Russia and the Arts: the age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky ( National Portrait Gallery)
Lovely show. I’ve started with Repin, who is the most famous, but I think Serov and Vrubel run him pretty close.
Repin, Turgenev – great hands, aren’t they?
Repin, Stasov – surely Michael Gambon in a Russian shirt..
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Repin, Baroness Hildebrandt – love the red star hat; probably not a revolutionary though…
Serov, Madame Ermolova – Really impressive full-length painting of this theatrical woman in a jet-black dress; I thought Singer Sargent at first, but now I think maybe more like Toulouse-Lautrec in execution. However, can’t find a picture, so you will have to go see.
Vrubel, Mamontov – Jonathan Jones reckons it’s sort of pre-Cubist, the angles and especially the shirtfront. I think it looks like a Sickert, or maybe even Ruskin Spear.
Serov again, Morozov – reminds me of a Scottish Colourist, Fergusson or Cadell, with those flowers behind.
Nightcrawler (2013), Dan Gilroy
Gyllenhaal’s eyes must surely have been “enhanced”; They looked too big to be real to me. He reminded me of a meerkat. Obvious comparisons: Jim Carrey in “Cable Guy” and maybe Robin Williams in “One Hour Photo”. I’d be interested to know just how far they were pushing it; are there really TV stations in LA that would show footage of murder victims in a private house, filmed before the arrival of the police (even with faces and wounds pixillated)?
Vinyl
I liked the comment about Elvis, singing Polk Salad Annie in Vegas: “He’s singing about lettuce…”. It’s way by far the best thing on TV at the moment. The man who played Elvis in the white- suited Vegas era was brilliant.
Art of Scandinavia, BBC4
What happened to the 20th century? The Denmark episode dealt with LEGO and furniture and the Danes’ supposed love for cosy miniaturism in architecture – no mention of Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby, CoBrA…
Swedish episode was better; Zorn, Gan(?) – but then, more furniture and design, model housing for 30’s factory workers… The only 21st century art mentioned was the graffiti artist who covers everything in black swirls. More painting in future, please (and sculpture, I suppose).
Nikolai Astrup (Dulwich Picture Gallery
Norwegian painter, died 1928.
My first impression on entering the gallery was green – and brown and blue, but mostly green. The canvases are nearly all landscapes, or lakescapes, with trees and they are crowded. There are blossoms that recall Hockney’s “maggot” hawthorns from his huge show a few years ago; there is a breast-shaped dark mountain that pops up in several pictures. Where there are people, they are mostly women or girls in long peasant dresses that remind me of Munch’s figures. In the last room, the green is relieved a little by yellow, in a series of pictures depicting enormous bonfires in the dusk. His brushwork is somewhat rough and blurry – one of the most effective pictures was of Monet-like blurred trees in twilight with a couple of lanterns glowing in the background.
He also did woodcuts, which show a distinct Japanese influence (and a much lighter green), like the one above.
St. Anthony and his Pig
Blackpaint
02.04.16
Tags: Asger Jorn, Asger Zorn, Cadell, Elvis, JD Fergusson, Nightcrawler, Nikolai Astrup, Repin, Russia and the Arts, Serov, Singer Sargent, Vinyl, Vrubel
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