Gursky at the Hayward
This finishes on 22 April, so go soon. No concessions for seniors not on benefits, which is bad for me but probably satisfying if you’re a resentful younger person awaiting the demise of “selfish” baby boomers. Before entry, we were briskly told to keep behind the lines on the floor in front of the pictures, but were given no further instructions on our behaviour in the gallery.
I had thought that Gursky produced huge, intriguing photos of striking scenes – supermarket shelves, winding motor racing tracks in the desert, panoramic harbours – and yes, these are all there; but he also manipulates the pictures, adding and/or removing elements from a scene – the river Rhine, straight as a road, dull grey, between dull green banks under a dull sky, for example, has had buildings erased from the skyline and a photo of museum interior with paintings and sculptures and a nude woman posing is a collage of images making up a fictional exhibition. One of the pictures in this fictional display is Gerhard Richter’s “Ema (Nude on a Staircase)”, which is apt, since there are echoes of Richter elsewhere. A large, grey, ridged expanse of surface turns out to be carpet, but reminds you of Richter’s sea and sky pictures. A few examples of the pictures below:
Rather reminiscent of Ansel Adams’ work, I thought; small and untypical of Gursky…
That’s more characteristic; huge and busy.
Antarctica, based on a satellite image.
Reading over what I’ve written, I’ve made it sound rather colourless. There are some stunning examples of colour saturation – another composite image of ocean and islands from satellite images that looks almost like a Lanyon painting, for example; pictures of operatic entertainments from North Korea, a Japanese cityscape, a panoramic view (manipulated?) of Salerno harbour. And a huge image of two teams at a Formula 1 pitstop, changing tyres or whatever on their team vehicles. Highly recommended, but remember not to step over the lines…
Fanny and Alexander dir.Ingmar Bergman (1982)
Rewatched this on DVD and struck by the lush sets, costumery and so on, so different from most of the other Bergman films I’ve seen, most of which are set on islands with relatively few actors, pulling carts, chopping wood and having breakdowns.
A mixture of eccentric (and wealthy) family saga and magical realism, it suddenly touches Shakespeare, or maybe Beckett, in Ekdahl’s speech in the scene above:
“Suddenly death strikes. Suddenly the abyss opens. Suddenly the storm howls and disaster is upon us… The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all… No-one escapes… So shall it be- Therefore let us be happy while we are happy…” How true.
For a more typical Bergman film – almost a two hander, with Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson, cooped up together as nurse and mute patient in a house on the seashore, see “Persona” from 1966. It must have been an influence on Roeg’s “Performance”, with the interplay between Mick Jagger’s rock star and James Fox’s gangster.
Persona, dir.Ingmar Bergman (1966)
Not done much painting lately, due to evil breaking loose and running through the world – but here’s the last one I finished:
Den of Thieves
Blackpaint
10.04.18
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