Blackpaint 664 – It’s Figurative Week, here at the blog

British Baroque: Power and Illusion, at Tate Britain until 19th April

Fantastic exhibition, despite Jonathan Jones in the Guardian.  It covers the years 1660 – 1714, the reigns of Charles II, James II, William and Mary and Queen Anne. Below is the centre piece of the first room, by Verrio; great explosion of figures fanning out from the upper centre figure of Charles II.  We’ve seen plenty of Rubens and Van Dyck in recent years, so although they sort of haunt, from an earlier era, this show of largely lesser mortals, their absence is definitely not fatal.

 

Antonio Verrio, “The Sea Triumph of Charles II”, 1674

 

This is the Earl of Rochester; I take it that the monkey is a comment on the nature of his poetry – but maybe he really had one, or the artist did; “No really, my Lord, the monkey will look wonderful in the picture…”

 

This picture carries a warning about the “demeaning” depiction of the black youngsters cavorting around the central character.  Stunning blue robe though …

 

I think this is the Duke of Monmouth, presumably channeling John the Baptist – or Bo Peep.

 

You get the impression at this show – or at least I did – that these artists are really interested in the dresses and fabrics, and how they drape and fold; the subjects, their faces, are secondary (a lot of these court beauties look pretty similar anyway).  Once or twice, I thought the artist could have done the dress and setting and left a hole for the face.  This silver silk or satin, shiny as Bacofoil, for instance.

Illusion

Trompe l’oeil plays a big part in this show, as it was very fashionable in the period.  Some examples below:

 

Hang on – isn’t that last Monday’s Guardian at the top?

 

This stand up, cut out figure could be placed in a dark  corridor or even the corner of a guest’s room in your mansion; what a laugh that would be when you suddenly caught sight of it…

 

The bottom half of the door is the real thing; the top half with the fiddle and no light streaks on the inlets (or whatever you call them) is a painting.  Maybe that’s obvious – a friend had to point it out to me.

 

Various parrots, a peacock, pheasants, a jay, a lapwing, turtle dove and a couple I can’t identify, all together as you would see them in the wild…

 

We’ve left “Illusion” now and are back in the world of beautiful (?) children and the dressing up box.

 

This is Matthew Prior, the writer, painted by Godfrey Kneller, and distinguished in this show by the lack of a resplendent wig – the only male, apart from children and servants, without one, I think.

 

Peter Lely, Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, 1661

That’s the lady in the painting, not the foreground.  Again, look at the sumptious rendition of the dress; colours recall Titian and Veronese, I think.  More of these fantastic swagger portraits next blog.

 

Radical Figures – Painting in the New Millennium,  at the Whitechapel Gallery, until 10th May

To quote from the booklet, “…ten artists who represent the body….to tell compelling stories and explore vital social concerns.  Largely avoiding the conventions of realism, they ….explore timely subjects, including gender and sexuality, society and politics, race and body image.”

 

Daniel Richter, Asger, Bill and Mark

That is, Asger Jorn, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

 

Daniel Richter – Tarifa

About as close as this exhibition gets to a straightforward visual depiction of a single event.  The black sky and midnight sea, I think, are rather overwhelming…

 

Michael Armitage

I love the washy green and pinks; saw a lot of his stuff in Venice last year, like hand-painted film posters, somehow.  These paintings are quite different.

 

Christina Quarles

The entwined bodies, flattened field (“pressing against the confines of the canvas”, to quote the booklet again) and smooth, graphic style remind me somewhat of the Australian artist Brett Whiteley, although the exploration of “female, black and queer identity” was not Whiteley’s aim…

 

Ryan Mosley

I think this must be Teaching Snakes to be Snakes – I must get into the habit of photographing the titles, like all the other bloggers you see in galleries…

 

 

Tschabalala Self

Love those brick wall legs, that brick wall torso.

 

Nicole Eisenman, Progress Real and Imagined (detail)

This is from the second panel of a diptych, “a creation story or apocalypse unfolding in an Arctic landscape”; the booklet mentions Bosch and Brueghel; I must say I thought first of Bosch because of the multiplicity of outlandish events rather than the great detail which the booklet cites – but now I’m thinking Mexican muralists, Rivera above all.  Intentions completely different, of course.

And some of mine to end with..

Bent

 

Man of Sorrows

 

Armpit

Blackpaint

17th February 2020

Blackpaint 660 – Lucian’s Selfies (mostly) and the APT Galleries

Lucian Freud Self Portraits, RA 

Strange title – there are many self portraits, but several pictures that are not; notably the “Two Irishmen in W11”,  “Freddie Standing”, and one of his daughters nude.  Maybe some others, can’t remember.

A number of the early selfies were unknown to me;  I was intrigued by the development of his realist fleshy style out of the early, flatter, more graphic portraits, with the hints of..who?  Christopher Wood?  Stanley Spencer maybe…  Craigie Aitcheson?  John Bellany, even.  I’m talking about hints and echoes, not clear resemblances.

Echo of those Renaissance religious works where the subject (Mary, baby Jesus, baby Baptist) holds a symbolic flower or bird.

 

That right ear is departing…  Actually, the ears echo the horns.

 

I still find something compelling about these unfinished pictures, with the flesh emerging suddenly from the snowy canvas.

 

Love that sidelong, disapproving – threatening? – glance down from a height.

 

Black left eye – fight with a taxi driver, I think.

 

Peeping round the corner – reminds me of a Bonnard (cropping, not style of course).  A lot of these earlier ones and some of the later too have these unusual peerings, croppings and angles.  Great show.

 

APT Galleries, Deptford:   “Material Indifference” – ended December 15th.

I saw this exhibition on its closing evening, at the beautiful white gallery, in the midst of elderly low-rise housing estates off Church Street.  I was struck by the beauty of the abstract painting and sculpture on display, which was the work of four artists:  Alice Peillon, Johanna Melvin, Michele Fletcher and Patrick Lears.  I am still puzzled by the title: the Gallery’s website says it is a “play on the continuum theory, Material Frame Indifference….. Materiality informs process and process determines materiality… The artists’ work seeks to embody the viewer by engaging the senses.”  I’m none the wiser, but happily, the pictures speak for themselves (maybe that’s what the foregoing actually means).

So, very sorry to the gallery and the artists for not getting there before the last day of the exhibition.  Check out their websites, anyway.

 

Johanna Melvin

 

Michele Fletcher

Little touch of Joan Mitchell’s Hidden Valley paintings, maybe…

 

Alice Peillon (I think)

 

Michele Fletcher

 

Alice Peillon

Great paintings to see on a dark winter night in Deptford.

 

Compulsory review of the exhibitions of the year

Best Exhibitions:

Albert Irvin and Abstract Impressionism at RWA Bristol

 

Bellany and Davie, “Cradle of Magic”, Newport Street Gallery, Vauxhall (Damien Hirst’s collection)

 

Bonnard, Tate Modern

 

Disappointing Exhibitions:

Dorothea Tanning, Tate Modern

 

 

Winter Solstice

Blackpaint

22.12.19

 

 

 

Blackpaint 642 – Monk, Barlow, Nudes and Fellini

William Monk, “A Fool through the Clouds”, The Pace Gallery

This is only on until 10th April, so visit soon if you like his works.  Three examples below – they are big, by the way.

 

 

 

Phyllida Barlow, Royal Academy until 23rd June

As at the Tate some years back, and at the Venice Biennale 2017, giant structures in stone, wood, fibre glass, canvas and metal, filling the white galleries and presenting beautiful prospects through the archways.  As can be seen, they recall skeletal structures, perhaps poking up through mud on river banks or sea shores; great precarious boulders or metal chunks, balanced on spindly supports and draped with canvas swatches.  I don’t know who to compare her works to – maybe Keifer in terms of size (but not portent)…  No-one else, really.

 

Great view through doorway.

 

I wouldn’t stray beneath those structures at the back…

 

They were squashed flat 10 seconds later…

 

The Renaissance Nude, Royal Academy, Sackler Gallery 

As you would expect, there are some fabulous treasures on display here; nothing, however, to justify the rather overheated review Adrian Searle gave it in the Guardian a few weeks back.  Far from arousing lusty thoughts, I was constantly struck by how odd some of the nude body shapes and features were, Cranach for instance, but also Durer, and others.  Many of the artists seem to have a better grasp of the muscular male physique.  I particularly liked this mysterious little picture in a vitrine with several others in a series; it’s by Giovanni Bellini, I think – what’s he doing?  Coming out of his shell is the obvious answer.  Probably has some alchemical significance – maybe??

 

 

The Ship Sails On, Federico Fellini, 1981

Fellini will be turning up regularly in this blog over the next few weeks, as I’ve just been watching virtually his entire output on DVD.  Three to go – “Clowns” (on You tube, but in Italian with Portuguese subs), “Intravista” and Voice of the Moon” (his last film, can’t find it on DVD).

Anyway, “Ship” is the one about the voyage to dispose of the ashes of a star opera singer (Helen Suzmann) in 1914.  The guests are an assortment of singers, academics, royalty and hangers-on, and there is a sort of narrator in the form of Freddie Jones, a journalist who breaks the fourth wall constantly to address us (as he is doing in the still above).  What I particularly noticed this time round was how closely Jones’ facial expressions resemble those of Giulieta Masina, Fellini’s muse and wife.  Raised eyebrows, sudden perplexed frowns, that mouth pulled firmly down at the sides, expressing an undermining skepticism: a sort of facial shrug.  Barbara Jeffords is great too, as a rival diva.  The fabulously artificial seascapes too, with the static plumes of black smoke from the funnels.  At the end, Fellini pans back (is that the right expression?) to show the crew working the “sea” surface in the studio.

No new paintings, so these are the ones I sold in the exhibition last week:

Bad Old Science

Good New Science

Ballet

Disunity of the Spheres

I certainly can’t be accused of pretentious titles…

Blackpaint

4th April 2019

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 640 – Bill Viola, Michelangelo, Ken Kiff and Fellini – the sublime and…

Bill Viola and Michelangelo, RA

No photos allowed, so can only comment on this.  The Michelangelo drawings, Archers Shooting at a Herm, notably, are as wonderful as one might expect and would constitute a great exhibition alone (as I think several have, a few years back at the Courtauld – I’m sure Tityas was there and Phaeton). It seems to me an enormous stroke of hubris to display them with Viola’s works, as if there were something fundamental that they had in common.  As it is, it strikes me as two separate exhibitions in one space.

As for Viola’s videos and installations, there’s no doubt that they are striking – who wouldn’t pause and watch transfixed as a baby emerges from the mother, who squats facing the camera?  I’ve been there (childbirth) three times, but I was always at the other end so the view was obscured.   At the other end of this triptych, Viola’s mother is dying – one might think filming to be an intrusion at such a time, but I suppose it’s easier than getting a stranger or his/her family to consent…  Can’t remember what’s in between; life, presumably.

My favourite of the Viola’s is the one with the diving figure that never arrives at the surface of the pool.  Reflected in the water can be seen the upside down images of poolside people walking – but they are not there.  The most annoying film is that of the two old people examining their naked. scrawny bodies with pencil torches – saw this in Bilbao a while ago and it annoyed me there too.

Here’s a Viola from Bilbao – not in this exhibition, but it will give you an idea…

 

Ken Kiff, Sainsbury Centre, UEA Norwich, until 23rd April 2019

This is without question the strangest exhibition I’ve seen for a very long time.  Kiff, who died in 2001, started a sequence of paintings in 1971 that eventually ran to around two hundred.  He called it – The Sequence.  The catalogue refers to Bosch, Klee, Chagall and Samuel Palmer as possible influences, or “fellow travellers” at least, and the Jungian influences are hard to miss; or so the book tells me.  Ovid, Yeats and Rilke also get a mention.  He was in psychoanalysis from 1959 onwards and this also informs the work, to say the least.

No title given in book

 

Love and shadow – sorry about the reflection; she’s holding his leg, by the way, not a stick

 

Crouching Man (1)

 

Dignified man in a respectable London suburb, passed by a girl

Talking with a psychoanalyst; night sky – the analyst is the black seated figure; the pointing finger is mine

The poet; Mayakovsky – For what its worth, Kiff is wrong – Mayakovsky shot himself in the chest, not the head (photograph in David King’s brilliant book, “Red Star over Russia”).

 

(Woman with) protruding tongue – reflection again

The works are all small (the largest is 113×76 cm) and are in acrylic on paper, gummed to board.  The book claims him as, for a time, a very influential figure in British art.  I can’t see any obvious evidence of his influence, however; he seems a complete one-off to me.

City of Women (Fellini, 1980)

Watched the DVD of this fevered and feverish film, starring Anna Prucnal and “Fellini’s favourite alter ego”, Marcello Mastroianni as Snaporaz,  and was deeply moved.  In the age of #MeToo, it seems to me that Fellini’s film still has much of relevance to tell us.

Next time, Don McCullin, Franz West and Dorothea Tanning.

 

Free Radicals

Blackpaint

05 March  19

Blackpaint 608 – Blade Runner, Blue Lamp, Johns, Dali and Duchamp

Jasper Johns 2 (RA)

Second selection from the Johns show at the Royal Academy.  It’s nearly as good as the Rauschenberg at Tate Modern a while ago; the Rausch had the edge for inventiveness and variety, but only just.  I love the splashy colours, the encaustic (waxy surfaces) and the combinations, like Rauschenberg’s – see below:

Johns, Field Painting, 1963-4

Neon light at the top – reminds me of Martial Raysse at the Pompidou a couple of years ago.   I wonder who did it first – probably came up with it independently and simultaneously.

 

Johns, Watchman, 1964

For a while, he liked sticking limbs on paintings; see the spotty arms below.  I think the chair raises “Watchman” aesthetically, though.

 

Johns, Perilous Night, 1982

 

Johns, Green Angel, 1990

Beginning to resemble Sigmar Polke a bit, in this one – but then, Polke was always really hard to categorize too.

 

Dali/ Duchamp (RA)

This is also on at the RA and so is Matisse in the Studio still – so a pretty good selection at the moment.  Dali/Duchamp, however, is thin and tendentious; what’s the connection?  As far as I can see, it is that they were close friends for a long time.  The fact that they are so different as artists is put forward as a further justification for a joint show – very different, but so friendly, there must be something interesting there…

Anyway, the R.Mutt urinal is there, as is the lobster telephone, the moustachio’d Mona Lisa and other old friends; also, the usual contrived “surreal” Dali paintings, like the one below.  I think Orwell got him about right in his essay “Benefit of Clergy”, back in the 40s.

.

Dali, Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)

 

Duchamp, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912)

 

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, even.

(Duchamp 1915 – 23, reconstructed by Richard Hamilton)

 

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

Since I am in a dismissive mood, I might as well do this, as it has been roundly praised by all the critics I’ve read.  Not a patch on the original; it lacks the kinetic energy and whirling colour of Scott’s film and I found myself checking my watch about 40 minutes in.  There’s a crap Bond-type blind villain trying to create the perfect cross-over android (I think – attention strayed at this point)  There’s an entertaining blitzing battle in a scrapyard – but I’m sure I’ve seen something similar in a “Star Wars” somewhere or other.  There is dust and gloom and red haze (like last week here in London on Ophelia day – dust from the Sahara and smoke from Portuguese forest fires, apparently).

Strangely, towards the end, I felt the director thought it was taking too long to resolve; we were suddenly in small fighting rocket ships shooting at each other, just like the original Star Wars and then in a hand-to-hand fight to the death in a craft filling with water – so that was the reason for those earlier spectacular shots of the dam…  What is true of the film is that it is truly Dick-like in the ramifications of the story; much more coherent than Dick, in fact.  I’ve said elsewhere in this blog that Dick has great ideas and writes brilliant short stories, but his novels are all over the place.

The Blue Lamp (Basil Dearden, 1950)

This popped up on TV the other night and for the first time, I stayed with it, and was glad that I did.  First, it was a beautiful, clear, clean print, sharp and sparkling, as if made yesterday.  The story was tight and mostly credible and there was a great car chase around Ladbroke Grove, police bells ringing, schoolgirls crossing the road as the police car screams round the corner.  It was out of a past that felt very distant; the villains, the sweaty Bogarde and his mate spud (Patric Doonan) use a music hall appearance by Tessie O’Shea as an alibi for the robbery and shooting of PC Dixon; scruffy, dirty kids in long shorts and hand me downs play in the streets and by a canal.  Everyone  (adult) smokes, there are horses pulling various vehicles, there are real bomb sites.  Bogarde (Tom Riley, the shooter) looks like a desperado from an Italian neo-realist picture, with his mop of unruly hair and shabby sweater.

I wrote “mostly credible”; it went into fantasy a little way in the White City dog stadium sequence.  When the petty villains and tic-tac men (google it) join with the police in the search for Riley and signal his whereabouts in the stadium, I was reminded of Fritz Lang’s “M”, in which the hapless (and also sweaty) child killer Peter Lorre is hunted down and put on trial by the underworld; at least, I think that’s what happens – it’s hard to see through the cigarette smoke.

Did you notice the rhyming title?  Slick, eh?  Oh well, please yourselves…

Ophelia

Blackpaint

19/10/17

 

 

 

Blackpaint 407 – Bloodshed at the RA; is Stoner Perfect?

Sorry for hiatus – been away.

Mexico, a Revolution  in Art, at the RA

Not all Mexican – Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Philip Guston, Cartier -Bresson,  DH Lawrence  et al, all down there on a visit at one time or another.

Starting with the inevitable sepia photos of firing squads and their dead victims, one sequence showing the shooting of four Mexicans, one after the other, at the moment the bullets strike; violent death somehow seems more prevalent in Mexican revolution, the executions routine and casual – maybe a reflection of the ubiquity of photographers.  Also strikers, prostitutes peeping from windows, semi-surrealist street shots…

A few lurid, blood-raw landscape pictures, and one snow-capped peak that recalled the Canadian “Seven” painter, Lawren Harris.  Maybe the landscape really IS that raw, blood orange colour – best to leave it to God, perhaps, like those lurid American Sublime sunsets.

The Guston (early figurative mode) and the one opposite of a man in a cat’s suit the best, along with a portrait by Siqueiros of Zapata – like a hooded-eyed, ancient deity.  Also an Orozco and a Rivera; both better as murals, I think.

The RA Summer Exhibition

Overall, not inspiring.  Lots of well-known RAs doing their usual thing; some beautiful Irvins, especially the small, marmalade orange prints called “Shakespeare” (presumably after Shakespeare Road, rather than the playwright) – and a huge, penetrating blue canvas by Barbara Rae,   I think the most striking painting – in a good way – in the show.  But I didn’t record the title.

Gillian Ayres’ flower-shaped images on prints, Tracey Emin’s broken-line etchings, John Carter’s Oiticica-like wobbly squares… A number of John Bellanys in garish, livid colours, humans with seabirds’ heads.. a big, brown, messy, lovely Basil Beattie.

Jock MacFadyen’s paintings were interesting – none of the cartoon-like tattoo’ed thugs with pit bulls; instead, a realist derelict factory with graffitti and a minimalist portrait if Humphrey Ocean – good, but I think I prefer the cartoon stuff – speaking of which, A big Rose Wylie over the door in her usual style.

Most striking of the non – RAs was a small yellow, patchwork print by Hetty Haxworth, called “Rig and Furrow”, loads of prints of which already sold.

Worst painting by famous artist; Per Kirkeby’s “Laokoon”, a roughly executed serpent in ugly colours.  Also Pete Tonkins’ acrylic abstract.  Ugliness, whatever that is, not necessarily bad in a painting, of course, but should be something else to carry it; coherence, structure, something anyway.

Stoner by John Williams

First published in 1965, a campus novel set in University of Missouri in years from WW1 to the 50s.  I thought it was stunning – I normally read a bunch of books a few pages each every day, but I put others aside until I finished this, in maybe four days, really fast for me.  It’s not flawless; the dialogue in the love scenes a little shaky, perhaps, and a death scene seems prolonged; but it made me reflect on my own time as a student and teacher, with some very depressing and uncomfortable results.

Something that occurred to me, but apparently to no-one else who has written about the novel on the internet, was that Lomax’s campaign against Stoner through Walker could be read as a metaphor for the ideological struggles between radical movements and more conservative forces on campus, which became common a little later in the 60s; I was thinking particularly of the accusations of racism or misogyny that were often deployed against conservative and liberal academics.  No doubt this take is somewhat crass; all other reviews stress the universality of the themes and the perfection of the novel.

I couldn’t help casting some of the characters mentally, in the film that must soon be made; Stoner himself, as a young man, I see played by Paul Dano (There Will be Blood); Finch could only be Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master).

Great book; best of its kind I’ve read since Richard Yates.

 

Montreuil, Blackpaint

15.08.13