lucian freud: painting people at the national portrait gallery

March 22nd, 2012 § 1 Comment

On my way to the Hayward last Sunday to take a look at the David Shrigley exhibition I was blocked off by the St Patricks day parade. I quickly gave up any thoughts of going south of the river and parked up. Negotiating samba dancers and steel drum bands playing Caribbean music (St Patrick of Antigua perhaps?) I made my way past irritating orange-bearded leprechauns and giant Guinness hats to the National Portrait Gallery.

They have named the exhibition Lucien Freud: Painting People, a strange title, as if the next exhibition might be called  ’Lucien Freud: Painting Still-Lifes’ or ‘Abstracts’ – Freud of course never painted anything other than people.

Nevertheless it is quickly evident that this is a very impressive show that has gathered together some 130 works, predominantly oils, and includes many rarely seen pieces. The curators have sensibly chosen a largely chronological hang which nicely clarifies Freuds often subtly changing styles. It also interestingly puts together groups of works where the sitter was portrayed several times – we all know about the ‘Benefits supervisor sleeping‘ but how many of us realised that there were three more very similar, sizeable, portraits.

As well as the above-mentioned government employee Freud painted a fairly closed variety of wives, girlfriends and children along with sundry friends and an occasional lord, lady and fellow artists



His famous selfishness meant that he needed people who would put up with his notoriously lengthy sittings and these very often seemed to be those closest to him. David Hockney calculated that he spent some 130 hours in a fixed pose but when Hockney asked Freud to return the compliment he allowed him just 2 1/2 hours!
Freud would only paint from life saying ‘I could never put anything into a picture that wasn’t actually there in front of me’. It often seems as if that turned out to be bored sitters with blank expressions and although that is probably what Freud wanted there are certainly few smiles here. What Freud seems to be painting are bodies, often it seems that all he wants is merely flesh.

The exhibition starts well, his precocious talent evident from his searingly precise early portraits – each hair neatly delineated, every fabric crease clear. Spiky plants, nervous cats and varied gazes adding extra meaning. Later he adds more background before moving on to freer brushstrokes and ever more nudity.

And there is plenty of nudity. There are bodies of all sorts – lovers, wives, daughters and, as if there is not quite enough flesh to be found, the more than ample Leigh Bowery and afore-mentioned benefits supervisor then appear. At this point (from about the 1990′s) it was hard to maintain interest in examination of every successive painting – I yearned to see clothed models or background detail – some blessed relief from the  relentless visual attack of the naked bodies.
Ever more acres of green, grey and pink appear in increasingly awkward poses, the flesh topped with impassionate, sad or distant faces, eyes gazing blankly in to the distance. More and more Freud seemed to be painting Beckettian existentialism. Most traces of emotion and expression have long disappeared – these are now paintings of blank acceptance of human frailty and decay. It is an exhibition that is not easy to follow right to the inevitable end, but one highly deserving of a visit.
Lucien Freud: Painting People runs at the National Portrait Gallery Trafalgar Square until 27 May 2012
Related articles

david shrigley at stephen friedman

March 7th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Humour is not hard to find in postmodern art – a typical definition of postmodernism will probably include humour alongside parody and irony – and we are all familiar with works like Maurizio Cattelan‘s Pope Struck by a Meteorite (below), Jeff Koons‘ Rabbit and Gavin Turk‘s Blue Plaque. But this is not laugh out loud humour – or should I say nowadays lol humour – this is more like the knowing chuckle of the West End audience in a performance of an Alan Bennett play. So when we do get a work of art that we can really laugh at (presuming that we are not laughing at its awfulness) it is instinctive to ask ourselves whether this really is art or not. Surely we should not be lol-ing at proper art?

But lol I did at the wonderful David Shrigley‘s exhibition at Stephen Friedman. Shrigley of course has a big retrospective currently showing at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank (to be reviewed later) and Friedman has taken the opportunity to use both his West End gallery spaces for a parallel exhibition. A lot of his work of course is on paper but he has broadened his output to include sculpture, animation, taxidermy and photography.

The first gallery space at Steven Friedman is taken over by the darkly humorous and rather disconcerting Bombs, an installation of black ceramic sculptures, subverting the destructive nature of a real bomb using a rather delicate material. In the next a sculptured word - writing - sits upon a small wall mounted platform, no explanation required.

A clever animation in the back room is of an artist faithfully depicting his model on canvas: the breasts are first (is that what that the artist is really interested in?), then the rest of the body and head, until finally after careful consideration, adding a smile to replace the glum expression of the model. The cynical suggestion of course is that art is there to please – the artist changing the reality to fit the expectations and commercial realities.

The most humorous works are those on paper over the road at Friedman’s other gallery space. Too many to describe and I do not have any images, but some random images below just for fun or for some more examples of his work have a look at the Steven Friedman Gallery website or better still drop in next time you are in the West End!

David Shrigley is at the Steven Friedman gallery until 10 March 2012.

Related articles

yayoi kusama at tate modern; now & future japan; hyper japan

February 24th, 2012 § 1 Comment

I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese,  I really think so….. It seems that there are all sorts of Japanesey things happening here in London pretty much at the same time – the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern being the highlight of course.

yoko ono - mend piece

Opening soon Now & Future JAPAN supports orphaned children from the Tsunami and features a work by Yoko Ono repeated from 1966 - Mend Piece – where visitors are invited to join in by repairing broken china. A fund-raising auction takes place alongside – see website for details. Please try to support it.

Meanwhile, starting today at Earls Court, Hyper Japan is UK’s biggest celebration of Japanese ‘culture, cuisine and cool.’ I will try and drop in if only to say konishi wa to Satoshi Miki – director of those unforgettable classics Instant Swamp and Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (see it!) and to check out the World Cosplay Summit (Cosplay being anime/manga/video dressing up – don’t ya just love it!).

Talking about someone who loves dressing up Yayoi Kusama‘s big solo exhibition at Tate Modern kicked off a couple of weeks ago. I do like Kusama, but I was not overly excited about the prospect of some 14 rooms chock full of her trademark spots. However this was a prospect that I has seriously misjudged and Yayoi, bowing deeply, I apologise. Like many, I am sure, I have been far too ready to assign her to the ‘it’s just lots of spots’ category (even the Tate get carried away in the foyer – image above!) but here was a timely reminder of all the wonderful, innovative and varied work that she has made over a long – and still continuing – highly influential career.

A prodigy and already exhibiting in her teens Kusama moved quickly from oils to every variety of works on paper and the first rooms of the exhibition show stunning imagination and variety. Quickly even Japan was too small for her. She soon decided, whilst only still in her mid twenties that ‘For art like mine… questioning what we are and what it means to live and die… [Japan] was too small… My art needed a more unlimited freedom and a wider world.’  

So off she went to the USA first having made contact with Georgia O’Keefe – one of the most influential painters of that time: this was no shrinking violet but a hugely determined artist. She quickly switched now from the compulsive and repetitive Infinity Nets to sculpture-making, her Accumulation Sculptures covering everyday objects with repeating forms. Her huge influence on the avant-garde of pop art being clear if I simply tell you that a boat sculpture was exhibited as the ‘One Thousand Boats Show’ in a room pasted on all sides with repeating silkscreen images (of the same boat from above) a full three years before Warhol created his ‘Cow’ wallpaper and that her stuffed objects predated those of Claes Oldenburg.

Her work continued to evolve rapidly. She featured herself in her own collages, photographs and films, putting the artist at the centre of the work – a tactic we are now (overly?) familiar with a la Emin, Abramovic, Gormley etc – but back then highly original. She threw herself in to happenings, performances and installation ‘environments’. As if she had not yet done enough she returned to Japan where she briefly set herself up as an art dealer before, deeply troubled, she checked herself in to an asylum where she remains to this day. As you may have guessed even this did not stop her with production of collages, sculpture, painting and installation still continuing apace.

If anyone has forgotten, or did not realise, just how influential and original Kusama really was then this excellent and comprehensive exhibition is a real must-see. A highly surreal, visual treat right through until the final two room-sized installations; one an infra-red/day-glo world of multi-coloured spots that float before your eyes, the other a mirrored space containing infinitely reflected tiny multi-coloured lights. Dazzling in every way – and the kids will love it too!

Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern until 5 June 2012

Now & Future JAPAN at 39 Dover Street, London W1S 4NN from 3 – 9 March 2012

Hyper Japan at Earls Court 24 – 26 February 2012

Related articles

elmgreen & dragset unveiled on 4th plinth trafalgar square

February 22nd, 2012 § 1 Comment

At long last the Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 by Elmgreen & Dragset - otherwise to be known as (probably!) the golden rocking horse – will be unveiled by Joanna Lumley in London’s Trafalgar Square tomorrow –  Thursday 23 February 2012. The recently commissioned competition-winning sculpture (see previous blogs linked below) is to occupy the notorious and long empty 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square.  It was a fitting winner and my runaway favourite – I cannot wait to see it in place.

Here is what the artists say: “In this portrayal of a boy astride his rocking horse, a child has been elevated to the status of a historical hero, though there is not yet a history to commemorate. As in a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, this enfant terrible’ gently mocks the authoritarian pose often found in the tradition of equestrian sculptures. His wild gesture, mimicking the adult cavalier, is one of pure excitement — there will be no tragic consequences resulting from his imaginary conquest.”

Everyone is welcome to celebrate the unveiling by Miss Lumley between 9 and 10am. I am not entirely sure what she knows about art or sculpture, but hey, who cares? – she is after all a rather theatrical fantasy figure like the statute – and ex-Bond girls are in any case allowed to do what they like!

My previous blogs on the subject:

Elmgreen & Dragset win battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar – the Fourth Plinth

Related articles

whiteread at whitechapel

February 10th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Bruce Nauman - The space beneath my chair

I have always been rather disappointed that Rachel Whiteread has been allowed to forge a career by simply copying an idea of  Bruce Nauman‘s from 1965 without any noticeable critical comment. I would have been much more impressed had she developed his idea much further and created something more as of course Nauman did with a truly impressive body of conceptual work.

Meanwhile, the Whitechapel gallery has just announced a commission by Whiteread for the building’s historic façade to be unveiled in June 2012 as part of the London 2012 Festival. Perhaps the similarities of name inspired the gallery to select Whiteread perhaps?

The original plans for the Gallery included a frieze which was never realised leaving a large blank rectangle above the main entrance.  The Whitechapel states that “Whiteread has drawn her inspiration from the Tree of Life motif, which is part of the terracotta building, making casts from existing features to then create clusters of gilded leaves and branches….. Four negative casts of existing Gallery windows in terracotta will be located centrally within the recessed panel area between the towers, as a formal counterpoint to the leaf elements.”

Grudgingly I think it looks quite promising – the notion of the original terracotta motif ‘growing’ into a gold ornament being quite interesting – but I will reserve judgement until I see it in place!

Related articles

art by animals – a new exhibition at ucl

February 3rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Some while back I wrote about animal art (see blog). In was partly in jest, mostly because of an elaborate ‘cat painters’ hoax, but also because of dog ‘artists’ who are just trained to jab a brush at a canvas. However, in respect of chimps I am much more open-minded about potential artistic talent. I am quite willing to believe that they do have the ability to create what they conceive as visually interesting patterns (art?), viz Congo the chimp (pictured) who also actually has an excellent auction record!

I am determined therefore to visit an unusual and quirky exhibition that has just opened at UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology. Paintings by orang-utans, gorillas, chimpanzees and elephants feature in what is believed to be the first multi species art show. Pieces includes a painting of a flowerpot created by an elephant called Boon Me, formerly involved in the Thai logging industry, and a tiny finger painting by a chimp.

From early modernists like Picasso to abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock artists have often sought primitive influences. Sometimes it is by using outside inspiration from artwork by primitive peoples, children or even the insane and at others perhaps seeking to go internally to an unconscious or primitive self. How does this differ from the work created by the genuinely ‘primitive’ animal? If primitive or subconscious art is somehow considered more ‘real’ then is animals art not even more genuine that that of the artist? An interesting philosophical question to which I doubt there is a simple answer!

The museum says it hopes the exhibition will help answer the question of whether animal art is really art. “That’s the big question,” said Jack Ashby, the museum manager. “While elephants can be trained to always paint the same thing, art by apes is a lot more creative and is almost indistinguishable from abstract art by humans. Ape art is often compared to that of two or three-year-old children in the ‘scribble stage’. ” Co-curator Mike Tuck, a graduate of the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, said the show was an attempt to take a “broad view of the phenomenon.”

See a short clip from the BBC here.

ART BY ANIMALS  runs from 1 February to 9 March 2012, M-F 1300-1700.

Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, University College London, University Street, WC1E 6DE. Free.

www.zoology.museum@ucl.ac.uk

Related articles

hockney, gossage, walden and marsh lane

January 26th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

The new David Hockney exhibition A Bigger Picture, that has just opened at the RA revisits the countryside of his childhood – the Yorkshire Wolds. It celebrates his engagement with nature, and here, more than ever before he employs his acute powers of observation to observe the attractive, but to most, unremarkable local countryside. It is the minute detail of his observation – the colours, the change of the seasons that is remarkable.

It brought immediately to mind the classic novel Walden – or a life in the woods by David Thoreau. Back in the 1840′s, leaving civilisation behind – but not too far away – he experienced a life of subsistence whilst observing in minute detail the natural life around him. He inspired, so it is said, the conservation movement and National Park system of the United States as well as one of the most revered photo-books of all time – The Pond by John Gossage.

Like Hockney’s Wolds and Thoreau’s Walden this book is, at first, unremarkable. Simple black and white images record a vague path and some scruffy landscapes, casually photographed. It is only after a few pages that you realise that you are taking a walk with the author – one that ends at an unremarkable latter-day Walden. The tactic is also incidentally one that Hockney uses – many of his paintings place the spectator on a path/track/road in to the landscape and invite you to take an imaginary stroll. It may disappoint some, but it is a subtle and philosophical book, one that emphasises the importance of the observation of what is around you rather than the creation of beautiful images.

It struck me that the above artist, writer/philosopher and photographer all have in common a deep involvement with nature and its observation. Each record it in at least one different way, including Hockney’s embracing of one the latest technologies, the i-pad. 

So where does Marsh Lane come in? This is the lane beside my house where I walk my dog every day. It is unremarkable, muddy and flat with some scruffy hedges and farmland. Sometimes an unnamed local builder uses it to tip waste when he can’t be bothered to go to the council dump (we’ll get him one day). Inspired, I thought it was time to take a couple of photos – just using a blackberry this is from one morning a week ago. Here are my modest results – anyone can do it using perhaps an i-pad, i-phone or blackberry. No excuses, it’s your turn now!

david hockney: a bigger picture at the RA

January 25th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

There seems to be a certain amount of unnecessary sniping at David Hockney following the opening of this exhibition last week. Brian Sewell in the Standard said that it was ‘overblown’, ‘repetitive’ and ‘garish‘. Laura Cumming in the Guardian thinks much is ‘inert and dehumanised‘. It is all ‘Too polite and unthinkingly happy’ for Alistair Sooke in the Telegraph. Just what were they expecting? Bold new experiments in contemporary art? Perhaps Hockney has led us to expect too much following a lifetime of consistent quality?

Once we are past the excellent four seasons of Thixendale Trees of the central hall, inspired by Monet, the show is largely chronological. From some early student works (my preferred) that already show his prodigious talent, we move on to American landscapes that include the clever photographic joiner Pearblossom Highway. It is cleverer than I thought – did you realise that the right side of the picture is the drivers view, the left the passengers – all signs and instruction versus casual observation? No, neither did I.

 More, many more, landscapes follow – smaller watercolours and oils from direct observation, ‘tunnels’ of tracks and roads, Woldgate woods and the Arrival of Spring’. Perhaps too many, but undeniably showing his clarity of vision and clever observation. There is enough variation though: there are the changing viewpoints of the multi-canvas paintings that drag you right in to the landscapes; the almost surreal Hawthorn blossom paintings; clever i-pad drawings including the huge ‘how did he do that on an i-pad’ ones of Yosemite; the vivid colours of Woldgate woods where darkest winter is transformed by brilliant colours.

There is film too. Made with nine cameras Hockney’s converted vehicle trundles along country lanes whilst recording – Google street-view-like – whatever it passes, largely the landscape of course but litter, passing cars and occasional cyclist not excepted. Each film is shown side by side with another of the same location (both same and opposing views) in a different season. Here is nature in glorious close-up and it makes us look – hard, much harder than we expect. We look at the weeds and hedgerows in fine detail observing everything anew – this is Walden on wheels.  The films too reconcile his key themes – looking, time, memory, movement and change.

Of course one could be critical about some of the work. Personally I found The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate – the 32-canvas centrepiece of the exhibition – rather a disappointment and over-stylised, but really, who cares? This is wonderful exhibition from our greatest living artist and it should be celebrated that at 75 years of age Hockney has produced such a large and inspirational body of work. Forget Leonardo – this is the biggest show of the year. Whatever its flaws this is the must-see of a summer.

At the Royal Academy until 9 April 2012

Related articles

grayson perry: the tomb of the unknown craftsman at the british museum

January 13th, 2012 § 1 Comment

Grayson Perry seems to have rather a marmite love-hate relationship with some of the British art world. I suspect that for his critics this is rather more due to the somewhat cosy relationship that he has with the mass media than his artistic abilities, after all what other contemporary artist appears on Have I Got News For You, features in documentaries or stars on TV chat shows? Perhaps he is rather too popular with the public for those who prefer their artists to be a bit more like, well, contemporary artists. In any case he is sure to be even more popular after this wonderful exhibition – will they hate him more or less? I suspect they’ll have to bite their lip and admit his great talent.

At the British Museum Perry has been given free rein to dig in to their vast collection and he has selected exceptionally well. Picking charming and quirky pieces – what else would we expect? – he celebrates the craftsmen and women who have made all those pieces that adorn the museum. Items cover two million years and feature diverse themes – you will find perhaps religious icons, grotesque masks, tiny reliquaries, strange totems, modern badges and pre-Columbian pots. There are inevitably plenty of phalluses, a bit of cross dressing, some sexual politics – all are linked by Perry’s own creations that are slipped in amongst them.

Jumping from culture to culture, leaping through time – and purpose – objects are juxtaposed to great effect. The biggest shock perhaps is that it is virtually seamless. The old and new mingle as if created at least by the same souls or spirits, if not the selfsame hand. Untold millennia of craft merges in to one fascinating, witty and often moving exhibition. The show culminates with the celebratory cast-iron ‘tomb’ which in the form of a boat carries a flint hand axe (the oldest artefact in the museum) as well as vials of blood sweat and tears, and sails ever onward. We emerge with feeling of connection with the past – a glorious celebration of human creativity and cultural diversity. 

At the British Museum until 19 February 2012.

Grayson Perry is represented by Victoria Miro.

Related articles

tom thomson and the group of seven at dulwich

January 7th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

A few years ago I was in Toronto (I think – or was it Montreal?) and exploring the city’s fine art gallery stumbled across Tom Thomson and ‘The Group of Seven‘. It was hardly ground-breaking stuff – largely comprising impressionistic landscapes of wild Canadian landscapes – but they had a vibrancy of colour and originality of style that made them stand out. I even bought the book (Tom Thomson & the Group of Seven by David Silcox). In Canada these works are national treasures and the artists revered as the country’s finest.

So why have we never heard of them in the UK? I guess that they have long been rather unfashionable. After all, over in Europe in the first half of the 20th century it was the flowering of the avant-garde – more new ‘-isms’ than you could shake a stick at and certainly more that you could keep track of and understand. Meanwhile over in Canada a bunch of, largely, European exiles were seemingly style-wise stuck at the *rse end of the previous century. They painted in plein air using a style that combined various aspects of the impressionists and post impressionists –  a bit of Seurat here, Cezanne there and Monet over here. 

They did however also bring something more – from the symbolists, Northern Europeans like Munch and others like Hodler. More awe of nature, respect for the sublime and a touch of religion no doubt. Painting from the early 1910′s and inspired by Thomson, a loosely connected group formed in 1920, and although they drifted apart in the early 1930′s they had by then between them created a distinguishable ‘Canadian’ style which undeniably reflects the wildernes and open space of the country. The gallery promotes this exhibition as a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to see these works in the UK. It may well be. 

The exhibition closes this weekend on the 8th of January (don’t complain – I did warn you it was on its was some 6 months ago) and, unless you are a City or United fan watching the Manchester derby, I cannot think of many better things to do than pop down to the Dulwich picture gallery to pass a dull and grey winter day.

Read a more comprehensive history and review from the Standard’s Brian Sewell here.

The Dulwich Picture gallery until 8 January 2012.

 

Related articles

« Older Entries

Where Am I?

You are currently browsing the Public Exhibitions category at a kick up the arts.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 65 other followers