ryan mosley at alison jacques gallery

Even by modern standards Ryan Mosley’s rise in the art world has been a pretty fast one. Graduating from the RCA in summer 2007 he was already featured in the Independent later in the year as a ‘Hot Star of 2008′. Alison Jacques wisely picked him up soon afterwards plus the Saatchi collection scooped up a bunch of works and he was part of their British Art Now exhibition last year.

Mosleys paintings are dark, strange and brooding. They initially seem to indicate some sort of narrative with an otherworldy cast of costumed characters, strange landscapes, disembodied heads and odd symbols. This is a narrative that morphs as look deeper, and, as Mosley admits, also changes as he paints  ‘you set out to paint something and it doesn’t quite turn out how you want it. That’s not to advocate lazy painting, but when it doesn’t turn out as you imagined, but takes on its own sensibilities that can be really interesting. Born of a fuck up, X can turn to Y, and Y can turn to Z.’

There are frequent references to the masters - here ‘A Bar in France’ is clearly  a hommage to Manet – but for Mosley they are more incidental than referential. His process of painting allows the subject to drift and mutate and you are just as likely to spot references to history or popular culture as art history. It makes for interesting viewing – this is a world where anything is possible, the canvas a stage for a world of timeless characters and motifs.

At the gallery he is already on his fourth solo show  – if you include a project room outing – which is again a sell-out. With most works selling north of £20,000 (still good value I would say) Mosley is an artist that we need to keep an eye on.

Exhibition runs at Alison Jacques Gallery until13 August at 16 Berners Street, London W1T 3LN

Related articles

• Artist of the week 148: Ryan Mosley (guardian.co.uk)

the shape of things to come – new sculpture at the saatchi gallery

Is this Saatchi sculptural review really the Shape of Things to Come? One of the first things you notice is that it may well be a better picture of ‘How Things are Now’ or perhaps ’Have Been Recently’ with only a handful of works less than about four years old. There also seem to be fewer new names than there are well known or long-established ones.

Amongst the latter is John Baldessari his Beethoven’s Trumpet  probably, neatly adding sound to the visual puzzle. Roger Hiorns was a Turner nominee, here using trademark copper sulphate crystal growths growing over church maquettes to experiment with natural sculptural forms. The German Anselm Reyle examines influences of modernism and here has appropriated a kitsch African sculpture and blown it up with a shiny purple finish. Deep in the basement Richard Wilson’s 20:50 – a pool of sump oil which reflects and expands on the architectural space – still beats the lot.

The big spaces of the gallery work best for the larger works and in the first gallery the monolithic blocks of Kris Martin’s Summit work well. Each has a tiny paper cross at the summit – death, hope or achievement? Moving on ’New Sculpture’ still seems to have plenty of the figurative. Rebecca Warren‘s rough representations of the female form take aim at sculptural cliches and fill another gallery nicely. David Altmejd large-scale figures seem to dissolve and change form as you walk around them. Non-traditional elements are woven in to the figures such as endless staircases and strange geometric forms whilst materials include, foam, wood, epoxy, resin and paint. Folkert de Jongh’s tableaux feature macabre figures and hint at the ghosts of colonialism and imperialism. Thomas Houseago is a recent auction favourite – filling another gallery his impressive works absorb a variety of styles with rough, flat painted planes building up 3D forms and sshowing a definite debt to cubism.

Elsewhere Bjorn Dahlem‘s room-sized Milky Way is an impressive neon which surely owes a big debt to Dan Flavin whilst David Batchelor appropriates found boxes for his strangely alluring installations of vivid coloured panels. Matthew Bannon, Matthew Monahan, Joanna Malinkowsa and other assemble various multiple objects with varying degrees of success.

Sculpture has certainly come a long way in the last hundred years - from wood, metal and stone there is a now a vast post-modern array of materials and influences to confuse us.  So do we get any sort of hint here as to what is the Shape of Things to Come? This show certainly does not show us – but hints at the reality – that we simply dont know.

The Shape of Things To Come: New Sculpture at the Saatchi Gallery 10-6 daily until 17 October 2011

Related articles

• The Shape of Things to Come, Saatchi Gallery / John Chamberlain, Gagosian Gallery, review (telegraph.co.uk)
• Roger Hiorns: using a calf’s brain in my sculpture (telegraph.co.uk)
• The Shape of Things to Come – in pictures (independent.co.uk)
• New Saatchi exhibition: Shape of Things to Come (telegraph.co.uk)

4 – artists to watch – ida ekblad

Gauda de Stampa Paris

Ida Ekblad is a young Norwegian artist who, despite being based in Oslo seems to manage to pop up all over the shop. Last year she had no less than nine solo exhibitions covering seven countries, and was involved in a similar number of group shows that also included multi-media collaborations. This year has been almost as frenetic and one somehow doubts that her obvious enthusiasm will wane next year either.

To Drink a Glass of Melted Snow

Her first solo show in Paris in 2009 received a strong review from David Lewis in Frieze magazine who raved ‘it is not every day that one comes across so expansive a talent’ whilst Saatchi likes her enough to have purchased five works, including ‘Drink a Glass…’ (illustrated) which are to appear in the forthcoming ‘Paint’ exhibition (dates tba).

Ekblad’s earlier work combined free and spontaneous painterly gestures with graffiti culture - she is clearly quite at home among popular and street culture. However, without breaking stride she has effortlessly moved through more traditional styles of painting and sculpture.

Herald Street

Her most recent London solo show was at Herald Street this summer, where, as usual she moved freely between expressionistic abstract paintings, multimedia installation and sculpture - moving off the wall, into the room and back again. There is a liberating playfulness in Ekblad’s work in which her artworks perhaps represent a synthesising connection between society and art, past and present and the street and the white cube gallery.

Her work is developing rapidly and her reputation should no doubt grow accordingly. Look out for her next exhibition.

Related Articles

• spotted at frieze – artists to watch (akickupthearts.wordpress.com)

newspeak 2 at saatchi – who do the critics love?

Jonathan Wateridge Jungle

Following on from a similar look at the Saatchi Gallery’s Newspeak Part 1, here is an overview of the critics verdicts on the artists featured in Part 2 – both positive and otherwise. Sadly analysis fairly limited in scope due to relative absence of critical reviews of the show. The favourites are at the top of the list, the clunkers at the bottom, with about twenty artists ignored entirely.

Dick Evans has produced a dark brooding wave of black silicon carbide, reminiscent of Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. Toss in a crushed can and some fag ends and it has an undeniably ‘dark brooding aura’ loved by Metro and the Mirror. The Telegraph use it as their leading image.

Maurizio Anzeri embroiders and partially obscures vintage photographs. The result is ‘arresting and unsettling’ (Metro) and ‘exotic, mysterious and disturbing’ (Mirror).

Anna Barriball aims to provoke mystery in the familiar. She succeeds. A wardrobe is covered in black tape – it becomes a memory or void. A door is covered with tracing paper, repeatedly rubbed ‘broods with an ominous glamour.‘ (Independent).

Anthea Hamilton’s assemblages extract the cubist elements from imaginary works to reveal them in their 3D strangeness. They work quite well and the Independent loved them, the Telegraph illustrated them.

Idris Khan’ s photographs overlay multiple images such as Becher’s iconic water towers to create impressionistic prints ’amazing in their depth’ (Mirror). Delicate images have been created from soulless objects.

Anne Hardy photographs fictional scenes carefully built from scratch. Littered with ephemera they create an elaborate narrative of events, place and time. Mysterious and captivating, I agree with the Mirror’s approval.

Toby Ziegler ‘remakes a Seurat landscape … for the computer age’ (Telegraph). His geometric landscapes, devoid of humanity feature star-shaped leaves fall from pixelated trees. Every Saatchi visitor stopped, stared and photographed. Genuinely eye-catching.

Tessa Farmer in Swarm has created a glass case full of insects, which on closer inspection are ‘elaborately constructed fairies battling garden insects’  which the Mirror wonders are just bits of craft  that has not yet reached the guft shop. Rather cruel – especially as it was chosen as the articles leading image. One up to Tessa I would say!

Jonathan Wateridge’s oversized canvases of plane wrecks, Sandinistas and astronauts play on the accuracy of traditional paintings whilst adding contemporary elements, somewhat as Ged Quinn, but were criticised by the Mirror for ‘not going far enough.’ Their physical presence and easy interpretation will nevertheless make them popular with the public and no doubt we will see his work sell strongly at auction.

Alexander Hoda creates assemblages of junk which are covered in black latex to – well – to something. Unfortunately Hoda does not really seem to know himself – the artists comments in the Saatchi guide are a mish-mash of different ideas including (but not only) ‘exploring relationships, desires, and urges, to perceive them in different contexts rather than something that’s conditioned to be guilt-laden or perverted.’ Pardon? They left the Independent, and me, rather cold. Metro concurred as did the Mirror – at length!

Carla Busuttil gets the ‘wooden spoon’ for ‘total lack of talent’ from Brian Sewell at the Standard. It is hard to argue. The deliberate lack of draughtsmanship or painterly efforts do not seem to have any real aim or purpose other than to provoke.

There we go – all rather underwhelming. Let us now look eagerly forward to the British Art Show , currently at Nottingham until 9 January 2011 and from thence moving onward to Plymouth, Glasgow and London. Held every five years it hopes to be an overview of the development of British Art. Early reviews seem to be good – personally I am itching to see Christian Marclay’s The Clock, where some three thousand film clips featuring the time are collaged in a compelling 24 hour film.

Related Articles

• newspeak part 2 at the saatchi gallery (akickupthearts.wordpress.com)
• Saatchi shows the magic touch (telegraph.co.uk)

newspeak part 2 at the saatchi gallery

Steve Bishop

Following the unremarkable Newspeak: Part 1, Charles Saatchi‘s review of ‘British Art Now’ continues with the opening of Newspeak: Part 2. I conducted a gloriously unscientific review of the critical opinions following Part 1 and planned to subsequently add the latest assessment to create an overall league table of artists and a full review of critical opinion to cover the whole.

Sadly, the second, similarly unremarkable, part has proved so unattractive to newspaper editors that only a handful of major papers have run a review. Here then, is a less than comprehensive selection of reviews followed in the next blog by a critics selection of artists - both good and bad.

Tessa Farmer

By way of a brief reminder Newspeak: Part 1  was, almost in one voice, branded as unco-ordinated – ‘a mess… the contents of someone’s attic’ (Independent). The quality was perceived as indifferent; ‘some good, some mediocre, some ghastly’ (FT) with ‘one or two instances of inspired brilliance’ (Guardian).

Five months down the line, we sadly have much more of the same. I wandered through one attractive space after another loosely filled with largely indifferent and uninspiring art. The critics agreed that Saatchi had perhaps once again used a scattergun approach to selection. ’Arbitrary’ was Amy Dawson’s view in the Metro, adding that it is ‘difficult to make sense of this baggy hotch-potch of the good, the bad and the downright ugly’. Brian Sewell wondered if the work ‘truly represented British art Now’ whilst Laura Mclean-Ferris commented that the curating was ‘basic and clunky’ and that ‘if you want to see an exhibition that defines current art practice  Britain [then] this is not it’.

But was there a deeper concern – that there was actually not much good art out there to select from? Brian Sewell thought that, contrasted to Sensation and the period following, ‘there is nothing to excite nor offend’ … ‘British Art has fallen in to a trough of sameness’ (Standard). ‘There is little to get excited about’  concurred the Mirror.

Mustafa Hulusi

The only mild dissent, if you like, came from Richard Dorment in the Telegraph. He commented that the show was ‘strong‘ and gave a ‘good idea of what is going on out there’ but in the end what was out there was’ just the great big simmering bouillabaisse of good, bad and mostly mediocre art that we’ve been seeing for decades now’.

Once again there was little personal criticism of Saatchi himself and Brian Sewell seemed to hit the nail on the head observing that he was really ‘part impressario and part Svengali, part Barnum and Bailey’ and stepping in where the Tate should had not, to support the here and now of British art. It seems that – in the end – one has to say that there is not much confidence or consensus in quite what there is right here and right now!

littlewhitehead getting bigger

A pair of legs emerge from pink balloons that have floated to the ceiling. A boy with a Darth Vader mast sits alone in a row of school desks. Hoodies gather menacingly around a hidden corner. A hooded hostage is tied to a metal chair.

Maurizio Cattelan - Frank & Jamie

Welcome to the world of Littlewhitehead. Craig Little and Blake Whitehead are the two halves of this Glasgow-based art duo that take their inspiration from the city’s working class and bleak industrial landscape. Darkly humorous their work is initially reminiscent of Maurizio Cattelan pieces like the inverted policemen Frank & Jamie. But where the Italian gently mocks the system and the art world itself Littlewhitehead investigate rather darker aspects of life. There is the latent violence in the group of hoodies gathered in It Happened in the Corner; the schoolboy at the desks in Spam wears the helmet of the evil Darth Vader but is he lonely, alienated or violent?; the pretty pink balloons in Sentient Orbs have been cheerfully collected but the happiness is negated by the greed which has raised the owner to the ceiling.

“Within our work there is a strong connection between the reality that surrounds us and some kind of escapism to a made-up world,” littlewhitehead explain. “This made-up world is the construct of a dialogue between the two of us, which infuses scenes from an encyclopaedic range of references, from video nasties, to current events, and subconscious musings. It is in that world, unlike the one we actually inhabit, where we can fulfil these sinister desires.”

I initially dismissed their work at Saatchi, where It Happened was exhibited in Newspeak Part 1, but on further viewing I now appreciate their work more.  I think that perhaps in a new century these darker aspects of life have increasing resonance and relevance.

For collectors their work is currently extraordinarily good value – mostly well under £10,000 a piece – and in my mind is well worth considering. A little fairy tells me that they have something very big coming up this year (not allowed to tell, sorry) and now would be a great time to take a closer look at these interesting artists.

london public art galleries – top ten

It is a cliché I know. Nowadays one can hardly open a newspaper or switch on the TV without being assaulted with yet another ‘best/worst of’ listing. As soon as something enters the public realm it is instantly categorised, tabulated and graded - from Rooney’s indiscretions to ways of cooking artichoke,  nothing is allowed to escape the ratings police. 

My excuse is a visiting friend from San Francisco, interested in modern & contemporary art, has asked me to send him a list of those galleries that he should definitely take time out to visit. Any guilt in populist list-making thereby assuaged by the potential education of an American philistine. Here then are my very personal top ten public galleries (private galleries listed tomorrow) - starting at ten and working up to the (overly long and unnecessary pause to build up an unconvincing and unjustified tension that was previously totally lacking) ‘winner’; 

10. Zabludowicz Collection. A messy collection of future ’emerging’ artists, most of whom never quite fully ‘emerged’. Put together by a curator employed by a multi-millionaires wife. Anita Zabludowicz seems to have no knowledge of art (is she more interested in social status?) but she has found a handful of good works, put them in a converted church and created a very interesting place to visit. 

9. Dulwich Picture Gallery. A lovely gallery with a fine permanant collection (pre-twentieth century). Temporary exhibitions hit and miss. Recent Paul Nash was a cracker. Current Wyeth so-so. After the long hike out to Dulwich you will be glad to find an exceptionally nice restaurant and terrace. 

8. National Portrait Gallery. It is always a pleasure to wander around their peaceful galleries finding a new gem. Some interesting temporary exhibitions (currently there is the annual BP Portrait Award and Camille Silvy, 19th century documentary photographer) and a local secret – a wonderful top-floor bar with views of Trafalgar Square. 

7. Saatchi Collection. The exhibitions here always seem to be frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. The work is of uneven quality, but is nevertheless always worth visiting and is shown in an excellent space. Enjoy a break at the cafe/restaurant on the pretty square afterwards or stroll down Kings Road. 

6. Tate Modern. Of course it has to be there. Sometimes frustrates with messy curation, has some big chunks missing from its collection and thinks that teaching children about art involves playing facile games that fill galleries with noisy groups. Membership benefits include a cramped lounge busier and less pleasant than the public facilities. Visit weekdays outside school holidays. 

5. Camden Arts Centre. Has a knack of putting on exhibitions of artists that have been overlooked, misunderstood or simply long overdue. A must-visit gallery if you want to keep one step ahead. This autumn Rene Daniels on the 23 September is followed by Simon Starling on the 16 December 2010. 

Richard Hamilton

4. Whitechapel Gallery. This is a gallery that is always worth a visit. The home of always excellent, often ground-breaking, exhibitions. This is Tomorrow in 1956 was so iconic and memorable that a current small show looks at some plans, letters and posters -quite interestsing. It has the best gallery restaurant in London - alternatively pop around the corner for a Brick Lane curry. 

Nouvel Pavilion

3. Serpentine Gallery. Take a relaxing stroll through Hyde Park (ie: don’t take a taxi!) to reach one of my favourites. The exhibitions, usually monographic, are invariably interesting and well-curated. An excellent Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition is on until the 19th September 2010. And then there is the pavilion to enjoy – this year Jean Nouvel’s red construction makes an uneasy contrast to the green of the park! 

2. Courtauld Gallery. Step a few yards off the hustle and bustle of the Strand in to an oasis of calm. A must-visit gallery that is often overlooked. Go to see the amazing Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works as well as their Fauvist, Bloomsbury and German Expressionist collections – and much much more. And dont forget the cafe. 

Boccioni - Modern Idol

1.Estorick Collection. A delight. A north london townhouse in a peaceful back street holds a fine collection of Italian 2oth century art. The futurist works are especially good and there is always an interesting temporary exhibition. Coming up is Against Mussolini on the 22 September 2010. I hardly need to add that they do a great cappuccino. 

newspeak at saatchi – who dont ya love?

Having compiled a ‘league table’  of the critical favourites it seems appropriate to also make note of those artists who did not manage to find favour. This was not easy. The majority of critics are sadly rather reticent when it comes to making negative comments about artists work. Is it some underlying delicate and caring sensibility which somehow holds them back from potentially hurting an artists feelings? I doubt it. Are they worried about potentially lightly bruising a certain Mr Saatchi’s ego by indirectly criticising his selected artists? I rather doubt that Charles cares a jot, but yes, I rather suspect they are.

Fortunately the wonderful Brian Sewell at the Standard has no such scruples about calling a spade a spade. Why are more critics not similarly forthcoming? Any perceptive and insightful critic owes it to their readers to assess good and bad, to jump off the fence, tell it like it is. In that very spirit of openness here are the lower reaches of Newspeak‘s critical pile starting at 10th and working down.

10= Steven Claydon. A sculptural head of resin, copper powder (aged with the artists urine) – and a feather. Dull.

10= Matthew Darbyshire. So-so assemblages of modern objects, questioning their cultural value.

10= Iain Hetherington. Baseball caps set against painterly backgrounds. Huh?

13 Lynette Boakye. I wont bother. ‘The work of an infant’ (Standard)

14= Sigrid Holmwood. Day-glo pastiches of Van Gogh ‘fit only for the bonfire’ (Standard) although to the Guardian they were ‘mesmerising’.

14=Karla Black. Dirty clingfilm plus dangling cellophane and paper. ‘A Saatchi Joke’ (FT).’ Disgusting litter’ (Standard). The absence of any aesthetic appeal, creativity or talent does not stop the Sunday Times calling the works ’beautiful’.

phoebe unwin - girl

 

14= Phoebe Unwin. Strange figurative paintings with a ‘deft capturing of mood’ (Guardian). ‘A monkey-see monkey-do who can mimic bady anything done well by others’ (Standard). To be fair they do have a certain charm.

16= The Rest. Sixteen other artists were not either good enough to be noticed or bad enough to be insulted. As Wilde said ‘ there only thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about’. Exactly – so I wont talk about them.

So with the table complete do we know we have any better idea which of these artists will enjoy relative success and which will quickly fade from memory? The quick answer of course is no – critical acceptance rarely has any correlation with more general measures of success. I would argue that public profile is the most important factor, but it is a complex and varying equation where the drip, drip of publicity and review are all vital parts of the whole.

My own instinct? Regardless of future quality of work Scrase will succeed and despite critical response Holmwood’s paintings are very noticeable and will stay that way. For investment I would buy Daniels, Quinn, Holmwood and maybe Anderson assuming prices have not been ‘Saatchi-inflated’. But then again what do I know? I would love to hear readers opinions – do not hold back!

If you liked this post please make a comment or like it. If you like the blog please subscribe for regular updates (top right of page). Many thanks! akuta

Related Articles

• Newspeak: British Art Now, The Saatchi Gallery, London (independent.co.uk)
• The State of Young Art in Britain (online.wsj.com)
• Saatchi’s Newspeak: the good, bad and indifferent (guardian.co.uk)
• Newspeak: British Art now at the Saatchi Gallery, review (telegraph.co.uk)
• Charles Saatchi’s catalogue of disasters (guardian.co.uk)
• As he unveils the next generation of young artists, has Charles Saatchi lost his edge? (independent.co.uk)

newspeak at saatchi – who do the critics love?

The agony is over, here is what you have all been waiting for. As promised yesterday this is the result of my scrupulously unscientific survey to discover which artists shown at Newspeak (part 1), were most highly – and poorly - regarded by the critics. Saatchi has chosen his top artists in the UK, and here are the critics top nine of those. So this is la creme de la creme? See what you think.

1 William Daniels (5). Paintings of his own still-lives that have been themselves created with paper and household bits and pieces. They question originality, authenticity and cultural worth. ‘Outstanding’ (Standard). ‘Heartfelt and uncanny’ (Independent). ‘Delightful and very, very collectable’ (me!).

2.Littlewhitehead (4). It Happened in the Corner. A group of life-sized hoodies gather threateningly, backs towards us, in a  corner of the gallery. ‘Ominous and unsettling’ (Guardian).  Personally I ignore  hoodies gathered in corners and this time was no exception.

3= Ged Quinn (3.5). Allegorical landscapes in the style of Poussin/Lorrain containing strange references from recent history. ‘Thought-provoking, witty and multi-layered’ (Guardian). These works allow repeated close examination and have great appeal.

3= John Wynne (3.5). An army of loudspeakers occupy a whole gallery, building in to a monumental pile in the corner. A pianola plays its punched card at ultra-slow page and random sounds are interspersed in the soundtrack. A delicate balance between order and disorder, both visually and aurally, that is totally captivating.

5= Eugenie Scrase (3). Well who would adam and eve it? The School of Saatchi winner has slipped in with her ‘readymade’ park railings that bend under the imagined impact of a lump of tree-trunk. Brain Sewell in the Standard hits the nail on the head when he says ‘wait and see’  whilst the Guardian agrees -  is she a ‘Duchampian magpie or a total chancer?’ She is definitely a very lucky girl – will it hold?

5= Hurvin Anderson (3). His large canvases flirt between abstraction and figuration. There is a sense of disorientation and displacement and they ‘evoke colour and space in a way that recalls Peter Doig’ (Independent). I can already see these on the wall at Christies in a few years time!

7= Barry Reigate (2). Cartoonish paintings with Basquiat, Koons and Walt Disney all rolled into one. Messy, undeniably eye-catching but a bit ho-hum.

7= Goshka Macuga (2). Mme Blavatsky (a 19th century theosophist) floats, parlour-trick style, above two chairs. To quote the Saatchi, she ’..emits a transendental aura, channelling the dark art of inspiration from beyond’. Macuga is a well-established artist who does not need our help, and with this waste of space she wont get it!

7= Rupert Norfolk (2). With Guillotine has ‘rendered duplictous a machine designed for cutting things in two… little short of genius’ (Independent). Also has a neat checked rug with trompe-l’oeil creasing.

Please see next post for the bottom of the chart!

The Publications were: The Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian, Standard, FT and Daily Telegraph. The number of positive reviews to a maximum of 7 are shown in brackets. I will update the chart after Newspeak (part 2) opens at the end of October.

If you liked this post please make a comment or like it. If you like the blog please subscribe for regular updates (top right of page). Many thanks! akuta

Related Articles

• Charles Saatchi’s catalogue of disasters (guardian.co.uk)
• Newspeak: British Art Now, The Saatchi Gallery, London (independent.co.uk)
• The State of Young Art in Britain (online.wsj.com)
• Newspeak: British Art now at the Saatchi Gallery, review (telegraph.co.uk)
• As he unveils the next generation of young artists, has Charles Saatchi lost his edge? (independent.co.uk)

a review of reviews – newspeak: british art now at the saatchi gallery

In Chelsea on a fine and sunny day there seemed to be no reason not to take a casual stroll around the Saatchi Gallery just off the Kings Road. It is an impulse in which I am not alone – last year the Saatchi had two of the three most visted shows in the UK. Having always championed young british talent, infamously of course at Sensation! in 1997, Charlie has recently cast his eye in the direction of the Middle East, USA, India and China. Now back with British artists there was great anticipation of what this exhibition – part one of two (the second to open 27 October) – would reveal.

However, what particularly interested me was how the major critics from the UK nationals have made of this exhibition. More, I was intrigued in the different ways they have viewed it. What are the stand-out works here? What then is the future of British art? Which artist is worth investing in?

John Wynne - Untitled

 

Saatchi has never been one for understatement; The Triumph of Painting, The Shape of Things To Come, Sensation! All imply a definitive judgment and invite contradiction. The title Newspeak was no exception and was roundly attacked. This Orwellian word represents a reductive language whilst Saatchi proudly speaks of ‘expanding and multiplying’ visual languages. The fact that only two of 29 artists shown are under thirty prompted others to call it ‘Oldspeak’ whilst Brian Sewell (Standard) brilliantly and humorously compares Orwell’s (and Saatchi’s) Newspeak with the ‘jargon and jabberwocky of present-day artspeak’ in the gallery handbook.

Once addressing the exhibition the writers, almost in unison, branded it unco-ordinated – ‘a mess… the contents of someone’s attic’ (Independent), ‘underwhelming to overambitious’ (Guardian), ‘scattergun and unfocused’ (FT). The quality was perceived as indifferent; ‘some good, some mediocre, some ghastly’ (FT), ‘one or two instances of inspired brilliance’ (Guardian), ’20% is really very good’ (Independent’), ‘Not quite but nearly’ (Times), ‘… in such feeble company three works are perhaps outstanding’ (Standard).

Strangely, despite this criticism, to a man (and woman) the critics were loath to criticise Saatchi. On the contrary, he was generally congratulated as one who stands head and shoulders above other public British gallery curators as one willing to take a chance. He treads (and buys) where others fear and is rightly lauded for it.

With broad agreement then that the exhibition only produced a smallish proportion of worthwhile work one would assume that this accord would extend – broadly - to which pieces these were. Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Of the seven reviews (Independent, Guardian, Telegraph, Standard, Sunday Times, Times and FT) only one artist only each ’scored’ with 5 and 4, three got 3, four got 2 (despite one being labelled a ‘genius’). In all no less than nineteen of the 29 artists received positive comments. Varied works were variously described as  ’litter, ‘fit for the bonfire’, ‘disgusting’, ‘a joke’ or ‘the work of an infant’ whilst at the same time being praised by other critics – hilarious! I will name names and provide a ‘league table’ in the next posts!

So, how about the future of British art. Well, all the critics all agreed that it was bit of a ‘hotchpotch’ with some ‘instances of inspired brilliance’ or ‘genius’ even. There was surely then a general consensus about what this uneven view represented about what is happening in this area? Nope. Not even close. The Guardian and FT do not even bother to decide. Charles Darwent (Independent) quite enjoyed the exhibition and, presumably (he does not quite say), feels that the outlook is promising. Richard Dorment (Telegraph) worried that Saatchi’s teaming with Philips de Pury weakened any message. Rachel Campbell-Johnson (Times) thought that there was plenty of room for optimism whilst Waldemar Januszckak (Times) felt Britain still has talent.

I will leave the last thought for Brian Sewell (Standard). If thought somewhat stuffy and old-fashioned in some quarters, he is still without doubt one of the most perceptive and insightful critics around. Wise enough to see though the ’weasel words’ of artspeak he has the courage to criticise where others sit on the sidelines. Ignore what he has to say at your peril;

‘The rest of Newspeak [other than three works] is at best cliche, kitsch and the ironic subversion that is the joke so often played by the post-modernist. It demonstrates how swiftly the energy of the YBA’s evaporated, leaving no useful legacy for their successors, nothing on which they could build. One might reasonably conclude British art is dead.’

Go Brian!  I look forward to part 2 in October and see if more of a consensus emerges.

If you liked this post please make a comment or like it. If you like the blog please subscribe for regular updates (top right of page). Many thanks! akuta

Related Articles

• Newspeak: British Art Now, The Saatchi Gallery, London (independent.co.uk)
• Charles Saatchi donates gallery to the nation (telegraph.co.uk)
• Saatchi Gallery: Nice gift Charles, but what now? (guardian.co.uk)