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

 

 

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 654 – St.Catherine, Cleopatra and the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment

Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Continuing with galleries in Lisbon, here are some paintings from the modern(ish) section of the Gulbenkian, fantastic museum in beautiful landscaped gardens.  Again, surprising number of British artists represented.

Love this, but unfortunately, didn’t get name of artist.  Think it’s Portuguese but looks Mexican, doesn’t it?

 

Howard Hodgkin – an early one, obviously.

 

Joe Tilson – painting, sculpture, collage – or all three?

 

OK, we’re in the same museum, but a different section.

 

Museo de Art Antiga, Lisbon

Another staggering collection – or rather set of collections – to rival the V&A.  Well, resembles it, anyway.  Below, triptych, showing the martyrdom and apotheosis of St.Catherine.

God has caused the torture wheel to shatter –

 

…but unfortunately, God’s intervention was not enough to save her.  Perhaps His attention strayed…

 

But never mind; bring her up to heaven (and don’t forget the head).

 

Bronzino, the Holy Family (not sure if this is correct title).  Notice the infant Jesus’ hand, near BVM’s breast – echoes the titty tweaking in Bronzino’s better known painting below:

 

Demon’s head

 

St. Jerome by ?  Charming little picture.

 

Studio of Ribera (obviously)

We didn’t have time to go round the lot, unfortunately, but it’s a huge museum.  Particularly striking were Japanese screens, showing the arrival of the first Portuguese to arrive on Japanese shores in the 16th(?) century.  For some reason, they’d brought elephants with them, apparently.

Tate Britain – Hoyland and Ayres

There is a great pairing of two major abstract artists, very different but, like Bellany and Davie at the Newport Street Gallery recently, they complement each other wonderfully.  I think it’s the colour and the size.

Gillian Ayres – Something Blues (forget the name).  It’s about the size of the other two below.

 

 

Ayres, Phaeton – I presume the arc is the route of Phaeton’s chariot across the heavens

 

Ayres, Cleopatra – fabulous tangle of colours, each of them absolutely right, it seems to me.

 

John Hoyland – this is best viewed from across the gallery; near to, the scrapings in the dark red look a little muddy.  Same order of size as the Ayres.

 

Hoyland again – sorry, took no note of titles.

Tate Britain rehang (sort of)

They haven’t done a full rehang by any means, but I noticed a batch of new paintings in the 50s/60s sections, a few of which I’ve put in below:

This is by Mary Martin, and it grabs your attention from the neighbouring room when you see it through the arch (whoever places the pictures really knows which ones should be seen through the arches – perhaps best example is the big blue Ayres above).

The Martin is actually a long sheet – or maybe four long sheets –  of metal (aluminium?), crumpled into triangular shapes; the faces of the triangles reflect the colours of the paintings around it.

 

Keith Vaughan – great figure study, with his characteristic blue background.

Gillian Ayres again – something of Whistler’s Nocturne here, maybe (is it Nocturne?  The one that Ruskin described as a pot of paint thrown in the face, or somesuch…)  Fantastic, I call it…

 

Sven Hassel

A bit of a mood change now…

My latest reading; I see Joseph Porta as a thin Falstaff, going into battle with his flamethrower and top hat (prototype of many Satanic majesties in rock music and Gothic horror), with Tiny, Pluto, the Little Legionnaire, the Old ‘Un and Hassel himself, the anti-Nazi soldiers of the 27th Tank (Penal) Tank Regiment.  OK, it’s not great literature but it hits that late night Discovery Channel spot, beloved of British men of a certain age…

Latest Lifeys

No new paintings this time, so a couple of my life drawings to end with:

 

 

Blackpaint

29/09/19

 

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 607 – Dream Homebase, Queer Tate

Jasper Johns, RA

Unsurprisingly, the best art show in town (apart from the magical Holbeins at the NPG).  It doesn’t quite have the impact and variety of the recent Rauschenberg at TM, but maybe it suffers a bit by coming after.  I’ll be going again, probably several times, so below are just a few of the delights on display. They are mostly of one type, the splashy, multi coloured early ones.  In addition, there are (of course) the flags and targets; the metal beer cans, torches, paintbrushes, spectacles; the combinations (broom, severed, spotted arm, piece of wire); the several-panelled pieces combining paint and silkscreen, again, like Rauschenberg.  Anyway, I shall return…

 

 

Painting with Two Balls, 1960

 

No (I think); note the wire structure attached, hard to see in this photo, reminiscent of Rauschenberg.

 

Rachel Whiteread, Tate Britain

This is like a visit in a dream to Homebase; or no, more a building supplies warehouse, Jewsons maybe?  Doors and windows and little model houses made of mauve, orange or green resins; fireplaces and bathtubs and mattresses made of moulded concrete or plaster or plastics; a little group of moulded hot water bottles in pastel-shaded plaster; great piles of shuttering, is it? in white concrete; also in white concrete, a central block of upside-down stairs.  There is a block of resin in the exact shade of those cider ice lollies you used to get, that lost their colour as you sucked on them and some intriguing dark grey moulded (actually, pretty much everything is moulded) plaques made from papier-machee, “spattered” with primary colour.  A selection of her rather delicate drawings and plans down at the far end of the warehouse.

 

Queer Tate Britain

The Queer Art exhibition is still on at TB; I notice that there are now a series of toilet options, a development perhaps related to the show .  The old male and female (though indicated by picture, I think, rather than the somewhat brutal categorising terms I have used) and two “Non-gendered” options.  These last also have pictures of wheelchairs, so it may be that they have always been there and I never noticed them; I am sure the non-gender descriptions are new, though.

Also, there is a sketchbook on sale, entitled “Erotic Fantasies” or some such, by the great Keith Vaughan.  These are not stylised, Tom of Finland-type cartoons, but naturalistic depictions of  various sex acts between males.  I would say “realistic”, but the equipment on display in the drawings is rather small…  Good to see that TB isn’t afraid to sell gay porn; maybe they think the quality of the drawings is justification (maybe it is).

Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre Room

This is a brilliant, quiet bit of the museum, top of the stairs and through the darkened jewellery room; videos, miniature stage sets, posters, costumes – Fred Astaire must have been really short, judging by the tails he wore in “Shall We Dance?” – puppets, memorabilia.  Some images below, including my favourite poster for “Bartholomew Fair” and the poster that provided title and characters for “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, from the Sergeant Pepper album.

 

 

While there, see the fantastic tapestries next door, and the Turner and Constable oil sketches in another adjacent room – much better than many of their more elaborate “worked-up” paintings in ornate gold-leaf frames.

 

Constable

 

Sluice Biennial

This art fair is taking place at various venues (a container block tower, underneath arches) around Hackney Central.  It ends tomorrow.  I was struck by those paintings which were representational in some way – they looked to be strongly influenced by one or more of the following: George Condo, Luc Tuymans and William Sasnal.  Maybe a little bit of Ryan Mosley too.  This seems to be a common matrix of influences these days; at the Saatchi Gallery, for example.

Two new ones of mine, to finish with:

Bridge

Blackpaint

Green Split

Blackpaint

02/10/17

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 595 – It’s British – but is it all Queer?

Queer British Art 1861 – 1967

There is a fair bit of great painting in this show, some of it problematic in terms of its queerness.  When you see a Tom of Finland show, like that at the ICA a while back, or Mapplethorpe photos, as in Helsinki, there are no doubts – it’s full- on queerness.  Here, it’s not so clear.  The Hockney “Physique” picture apart, none of the paintings below are queer in the sense of openly celebrating queerness.  Hardly surprising, given the discriminatory laws in force in Britain between those dates – however, what makes the Singer Sargent portrait of Vernon Lee “queer art”?  Or the Laura Knight self-portrait, of her painting a female nude?  Or William Strang’s picture of the woman in the red hat?  The answers, presumably, are that Sargent and Vernon Lee were both queer, as was Vita Sackville-West (the sitter for the Strang portrait) and Knight’s self-portrait was a conscious protest against the art school ban on women artists painting nude women models.

Anyway, the riches on offer include:

• Three beautiful Keith Vaughans in his characteristic blue, cream and brown hues, all figure studies I think, including the one below.  Best in show (Crufts again);
• The Laura Knight self-portrait I mentioned;
• A couple of terrific Patrick Proctors, quite like Hockney – but different;
• Ethel Sands – shades of Harold Gilman, Sickert and Vuillard, I thought;
• A Lord Leighton classical theme that looks like a Bright Young Things fancy dress ball;  fine-boned, handsome youths with lower lips seemingly a-tremble;
• Duncan Grant swimmers and divers.
• There are Cecil Beaton and Angus McBean photographs and posters for cross-dressing music hall acts Vesta Tilley et al.

 

Henry Scott Tuke

 

Vernon Lee (author of “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers”) by Singer Sargent

 

Hockney, of course

 

Keith Vaughan

In addition, there are some interesting oddities, such as Oscar Wilde’s cell door from Reading Gaol and Noel Coward’s dressing gown.  Go and see it; interesting history – not all the art is great, because the queerness is maybe more important here than the quality – but enough is great to make a visit worthwhile.  Still not totally comfortable with the idea of using “queer” out loud, though…

Cataracticus

Blackpaint

 

Still on for another week and several paintings still unsold!

Blackpaint

24/04/17

Blackpaint 530 – The Angels, the Superhighway and the Deer Hunter

London Art Fair, the Angel Islington

Finished last week, I’m afraid;  a great little “exhibition-within-the-exhibition” from the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings; my favourite was the “Winter Landscape” by Barns-Graham – tiny but good.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Other highlights below:

Dorothy Mead 

A Bomberg disciple – but these are every bit as good as DB, in my view.

 

Keith Vaughan

Very unusual Vaughan – touch of Bacon in the middle, possibly?

 

,

Alan Davie

There were dozens of Davies (and Roger Hiltons and quite a few Hitchens); high quality ratio though, with his trademark symbols, lovely blues and yellows and rough surfaces.

Electronic Superhighway, Whitechapel Gallery

Private view of this on Thursday night; the usual roar and surge of the crowd to get to the free drinks before 7.00pm, after which time you have to pay.

The term was coined by Nam June Paik, whose exhibit was one of those – maybe the first one of those –  batteries of TVs, each showing a recurring series of visually explosive images too fast for you to grasp more than one at a time, with an accompaniment of cacophonous sound.  The theme of the exhibition is the effect of computers and the internet on art.  The theme was more evident in some pieces than others…

Deathoknocko, Albert Oehlen

Combination of computerised inkjet and hand painting.

Peter Sedgley

Light projection from 1970.

 

Celia Hempton

These are screen-size paintings of images from the internet – some – ahem! – rather controversial, perhaps…

 

Vera Molnar

Several printout works from 60s and 70s.

Rabelais and Joyce

As I get further into “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, the more I am struck by the similarities to “Finnegans Wake”.  The long list of books in the library of St. Victor with their ridiculous titles is only one small step back from Joyce, as are the encounters with the Limousin who speaks gibberish and Panurge,  who talks sense – but in a variety of languages, including Hebrew and Basque(!) that his interlocutors can’t understand.

I got quite excited about this “discovery”, wondering if there was a thesis knocking about on the subject in some European or US university – then I read the excellent translator’s introduction by JM Cohen.  There it all was, similarities of Rabelais and Joyce, written in 1954…..

However, I feel that there are sufficient grounds to advance another of my reincarnation propositions here (see previous Blackpaints, which prove that Shakespeare was the reincarnation of Michelangelo).  Both Rabelais (or Alcofribas Nasir, as he called himself – work it out) and Joyce did long lists; both spoke and used a variety of languages, some rather obscure, in their works; and both wrote passages – in Joyce’s case, hundreds of pages – of “nonsense”.  Case proven.

The Deer Hunter

I had one of those cinematic moments last night, when you’re in a noisy public place and suddenly everything goes sort of silent, or merges into an unspecific background drone and things go slow motion.  Could well be wrong, but I think it was “The Deer Hunter” – wedding scene maybe, Meryl Streep dancing and laughing – it’s a cliche, of course, probably used in loads of films by now.

Anyway, I was sitting in a packed and roaring Tooting pub, third pint of London Stout before me, celebrating my eldest son’s birthday and engagement.  I looked at the bar and there they were, the three brothers and their girlfriends, laughing and shouting to each other above the noise, eyes shining – and the Deer Hunter moment clocked in, inside my head, and lasted probably only a couple of seconds.  Then I was aware of it and it went.  First, I was happy and proud; then I had a moment of near dread; everything changes, it will never be like this again…

So those effects are cliches, melodramatic and worn out; but very effective, nonetheless.

Exterminating Angel (work in prog)

Blackpaint

31/01/16

Blackpaint 483 – War in Spain, the Auctioneer and the Dancing Chicken

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

This gallery must be visited as a matter of urgency because there’s such a lot of really good paintings in it.  Go on Tuesday, when it’s half price.  What’s it got?  Well…

• Terry Frost “Lorca” prints – a roomful.
• Several fantastic, quite late, Ivon Hitchens, less..well,  oblong than usual and highly colourful;

• A sort of St.Ives room, with Heron, John Wells, Barnes-Graham, a nice John Tunnard (actually, he was elsewhere) and a great Ben Nicholson (see below);

• There’s also a Ben panto horse in brown fields and some nice Winifred portraits;
• Bomberg, two Rondas I think, and a corner of his disciples, Dorothy Mead, Crenfield etc.;
• Then there’s a bunch of self-portraits by various, the most striking of which were by William Gear, the lines of which resembled burnt briars or maybe barbed wire (fascinating to learn he was connected to CoBrA) and the one below by Peter Coker, with a black outline on a narrow canvas in a corner;

• A room of Kitaj, of whom more later.
• Then there is the main gallery, with some lovely big pictures – Michael Andrews dark coastal painting with figures; a Bacon, two figures who look to be wrestling..possibly..; a great Keith Vaughan; a Colin Self pop art group with one of those women with bright lipstick – bit like Pauline Boty, I thought – and a Peter Blake with an uncharacteristically(?) rough, blurry finish, very effective.  A couple of paintings of domestic scenes by Victor Willing, Paula Rego’s late husband, which have that distorted, slightly monstrous quality of her work.
• Finally,  there’s Spain; a special exhibition relating to the British role in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.  Great photo of the poet John Cornford and of Felicia Browne, the first British volunteer killed in the war, with a couple of her sketches – and very good they are too.  Banners of the British Battalion – 15th, was it? – with the battle names on it: Brunete, the Gandesa, Belchite, Teruel, the Ebro; lump in the throat time.

Felicia Browne

John Cornford and Ray Peters

Figures in a Landscape, Alexandropoulos

Two children, a girl of about twelve and her kid brother, run away from their Greek home to try to reach Germany, mostly by rail, sometimes by hitchhiking.  The Travelling Players show up on the way, having wandered in from another film.  There’s a scene in which they escape from a police station when it starts snowing – all the adults wander outside and freeze in a trance, looking up at the falling flakes.  So whimsical, you think – then the girl is raped in the back of a lorry by the driver, thankfully not on screen.  They press on and eventually arrive at the border; a shot sounds as they cross the river.  They run through the thick mist to embrace a tree on a hilltop – symbol of the father?  Are they dead?  End.

Stroszek, Werner Herzog

The great Bruno S. again (from Kaspar Hauser).  Three “vulnerable” Germans go to the USA to escape from their tormentors.  I think it’s a comedy, but there’s some sickening brutality towards Eva, the prostitute, in the early part of the film.  It must be seen, however, if only for the fastest auctioneer in the universe – he must be! – and for the dancing chicken and the fire truck rabbit.  Also a beautiful electric guitar instrumental version of “The Last Thing on my Mind”, which accompanies the driving scenes.  Don’t know who it is.

RB Kitaj

Got a cheapo catalogue of the above in the Pallant House, including two fantastic pictures; “The Rise of Fascism” and “the Architects” (see below).

 

 Marlene Dumas

Visited this again and found that the red faced-woman wasn’t in it (see last blog) – I’d seen it somewhere else.  Just as good – no, better – on second visit; look out for the Japanese Boy, the full-length portrait of Helena and the head of the dead young man, killed in the Chechnyan incident – or was it the Moscow theatre siege?  Beautifully painted, anyway.

Sprout Gallery, Moyser Road, Tooting SW16

If you are in London next week, visit the Sprout Gallery  and avail yourself of the opportunity to buy my paintings, and those of my partner, 11.00am – 6,00pm, any day but Monday.  Not the one below, however; it’s still wet.

 

 

 

Blue Crouch

Blackpaint

22.02.15

Blackpaint 479 – Birdman, Auerbach and Cat Strangling

Birdman

I think this is the best American film I have seen for years. I was about to say because the others are all superhero crap – but then so is this, in a way;  not crap, but superhero.  Michael Keaton is an ageing ex-superhero, Birdman, who is directing and leading in a Broadway version of a Ray Carver story, “What we talk about when we talk about love”.  The preview stage has been reached and Keaton is struggling with self-doubt and contempt, an egomaniac co-star (Edward Norton, magnificent), a disaffected daughter recently in “rehab” (Emma Stone, also brilliant, below) …. and so on, can’t bother with all this exposition.

Anyway, the dialogue crackles, as does the jazz drum accompaniment, the story is absorbing and funny, sentimentality is kept in check (though not absent) and the acting is great, as are the long takes following the actors’ tracks backstage and out of the theatre in one memorable scene.

I can’t resist the urge to spot resemblances that has often (always?) been a feature of this blog;  I glimpsed Gene Hackman in Keaton, Helen Mirren in Naomi Watts, Matthew McConnaughey in Edward Norton, Richard Dreyfuss in Zach Galifianakis – and in the huge-eyed Emma Stone, Lucian Freud’s painting of Kitty Garman strangling the kitten, below.  Well, just the eyes really – and Kitty is just holding the kitty….

 

 

London Art Fair, Islington Business Centre

Unfortunately, this is only on for another day, but I daresay that some of the paintings below will still be unsold, if you want to buy them (although the first four are not for sale, being part of the Chichester Pallant House Gallery’s exhibition-within-the exhibition, so to speak).

 

 Frank Auerbach, Reclining Head of Gerda Boehm – the best painting in the building, a more intense blue than appears here

 

 

Walter Sickert, Jack Ashore – you can see Jack in the background, but he’s not the main focus really – look at her left thigh; it’s made up entirely of loose dabs and strokes of white.  I’m not sure why this is good, but it is.

 Peter Lanyon – didn’t get the title;

 

 

Robyn Denny – again, no title, and I’m not sure that this is the right way up.  It’s great though, from when he was doing AbEx stuff before going geometric and minimal.

The following were from various galleries showing at the fair:

 

 

 Keith Vaughan

 

 

 Keith Vaughan again – Two Figures

Margaret Mellis – love that red

 

 

 

Cadell – Ben More and Mull

 

Fergusson – Still Life with Fruit – I love these Scottish Colourists; there’s also a Melville, the Glasgow Boy, in the same display.

 

William Gear – Two landscapes, 1947 and 1948 

 

Peter Kinley, Figure on a Bed, 1975

…and, as usual, several great Roger Hiltons, Allan Daveys, Gaudier-Brjeska figure drawings, Prunella Clough, John Golding – great stuff.

Conflict Time Photography, Tate Modern

Revisited this (see previous blog) and found a couple of things I missed last time:

• The collection of photos of Northern Ireland – irritatingly, these go up the wall too high to see them all properly (they are small), but there are some interesting ones low down – a couple of men or boys, tied up and covered with whitewash (?) wearing placards; one proclaims him to be a drug dealer to “underage children”).  Also, the huge photo of a riot which seems to involve throwing of milk cartons – what does the big red circle indicate?
• The series of photographs of relics of Hiroshima.  The lunchbox of a schoolgirl, contents carbonised; no sign of the girl.  The uniform tunic, discovered in branches of a tree, of a schoolboy; no trace of boy.  Single lens of eyeglass of a housewife; piece of skull found some weeks later.
• The odd, but fascinating jumble of photos and memorabilia contained in the little sub-exhibition of “the Archive of Modern Conflict”.

 

Still haven’t done any proper painting for a while, so some life drawings to fill the gap.

Life Drawings

Blackpaint

24.01.15 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 457 – de Stael at le Havre, Perfect Backs and Zola

Nicolas de Stael at le Havre – Lumieres du Nord, lumieres du Sud

I’m deeply indebted to Jon Hensher for commenting on 453 and letting me know about this stunning exhibition of de Stael’s late sea-and landscapes, mostly from 1951 – 55 (the year in which he killed himself by jumping from his studio window in Antibes).  Wikipedia gives his place of death as Paris – this must surely be an error, as he jumped from the 11th storey.  Why?  he was very successful and producing fantastic work.  Apparently, he suffered from recurring depression and had had an “unsatisfactory” meeting with an art critic.

Although the exhibition contains only one or two paintings that approach real abstraction, his work throughout is concerned with shape and colour rather than the accurate depiction of reality.  Sea and shoreline are represented by bands or stripes of colour, detail of ships or buildings by his familiar dabs or “tiles” of paint.  On the whole, the textures lack the thickness and crustiness of his earlier large abstracts, apart from one or two, such as “Landscape, Agrigente”,  which are scraped or scratched into (these are, to my eye, among the best).

What I hadn’t appreciated was his mastery of colour.  A few examples below:

Paysage, Sicile 1953

Landscape 1952

Figures by the Sea (I think – my notes are very scrappy)

Calais – this is the exhibition poster; shades of Vanessa Bell’s “Studland Beach”?

I could rhapsodise about these pictures for some time, but that would be tedious, so I urge all my readers to drop everything, go to France and see for yourselves.  Incidentally, Wikipedia mentions the Bay Area painters as a point of comparison, in that NdS returned to figurative painting after abstraction; there is however a quotation from the artist on the wall of the museum, indicating that he himself made no distinction between abstraction and figuration.

Wim Oepts

Dutch painter, died 1988, who came to mind when I saw the more intense de Staels:

Also Anthony Frost, a bit – those ones he does with sacking.

Tate Britain Archive Room – “The Model and the Life Room”

This is easy to miss, as its down in the basement, at the bottom of the Fred and Ginger stairs.  it’s a collection of life drawings and sketches by the likes of Gaudier- Brzeska, Hilda Carline, Keith Vaughan, Augustus John, Michael Ayrton and Ithell Colquhoun.  There is a drawing by Alfred Stevens called “Seated Woman Gazing at Magog”, which is another in my Perfect Backs series:

It goes with the likes of Kitaj’s smoking woman

 

 

and the back of the real Ginger, dancing with Fred at the end of “Swing Time” (buy the DVD to see what I mean).

 

Here’s my own best effort, not in the same league, I know:

Zola; Rougon – Macquart cycle

Started the 20 novel cycle on my Kindle, having downloaded the complete works for £1.99.  What it demonstrates to me is the importance of the translation.  I read “Germinal” and “The Debacle” (or The Downfall, as it is called in the Collected Works) in the 60s Penguin Classics versions; I remember a racy,modern,  brutal, colourful prose style.  The style here is archaic and sentimental – the word “damsel” cropped up early on, used by the narrator, not a character.  Not sure I’ll be able to last the whole twenty – easier than Proust, though, and more happens.

 Next blog: Braque and Yoko at Bilbao, Martial Raysse at the Pompidou.

 Sonia “on the beach”

Or maybe she should be on her side?

 Blackpaint

7.08.14

Blackpaint 430 – Abstraction at the Fair; Murder in the Mountains

London Art Fair

Some stunning paintings at the above – well worth a visit.  Three fantastic Lanyons to start with. all from the early 60s:

This one is “Pony” – didn’t get the other names.

The fair’s on for a while, so I’ll just put in a couple more of my favourites, these ones by the Scots painter Philip Reeves:

Rather like John Golding, I thought – until I saw the large number of Goldings at the fair, none of which were like the Reeves, or indeed, the Golding that was shown at the Tate in the 80th birthday slot a while ago, and that I featured in an earlier blog.

The fair has, as usual, loads of great Alan Davies, Keith Vaughans, blinding prints by Bert Irvin and Anthony Frost and a big Kazua Shiraga; heavy, dense -coloured ropes and splodges of deep paint, no doubt hurled in handfuls at the canvas and swept through with a broom.  You might not like it but it’s definitely there.  More pictures (Peter Kinley, Bruce McLean, William Gear) next blog.

Ornulf Opdahl

I think it’s spelt right – Norwegian painter of large, dark sea and mountain-scapes, with cracks and shafts of light penetrating the murk, back at Kings Place; they are really impressive when seen in the round on vast white walls.  He must get through gallons of Prussian Blue.

 

The Reconstruction, Angelopoulos

His first film, 1970, set in a bleak mountain village, all stone houses and stone wall  mazes – reminded me of Aran Isles – rain, mud, snow, crisp black and white; the murder of a husband, returning from work in Germany, by his wife and her brutal lover.  They turn on each other – who was the instigator, who the follower? Wild Greek songs, villagers bent with labour, narrative in series of flashbacks – first in a box set.

Heaven’s Gate – Director’s Cut

Complete contrast, the Cimino film a series of big set pieces, beginning with a spectacular waltz scene and riotous college graduation ceremony and shifting to a murderous war on immigrants waged by hired guns in Wyoming.  Kristofferson, Bridges, Hurt, Walken, Huppert… wage bill must have been huge.  The “operatic” style I associate more with the Angelopoulos of “Weeping Meadows” period.  Maybe a touch of “1900” in there, too.

Mrs.Dalloway

The experimental stuff I’ve been discussing seemed to dwindle away in the latter stages of the book, as Woolf focuses on the decline and suicide of Septimus, the ramblings of Peter Walsh and the bringing together of these strands at Clarissa’s party.  I found Walsh’s habit of opening and closing the blade of his pocket knife rather disconcerting.  It has, perhaps, a different resonance for those of us who watch Silent Witness, The Fall et al.  I’m going to the lighthouse next.

 

Laurels

Blackpaint

18.01.14