Blackpaint 677 – Tate Mod; The Man

Tate Modern Regular Collection

Our second post-shielding gallery visit to Tate Modern for the regular collection.  No trouble getting a booking even on a weekend; queue (spaced and short wait); relaxed about times (we were let in a bit early); more people than at Tate Britain, but still mostly easy to avoid crowds; most, but not all, masked.  Some selections below:

Christian Schad

Strange, strange picture:  I’ve seen it many times but I’ve never even noticed the woman at the bottom of the picture in the apparently subservient position.  I’d plead the chest deformity and the supercilious expression as attention grabbers.  I don’t think it’s unconscious racial prejudice – it’s more that I’m extraordinarily unobservant.

 

And these sculptures – Wifredo Lam?  Germaine Richier?  Couldn’t find the wall plaque – they’re often in odd positions…

 

Aubrey Williams

I like the splurged nature of this; as if it’s dribbled and smeared somehow.

 

Beuyss

Lovely collection of little leaden turds in front of the huge one dangling from the girder.

 

Beuyss

Granite corpses or coffins flung up by some earthquake…

 

Edward Paolozzi

Beautifully sculpted (cast?) set of totally useless…. boxes and mechanisms.  I’m not sure if it’s all one piece or not.

 

Sigmar Polke

Big dotty print(?) with a statue and an angel or devil and spurts of some cream/yellow fluid – what could be easier to interpret?

 

I think the one at the front with the wheel is a Paolozzi – didn’t get the name of the other sculptor – sorry, appalling commentary.

 

Obviously this has to be called “Babel”.  I though Nam June Paik-but no, it’s Cildo Meireiles.

 

Max Beckmann

Beckmann’s strange collection of glum clowns and/or musicians – I notice it faintly resembles his famous “Night” in it’s structure (the way the masked figure curves round the right hand corner).

 

William Sasnel 

One of a series of the dead Gadafi.

 

In common with Tate Britain, the arches give great views.  Paintings by Dora Maurer.

Apocalypse Now, Coppola (dir) 1979

Recently watched the “uncut” version of this on TV; I presume the scenes with the French ex-colonials hanging on in Cambodia were restored – I don’t remember them at all from the film I saw back in 79 or 80.  Another thing that struck me was the night scene at the last bridge, where no-one is in command – I could have sworn there was Hendrix playing, “Voodoo Child” maybe; there WAS some music but nowhere near as prominent as I remember…

Hopper’s over the top hippie photographer gave me, along with “Eddie Coyle” below, the title for this blog; his crazed eulogy of Kurtz, “The Man” is this, “The Man” is that, “The Man is – the Man, you know”….

 

Everybody is deranged (except the Vietnamese and maybe some Cambodians) in this film.  Here’s Martin Sheen’s intense assassin’s stare, years after his Charles Starkweather turn in “Badlands” (1973) with the wonderful Sissie Spacek – and a good while before he became liberal President Bartlett in the West Wing.

American Dharma, Errol Morris (dir) 2018

This was in the Sky Documentary Channel a couple of weeks ago. A fascinating portrait, but hardly a fair and unbiased one, of Steve Bannon, ex-Trump adviser, self proclaimed “street fighter” (I think he means attitude rather than actuality). right-wing hate figure of the liberal-left “Establishment”.  Bannon was sweaty, scruffy, unshaven and unflappable, with a hard stare and a challenging grin.  He speaks with relish of media stunts in which he undermined Clinton (Bill, not Hillary).  His favourite animal is the honey badger, because it is obsessive and relentless in its pursuits.  He seems to look to old films to underpin his principles and has picked some pretty good ones: Gregory Peck in “12 o’Clock High”. John Wayne in “The Searchers”, Kirk Douglas in “Paths of Glory” and Orson Welles as Falstaff in “Chimes at Midnight”.  This last pertains to his breach with Trump – unlike Falstaff, he claims to feel no resentment at being cast adrift by his protege – it had to be, the time had come.

The director makes no real attempt to refute anything Bannon says, but periodically flings headlines from the US press onto the screen which may or may not relate to him or undermine him; you can’t tell. There’s no engagement, just another restatement of Democrat/liberal-left distaste and fear.  In an extraordinary sequence at the end, Bannon is portrayed walking through a blazing building – an aircraft hangar? – as if he were Stephen King’s cowboy Satan in “The Stand”.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Peter Yates (dir) 1973

To end this week, a film which must be seen by any fan of US crime thrillers, with a brilliant cast headed by Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle, based on a novel by George V. Higgins.  The first, I believe, of several films in which bank robbers use moulded rubber masks (cf. Bigelow’s “Point Break”).  There is a “Man” conversation between Boyle an a mob go-between – “The Man wants it done tonight.”

“Tell The Man I can’t do it tonight; too short notice.”

“The Man says it has to be tonight”….and so on, for several minutes.  The Man gets his way, of course.

A bank robbery.

Boyle and Mitchum at the ice hockey game, before the murder.

 

A couple of old ones of mine, gone to good homes, one in England, one in Finland, I believe.

 

Blackpaint

22/08/20

 

Blackpaint 676 – Back to the Tate

Tate Britain, open again..sort of..

Booked a trip around the bits of the Tate that were available: British Art 1931 – present day, and British art 15 something – 1890.  Not much going on between 1891 and 1931, maybe…  Hang on, there was World War One, Nash, Nevinson, Orpen, Spencer and all that –  and probably some other art stuff too…

Anyway, great to be back and in the (short) queue and the galleries too, not many people about and most, but not all, wearing face coverings.  Like always, when you haven’t seen pictures for a time, they look fresh and exciting and there are a few new ones to pique your interest.  I went round exactly like those people I usually deride – photographing everything.  A few examples below with the customary banal and/or facetious comments:

Joshua Reynolds, Detail of a woman’s layered skirt

My partner took this one.  I thought she’d got the whole painting but she’s mainly interested in fabrics so just got the skirt.  Quite amazing really, like a fractured ice cliff.

 

Gerald Brockhurst – Margaret Duchess of Argyll, 1931

Great portrait, very like Keeley Hawes in “the Durrells”   (see below)

 

 

John Tunnard – Fulcrum (top) 1939

A typical Tunnard painting, recalling a science fiction paperback from the 50s or 60s – or maybe Festival of Britain art – so ahead of his time.

Sam Haile – Surgical Ward (lower) 1939

Sam Haile is new to me; Miro-ish, but with a drab British palette.

 

Meredith Frampton – Trial and Error, 1939

Beautifully executed, but “painting by numbers” Surrealism – think of a bunch of unrelated objects and assemble them to make a dreamlike still life.  Leaves me cold really, compared to, say, Magritte or Delvaux, who really do evoke dreams successfully in some of their images.

 

Jacob Epstein

And on the back of the Epstein sculpture..  I didn’t realise that there was anything on the reverse.

 

John Minton – Portuguese Cannon 1953

A new Minton (I’ve never seen it before, anyway), in the style of his big picture of the death of Nelson.

 

Keith Vaughan

Lovely picture, no comment required.  So- no comment…

 

Patrick Heron

This one’s been up on the walls within the last five years, I guess – unusual Heron with regard to the colour; that acidy, poisonous green – or is it greeny yellow?  Well, it’s both really.

 

William Scott

Scott often painted huge pictures of assembled kitchen implements, frying pans, pots.  I didn’t get the title of this so I’ve no clue as to what is depicted – brick wall, bits of toast, cribbage peg board..  It’s a new one.

 

Peter Lanyon – Zennor Storm, 1958

An old favourite.  I’d always thought the central image was a boat – bit like Noah’s Ark.  But no – it’s the green at Zennor (in a storm, of course)  I actually miss “Wreck”, the one they had up before Covid, with the boat, the guitar, and the shark.

 

Roger Hilton – September 1961

Stark, clear composition; back view of a sleeping dog on the floor of an old pub, perhaps? but what’s the black loop?

 

Alan Davie – Black Mirror, 1952

I think there’s more than a touch of Bacon in this image and the brushwork; I wonder if they knew each other’s work?

 

Peter Lanyon – both the glass assemblage and the painting, which I think is called “The Lost Mine”.

 

Rose English

Her fabulous film, made in 1975, I think, of these women at a horse show, trotting round like horses in formation, kitted out with tails, making an obvious feminist point, but no less funny for it.  Forerunner of “Smack the Pony”.

 

 

Unknown artist – William, First Lord de la Warr, c.1550

I’m sure I’ve seen that face on TV or at the National Theatre.  Tried to poison his brother, says the plaque on the wall.  He looks well capable of that.

 

I’m going to avoid making the obvious remark.  It’s a strain, but I’ve managed it.

 

Thomas Gainsborough – Mr and Mrs Carter, c.1747

I had to include this for the clear disparity in dimensions and the fact that the lady appears to be floating…  It seems remarkable to me that Gainsborough painted both this caricature-like portrait AND the painting below: two completely different styles (and he had at least one more).

 

Thomas Gainsborough

 

Tilly Kettle – Mrs Yates as Mandane in “the Orphan of China”, c.1765

Mrs Yates in a martial arts defensive posture.

And that was our end-of-shielding trip to Tate Britain.  An old landscape of mine below:

Islares Bay 

Blackpaint

7/08/2020