Friday 27 September 2013

Airplane art at Duxford

Mission Black Barol? Avro something 1957? detail
Avro Vulcan.  Mission Black Buck.  1957.  (detail)

Hi everyone!  I've been so busy with life that this blog has been sadly un-updated for a while.  :-(   And I'd been looking forward to my 'blogiversary' post!

Because yes, Art in Cambridge is one year old!  I started this blog on 13 September 2012. I can't believe I made it this far. I'm still immensely fond of my very first blog post on the Chapman Brothers' dinosaurs (a sculpture which, sadly, is no longer at Jesus College -- I hope you got to see it while it was still here).\

Well, that date came and went.  I'll write a little after-blogiversary post anon.  :-)


Super Striker - BAC TSR2 (tactical strike reconnaissance aircraft) passg thru sound barrier during flight trials at Boscombe Down 1964
Super Striker - BAC TSR2 (tactical strike reconnaissance aircraft) passg thru sound barrier during flight trials at Boscombe Down 1964

Anyway, what I have for you today is just a little offering from Duxford Air Museum.  Or, as it's officially called, the Imperial War Museum Duxford Cambridgeshire.

I went to Duxford for a work event last week.  And what was the first thing that greeted me upon entering the Duxford Conference Centre?  Yes, you've guessed it:  not airplanes but ART!

Art of airplanes, in fact!

Lots and lots and lots of it. All up and down the stairs and in the conference break-out rooms:  paintings upon paintings of airplanes.


Mosquito Attack - De Havilland Mosquitoes in low-level sortie over Dutch canals in 1944
Mosquito Attack - De Havilland Mosquitoes in low-level sortie over Dutch canals in 1944



Mosquito Attack detail





Coastal Patrol - Avro Arison? over the Needles
Coastal Patrol - Avro Anson over the Needles
They're oddly vertigo-inducing, these birds' eyeview airplane picture.  It's not a viewpoint much found in painting.

Coastal Patrol detail plane


Coastal Patrol detail lighthouse



Who's the artist?  One Mark Bromley, a graphic artist with British Aerospace.  You can see more pictures painted by him here.

There's a curious thing about airplane art.  Each painting is signed but in Duxford the plaques do not tell you the artist's name.  Instead, they tell you in great detail about the type of aircraft shown.  It's all about the PLANES!

This one intrigued me most.  But it's not by Mark Bromley.  It's signed French but you try googling 'French artist airplanes'...  So I wasn't able to find out anything about 'French'.

BAE Systems Taranis Unmanned Air Vehicle Demonstrator May 2007
BAE Systems Taranis Unmanned Air Vehicle Demonstrator May 2007


Airplane painting from the sky was invented by the Italian Futurists in the 1920s; they called it aeropittura.  Here's my favourite:

Tullio Crali, Nose Dive on the City, 1939

Happy flying through the weekend!


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