Blackpaint 661- Vampires, Volcanoes and False Confessions

Elizabeth Peyton, “Aire and Angels”, National Portrait Gallery until 5th January 2020

So not much time left to see these paintings, if you should want to – exhibition has been on since October, it seems, without entering my consciousness.  Mostly celebrities: Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Liam Gallagher (whoever they might be), Napoleon….

Critics are somewhat split on the quality of these works: The Time Out critic, for example, thinks that the exhibition as a whole works, but that, individually, the paintings “stink”.  Bidisha in the Guardian is rapturous about this collection of beautiful (?) boys, and says that they smack of the “hot vampire”, which seems about right to me.

Strangely, none of the pieces I read, including the NPG’s own site, make any comparisons, or attempt to locate Peyton in any context.  I imagine Alistair Sooke does, in his Telegraph review, but since you have to subscribe to read it in its entirety,  I’ll never know.

Here, then, for what they’re worth, are my contributions.  First, Marlene Dumas – the flatness of texture, the graphic, cartoon-y nature of some of the portraits.  Then, German Expressionism, especially Oscar Kokoschka, in the entwined lovers below; finally, that woman with the flowers, against the green wall – a cross between Christian Schad and a Scottish Colourist like Peploe, maybe?

 

Quite unlike anything else in the exhibition – slightly blurred, I’m afraid, but definite Dumas touch, reinforced by the monochrome.

 

Vampire lovers…

 

Kokoschka crossed with Burne Jones?

 

Who’s this vampire boy?  No-one I know recognises him…

 

 

The exhibition is not confined to the rooms devoted to it; there are several portraits elsewhere in the galleries (although I didn’t see them).  It’s free, so definitely worth a walk through before it finishes on the 5th.

Erebus, The Story of a Ship – Michael Palin (Arrow Books, 2018)

John Hartnell, one of Franklin’s crew, buried in the 1840s and preserved by the ice

I got this book for Christmas and find it absorbing and beautifully written.  Erebus was the name of the ship which James Clark Ross sailed to the Antarctic on two expeditions in 1840 and 41 – and Lord Franklin took towards the other Pole in 1845; the voyage which led to his death and that of his entire crew and the disappearance of the ship.  The Erebus has now been located, sunk in shallow water; the bodies of some sailors discovered and exhumed (see above) – but I haven’t got that far yet; I’m still in Tasmania with Ross, just back from the first Antarctic “trip”.  I was interested to find that Mount Erebus, the active Antarctic volcano, was named after Clark’s ship, not the other way round.  Seems obvious now…

The Confession Killer and The Confession Tapes (both series on Netflix)

Henry Lee Lucas

I haven’t been to the cinema recently (apart from the latest Star Wars effort on Christmas Eve), but have been watching these two fascinating series on Netflix.  Lucas – you may remember the film “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” – confessed to around 600 murders when he was in the custody of the Texas Rangers, murders which had been carried out all over the USA, sometimes in different states simultaneously.  Police forces from numerous states queued up to clear their unsolved cases; Lucas, with his Texas Ranger “handlers” rarely let them down.  He was eventually convicted of one particular crime, the “Orange Socks”murder, which led to a death sentence – and it subsequently became clear that the confession was false.  I think I’m right in saying it was the only time that George W Bush ever granted an appeal against the death sentence.  Lucas died in prison in 2011 – no-one knows how many – if any – of his claims were true.

As to “The Confession Tapes” – there are two clear lessons to be learned.  NEVER falsely confess to a crime to relieve relentless pressure from interrogators, and NEVER agree to a plea bargain in Arkansas.

Anyway, I’ve finally been doing some proper painting again.  Latest efforts below:

 

Erebus

 

Night Visitor

 

New Years Eve

Happy New Year to all readers (for whom it IS new year, of course)

Blackpaint

January 1st, 2020

Blackpaint 567 – Fred in his Coffin, Julieta and the Deluge

William Eggleston, Portraits, NPG

Brilliant exhibition.  We were put off a little by the title, thinking of a series of head and shoulders photos – should have known better.  They are in context, of course – the context being the American southern states, mostly Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee from the 50s through to the 80s.  They have the air of snapshots; the subjects sometimes look startled, or mildly annoyed, or are in mid action, stepping off a kerb, say.  In that respect, they provide a contrast to the great photos of Saul Leiter, recently displayed at the Photographers Gallery (see previous Blackpaint).  A few favourites below:

Self Portrait

 

Touch of Psycho here?

 

Stephen King, maybe – Firestarter?

In one or two pictures, you are reminded (slightly) of Diane Arbus – but without the sense that the grotesque has been consciously sought out.  Rather, challenge, vulnerability, self-consciousness, especially in the Disco series.  A few celebrities – Joe Strummer, blues singer Mississippi Fred McDowell (well, he’s a celebrity to me) in his coffin.. there’s context for you.

Julieta, Pedro Almodovar, 2015

The latest Almodovar, and it has been received with reverence by film critics, notably Mark Kermode.  I think it’s great, but the reverence is misplaced.  It’s based on three Alice Munro stories, a heroine played by a young and older actress – sorry, actor, for Guardian readers – who transforms from one to the other during a hair-washing sequence.

As often happens in Almodovar films, women brightly and loudly tell each other outlandish and unlikely things in series, and the other just…accepts.  Also, there is the thing where a woman (usually) makes a completely unreasonable and inexplicable decision and demands that others simply accept without question – which they do.

Another Almodovar thing – women in comas, disabled by MS, dementia, weakened by nervous collapse.  There is a sort of soap opera feel to the plots, intentionally I’m sure; you could imagine them turning up in “Neighbours”.  Almodovar mixes in a bit of surrealism and surprising, unconventional sexual behaviour – rather like Bunuel’s realist brother.

As to visuals, the film is billed as “ravishing” and “gorgeous”.  It has its moments; the stag running with the train, stormy cloud- and sea shots, beautiful female actors, Julieta’s Klimt dressing gown.

The plot hinges on the disappearance of Julieta’s daughter.  Without revealing the end, I thought Bunuel would have handled it differently; I’m thinking of “Exterminating Angel”.

Winifred Knights, Dulwich Picture Gallery

The drawings are impressive, especially the nude life drawing; there’s a pen and ink that’s just like the sculptor Flaxman – however, they are really static.  There are several scenes with multiple figures, with no movement at all.  Some like those medieval style Victorian tableaux.  Some nice coloured drawings or watercolours of Cuckmere and mountain scapes.  A group of pilgrims, sleeping amongst tit-shaped haycocks; another drawing of women sitting and lying that look just like flints from a couple of feet away.

The presiding influence in her work is a combination of the Vorticists and Della Francesca (static, statuesque, isolation of each figure in the picture – eg the Marriage at Cana).

Her masterpiece is “The Deluge” – massive, absurd, dramatic gesturing, static.  There are a number of precision sketches of the same, showing the preparation that went into the final work.  There’s a bit of Stanley Spencer in the colours; the shapes vaguely reminded me of the silhouettes on road traffic signs, for some reason.

 

The Sea of Marmara

Blackpaint

September 2016

 

Blackpaint 498 – Ice Cream at Tate Modern, Breasts at the RA

Agnes Martin (Tate Modern)

Happy Holiday

This is the new exhibition at Tate Modern – those familiar with Martin’s work will know what to expect: the palest “ice cream” pastels (Neapolitan) , vanishing into near invisibility, stripes, huge grids done in faint graphite with tiny squares, a roomful of a dozen white canvases, occasionally, background fields varied by tiny, pale, differently coloured blobs…  Her early work, influenced to a degree by other abstractionists, resembles Pasmore somewhat.  Strangely, her later work appears, to a dissenter like me, to have more going on – a coloured stripe through the centre, a blue square, two black triangles with the tops snipped off.  This seems the “wrong” way round, somehow.  Still, if you emptied out your pictures early on, I suppose you start putting things in again, if you live long enough.

Like Rothko’s Seagram pictures, this is art that I think requires a contemplative attitude in the viewer that I am unable to sustain.  I hope one day to be able to appreciate them more fully.

My Blake Calendar

Below is the picture for June.  It shows Oberon, Titania and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I find it enormously encouraging that even artists of William Blake’s taste and ability are capable of turning out crappy pictures occasionally.

National Portrait Gallery

I wrote about this beautiful little portrait of Hardy a few months ago.

 Thomas Hardy, William Strang

A little while later, I bought a 70s Penguin paperback of EM Forster’s “The Longest Journey”; on the cover was this picture, also by Strang, called “Bank Holiday”.

I think it’s great – totally unlike the Hardy; for some reason, it makes me think of Norman Rockwell.

Forster and Woolf

While I’m on the subject of Forster and the above novel, I found it interesting that he, like Virginia Woolf (Lighthouse, Jacob’s Room, The Voyage Out), occasionally kills his characters off with quite brutal suddenness.  He does in this, anyway; I wonder if there was any influence, and if so, in which direction?

 Back to the NPG

Below are two more arresting paintings, both by John Collier.  The first is, of course, Charles Darwin; the second, the Labour and later, Liberal, politician, John Burns.  I suppose it’s partly the full square stance of both subjects and Burns’ hands on hips – defiance? frankness?  I have to say that Darwin’s picture reminds me faintly of an orang utan – in a good way – but I think that may be because it was parodied in a cartoon and I “see” the parody…

Darwin, John Collier 

 

John Burns, John Collier

RA Summer Exhibition 

Proper review of this next week, but in the meantime, here is by far the best painting in the exhibition – the fact that Marion Jones is my partner has no bearing, obviously, on my opinion.

 

Bars and Triangles, Marion Jones

Diebenkorn, RA

I made my third visit to the brilliant Diebenkorn exhibition after the RA Summer Show – I started seeing great little paintings within paintings in the earlier abstracts, Albuquerque and Urbana series; little sections that would make paintings in themselves.  I started to see slight parallels with some of Nicolas de Stael’s landscapes, especially “Sea Wall”.  But most startlingly, I saw breasts everywhere.  In “Albuquerque 57”  (below) for instance, there is a very clear sketch of a pair of breasts that I hadn’t noticed before.  After that, I saw them everywhere in these abstracts, mostly in the shape of the lobes.

 

Just above the green and yellow rectangular shapes.

To finish, here is a minimalist work of mine, in homage to Agnes Martin:

Close of a Long Day

Blackpaint

6.6.15