The BP Portrait Award 2010 at the National Portrait Gallery

My opinion is that portraits have the greatest potential of all the genres to be masterpieces. This is a visceral view of mine, yet for Kenneth Clark it is easily theorised, ‘[certain] portraits are masterpieces because in them a human being is recreated and presented to us as an embodiment, almost a symbol, of all that we might ever find in the depths of our hearts.’ It is the art that reaches into us that has the lasting impression of greatness, and this is how I’d separate my hot-tipped from luke-warm. Though it is very true that each individual will relate to a painting differently, for example the winning Last Portrait of Mother by Daphne Todd, will speak deeply to those who have been faced with this grief, I believe that some portraits, are so blatant, so universal, that the power of its expression crosses boundaries.

Perhaps the most memorable of the exhibition was the striking and surprising, Le Grand Natan by Daniel Enkaoua that absently greets you upon turning the corner to it. The painting is one that evokes energy of the imagination. It is compositionally somewhat empty, but its impression has great brooding breadth. It imprints upon the memory and reawakens the past in a most mysterious way. The child, with feet of a giant, revives memories of shaken moments from The Orphanage. And so it is even more intriguing as a piece when you discover that four year old painted, Natan, is the artist’s son who insisted he be painted the largest possible, as though imposing adulthood upon himself.

There is just one thing that bothers me about portraiture from the last decade: intentionally inaccurate perspective that serves no purpose at all. Did Wendy run out of canvas space in Mary (The Visit V), determined to fit in the (to be true, nicely painted) tiles of the fireplace, and so have to put everything on the squat, like a home-made passport picture that doesn’t fit the ratio of your railcard? Quite what is the point of its extremity in Love Painting – Portrait of my wife Jackie, and our cat Amy, Redbrick Mill Studio by Tony Noble – why inflict upon your viewers that queasy feel of vertigo? Perspective is a great tool in which creativity can be explored to effect. It has the power to altar our perception of a situation, such as the masterpiece Lila Pearl by Thea Penna. In viewing, there is a transferral of emotion from the artist, to her painting, to us. The artist looks down on her child who is boxed into the corner, vulnerable, in the same way the mother resembles due to her responsibility – she feels exposed, watched, and disquieted herself.

Modern portraiture has developed in a fair number of directions, and the BP portrait prize each year celebrates these equally. It is a great opportunity to assess, like the Frieze Fair or the RA summer exhibition, the movements within an annual period. Though I believe this exhibition to be the best opportunity of them all, due to its specialised focus, and competitive status: you are thus able to judge not only what is being created, but what is most valued from that which has been produced.

Pictured: Le Grand Natan, and Lila Pearl

BP Portrait Award 2010 is at the National Portrait Gallery until September 19

http://www.npg.org.uk/index.php?id=4711

The Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition

I’ve had the privilege of dissolving probably the greatest problem of the annual RA summer show. That being that: human nature, even for one who tries their hardest out of pure dogged fascination, cannot keep our feet from tiring, our eyes from glazing over, or our concentration from lapsing; due to the sheer quantity of art stifling all viewable wall or plinth space available unto the academy. There is only one case worse, October’s Frieze Fair, which is a completely overwhelming and disorientating experience requiring sheer mental strength. Overall, despite there being great work to discover here, the experience is itself disappointing. This is due to the fact that no attempt will be able to reveal the mysteries of the unseen. (One always assumes that in failure to complete a viewing, the most exquisitely mind-blowing, beautiful and radical will be just around the corner). There is nothing worse than rushing the experience of art out of no given choice…

I, by complete charming chance, have been able to preview the exhibition not once, not twice, but three times, in my job as…a waitress, which provided just enough to be able to judge the holistic atmosphere of the exhibition, to note the famous and their iconic styles, the unnoted, and the notably unnote-worthy. And have since made a dedicated longer visit.

There is a couple of artists featured with whom I have formed particular alliance to after hearing them speak in the flesh about their work: Grayson Perry on his slightly queer and very eccentric ceramics; and Humphrey Ocean on his series Peggy’s Birthday, which was exhibited at the Sidney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury last September. Six of Peggy’s Birthday made the show, of which one - Geoffrey - has been printed onto postcard.

Grayson Perry’s work seems to be the perfect proportion of creative absurdness. His visually extravagant work could be furniture pieces in the Wallace Collection or British Museum because through tradition eyes, Personal Creation Myth could not be deemed anything other than a pot – it’s well made, decorative and certainly beautiful – the coral pink marbling of the varnished sky particularly. It’s absurd, some might say surreal - though not in the way of the Surrealists - due to it’s subject matter, and means of exploration. (For some reason, a pot will never seem as natural a place for creative expression as a canvas.) Perhaps then the perfect home for a Perry pot would be a rescued country home, out of a programme entitled something like that, where Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and Andy Warhol (, or more likely, Michael Craig-Martin) have had their way, sometimes in unison and sometimes not. It is yet unsold! Ocean’s works are characterful portraits of which I only have one slight complaint: the dull skin minorly snuffs the life of these personalities.

I was unimpressed by the repetitive work of Michael Craig-Martin – I expected to feel indebted that I missed last year’s summer show – that the work of 2010 Untitled (Real), Untitled (Paradise) and Kids, would be noticeably different from 2008. Personally, I think the man has been holidaying since bulk printing in 2008…He’s been using the same imagery year after year, regardless of the so-called title and supposed intent. Honestly, Untitled or Real. Don’t suggest it has no obvious point when it glows neon 2m letters that very unambiguously spell what they do. There is a difference between an artist choosing to use an unusual, non fine-art medium for creative affect, and an artist who through the way he works, appears unable to create work outside of the niche he is filling – this is when you come to doubt the artist because essentially you see little creative future in their work.

Likewise, a previous favourite of mine, Lisa Milroy, appears to have lost momentum as her years have matured her. Her attempt to broaden out of regimented grids of repeated aerial viewed objects has left work that is dull, and less, not more, imaginative. I can’t bear to look at the increasing quality of cartoon.

I was thoroughly impressed by Self, Vasiliki Gkotsi’s Jenny Savilleish piece and some very buyable pieces in the Small Weston room by Bernard Dunstan - The kitchen and Sitting by the Window, which are stunningly gentle-spirited. One other mention would be of Anselm Kiefer’s ever dramatic but simplistic Einschüsse, which greets you first on entrance to VI from the central hall – art fiend or not, Kiefer’s work is beautifully raw and thought-provoking to investigate.

The show is open until 22^nd August, and is one of the events in the international art calendar. http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/summer-exhibition/

Picasso - Celebrating the Muse, at Marlborough Fine Art

I’ve never been a die-hard Pablo fan. It probably sprouts from a late afternoon drag-of-a-sweaty trip around his house museum in Barcelona, when I was young, disinterested, and frankly confused by it all. (My parents still quote that, and the visit we took to the Musée d’Orsay, which came even earlier in my childhood, as a tale of amusing dramatic irony from my life). That and, (I have only myself to blame for this), the disturbing, uncomfortable and unsettling impression I’ve often felt from what I perceived as inconsistency in his work. For example, Andrew Wyeth’s life-long commitment to the Helga Pictures steadily, solidly, and unquestionable, always seemed admirable to me. Picasso, I’ve imagined as a fidgety child, and a fickle adult. How unreasonable and ignorantly callow, to dictate that an artist who lived as long as Picasso did, should, or even could, remain challenged, inspired and motivated by the same style, influences and subjects; unchanged throughout his life.

What I realised viewing totalling 200 prints, is the pure frantic speed of his creativity. What I just outlined as a weakness: that Picasso exhibitions are visually loud, incohesive, chaotic, discordant and disorganised, is because you never can see just one Picasso at a show; which is in fact the testament to his greatness. His imagination, ideas and style seem to develop so rapidly that it can be identified within one piece. His work is constantly futuristic – forward facing…forward running.

In places and at times, you could also think of Picasso as being too easily swayed. His work is, as a single piece or in a body, always highly referential and a broad-ranging culmination of influences. Yet despite this, he appears so influence-less, in that his persona is utterly unique, independent, fresh, bold, and as it was…modern.

As I pointed out in my article Italian Renaissance Drawings…, if drawing be the father of all the other arts, and Picasso be the master of prints, then by viewing a collection of prints from the core of his career is perhaps the greatest insight into the decisions of direction and development he made in his paintings and sculptures. For a man who’s work is as varied as the entirety of the History of Art, to reach beyond insight to understanding of all his achievements, is a complex but rewarding task. And so, like this was for me, with every exhibition of his work, you can expect to learn of something new.

Pablo Picasso: Celebrating the Muse – Women in Picasso’s Prints 1905-1968 is only available today and tomorrow (until 2 July,) at the Marlborough Fine Art, Albermarle Street.

http://www.marlboroughfineart.com/exhibition-Pablo-Picasso-Celebrating-the-Muse---Women-in-Picasso's-Prints-256276.html

Italian Renaissance Drawings at the British Museum

If ever I’ve seen an informative and theoretical exhibition, here was it. Following Change to Come? and the foundation show it dialogues, here is a show and a blog marking the change to come in my art education: from almost wholly practise to incessant study; from an environment of the very contemporary in art, to a varied environment of sources and a traditional approach to the study of art’s history. My Art & Design Foundation diploma is complete, and I embark on a History of Art degree in the Autumn term that is destined in its final year for the origin of many of the drawings in this exhibition, in a study trip to Venice. I found it uncannily considerate how the colour scheme chosen by the British Museum, a rich berry red and naturalistic Christmas tree green; and the demography of visitors couldn’t point more literally to the topic of tradition itself. The Renaissance, I’ve always felt, is where the traditions of Western Art began, and as the exhibition very clearly explains, the tradition of drawing.

Renaissance Man (author, artist, architect, poet, philosopher etc.), Leon Battista Alberti, warned, ‘Never take the stylus or brush in your hand if you have not first constituted in your mind all that you have to do.’ I think most contemporary tutors and artists would advise this also for a brush, but for a pencil, we see how the tradition of drawing and its purpose has changed. To make a drawing could have two very different approaches: to plan and to sell. To plan may be with brisk rousing marks as in Da Vinci’s fluid Virgin and Child with a Cat c.1475-81, as he explains: ‘The sketching out of a narrative should be rapid, and the arrangement of limbs not too defined.’ This becomes the visual brainstorm of the artist as he considers a range of compositions (mostly). Or to plan, as in elder works - from model books of old paintings - the composition of a scene through the careful cohesion of many parts. Or, as never seen quite so importantly as before this time: to sell oneself. Artists could advertise their skills in finished books of drawings and prints (to which could be reproduced) to the wealthy bankers that kept town states such as Florence and Venice afloat and thriving.

From an exhibition that includes the works of powerhouse High Renaissance artists: Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, I was challenged by the sight of a Da Vinci charcoal mess. I found myself resting in front of some other favourable Italians, whose drawings reflect a core of craftsmanship, and an intuitive talent. One was Andrea Mantegna, and his dramatic Man Lying on a Stone Slab, c.1475-85 (pictured), that for anyone who knew it already, would reignite imagery of his stunning tempera masterpiece The Lamentation over Dead Christ, c.1480, and both pieces’ highly desirable foreshortening. This is the growing talent of the Renaissance that can be spotted over the retrospect of the exhibition, and the course of 150 years from the late Gothic traits, to the borderline Baroque.

Another notable piece would be Fra Filippo Lippi’s radiant Virgin and Child with Two Angels (recto) c.1460-5, where exquisite yet bold touches of white over an ochre preparation are so commanding that the drawing exudes the physical and metaphorical light and purity intended from these four characters. Quite on the other end would be the stainless steal appeal of Fra Bartolommeo’s Christ in Judgement c. 1500, whose very finished and crisply delivered drawing, found at the end of the exhibition, enunciates drawings, (though never excepted on the same plane as a painting,) as being a considered art form themselves. My feelings on it couldn’t be arranged better than Giorgio Vasari wrote in Lives of the Artists, 1568, ‘Drawing: the father of our three arts, architecture, sculpture and painting.’ For me, drawing is a key skill that underlines all great artists, and for me, the practise of it births undeniable masterpieces.

Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings is at the British Museum until 25 July.

Change to Come? 2

Images to illustrate the previous blog: work by fellow students

Change to Come?

Sitting in my gallery space at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, vigilant to the possibility of art falling from the walls, and ready to tour any eager visitors, I think I could be at any art school in well…England, surveying the primal days of the artists of the future. There are always fads and phases to inevitably grip a collection of young people all working under one tutor, in one environment – are these the trends of the future? Can I predict where the focus of art may be in half a decade’s time based upon the unique and eclectic concerns of the students’ final major projects of the foundation (, fine art especially,) show?

In conversation with my sister in law - an ambitious academic - I revealed that I think at some point a fundamental shift will occur from emphasis put on ideas back onto emphasis on craftsmanship, like a new Aesthetic Movement. It seems logical to me that the end is nigh on the highly conceptual – there appears to be little a concept left to explore. On the other end, there are always a few whose academic approach to art and conscientiousness, motivates them to achieve a widely agreed level of craftsmanship quality which distinguishes it art. However at this stage, in this exhibition, these few are greatly outnumbered; so I don’t perceive this coming soon!

Not altogether a paradox, currently many students are deeply influenced by the ways of the past – not in style or method, like the afore mentioned traditionalists, but by the facts and objects of a society of the past, and the appeal these have as ‘old’ objects – as rotting, decaying, time capsules which are unmoved, found, remnants; passageways to people from before; to explore the concept of memory. This often involves ‘leaving’ objects in a suitcase; framing new works in vintage frames; or scattering objects across a worn down table. Looking for quaint objects, usually wooden, and dated floral prints or photographs with an antique fade, will help you identity this fad, which is usually in the form of instillations. I can see why it’s become an attractive concept – it’s nostalgic, invites elements of mystery, and has the potential to involve a strong narrative. It is intriguing because it is about absence. Absence of that time itself, of the person alluded to within it, but also – and here is where the last two styles differ – of the artist. The anonymous artist appears again. The opposition between these styles is that these students don’t want to appear to have made ‘their’ things. And so a return to craftsmanship focus in art really would be radical.

The third shares this lack of artist identity, but appears from the outside quite different. It is very unmade, and it prides itself on this openness and unsubtly. It takes its space, and demands attention. Comprising of found objects - often furniture - that form instillations, or sculptures. It lacks the quaintness of the genre before and is generally more robust, less detailed, and more matter of fact. It is even less crafted. Sometimes barely touched by the artist, often only composed by him/her in order to create a new meaning out of these pieces. The artists create ideas, not things – truly modern. It was unkindly graffitied on our wall, ‘Fine Art is for people who can’t paint’…or as it could [optimistically] rebutted: ‘Fine Art is for people who choose not to paint, so this cannot be proven.’

Out of the odd few who do in fact use their hands to mark on a flat material (paper, card, newspaper, canvas, panel etc) with some kind of rectangular implement (pencil, pen, chalk, pastel, paint, graphite etc); their style could be broadly categorised within Abstraction or Expressionism. Pieces are usually not recognisable within a genre (: landscape, portrait, still life, religious/historic and genre painting) and often multi-media. Modern again in purpose – the significance is put in the concept or emotion.

Art school education is a lot more DIY in the way it is learnt: you teach yourself; you learn [consciously, or directly] nothing; and less DIY in the work that is produced. The question is perhaps does this provide more, or less freedom for artists to develop and work within their unique style…?

On My Travels

I’ve been working… as a waitress. A new venture for summer 2010 to gain, not in this case careers experience, but money. I offered up one and a half solid months as a sacrifice to my consciousness, expecting it would be a loss to my freedom of the holidays and thus art activities. But here’s the interesting bit – I’m not working at one restaurant, but rather a company that staffs for catered events in venues around London. In May I worked at Christie’s Auction house on Kings Street, and in June, so far, phase one of the opening of the new Ceramics Gallery at the very top of the Victoria and Albert museum.

Quite literally on my work travels, eyes poised and expectant for interesting looking exhibitions, I pause in front of posters for galleries on the underground platform; or let my pupils dash from side to side, as we pass one on a train in motion. I’ve never quite understood the objective of the Art on the Underground project. I like the idea, if it is this: to turn more of our public spaces into galleries; to decorate ugly walls with beautiful art; to expose thousands of people to exciting aesthetic experiences – to educate all evenly and inclusively in art. But, it’s never quite felt like this. Not helped probably by a lack of real name dropping (comparable to a mediocre musician ‘Feat.-ing’ Paul McCartney) by TFL. You need big name artists to be involved for people to realise it is art, and not just advertising. But then probably these, unless we count Banksy, would find the often dirty and sweaty setting, especially in summertime, of the underground a bit demeaning a place for high quality art – It just isn’t practical for safe, or fully appreciated viewing.

Is it just then, as it has seemed over the past, trendily designed instruction to London underground etiquette: especially useful for the tourists to which pictures communicate more efficiently and clearly than words. The first piece I’ve really appreciated is Linear: 60 portraits, pencil on paper by Dryden Goodwin. It is high quality art on the theme of the underground – the sixty subjects are underground staff for the Jubilee Line – so it seems highly appropriate for its intentions.

I remember introducing myself to a colleague at one of my first events, as an art foundation student, and so she proceeded to tell me how awkward she felt because the entirety of her journey there, she was being watched and drawn. I’m surprised not more of my London friends have complained to me about this, for, numerous tutors have advised me, and no doubt will continue to do for all time (as drawing from life will always be an important and valued skill), to sketch people on our journeys – Piccadilly, Jubilee, Northern Lines of the underground of course being perfect for this. Goodwin’s drawings are a collection of portraits I really appreciate. Simple, tangible, true to the medium, character-oozing and collectively cohesive.

All completed in under one hour, it was a task I tried myself in an art project, and carried out in a similar manner. On the online video you can see this best, that Goodwin chats to his models about themselves, and through the learning of his personality, almost like a less synthetic, more fleshy caricature, he moulds their face of life from this. Additionally clips of their conversation are run through the speeded up version of his drawing. This is the kind of art I want to see on the underground, where it can be heralded as the talent of Britain to guests from a far.