Women - Female Virtue

I am desperate to discuss with you the most beautiful work of art I’ve seen in the last week, and the most intellectual and morally inspirational work of art I’ve seen in the last week. The absolutely perfect coincidence is that they have something in common, Female Virtue.

The work of art who’s beauty is strikingly extravert is, Lady Godiva, c. 1897, by John Collier, at The Herbert museum and art gallery, Coventry. The work of art who’s is an enigmatic introvert is, Innocence between Virtue and Vice, 1790, by Marie Guillhelmine Benoist.

I have no doubt that Collier’s figure is the (for I can recall no other) most beautiful figure I have seen in art. It surpasses even Deigo Veláquez’s stunning posterior view upon Venus in, The Toilet of Venus (‘The Rokeby Venus’), 1647-51, at the National Gallery, London. For in Collier’s masterpiece, Godiva’s flesh radiates. It is utterly sensuous, and yet wholly dignified. Even the ratty hair standard to Pre-Raphaelite painting, of which Collier’s style could be associated with, that I usually find myself twitching at, does not bother me in this painting. Moreover, it isn’t something of visual surplus, it is in this painting completely visually necessary – it seals the Lady’s virtue.

Though it may seem that her head is head in shame, and as though she is a prostitute paraded about the city; she is in fact a woman of will, whose head is held down to show the sacrifice of shame she has made in order to achieve good. This historic character of Saxon nobility, alive between c.980-1067, rode through the streets of Coventry naked to make a stand against her husband’s unjust leadership. Her spouse, Leofric the Earl of Mercia, enforced unreasonably high taxes upon his tenants, to which Lady Godiva could not support. What a woman of virtue?

Female artist, Maria Guilhelmine, Comtesse Benoist painted Innocence Between Virtue and Vice to retell the didactic mythological story, ‘The Choice of Hercules.’ Hercules, in this case Innocence, is to decide between the characters of morality and immorality, and if [s]he chooses correctly [s]he will reach the temple of innocence and success. The artist (1768-1826) worked at a time of male dominance, when women were often viewed as an evil temptress of sexual immorality. Thomas Gisborne in Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex wrote on the supposed instable mental qualities of the female gender, arguing they had the tendency to, ‘frivolousness…a thirst for admiration and applause; to vanity and affection.’

In this painting the balance is readdressed. Vice, or the appealing pleasure, is the male figure the leaps towards Innocence who is appropriately dressed in the colour of purity. Innocence rests into Virtue, who becomes thus the symbol of protection. The nature of Vice’s unexpected and aggressive approach left Innocence little time to consider the temptation upon her, he had planned to whisk her away immediately; yet in Vice she will find freedom as she runs gaily towards the temple. Together the women represent the relentless and unified quality of feminine willpower. They flash Virtue an evil gaze and skidaddle.

A great interactive exhibition on Lady Godiva is at Coventry’s Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, entitled ‘Discover Godiva’ and is one of the permanent exhibitions.

http://www.theherbert.org/index.php/home/visit-us/permanent-galleries/discover-godiva

It has to be this Way2, Lindsay Seers at the Mead Gallery

Whether or not people agree art is becoming increasing inviting, it is becoming increasing involving. The way of contemporary art, and so much of the work exhibited at the Arts centre’s Mead Gallery, is to immerse its audience into the varying 3D and multi-media format of the art. It seems logical that this should become today’s trend when considering how long the average person, students especially, spend in front of screens in a world that is almost completely reproduced virtually. We long for intimacy, to feel, to be amongst it all.

This couldn’t be truer for the work of artist Lindsay Seers, who was mute until she was eight years old. This was due to her feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of her sensory experiences of the word, that, quite literally words weren’t enough. But in this new world, the world created for us in these art exhibitions, do we long for reality or for fantasy?

The artist’s inspiration for the film and fortifying sculptures was the disappearance of her step-sister, perhaps to a diamond smuggling industrial area in west Africa. It appears that Lindsay searches for the facts of the case: for clues to her survival, and records of memories and events. Yet the work is far from a missing persons case; its style of communication reflects the confusion of the data found. Nothing, when viewing the film, appears to be true. It all seems like a surreal, disjointed fantasy. Guardian writer, Laura McLean-Ferris, questioned Seer’s award winning film of 2009, Extramission 6 – ‘Is any of it true?’ Concluding, ‘It doesn’t matter…’ Facts aside, (how can memory ever be fact?) all that is remaining is a range of viewpoints.

Seer’s film It has to be this Way² imposes its impression in a completely unique and praise-worthy manner. Even though you long for reality, for the truth of the matter, when you discover the darkness of the truth, that it doesn’t embody this ideal image, you become reserved and retreat.

The room in which this short gothic thriller (20 minuets of fear-invoking voices and progressive imagery,) is shown in a mock, true-to-scale slave fort and throughout the film flashes of images of the real and the re-created are integrated until you lose any real sense of location. Seers picks you up and carries you in and out of reality. At times you are very conscious of the view you have down upon the circular screen that imitates looking through the camera; at other times you are completely submerged. At anytime when you are not consumed by baffled thoughts, you can admire her creative ability to relate language, the arts, and experience. A skill fostered during, and in reaction to her time when she couldn’t speak herself.

Get involved in Seer’s work and become the modern viewer. From outside appearances, the white cube design of gallery seems empty of substance. But upon seeing the film inside the slave fortress, you begin to make sense of the sculptures found outside of it. You needn’t stop for 20 minutes to capture Lindsay’s unique and ultra-modern, creative style of film making; even two minutes inside the viewing room gives you a great sense of mystery, intrigue and to some vague extend – insight. And a warning, don’t arrive with the preconception that the work there is to be understood; to enjoy the full glory of contemporary art you mustn’t search for an answer, but enjoy the exploration of the questions.

This essentially is the idea behind Lindsay Seer’s It Has to be this Way² project. That she is not likely to solve the mystery of her missing step-sister, Christine Parks - as if she thought it possible she would have surely invested some time earlier in her life into it - it is to revel in the unknown of the journey and through a range of interviews and travels, build up a picture of the distortion and frailty of memory itself.

The Mead Gallery, part of the University of Warwick’s art centre, is holding this exhibition until 11^th December. Entrance is free!

http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/events/visual-arts/lindsay-seers-it-has-to-be-this-way2

This article can also be found on Warwick University’s student newspaper – The Boar: http://theboar.org/archive/volume-33/issue-2/

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Serpentine

If you go to the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition at the Serpentine, you are welcomed into a mix-tape of photography frailty, beauty, and (most importantly to the artist,) experimentation. Composed to uncomposed, perfected to left.

Tillman’s exhibition is one of varied taste – it’s not easy to gage what makes him passionate, yet this is far from disconcerting because it appears he has a passion simply for taking unique shots, and it is invested in individually unconnected, but very enjoyable outcomes. At points it appears it is light that interests him most, for example Paperdrop (Puma) 2007; sometimes composition e.g. Roy 2009; in some photographs narratives are exalted, Anders Pulling Splinter From his Foot, 2004; and on many it is photographic exploration: Gedser 2004. (I urge you to look these up as exemplary specimens.)

Now I know I have said this before about another piece of work (The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, after seeing it in November), but I believe I’ve now seen the most beautiful piece of artistry put before my eyes. And, I don’t think it is completely unjust or fickle to change my mind on my favourites - to have found another which rivals the first in the course of a year, from the many exhibitions and permanent collections I’ve viewed, I think that it is still only proportionate and true to my devotion to good taste.

Ostgut Freischwimmer, 2004 by Wolfgang Tillmans, is both the most bewilderingly beautiful photograph (that which it is), and painting (that which it appears) I’ve come across, (those which are my two favourite mediums).

It is not often that I cannot correct any part of the work; to the extent that I am stunned by the work itself and have no consideration deeper into the realms of analysis – that’s when you know you’ve seen real beauty. You just want to stare: “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Drop knowing something. You are not here long.” (Walker Evans, American photographer.) Just look at this piece and see how it captures your imagination, how it stuns your senses. It is somewhere between the tracts of a falling feather, or a rustling bag caught in wind, or paper as it floats to the floor. It’s alive with definite but delicate movement. It feels like it’s in a deep place, but not to the depths of entrapment, but to the depths of new unexplored places (the work itself is experimental, it’s new); like a sea creature gliding the sea floor. It’s a ballet dancer – Tchaikovsky’s Swan. It’s dumbfoundedly creative, and yet surprisingly simple and quiet. It’s a lady who is completely casual, but very prim. And I’ve watched how she charms on the catwalk.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, there will be something of Tillman’s that will: it is that varied.

This show continues until, at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2008/04/wolfgang_tillmans26_june_29_au.html

Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World

I was shamefully too late in noticing this show in order to recommend that you visit it (it closed on Sunday), so let this be a lesson, now that I know Ernesto Neto, that you should never miss out on an opportunity to follow his work: he is a truly surprising find!

The photo above evinced the odd feeling I possessed throughout: my father, a fair art fiend like myself reading the published literature, and in the background a child jumping around. There were times where I did not feel like I really belonged at this exhibition, not that I wasn’t welcomed…It was like being welcomed into a home with unquestionable hospitality to find the family are all Earl Grey drinkers and you are not and suddenly you don’t feel so comfortable. It was the weirdest exhibition I’ve been to, but it wasn’t disturbing like Dali - It was the one of the few shows I’ve been to when I’ve felt: art more than for all cultures, is for all ages. But let me correct you now – this was no playground. Ernesto Neto is in the discussion of intellectual and imaginative art. You only have to read the literature to know how deep his considerations go.

So let me explain, if I can. Your place is this world Ernesto Neto has created - in his five-room-spreading-instillation in the upper gallery (indoor and terraces) of The Hayward - is some fusion of alien, animal and amoeba. It is the most effective transformation of space I have seen done in the art world. When you go to the latest Turbine Hall instillation, you still know you are in the turbine hall. Neto’s earth is a world of its own: and he calls his show The Edges of the World and comments, ‘The idea of a boundary, a limit, is very important in my works as they are always in every sense, on the verge of something.’ There are parts that resemble our world, but not obviously enough for it to not engage your brain into the intrigue of its mystery. His point is that his world itself is like a body. There’s bone-like structures; a strawberry-shaped net pavilion that is the heart fitted with drum inside for its beat of life; and a womb-like tepee of which it is written, ‘it is here, perhaps, that we come closest to the sensation of being inside our own selves.’ There is also water, of which our bodies is made two thirds of (so maybe in this world we’re not aliens, animals of amoebas, but human); and blood – again in no sinister way, but in a matter-of-fact science museum style.

So what does this exhibition actually look like? Depending on the scale of your imagination: either we are roaming around inside our own regenerated magnified bodies; or we are exploring a varying and unfamiliar landscape. Neto said he sees the body: ‘more like a city than an emotional and psychological representation of a person.’ So his garden city is made of ‘large-scale sculptures of biomorphic forms and participatory, immersive environments.’ Sculptures, such as wooden look-out points that are plagued with large Dalmatian shaped holes that could also be like leaves woven around trees. When you step up onto these tree houses you emerge from within the layer below. This is perhaps my favourite feature about the show: the utilising of vertical space. Through netting, he has divided the areas; so that to below your head appears above the mist or clouds, but from above you overlook a canopy of new foliage. (The Rainforest feel is no doubt related to Neto’s Brazilian birthing.) From the first room to the second room, this scenery turns from open, white-netted coves, and collections of pebbles; to shoots of green tight life – ‘his work is characterised by the use of stretchy, transparent fabric.’ Coves turn to enclosed brightly colours tunnels, structured by skeletal wooden slacks, and scented like spices. Across the outdoor areas there are plant-like sculptures, and actual organic forms (that don’t appear half as fun and interesting anymore), and a swimming pool like no other!

As proved by this exhibition, Ernesto is truly in touch with his senses holistically, which wholly shapes the outcome of the art he forms. He recommends, ‘breath through [y]our pores, close [y]our eyes to see, smell to listen, dance to levitate.’ If you really fancy educating yourself, as the booklet exemplifies, I assume the catalogue will prove also, that reading into Neto’s thoughts will open your eyes to your world and his.

This show, part of Festival Brazil [19^th June – 5^th September] has now finished.

http://festivalbrazil.southbankcentre.co.uk/ernesto-neto/exhibition

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