Jusepe de Ribera, Dulwich Picture Gallery
The most effective heir to Caravaggio, Spanish painter who worked in Naples (1591 – 1652)
I’ve been looking forward to this exhibition for months, having seen fantastic de Riberas in the Prado last year; vast canvases of stretched, prostrated male bodies undergoing torture… hang on, this is becoming rather weird. They are not actually all that gruesome and it’s the brilliant rendition (unfortunate term, but the correct one) of the human body that’s fantastic, not the torture or bloodshed.
There are only four or five large canvases in Dulwich – St.Bartholomew, about to be skinned alive (two of those, I think); Marsyas, being flayed by Apollo; St Sebastian, having his arrows pulled out by a couple of women (the women rather perfunctory – de Ribera seems more interested in men). There is a portrait of a man holding a knife and a flayed human skin, obviously inspired by the Michelangelo self portrait on the Sistine wall.
Additionally, there are a number of beautiful little drawings, some in red chalk, that are reminiscent in style of Leonardo, but Goya immediately comes to mind; the subject matter? Executions, tortures such as the strappado, hangings, crucifixions, facial deformations… You can imagine the visitor to Ribera’s studio, after seeing these: “And the one you’re working on at the moment, upstairs – would that be a harbour scene or some nice flowers in a jug, with butterflies? Oh, a flaying…”.
St Sebastian
The sprawling male bodies are the obvious focal point – the skin often white or greyish, grainy, rippled over the belly, livid white and scooped out by shadow in turn. Wher the flaying is actually in progress, it is the foot or arm that is being “done” and is easy to miss. De Ribera is also pretty hot on fabric; see the example below.
By coincidence, the night before going to this, I watched the film “Bone Tomahawk” (dir. S.Craig Zahler, 2015) on TV, in which cave-dwelling cannibal throwbacks scalp a living man, then upend him and chop him in two from the crutch; it seemed to make an appropriate double with Ribera.
Amy Sillman, Camden Arts Centre, Finchley Road tube
By way of slight contrast, this beautiful set of paintings and drawings, and a cartoon film in the overheated Camden Arts Centre. Lovely big, green, pink, blue abstract canvases (see below) and cartoony characters, like the crawling, vomiting (?) creature that make their way, like Kentridge’s people and coffee pots, into the film. The pictures have surface; sometimes hard, smooth and glazed, sometimes rough, scraped, paint in bobbles and rills. She seems, again like Kentridge and many other artists, to have recurring images; the thing that looks like an old vinyl record pickup in “TV in Bed” below; or is it an unconscious deep sea diver, lying on his back on the sea bed and wearing flippers…
Apart from Kentridge, Guston (the pinks), Oehlen and for some reason, Marlene Dumas came to mind.
What the Axe Knows
TV in Bed
Slant
Sean Scully, “Uninsideout”, Blain/Southern, Hanover Square
For some reason, someone tweeted that Scully “should be ashamed of himself” for this exhibition… Why? He did stripes before and he’s doing stripes now – what’s wrong with these stripes? Too colourful, maybe…
Anyway, they are huge; lush, syrupy sweeps of paint on aluminium supports, very painterly, with a depth of colour like those he showed in that fabulous palace in Venice, at last year’s Biennale. Additionally, there are a couple of enormous, quilt-like assemblages with inset panels (three pictures down, below). Downstairs, smaller works on paper in pastel. In Scully’s handwriting, some guff about clashing colours suggesting The Clash rock band – great art doesn’t, or shouldn’t need explanation or justification.
Two of mine to finish with, somewhat smaller than Scully’s:
Ice Candle
Blackpaint
Little Crashing Out
Blackpaint
21.10.48
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