So Many -isms

Today we met at King's Cross station and popped into a gallery that I've had on my list of places to go for the last several shows that have exhibited there, but somehow even though it's relatively convenient to home, we never seem to make it there. Located on a quiet street very close to the station, everyone we saw on the street was coming or going from the gallery and I was surprised to find what I thought would be a small gallery space turn into a series of large rooms with quite a crowd roaming from room to room, taking in the pop art.

After we left the Gagosian, we crossed the main road and walked to the nearby British Library for their new exhibit, Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937.

An utterly fascinating look at the role of the printed format in different efforts to pursue the "new" as a way of freeing artists from the multidisciplinary baggage of a capital-C "Canon," the exhibit covers many cities, artists, and movements (such as Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Dadaism) while questioning the limitations of the -ism labels themselves. I found myself peering into the extremely low-lit cases, marvelling at the beauty found on many of the pages--from the pencil scratchings and giant red Xs on the original manuscript page of Finnegan's Wake to a page of sound poetry whose vibrant colours almost ring in my ears to the first Gertrude Stein book published in France to the sheer beauty of the printmaking on display, the collection is definitely something special. We were both a bit tired though, so we'll have to make a return visit to check out the array of multimedia items in the final part of the exhibition, but since the show runs until spring, I think we should be able to fit that in--I say this now, but no doubt we'll be rushing back in the show's final week to see more before it closes!