In conversation with Nick Serota, the Director of Tate Britain in London, Cy Twombly gave the following insight into his attitude towards painting.
“I’m not a professional painter, since I don’t go to the studio and work nine to five like a lot of artists. When something hits me, or I see a painting, or when I see something in nature, it gives me a thing and I go for it. But I don’t care if I don’t go for three or four months. You know, when it comes it comes.”
A small cross section of Cy Twombly’s paintings covering his work from the 1950s right up to his most recent work was recently shown at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The curator’s twist was to compare and contrast his work with … Continue reading
Where am I? In a gallery that’s 30 minutes from Waterloo, surrounded by work by Richard Hamilton, Marc Chagall, Elizabeth Frink, Eric Gill, Patrick Caulfield, Edward Burra and many others. Can you guess where yet (sorry Rolf)?
Woking is the unlikely home of the excellent Lightbox Gallery. It was designed by Marks Barfield Architects and opened to the public in 2007. Here’s a link to their website:
http://www.thelightbox.org.uk
Whatever the reason, this attractive gallery has burst into life in 2012 showing collections from two local collectors. The Ingram Collection, held by Surrey University includes a range of work including a few beautiful table-top sculptures. A female figure by Eric Gill is made of sand blasted limestone. Also represented are Lynn Chadwick and Barbara Hepworth. There is also an eclectic mix of two dimensional work with paintings by local and nationally known artists. The highlight is a set of hand-coloured lithographs by Marc Chagall, so spontaneous seeming, but not a brush stroke out of place.
If you haven’t been to the Lightbox, you must go, leaving behind you any preconceptions you might about Woking.
Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence While I am looking at a Vermeer it is as if the world has stopped and all of the normal daily distractions have been suspended. Before me is calm, clarity and harmony, even if I’m … Continue reading
The Royal Academy has built this exhibition around a collection of photographs taken by Richard Pare. Oddly he is given no credit apart from a small footnote. Taken in 1999 and 2000 the photos show the decayed state of many of the buildings featured.
Despite their current run down appearance what comes across is the giant strides made in Russian architecture and the arts in general, after the Revolution. However, what also comes across is the tragedy that halted this flowering in its tracks under the repression of Stalin.
Much of the architecture shows great innovation and equals much of what was happening in western Europe at approximately the same period. All in all a fascinating window on a lost culture, whose remains are gently rotting away in the shadow of greater problems facing Russia in the 21st Century.
Rubisouth 13-Jan-2012
According to Steve Jobs biography it all started with the first iMac, you remember the one with a CRT display and a semi-transparent case in white and aqua blue. Well, it was the first computer that was ready to connect to the internet straight out of the box. Hence “i” for internet and the rest is history.
AN exhibition focussing on Leonardo da Vinci’s painting opens at the National Gallery London on 9 November 2011 and has managed to persuade many galleries around the world to lend works for the show, although surprisingly the Louvre hasn’t lent the Mona Lisa.
Here’s the exhibition link:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-at-the-court-of-milan
Of the 18 paintings included in the exhibition, five were showstoppers and one made me wonder if it was really by Leonardo at all.
We visited the show first thing on a Sunday morning. Even so there was a queue around the building for that day’s tickets and inside the exhibition was very crowded. It made it difficult to get a good look at the paintings because they are mostly fairly small, but the effort was well worth it.
Leonardo’s technique was so refined that it is difficult to see what he was doing and how he achieved his effects without getting within a couple of feet of the works. This applies especially to the drawings, many of which are as small as, or smaller than postcard size. He must have had incredibly sharp vision to put so much detail into such small work.
“La Belle Ferroniere” 1490-94 is an oil painting on wooden panel. It appears a very simple composition of a beautiful young woman sitting at an angle, with her head turned towards the viewer. The flesh and features are painted with unbelievable delicacy. Look closely and you realize the face has no outline it just fades imperceptibly into the background, but her hair draped across her left cheek is surprisingly flat and lacking in detail. Has it been restored or was Leonardo only interested in painting the structure of the head and the texture of the skin?
“Lady with an Ermine” 1489-90 is also an oil on panel. She was Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Duke Ludovico who Da Vinci worked for. The composition is more complex, the body turned to the left and the head turned to the right. In her arms the young woman holds the ermine in the title and allows Leonardo to show his virtuosity in rendering fur as well as flesh and skin. As with La Ferroniere, the background is completely dark, focusing attention on the woman and her pet ermine, which in the 15th century was a symbol for purity. It is a wonderfully calm portrait, but the 15 year olds hand that holds the ermine seems huge in relation to her head and also very masculine. It is almost as though the painting is an assemblage of closely observed elements.
Apart from the figure of St Jerome himself, much of this painting was left at the under painting stage and is difficult to engage with.
By contrast the two paintings of “The Madonna of the Rocks” 1495-1508 are both highly finished despite their size, surely a sign that the studio assistants did much of the background painting? These are both great compositions with beautifully painted women and strangely unpleasant images of babies. Why was it that so many Renaissance artists struggled to paint convincing babies and children?
My final highlight is another Virgin and child, with a goldfinch nestling between them (a symbol of Christ’s passion and the crucifixion). The painting is tempera on canvas and the colours are sharp and clear. The Virgin wears blue and red robes and behind her the wall of the chamber has two windows showing a glimpse of the outside world – an Italian landscape. It is a far more tender image than the much grander Virgin of the Rocks and is extremely detailed thanks to the use of tempera which must be applied in individual strokes as used in fresco painting, quite different from oil painting technique.
Andrew Graham Dixon questions whether the Virgin is by Leonardo himself and also questions the authenticity of the recently discovered “Salvator Mundi”. For me this work is painted in strange ghostlike colours and lacking the sharpness of vision seen in all the other works. The colours are most unrealistic and the contrast range is very flat. If it is indeed a genuine Leonardo, it’s difficult to believe that it hasn’t gone through some over enthusiastic restoration in the past and that what we see is at best the under painting for a work. It is understandable that the pressure to authenticate it as a genuine Da Vinci is immense because of the commercial value of such a rare commodity.
Finally, I found the room devoted to the Last Supper strangely fascinating. There was a life-sized facsimile of the original, but hung low enough to look at in detail. There was also a copy borrowed from Oxford that is not brilliantly painted, but which does show much of the detail that has been lost forever in the original and a number of drawings that could be studies for the work.
Overall, you could say it was more like archaeology than an exhibition but interesting and well worth the visit.
Andrew Graham Dixon, in his review of the exhibition concluded: “The astonishing depth of anatomical and scientific research that underpinned all of his work as a painter – and distracted him from doing more of it – is also evident here, in a broad and vivid selection of his drawings and studies.
“He stands confirmed as one of the least prolific, yet most profoundly innovative artists who ever lived.”
Praise indeed.
Rubisouth
