The Portrait and the Camera

With the advent of the camera, of course, the function of Art as a recorder and presenter of actuality started to fade away. At first there were matters of format to sort out. Which photographic system should be used? How could the size of the equipment be reduced to make it a practical proposition for anywhere other than the studio? It was, perhaps, the first example of this process which is now so familiar to us in the early 21^st Century. Just as video recorders, computers, televisions, mobile phones and personal stereos have developed and altered, so the camera. True democratisation of the photographic image arrived with the invention of roll film from the 1880s, and the subsequent development of the Kodak Eastman Box Brownie introduced in 1900, a simple to use basic camera which sold for one dollar. Now anyone could take a “snap” and, if a good result was obtained, have it enlarged, framed, and hung on the wall.

So what happened to the portrait? The simple answer is that it thrived. Which is odd, when you come to think about it. You'd imagine that the one discipline which would be rendered obsolete by the camera would be the simple representation of someone's face or, indeed, thewhole person. But this was not so, and one example may show why. Ellen Terry was the leading English Actress of her day. Although not considered an absolute Beauty, she was a handsome, strong, confident woman who had decades of success in Europe and in the United States. Here is a photograph of her from about 1890:

And here is John Singer Sargent's portrait of her as Lady Macbeth from the same period:

The portrait (a great example of what came to be known as the “Swagger Portrait” for obvious reasons does what the photography of the time could not. It records the feel of the moment as well as the actuality. In fact, the actuality has already become less important. Just look Lady Macbeth's robes; look at the brushwork.

The swirls and streaks create a marvellous impression of what that robe looked like, almost what it must have felt like to wear. It tells us more about Ellen Terry, her person, and her interpretation of that role than a mere photograph could have done – certainly given the constraints of the equipment at that time. And so – slightly late in the day – I've used the word “Impression”.

The Hare With Amber Eyes

Here's the review I wrote on Amazon about Edmund de Waal's book on his family history.  Certainly caused a fuss.  Follow the link at the end if you want to see the posts it engendered on Amazon.  I've reproduced it here because it addresses some interesting issues about patronage and ownership of Art.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (Hardcover)

I really wanted to like this book and, as far as literary craftsmanship is concerned, I do. It is beautifully written. But I can't help feeling that there is something important missing. We read about the fabulous wealth (and it was really fabulous) of the Author's forebears (the Ephrussis) going back five generations. These were men - and a few women - who commissioned works of Art from such as Renoir and Manet; who lived in huge palaces in the centre of Paris or Vienna; who owned huge estates in the Czech countryside and homes in many different cities; and who assembled their massive wealth, not through invention or production, but through banking and brokerage in foodstuffs. In living as the Author describes none of them, I am certain, meant any harm to anyone. They saw themselves, surely, as model employers, as philanthropists. They floated above normal Viennese (and Parisian) society; they were hardly affected by the First World War; the slump and depression of the early 1930s didn't affect their standard of living much; only the Nazis were able to bring down their world of privilege after the Austrian Anschluss of late 1937. And, unforgiveably, this happened because they were Jewish, as it happened to so many at the time. But the consequences for this particular very rich family were not as serious as for many of their fellow Jews, since they were able to buy their exits from Nazi Austria, albeit at the expense of almost their entire fortune, and with a huge amount of very stressful anxiety (which circumstance, the Author indicates, sadly killed his Great Grandmother). But those members of the Family who ended up in England for the duration of the Second World War lived in more comfort than many of the English, in a villa in Tunbridge Wells. Distant connections and some friends had their lives ended, tragically, in Nazi death camps, but these cultivated, educated, privileged people survived, although in very reduced circumstances.

The account of events immediately after Anschluss are very interesting. At first the local Austrian Brownshirts trashed the Ephrussi Palace in what seems, from the descriptions in the book, as much like undirected class resentment as political violence and sequestration. Only when the Germans arrived did the systematic theft of the family's treasures take place. The poor (or poorer) people of Vienna wrought a sort of violent anti-capitalist vengeance before the serious work of the German SS commenced. All this was and is deplorable, of course. But, rather like the Bankers in our present society, I wonder if the Author's forebears had any idea of the resentment that they had stoked up against themselves with their fabulous and unreal standard of living.

So I read this book with great interest and enjoyed it for the most part. But from fairly early on I had an unworthy feeling that "they had it coming". Not the anti-Jewish persecutions - which, it surely goes without saying, were utterly barbaric and inexcusable - but a reckoning with and by the poor and the dispossessed, even if their poverty and dispossession was only relative. (I sincerely hope that no-one reads this as any sort of apology for or justification of, the atrocities of the Nazis' vile regime; I have simply tried to be scrupulous in my explanation of the uneasiness I felt at the story told in this book.)

And I was left with an interesting question. Just how civilised are (were) the very rich? Of course, they have all the hallmarks of civilisation - appreciation of high Art and Culture, a code of behaviour which appears to be the epitome of politeness, often a great philanthropy, a facility with languages, a wide reading, cleanliness, reliability, and (that elusive quality) character. But - you have to accept - the very rich are very rich because they are able to make a profit from the labour and from the needs of their fellow men. At what point on the sliding scale does "a fair profit" become rank exploitation?

It is always fruitless to say "this would have been a better book if . . ." but a little more empathy from the Author for the poor and the dispossessed who formed the foundations of the society in which the Ephrussis flourished so remarkably would have been welcome.

The review and the posts it engendered.

And then?

I've reached the point where the function of Art changed, and it changed because of two technologies: photography and printing.  A photographer, even in the mid-19th Century, could record an accurate image in a fracton of the time it would take an artist to do the job less accurately.  Using the new print technologies the image - or any image - could be reproduced as amny times as required, and very cheaply.  Of course these are both monochromatic technologies at this point, but the writing's on the wall for painting.  Just as Art came to terms with how things really look, just as the skills of the painter reached a zenith of maturalism, so those skills - as far as strict reportage is concerned - were becoming redundant.

What I'd like to carry forward is the idea that a painting has different meanings to different people right from the beginning, even before it is completed in some respects.  The Artist will have a view: s/he may be obsessed with the conception and execution of the artwork as a pure work of art; s/he may have a mercenary attitude, concerned to please the commissoning patron; whatever, s/he will be concerned about achieving the desired outcome, either in artistic terms, or in terms of fulfilling the commission, or (most likely) both.  The patron will have a view.  How prescriptive was the commission?  How well is the artist fulfilling the brief?  Is it value for money?  Will it enhance the patron's prestige?  The casual viewer - perhaps in a saleroom or a gallery, will have a view too.  What is it?  Do I like it?  Is it well executed?  Is it any good?  Does it move me?

All this is not unimportant.  Consensus is harder to reach with so many different viewpoints.  To take a simple example, here are some of the comments I've heard about J M W Turner's work:

* he couldn't paint people at all accurately

* he is the forerunner of the Impressionists

* he is better than the Impressionists

* his eyesight was wonky

* he is the greatest British artist of all time

* he was a hack, only in it for the money

And so on.  Obviously these views are not all mutually exclusive; some people like one part of Turner's opus, some another.  But there is no complete consensus, despite the historical perspective we have.  Generally, what there is is a canon of work regarded as being worth looking at.  And that applies to all Art up to, say, the 1900s.  And then, and then . . . 

 Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth - J M W Turner . . . painted in 1842, remember!

(Originally published 10/10/2010)

Painting's functions in the 18th and 19th Centuries

And then there's landscape; views; the picturesque.  Here is one of Canaletto's views of the Thames, painted in 1747 and showing the Lord Mayor's Day Regatta.  It speaks of London's importance and grandeur.  It exaggerates the width of the Thames and the scale of St Pauls, but remains an astounding panorama of perhaps the most important city in the world at this time.  It makes you want to be there, as does this famous painting by John Constable from 1826:

"The Cornfield" is in the long tradition of the English pastoral.  We know that it subtly improved on the actual view at the time, but this doesn't matter.  It's an ideal English rural view, and actually affects the way we see the countryside.  It conditions us to look for the picturesque in our own countryside.  It doesn't matter that we know that the lives of those working in the picture were far from idyllic; that they died young from preventable diseases; that they lived in poverty in an unequal society.  It captures a moment on a hot summer's day when any of us would be happy to be in the shade and to take a drink from the same stream as the boy in the red waistcoat.  It's a landscape which we can navigate in our imagination, through the gateway into the cornfield, and on to the church in the distance.

And then, from four years later there's this:

Samuel Palmer's "Magic Apple Tree" is further removed from reality, drawing on a different tradition which takes in William Blake and the Christian symbolism of the New Jerusalem.  You couldn't navigate anywhere from the information in this canvas.  This is a mystical picture of a strange and idealised landscape.  It speaks of the spirit of place rather than topography, and as such is one of the most famous landscape pictures of the 19th Century, despite having languished in the office of the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for a number of years, kept there presumably for his private delectation.  This is far removed from Thomas Gainsborough's famous double portrait and landscape of Mr and Mrs Andrews:

This has been called the ultimate 18th Century Capitalist portrait.  Painted after the Andrews' wedding in 1750, it shows the happy couple in front of the landscape which they own.  I detect a slightly smug air about them.  Someone once said (tell me who, please?) that Mr Andrews is saying "This is my dog, this is my gun, this is my land, this is my Wife" - with the emphasis on the possessive pronoun.  But there is another view which takes into account Gainsborough's recorded dislike of the "Landed Gentry" - he has painted them as being at odds with the idyllic landscape, him with his gun, she with her inappropriate dress.  It's worth recording that he painted this a year after the wedding, when Mr Andrews was 23 and his Wife 17.

And now another strand which grows in importance as we enter the 19th century: animal portraiture.

This is "Whistlejacket", painted for his owner, the Marquess of Rockingham in the early 1760s, when the horse was about 12 years old.  By definition racehorses have a short useful life, and rather than rely on memories of  Whistlejacket's great victory over a four mile course at York in 1759 (which netted him 2,000 guineas), the noble owner commissioned Stubbs to record him.  This huge canvas - almost 10 feet high - shows the animal and nothing else, a real departure in this sort of picture.  While we can read this as a statement of pride in the ownership of such an animal, the sheer presence of the horse and the accuracy of the depiction, transcends such a view.  This is a horse for everyone, the essence of racehorse.  Unfortunately this magnificent portrait leads us on to the cloying sentimentality of the Victorian animal picture. 

(Originally published 22/09/2010)

Painting's functions in the 18th Century

In 1735 William Hogarth painted this last of eight pictures in his great series "The Rake's Progress".  The Rake has wasted his fortune on gambling, whoring, drinking, and false friends; he has jilted his pregnant fiancee, been thrown into the Fleet Prison for debt, and ends up in this picture on the floor, sans everything, pox-ridden and mad, in Bedlam - The Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane, in London.  It's a morality picture; it shows the wages of sin and debauchery.  Hogarth was genuinely disgusted by the excesses of the metropolitan beau monde of the early 18th century and painted his series of images as a warning about the results of those excesses.

So in some ways this picture is not too different in intention from the devotional works of earlier centuries, although it's unlikely that it would ever find a home in a church.  Like the paintings in my last post this shows how to live a good life - or rather, in this case, what to avoid in order to live a good life.  It is, for most of us in the 21st Century, a more powerful image than a picture of the Holy Family, or a saint or two, no matter how much gold-leaf the latter may display.  But this is still a "morality picture" in a tradition which stretches from mediaeval church wall paintings through both Breugels, Goya, and such 20th century painters as C R W Nevinson, Paul Nash ("We Are Making A New World"), and even Picasso ("Guernica").

Another form of painting which changeded over the three hundred years between 1450 and 1750 is portraiture.  Always slightly questionable as a display of wealth and egoism, the only portraits with which the mediaeval peasant would have been familiar were those of the patrons of their local church who paid the artist to insert them into a corner of the altarpiece, perhaps next to an obscure saint or martyr, possibly in the belief that the painting would predict their stature in the afterlife.  But now, look at this fine portrait by Thomas Gainsborough from around 1786:

This is Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan.  As the famous soprano Elizabeth Linley, and a lifelong friend of Gainsborough, she had eloped with Sheridan, the playwright and politician twelve years before this portrait was painted.  It is a "speaking likeness" - she was instantly identifiable.  But Gainsborough has taken her out of the studio in which he painted her, and given her an invented rural setting.  It is an utterly romantic portrait, and the wild brush-strokes with which the Artist has built up the almost impressonistic background and the details of the costume give way to a careful and masterly rendering of Mrs Sheridan's face.  It is a wonderfully tender portrait.  But who was it for?  Only for family and friends, not for continuous public display.  This is private Art, not public.  You could say it is still devotional Art, but only in so far as it expresses the devotion of her husband - and of her friend the artist. The great shame is that this painting in the Mellon Collection in the USA is not on display.

Of course some portraits become famous over time, and have been adopted into the public consciousness.  But there is a distinction between the portrait for public consumption (think Queen Elizabeth, Horatio Nelson, T E Lawrence) and the portrait for private satisfaction, the "this is me, this is my Wife, this is my child" sort of likeness - of no great personal interest to anyone outside the sitter's circle.  Here are those public images:

The "Armada Portrait" attributed to George Gower is absolute Elizabethan propaganda.

The 1800 portrait of Nelson by Lemuel Abbott, already a National hero five years before Trafalgar.

The Augustus John portrait of T E Lawrence from 1919; taken up by a nation desperately in need of heroes who hadn't drowned in the mud of the Ypres Salient.

In contrast here's my favourite private portrait, William Chalmers-Bethune and Family painted by David Wilkie in 1804.

As a "warts and all" depicton this can hardly be beaten.  And yet such tenderness is in this family portrait; I see it as a triumphant artefact of the Enlightenment in Scotland, brilliant in its unflinching honesty.  Initially its appeal must have been limited to the family and friends of the Chalmers-Bethunes.  Now, we see it as a window on its period, fascinating precisely because of its humanity. 

(Originally published 21/09/2010)

Starting to rethink

In a 1906 edition of "Punch" there's a cartoon of an old man with an injured foot sitting in a chair.  He explains to the vicar's wife how he passes the time: "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits."  Thinking is like that.  If you set out to have a "thinking" session the chances are you won't come up with anything,  Of course, if you're trying to solve a particular problem you may well be able to concentrate and find a particular, peculiar solution.  But to think - in the abstract, unfettered - you'll probably end up wondering whether you should have that coffee yet, or where that list of things to do (that you wrote yesterday) has got to.

So most times when I set out to think about what Art is (and isn't) I either end up with a couple of trite truisms before drifting off to think about something else, or I find myself thinking how much I despise Tracey Emin, or Nick Serota, or . . . . insert your own pet hate; you know what I'm getting at.

Recently I've tried to change tack and go back to basics; to work forwards from a basic, incontravertible position.  What was Art for in the millenia before Fox-Talbot, the Daguereotype, and photography generally?  What did the artists think they were doing?  What did the patrons think they were paying for?  And what do we think those Artists achieved?  On the surface these are easy questions to answer.  But when you try to put together what they felt then, and what we feel now, you run up against a problem.  To illustrate what I mean, consider a piece of devotional Art.  This is Fra Angelico's "Annunciation" from around 1440:

What's happening here?  Well, the Angel of the Lord has appeared to tell the virgin Mary that she's going to bear a baby who is the son of God.  Mary is struck dumb, apparently, as who wouldn't be?  Apart from everything else, the Angel is in awe of her, and is bending the knee . . . to a humble carpenter's wife!  Amazing.  The poor people who saw this painting would never have seen anything so lifelike.   

These days we are struck by the painter's astounding competence and ability given the context of the times.  The painting doesn't carry the spiritual, emotional weight it did five and a half centuies ago.  We admire the technical skill of the Artist; his contemporaries wouldn't think like that.  They were having the story of the Annunciation made flesh in their own village church - or as near as could be.  Think high definition 3D for us.  Or hyper-reality.  That's what they saw.  And it confirmed what they were told every Sunday and feast day of their lives.

I remember going round a gallery of religious images from the 12th Century through to the beginnings of the Renaissance, in Sienna a few years ago (the Pinacoteca Nazionale).  After the first two rooms it left me cold.  Wall after wall of religious pictures.  Nativity after nativity, miracle after miracle, saint after saint.  Boring.  It was utter overkill.  But, of course, this was a collection from the whole of Tuscany and beyond - from little churches in tiny communities.  Each church might have had just one or two images.  The people who worshipped in each church might be familiar with three or four other churches in similar communities - and that would be the limit of their experience of Art, and of the accurate representation of life - of simulacra.

Here's a lesser known painting from Sienna:

 

This is The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine and St John the Baptist by Michelino da Besozza in about 1420, now in the Sienna Gallery I visited.  We cannot understand this image now unless we see it as an elaborate allegory.  We cannot understand the idea of a spiritual union between a humble but saintly virginal woman, and characters who had been dead for over a millenium, or who were local dignitaries who paid for the image.  But to humble "parishioners" who saw this every week in their church - and who saw no other accurate images - it was a deep reality; in some ways a deeper reality than that of their own daily existence, since it spoke of their own imminent eternity, which was going to be so much better than their earthly life.

It's taken me more than twenty years to understand the significance of those rooms and rooms of devotional Art I saw in Sienna.  The paintings still do not really move me as objects in themselves.  But their significance to the men and women who saw them when the paint was fresh - well, if I can respond to any work of Art in such a sincere way, I would count it a good day.  No, a great day. 

So now I need to think about how a more secular, less naive society looked at its Art.  I'm going to move forward 300 years and think about the 18th Century.

 

(Originally published 20/09/2010)

Birmingham Art Gallery

I visited this gallery last Friday and was amazed at the quality of the 19th Century painting which they have.  There's a fine version of Ford Madox Brown's "The Last of England", almost identical to that held by the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge:

There's what must be almost a full size water-colour study for Burne Jones' "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid":

There's Millais's "The Blind Girl:

There's a half size copy by Ford Madox brown of his "Work", the original of which hangs in Manchester:

This is Rossetti's final version of "Beata Beatrix", left unfinished at his death in 1882:

All these and many other fine Pre-Raphaelite paintings.  Birmingham's modern collection is much sparser, and the very recent stuff is mostly the usual rubbish that will probably be in a skip within 20 years (we can but hope), but there is a reconstruction of Epstein's amazing "Rock Drill" from 1913 - twelve feet high and very imposing:

 

Finally a couple of works from about the same period.  First is C R W Nevinson's "Column on the March" from about 1915 - stunning, and I've never seen it before:

 

And from a few years later, Munnings' "Arrival at Epsom Downs for Derby Day":

 

(Originally published 22/08/2010)

Yesterday I went to see this exhibition at the UEA, Norwich.  In the main it consists of two collections of small, ancient humanoid figurines from Japan and from the Balkans, two areas which were never in contact but which, in this instance, produced remarkably similar artefacts.  There are several ancient specimens from other cultures which reinforce the point that the making of such figurines was a pretty universal human activity.

The figurines are of varying degrees of complexity in both imaginative and technological abilities.

All this is very interesting in various spheres.  It might well interest the archaeologist, the historian, the ethnologist, the sociologist, even the technologist and the craftsman.  Well and good.  But with typical obtuseness the exhibition seeks to point out non-existent links with (gulp) modern Art.  So one of the exhibits is this:

I think it's by the Chapman Brothers (Jake and Dinos) and I think it's called "Dead Guys" - but I'm open to correction here.  Anyway, it's supposedly inspired/based on one of Goya's macabre etchings of body parts hanging in a tree.

But what on earth does it have to do with the rest of the exhibition?  It's not alone in its inappropriateness - there's a sort of Barbie Doll presented in a glass case, and a 1960s Japanese plastic toy featuring small figures of an Emperor and a concubine.  It's part of this loony desire to establish modern Art as the inheritor of a hundred thousand years of human creativity.  But these ancient figurines are a mystery.  We do not know what they were for, what purpose they were created to fulfil.  We do not even know whether all the old artefacts in this exhibition were created for similar purposes.  We cannot know this.  We do not know how the creators of these artefacts and their societies functioned on a physical level, let alone the intellectual or spiritual context in which they were made.

But we can be sure of one thing: the creation of these ancient figurines was not attended by the cynical money-grubbing of the modern Art World.  And the shaping and firing of the simplest of the figurines required a great deal more technological sophistication in the manipulation of materials than that needed for sticking a few bits of Lego together.  Or putting a barbie Doll in a plastic case. 

(Originally published 09/08/2010)

Election News 2010

Well, Tracey Emin has come out for the Tory Party.  That should scupper their chances.  Well done, Trace!

Oh, in case you've forgotten, here's one of her "artworks" complete with used condoms and blood stained pants.  Very life enhancing.

(Originally published on 11/04/2010)

A S Byatt - The Children's Book; Lenny Henry on Pollock

I'm currently reading this - about halfway through the 600 odd pages at the moment - and I'm amazed by the relevance of the story to the main obsession of this blog.  Loosely based on the lives of several late 19th/early 20th century British artists, writers and connoisseurs (E E Nesbit, Eric Gill, D H Lawrence etc) and their families, A S Byatt has written a gripping tale which highlights the centrality of skill and craftmanship in Art.  Very much worth reading.

And then there was a programme on Radio Four this week which featured Lenny Henry trying to come to terms with Jackson Pollock's work, with the help of a couple of critics, including Brian Sewell who concluded that Pollock's dribble paintings would make good designs for linoleum.  Let's see:

Hmmm.

(originally published 24/01/2010)

Conceptual Art is just a con . . .

All the expressive arts have groups of practitioners who push the boundaries of their art form. 

In music the avant garde were experimenting with dissonance and strange time signatures from the beginning of the 20^th Century, pushing the boundaries until we arrive at “found” music on one hand, and John Cage’s 4’33”, three movements for any instruments the players choose to bring, as long as they don’t play a single note for the duration of the piece.  Music could go no further out.  The boundary had been reached.  Most composers currently working are back to producing music for an individual or a combination of instruments, including electronic devices, and no matter how inaccessible it may sound to the average MOR fan, it is recognisably part of a continuing tradition.  

In English literature we had “found” poems; we had BS Johnson publishing a loose leaf novel that the reader could tackle in any order they chose; but in many ways the boundaries were reached much earlier with “Tristram Shandy” by Sterne, published in the decade from 1759, with its totally black page, its concentration on the hero’s conception and birth, its learned references, and a concentration on the minutiae of domestic life and its mishaps – all foreshadowing Joyce.  Joyce could be said to have pushed at the limits with “Finnegans Wake” with its reinvention of the actual language.  But there has been a retreat from the extremes and currently esteemed practitioners generally produce accessible work which can be understood and appreciated by almost every literate person.

But the avant garde in the Visual Arts, having reached the limits with “found” pieces such as Duchamp’s “Fountain”, with the dribblings of Jackson Pollock et al, with reductionist sculptures such as Caro’s painted girders, with the use of collage by such as Richard Hamilton, still insist that the boundaries can be pushed further, until anything can be “Art” if the artist says it is.  And anyone can be an “Artist” if they say they are.  They don’t actually have to produce anything.  It has been suggested that all that’s needed is for the “Artist” to think a work.

By that definition I’m the best visual artist in the world . . . . . because I say I am.

 (That's not me, BTW!)

(Originally published 24/10/2009)

From The Times

Rachel Campbell-Johnson doesn't think much of Damien's little show either:

"Hirst has been painting. And by that he doesn’t mean employing a team of assistants to produce the paint-by-numbers-type canvases familiar from recent shows. Hirst has been alone in his studio working with palette and brush.

"The result is No Love Lost — a show of 25 pictures. Seen from a distance they don’t look too bad. Their dark expanses are seductively presented in traditional gilt frames. They fill the galleries with an eerie blue Insect-O-Cutor-style glow.

"But take a step farther and a pale, silk-papered boudoir transforms into what feels more like a teenage boy’s bedroom. You can almost smell the brooding odours of existential angst.

"Here are all Hirst’s familiar obsessions: the skulls, the shark’s jaws, the ashtrays, the spots with the odd iguana or little O-level, “still life” lemon added to the mix. Hirst floats his images on the dark surface of the canvas, mapping out their spaces and relationships with a mesh of perspective lines.

"These works are utterly derivative of Bacon (give or take a dash of Giacometti), but they completely lack his painterly skill. And their metaphors are as ham-fisted as the application of pigment.

"Look to the end of the galleries and you will see Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time. Hirst appears to hope that his heavy handed memento mori will make him part of the line-up of art historical tradition. But the artist who has made his reputation with shock now produces works that are shockingly bad. And who knows, maybe this is his trick. Is his brand so strong that we can’t resist turning up to look — even at works on which we know no love will be lost?"          (The Times, 14th October 2009)

Here's the Poussin:

and here's one of the Hirsts, called "Requiem: White Roses and Butterflies 1":

It makes you want to weep, doesn't it?  But not in the way Damien wants you to . 

(Article first published on 18/10/2009)

The critics on Hirst

Utterly hits the spot:

Sewell on Hirst

Thanks to Nick for pointing me at this.

Does no-one love Damian any more?  Peter Conrad in The Observer doesn't:

Conrad on Hirst

(Article first published on 17/10/2009)

A pic to make you sick?

Yes, that's Nick Serota, Director of The Tate Galleries, schmoozing with the sainted Damian.  The best comment on his relationship with the YBAs is Charles Thomson's 2,000 painting  

"Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision":

 

(Article first published 15/10/2009)

"So What Have You Done Lately?"

I hear you saying.  It's all very well slagging off other people's work, but what have you done?  So, to prove I'm not a critic (as if you couldn't guess that already) I'll occasionally stick in a piece of my work.  Not because I'm claiming any particular merit for it, but just to prove, in the words of Archie Rice, that "I have a go Missus, I have a go!"

This is an imagined view of the Sussex Ouse valley seen from the sea and a thousand feet up, with Newhaven in the foreground and the inland "Cliff" of Lewes upstream.  It's the third version of this subject I've painted, and interested me because it was the first large painting I'd made using acrylics.  I normally use (and much prefer) oils.  So I do have a go - and I'll post some more later.

(Article first published on 14/10/2009)

Excuses for Tracey Emin

Number 1:

The fact that she can't spell, yet uses words as an integral part of many works, reveals a wonderful vulnerability. 

No.  It reveals that she can't spell and that she has total contempt for the consumer of her "Art".
Have a look at "Helter Fucking Skelter" (sic) above.  "Atitude", "Envey" Everythig", Steel".  How hard would it have been to check those words?

I've just found this blog which says stuff about Ms Emin better than I can - I'm too angry!  Have a look:

http://kirstyhall.co.uk/blog/2008/08/tracey-emin-20-years/

(Article first published on 14/10/2009)

If It's Not Art, What Is It?

So before I let myself go about Tracey Emin, a few words about what YBA crew have actually produced.  In some of the reviews of the big Pop Art Exhibition currently filling the coffers of the Tate Modern the point’s been made that most pieces of Pop Art were comprehensible in a matter of seconds.  You look at it, get the point, and move on.  There is no depth; you don’t “lose yourself” contemplating a Lichtenstein or a Warhol.  This may or may not be a criticism; but the lesson the YBAs (Young British Artists as were – they’re mostly in their later 40s now) seem to have learned is that extreme novelty is a selling point.  That might take the form of gruesome dealings in dead animals (slaughtered for the occasion, let’s not forget), extreme sexual explicitness, or a sad parading of the detritus of their daily lives.  I would argue that, whatever these pieces may be, they are not Art.  So what are they?  How about reviving a term from the 19^th Century – they’re “Conversation Pieces”; an updated version of the sort of thing a rich Victorian might keep in his salon to provide an ice-breaking topic of conversation with his guests.  It could be an interesting arrangement of stuffed animals, like this one from among many produced by Mr Walter Potter from Bramber, Sussex in the second half of the 19^th Century (click on it to enlarge): 

Actually, that's both more fun and more gruesome than anything Damien Hirst has dreamed up.  And nobody's called it Art - it's Taxidermy.


(Article first published 09/10/2009)

The "Damien Hirst Is A Knob" movement - Brooker strikes!

Worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/charlie-brooker-damien-hirst

Art, Craft and Skill

It's probably not the best time to quote an incestuous child abuser, with Roman Polanski sitting in a Swiss jail for having sex with a 13 year old in 1978, but Eric Gill said:

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

So can there be Art without skill?  If so, then clearly Conceptual Art is a valid form.  The artist merely thinks the idea, and he/she or other people can try to put it into existence - or not.  But if skill, in whatever medium, is a prerequisite, then we have a valid standard which we can apply to any piece of Art.  So let us consider a couple of "Works Of Art" and see where we get.  I'm choosing well-known works so that we are not confused by novelty.

This is Gainsborough's famous portrait of "Mr and Mrs Andrews"  from about 1750.  It has been interpreted of late from a Marxist perspective as a comment - if an unwitting one - on a society based on the holding of property.  But I'm not interested in that here.  Let us consider skill.  Gainsborough can clearly handle oils.  The rendering of surfaces is well done, there is real delicacy in the application of the paint, and there is a convincing, if conventional, handling of sky, cloudscape, scenery, perspective and clothing.  The painting falls short where the Artist has used the conventions of the period rather than observation and drawing.  So the figure of Mrs Andrews is almost fatally compromised because he has given her excessively narrow, "feminine" shoulders, and an anatomy which, if you stripped the clothes away, would look distinctly odd unless she is sitting on a surface inclined at 45 degrees.  The trees owe more to looking at Flemish School landscapes than looking at real trees.  And the sky seems to be adding something portentous without it being really clear what.  The painting, of course, is regarded as the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early life.  But he did so much more, and better, later.  So is this a Work of Art?  That must seem like a daft question. And the answer has to be "Yes".  But it's yes because, despite the shortcomings of draughtsmanship, we know what these people looked like and we know quite a lot about their life together simply through the skill - or artistry - of the Artist.

Now clearly this is a work from a period before photography , and its purpose is somewhat different from that of a modern portrait.  It is first and foremost a likeness.  These people really looked like that (apart from those shoulders).  Secondly it is a record.  This is how these people wished to be seen and to go down to posterity - for paintings such as these were seen as permanent artfacts, not fashion items to be changed with the colour of the walls.  Finally, it is an object to look on many times - there is no sell-by date.  Such a picture might also be contrived to be thought provoking, stirring, sexually appealing, funny, scary, devotional, educational, or just plain pretty.  Painted pictures served all of these purposes because, together with engravings and other prints, they were all there was to look at in a domestic context: no TV, no photographs, no home videos, no colour magazines.  And of course, a major difference would be that the Artist was commissioned to paint the picture - such things were not done "on spec" - the outlay of time and material was simply too great.  Such a picture would take months of work to complete - perhaps the time scale was even longer: a year? Perhaps two? It is quite a big painting - roughly four feet wide by two and a third feet high (69.8 x 119.4cm) and the surface is minutely covered with brush work.

One final point: the painting of Mrs Roberts' lap appears to be unfinished; the speculation is that the Artist was requested to make space for a possible future child to be painted in.  This was, in a small way, to be a dynastic picture

Now I'd like to look at a picture from 165 years later:

 

This is Walter Sickert's 1915 painting of a Concert Party on Brighton Beach.  It was almost certainly painted "on spec"- it is doubtful if Sickert had a particular buyer in mind.  It is probably not a recogniseable portrait of any of the performers.  But it is a record of a particular time and place.  The topography of Brighton seafront has not changed, although the stage is not there any more.  It is a summer evening in 1915.  The First World War is less than a year old, and the British Army and its allies are far from being in the ascendent.  The Pierrot troupe are playing to a small audience, and the whole setting is just a bit run-down.  You sense that these performers have either seen better days, or wish they had.  It is quite possible to read the painting as an early comment on the decline of Empire: this is not the fabled Edwardian Summer, rather it is the start of the era of the common man, what Alan Bennett describes as "an NCO's world" in his play "Forty Years On".

The technique is heavily influenced by photography.  There is a distinct snapshot quality to the picture; the figures are partially obscured by the structure of the stage; one, indeed, exists only as a pair of legs coming in from the left.  It may be that Sickert worked from a photograph - he used them extensively later on.  You can see how Impressionism has influenced the Artist - the effects of the various lights (including the natural evening light) are as much the subject as the people.  But what the painting does, skilfully, is to evoke the feeling of a specific time and place, and associate that with a slightly tired, brittle glamour which we feel was somehow typical of that first disillusionment with the military and diplomatic might of Britannia.

Like the Gainsborough, this picture is enjoyable on several levels; as a gorgeous object to look at; as a historic document, as part of the record of England, and Europe, at a stage in its development and change; and as a caller-up of emotion, as a touchstone for the emotions.  In neither case did this happen by chance.  The skill (to use Eric Gill's term) of the Artist has done it for us.  What has happened to such skill in the world of "Brit Art"?

(Article first published on 30/09/2009)

" So you don't think it's Art. So what?"

At this point I think I should explain how this blog arose, since it may look like the senile ravings of a traditionalist.  I don't think that's so, and here's why.

For many years now I've had debates or discussions with friends, many of whom are involved in the Arts to varying degrees, about this central topic - what is Art, and what's it for.  And, as a corollary, what isn't Art.  And does it matter?  Some of these debates have become furious, polarised arguments (occasionally fuelled by too much wine), to the extent that we no longer raise such topics with each other.  So on that level at least it does matter.  It matters enough to have friends shouting at each other and feeling hurt by the exchanges.

But it also matters because Art has a function in Society.  It is not unimportant.  It is not a means for a few favoured late adolescents to make a lot of money at the expense of gullible Investment Bankers and Advertising Executives (and Russian Oil Billionaires, for all I know).  Because they also make money at the expense of our great public collections - because of the gullibility of the Directors (or Curators or what you will) - and hence they impoverish those collections both financially and culturally, because the money wasted on evanescent "Brit Art" (or whatever) could actually go towards buying something worthwhile - or even displaying more of the huge stock of Art works which these places usually have in their storerooms and offices.* 

At that point I should add (in text-speak) IMHO - in my humble opinion.  Because, obviously, many many people don't agree with me, although many do, and an even larger number don't give much of a toss.  Which,  is part of the problem.  If Art is only for the select few then it goes into that category of esoteric interests such as matchbox collecting or shoe fetishism - something that can be indulged in by those who enjoy that sort of thing.  Of course, you can buy matchboxes for very little money, and you can indulge shoe fetishism cheaply on the Internet (or so I'm told . . . . ).  But Art is usually big and expensive, especially if many people like a particular work, so the only fair way to enable access to such works is through large scale public collections.  And fortunately, in the UK we are blessed with these.

But Art does speak to most people, given the opportunity - look at the story of the Pitmen Painters, the play about whom is revived at the National Theatre this Autumn.  And my argument with much of contemporary Art is that it shuts out most people.  I'll have to go into the reasoning behind this next time.

* Did you know, for example, that for years one of Samuel Palmer's masterpieces, "The Magic Apple Tree", painted in 1830, and given to The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge by a Mr Anderson in 1929 in memory of his dead brother, for years that painting hung in the office of the Director of the Museum, and could only be seen by special arrangement?  For all I know it's there still.  I'll have to email Dr Timothy Potts to ask if it's still on his wall.  How many thousands of Art works are thus squirrelled away?

And another thing . . .

Back to what has become the main topic of this blog: I want to think about Conceptual Art.  As I understand it, the Art is in thinking up the concept.  But there seems to be some disagreement about whether or not the Artist has to do anything other than formulate the concept in his or her own head.  So by one definition, if the artist formulates a concept s/he has created a work of Art.  Or, in other words, "it's Art because I say it is".

I have relatively little experience of Conceptual Art, I freely admit.  But I have looked at a few different pieces.  One that springs to mind was the runners tearing through the Tate Gallery last summer when we went to see the "Art of the East" exhibition.  It was a bit hair-raising - you didn't want to get in the way of the athlete in case you were knocked down.  I freely admit that I don't understand why this was Art.

Another that I recall was a Video Installation in the Liverpool Tate when we went to see the Klimt exhibition last year.  It was a series of shots of urban settings with the camera swinging through 180 degrees in both the vertical and horizontal planes.  It made you feel nauseous simply by the camera's movement.  Again, I don't understand why this was Art.

In fact all the "Video Installations" I've seen have looked rather like amateurish home videos.  I often wonder why the Artists who make Video Installations didn't do a Film Studies degree and at least learn to use the equipment proficiently.

Now a confession: when I was a student (Brighton 1967-1971) I made three pieces which you might call Conceptual Art.  The first was a triptych altarpiece which opened to show three scenes which seemed to me, at the time, to be desperately important.  If I remember right, one of the side pieces was a portrait of Bob Dylan, and the centrepiece was a painting of St George slaying the dragon.  Don't ask me why - I can't remember.  Then there was the metal grille from a heater which I partially melted with an oxy-acetylene torch to demonstrate (if I remember  properly) the precariousness of our civilisation's dependence on Technology.  And finally the mock French-Cafe table with its centre cut out and a card index (like half a Rolodex) of designs for restaurant fronts inserted in the hole.  I spent months on these over a two year period.  They were all rubbish - by any standards, if we may still use a term like "standards" in this field.  But I wonder what a Saatchi would have made of them had they been in the right place at the right time?  Would I now be rich?
 
But, take the mickey out of them as I have, I think that there was more artistry in any of these three pieces than in a Damien Hirst "spin painting" actually made by one of his technicians, or a Tracey Emin drawing of her own crutch.  And honestly, there's no sour grapes in that statement.  For each of those three pieces I learned, pracised, and utilised new skills, adapting them to the needs of the work as it progressed.  And those pieces were not done for money, obviously, as Hirst's spin "paintings" were (by his own account).

 

In the end the piece I made as a student which I most value is a little coil pot about eight inches high.  I spent an age making this look as much like a thrown pot as I could (this also smacks of "Concept" Art, I'm afraid).  But now, 40 Years On - to hi-jack a school song and a Play title - I like it just for the unassuming craftsmanship of its making.  Here it is:

(Article first published on 22/09/2009)

Art and What It's For

Last night I watched Peter Capaldi's guide to Scottish Portrait Art, an excellent progrmme from the BBC (hands off, Murdoch, you bastard).  In the programme the one-time Art student (Glasgow School Of Art - that wonderful Mackintosh building) and Actor looked at portraiture in Scottish Art from the famous 1559 portrait of Mary Queen of Scots onwards.  Ramsay, Wilkie, Raeburn, the Victorians, the Glasgow Boys, the Colourists and so on - all of the work we saw was executed with consumate skill, which was learned and practised over the years.  There were insights into how the artists worked, and glimpses into their studios.

 

This is Sir David Wilkie's portrait of William Chalmers-Bethune, his wife Isabella Morison and their Daughter Isabella.  It was painted in oils in 1804.  It is not intended to be a flattering portrait.  It is an accurate record of how Wilkie saw that little family.  The sheer skill is obvious.  And to those of us who have been taught to actually look at paintings, the insights into the people portrayed are richer and deeper than any photograph could convey.

And this is John Byrne's 2007 portrait of his partner Tilda Swinton, executed in chalks.  And the same comment applies.  It tells you far more about the Actress than any photograph could.  The technique is completely different apart from one thing.  Both Artists, separated by 200 years, have looked and looked and looked at their subject; have interacted with their subject, and have put their insights down on canvas or paper.  Wilkie's must have taken months to complete; John Byrne's perhaps much less time.  But they are both the result of an applied art, craft or skill, call it what you will, which values intelligent, thoughtful analysis over cheap sensation.

It was a brilliant programme, and offered a vision of Art so far removed from Saatchi-World that it could have been a different planet.

(Article first published on 19/09/2009)