaged to university sweetheart, holidays in Mallorca) lurking around office water coolers across this green and pleasant land accusing him of leading the kids astray with his blatantly drug-addled buffoonery or worse - obvious lack of talent. Lets face it, the guy is hilarious with his antics and if he was good enough for Cocaine Kate then hes good enough for me. Its called rock'n'roll people!! Nobody gave a shit when Keef spent half the '70s on the nod.

Peter, being a Rimbaud-reading boho now lives in Paris where his brand of louche decadence is perfectly acceptable, positively encouraged in some arrondissements. Everything about Peter from his nonchalant sartorial elegance to his pretty-boy-lost-in-a-dream-world-of-fey-literary-heroes-adrift-in-Arcadia countenance seems to fit like a glove with the je ne sais quoi, that indefinable charm of the City of Light. His reported recent friendship with a certain Madame Sarkozy seems the perfect Parisian fusion of his charisma and her inherent rebellion. Underneath the artifice...they are two sides to the same coin, the post modern Birkin and Gainsbourg.

LL Cool P....Parisienne mademoiselles know the score...

So Mr. Doherty has now evolved his notorious blood fetish into a new career as an emerging visual artist - his idiosyncratic canvases recently exhibited at the Cob Gallery in London's Camden Town. A few of Doherty's mono and neutral toned multimedia pieces were mildly interesting (below)...combining elements of collage, his own putrid blood, tabloid newspaper imagery plus the detritus of a chaotic life with his largely illegible 'word vomit' pencil scribblings.

Far more striking were the installations in the gallery's basement. Featuring all manner of symbolic, Dohertyesque objects (Babycham anyone?), the subterranean opium eater's cave was draped with threadbare flags, sweat-stained backstage passes, ancient typewriters, vintage guitars and beautiful antique crucifixes. The only things missing were burnt foils, dirty spoons and a crack pipe stained with Amy Winehouse's lipstick. Vinyl punk albums littered the floor and a decrepit Beatles poster from the (sadly) now defunct News Of The World gave the installation a real sense of authenticity, as though you were poking through this genuine music fan's own personal wreckage of the Albion Rooms circa 2001. Which I probably was. I love Doherty's celebration of his Englishness and pride in the ancient motifs of a once great country now consigned to the imagination of poets and dreamers. As a songwriter, Doherty's talent lies in evoking this lyrical imagery of a lost utopia. As a visual artist he offers up the tangible, literal interpretation.

RUSSIAN FEMME FATALES

Russian ladies...a peculiar breed...each and every one of them got serious swag and rocking their own particular sartorial vibe. We were astounded by the preponderance of young ones who truly were blessed with supermodel genetics and the older ones that were styling it up on a babushka/gypsy/Rocky Horror Transylvanian tip. Young or old...they all very clearly knew their way around the local cosmetics counter, hairdresser, beauty parlour and discount clothing emporium. Hooray for Capitalism!

RUSSIAN BOOK ARTIST MIKHAIL KARASIK

A definite highlight of our Far Eastern European extravaganza was discovering the quirky work of Mikhail Karasik in the Avant-Garde Museum, St. Petersburg. Karasik is a leading exponent of the Russian 'artist book' movement - creating unique handmade books that combine literature, art and design in low print runs (usually less than 20). Karasik utilises graphic imagery and pop-style colours often fused with lithographs created in his own studio. The books are pieces of unique, idiosyncratic art (each edition slightly varied) yet also literary texts to be read. 

The Avant-Garde show featured large prints of the artist's work, each piece immediately suggesting a recognisably 'Russian' aesthetic. Karasik's early 20th c constructivist and futurist influences are obvious, however his treatment is far more humorous, the colour palette softer and lighter. His sepia and pastel tones modernise the stark, aggressive gravity of the communist reds and blacks of Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko's style. Karasik uses iconic Russian imagery in a playful, absurd way - Red Square's creepy Lenin Mausoleum given a vibrant pink sky, while Lenin and a bearded crony are given a summer holiday vibe as they chillax in a beautiful garden.

See more of Karasik's brilliant work here.



MARTYNA ZOLTASZEK'S FRIDA KAHLO

At my workstation last week, Inspector Google and I came across this beautiful painting above of Frida Kahlo. On a whim I decided to email artist and illustrator Martyna Zoltaszek to sniff out the possibility of a sale. After some (thankfully) not-very-heavy-duty negotiating we agreed on a price and I visited Martyna tonight at Hackney's Absorb Art studios off the Kingsland Road to collect the work.

Martyna (below) welcomed me at the door like an old friend and immediately began entertaining me with funny stories like her escape from conventional marriage in her Polish hometown of Wroclaw. Other vignettes of her interesting last decade included a scholarship to study art in the US, a bohemian few months spent painting in Australia with a minted boyfriend and his artist mother and her tale of woe when a London gallery went bust without paying her a pound. The evil shysters. 

   

Martyna's delicate, naive-influenced paintings feature wild colourful tigers, roaring Communist bears and other animal motifs such as the minimalist, almost monochrome, stark-eyed canine pictured above. The Frida painting was the first portrait Martyna had completed and the counter offers she received over the weekend to buy the piece at the Absorb Arts open studios are a testament to her very significant talent. 

Ms Zoltazsek's little studio space in east London seemed a perfect cross-section of the creativity, passion, determination and success thriving in the city today - and an inspiring antidote to the orgy of political, financial and actual violence we have been reading about in the (Murdoch owned) newspapers over The Summer Of Shit 2011. Martyna is represented by the Enid Lawson Gallery in London. View more of her work here.