Author Archives: Robin

About Robin

Occasional painter. Golfer. Fascinated by humanity. Passionate about beautiful stuff, the people who create it and its narrative.

Ian Poulter’s Trousers

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Ian Poulter 1

Photo: Daily Mail

“We shall not be asking Ian to change his trousers.” – Peter Dawson, Chief Executive, Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.

Talking Beautiful Stuff is about the people, ideas and means behind anything creative. The quaint story of Old Tom’s Old Course at St Andrews, Scotland is a narrative that proved popular with golfers and non-golfers alike. We might be stretching it just a bit in expecting our readers to be interested in a man’s trousers even when sported by of one of the world’s more talented and flamboyant golfers. But, believe it or not, Ian Poulter’s trousers are the stuff of a feel-good design story. Where does that story come together? You guessed… St Andrews, the home of golf.

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Photo: The Thunderblog

This year The Open, one of the oldest competitions in sport, is on the Old Course at St Andrews. The golfing elite will compete for one of the oldest trophies in sport: the famous Claret Jug. “The Golf Champion Trophy” was designed and crafted by Mackay Cunningham and Co. in 1872 for the grand sum of £30. It now has a permanent home in the club house of the sport’s governing body, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. No stapleford points for guessing whose troos featured the Claret Jug when the Open was held in St Andrew’s in 2005!

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Photo: Daily Mail / AFP / Getty

On the first day of the Open at Royal Birkdale in 2004, Poulter strutted onto the first tee wearing his extraordinary Union Flag trousers. Jaws of the tweed-clad dropped to the sound of a hundred cameras clicking. The R&A saw no breech of either rules or professional dress code. At the time, Poulter claimed “I honestly didn’t do it to get noticed. I did it because I thought it would be really cool…. The attention was nuts, wasn’t it? You’re not expecting to hit every paper around the world because of a pair of trousers.” He went on to say – as a warning to any club golfer tempted to make a dressy statement for the monthly medal – “But I had to back it up, because if I’d played like a total idiot, I would have been absolutely slaughtered by everyone.” The episode sowed the seeds of an idea.

A competition to design his trousers for the 2005 Open drew 2000 entries. The winning pair, designed by Gavin Adams, featured the Claret Jug on the left leg and the names of past winners on the right leg. Poulter, tongue-in-cheek, said “I wanted to do something a bit more subtle than last year!” Along with a replica of the Claret Jug, these trousers now feature in the British Museum of Golf ….. at St Andrews.

Poulter’s public persona portrays a lion-hearted, all-round good bloke with drive, attention to detail and attitude by the truckload. In his own words he’s “got more front than Brighton beach.” His recently published and totally readable autobiography “No limits” gives a fascinating insight into the persona, the life of a determined professional golfer, the road from Ford Fiesta to fleet of Ferraris, his Ryder Cup heroics and his admirable support for Dreamflight. “No Limits” also tells of a young English boy with a Saturday job on a clothing stall in the local market place. He loved the display and the sell. He now admits to a fastidious, even obsessive, attention to what he wears for work. No surprise then that he has created his own distinctive brand of golfing attire that hunts where smart and tasteful meets out there.

And the trousers? Forward to St Andrews, 16-19 July 2015. Two media-photo-frenzies are predictable. Obviously, one focuses on the happy winner holding the Claret Jug aloft at the end of the last day. The other is when Ian Poulter’s trousers walk onto the first tee on the first day. The man wearing them will lap up the attention and calmly biff his first shot straight down that vast expanse of green over Granny Clark’s Wynd toward the Swilcan Burn. Go Poults!

The 2015 Geneva International Motor Show and Bentley’s work in progress

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Cars are not really my thing. In nearly twenty years of living in Switzerland, I have never been to the Geneva International Motor Show. Well….. it’s my first week of retirement and, by chance, I receive a complimentary ticket. Feeling not terribly automotive, I hop on a crowded number 5 bus to Palexpo.

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First observation: I never knew this show happens on such an enormous scale. Thousands upon thousands of car enthusiasts gather around hundreds and hundreds of next year’s models. Second observation: this is fun! As far as the eye can see, there is sumptuous, extravagant, shiney and very beautiful stuff. Third observation: when it comes to design and function, nothing can match the automobile industry. These lustrous vehicles generate fantasy; they ooze influence, chic life-styles, seduction, virility and power. I love it! I move with the crowd. I listen to the comments. I follow their interest. I join the buzz as much as I can. And I find lots and lots of beautiful stuff to photograph and to talk about here.

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Just look at the sleek lines of the new Nissan S Way. What really catches my eye is the addition of warm tones with the bronze highlights. Without them, the whole would appear cold. Who does this appeal to? A sporty-chic young lady? A young man in the pre-ferrari stage of his petro-development?

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This is the interior of the GEA G Giugiaro. Anonymity, masculinity and comfort. If you want to go for something at the top-end of the chauffeur-driven range, here it is. Well, that’s what I think until I come across…..

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…. the RR stand. O… M… G…!! Would you really take this to the shops? Or to the beach? I adore those little peek-a-boo curtains!

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Fourth observation: a recurrent feature of the show is that the most exclusive cars are surrounded by modest little glass barriers. I think they are to prevent people like me from getting too close. But I did sneak up to snap the superb front wing of the new Quantino. Another recurrent feature is how people patiently queue to pass through those little barriers for the privilege of sitting in the sort of vehicle that I’ve only ever associated with James Bond or the Pink Panther. I couldn’t help noticing that most are men. Most are beyond their first week of retirement. Many need a little bit of help from the amiable hosts and hostesses to get in and out of their would-be purchases.

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Talking of men, cars, hosts and especially hostesses, I fully expected to find the displays draped about with slinkily-clad super models. That seems to be a thing of the past except of course for Pirelli. The calender-happy Italians simply laugh in the face of political correctness. But then what is politically correct may not be biologically correct. Images of beautiful women sell things. Even tyres!

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I come across the Bentley stand. It is difficult to get close to the little barrier such is the excitement . “Magnifique!” the admirers gasp.

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What has drawn the crowd, revolving slowly on her display, is the most elegant car of the whole show. She purrs British Racing Green.  She soaks up the attention.

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This is the new Bentley…. but I find no sign indicating model or series. I ask a helpful young man sporting a Bentley lapel pin for specifications. “That, Sir, is a Speed 6. It’s a car in its design stage. It may not be out for another five or six years. It’s just a concept for the moment.” I’m stunned. The most beautiful car here today is not yet a car! “You mean it’s kind of work in progress?” I ask him. “You could say that, Sir. Yes.” This is so cool! I ask if I could sit inside it for a moment. He smiles politely, “I regret, Sir, that is not possible.”

Catherine Kirchhoff at Galerie ID

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Catherine Kirchhoff 1

Piments, 2014, Acrylic on canvas 200cm x 80cm

I visited Catherine Kirchhhoff‘s website before meeting her at her new exhibition. To be honest, on-line, her work didn’t grab me. It seemed just a bit too close to all those giant-sized, machine-printed photoshopped images that have filled so many galleries in recent years. I saw it as design (albeit pleasing design!) suitable for posters or tee-shirts. When I saw the paintings for real, I changed my opinion. I should have had more faith in the discerning Isabelle Dunkel. These are big beautiful paintings. The exhibition is another hit worth seeing at Galerie ID.

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O rings, 2014, Acrylic on canvas 120cm x 95cm

Catherine is an art teacher in a local school. She studied fine arts here in Geneva and also in New York and Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely. This is her fourth exhibition at Galerie ID.

Catherine Kirchhoff 3She tells me that, as a child, she loved to do very precise drawings. In adult life, she became fascinated by the design component of advertising. When in New York she realised her talent for working with big bold colours. The flash-of-light moment in which her signature theme was born was in a supermarket. She looked closely at the image of a food item on its packet. The image bore little resemblance to what was inside. Bingo! The stars aligned. Her work is now sought after. No surprise then that she won a prestigious commission for sixteen pictures destined for the walls of the new US head-quarters of Franke Foodservice Systems, the world’s leader in systems and services for the food industry.

In terms of human evolution, taste and smell – our detectors of chemicals – are much older senses than vision. Catherine manages to dislocate the old. She starts with banal images of food and reduces them to two dimensions. There is neither shadow nor perspective. The colours chosen are monotone, unexpected and clash in terms of temperature. Reality is kept at arm’s length. These skillfully displayed, broad canvases leap off the wall at the viewer before the food item is recognised as such. The overall effect is arresting but purely visual. There is no stimulation of appetite. The older senses are not recalled. I even hear a little warning voice that whispers “Don’t eat it!”

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Noisettes, 2014, Acrylic on canvas 180cm x 100cm

Fearful of irritating my fellow invitees to the opening, I examine the canvases close-up. This is master-class painting. Catherine creates these fabulous, even tones by painstaking application of multiple layers of undiluted acrylic. Not a single brush stroke is visible. The boundaries of the colours are razor sharp. You could still convince me that this is machine-printing.

Catherine recognises that her paintings might be termed “Pop Art.” Jasper Johns claimed that the term means simply “to take something and add to it.” This is precisely what she has done. And I have every confidence that, like so much great Pop Art, her work will end up being reproduced on posters and tee shirts. You first read about it here!