Paul Noble - Artist review, - re-visited.

Following on from the work I did last week, and my subsequent conversations with Prof Swindells, Christian and Dale, one of the artists that was suggested that I take a look at is Paul Noble.

Paul Noble is an English craftsman painter and installation artist.  He attended Humberside College of higher education and completed his degree in fine Art in 1986.  He was given a nomination for the Turner prize, together with a number of other artists in 2012.  Interestingly, he is exactly the same age as myself, having been born in 1963.

My favourite phrase of his is...    "Allow yourself to imagine!"  (Paul Noble, 

Much of his work has been recognised by a unique signature of architectural buildings, very much in, in my humble opinion, and arabesque style.  His streets and town use almost encourage a spectator lose themselves in a maze of winding and narrow alleyways.  Every so often there are town squares, as open places, which in many of his drawings may be decorated with some kind of phallic statue or monument within it.
 One of the most famous creations that Paul Noble has continued with as a theme is his town called Nobson Newton; a completely fictional town which comes purely from his imagination.

It's only after very detailed scruitiny that you realise that there are in fact, many letters of text concealed in his drawings.


Take for instance, Newton Central, which is totally loaded with letters, that have actually come from the poem...

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.Bin keine gar Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

And in Nobson Newtown, these appear as;

APRIL IS THE CRUELLIST
MONTH DING LACS OUT OF
THE DEAD LAND, MIXING
MEMORY AND DESIRE,
WARM COVERING EARTH
ED TUBERS. SUMMER
SURPRISED US COMING
OF WE HOFGARTEN.
AND DRANK FOR AN BIN
KEINE GAR DEUTSCH
STAYING DOWN MUCH
OF IN WINTER

His pencil drawings are particularly detailed, often depicting people going about their business in an aimless and nonsensical routine.  Is drawings are also particularly interesting from their sense of perspective and can cover a huge expanse where it seems the artist has entered into a state of meditation with endless doodling and repetition of the architectural box theme create a world that sits somewhere between humour on the first glance, but despair and monotony in the more deeper analysis.  This is an illusion of the utopian city being transformed into the modern day dystopia that our existence and civilisation appears to be travelling towards.  In his later works, there is a noticeable lack of people which used to occupy comicstrip drawings which were presented with his earlier works.  This dystopic notion of bleached white cities with no inhabitants draws parallels to contemporary town planning in some parts of our own world, where it appears that the needs of people have been abandoned for the sake of architectural elitism and the notion of unneeded testicle elegance by the architects themselves.

He exhibits works all over the UK, including the Tate Gallery, the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, and of course the city racing Gallery in London, for which he is one of the founding members, together with five other artists who created a cooperative between 1988 and 1998.