Blackpaint 660 – Lucian’s Selfies (mostly) and the APT Galleries

Lucian Freud Self Portraits, RA 

Strange title – there are many self portraits, but several pictures that are not; notably the “Two Irishmen in W11”,  “Freddie Standing”, and one of his daughters nude.  Maybe some others, can’t remember.

A number of the early selfies were unknown to me;  I was intrigued by the development of his realist fleshy style out of the early, flatter, more graphic portraits, with the hints of..who?  Christopher Wood?  Stanley Spencer maybe…  Craigie Aitcheson?  John Bellany, even.  I’m talking about hints and echoes, not clear resemblances.

Echo of those Renaissance religious works where the subject (Mary, baby Jesus, baby Baptist) holds a symbolic flower or bird.

 

That right ear is departing…  Actually, the ears echo the horns.

 

I still find something compelling about these unfinished pictures, with the flesh emerging suddenly from the snowy canvas.

 

Love that sidelong, disapproving – threatening? – glance down from a height.

 

Black left eye – fight with a taxi driver, I think.

 

Peeping round the corner – reminds me of a Bonnard (cropping, not style of course).  A lot of these earlier ones and some of the later too have these unusual peerings, croppings and angles.  Great show.

 

APT Galleries, Deptford:   “Material Indifference” – ended December 15th.

I saw this exhibition on its closing evening, at the beautiful white gallery, in the midst of elderly low-rise housing estates off Church Street.  I was struck by the beauty of the abstract painting and sculpture on display, which was the work of four artists:  Alice Peillon, Johanna Melvin, Michele Fletcher and Patrick Lears.  I am still puzzled by the title: the Gallery’s website says it is a “play on the continuum theory, Material Frame Indifference….. Materiality informs process and process determines materiality… The artists’ work seeks to embody the viewer by engaging the senses.”  I’m none the wiser, but happily, the pictures speak for themselves (maybe that’s what the foregoing actually means).

So, very sorry to the gallery and the artists for not getting there before the last day of the exhibition.  Check out their websites, anyway.

 

Johanna Melvin

 

Michele Fletcher

Little touch of Joan Mitchell’s Hidden Valley paintings, maybe…

 

Alice Peillon (I think)

 

Michele Fletcher

 

Alice Peillon

Great paintings to see on a dark winter night in Deptford.

 

Compulsory review of the exhibitions of the year

Best Exhibitions:

Albert Irvin and Abstract Impressionism at RWA Bristol

 

Bellany and Davie, “Cradle of Magic”, Newport Street Gallery, Vauxhall (Damien Hirst’s collection)

 

Bonnard, Tate Modern

 

Disappointing Exhibitions:

Dorothea Tanning, Tate Modern

 

 

Winter Solstice

Blackpaint

22.12.19

 

 

 

Tags: Alan Davie, Albert Irvin, Alice Peillon, APT Galleries, Bonnard, Johanna Melvin, John Bellany, Lucian Freud, Michele Fletcher, Patrick Lears, RA