Blackpaint 651- Annely Juda, Mary Ramsden, Helene Schjerfbeck and the Whole of South America

Annely Juda – Summer Exhibition until 30th August

A sort of retrospective of AJ artists, leaning towards geometric abstraction, I guess (see examples below) – but also figurative and sculpture; Hockney, Caro, Kossoff, Roger Ackling, et al.  A selection follows, not necessarily the best – although I like the Shiraishi red zips on grey – but giving some idea of range.

 

Alan Green – White over Red/Violet 

The title makes sense in the gallery, but not in this photo, where the subtleties of colour are lost, rather.

 

Yuko Shiraishi – Boulevard No.2

 

Sigrid Holmwood – Land of Cockaigne

Seen her work before in the Saatchi Gallery; the cartoonish quality is almost a Saatchi house style, it seems to me.  I think a faint hint of early Sigmar Polke too…

 

Leon Kossoff 

Didn’t get the title of this, but that building looks really familiar.  John Berger’s occasional correspondence with Kossoff about drawing is an interesting read.

 

Mary Ramsden at Pilar Corrias, Eastcastle Street W1

Sorry to say that this exhibition finished on 9th August (I didn’t check the dates before I went on holiday); I was so impressed with the paintings, though, that I thought it was worth uploading a few – you can always check her website.  Colours remind me a little of Mary Heillman, contents and the sort of roughness of the paint suggest Roy Oxlade maybe?  to me anyway; maybe it’s the orange coffee cup ring on the blue painting.

 

 

 

 

Urban Impulses 1959 – 2016; Latin American Photography, Photographers Gallery until 6th October 

Mostly Mexico, I think, but most other LA countries represented.  Demonstrations, police beating students, students beating police, murders, accidents, bars, transvestites, brothels, dancers, artistes, beaches, posers, posters, shopfronts, mannikins, lovers, cinemas, walls – I have avoided the sensational and given some examples of the Colombian Beatriz Jaramillo’s “Zocalo” series of vernacular architectural features.  As usual at the PG, fantastic and varied work and a thick, free booklet.

 

Not sure if these are also Jaramillo’s; they were next in line.

 

Helene Schjerfbeck: RA until 27th October

By way of total contrast to the other exhibitions I’ve mentioned is this one of the Finnish artist (Swedish speaking, according to the booklet – is that significant?), 1862 – 1946.  A range of her work  below, starting with a self – portrait of the young artist (compare it to that of the old woman portrayed in the 5th picture down, her last self-portrait, one of twenty she did in the last year of her life; actually, there’s a later drawing but the one here is the last painting).

 

Portrait of her mother; I like the light on those knuckles and fingers…

 

Nothing like the others, this one…

 

Her mother again; the blue background and the dazzling white of the open book sing out to you in a gallery full of rather – well, brown and grey pictures.

We’re in the land of Munch here, aren’t we?  I don’t mean that as a compliment.

 

Like the blue mother above, a welcome splash of colour in a drab world.  I liked the paintings for the most part and was reminded here and there of Gwen John (but also, unfortunately, of Munch).  Thirsty for colour, as well as for a beer of course, by the end of the visit.

Modernists & Mavericks; Bacon, Freud, Hockney & the London Painters.  Martin Gayford, Thames & Hudson, 2018

Buy this; it’s £12.99 well spent (has to be the book, not a Kindle version, if there IS one).  No jargon; all the famous anecdotes are there, but Gayford does a great job of putting this lot in the context of the times and of each other.  There’s a very clear discussion of just what “abstraction” can mean – about five different things, I made it – which, as the author says, is a question which kept a lot of drink-fuelled arguments going all night in the 50s and 60s.  I was astonished – no, overstated, but surprised – to read about the furore over William Gear’s “Autumn Landscape” at the Festival of Britain.

As always, a couple of new ones of mine to finish:

Before the Snow

 

Drying off

….and three others that I will be exhibiting with ArtBridge in Paris in September:

Caen

 

On the Rocks

 

Crossfire

Blackpaint

12.08.19

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 646 – Rembrandt, Richter, Caro, Saatchi

Rembrandt, Visions of the Self, Gagosian, ended 18th May

Sorry – missed the boat to recommend this one; but it was very good.  Just a bunch of self-portraits really, linked to or inspired by Rembrandt’s selfies.  A selection below, as always:

 

Untitled 2011 by Urs Fischer; Cast in wax.

 

Cindy Sherman, in disguise of course…

Baselitz – seems to be adjusting his dress…

 

Dora Maar – a searching gaze…

Others on display included Howard Hodgkin, Bacon, Jenny Savile and of course, Rembrandt himself.

 

Richter, Overpainted Photographs,  Gagosian Davies Street W1, on until 8th June

Only four days to go, well worth a look.  They’re not much more than postcard size, by the way.  Simple idea, but some great effects.

 

 

 

 

Caro, Seven Decades, Annely Juda, until 2nd July

Interesting to see some of Caro’s early pieces, from before his big conceptual breakthrough (connected metal components, displayed on the floor instead of some sort of platform).  The drawing on the wall below is of a bull, but reminds me of David Smith’s flat plane arrangements, like Hudson River Landscape of 1951.  The two small figures – Bernard Meadows, or maybe Elizabeth Frink (was she later or his contemporary?)

 

 

Touch of the Guillotine about this one…

 

Speaking Trumpet from the lower decks?

 

Navigational instruments?

Kaleidoscope, Saatchi Gallery, Kings Road, until 11th June

Another short time one, I’m afraid; several interesting and one really good young painter.

Pierre Carreau, AquaViva series

French artist, working in the Caribbean.  I’ve no idea if these photographic images are manipulated in any way, and if so, how – but the waves depicted seem somehow to be frozen, or solidified, or maybe coated in oil.  Maybe it’s the size of them, coupled with a high shutter speed.

 

Whitney Bedford

Appropriately nautical- sounding name, this American artist’s work, according to the Saatchi booklet, was created at the time of the Iraq war and they are “sort-of-salon paintings about empire and war in very pop colours”.  Can’t say I got the connection with war, but I did get the very pop colours.

 

Florence Hutchings

 

Florence Hutchings again

Great paintings; big, roughly textured, loosely collaged in places, big rich colours.  They’re sort of Braque-ish, I think.  I look forward to seeing more of her work.  Only 22, apparently, based in London.

 

Tillman Kaiser

Austrian, from Vienna.  Booklet says his paintings “echo a likeness to the art of stained glass windows” and he says he is interested in symmetries.  Some of his paintings represent patterns of swirling heads and reminded me strongly of works by Ellen Gallagher.

 

Saatchi, Gallery 8: “Arctic: New Frontier” by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir Van Lohuizen

Kozyrev’s pictures are of Russian Arctic ports and the Nomadic people of the region; van Lohuizen’s are of Spitzberg Island in the Svalbard peninsula.  Some are breathtaking scenery; some rather depressing scenes of workers revving jet skis in great clouds of exhaust, or of giant, impressive pieces of plant in bright yellow against a blinding white background of snow and ice.

As always, one of mine to finish with:

Ocean of Storms

Blackpaint

4/06/19

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 584 – Uluru, Falling Space and Ken’s Ceramic Lava

One of mine to kick off –

Little Fire and Sea

Blackpaint

 

Now on to proper artists:

Michael Andrews, Gagosian, W1

A great exhibition of paintings by this lesser-known artist (lesser-known, that is, than his contemporaries such as Bacon, Freud and Auerbach; obviously, all my British readers will know him – you do, don’t you, both of you?).  It covers his whole career, starting with a couple of those eerie group paintings, people lying about singly and in couples, in a garden, staring out at you, some of them, as at a camera, or mingling in a club (the Colony Room, Bacon seated back to viewer, Freud staring out).  Then the balloon pictures, and an arresting picture of a plane about to hit us, above the lights of a city – bit like an Italian Futurist.  Then to Australia and the pink, rounded stone hills of the outback.  Then deerstalking in the Scottish hills.  Portraits in between.

Laughter, Uluru (Ayers Rock) The Cathedral I, 1985

Strangely like a Bacon, the mouth I suppose.

The Thames at Low Tide, 1993-4

His last painting, I think.  Strange angles..

School I, 1977

I love that black to dark blue water.

 

Swimming Pool with Two Girls, 1982

From a photo, surely.

A lot to see; sixty-one pictures in all.  It’s on until March 25th.

Marcus Harvey, Vigo Gallery, W1.

This is the artist who caused the big stir back in 1995 at the Sensations exhibition,  with his portrait of Myra Hindley done in children’s handprints.  Nothing like that in this collection, but some interesting pieces, like below:

Maggie, 2011 – surely not Mrs. Thatcher?

The English Cemetery, 2016 – like Kiefer doing Isle of the Dead, floating in a Richter sea…

 

Richard Wilson, Annely Juda, W1

This is staggering; can’t work out how he did it.  He’s taken whole sections of space within the gallery itself (a stairway, curtains, wall), sculpted the space in wood. and then dropped them – gently – into position as below.  The drawing shows the section he has constructed.  Sorry about my mania for comparisons, but the effect is Louise Nevelson, positioned by Phyllida Barlow.

 

 

 

Ken Price, Hauser and Wirth, W1

Ken Price, Bay Area sculptor (see him in “The Cool School” film about the Ferus Gallery, Walter Hoppe and Irving Blum and their artists, fantastic film);  yes, there are his big breast shaped ceramics, nipples pointing to the roof.  Unbelievably, this whole collection of outlandish pieces are ceramic; several look like molten lava, others like huge gemstones, and there are a pair of high gloss pots, as if to show he can do conventional brilliantly too.

Next door, there is another galleryful of his drawings in colourful inks.  Those ones of the naked women are a little Aubrey Beardsley, a little R. Crumb…

 

 

400 Blows, Truffaut, 1959

I’ve been meaning to buy this DVD for ages.  A school rebel film, developing into a reform school film. it’s the forerunner of several British films.  I reckon Ken Loach saw the games master leading the boys through town at the trot – Brian Glover, those shorts,  in the football match in “Kes”.  I reckon “Scum” too – and “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” at the end.  When the boy pockets the cash he steals from home, he swings his shoulders just like Jean Gabin.

Another one of mine to end with:

Time and Place No 8

Blackpaint

29/1/17

Blackpaint 538 – Saul Leiter, the Easter Rising, Pasolini and Friedrich..er

Saul Leiter, Photographers Gallery

I can’t praise this exhibition too highly – I’ve been twice in two days and wanted to download every image.  It’s singular, in that the colour photos are even better than the B&W ones; how often does that happen in street photography?  He does figures seen through condensation on windows, odd cropping, red umbrellas (lots of red, yellow and black), hats, snow, ads, car windows – all the usual props, but they’re somehow better.  See below:

 

Like a Cheever story, somehow..

 

Is that William Burroughs?

 

He must have scouted the signs out and waited for the man in the hat and cigarette to walk into the frame..

 

US Mail, coming through the snow..could be by Norman Rockwell.

In addition to the street photos, there are his great fashion pictures, pictures of the beautiful (and beautifully named) Soames Bantry – watch the video of Leiter talking about her and his art, He cites Eugene E Smith and Cartier Bresson as influences and some of their pictures are included in the video.  Finally, there are his gouaches on thin paper, brightly coloured, some abstract, some little portraits and nude photos coloured in, as it were.  It’s terrific and free before 12 0’clock.

The Easter Rising

Also in the Photographers Gallery is a collection of  photos relating to the Dublin rising against British rule in April 1916 – the events leading to it and following it.  It’s a bit more than the usual formal pictures of Pearse, Connelly and the other martyrs that I remember from museums in Irish towns – the desperate crew below are purportedly the “Cairo Gang” , British military intelligence officers, who were all murdered by the IRA on 21st November 1920.  On the same Bloody Sunday, the British “Black and Tan” auxiliaries opened fire on the crowd at Croke Park stadium, killing twelve spectators, as a reprisal.

There are also photos of two of the Invincibles, who carried out the Phoenix Park murders; shades of Skin the Goat, the Invincible (it’s rumoured) who runs the cabmen’s shelter in “Ulysses”, where Bloom takes Stephen after the NightTown episode.  And plenty more – hunger strikers, countryside evictions, street ambush, Countess Markievicz posing with a revolver…

 

The Cairo Gang – or perhaps not.

Wikipedia says that the photo more probably shows the Igoe Gang, RIC undercover agents, who succeeded the ill-fated British agents.

Friedrich Vordemberge – Gildewart ( Annely Juda Fine Art, Dering Street W1)

Yes I know, I can’t get the name into my head either – and the exhibition’s finished now anyway.  But the paintings and collages are great.  He was a member of de Stijl and the pictures remind me a little of Malevich, a little of Van Doesburg and one or two are like Prunella Clough.  Oh, and maybe a touch of Oiticica.  Little lopsided squares and wedges of colour, thin lines like spills tipped out on grey or blue or yellow.

 

Here’s my partner, putting her image into a picture in a homage to the techniques of Saul Leiter, no doubt.

Pasolini

I’ve recently watched the DVDs of the Decameron and Oedipus Rex and, as well as Silvana Mangano and the brilliant thug Franco Citti, I noticed that Pasolini himself appeared in both, as the painter in Decameron and in Oedipus.  I’ll be checking on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew over Easter, to see if he shows in that too.

Franco Citti (Oedipus)

Pasolini as Giotto

And my latest painting:

Jerome

Blackpaint

24.3.16