Essential Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is one practitioner on my list of contemporary artists whose artwork I can always depend upon for visual stimulation, hence why I was so keen to see his latest exhibit at the White Cube in Hoxton. Relatively unknown to those who have yet to stray from mainstream consumption, the German national and French resident, has in fact showcased numerous solo shows across Europe, always to a standard and style distinctively his own. More than a review of ‘Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen’, I’m going to introduce you to the artist I’ve nearly written about many a time, and almost once paralleled to Turner and Rembrandt’s idiosyncratic painting technique discussed in ‘Visual Indigestion’ (December 2010.)

The exhibition of multimedia relief photographs (predominantly), sketchbooks and one epic relief painting, fills not only the main, but upstairs galleries.

So what is it about Anselm Kiefer that makes me so enthusiastic? The artist subtly but ambitiously combines interplay of techniques, exploitation of media, and a thoroughly ‘felt’ response.

The twenty-four large seascapes that make up ‘des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen’ in the main gallery of the Cube, are a melee of techniques ceased fire. With colours, and textures at hazy peace with one another. He heightens black and white photographs with splashes, drips, smudges and the most radical – electrolysis. This provides a stunning contrast between primitive patterns from nature and man-made experimentation. The latter, is enigmatic, especially in places where it appears even outside of the artist’s hands, highlighting the idea of the sublime.

The first I knew of the artist was his exploitation of oils, often mixed with sand, to build up heavily textured impasto paintings such as ‘Rorate Caeli desuper et nubes pluant iustum’, mixed media, 2006 - that has also been exhibited at the White Cube. He uses an aggressive application of materials that associates itself with the history of Germany he often seeks to portray. And I always find myself complimenting the artists whose subject and technique align to additive affect.

It is due to the first and second reason that works that are almost always 2D, stray, like much of contemporary art, into the 3D – not content with established and boxed techniques. Kiefer is able to combine the abilities of paintings to depict the strength of colour and design, and sculpture to be sensational. For example the nine pieces of ‘I hold all the Indias in my hand’ from my favourite part, the upstairs gallery are, as those downstairs, photographs worked over. These images of him bathing in the sea echo the idea brought about by the title, which is an extract from a seventeenth-century poem by Francisco de Quevedo, meditating on love and loss. These are overlaid with bath crystals to emphasis spume; and by marbling techniques in complimentary peppermint greens and burnt rusting umbers, which frame the figure as well as areas of natural water patterning such as ripples. In places, this forms the mist of misconception of the naive, whereas the burnt oranges arise like a fire of passion. All continuing what the downstairs room began with insinuating – the sublime. He uses technique to deep poetic effect – assumed even before the quotation to literature is observed.

I would encourage you to do as I, always see the work of Kiefer when it is advertised…

Paintings are pictured in the order they are referenced across the article.

This exhibition is at the White Cube in Hoxton, N1, until 9 April 2011.

http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/ak%202011/v/

Cradle

I always feel doubly enlivened by a creator discussing his creation. Last Summer I wrote about Dryden Goodwin’s Jubilee line portraits from the series entitled ‘Linear’ (see On My Travels – June 2010.) This evening I heard the multi-media portraitist speak on his work in discussion with the writer Geoff Dyer and the curator-come-chairman Camilla Brown, and found inspiration in discovering the series ‘Cradle’, exhibited at the photographer’s gallery (- a place I must take a vow now to visit.)

‘Cradle’, a series of high contrast black and white photos of strangers on the streets of London is but another fulfilment of our modern world so frequently expressed by artists in street photography. Yet, Goodwin has “disrupted the surface” of the print with the scarring of line from an etching needle. What he has described as daring form of ruin, is in fact not subtractive but positively additive. He has cradled the heads of his subjects with the workings of his hands – the tactile nature of the drawn, manual medium in contrast to the detached digital media. He encases this fragile part, protecting it from the unknown turns of the city. It stabilises the body in a moment where it would other wise just be moving through. Without this act, it is more an image of the impermanency of modern life, and less a portrait. This enforcement of the contours of the face, individualises the ‘sitter.’ Without it, it wouldn’t be more than the changing face – as the talk entitled ‘Picturing Everyman’ so knowingly echoed.

The artist described his falling in love with the face of the sitter he draws. Whether he did momentarily, or it is just the undivided focus, the lack of interest in all that is besides it, that suggests to him the euphoria of love, I’m not sure. But certainly, he seeks to contain that moment of the delight in looking at and creating the face, to hold in that place a permanent image – the engraving so sunk it can’t be undone – around the face. The contours are beautiful. From a coarsely carved line is in fact the gentleness of the fluidity of his hand, caressing as he sculpts the face, that in photographing he could only document not altar. Lines like tears, like wrinkles and like dimples charge the face with a psychological depth needed to mar the absence of the photographer, which is felt from pictures like voyeurism. He effectively creates a second image – for when the light shines on the reverse there is only the face that the artist has moulded. However as the artist wished to emphasis he sought an image of “portraying not betraying that person.” He has not really created this person, he has only defined on paper what he has noticed.

http://www.drydengoodwin.com/cradle.htm

This talk was part of series of talks at the National Portrait Gallery entitled ‘Picturing the Self’ http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/late-shift-1/talk-picturing-everyman.php

‘Carved, Cast and Modelled’ – Sculpture from the Barber Collection

‘Carved, cast and modelled’ could be described as an antipode to the capacious sculpture exhibition currently held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London - ‘Modern British Sculpture.’ That is, if the Royal Academy show questions what sculpture is and should be in the future, the Barber Institute efficiently envisages a definition of the tradition of western sculpture in its 2000 years of established existence, in a manner that its curator rightly described as balanced. This is a triumph that a collection of this size can boast such a wide selection. The staff admitted that they have in the past struggled to pass misconceptions locals had, that there is little of wonder inside this one-brick-to-shape-all-bricks building found on the University of Birmingham campus.

The speakers at the opening were keen to labour these points – that the success of the gallery has come out of Sir Thomas Bodkin’s bold directorship in purchasing so bravely many sculptures at a time of war, or worst even, just after the war, when buying art was a major financial risk. This did of course pose one key advantage – the relative cost of works was cheap, and the Barber could afford that which (more or less) the national galleries could. In other words, this is a rather delightful collection. And it is duly deserved that these sculptures be set aside, to be distinguished and made holy as a unique collection within the wider collection.

Speaking of making holy, it is right to begin with ‘Christ as the Man of Sorrows’, a stirring marble relief from the Baroque period, that is far from the expected austerity, and instead has the rough expressionism of the International Gothic period. The sculptor, Orazio Marinali (1643-1720) has carved Jesus’ face with assertion of humility and sacrificial suffering. The tears and the crown of thorns, which are both far from subtle, remind us of the emotional and physical torture endured by Christ. In complete juxtaposition, the nose and cheek have porcelain-like perfection, thus representing divinity. The finest details are undoubtedly for me: the taut skin of the gaunt face, and the deep nostrils that propel the sculpture’s nature to that further than mere relief.

On quite another theme, ‘The Bust of Juliette Recanier’ by Joseph Chinard, c.1800, is perhaps the most beautiful of them all. If ‘Christ as the Man of Sorrows’ touches us, then this calls us to touch. The model’s limp-hands attempt to hold on the shawl to cover her. Between her fingers she gathers the fine, patterned fabric – just compliant enough to remain hooked over her sloping left shoulder, and then to be indecisively stretched from her arm to breast. Although she is half exposed, from a three-quarter view, her lowered glance hides all knowledge of it. In subject matter and handling she couldn’t be more sensitively rendered. This is only furthered by the poetic play on the heroic marble goddess - Juliette is serene like her classical counterpart, but unlike a goddess, her beauty is tainted. She is not untouchable.

One of the key beauties of sculpture resonates: it is a tangible subject, which is so engaging because it allows us to explore, to move about the object, and to find surprises in the revision of each view. Sculpture is, and this exhibition does nothing but prove it, an interactive discipline. It provokes a perceptive response and to know this, you must only go and stand before them.

Photography is care of the Barber Institute.

This exhibition is open until 2^nd May.

http://www.barber.org.uk/carved.html

This article also features in Warwick student newspaper: the Boar - http://theboar.org/

Intellect as Art’s Enemy? 2

“People have an inbuilt sense of art, particularly the ones who haven’t had it taken out of them.”

Quinlan Terry

It has always been my ambition that everyone can take hold of the joy in art [even slightly] that I do, and quotes like this remind me that it is not my opinion that education is the only way to understand art – understanding as I discussed in ‘Intellect is…the enemy of art’ (January 2010) that prohibits many from engaging themselves uninhibited. After all it is understanding that stabilises one’s confidence. However, it is my understand of art, that like the creativity that creates the art itself, is in fact intuitive. Appreciation isn’t taught, it is felt; and likewise for understanding. Therefore although I have practised and studied art, I am no more the likely to identify the beauty in an artwork.

Sometimes I wonder if education only builds a veil, of terminology, pretence and ordered analysis, over ones’ eyes. Do not get me wrong, I yearn to learn, it is what I am deeply passionate about – not just appreciating art, but knowing about it. But I do not believe a crash course in Rodin is necessary for a viewer to sense the emotional content in one of his sculptures, to identify the character of its making, and the attitude of the artist. This is purely observation, closer to body-language studies than art history (in this case).

My foundation art tutor was, while I was under his instruction, working on a project with a similar theorem. He studied the art he asked his children to create, and the way in which they appreciated and understood art, believing that they had as much potential as he – a trained teacher and fine art practitioner.

I don’t wish to sound like a bohemian. I am very consciously aware as I write, that I sound like an expressionistic tutor from the early Bauhaus – those that were deeply criticised for their methods of teaching, and scared many of their pupils away from art because they must have feared that they would sound as crazy as them at the end of their education…However, I’ll risk it for a biscuit, because I believe I’m speaking rationally: Art could do with being less taught, and more affectively, experienced.

So I’ll end where I begun - with something someone else said. E. H. Gombrich advised his readers not to loosen their tongues, but to open their eyes. So look and then you will love, because you are bound to observe something lovable. Personally this detail from Ford Madox Brown’s ‘Baa Baa Lambs’, 1851-59, does it for me…

Hannah Starkey ’29 pictures’

Hannah Starkey, celebrated British contemporary, is currently exhibiting a collection of photographs that from the entitling: ’Twenty Nine Pictures,’ would seem fit for a mindless assortment, and yet this retrospective is a highly cohesive, well-formed and prima facie, thematic show of stalwart pictures.

As an important aside, before I launch into an account of the artist’s work viewed at the Mead Gallery, (as I fear I shall never return from the black hole of shear enthusiasm), it is first right that I attribute praise to the curator - Diarmuid Costello, who has laid out a logical and assessable exhibition, with potential to appeal to all….

The work of Hannah Starkey is both charming and thought provoking –something I consider a rare combination. It supersedes contemporary standards for these documentary scenes are neither detached, nor forcefully controversial for the eye. These qualities I find to be the two greatest flaws in work of the moment; that the world can be made to appear utterly hostile via the representation of human indifference, or confrontation. Neither of these properties produces pleasant work, even if they are ‘challenging.’ In opposition, here is a body of work that still oozes intelligence and a newness that contemporary art aims always to achieve.

The twenty-nine pictures are unashamedly composed, expressing the refined beauty and skill the photographer possesses in constructing an aesthetically pleasing, steadfast shot. This is not just the ability to take a striking, accurately focussed picture; it is that which must be held by artists of all descriptions – to lay out colour, line and form across a space in places and of quantities that construct commanding harmony. Starkey introduces patterns into a setting that compliments its reading by the viewer. Primarily these are well-positioned forms that echo shapes throughout - these are highly rhythmic pieces. And in being such, they feel alive, subtracting from them the potentially suppressive atmosphere provoked by her subjects’ melancholy.

In being so formulated, they are playful because close-to all contain artificial subtleties. This becomes a game for the audience – to detect the deceptive element in each photograph by closely observing the patterns weaved into the pieces seen before.

Frequently, Starkey plays with the relationship between the foreground and background, suggesting consequently how the figure feels a part of the natural (of urban) world. This is when a mirror gains creative potential, such as in Untitled, January 2001 and Untitled, September 2008 (seen above.) The detachment is not deep enough to dampen our visual senses - we still feel involved, engaged, interested.

In Untitled, August 1999 (also above) it is a reflection of other sorts – two women stand apart from each other, beneath a spotlight. To their side, a couple of shadowed figures, which appear very similar respectively to the pair, are engaged in friendly conversation. This is to me, a beautifully expressed comment on the pair’s relationship, that is then only further enhanced by the whole photograph being split into two distinct horizontal areas, one sourced by outside light, one lit from the room behind the curtain.

Hannah Starkey’s ‘Twenty-Nine Pictures’ is an effigy to artistic tools used to their greatest potential. She crafts into of a scene: a narrative without saying anything, emotion without attending to the face, and beauty without a banal assemblage of beautiful things.

You’ve just missed the opening! Fortunately this exhibition will be held until 12^th March 2011.

http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/events/visual-arts/hannah-starkey

Gauguin: Maker of Myth at the Tate Modern

The success of Tate Modern’s Gauguin: the Maker of Myth exhibition can, in my opinion, be attributed to that fact that as an artist “Gauguin’s no visionary, he’s a schemer” This, perhaps the most insightful description I’ve heard on the work of Paul Gauguin, was beautifully stated by his contemporary Camilla Pisarro. It is as a schemer that Gauguin became crucial for the beginnings of modern art, and it is the art of scheming that is a defining feature of what makes modern art, modern.

The Impressionists represent the visionaries, who sought to capture what they viewed when sat painting en plein-air, discovering a representative romance. They were however, as visionaries, only skirting around modernism, not venturing quite far enough from what they already knew, or far enough into their imagination. It was those who came post the Impressionists, the bohemian radicals such as Paul Gauguin, whose imagination for what art could be, led them to discover the real shock of the new.

To be modern is to scheme so that materials are transformed into a work of art. It is certainly to encompass more than is provided before your eyes, or to your fingertips.

The most dramatic examples of Gauguin’s are those, which exemplify his fearless approach to all elements of colour. The enigmatic Breton Girls dancing Pont-Aven, 1888, depicts three Brittany maidens held momentarily in scalene triangular form – each facing and reaching into their own separate direction. The magic of this is that in all parts of the room, it feels as though they are inviting you in. The light is delightfully different on each face, absorbing into the skin a range of surprising hints, which come to echo the blanket chromaticism of the painting. There is potency to these potentially excessively (but not actually,) variegated and uncomplimentary colours. - This is the daring flair of a successful modern artist.

The palette represents a surprisingly sophisticated soberness of colour – muted limes shade the grass the girls dance upon; pastels lights in the sky highlight the village buildings and shrubbery; and fiery hints define patches of exposed skin otherwise pale, jaundice and carrying ill teals tints. The artist may well have endorsed the archaic Breton stereotypes, but he equips the images with an accurate, if borderline-abstract drama.

The creativity of colour is just one of the ways Gauguin schemes. He is the self-created bohemian artist, he formed himself into a character when he transformed from Bourgeois banker to avant-garde artist. His character became the weight behind his art - where he lacked in formal training, belief in his own abilities became the self-motivator of his career declaring, ‘I am a great artist I know it.’

This is one striking method that modern artists have taken to become the painter-schemer – he/she builds an outlandish character to better advertise themselves by gaining press and selling their art by establishing a celebrity brand. Whether this is Damien Hirst or Andy Warhol, the role of artist persona has been exaggerated to a much greater significance.

Though Gauguin was far from known and popular in the day, this is the most popular exhibition I have ever visited. It seems more than a little ironic that an artist who so fervently sought the primitive past for inspiration, and wished to escape from the art world community, became a leader in modern art. What he did come to represent by doing so however, was an adventurer into new places across the world - to the Pacific and Caribbean islands of Martinique, Masquesas, and most decidedly – Tahiti; and consequently into new places in art via a daringness to discover. Even if new finds are just old things uncovered.

Gauguin: Maker of Myth is at the Tate Modern until 16^th January

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gauguin/

This article also features in Warwick’s student newspaper ‘The Boar’

http://media.theboar.org/archive/volume-33/issue-6/newspaper/24.pdf

Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals at the National Gallery

What is it that warrants Canaletto (and let us not forget, his rivals) an exhibition at the National Gallery? What differentiates these paintings from others known for their landscapes – Claude, Turner and Constable? Perhaps, even more pertinent a question ought to be: what differentiates Canaletto from his rivals – Marieschi, Belotto, Carlevarijs and Guardi?

What struck me first about Canaletto’s scenes of Venice, was the glow of warming light that basks the building forming dramatic shadows, and highlights the ripples in the lagoon. Yet, his work is unlike the seventeenth-century hero of the landscape genre, Claude and his inseparable infamous glow. For Canaletto’s brushstroke, composition etc. lacks the fantastical air of Claude’s classical landscapes – the classical that represents the element of mythology - the invented. Therefore I see Canaletto’s landscapes as both more assessable and relational.

It is true that here Canaletto (and his rivals) portray an idealised view of the city – always seen in pleasant weather and complimentary light. However the other aspects of its formal qualities assure us Canaletto’s Venice can be trusted with our eyes. Crisp lines, perfect perspective, well-plotted compositions, and deep shadows – His chiaroscuro is the well balanced mid between natural visual drama and mistrusted melodrama. Such shadows are entirely considered so that they are not a wayward add-on, but factored into the very composition. It seems impossible that even in the darkness of the shadows, there is the warmth of Canaletto.

As far as beautifully painted landscapes and cityscapes go, this is a worthy collection of paintings to view in exhibition. However I must confess, I sped around the six rooms of paintings in under thirty minutes. This is a thematic exhibition of Venetian scenes – you cannot come expecting a menagerie. It will be of no surprise then that I struggled to identify the painting I wished to buy at postcard stand, now in smaller size. It’s an exhibition I’d invite an art lover, traditionalist, or general romantic (to which looking upon pictures of Venice alone conjures up a good reception). In structure it’s strikingly similar to ‘Turner and the Masters,’ where indeed some Canaletto’s and Guardi's were shown, last winter at the Tate Britain. And my belief is that if an artist is to stand up against Turner, that artist will lose.

In terms of how Canaletto measures to his rivals in Venice and at the exhibition, I admired Guardi’s creative tease on the city’s views. Particularly in A Regatta on the Grand Canal c. 1777 the subtle sway of the buildings clustering the riverbank that lean inwards sandwiching the scene together. It’s that light adaptation, like Canaletto’s stark shadows, which become a part of the cohesion of the composition. I did not at all fall for Carlevarijs’ overtly Baroque scenes of Venice in festivities. There is great, refined taste in Canaletto’s paintings that can’t be denied.

The exhibition stays in the Salisbury Wing of the National Gallery until 16 January 2011 -

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/venice-canaletto-and-his-rivals