The Pleasures Come to London

Koenig Books, Frieze Art Fair 2021

After years away from my second home (in my heart, not in bricks) I finally flew to London. Aside from museum-hopping and eating Indian food, I visited the coolest bookshops in the city, discovered new authors, distributed my book, met up with friends, and had some wild times in East London. The highlight of the trip was seeing my art book, ‘The Pleasures of Hackney Road’, at Koenig Books in Frieze Art Fair. 

Here’s where you can find my art book in London:

The Broadway Bookshop. Burley Fisher Books. Pages of Hackney. Gosh!. Housmans Books. Koenig Books at Frieze.

It’s also available in 12 other bookstores and art museums. Write me on Instagram @thefortunyverse if you would like to find a copy at your nearest bookseller.

The second draft...

My book at Gosh! in Soho

The Pleasures of Hackney Road

This year I wrote and illustrated my first artist book! The Pleasures of Hackney Road: Five Tales of Wildness features drawings and stories about my adventures in London. You can find it at two major contemporary art institutions (The CCCB and La Casa Encendida) and at numerous bookstores. There's also a Spanish edition, Los Placeres de Hackney Road, which is now in its second printing. 

You can write me on Instagram @margofortuny if you would like to order a copy internationally or stock it. 

It's the first in a series of books about different cities I've lived in. What cities do you dream of moving to, if you just move spontaneously?

Holding my book in Madrid

The inside of 'The Pleasures of Hackney Road' by Margo Fortuny

A drawing from 'The Pleasures of Hackney Road' by Margo Fortuny

At El Imparcial in Madrid

At the CCCB bookshop in Barcelona

I Love London

I returned to London last week, just for a few days. It felt like coming home, walking the familiar streets, seeing friends, and eating delicacies that are hard to find in Spain, like spicy Indian food or very soft chocolate chip cookies. I love listening to friends speaking numerous languages on the tube and watching the stylish people rush around the city. On Thursday night, my friend Sarah took me to a Halloween-themed magazine launch party in a members club. The host handed us red cocktails in mock blood-transfusion bags with a long straw, before introducing us to a flirtatious couple. Afterwards we went to Ridley Road for a dance in a bar with wood-paneled walls. I think a Klaxon was playing disco records that night.

Stephanie, a vegan chef, shows me her chains in Dalston

We cruised by a few more pubs before ending up at my favourite one, The Gun, in Hackney. As soon as we arrived, a petite blond in a zip-up patent leather moto suit smiled, and put her arms around me. She complimented my long blue 70s dress and the yellow flowers in my hair. I told her she reminded me of Marianne Faithfull in 'The Girl on a Motorcycle'. I ordered a Paloma and the bartender recognized me from ten years ago, when we used to go to the same parties. I bumped into a friend who invited us to an Italodisco warehouse party in Hackney Wick. A tall, slim, androgynous girl with short dark hair caught my eye. She wore a sheer black blouse, a minimal black bra, a scrap of black underwear...and fringed ass-less chaps. Her boyish looks and clean face added a casual touch to the outfit. It felt like Prince was in the room. She was enchanting. She was from Georgia. We all danced and mingled until the bar closed.

The Dove pub

The rest of my days in London were filled with museum exhibitions and fascinating conversations with beloved friends. I reunited with a friend who had been living in jungles in Thailand and Peru for years. We met as teenagers at a rave in Vauxhall, lived together (she kindly let me stay on her sofa when I first moved to London), worked together (she opened a burlesque supper club and asked me to DJ there), met up on an island in Thailand six years ago...and rode a moped on rocky roads, while a bird flew through my hair, almost causing us to fly off a cliff. I told her to write a book about all the things she learned in the jungle. We drank tea, ate cookies, and told sexy stories.

Homemade cookies by the multi-talented Andreas

Another afternoon I went to the V&A Museum to revisit the excellent Mary Quant show and have tea with my friend Toby. (Quant probably invented the modern miniskirt, thus she is my hero.) I met Toby at a Turkish pool hall in Dalston back when Mark Ronson drank there, surrounded by girls dancing until their shoes broke. (I was one of those girls... I lifted up my friend Karen in an attempt to replicate the final scene in 'Dirty Dancing' and though she is light, on the way down one heel broke off.) The pool hall days are over. Now we meet in art museums. He told me about contextualizing my art with theory, and recommended analysing what I love and hate to arrive at a deeper meaning when creating artworks...

The Ed Ruscha rooms at the Tate Modern

Below is a list of my favourite spots in London, and I'll post some pictures tonight on Instagram @thefortunyverse

FOOD:

Indian food: Dishoom in Shoreditch (they have a mocktail that tastes like snow, it's amazing.)
Tayaabs: a popular, inexpensive, chaotic, classic place behind the mosque in Whitechapel. Order the Saag Aloo and the Peshwari naan. Both places have long lines so try to go off-peak or early.
Sweets: Gelupo has dreamy gelato and the best hot chocolate outside of Torino. Get a small gianduja hot chocolate with whipped cream and go back for the ice cream another day so you don't have a diabetic arrest.
Hummingbird Bakery has the best cupcakes. I like Black Bottom or the gingerbread one.
Ben's Cookies. There are numerous branches. These cookies are great to bring to friends. They're soft, chewy, and very chocolately.
Brunch/ Hangover Food: Stone Cave in Dalston has a wonderful shakshuka (eggs poached in a delicious tomato stew, spiced with paprika, nutmeg, and chili peppers.)
The Diner (Dalston, Shoreditch, Soho) has In &Out-style 'hangar fries', a great vegan breakfast burger and thick milkshakes, with or without booze.

ART:

Usually the Barbican and the V & A have the most unforgettable exhibitions, though you should also see what's on at the Hayward Gallery, the Photographers Gallery in Soho, the Tate Modern and the Tate Britain. If you're going to London soon, check out the Blake show at the Tate Britain and the Lisa Bruce exhibition. Skip the Olafur E at the Tate Modern. (He's usually fantastic but this show is claustrophobic and jammed with people taking selfies. Go upstairs to the free Ed Ruscha rooms instead.) The Tate Modern gift shop is very good too. Peckham has lots of cool little galleries. Sprueth Magers is usually fun and has hip openings.

SHOPPING/ PRESENTS:

Portobello Road: On Friday morning there is a large vintage clothes and antiques market. There's usually nowhere to change so wear a leotard or tights. Next to the vintage stalls, Ladbroke Grove side, there's a little store called What Katie Did that sells a variety of seamed stockings and 50s-style lingerie. I found a beautiful 1970s Biba-style jacket for 40 pounds (after bargaining) and a blue leather Prada belt for 10 pounds. The Biba dresses were 380 pounds, so I only glanced at them longingly.

Broadway Market on Saturday, around lunchtime/ early afternoon. There are 2 excellent art bookstores here and in the market itself, there's a cool French girl who sells wool kilts and retro pieces. Borough Olives sells tasty pestos, harissa, and delicious green olives. This is a fun market for people-watching, pesto sampling, and it's not crowded or touristy like Borough Market. The Dove pub, on the same street,  has a large variety of international beers as well as board games.

Liberty London: A cool but classic, expensive store in a Tudor-style building, made partially of old ships. Upstairs, there are bolts of the famous Liberty-print fabrics. The perfume and stationary sections are interesting too. Amongst the notebooks and pastel pens, they sell gift wrap that looks like old maps.

Paks: They sell all kinds of cheap but intriguing make up in hard-to-find colours, as well as wigs and beauty products. There's one on Ridley Road in Dalston.

The High Street: Holland & Barrett has every kind of vitamin you can imagine, usually on sale, as well as honey soap and health-food store snacks and beauty products. Topshop in Oxford Circus - yes, it's intense, but they still have fun clothes. Right now the Fiorucci x Adidas collection is worth checking out. Boots has all kinds of make up, bandaids, and general pharmacy items. I like the Avène moisturizer and the Kalms One-a-night natural chill pills.

The Girl on a Motorcycle

Tea with Alan Aldridge

Penguin books, the 60s, psychedelia… Here's what we talked about the first time we had tea. You can read my interview with the cult artist below.

The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes

Alan Aldridge grew up in East London and moved to Los Angeles 28 years ago. In his early 20s, the young artist went from unemployed and unknown to a designer at the Sunday Times in four months. At first, he received hate mail for his unconventional depictions. Aldridge became the art director of Penguin a year later. Soon after, he was illustrating for the Beatles, drawing posters for Warhol, and hanging out with rock stars. Aldridge created album covers for the Who, Elton John, Cream, and the Rolling Stones. He also made successful children’s books filled with colourful beasts. Film deals, beauties, and traveling around the world factored in along with creative output. Aldridge is currently writing a book called Pandemonium, which is out next spring. I met up with the charming man in Soho to talk about his past and thoughts about the future.

When did you start drawing and designing?

We’ll get one story straight. I wasn’t good at art in school. In fact, one term I came bottom in the class. When the teacher read out the results, I kept thinking he would call my name out next, but no, it was so-and-so, and then so-and-so, “And last of all, Alan Aldridge, 3/100.”   He glared at me; he thought I could do better than that. I mean, I wasn’t really trying, so he said, “Aldridge, you would’ve gotten 4/100 if you’d spelled your name right.”

 I didn’t start drawing until my 20s, and that was drawing in bars, trying to sell portraits and they were all terrible. Never sold one. Then I went to a graphic workshop, because it said Free Coffee on its flyer, which I thought was really weird, ‘cause the flyer was in a coffee shop, so I went and it turned out to be a class for graphic design. I convinced the guys that ran it that I was broke and they let me sit at the back. It was a ten-week course, twice a week. Slowly I got into it and finally I won the big prize, to do a Penguin book for twenty-five pounds. Very quickly after that, Germano Facetti who was head of Penguin’s design group started giving me work and one of the jobs he gave me was a book called Private View by Lord Snowdon so I had to go to the palace. I became very good at putting layouts together. At the end of the gig, Lord Snowdon recommended me to the Sunday Times, which at that point had one of the best design groups in Europe. So I go along to the interview and I get the job. I had gone from literally nothing to the Sunday Times in about four months. I had only been there a year when I became art director at Penguin.

How did you shake up the place when you were designing the Penguin book covers in 1965-67?

Well I was made art director, so I was the boss. It’s a funny story-I was getting to have a reputation and I had done some Penguin books because I had won a prize with the graphic workshop. I won first prize to do a Penguin cover and the art director at Penguin liked me so much he gave me two or three covers to do a week. Then the boss at Penguin, a guy called Tony Godwin  said, “Alan, you’re kind of trendy and know everyone. Do you know somebody, an American, to take over as art director of Penguin?”   I said “Yeah, I do know someone, ME.” And he laughed and I laughed cause it was kind of a joke to think you could be only a year at Sunday Times and then become head of Penguin Books art department. I forgot about it and then two weeks later, he called me up and said, “Do you still want the job?”  I said, “What job?”  And he said, “The art director of Penguin.”  I said, “Are you kidding me?”  He said, “No, it’s yours.”  I was twenty-three or twenty-four at the time. I had only been in the art business for two years, three at the most. Suddenly I was art director of Penguin and I brought my friends in to do the work in the studio. I started to get photographers and designers involved. We threw out the old grid; it was good fun.

 Your Chelsea Girls poster is famous.  How did you get to know Andy Warhol?

 He didn’t ask me personally. There was a place called Arts Lab in Covent Garden, which is a real bohemian, existential, beat generation kind of a joint. They were putting on the Chelsea Girls premiere. Somebody at Arts Lab called and told me Andy Warhol had asked if I’d do the poster, something like that. The poster became more famous than the movie.

Do you see any parallels with the creativity and upheaval of the 60s and the current cultural climate?

No, the difference between the 60s and now, is that the 60s already broke all the barriers: graphically, musically…if you listen to 50s music and the transition into 60s music, it was partly a drug culture as well which took over. There was colour in magazines. Colour became prevalent, as opposed to black and white magazines. It was like the whole younger generation wanted to try out everything...and did. Today it would be very hard to say your vision is unique when so much has already paved the way before you. My drawings had no precedent in the 50s or early 60s. I drew whatever came into my head and I guess that, in its own way, is revolutionary.

I know a lot of people who are obsessed with the 60s and particularly influenced by the style and music of that time. It’s as if there is an imagined nostalgia for a superior era.

Well, 1967 was voted the year of the century, primarily because of Sgt. Pepper. The 60s are all about free love. I mean, I didn’t see too much of that…there were a lot of concerts, a lot of drugs, people were taking their clothes off. That didn’t happen in the 50s…Some of the Pop Art was spectacular.

 Is there anything left to discover?

Oh yeah: computer art. You see what kids are doing in Photoshop. I find it very creative but it’s also cold. It’s almost like no hand has ever touched it. It’s very technical. I think my stuff has a bit of spirit to it.

Do you listen to music when you work?

I have an itunes electronica channel on all the time: XTC. It’s techno mostly.

What is your favorite book?

 Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck. It’s about Shamanism and the effects of psychedelic drugs.

What do you think is the most mind-expanding art out there?

It really depends on the viewer I think. I once when to Ghent in Belgium to see the Jan van Eyck altarpiece, the triptych, and nothing has every blown me away quite like that. At the same time I could look at psychedelic art and feel far less tripped out by it because it’s something I can understand. Jan van Eyck’s paintings don’t seem human to me. It was something that said to me technically you can get a lot better if you try. He was a genius.


Then I suggest playing Exquisite Corpse. We whip up some pictures of hybrid creatures while he regales me with stories about when he was a teenage butcher and old East London. Back when Shoreditch was the roughest part of London, the pub Dirty Dicks used to have dead cats nailed to the wall. But Shoreditch has changed; they took the cats down and Alan Aldridge hasn’t been back since. 

-Words and interview by Margo Fortuny. Published in Exit Magazine, 2008.

EAST LONDON THREE YEARS AGO

Photos by Alistair Allan.

I just came across this list I scribbled a few years ago when I moved to Hackney…

You know you live in East London when…

The 55 bus is a great place to meet people.

Every good electro night is described as ‘polysexual.’

You forget fringe-less girls exist.

Everyone has at least one Pete Doherty story.

Your boyfriend is so thin he’s now two-dimensional.

You see Faris Rotter so often you think he’s part of the wallpaper.

Your passport photo was taken by Alistair Allan.

Every Sunday night (in a secret location) there’s a guestlist-only candlelight memorial mourning Boombox. All tears shed must glitter.

At least half your friends go to Saint Martins.

You haven’t seen flared jeans in years, and consider them a symptom of blindness.

You thought Santa was the mayor of Shoreditch.

Photos by Larissa James.