Ben Johnson is currently working on a number of drawings and studies following visits to the Neues Museum, Berlin and the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.
Recent Projects
Ben Johnson exhibited in Room I at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London from 8th December 2010 to 23rd January 2011 to coincide with a major Canaletto exhibition. His panoramas of Liverpool and Zürich were shown alongside a work representing the view from the roof of the National Gallery but showing the strong compositional relationship with Canaletto’s "The Stonemason’s Yard." Johnson and his team set up their studio in Room I and completed the painting, entitled "Looking Back to Richmond House," in public. Over 73,000 people visited Room I during this period.
To see a 11-minute film please visit http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/ben-johnson-modern-perspectives
Ben Johnson had a solo exhibition of recent paintings of interiors at the Alan Cristea Gallery, 34 Cork Street, London W1S 3NU from 18th November to 23rd December 2010.
To see a 3-minute film please visit http://www.alancristea.com/artist-Ben-Johnson
The Liverpool Cityscape
A recent major commission was from National Museums Liverpool to create a portrait of the city at an important time in its history. It had recently been added to the list of UNESCO world heritage sites and in 2008 was European Capital of Culture. The project was co-commissioned with the Liverpool Culture Company and Professor Phil Redmond CBE & Mrs Alexis Redmond.
Ben Johnson took up residency at the Walker Art Gallery to finish the Liverpool Cityscape in front of a live audience from 28 January to 7 March 2008 and 51,000 visitors came to watch during those six weeks.
The exhibition ‘Ben Johnson’s Liverpool Cityscape 2008 and the World Panorama Series’ formed part of the city’s celebrations as European Capital of Culture from 24th May to 2nd November 2008 at the Walker Art Gallery.
The exhibition consisted of panoramas of Jerusalem, Zurich and Hong Kong and paintings representing Chicago and Paris. These were part of an ongoing project started in 1994 and represented the equivalent of 44 years work, as Johnson creates these paintings in a Renaissance-like studio using highly specialist assistants. This was the first time that these works have been exhibited together. Over 250,000 people visited The Walker Art Gallery during this exhibition.
Click here to read the press release from National Museums Liverpool
For further information please click here.
"The Liverpool Cityscape" will leave the Walker Art Gallery to take up permanent residence at the new Museum of Liverpool, opening 19th July 2011.
The People’s Panorama
To view the People’s Panorama click here
The Backround
Ben Johnson has for the last 12 years concentrated the majority of his work into making large city panoramas. So far he has painted Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Zurich and Liverpool. Liverpool was the largest and most complex painting to date. The commission, by National Museums Liverpool, was for a cityscape to become an icon for the city and the celebrations in 2008 when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture. This painting took 3 years for Johnson and 6 assistants. The drawing alone represented 4 years of full-time concentrated work for a single draughtsperson. Each building was analysed and reconstructed on an individual basis. Given this intense and concentrated project spanning 36 months, when approached by The Big Draw to participate in the launch at Somerset House in 2006 he took on the challenge of producing, in just a few days, a drawn panorama of London made by over a thousand people of all ages and from all walks of life.
The Project
Johnson took a panoramic photograph of London from the top of Canary Wharf tower. This image was divided into 1280 squares measuring 3 inches or 76.2 mm each. Each square was reproduced on the left hand side of an A4 sheet of paper. On the right hand side of the sheet was a blank square. The idea was to draw with an HB pencil the image on the left hand side in the blank square on the right. (Some of the surrounding area was shown to help a little.) Every drawing was then cut out of the A4 sheet and pasted in its correct position onto a panel to recreate the panorama as a drawing. The drawn image is on 5 panels and measures 4 ft x 20 ft or 1.22 x 6.10 metres in total. All participants received a stamped certificate. After Somerset House the panorama moved to The Museum of London for four days and many contributors returned to see the work develop and reach its completion. The project was made with huge enthusiasm. There was a great sense of concentration as people did their individual squares and then a sense of pride at being part of a collective experience. There was not one bad drawing among them and each was unique and special to the person that made it. Even the initially reluctant surprised themselves and many people’s enthusiasm to do multiple squares had to be restrained. It truly is The People’s Panorama. Since its completion it has been on loan to Paintings in Hospitals and has toured several hospitals where it can be enjoyed by the public.
Click here to download the PDF version.
The Liverpool People's Panorama
Johnson then repeated this project at The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool at the time of The Big Draw in 2008 on a slightly smaller scale but with equal success. The finished piece was displayed in The Walker.
These two experiences are part of an ongoing ambition to involve a broad audience in celebrating both architecture and the individual's innate ability to be creative but with the emphasis on collaboration.
Publications
A catalogue of the Alan Cristea Exhibition, with text by Richard Cork, is available from the Alan Cristea Gallery.
A major publication in 2009 was the book “Ben Johnson: Foster In View,” which won a Red Dot Award for Design.
Essays by Charles Jencks and Mel Gooding
Foreword by Norman Foster
Edited by David Jenkins
For more than thirty years Ben Johnson the artist has been documenting the work of
Norman Foster the architect in photographs that have served as source material for Johnson’s own neo-realist paintings – many of them studies of Foster buildings. This book is a record of that unique body of work. Included here are photographs of nearly all of Foster’s most celebrated projects, from the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the restoration of the Reichstag, and the Great Court at the British Museum, to airports in Hong Kong and Beijing. Johnson’s images explore the ineffable qualities of Foster’s architecture – the use of light and shade, innovative materials and attention to natural and man-made surroundings.
Charles Jencks is the author of the best-selling The Language of Post-Modern Architecture and has written numerous other books on contemporary art and architecture, including What is Post-Modernism, The Architecture of the Jumping Universe, and The Iconic Building: the Power of Enigma.
Mel Gooding is an art writer, critic and curator. He is the author of many publications, including major monographs on individual artists, architects and other art topics. His recent books include Abstract Art; Song of the Earth: European Artists in the Landscape; herman de vries: chance and change; and John Hoyland.
"Ben Johnson: Foster In View" is published by Prestel and is available here from Amazon