Richard Deacon at Tate Britain – until Sunday!
I was unexcited about the prospect of visiting this exhibition, since painting is more my thing than sculpture usually; that’s why it took me so long to get around to it. I was surprised – it’s great. Wood, metal, cement. sometimes all three together – wooden strips looping along the floor and rearing up like lassos; an oblong metal “shell”, open at both ends, with a flat metal lip overlapping and then blending with the edge of the orifice. It just lies there on the floor, like a giant grey metal cream horn.
A splintered and tortured steamed oak and metal structure, writhing all over the floor – how does he twist the wood like that? I presume it’s made possible by the steaming process.
A black “hogan” shaped thing, or maybe giant seed case called “Struck Dumb”, rather spoilt in my view by a red bow tie shape at one end; “After”, a huge, “wickerwork” snake, curling across the gallery, stiffened by a wide silver metal band running from end to end. A group of small, organic shapes, sculpted in various materials, like a group of sea creatures washed up by the tide. And terrific, looping, diagramatic drawings with erasures and fuzzed lines in blue ink.
Great sculptures and great engineering. It finishes this Sunday, so go this weekend.
Ruin Lust, Tate B
I thought this stretched the definition of “ruin” a bit far; there is a series of photographs by Gerard Byrne, for instance, which show hangovers or survivals of 60s design in present-day architecture and society – great photos, interesting idea, but not really “ruin”. Unlike Waldemar Januszczak, however, I don’t really care if the concept is stretched though, as long as there’s some good art to look at in the exhibition. And there is some; several paintings and prints of Llanthony Abbey to kick off. I know it well and none of these look much like it (not that it matters). The usual suspects are here; Turner, Constable, Wilson Steer. There’s a mildly Apocalyptic John Martin, of the Pompeii eruption, which looks to me as if it’s happening in a vast underground chamber – my partner tells me he did some designs for sewers during the cholera epidemics, so maybe that influenced him. They are in Jeremy Deller’s exhibition in Nottingham, I understand. Photos of stupendous German bunkers and gun emplacements on the Atlantic coast, by the Wilson sisters; A couple of familiar surrealistic pictures by Paul Nash; a great Sutherland and a Piper church.
I thought Ian Hislop’s description of Piper as “a committed Modernist, in love with the Olden Days” (The Olden Days, BBC2) was spot on. Some war photographs from Rachel Whiteread and a Patrick Caulfield, which displays the contrast between his clean, radiantly coloured, graphic style and the ruinous subject matter. Not one of the great exhibitions, but a good 30 minute job. if you are a Tate member and don’t have to fork out specially.
Cezanne and the Modern , Oxford Ashmolean Museum
This is just packed out with interesting things, as is the permanent collection at the museum ( I’ll write about that in next blog, along with the Matisse cut-outs).
The Cezannes are mostly watercolours; the best of these are one of a rockface or quarry, almost like an early Hamilton car fender drawing from a distance; and one called “Undergrowth”, I think, like a pen and ink and wash drawing. Then, there is a single, large, unfinished oil painting called “Route to le Tholonet”, which has beautiful, subtle blue, brown and green hillsides behind a couple of tree trunks and a sketchy cottage – it’s oil, but it looks like watercolour, especially in the exhibition guide (good for £5). Also pears in a bowl, a skull and a shimmering bottle still life. Great St.Victoire, next door with the others.
Others: Great Modiglianis, one of Cocteau, pink cheeks, spidery body and features, wrists and chin and a male face, a Russian I think, with a crooked, “stuck on” nose;
A striking Degas nude, “After the bath, woman drying herself” – her bum is right in your face as you enter the gallery; she appears to be diving forwards, her arm and shoulder outlined in red, head disappearing behind divan, or whatever. Her head’s in the wrong place, it seems to me, too far to the right…;
A Van Gogh, “the Tarrascon Stage”, the paint badged on thickly in sticky-looking squares;
A fabulous Manet, “Young Woman in a Round Hat” – on the wall above is a quotation from Manet; “There are no lines in Nature…” and yet, round the woman’s left shoulder and arm, a very visible black line. Great painting though.
Soutine – these are a revelation; he’s much more than the sides of beef. A thick red-lipped, crop-headed self portrait; A beautiful, sad-eyed portrait of an unknown woman in a black dress, with a dark blue background; an awful choirboy and an awful hanging turkey BUT – three expressionist paintings of the town of Ceret, that look a little like Auerbach building sites, but with curving lines. There’s a church spire from below looking up, recalling Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower. Another, with two paths meeting to form a triangle, like the legs of that Boccione statuette… all done in the late 20s.
Fellini, “81/2”
Stunning opening and closing sequences – in the opening, Mastroianni (Fellini) floats high above, attached by the ankle to a line and to a car (it’s a dream sequence) – and the closing, the actors take part in a Dance of Fools, hand in hand, to the music of a clown band – shades of “The Seventh Seal”.
The Olden Days (BBC2)
I mention this series again, NOT because my son Nicky was a researcher on it (although he was), but because I was struck by the startling resemblance of Billy Bragg to the photograph portrait of the older William Morris…
Heaven Only Knows (final version)
Blackpaint
25.04.14
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