Kenneth Clark Collection at Tate Britain
This is an astonishing exhibition; four and a bit big rooms of great art, most of it actually owned by Clark. Some of the treasures on show listed or shown below:
Victor Pasmore
A couple of portraits and nudes by Pasmore that are new to me, along with the more familiar river side pictures like Hammersmith and “Evening Star” in which, unlike the Turner of the same name I saw the other week at Margate, the star in question is readily visible. The rear view nude on the bed (which I can’t find a picture of) looks like a fore-runner of Uglow.
Graham Sutherland, Sun rising between two Hills
A number of great Sutherlands, landscapes, foundries, Blitz damage, portraits (of Clark himself); also Pipers on similar themes, and Paul Nash – especially his magisterial “Battle of Britain” with it’s vapour trails making a great, plant-like shape in the sky above the Thames and the coast.
Graham Bell, Brunswick Square,
A new one on me – love that violet blue.
Just too much to list really – Cezanne drawings. Coptic tapestry figures from the 5th – 7th century AD, a Lippo Lippi Moses striking the rock, a couple of Nolans, one horrible the other fantastic, a couple of great Seurats, a Samuel Palmer, Cornfield by Moonlight and Evening Star (again), Henry Moore in the shelters and the mines, oh, a couple of Leonardo drawings… It’s amazing that one man could have amassed all this in the 20th century.
Theory
I attended a symposium at UCL a couple of weeks ago, on “Real Abstraction”. A series of distinguished academics, who discussed matters like materiality in very abstruse terms, assuming familiarity with the terms on the part of the audience (many of whom looked as if they were up to speed on the topic). All the speakers, I think, mentioned Adorno; Capital also made an appearance in every presentation. It was soon clear to me that the real subject was how abstraction in art could be accommodated by Marxist theory of the Frankfurt school – for the first speaker anyway. We listened to six of the speakers and none of them made any attempt to define what “Real Abstraction” was. We listened quietly, applauded politely and visited Habitat in the lunch hour, buying a nice glass flask for £8.00.
More Theory
My painting has always taken account of “theory” – Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Baudrillard, Deleuze – I suppose it’s obvious from the content. At my book group the other day, I discovered from one of the academics that there are “theory” and “non-theory” people in the universities; the latter would be traditionalists, liberals or conservatives, using analytical processes not determined (although perhaps informed) by the writings of the above and their followers. Glad I’m not one – now I can add Adorno to the list too.
Orwell, Eileen and 1984
Perhaps the ultimate non-theory person; I was interested to read in the great Crick biography that Orwell’s wife Eileen worked for the Ministry of Food during the war, persuading the people to eat whatever vegetables were currently plentiful – one month, she might be stressing the health benefits of potatoes; the following month, there may be a shortage, and she would switch to pointing out how fattening potatoes were. Crick suggests plausibly this filtered into Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Fellini, The Ship Sails on
Watched this again and was freshly impressed by the performance of Freddie Jones as the reporter-narrator, who ends up in the rowing boat with the rhino (you have to get the DVD and watch it, too complicated to explain) and Barbara Jeffords as the suppressed operatic diva. Fantastic.
For Derrida
Blackpaint
23.05.14
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