Art at Bull
I have always hated art galleries. Spaces whose only purpose is the display and sale of pictures.
To have any real value, art should be part of something; a home, an office, a public space or a hotel like Bull. A visual contribution to the experience of hospitality and community that Bull strives to deliver.
The collection in both the rooms and the communal spaces is eclectic and incoherent. The artists span 500 years and a few continents. Some are very expensive and others almost worthless, but they are all valuable to me as each work is a part of the narrative of my lifetime as an insomnia driven collector.
There is a story behind every one which I am happy to share, but happier still if you see something on the walls that makes you smile or think or even stop thinking.
Matthew FreudThe highlights
Room by room
40 works, and where to find them.
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The first holographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, commissioned by Jersey to mark 800 years of allegiance to the Crown. More than 10,000 images were taken over two sittings.
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A series of fourteen colour lithographs by one of the defining, and most provocative, figures of British Pop Art.
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The French ‘photograffeur’ on migration and belonging, drawing on Roosevelt’s 1936 speech for the statue’s fiftieth anniversary.
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A quiet, precise self-portrait by the Scottish painter who emerged alongside the New Glasgow Boys.
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Portraits from the photographer’s long career with Vogue and Vanity Fair, with sitters from Mick Jagger and Princess Diana to Kate Moss.
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Ninety-six porcelain pots pierced with tiny holes that spell out words, legible only when they’re lit from within.
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Two portraits by the photographer who defined Swinging London: Elvis Costello in 1985, and the Stones, whom he had photographed since the early sixties.
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Carved and parcel-gilt, uniting the arms of England, Scotland and Ireland with Hanover. It may once have adorned a civic building, or even a royal barge.
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A silvered badge bearing the Bute crest, made to mark the door of a noble carriage.
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A vast tapestry map of the United States, made after the road trip for his Channel 4 series. Perry calls it a meditation on the illusion of certainty.
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An Ichthyodectes from the chalk of western Kansas, a predator of the inland sea that once covered North America. A smaller fossil hangs beside it.
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Two Old Master portraits overlaid with a modern image, so past and present look back at each other.
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A fluid line drawing of a standing nude, all gesture and balance.
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A French still life of deep pink roses in a glass vase, in its original gilt frame.
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One of the late cut-outs Matisse made when illness kept him from the easel: a seated figure in pure blue paper.
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A changing selection of photographs, hung throughout Bull.
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The ‘Invisible Man’ paints himself into a wall of sunflowers, a flower long tied to Mao, for his Hiding in the City series.
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Thirteen screenprints that dress British staples like corned beef and beans up as pharmaceutical packaging.
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A bronze of a woman mid-stretch, by the Slade-trained sculptor who championed art for everyone.
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From Warhol’s portfolio of animals then on the US endangered list, turning a national symbol into an emblem of fragility.
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Cassius Clay knocks out all four Beatles at Miami’s 5th Street Gym, days before he took the world heavyweight title.
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A ceramic cameo of Maya Angelou, edged with lines from her poem Phenomenal Woman.
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A Metropolitan Police riot helmet inlaid with around 650 mirror tiles, turning it into a disco ball.
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Carved by hand from a single block of wood, chisel marks and all, against a shimmer of metal leaf.
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Pieces of floor or wall mosaic from the Eastern Mediterranean, in cream, ochre and terracotta.
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Basquiat’s tribute to Charlie Parker, crowned and haloed: ‘Most young kings get their heads cut off.’
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A study for one of the holograms Dalí planned with Selwyn Lissack in the 1970s, returning to the melting clock of The Persistence of Memory.
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The hologram Dalí couldn’t make in his lifetime, finished by Lissack from his drawings once the technology caught up.
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Eleven laurel-crowned emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, from the circle of Rubens’ teacher.
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Devotional scrolls in alternating panels of gold and black, once kept to protect a home.
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Sinatra’s 1938 mugshot reborn as a huge screenprint, scattered with diamond dust.
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A warm pastel café scene, named for Mackesy’s own note across the bottom. Look out for his small mural drawings around Bull too.
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Painted panels of heraldic portraits in low relief, probably from Northern Europe.
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Carved oak panels of coats of arms and allegorical figures, likely Dutch.
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The New Labour strategist photographed at the Highgate plot he had chosen for himself.
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Korda’s portrait of Che Guevara, one of the most reproduced photographs ever taken, alongside his pictures of Castro.
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Ai’s coat-hanger profile of Marcel Duchamp, remade in porcelain.
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One of Bacon’s portraits of his friend and rival, once owned by Roald Dahl.
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Three of Miller’s painted Penguin covers, with titles that read like confessions.
Download the art guideCollecting is for me both essential and completely useless.
Pierre Le-Tan