What are You Looking at?

[amateur51]

Malevich

Interested forumistas unable to get to the Tate Modern exhibition (and those of us who did, and want a reminder) may wish to know that there is a half-hour documentary tonight (Tues 9th September) 0n BBC4, Russian Revolutionary: Zaha Hadid on Kazimir Malevich. 10:00 - 10:30, and, I presume, thereafter on the i-Player.

Thanks for the alert ferney

[Nick Armstrong]

Big "abstraction" theme currently on BBC4.

I found the Matthew Collings programme fascinating last night

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04gv5kl/the-rules-of-abstraction-with-matthew-collings#group=p025v15l

... though I have a problem with some of the talk: I just enjoyed the pictures, me!

[amateur51]

I found the Matthew Collings programme fascinating last night

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04gv5kl/the-rules-of-abstraction-with-matthew-collings#group=p025v15l

... though I have a problem with some of the talk: I just enjoyed the pictures, me!

Cheers for this Cali

Are Mr Collings' luxuriant new whiskers a rebuke to Botney's, I wonder?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Alistair Sooke on Constable is also well worth watching:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04gv42q/constable-a-country-rebel

I'm not entirely convinced by Sooke's claims that he didn't know Constable's sketches and later work (I only did Art History at "A"-Level, and as "Third Subject of Equal Importance" in my first year at University, but even I knew this stuff - and the oil sketch of the Horse Rearing is reproduced in every book on Constable I've ever seen) but the pretence allows him to explore and dismiss the "chocolate box" reputation that still dogs this fantastic painter.

A couple of points which reflect on Musical concerns, too - the fact that the varnish on 17th Century paintings had yellowed by the next Century, so that greens and blues had all become a homogenous mucky brown. But "enthusiasts" were so used to these colours that they insisted on painters from their own time also using them in their own work. Uniform, undifferentiated vibrato, anyone?

And the telling phrase about Artists being judged by how well they copied other, older Artists, rather than producing original work from their own imaginations and observations. I couldn't help thinking of the majority of BBC Proms commissions over the last thirty years.

[Serial_Apologist]

Cheers for this Cali

Are Mr Collings' luxuriant new whiskers a rebuke to Botney's, I wonder?

AhAAA!!! I just KNEW I'd seen him presenting on telly before; the giant bush just threw me. (Same thing happened once when I was on me bike!)

Addendum: come to think of it, a programme drawing the parallels between Kandinsky and Schoenberg would be just great. I'm not sure anybody with BBC connections would be up to it today: even back in the 1960s I was having to show this to arts students who knew all there is to know about Kandinsky, Macke, Delauney(s) & co, yet nothing about atonal or 12-tone music.

[Ockeghem's Razor]

Yesterday I visited the 'John Ruskin: Artist and Observer' exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Mainly watercolours and all from the Ashmolean collection but nice to see them here. Interesting to see his technique developing in a Turner direction (unsurprisingly). As an inept watercolourist myself I was most impressed by many of his effects, especially in painting landscape.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Frau A and I have been to the Pipe and Glass Inn, north of Beverley, on a couple of wedding anniversaries. As a result, we we e-mailed details of the commissioning and painting of the inn/restaurant by Bradford artist Bob Barker, with a special meal for the unveiling of the painting. We were so impressed that we ordered a print immediately and it adorns our living room.

Most of Bob Barker's work is in this style - main black with touches of red and yellow. He usually features a heart somewhere on the painting. See if you can spot it between the two people under the umbrella.

http://www.artmarket.co.uk/art/bob-barker-table-for-two.aspx

[amateur51]

‘Late Turner – Painting Set Free’ at Tate Britain until 25 January 2015

A six-room exhibition of Turner's late works, with a fair amount of biography to get under your belt, I wonder if I should have enjoyed it more if I had read one or had I seen Timothy Spall as Turner in his forthcoming film.

Turner lived to quite a great age for the 1850s and he appears to have been almost tirelessy working. I had no idea that he travelled so much in Europe which required a good deal of walking, even when his tummy was playing up. His paintings of Rome, ancient and modern, place side-by-side in this show, are remarkable and delightful being largely well-lit. As he got older there was a great deal of darker stuff and of course more and more experimentation with light, rainbows and other phenomena, on land and at sea.

If I have a criticism it is that there is an awful lot to take in and my advice would be to go twice: the first time to take in the scope of the show and catch up on the biography; and on the second visit to go in early and take in two-thirds before lunch and then polish off the rest and revist a few favourites after lunch. This is feasible if you are a Tate member; I doubt that your ticket will allow readmittance on the day post-lunch, but it's probably best to check.

It is a remarkable show of the late work of a great artist working almost right to the end, and by that I mean not just churning stuff out but continuing to experiment with capturing and representing light and the elements and landscape, all the while encouraging young artists in their progress. Several of his watercolour and witten notebooks give a fascinating but limited insight into his processes and how he used them to remember what he had visited.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ebdfaf20-3a17-11e4-8aa2-00144feabdc0.html#slide7

Tate Britain, Great Stuff!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tate Britain, Great Stuff!

... and whilst anyone is in the vicinity, you might find the Marlow Moss exhibition well repays the visit. This has been on a national "tour" from Tate St Ives over the past year which is how I saw it at the Leeds City Gallery. Ay first glance, my impression was "Second-hand Mondrian" - and, indeed, she was a lifelong friend of Piet - but the influence was mutual, and closer examination of her work reveals increasing differences between the two. Her later work suggests knowledge of Malevich, and some of it can be regarded as the link between the Russian and Ben Nicholson - her sculptures particularly good, I thought (the photo in the Guardian piece below shows the way her earlier work carried on into her later life in a way the experience of the 3D work doesn't suggest). And a fascinating personality, too.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/25/marlow-moss-cornwalls-forgotten-art-maverick-tate-britain

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And Andrew Graham-Dixon's documentary on Paul Nash on BBC4 last Sunday is still available on the i-Player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04j2ywv/british-art-at-war-bomberg-sickert-and-nash-1-paul-nash-the-ghosts-of-war

AG-D perhaps interposes his own responses a little too much (making connections with the Artist's biography that sometimes I found enthusiastic but a bit cheesy) - but at least as often he provides insights and always provokes the viewer's own reaction to the work. And we're shown a lot of this work: and what work!




(Incidentally, if you type "Paul Nash" into the search facility at the top of the i-Player home page, the first item that is listed is a Paul Hollywood programme )

[amateur51]

... and whilst anyone is in the vicinity, you might find the Marlow Moss exhibition well repays the visit. This has been on a national "tour" from Tate St Ives over the past year which is how I saw it at the Leeds City Gallery. Ay first glance, my impression was "Second-hand Mondrian" - and, indeed, she was a lifelong friend of Piet - but the influence was mutual, and closer examination of her work reveals increasing differences between the two. Her later work suggests knowledge of Malevich, and some of it can be regarded as the link between the Russian and Ben Nicholson - her sculptures particularly good, I thought (the photo in the Guardian piece below shows the way her earlier work carried on into her later life in a way the experience of the 3D work doesn't suggest). And a fascinating personality, too.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...k-tate-britain

many thanks ferney

Note that Marlow Moss exhi opens on 28 September

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Note that Marlow Moss exhi opens on 28 September

Good point.

[Serial_Apologist]

And Andrew Graham-Dixon's documentary on Paul Nash on BBC4 last Sunday is still available on the i-Player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04j2ywv/british-art-at-war-bomberg-sickert-and-nash-1-paul-nash-the-ghosts-of-war

AG-D perhaps interposes his own responses a little too much (making connections with the Artist's biography that sometimes I found enthusiastic but a bit cheesy) - but at least as often he provides insights and always provokes the viewer's own reaction to the work. And we're shown a lot of this work: and what work!




(Incidentally, if you type "Paul Nash" into the search facility at the top of the i-Player home page, the first item that is listed is a Paul Hollywood programme )

I was so knocked out by this programme I barely noticed the commentary! It was one of three - the next (Walter Sickert) being on this coming Sunday, also on BBC4 at 9 pm, and the third (Bomberg) presumably the week after. There's an article by A.G-D in the current RT, PP 27-29.

Thanks ams and ferney for bringing these exhibitions to our notice.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just to bump this thread up to remind people that part 2 of this programme series is on BBC4 tonight at 9 pm, the subject being the marvellous David Bomberg, one of our greatest artists imv, whose Expressionistic wartime scenes remind me of Alban Berg's music, especially the jumbled aural images of the Orchestral Pieces Op 6. Here's a link to lots of his paintings:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/david-bomberg

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]