Blackpaint 662 – The London Art Fair and Son of Saul

London Art Fair – until this Sunday, 26th Jan.

Up at the Angel tube, turn right, over the road and carry on for 5 mins to the Horticultural Halls (sorry – the Business Design Centre).  This year, the featured gallery on the ground floor is the Southampton.  The first two paintings below are in the Southampton collection – I love them both, especially the Roger Hilton, with that great, charcoal, sweeping line (see also Brett Whiteley’s drawings).

 

Matthew Smith

Touch of Phoebe from “Friends” here, maybe…

 

Roger Hilton

Photo doesn’t really do justice to the blue background, which is more… better in the “flesh”.

 

Brian Fielding

Big and in your face, on a partition at the end of a row.  Floaters in red and ochre-ish yellow on that turquoise – ish ground, lovely.

 

Martin Brewster

I like these, especially the one on the right; my partner scorns them, however, as “typical art fair fodder”.  Her taste is more reliable – but it’s my blog,

Keith Vaughan

Very untypical Keith Vaughan, I think; Vaughan is everywhere at the Fair (along with Adrian Heath and Alan Davie, I’m pleased to say) and commands huge prices – £25.000 for a small drawing, for instance.

 

Katherine Jones

Beautiful prints – she’s our niece, but that hasn’t influenced my choice in the slightest degree.  Sorry, not prints: watercolours.

 

Nikoleta Sekulovic

This is big – life-size.  Great painting (drawing?), poor photo.  Love the line – like Hockney.

 

George (?) Peter Lanyon

I think this is the famous Lanyon, not his father or uncle or something.  Never heard or seen him called George before.  I don’t think it’s great, but included it because it’s by the great man and is nothing like his usual output.

Rachael Read

This single painting is on two grounds; thick, wrinkled brown paper.  Don’t know exactly why, but this adds a degree of attraction to the painting, for me anyway.  looks a little like those little works on paper that Roger Hilton did, from his sickbed, in his last years.  But blown up 10 or 15 times, of course.

Son of Saul, dir. Laszlo Nemes (2015)

This was on TV the other night and I was unable to avoid watching it, as I’ve done several opportunities in the past.  It sounded far too harrowing to sit through if there was an alternative.  It’s set in Auschwitz, towards the end of 1944,  when the big transports from Hungary arrived and the massacres and burnings depicted in the film took place on the edge of the woods; also when there were breakouts involving members of the Sonderkommando, one of which is depicted in the film.  The focus throughout is closely fixed on the main character; the horrific events he sees and takes part in, are blurred and obscured to a degree – but you hear them clearly.  He becomes fixated on achieving some sort of proper burial for a boy victim of the gas chamber; he wants a rabbi to conduct the ceremony as properly as possible.

When I was at university in the early 70s, we studied Peter Weiss’s play, “The Investigation”; this was actually taken from the transcripts of the Auschwitz trials of the 1960s.  Weiss simply selected and split the testimonies into “cantos”.  At the time, Adorno’s dictum, or suggestion, was that the Holocaust had somehow killed art – silence was the only appropriate response from artists.

A fascinating article in the Guardian today (NOT something you will often hear from me) by Howard Jacobson points out that there have been a number of novels and films on the subject since then, some great, some not so much. He identifies the emergence of a disturbing subgenre, the Auschwitz novel:  “Auschwitz Lullaby, The Child of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz, The Druggist of Auschwitz, The Tattooist of Auschwitz…”  These books, which claim to be based on truth, i.e. “Faction”, use the mass extermination programme carried out by the Nazis in Auschwitz as a backdrop to the story.  Jacobson articulates the issue lucidly and should be read.

Actually, thinking about it, Nemes may have done a similar thing in “Saul” – although it feels as if he has done a right thing; it’s ABOUT the Holocaust, rather than using it as a backdrop; but then again, I don’t know.

 

I got a print set for Christmas; these are the first attempts:

 

Blackpaint’s First Prints

23.01.20

Blackpaint 661- Vampires, Volcanoes and False Confessions

Elizabeth Peyton, “Aire and Angels”, National Portrait Gallery until 5th January 2020

So not much time left to see these paintings, if you should want to – exhibition has been on since October, it seems, without entering my consciousness.  Mostly celebrities: Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Liam Gallagher (whoever they might be), Napoleon….

Critics are somewhat split on the quality of these works: The Time Out critic, for example, thinks that the exhibition as a whole works, but that, individually, the paintings “stink”.  Bidisha in the Guardian is rapturous about this collection of beautiful (?) boys, and says that they smack of the “hot vampire”, which seems about right to me.

Strangely, none of the pieces I read, including the NPG’s own site, make any comparisons, or attempt to locate Peyton in any context.  I imagine Alistair Sooke does, in his Telegraph review, but since you have to subscribe to read it in its entirety,  I’ll never know.

Here, then, for what they’re worth, are my contributions.  First, Marlene Dumas – the flatness of texture, the graphic, cartoon-y nature of some of the portraits.  Then, German Expressionism, especially Oscar Kokoschka, in the entwined lovers below; finally, that woman with the flowers, against the green wall – a cross between Christian Schad and a Scottish Colourist like Peploe, maybe?

 

Quite unlike anything else in the exhibition – slightly blurred, I’m afraid, but definite Dumas touch, reinforced by the monochrome.

 

Vampire lovers…

 

Kokoschka crossed with Burne Jones?

 

Who’s this vampire boy?  No-one I know recognises him…

 

 

The exhibition is not confined to the rooms devoted to it; there are several portraits elsewhere in the galleries (although I didn’t see them).  It’s free, so definitely worth a walk through before it finishes on the 5th.

Erebus, The Story of a Ship – Michael Palin (Arrow Books, 2018)

John Hartnell, one of Franklin’s crew, buried in the 1840s and preserved by the ice

I got this book for Christmas and find it absorbing and beautifully written.  Erebus was the name of the ship which James Clark Ross sailed to the Antarctic on two expeditions in 1840 and 41 – and Lord Franklin took towards the other Pole in 1845; the voyage which led to his death and that of his entire crew and the disappearance of the ship.  The Erebus has now been located, sunk in shallow water; the bodies of some sailors discovered and exhumed (see above) – but I haven’t got that far yet; I’m still in Tasmania with Ross, just back from the first Antarctic “trip”.  I was interested to find that Mount Erebus, the active Antarctic volcano, was named after Clark’s ship, not the other way round.  Seems obvious now…

The Confession Killer and The Confession Tapes (both series on Netflix)

Henry Lee Lucas

I haven’t been to the cinema recently (apart from the latest Star Wars effort on Christmas Eve), but have been watching these two fascinating series on Netflix.  Lucas – you may remember the film “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” – confessed to around 600 murders when he was in the custody of the Texas Rangers, murders which had been carried out all over the USA, sometimes in different states simultaneously.  Police forces from numerous states queued up to clear their unsolved cases; Lucas, with his Texas Ranger “handlers” rarely let them down.  He was eventually convicted of one particular crime, the “Orange Socks”murder, which led to a death sentence – and it subsequently became clear that the confession was false.  I think I’m right in saying it was the only time that George W Bush ever granted an appeal against the death sentence.  Lucas died in prison in 2011 – no-one knows how many – if any – of his claims were true.

As to “The Confession Tapes” – there are two clear lessons to be learned.  NEVER falsely confess to a crime to relieve relentless pressure from interrogators, and NEVER agree to a plea bargain in Arkansas.

Anyway, I’ve finally been doing some proper painting again.  Latest efforts below:

 

Erebus

 

Night Visitor

 

New Years Eve

Happy New Year to all readers (for whom it IS new year, of course)

Blackpaint

January 1st, 2020