Ian Kiaer talks about the life and work of Russian architect Konstantin Melnikov working in 1920s - 'He never fitted into the materialist revolutionary constructivist movements, he was more esoteric, he built a house called cylindrical house studio living working and sleeping spaces conjoined. Soon after he built the house he was shut down as an architect by Stalinist censorship and he fell out with the regime so he remained in the house until 1972 until he died. A house designed as the perfect living working space became his professional tomb where he was unable to operate any longer. So it becomes
an extraordinary hermetic space and he turned to painting.
Inside Melnikov's studio, stacks of painting http://www.betweenbridges.net/ull_hohn.html'By 1993, near the end of his life, Hohn had completed an ambitious series of landscapes predicated on the lessons of Bob Ross, the well-known TV painter who has since become a cult figure. Intended for the leisurely retired manager or the stressed mother, Ross taught millions of TV viewers how to paint visually pleasing landscape scenes. Yet while Hohn, himself a far more competent draughtsman than the average Ross spectator, often followed his instructions to the letter, he also added Richter-like blurs, reflections on water, and worked up surfaces put on by palette knife. Once again, Hohn sought to execute a kind of painting outside painting, but never sacrificed an engagement with the actual medium. In his short life he offered a model of aesthetic engagement that consistently investigated the dichotomy between de-skilled artistic production and painterly craftsmanship.'
Manfred Kuttnerhttp://www.frieze.com/issue/review/manfred_kuttner/Kuttner had just three productive years as an artist before he gave up at the age of 28. This is a very limited field to mine, and it is hard not to conjecture where his work might have gone had he continued, particularly since he died last year at the age of 70.
Martin Creed
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