Of Croatian Beasts and London Artistic Feasts

'suspended'

It has been an orgy of art since I arrived back in London just over a week ago. Russian/Communism inspired exhibitions kicked off my visit as I enjoyed Red Star over Russia, Centre for Russian Music: Inside the Collections at the Barbican, and The Currency of Communism. There was no planning, just a desire to reacquaint myself with my favourite artistic haunts and, inevitably, connections started forming. Obviously I am catching the tail-end of exhibitions put on to commemorate the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it's always possible to see beyond the obvious.

Dark and terrible: Beyond Caravaggio

Many high profile reviews of Beyond Caravaggio have criticised it because it only contains six works by the master himself. However as the exhibition title makes perfectly plain, it is looking beyond Caravaggio. The stress is clearly on the word 'beyond'. It aims to examine his legacy, critique his followers, and put him into a wider context. Given his mastery over story telling, he deserves to have his own place in the art history story, as the quality of those incredible six pieces demonstrate. 

Waiting with Magda Mozarka

Waiting. We sit on the island content to wait. Waiting weeks for the moon to be in the right quarter so we can fish. Waiting months for the fruits to ripen so we can start the harvest. Waiting hours for the heat to pass so we can work. Waiting for the time we can leave this island for provisions...the inevitable slow but steady natural clockwork marking time. An hour hand of ferries offering a smaller human scale to the wait. Just waiting. When waiting is part of a culture, patience and acceptance almost to the point of madness is inevitable.

Revelations in glass

Eleanor Morgan

It's been my intention to write and record something about glass for a while now, primarily looking at it from a combined scientific and contemporary art point of view. For instance, Luke Jerram's mysterious shapes of viruses - ebola, MRSA and swine flu - crafted from glass, or the sculpture made from glass laboratory implements recently exhibited in the Wellcome windows. Then recently there was the stunning Glass Delusions at the Grant Museum which was partly inspired by nature's foray into silica based organisms. The inexplicable and unique scientific nature of glass makes it a perfect material of artistic endeavour, able to capture fragility, a human moment of stillness in a medium of movement.

From the archives: Bill Fontana's 'River Sounding'

I was checking through some ancient work and found this about River Sounding, which was a joint venture between The Somerset House Trust and Sound and Music (SAM). The remit of both are very different; the Trust is keen to “open up its spaces to the public by presenting and commissioning work that places the building firmly at the centre of their activity”. SAM’s mission is to “present leading sound based art work to the widest possible audience”. Both were drawn to working with internationally renowned sound artist Bill Fontana, not least because of his previous work in key industrial and nautical locations in London, most notably at Tate Modern and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. 

#PaintingParadise: The Art of the Garden at the Queen's Gallery, London

From the natural open space of Green Park to the ordered splendour of Russell Square, it is hard to avoid London's parks and gardens. Open to all and offering different atmospheres to please all tastes, they ensure the sanity of tourists and locals alike, as well as inspiration to the most jaded of writers. When I saw the underground poster for the Queen's Gallery's exhibition 'Painting Paradise: The art of the garden', I was unconsciously lured by the well dressed young man's relaxed pose under a tree. Now I've seen that exquisitely tiny painting in its gold frame, I understand my response; it's spring. The sap is rising and simply put, sex sells, and sex is to be found in many of the painted gardens on show.

'Fabric' Review: No sun without shadow

Malina Busch 'Fluorescent Blush'

This review was going to be a celebration of summer colours; of shutting ones eyes against the June solstice, leaving echoes of bright pink, rich blues, willow green flashing across the vision, leaving red spots in their wake. I wanted to waken a joyous holiday spirit found in new summer clothing; softly draped fabrics dyed in fluttering colours. Instead I've found myself unwillingly drawn to secluded gazebos hiding clandestine encounters, and surreptitiously lifting tablecloths to see who is touching who inappropriately.

Which sounds like every summer party I've ever been to, so what better exhibition to open in June than Fabric? This show was inspired by the current trend for artists, both established and emerging, working with all kinds of cloth. From embroidery, tapestry, found material, string, canvas…as well as combining it with other media. After the experience they had at the Exeter Contemporary Open, the curators followed up some old and new leads which led to this exhibition. 

Enter the Dragon and the Birds

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Perhaps I’m getting sensitive to the geography of art, or I’ve always fancied exotic places at lunch, but today I went to China. Room 91 at the British Museum affords visitors the opportunity to go on a voyage along the Yangzi River. There is nothing standard sized about the real or depicted landscapes. The scrolled horizontal ones are like a slow journey along the canal; the vertical banners offer a glimpse of a lush garden through an open window.

I want to focus on one image. It shows figures on a mountainous pathway, their voluminous clothing buffeted by the unexpected animation of a dragon to the top right. The artist is witness to the miracle from behind a rocky, wild outcrop which he puts in the foreground. The heavily shaded and emphasised tumbling rocks and foliage emphasise the reality of the locale, where the lightly sketched figures seem ephemeral in comparison. The dragon just is; scaly, snaky and hanging in the sky, surrounded by shading to make it stand out.

Death, Romance and the Landscape

Time Passing

This piece is a rather odd collection of thoughts. As a jigsaw of unintended connections, it works as a semi coherent whole; from chance encounters with Tower Hamlets cemetery, various books on forests and a romantic landscape exhibition at the weekend. Wild wooded nature is the theme of all these and I've been thinking about how woodlands have been perceived by people at different times. There is a large physical difference between a dilapidated Victorian cemetery, South German primeval native forest, and sketches of pastoral fantasies. However they in turn have provided us, and continue to provide us, with pleasure, escape and a way of passing the time.

Strange Beauty and Augustus, Elector of Saxony

Altdorfer 'Landscape' 1518-20

It seems you can travel miles in search of a certain historical figure, and not realise that useful insights could be hiding in plain view. After a trip to Dresden to see Elector Augustus of Saxony's family home, I decided to visit to London's National Gallery 'Strange Beauty' exhibition. This is not a review because I am too late and its failings have been done to death. However for my purposes the exhibition was a success because it helped me frame some interesting art historical questions, as well as send me off in an unexpected direction.

Naturally I got distracted; in the introductory room I was able to spend quality time with the Arnolfini Portrait, where you could get up close and personal without the usual crowds (yes, I'm happy to pay to be alone with it); as well as some stunning engravings and woodcuts by Cranach and Holbein. The latter's Dance of Death (1526) showed how a tiny skeleton can imbue a scene with an emotional sense of loss - the unwilling toddler being led away was heart stopping. Another dual highlight was Dürer's Melancholia I and an engraving of a self portrait. That arresting gaze missed nothing; whilst the reflection of the windows captured the illumination of his own soul. 

The various Cranachs were, as usual, inscrutable and teasing. Finally I was getting there. Cranach the Elder spent a lot of time at the Elector of Saxony's court and was highly esteemed as an artist and diplomat. Cranach chose to depict the naked people of the mythical silver age fighting one another, against a backdrop of wild mountains and greenery. Instead of focusing on the positives of this age, where Jupiter introduces the seasons and agriculture, he shows the senselessness of men beating each other. The graceful, perfectly coiffed women with their toddlers look on. The fleshy tones and juxtaposition of violence and babies is disturbingly captivating. 

When the kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony in Dresden was founded by Augustus, Elector of Saxony in 1560, paintings were subordinate to technology and other crafts. However, despite his practical focus, August cherished Cranach the Younger's Adam and Eve which he kept with his treasures. These slim paintings may lack either the sculptural monumentality of Michelangelo or the anguish of Massacio's Adam and Eve, but they have a power and allure of their own. The elegance and simplicity of the gestures catch them on the cusp of the fall; the calm before the storm, the moment of silence before the death and horror. You catch your breath at the inevitability of their temptation and they act as a reminder that we now need to rely on our industry to survive.

From Cranach to the second to last room where I finally captured my Elector; 'Nature and beauty' was the theme. I copied the text which explains the rationale of the pictures in this room. 

Critics have sometimes described German Renaissance art as ugly because of excessive emotion or natural detail but the images themselves present more subtle relationships between beauty, nature and artistry. Durer wrote of his constant search for accurate proportion but he also observed that the human body exists in varied shapes and sizes. Rather than searching for universal ideas of perfection German artists created beautiful images by exploring the diversity of the human form whether variations in body type the effect of ageing or the expressive power of gesture. 

They often lavished equal attention on topography and foliage since mountainous forest landscapes signalled Germanic identity and history. Albrecht invented the new genre of independent landscape omitting all human subjects. But in many figurative images too, landscape setting plays a vital part. Nature in these works is never an objective truth to be recorded. Instead the natural world becomes a subject for creative investigation.

It was Dürer's 'Illustrations of perspective from 'Four Books on Measurement' (1538) I saw Augustus. Augustus was constantly measuring everything, from surveying the land to mapping the heavens. He was looking to the art of science to work out the relationship between things. One article states, 'a 1580 handwritten catalogue lists 2,345 works in his collection from all fields - the classics, theology, history, medicine, surgery, law, mathematics, architecture, astronomy, tournaments and festivals, warfare, mining, numismatics, mineralogy, biology and agriculture'. So not so much creative investigation but early modern natural philosophical experimentation on what the earth can produce for the benefit of the Elector and his state.

Landscape was all. I don't know whether Augustus saw the romantic beauty of his wild forests and mountains, or if he saw the mineral ore, timber, and wealth that they provided. However it is the mountainous forest landscapes signall[ing] Germanic identity and history which has provided me with raw material for consideration. The wiredrawing bench is covered with images of a mysterious forested landscape and set against some of the images in this exhibition, it can only be described as 'germanic'. Altdorfer and his dramatic landscapes are going to provide some very interesting ideas.

The exhibition ends with questions and says, 'today art galleries avoid identifying aesthetic qualities with national character'. I agree, 'national character' is a very woolly and unhelpful phrase. However when a patron like Augustus commissions a work of art or technology, it is necessarily going to be identified with him and his personal interests. Where his interests are so forcefully tied to the identification and exploitation of his state's natural resources, do they produce a 'national character'? If a place is famed for its silver mines and industrial processes, and one of the tools of that process - the wiredrawing bench - is highly decorative, it is logical to assume that the images are inspired by the local landscape. Thus the work of art takes on a national character and demands an explanation in that context.

And this is what I'm setting out to investigate. 

'Constellatio Felix': August the Strong's Festival of the Planets

One of the unexpected highlights of the Royal Palace was the collection of prints drawings and photographs. On the top floor, like the print collection of the British Museum, it has an air of secluded quiet, and requires a visitor to seek out its treasures. The Dresden museum has 500,000 works on paper by over 11,000 artists from eight centuries. Therefore the Kupferstichkabinett (print collection) puts on changing exhibitions, so visitors can have a tiny taste of the material they keep. The exhibition on currently is the 'Constellatio Felix: August the Strong's Festival of the Planets • Thomas Ruff's stellar constellations'.

Constellatio Felix 'fortunate stellar constellation' was the theme of one of the most lavishly ostentatious celebrations of the baroque. Augustus II staged a month long set of events to mark the September 1719 marriage of his son to Frederick Augustus to Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria. The festivals dedicated to the planets were particularly spectacular, and thankfully for us, Augustus required that the event was fully documented. Images of feasts, dances, parades, meticulously recorded the every detail of day- and night-time extravaganzas. Interspersed throughout the baroque fancies, the curators have placed Ruff's timeless planet pieces; offering balance, colour and serenity to the endless historic, dynastic and political posturing.

Great War in Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Jules Gervais Courtellemont, 1916 

Cultural review shows entertain and repel me in equal measure. Sometimes the cynical, world weariness of these self satisfied know-it-all critics make me laugh. Few, however, provoke a such a negative reaction that I run along, at the nearest opportunity, to the thing being reviewed. The conversation between Rachel Cooke and the host on BBC4's Front Row (Peter Gabriel; Paco Peña; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Mark Thomas) was uninformed and utterly disgraceful. After a polite twitter exchange with Ms Cooke, I went down to one of the convenient late night openings.

Speaking Space at the Collyer Bristow Gallery

Ruth Claxon 'Nest (Banana Bird)' (2009)

Finally, the moment for which we have all been waiting: Spring is here, everything is coming to life! The sun is casting its light on our seemingly endless murky London buildings. We can finally look up and rediscover and re-engage with what surrounds us - the dazzling commercial glass frontage, the delicate scroll work, the bright golden brickwork. But. Imagine what might happen if those architectural details had also re-emerged from the winter gloom, coming alive, taking sustenance from the sunshine. And spoke...

The latest exhibition downstairs takes this enchanting, if alarming idea, and the seven featured artists respond. The show's notes state that this 'is an exhibition that allows us to imagine buildings as sentient beings. It is human nature to constantly refer back to ourselves: children and adults can quickly begin to anthropomorphise buildings and their surroundings'. It was prompted by conversations with Matthew Houlding and a collection of spatial oddities were brought together.

Vikings at the British Museum

This afternoon I was lucky enough to be a part of the advance rape and pillage expedition to the new Sainsbury wing of the British Museum. The Viking show which opens 6th March is the first major exhibition on these fascinating people at the British Museum for over 30 years. The press release says that 'it features many new archaeological discoveries and objects never seen before in the UK alongside important Viking Age artifacts from the British Museum’s own collection and elsewhere in Britain and Ireland'. They continue, 'new interpretations place warfare and warrior identity at the centre of what it meant to be a Viking; cultural contact was often violent, and the transportation of looted goods and slaves reflects the role of Vikings as both raiders and traders'.

Old Master Dialogues at the Collyer Bristow Gallery

'Hands' French, c18th, Richard Day

I am lucky enough to work in a place with an idiosyncratic and eclectic take on the arts. A dedicated curatorial partnership works with the firm's gallery to stage three varied exhibitions per year, and though generally small in scale, are large in personality. Old Master Dialogues is the latest offering and is a collection of selected and newly commissioned works responding to the Old Master prints and drawings collection of Richard Day.

The exhibition notes say that museums traditionally aim to observe the hierarchies of history, whereas collectors and artists acquire or visually consume anything and everything that appeals to them personally. And this goes straight to the heart of this show. The small, intimate pieces borrowed from the Day Collection demand your attention because they have this aura of love and care around them. They are all beautiful works of art and where artists have responded to a specific one, they could not fail to have been inspired by it and open a dialogue with the past.

Of royal frills and furbelows

Fashion inspiration

I've had a passive interest in historical fashion for a long time and it was very much cultivated by my marvellous step mother, who remains one of the most elegant people I know. Therefore to lure her down to London, I told her I'd booked tickets for the Fashion Rules at Kensington Palace and In Fine Style at the Queen's Gallery. It worked, for the first time in years she came down and on Saturday we did both of the exhibitions.

We started in the modern times with dresses from the wardrobe of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana, obviously covering the 1950s-80s. It was a fine selection of frocks which reflected the public role of the figure head/royal representative and the uniform that they have to wear - they have to be seen in a crowd, reflect the interests of the country they are visiting, and yet be utterly bland in a non controversial way.

Lowry: Painting the past

River Scene © The estate of L.S. Lowry

I have a vague personal connection with  artist L.S. Lowry. He lived opposite my playgroup in the mid seventies and would regularly walk past my parents as they all went about their business. And finally at his death in 1977, my dad and his partner in crime were dispatched to the artist's house to ensure that nothing went missing. He had a hugely valuable art collection so it seemed best to send two young police constables to guard the place. There is even a photo of them in the Salford Lowry museum which is a fabulous record of a moment in time, where the art world and my dad bizarrely collided.

Pestles and Mortalities: Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Musem

This post came to me in the aftermath of a host of sensory experiences; the scent of fresh garlicky flavours being pounded out by a granite pestle and mortar, whilst the images of an emotionally exhausting exhibition were still pricking at my eyelids. Though these two seem far apart the connections, inevitably, were there.

The Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum has taken Roman everyday life and made it seem as fresh and modern as if they were walking down the streets now, today, tomorrow. After the pomp and splendour of Hadrian, here the curators have instead focused on living arrangements, family life, relaxation, domestic objects and simply allow us explore what it was like to live in a provincial Roman town. What comes across primarily is the sheer sense of fun and humour; the phallic lamps and good luck charms, playful graffiti and garden ornaments. They are, to modern minds, as unsubtle as they are beautifully crafted.

Tate Britain Print/Drawings: ReTurning to Turner

'Explosion' in the Tate 

On Friday the MA group went on a field trip to the Tate prints and drawings room. It was reminiscent of the visits I made last year to the V&A, RAI, London Met Archives and the various other amazing places who open up their archives for interested people.

It seems obvious when you think about it but Tate Britain is known primarily for its collection of Turner material/resources, including a complete reference collection which they keep up to date. Though his paintings are all over the place, he didn't leave provision in his will for the contents of his studio  - sketchbooks, small preparatory watercolours, juvenilia, etc, so it all came to the Tate. There are many ongoing research projects, including a cataloguing project which was started by John Ruskin, then continued by Turner's biographer, Joseph Finberg. Sadly two thirds of this collection was affected by the flood in the 1920s and even now, the crinkling and water marks are evident in his early sketchbooks. 

Metaphors for embodiment; Or I'm really losing it this time

This is a work in progress taken from my latest essay but it works quite nicely as a standalone piece, I think. This series of Janice Gordon's work was on show at La Specola, Florence's Natural History Museum and I've talked about it in a previous post Hearts of Florence.

The Materia Medica/Metafisica series of portraits are described in the catalogue;

© Janice Gordon 

Gordon has constructed “portraits” using images from antique anatomical drawings, art history and nature, creating them on original 17th century materia medica manuscript pages. The beeswax that has been used contains virgin wax from the apiary at the Benedictine Monastery of Torrechiara near Parma, Italy. While “materia medica” refers to medicinal substances used to heal the body, “metafisica” refers to the aspects of spirit, mind and mystery, which transcend the body

In order to draw out some of the complex iconography, I want to concentrate on one image in the series. The most recognisable feature is the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 1477 portrait of Ginevra de Benci which sits within a profile dissected head, surrounding her face like a halo. A skeletal orange torso with arms folded is affixed to her forehead. The serious austerity of her gaze takes on a sadness due to her slightly tilted face. The lines of her neck continue downwards towards the head and arms of a sleeping foetus which lies over her upper chest, whilst figures in old fashioned diving costumes surround it. Snippets of red musculature, a curved spine, cut ribs and coloured nerves form her shoulders and truncated arms, in a parody of a stiff renaissance costume. The three quarter pose with cropped arms is familiar from other fifteenth century portraits. The beeswax marks the manuscript parchment at the top and bottom of the collage.