What are You Looking at?

[Belgrove]

Another series of R4’s Moving Pictures commences on Monday at 4pm with an analysis of Titian’s Ariadne & Bacchus, accompanied by a high definition definition image that enables zooming in on the details:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pfd4

Previous episodes have been revelatory.

[Bryn]

Very much enjoyed Harry Hill on Damien Hirst (Sky Arts last night). I have never had a high regard for the latter's work. Neither concept nor craft ever rises above the mundane, as far as I'm concerned. He certainly knows how to exploit the art market, though. As for his 'spin' paintings, essentially plagiarised from Blue Peter . . .

[Serial_Apologist]

Very much enjoyed Harry Hill on Damien Hirst (Sky Arts last night). I have never had a high regard for the latter's work. Neither concept nor craft ever rises above the mundane, as far as I'm concerned. He certainly knows how to exploit the art market, though. As for his 'spin' paintings, essentially plagiarised from Blue Peter . . .

Couldn't agree more.

[Belgrove]

Last chance to see the Francis Bacon: Man and Beast show at the Royal Academy. His work is the stuff of nightmares. They are paintings whose impact and importance will not fade with time, having a universality and resonance, however unsettling that may be. His use of vivid but always complementary colour is striking and in some early works the thick application of paint almost becomes sculptural. The exhibition explores many of his studies of animals that find expression in human subjects. Two paintings are of dogs, which you would fear to approach - they are a distillation of ferality. Imagine entering a room and being confronted with the ‘Study for a Portrait’ from 1953 - you’d run a mile! It contains many paintings from private collections that are only rarely seen. It’s a substantial show that is expertly curated, leading one through a narrative thread in spacious and uncluttered galleries.

[Serial_Apologist]

A big plug for the postwar exhibition of art at the Barbican - the best £15 I've spent on such an event. There was a mix-up resulting in our being sold two tickets for the wrong exhibition, the other one, but the staff for the one we'd gone for were fine about this and were able to effect a simple transfer. Apart from the building the general vibes at the Barbican are most welcoming: my only fear was that barely any of the visitors apart from myself were wearing face masks.

[Belgrove]

The Walter Sickert retrospective at Tate Britain, the first in nearly thirty years, is a substantial show of an artist with a surprising diversity of styles from the 1870’s to the 1930’s. The early works are small and murky-dark. Whether this was deliberate or a symptom of inferior pigment changing over the years is unclear. He knew Whistler and Degas, whose influence emerges in his later paintings of Music Hall subjects onwards where colour enters the picture, often to striking effect. He manages to convey loneliness, isolation and especially threat - a sequence of works rooted in Camden Town are unnerving. One wonders whether Hopper was aware of his work, Bacon and Freud certainly were. The late paintings are created from photographs, dominated by flat blocks of denatured colour, they look surprisingly contemporary despite their subjects. It was fascinating to see portrayed aspects of everyday life that have now entirely vanished; entertainment in Music Halls, laundry shops, costermongers… As is nowadays often the case with Tate shows, the curating was not to my taste. It is organised by supposed themes, where paintings of vastly different styles are grouped together, sometimes spuriously. And the blurb accompanying the paintings often (rebukingly) interprets them in terms of some of the social sensibilities of today. Of course one does not have to read these ephemeral intrusions, rather let the paintings suggest their own meanings. On until mid-September and worth a visit.

[johncorrigan]

I like the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh. It has a quiet atmosphere, more intimate that its larger neighbour across the Belford Road. It certainly felt ideal to hold the largest exhibition of Barbara Hepworth held in Scotland, which runs till 2nd October, after which it will head to the Tate in St Ives. The exhibition took us through her life from her early days in Wakefield. Unlike my more knowledgeable wife, I was only vaguely familiar with her life and her art. I enjoyed her drawings very much - she seemed to have been a great draughtswoman. Her early heads were beautifully primitive, and as with so much of her work, the viewer benefited from being able to be look at them from various angles. Of course, I was always frustrated by the signs indicating 'do not touch', when all you wanted to do was run your hand along a surface. I loved her later lithographs, especially those influenced by the space race, and also her late pieces in various metals. What struck me most were the wonderful shadows that her works often created; and looking at my photos of the show, that's the thing that seemed to be pleasing me most...that and being able to look at the work from various viewpoints. It was a most enjoyable show.

Travel plans allowing, hoping to take in the John Byrne Exhibition in Kelvingrove this weekend.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Walter Sickert retrospective at Tate Britain, the first in nearly thirty years, is a substantial show of an artist with a surprising diversity of styles from the 1870’s to the 1930’s. The early works are small and murky-dark. Whether this was deliberate or a symptom of inferior pigment changing over the years is unclear. He knew Whistler and Degas, whose influence emerges in his later paintings of Music Hall subjects onwards where colour enters the picture, often to striking effect. He manages to convey loneliness, isolation and especially threat - a sequence of works rooted in Camden Town are unnerving. One wonders whether Hopper was aware of his work, Bacon and Freud certainly were. The late paintings are created from photographs, dominated by flat blocks of denatured colour, they look surprisingly contemporary despite their subjects. It was fascinating to see portrayed aspects of everyday life that have now entirely vanished; entertainment in Music Halls, laundry shops, costermongers… As is nowadays often the case with Tate shows, the curating was not to my taste. It is organised by supposed themes, where paintings of vastly different styles are grouped together, sometimes spuriously. And the blurb accompanying the paintings often (rebukingly) interprets them in terms of some of the social sensibilities of today. Of course one does not have to read these ephemeral intrusions, rather let the paintings suggest their own meanings. On until mid-September and worth a visit.

Thanks for the thumbs up for this, Belgrove, which I very much want to go to. I had not been aware of Sickert's later photo-based work, an example of which, Variation on Peggy, is remarkably prophetic in its use of colours of Warhol's work of thirty years later. It is featured on P 160 of next week's Radio Times, and was itself prompted by a photograph of Peggy Ashcroft in a 1934 edition of Radio Times. In anticipation I think we will be in agreement over the kind of blurb on offer typifying the kind of revisionism John Berger would have had something to say about were he still with us!

[Serial_Apologist]

I like the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh. It has a quiet atmosphere, more intimate that its larger neighbour across the Belford Road. It certainly felt ideal to hold the largest exhibition of Barbara Hepworth held in Scotland, which runs till 2nd October, after which it will head to the Tate in St Ives. The exhibition took us through her life from her early days in Wakefield. Unlike my more knowledgeable wife, I was only vaguely familiar with her life and her art. I enjoyed her drawings very much - she seemed to have been a great draughtswoman. Her early heads were beautifully primitive, and as with so much of her work, the viewer benefited from being able to be look at them from various angles. Of course, I was always frustrated by the signs indicating 'do not touch', when all you wanted to do was run your hand along a surface. I loved her later lithographs, especially those influenced by the space race, and also her late pieces in various metals. What struck me most were the wonderful shadows that her works often created; and looking at my photos of the show, that's the thing that seemed to be pleasing me most...that and being able to look at the work from various viewpoints. It was a most enjoyable show.

Travel plans allowing, hoping to take in the John Byrne Exhibition in Kelvingrove this weekend.

I've commented previously on this irritation, specifically in relation to Henry Moore exhibitions at Tate Britain, and particularly in view of his insistence on the tactile being an inseparable facet of appreciating his work, which I would think Barbara Hepworth would also have advocated for her own. The reason one of the minders gave us was that acid or other damaging chemicals could be transferred by touch; but this applies even more to the outdoor specimens of both these and indeed statues as a whole, and is surely an essential aspect of their contingency, I would have thought.

[Belgrove]

… I had not been aware of Sickert's later photo-based work, an example of which, Variation on Peggy, is remarkably prophetic in its use of colours of Warhol's work of thirty years later…

Precisely. There’s a full length one of Edward VIII in full ceremonial rig, purposely striding from his car, maybe, from the rather alarmed look on his face, being caught-out on the way to meet some of his Nazi chums.

[Serial_Apologist]

Precisely. There’s a full length one of Edward VIII in full ceremonial rig, purposely striding from his car, maybe, from the rather alarmed look on his face, being caught-out on the way to meet some of his Nazi chums.

[johncorrigan]

My Son and I headed to Glasgow on Saturday for the John Byrne retrospective. I hadn't been in Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery this side of the pandemic, so it was great to be back there. Being a son of Paisley, I had known of Byrne's work since the late 60s through some of his album covers and book designs and then an early exhibition in Paisley Museum and Art gallery. The exhibition in the basement gallery of Kelvingrove took in work going back to his days in Glasgow School of Art through to the present day. One room contained just self-portraits most with the permanent roll-up on show. Other rooms had work related to his plays and TV work such as 'The Slab Boys' and 'Tutti Frutti'. Throughout there was a sense of joy, with films featuring the likes of Robert Carlyle and Robbie Coltraine. I laughed a lot, but also marvelled at how life affirming these images were - only cost me a fiver with my bus pass. He's a Scottish National Treasure, in my opinion. The exhibition runs till September.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61593753

On Sunday we had a couple of hours and since we were on the south side of the city dropped in on the newly refurbished Burrell. I thought it looked great - it seemed to maintain a lot of the good features of the original design, but adding an extra floor there's lots more chance to view work from various perspectives, and things felt slightly better organised than previously. They've done a great job - if you're in Glasgow you can never go wrong with a trip to Pollok Estate and the Burrell. Terrific to have it back open...and it's free entry, although you can make a donation, of course.

[johncorrigan]

Headed to the Parliament at Holyrood yesterday to take in the World Press Photo Awards 2022 though a lot of the photos were taken in '21. Stunning frightening images from around the Globe - Brazil, Australia, Siberia, Nigeria, Thailand among others - very moving images of migrants in United States, a very evocative image of a family sheltering in Gaza, and from Argentina a young girl who decided not to cut her hair in the time of covid until her school re-opened. Great exhibition if you happen to be in Reekie in the next week - well put together in the Parliament buildings...and it's free. You can see some of the winners here.

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/contest/2022

[Belgrove]

The Cezanne exhibition at Tate Modern has received widespread acclaim by broadsheet art critics. They had the advantage of attending before the public were allowed in, and could therefore appreciate the paintings without being jostled and subjected to the crush one associates with a tube train. There are simply too many people allowed into this show at any time, in a series of rooms that are mostly too small to contain the crowd and oddly arranged to assist their flow. It’s difficult to verify if the quality of the curatorship claimed by critics is there because it’s difficult to discern an overall narrative among the milling throng. A careful read of the catalogue may reveal that narrative and the ability to appreciate the works better. But the book is not the thing, so that’s a massive fail for Tate as far as I’m concerned.

From what I could discern, Cezanne is not as universally ’good’ as the critics would have us believe. There is an awful lot of substandard works here - a bit more selectivity would have been welcome in what is a big exhibition. He is poor at portraiture, the only ones that work are of his young son. His early landscapes don’t capture how light changes with distance, they are flat. This is an effect that the later paintings master to wonderful effect. The ‘bathers’ sequence contains too many poor representations of figure - the anatomy is wrong. What is masterful, and influential, is the use of colour and the exploration of warped perspective, that has a strange, queasy effect in the still-life studies for arrangements of fruits, jugs and fabrics. Also the repeated studies of Mont Saint Victoire, that become increasingly abstract in form and the use of colour (green skys…) These don’t quite make the leap into purely abstract art though being rooted upon a subject - it is possibly the retention of this visual crutch that makes his work popular. But there is too much in the show which is not of the highest quality - less could have more.

If it’s possible to visit this exhibition at a time when it is not too busy, then I would recommend it wholeheartedly. But sadly I couldn’t wait to get out.

[gurnemanz]

The Cezanne exhibition at Tate Modern has received widespread acclaim by broadsheet art critics. They had the advantage of attending before the public were allowed in, and could therefore appreciate the paintings without being jostled and subjected to the crush one associates with a tube train. There are simply too many people allowed into this show at any time, in a series of rooms that are mostly too small to contain the crowd and oddly arranged to assist their flow. It’s difficult to verify if the quality of the curatorship claimed by critics is there because it’s difficult to discern an overall narrative among the milling throng. A careful read of the catalogue may reveal that narrative and the ability to appreciate the works better. But the book is not the thing, so that’s a massive fail for Tate as far as I’m concerned.

From what I could discern, Cezanne is not as universally ’good’ as the critics would have us believe. There is an awful lot of substandard works here - a bit more selectivity would have been welcome in what is a big exhibition. He is poor at portraiture, the only ones that work are of his young son. His early landscapes don’t capture how light changes with distance, they are flat. This is an effect that the later paintings master to wonderful effect. The ‘bathers’ sequence contains too many poor representations of figure - the anatomy is wrong. What is masterful, and influential, is the use of colour and the exploration of warped perspective, that has a strange, queasy effect in the still-life studies for arrangements of fruits, jugs and fabrics. Also the repeated studies of Mont Saint Victoire, that become increasingly abstract in form and the use of colour (green skys…) These don’t quite make the leap into purely abstract art though being rooted upon a subject - it is possibly the retention of this visual crutch that makes his work popular. But there is too much in the show which is not of the highest quality - less could have more.

If it’s possible to visit this exhibition at a time when it is not too busy, then I would recommend it wholeheartedly. But sadly I couldn’t wait to get out.

Thanks for review with reminder to attend off-peak. The Nat Portrait Gallery show of Cezanne portraits show was something of a revelation a few years ago - most were new to me. Not as astounding as the Goya portraits at the Tate the year before. I know what you mean but wouldn't call them poor.