Blackpaint 636 – Vishniac, Wallace, Schiele and the Giant Slug

Roman Vishniac, Photographers Gallery, until 24th February

Unique and fascinating photos of  life in pre – war Jewish ghettos in Poland, resettlement camps in Europe and Israel after the war as well as war-ravaged Germany and miscellaneous pictures of life in the USA at that time (is that Josh White on guitar? it is!) .  A selection below:

Somehow, looks earlier than 1935; I would have guessed the early 20s, or even 1919 – the soldiers look more like Freikorps than regulars…

 

Berlin street –  see the statues over the doorway.

 

Pre-war Berlin – love the saint/patriarch on the right, watching the men up the ladders.

 

Wallace Collection – Manchester Square W1.

Great paintings in an ornate – to put it conservatively – setting; in fact, I find the gold leaf and plush a bit too rich for my taste, but it fits the paintings right enough.  As usual, a few of my favourites below:

 

Esaias Boursse

A beautiful little jewel of a painting – look at the bonnet and the fabrics; super realism, visual poetry.

 

Gabriel Metsu

Reminded me of that Velazquez with the fish and the servant woman in the foreground and Christ in the room behind..

 

Van Der Velde

A couple of lovely seascapes by the master.  The frames are just too much for me, so I cropped the second one.

 

Van der Velde

 

Watteau

An early Dejeuner sur l’herbe, but without the nude woman and the men in top hats – so nothing like it really… but still….

 

Jan Weenix

Weenix had to be included, both because I like his name and because he is the master of dead game, especially hares.

Plenty more to look out for: more Watteaus and Lancrets, a Canaletto with a tiny Dutch flag on a vessel exactly equidistant from left and right side of the canvas (well spotted, Bernard); and some interesting Richard Bonningtons – I’d thought he did intricate scenes of ships’ rigging and the like, but some nice theatrical pictures here.  And some lovely Rubens sketches.

 

Renzo Piano, RA – ended 20th January, unfortunately.  

I felt I had to include this building, which I think is a film museum in New York – it looks like a big slug to me.  I rather like it.

 

Egon Schiele at the RA, on with drawings by Klimt  until 3rd Feb- a couple more.

Some homosexual activity to offset the risque pictures of women I posted a couple of weeks ago…

 

…and back to women…

The Passenger, dir Michelangelo Antonioni (1975)

This is on at the BFI at the South Bank in a new print.  I watched it on my DVD.

The three main characters in one shot – Jenny Runacre, with the long legs, in the phone booth; Jack Nicholson with his back to us; and Maria Schneider with the bag.  Don’t know who the receptionist is.

One of the things about this film is the scene at the end, in which a character is shot in a hotel room, while the camera gazes from the room’s interior at the window through which the fatal shot is fired.  I’ve watched it over and over, and I still can’t pinpoint it.

 

Detail of “Golem“, one of my old ones.  Next blog – Bonnard at the Tate Modern.  Nice.

Blackpaint

24/01/18

Blackpaint 353 – Diana, Fidelio and the Long Shot

Titian et al at the National Gallery

The first striking thing in the exhibition is in the Callisto painting, the one on the far left as you enter.  It’s the massive right arm of the nymph in the foreground, with her back to us – the one who holds the equally large arrow.  The right arm is worthy of a shotputter and is out of proportion, but in a good, Michelangelo’s David sort of way (also substantially meaty are the arms of the goddess herself, as she fires the arrow at Actaeon in the “brown” picture).

In the centre of the Callisto painting is a glass object – an orb, globe or mirror – painted with the icy clarity of a Kalf still life.  It sets off the slightly misty “seethingness” of Titian’s surface seen close up.  In the autumnal tones of the painting depicting Actaeon’s death, the blurring is obvious, but can only be seen close up in the others.

In the painting where Actaeon surprises Diana, her small head and the odd angle at which it sits on her neck are, as always, striking; as with the arm, I point out distinctive, peculiar features which help make the pictures memorable for me.

Chris Ofili

There is a series of huge paintings which he calls the Ovid works.  Several display that Art Nouveau, Beardsley – like line he used in the paintings in his last exhibition and that dry, thin surface with the dark blue/mauve ground.  An enormous, light blue phallus in one – “Ovid; lust”, I think and a striking floor of red and white irregular “tiles” in another.

Conrad Shawcross

The Shawcross robot, smoothly running, with echoes of Epstein’s Rock Drill in its general appearance;  while I was there, its movements resembled those of a dog sniffing its crotch with the light probe.  For this reason, I took it to represent one of Actaeon’s hounds, but have since heard that it is supposed to be Diana herself.

There are also ballet costumes by several of the artists and a huge video of beautiful dancers and the directors rehearsing the ballets.  And all free.

Albert Irvin; Fidelio

At Gimpel Fils in Davies Street W1 until September.  Twenty six paintings, I think, that are great.  A couple of years ago, I saw my first Albert Irvin at the top of the stairs in the Tate Britain and it left me completely unmoved.  I thought it was boring; flat and brash, at the same time. Don’t know what happened – the “scales fell from my eyes” (where does that come from?) and now he’s my favourite living abstract painter, with Paul Feiler.

The “usual” fluorescent reds, greens, yellows, motifs that resemble flowers, crosses, pinnate leaves, stripes, squiggles, badges, circles – but amonst them, four stupendous paintings: “Rampart”, a tidal wave of wine or blood in a fluid block (?), “Brady”, yellow base with huge half-circle of green, covering left side; “Beacon”, with the grey/mauve ground and yellow-white cross hatchings like a cake – tiramisu maybe – spatched down on top; and “Trophy”, luminous green and red patches with a huge blue keyhole shape painted on it, for us to see through.

The first three are old – 76, 86 and 94 respectively – but “Trophy” is dated this year and all the rest are 2011 or 2012.  He’s 90 years old; not much development, but pretty consistent.

It strikes me that you could group him with Hoyland, Bowling, Paul Jenkins and maybe Richter (the abstracts anyway) in that they don’t use earth colours much or at all – their colours are airborne and sizzling.

More Irvin at Kings’ place until 24th August.

The Passenger, Antonioni

Watched the last, long shot through the barred window three times and couldn’t see the assassin or make out a shot.  Finally, watched it with Jack Nicholson’s commentary over the top; he points out – or at least, asks the question – “Was that a shot?”  At some point, the camera goes through the bars and turns round to follow the women and police into the dead man’s room.

Blackpaint

2/08/12