Tag Archives: painting

May 13, 2013 · 9:35 am

Is Tate Britain Rediscovering Its Purpose?

“Gloriously, satisfyingly reactionary,” is the assessment of the Torygraph’s art critic, Richard Dorment, on the renovations to Tate Britain, the London museum dedicated to British art from the 16th-21st centuries.  The museum’s Director, Penelope Curtis, has presided not only over the renovation of the galleries themselves, but in re-hanging the paintings contained within it in chronological order.  In so doing she is bucking an unfortunate trend which hit public museums like the Tate, and the Hirshhorn here in Washington among others, in which their sense of purpose was forgotten in the fight to re-brand themselves as beacons of hipster nonsense.

Beginning around a decade ago a number of public art institutions, inspired by the example of Sir Nicholas Serota at the Tate conglomerate began to rearrange the collections of painting and sculpture in their care.  The exercise lead to the works being displayed, not chronologically or in “schools”, as one would study them in art history, but in whatever bizarre arrangement the management felt would draw in the curiosity-seeking public, and get them more press.  Curators would decide that a group of completely unrelated works evoked thoughts – for them, anyway – about sex, the environment, a cause du jour, and so on, and group them together, often in a highly discordant fashion.

At the time, the art press went into raptures over the idea that this idea was something bold, new, and fresh – which of course it wasn’t.  If you have ever been to a private museum, such as The Wallace Collection in London, you know that oftentimes private collectors and their families hung pictures of different centuries and styles together in their homes.  They did so because they liked the way the pieces looked together, as well as matching the colors of the drapes, furniture, or carpets.  Some pieces then occupied the space they did because they were thematically suited to the purpose of a room, or conversely were banned from a particular room because they were ill-suited to it.  One would not like to see a painting of the beheading of St. John the Baptist hanging over the sideboard in the dining room, for example, even if it was by Sassetta.

However when more public institutions began to make similar idiosyncratic arrangements of their collections copying Serota’s lead, there was quite correctly a vociferously negative reaction from those of us who love good art, but who thought that museums  were losing their way.  There is a time and a place for creating what are popularly called “mash-ups” of seemingly conflicting elements in exhibition spaces:  it has always been the purview of the temporary exhibition to juxtapose works which might not otherwise be displayed nearby each other, so as to encourage the visitor see the connections between them.  Artists always influence each other, sometimes centuries apart, and so for these traveling shows the mixture of styles and centuries can work rather well.  The highly-regarded Manet/Velázquez show at The Metropolitan in 2003 was a good example of this.

The point of the public museum is not to indulge the personal whims, bad taste, and general ignorance of its leadership.  Serota for example once argued that the great High Renaissance master Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” should be allowed to be sold and leave the country, since British public institutions needed to collect more “foreign” art – apparently forgetting the fact that Raphael was from Urbino in present-dy Italy, and never set foot in Britain in his lifetime.  Unfortunately this is the sort of person leading most major public art collections these days, and we all suffer as a result.

Rather museums are meant to be institutions which both preserve art for future generations, and educate us as to its history and meaning.  Having been established for the public good, they are provided with certain legal protections and exemptions, as well as taxpayer funding.  As a result, they are not meant to be a rich man’s plaything, nor a venue for proving to others in your field that you are a bigger hipster than they are.  Thus it is a very good thing indeed to see that Director Curtis has taken the time to examine the role of the art museum in public life, and to try to recapture a sense of purpose from which all may benefit.

TateInterior Loggia at Tate Britain, London

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April 30, 2013 · 10:49 am

Rags, Riches, and the Contemporary Art Trade

Why is it that when one sees articles like this, describing how the halls and salons of The Louvre are being filled with contemporary art, that the sensation is one of anger arising from a deep sense of injustice? We all know instinctively that much of the headline-making contemporary art we see is garbage, and sometimes quite literally so as shown in the photograph which accompanies this post.  Unfortunately, few people have the courage to actually stand up and say so, and there are several possible reasons as to why.

One reason might be that many in contemporary Western society are brought up to believe that anyone can make good art, which is simply not true.  It is one thing to encourage little Tracy to make a nice picture for Aunt Hilda with her fingerpaints. It is another to convince adult Tracy that she is a great artist, and can in fact teach other people how to be artists, when she cannot even draw properly.

I cannot speak to the European experience, but the rather poor state of art education in this country is something I suspect most of my American readers know first-hand.  One learns very little beyond a smattering of Attic sculpture, the Italian Renaissance, a bit of Dutch genre painting, and the French Impressionists,  followed by an over-concentration on Modern Art.  Then one spends the rest of the course making bad pots, or poor sketches of one of the girls in the class seated on a wobbly stool.  In fact, far more time is spent in the American education system teaching students how to boil an egg, parallel park, or avoid getting Suzy pregnant, than is on educating them about the great artistic legacies of Western civilization.

Increasingly it is the persona of the artist, feigned or otherwise, and not the art itself, which is valued and praised.  The art becomes secondary to the story, i.e. the mythos created around the artist: this one is a political dissident, or that one is a public drunk, or that one sleeps with anything he can get his hands on, and aren’t they fascinating people?  In the end, seeing someone put thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds in a room may be amusing, but no one dares to ask whether it is actually good art. [N.B.: It isn't.]  

The contemporary art world does not genuinely want to ask itself this question, nor does it want you to question their judgment on this point, because in reality much of that segment of the art market is nefarious, at best.  When you read about someone paying astronomical prices for what looks like – and in fact, is – a pile of poo with a title placard, the story is not really the art.  Rather, it is about the amount of money changing hands, based on how well the art dealers and press have managed to create a marketable brand value for the artist whose work is being sold.

What most people do not realize is that the majority of this art which makes you scratch your head or roll your eyes is not actually being brought home for people to display.  Instead, it is going into places like bank vaults or gigantic tax-free storage facilities, where it is kept as an investment  readily convertible to cash by financiers, spendthrift entertainers, and arms/narcotics merchants.  This story which broke yesterday, about private AND institutional collectors pulling out of Christie’s art storage warehouses in Brooklyn, should give you some idea of the vast amount of art created and sold over the past 30-40 years which is sitting crated up somewhere, unseen.

If it were all released onto the market at once, the value of such art would collapse, since frankly no one would actually want it.  There is already so much of it available that it has lost that one quality which collecting objects like Old Master paintings or fine porcelain has always had, which is scarcity.  We all know from economics that once the market becomes aware that something is not actually rare or difficult to obtain, it begins to lose value, and sometimes precipitously.  The contemporary art market keeps pushing along, making new art stars out of delusional half-wits to keep the flow of goods coming, but looking less like an intelligentsia and more like the purveyors of tulip bulbs.

As someone who has collected in some very niche areas of art for the last couple of decades, I regularly encourage my readers to go out and collect what you love.  Owning art is not only an ongoing means of self-education, it is simply a joy.  I would based on the forgoing advise you to avoid the temptation of buying art which requires you to install a dedicated video monitor, or put down a layer of plastic on the living room floor, in order for you to be able to display it.

Instead, look for those contemporary artists who know how to do things like actually paint – like this guy – and have made a career of careful and attentive craftmanship.  These people develop their natural talents into something striking and accomplished, whatever style they happen to work in, because they know that great art takes time and patience to create.  These artists are the men and women who inspire and encourage us to feel that link of continuity with the history of our culture, and not that we are simply cattle to be manipulated by the contemporary art world for the purposes of commerce.  And when the contemporary art market finally does burst, these will be the artists left standing.

Louvre

“The Venus of Rags” by Michelangelo Pistoletto (2013)
from an temporary installation at The Louvre, Paris

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March 13, 2013 · 9:32 am

A Quiet Place: The Landscapes of Sir John “Kyffin” Williams

So much of modern and contemporary art is rather loud, poorly executed, and ultimately forgettable, that is always a joy to discover the work of painters who bring a quiet, workmanlike dignity to their art.  Such is the case of the late Sir John “Kyffin” Williams (1918-2006), who not only had a long, fruitful working career which led to his becoming one of the most celebrated Welsh artists of the 20th century.  Most of all, I find his work appealing because he managed to convey a sense of peaceful isolation in his pictures.

Williams is one of those great “but for” cases in the history of art, since interestingly enough, he only took up painting in his twenties.  He began his career in the British Army in the late 1930′s, but in the lead-up to World War II he failed a fitness exam due to his epilepsy.  On the advice of his physicians, he took up the study of painting as a therapeutic measure, and managed to gain entry to the prestigious Slade School in London.  From there, his career as an artist was to span over sixty years.

The viewer is immediately struck by the relation of Williams’ work to that of another artist who enjoyed the use of the palette knife in the creation of landscape,  Paul Cézanne.  Yet whereas the French 19th century artist’s work is often a collection of golden sunbeams dancing across honey-colored stone, lavender fields, and green-black cypresses, Williams tonalities are those of his native Wales: cool, often gray, and bathed in that diffuse and cloudy atmosphere which pervades much of the British Isles.  It is the kind of environment which conjures up images of knights, dragons, and adventure.   One can imagine Tolkien, for example – no mean watercolorist himself – looking at Williams’ paintings and imagining some of the misty landscapes of Middle Earth.

As a figure painter Williams was admittedly a bit more flat in his line, and I must confess that I prefer his landscapes to his portraits.  I also prefer those views where there are no people to be seen hiking along a ridge or strolling down a path.  He also worked in print-making, as it happens, which certainly shows in the way that he treats the human figure.  He typically reduces it to a series of forms much in the way that a stained-glass artist does.

However for me their inclusion in his landscape paintings often serves as a distraction rather than a completion.  One cannot imagine Turner’s justly famous view of “Mortlake Terrace” at the National Gallery here in Washington without the little cut-out dog standing on the parapet, but in the case of William’s paintings I often feel that they would be improved by the removal of the figures.  The blocky nature of the palette knife as an instrument of creation often rather lends itself to the geometry of houses, rocks, and trees, better than to the portrayal of people.

What’s more, it is perhaps a sad commentary on contemporary collecting that his pictures can be picked up for a comparative song.  While untalented British hucksters like Tracey Emin and the Chapman Brothers rake in millions for their enfeebled mental detritus,  Williams’ lovely “Welsh Landscape with Rocks, Cottages, and Hillsides” was recently sold at Bonham’s for less than $50,000.  Note that this result was double the pre-sale estimate, delighting seller and auction house alike, yet how very sad it is that someone who could actually paint – as opposed to simply fooling the nouveau-riche into pretending that they are hip and have good taste – commands such startlingly low sums for his work.

Be that as it may, one can enjoy the work of Williams in this gallery of dozens of images of his paintings provided by the BBC.  One of my favorites appears below, showing the mountains in the Welsh region of Snowdonia, the blocky forms made by the palette knife reinforcing the idea of hard, moss-covered stone and slippery sheets of ice.  Given his prolific brush, or knife, those of my readers in the UK would do well to keep their eyes open at the next estate sale or local auction, since you never know when some undiscovered gem by this woefully under-appreciated artist might come your way.

(c) DACS and Sir Kyffin Williams; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

“Snowdon Range” by Sir John “Kyffin” Williams (c. 1990-2006)
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

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January 30, 2013 · 10:20 am

Tim Eitel: German Realism in a Grey Age

A new exhibition at the Rochester Art Center gives us a chance to look at the work of German artist Tim Eitel, one of the leading exponents of a group of artists known as the “New Leipzig School” of painting.  The group got its name from the fact that the members all attended the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts in the 1990′s.  While the members of the New Leipzig School paint works which often differ substantially from one another, and they are not strictly realist images per se, there is a certain sense in looking at their work that that they are building upon the past history of examining realism in Western Art and branching out from that tradition, rather than cutting themselves off from it.  Now in their 30′s and 40′s, this group of German artists produces interesting, often highly accomplished examples of actual figurative painting, showing that not everything in the contemporary art world consists in the display of detritus from the bathroom wastepaper bin spread on a floor underneath a video screen of a woman reciting a grocery list in Sanskrit. (Ooops, I’ve just previewed Tracey Emin’s latest work of “art”.)

Eitel is among the more prominent members of the New Leipzig School, and it is not difficult to see why.  If the 20th century Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte had studied under the 15th century Florentine painter Fra Angelico, his work might have looked something like Eitel’s.  It is paradoxically both flat and three-dimensional, giving a sense of space and depth through the simplification of shapes almost to the point of abstraction, and yet at the same time allowing us to recognize figures placed into various degrees of recognizable settings.

Perhaps because of his experience in a very gray East Germany, Eitel is often most effective when he uses his signature limitation of detail in combination with a gray and neutral color palette.  His figures are frequently shown from behind, engaged in activity or in thoughts which we are not privileged to share.  And when his figures are turned toward the viewer, their features are often highly simplified, or represented merely with hints of shadow.

Because Eitel is a painter with an aesthetic owing much to the world of design and photography, his work may seem by some to be cold, geometric, and lifeless.  Yet I find it an expression of a modern understanding of image which at the same time hearkens back to the study of composition and the effects of palette and light upon a finished work, of art.  While Eitel has in many respects made his name among collectors and curators for his often rather dark paintings and prints, his understanding of how intense light can both illuminate and flatten at the same time reminds me not only of the Surrealists, but also of those exponents of the Italian Renaissance who were trying to bring greater realism to their work without quite being able to break out of the two-dimensional point of view that had dominated much of Medieval painting.

Take Eitel’s engaging 2003 oil “Hill”, now in a private American collection.  On a hillside sometime around twilight we see a young man with his hands clasped behind his back, who has probably been out for a stroll.  For some reason he has paused, and is looking down at the viewer, who appears to be standing a distance below him on the hillside.  We do not know what we have done to momentarily capture his attention, but clearly we now have it.  Despite the fact that all is quiet and still, it is an image which suggests a forthcoming dynamism, as a result of the undulating crest of the hill, and the sense of paused motion on the part of the young man walking across it.

Hill

Eitel’s prints are equally fascinating. Take for example his 2010 work “Monks”, showing a group of three men, one in a hooded religious habit and the other two in cassocks, who are looking at something which we do not see.  The balding monk on the right is gesticulating, while the priest in the center is holding what appears to be a sheet of paper behind his back; he and the taller priest on the right appear to be listening to what the balding monk is explaining to them.  We are left wondering what they are talking about : perhaps the fellow on the right is explaining the plans for a new building,  which are held by the priest in the middle, and they are trying to imagine what the finished project will ultimately look like.

Priests

If Eitel’s priests preserve their anonymity by not showing us their faces, Eitel’s policemen do so by not really having faces at all.  In his “Professionals” print from 2008, Eitel shows a tall police officer with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking out over his left shoulder at something we cannot see. His partner is a short police officer who stands at the ready with his hands at his sides, facing directly at the viewer, in a stance that calls to mind the gunfighter of the Old West.  Are they standing outside on a wet pavement, or are they standing on a polished museum or office building floor? Eitel does not give us answers, but allows us to think for ourselves.

Profis

The reason I appreciate Eitel’s work is that the detachment of the painter and the anonymity of the subject are elements which mirror the times in which we live.  For rather than strictly trying to revisit and live in the past, Eitel takes a long, hard look at the world he lives in.  We are so often pushed about in crowds, whether by transit systems, marketers, or nanny states, that our individuality is often lost in the crush of larger forces.  Eitel recognizes that even though we find it difficult to perceive our own individual features clearly any more, they are still there, albeit illumined only dimly.

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January 7, 2013 · 10:27 am

What Lies Beneath: Hidden Paintings and Tudor Portraits

If you will be in London between now and June 2nd, make sure you take time to drop by the National Portrait Gallery for a small but fascinating new exhibition, entitled Hidden: Unseen Paintings Beneath Tudor Portraits.  In preparation for a separate exhibition, experts at the National Portrait Gallery have identified that at least two paintings from the  16th-17th centuries in their collection were painted on top of Catholic devotional works.  The underlying, original images were revealed using modern investigative methods including x-rays and infrared reflectography.

It is not entirely unusual to have a new work of art created from an old one, for various reasons, and examples are known from the ancient world through to today.  Thus,  if a pharaoh fell out of favor in Ancient Egypt after his death, sculptures or paintings of him might be recarved or repainted to reflect a subsequent ruler.  In other cases, the artist may not have had access to all of the materials he needed, and so had to re-use what he had available; we know that Van Gogh often had to do this, for example.

While there is no consensus in this exhibition as to why these particular works were used as a base for new paintings, I would venture it is a reasonable certainty that this was partially brought about as a result of the iconoclasm that took hold under Henry VIII and his illegitimate progeny.  Beginning with the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry instigated a period of systematic destruction of the cultural and artistic patrimony of England that continued under his successors.  Anyone interested in learning more should read Cambridge professor Eamon Duffy’s authoritative The Stripping of the Altars, to try to grasp at least to some extent what was lost.

One of the works in this show is a portrait of the 1st Earl of Dorset, which was painted over a copy of Sebastiano del Piombo’s “Flagellation of Christ” – which itself was based on designs by Michelangelo. Another portrait, that of Sir Francis Walsingham, who was employed by Elizabeth I to capture, torture, and execute Catholics, is in a terrible irony of history painted over an image of the  Madonna and Child.  It should be pointed out that neither of these paintings are recoverable, at least with the technology presently available to us, because they were partially destroyed in order to create an even ground for the new painting to be painted on top.

Given that these portraits were painted about twenty years apart, it begs the very fascinating question: what else is out there to be discovered?  For surely now there is going to be a great interest among museums and collections which hold portraits dating from the Tudor period to have them analyzed in order to discover whether a devotional work lies beneath.  Perhaps there might even be a great artistic discovery in the making, of a work long thought to be lost.  It may be that, in reality, it has been hanging in plain sight all this time, in some castle or public gallery, under a thin veil of paint and varnish.

dorset

Portrait of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset by Unknown Artist (1601)
Current state (l) and x-ray showing “The Flagellation of Christ” (r)
National Portrait Gallery, London

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