Amber Atherton, Founder & Director of MyFlashTrash.com, returns from a visit to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, with reflections on the meeting of art, commerce and ideas.

The little TV screens on my Azerbaijan Airways flight to the country’s capital, Baku, flickered and lit up the faces of my fellow passengers. Scottish oil rig workers, business men and botoxed, bleach blondes, we stood out from your typical Azerbaijani traveller; part of a small handful of British guests invited as guests of Leyla Aliyeva to the opening of the country's first Four Seasons hotel.

Incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920, Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991 and began its rise into a capitalist driven free market.  The Baku of today aims arrest the country’s history of democratic repression and establish a cultural reputation, cultivating freedom of expression through the arts.

Keen to develop a relationship with the global art community, organisations such as YARAT! have emerged to provide a platform for Azeri artists, though a tour of the Baku Museum of Modern Art hints at a city concerned with attracting a new type of wealth – not for the first time.  In 1864 the first commercial oil well brought on the self-styled 'Caspian Sea Gold Rush', which led to prospectors and entrepreneurs flocking to Baku. The capital’s fairly nondescript terrain was transformed into a grand European-influenced city teeming with opera houses and theatres.  Azerbaijan is now undergoing a second cultural rebirth following seventy-odd years of Soviet occupation.  From within the walled old city of Baku (a UNESCO-listed world heritage site), the city’s newly-prosperous have a profound desire to celebrate their country’s heritage while retaining a hunger to interact and make an impact on the world stage.

And it’s art, then, that will act as the vehicle for this international discourse, posing as an emblem of intellect and social respect -- lets hope it also acts as an education and gives Azeri artists the chance to give their nation a distinctive cultural voice.  And, for the Azeris, hopefully somewhere in this country there is a native Damien Hirst lurking, waiting to jump on this wagon of wealth, inspiring his fellow public to take advantage of this grand PR coup.

image one: Artworks from the Museum of Modern Art, Baku.

image two: Philarmony Park, Baku.

East of Mayfair is a new concept in art, design and collecting.  Of itself, it says “art collecting does not need to be complicated, pretentious or expensive.”  They present work by a range of artists and designers – emerging and established – sourced to act as both a gateway into art collecting and as inspiration for new moves in interior design.

In operation since only the spring, East of Mayfair has been working with some of the most reputable artists and designers, including illustrator Pierre Le-Tan, famous for his work on The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and Thibaud Hérem, whose symmetrical monochrome drawings put a modern, dandy-stylistic spin on renaissance-era figuration.

Conceived and established by friends Janina Joffe and Alexander Montague-Sparey, East of Mayfair presents itself as a virtual house, in the grand Huguenot style that you see dotted around Spitalfields, in which objects and artworks are displayed in their natural environments.  These works are to scale and presented in situ.  Users can explore the house room-by-room, clicking on individual windows.  An artwork, above the bed, for example, or in hallways, framed on walls, can be clicked.  Doing so brings up its information.  Looking at art with a view to buying, traditionally in the context of a commercial gallery, can be an intimidating experience.  East of Mayfair removes this and utilises the very best of the web – inclusivity, information and individuality.  Represented artists include the world famous René Gruau, Paul Negent and Marcus Tremonto.  It’s a unique and very modern way of engaging with art, and in addition to the virtual East of Mayfair host special events and exhibitions and provide a bespoke advisory service on building and developing a collection of your very own.  Their house can be visited here.

The venerable monthly film magazine Sight & Sound have published a list of the 'best films ever made' every ten years since their twentieth anniversary issue in 1952 (yes, they've been going since the thirties).  The problem with lists is that they are always divisive, no matter the extent of survey, and the Sight & Sound survey is extensive, stretching internationally, from critics to leading film personnel (including filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino).  This year there was a great surprise on the list.

Removed from the top spot, its home for every list since 1952, Citizen Kane was replaced by Vertigo, which plays all weekend at BFI Southbank.  It's a film that has not had too much general appreciation in the past decade, and has only been recovered for theatrical screening in the past few months, with the BFI's retrospective of Alfred Hitchcock.  It's certainly not Hitchcock's most famous (Psycho, m'lud), nor is it everyone's favourite, but it seems to be generally agreed that it is probably the creative pinnacle of his long career - his directorial career lasted forty-four years.

Scottie Ferguson is a private detective, laying low in his San Francisco office after a particularly heavy job.  Scottie is called on by an old friend who asks him to follow his wife Madeleine.  The detective takes the job and soon finds himself in pursuit of Madeleine, a gorgeous, sultry and exotic blonde - a stereotypical Hitchcock heroine.  Suddenly, something here is not right, but that might just be all in Scottie's head.  Is Madeleine who she says she is?  Or worse, is Madeleine someone else altogether, and is Scottie even chasing the right woman?  This film is the darkest of love stories.  It's a thriller about self-torment, erotic fantasy, unconditional love and the guilt that follows it.  Exploitation and manipulation, both physical and emotional are rife.  Hollywood royalty James Stewart and Kim Novak are the stars who, if placed together in a film at any other time, would be our lovestruck hero and heroine finding romance against the odds.  In Hitchcock's hands, they become ensconced in a psychoanalytical nightmare.

Vertigo plays at BFI Southbank all weekend.