Posts tagged ‘Tate Britain’

Sep 2

Genius of Geometry: Patrick Caulfield

When I attended the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2006, I was completely stunned by an artist to whom the Academy had dedicated a room of its annual summer show: Patrick Caulfield. Born in London in 1936, and died in 2005 (hence the tribute paid to him at the following Summer Exhibition), Patrick Caulfield’s flattened geometric black-lined block coloured works have now become synonymous with the age of British pop-art, although it was a title which Caulfield actually rejected. And he was probably right to. While his works, largely acrylic on canvas, share many of the characteristics of the pop art age (bold colouration, simplified forms, black outlines), pop art promoted and impersonated the commercial world, while Caulfield’s works actually reference art historical notions of representation; from still life to pictorial depth, albeit represented in his characteristic paired down flat colours and simple linear expression.

Early output

Pottery (1969) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Foyer (1973) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Café Interior: Afternoon (1973) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Wine Glasses (1969) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Battlements (1967) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Dining/ Kitchen/ LIving (1980) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

It only took one glance that summer of 2006 at the perfectly painted lines and faultless application of block colours used artfully to depict rooms and places, café scenes and still lifes to know that I was completely in love with Caulfield’s works. While I adored the sparse simple images of his 1960s work, my real admiration was reserved for the knockout creations of the mid 70s, when Caulfield started to play with styles, integrating into his then renowned geometric works hints of trompe l’oeil photorealism. So in works such as Dining/Living/Kitchen for example, Caulfield paints a scene characterised by black outlines, block shadows, dispensed brushwork and anonymous handiwork and inserts into it a casserole dish so perfectly represented that you would swear a photo had been collaged onto the background. This technique is used with spectacular success in After Lunch, where the window (or is it a picture hanging on the wall?) looking onto an Austrian landscape is photorealistic to an awe-inspiring standard, while in Happy Hour, the wine glass at the painting’s centre actually reflects in its sheen a realistic depiction of the bar which, elsewhere in the painting is only represented with paired down flattened forms. Absolutely brilliant.

Tromp L’oeil brilliance

Happy Hour (1986) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

After Lunch (1975) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Still Life Autumn Fashion (1978) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Interior with a Picture (1985) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Second Glass of Whisky (1992) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Caulfield’s work not only thrilled me; it also inspired me. I am much indebted to the influence Caulfield had upon my own work – my painting Vintage Q, painted that summer immediately after seeing the RA show, is directly inspired by Caulfield’s technique, while Q4 and Q5, which followed suit, are likewise. Meanwhile, I think much of the interior design I put into place around my apartment flows directly from his mix of contemporary block colours, and interlaced with hints of rich, detailed damask patterns.

Later works: light and shadow

Room 3-95 (1995) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Trou Normand (1997) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Bishops (2004) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Hedone’s (1996) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Rust never sleeps (1996) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

Fruit display (1996) © The estate of Patrick Caulfield

So for that reason alone, Caulfield has always stuck in my mind, but imagine my delight when this summer, a solo show held at Tate Britain afforded me the opportunity to see Caulfield’s works all over again. In 5 exquisite galleries, a comprehensive selection of Caulfield’s works took us from his most simplistic 60s creations (a simple grey well reduced to flattened, even more simplified forms; a bend in the road, some castle battlements (above) and so on), to his brilliantly innovative 70s works, where trompe l’oeil dazzles the senses and shines amongst the flatter planes of the large-scale block colour canvases, and then onto the 80s and beyond, when Caulfield began to experiment more with light and shadow, not focusing so much on the thick outlines of black, but expressing an object with shadows and throwing light, albeit in block-colour form.

My works: inspired by Caulfield

Vintage Q (2006 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

Q4 (2007 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

Q5: Chez Helen (2008 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

I realise that in writing this review, I am somewhat missing the boat, seeing as the Caulfield show at Tate ended last weekend. But that is no reason why the genius of this brilliant artist should not be applauded to the full – an artist who took 60s simplification in an altogether more mentally complex direction; whose works have become iconic in the chic interiors of London’s cool hotels and boutiques; and whose images have been fundamental in shaping my own creative output as an artist.

Patrick Caulfield, the quiet revolution (reinesnotebook.com)

Oct 17

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Bored of the Pre-Raphaelites? Head straight to William Morris

The problem with the Pre-Raphaelites, the brotherhood of artists formed in England in 1984 by founding members John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, is that they have become a British institution. As much an institution in fact as the Queen’s corgis, the black cab and Big Ben. And like many a British institution, they get carted out, every so often, more often than not when times are down, when blockbuster exhibitions are expensive to organise, and its cheaper to take the best of British out of the closet. So seems to be the case with Tate Britain’s new “blockbuster” show, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, which promises to be a re-examination of the PRB, but in actual fact presents us with the same old paintings, the same old themes, and the same old narrative that we have seen time and time again.

Lady in red – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith (1866-8)

Usually in Liverpool – John Everett Millais, Isabella (1848)

Super twee: William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts (1852)

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that these paintings aren’t good – they are in fact pretty incredible, packed with their flowing fantastical red locks, the precision of Millais’ plants and flowers, the scale of their pictorial ambition and the brilliance of their life-like representation within a mystical setting. It’s just that even the most incredible painting can lose its gleam when it’s seen time and time again. In the last 5 years alone, Tate gave us a Millais retrospective (Sept 2007-Jan 2008) and a Romanticism display (Aug 2010-April 2012), centred around Pre-Raph favourites. Meanwhile at the Royal Academy, we had a retrospective of that other PRB favourite, J W Waterhouse (June-Sep 2009), and at the V&A the same old brotherhood was featured heavily in the exhibition on Aestheticism (April-July 2011). And so you see, with Tate’s new show, which promises to give us something new, and really doesn’t, it’s all a bit, well, underwhelming.

Skip through 6 rooms however, and in the room named “paradise” you really do get something worth visiting. For in showing the designs of William Morris, now famous for his Victorian fabrics which have become equally and intrinsically part of the “fabric” of British society (excuse the pun), you get to see these much loved designs in a new light – works which, when placed in a gallery setting, take on a new life force, as the viewer is encouraged to appreciate the intricacies of the designs and the decadent elegance of the period from which they arise. The Morris display did, admittedly, come as something of a surprise – Tate justifies its inclusion on the rather tenuous basis that Morris had been inspired by the PRB (as well as the medieval past, with which the PRB artists were also rather enamoured) in embarking upon his designs. Oh, and apparently Rossetti and a few other artists of the time were partners in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, the company which started producing the now widely-recognised fabrics on an almost industrial scale.

Whatever the connection, I was glad for it – Morris’ designs were my favourite part of the show and, although sparse in number, made me realise how often undervalued Morris is in art history. Too often overlooked as a designer, or at best an illustrator, are not these beautifully hand-crafted designs every bit as valid as artistic masterpieces as a Millais painting? Of course the art or illustration debate has gone on for years, and god knows, I have often been “accused” of being more an illustrator than an artist myself. But call it what you like – I’d far rather admire these “designs” in an art gallery than a filthy Tracey Emin bed any day.

I leave you with some of Morris’ best.

In the meantime, if you can stand the repetition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde is on at Tate Britain, London, until 13 January 2013.

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde (madameguillotine.org.uk)
Brian Sewell on Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at the Tate Britain (standard.co.uk)

May 14

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L.S. Lowry is coming to Tate Britain

I was thrilled by the news last week that Tate Britain will be honouring the work of frequently overlooked British industrial landscape painter L.S. Lowry from 25 June to 20 October 2013. The only frustration is that I have a whole year to wait until the spectacle hits London!

Lowry has long been one of my favourite British artists, ever since my parents purchased a tiny cottage in rural Isle of Wight almost 20 years ago, and along with the various odds and ends left in the cottage by the previous owner, there was a strangely gloomy yet enticing industrial scene hanging on the wall together with a group of funny little people walking around in the foreground.

L S Lowry, Street Scene (Pendlebury)

I was strangely fascinated by the image, which bared very little resemblance to the fresh, green bucolic landscape surrounding the cottage. Rather this industrial scene was rather bleak, in monotone shades of browns and greys, with vast forests of chimneys puffing smoke into the air in a continuous, unyielding fashion, while the workers all dressed in the same earthy tones looked the same – small cogs in a spiritless industrial machine. Despite its apparent despondency, the painting fascinated me, for it showed a snap shot of the humdrum of modern life, but in a style which was both naive but accessible. I had been introduced to Lowry, and I have been hooked ever since.

L S Lowry, A Market Place, Berwick upon Tweed (1935)

It is perhaps because of the naivety of Lowry’s draftsmanship, such as his figures, which are often referred to as “matchstick men” which has caused him to be relatively overlooked in the history of British art. I have often looked on amazon, for example, for a catalogue of Lowry’s oeuvre, but have found publications of his works to be woefully lacking. The only exhibitions I have attended of his works have been small scale sales of limited edition prints in private galleries, and I must have bemoaned the lack of a retrospective show of his work on at least a dozen occasions. It is therefore with great excitement that I await Tate’s show, and in the meantime fully intend to get everyone else excited by a small gallery below of some of Lowry’s works.

L S Lowry, Huddersfield (1965)

Bleak and grey as ever, the works rarely diversify from depicting scenes of industrialised Northern England where Lowry was born and worked and which, during the years of Queen Victoria’s reign had become a hub of industrialised growth leading to a population boom but a vast decrease in living conditions. Lowry demonstrates that England is not all lush green and pleasant lands as captured in works by Constable, or grand waterways and misty sea views as pronounced with such effect by Turner. Rather, these industrialised landscapes are typical of much of the country, even to this day, and Lowry’s paintings not only reflect upon the 20th century urban landscape, but also focus on the everyday lives of the ordinary masses. Yet in doing so, he rarely focuses on a single individual. Rather, through painting large groups, Lowry represents a typical city day for what it really is – large groups of people, all stripped of personality, as towns become influxed with workers, and the individual merges into one roving mass. Like the impressionists before him, Lowry is a proponent of the ordinary, but unlike the Manets and Degas of this world, Lowry depicts lives as most of us see them – crowds of faceless individuals, who represent statistics, but whose stories remain locked in the crowds.

L S Lowry, Industrial Landscape (1955)

L S Lowry, The Pond (1950)

L S Lowry, The Old House, Grove Street, Salford (1948)

L S Lowry, Coming out of School (1927)

Information of Tate’s forthcoming show can be found here.

Picasso at Tate – highlight of London’s exhibition year so far (normsonline.wordpress.com)
New Tate show to ‘reassess’ Lowry after ‘shame’ campaign (theweek.co.uk)
Tate Modern and L.S. Lowry (artchicken.wordpress.com)

Apr 30

3 Comments

Picasso at Tate – highlight of London’s exhibition year so far

The new exhibition at Tate Britian, Picasso and Modern British Art, is a triumph. In analysing Picasso’s complex relationship with the UK and his influence upon Modern British painters and sculptors, the Tate approach a well-trodden artistic oeuvre with a new, fresh perspective. The exhibition not only shows off some wonderful Picasso’s, including many lesser known works from the beginning of his career, but it also places the spotlight on some lesser known British artists such as the superb, prickly and moving work of Graham Sutherland, promoting them to the undisputed limelight enjoyed so regularly by Señor Picasso.

The story of Picasso’s relationship with the UK runs throughout the exhibition, both through the works on show and by way of useful curator commentary placed alongside the canvases. Who would have thought that the artist, so universally accepted as a leading genius of modern art, and whose paintings comprise the top three most expensive paintings ever sold at auction, should have once been so inexorably spurned by the British art institution? When his work was first exhibited here in 1910, one critic, GK Chesterton described one of Picasso’s cubist paintings thus: “a piece of paper on which Mr Picasso has had the misfortune to upset the ink and tried to dry it with his boots”.

Picasso, Flowers (1901) - Tate's first conservative Picasso purchase

This sort of reaction was by no means unique, and with his few British fans stemming almost universally from groups of budding artists such as the Bloomsbury group with the exception of a few steadfast collectors, it was many years before one of Picasso’s works entered the public collections in Britain. In fact when Britain did at last buy a Picasso work, they made the purchase of probably the most innocuous and dull painting Picasso ever created – Flowers (1901) – which was purchased in 1933 by Tate.

Picasso’s popularity in England did increase in the inter-war period, with works entering the private collections of collectors such as Douglas Cooper, Roland Penrose and Hugh Willoughby, as well as the stir caused as the worldwide propaganda tour of Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica, passed through the UK in 1938 in support of the Spanish Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. Nonetheless, it was not until post-WW2, when, numbed to the horrors of war, a newly optimistic peace-time Britain was ready to truly accept and celebrate the talents of Pablo Picasso. Shortly after the end of the war in 1945, the Victoria and Albert museum held an exhibition of Matisse and Picasso, and in 1960, Tate held the largest exhibition of Picasso’s work to date, an exhibition which proved popular enough to attract some 500,000 visitors.

Picasso, The Three Dancers (1925)

It was only after this time that Picasso agreed to sell what he regarded to be one of his most important works to the Tate Gallery in Britian: The Three Dancers, a sale which was agreed in 1965. The work remains one of the masterpieces of Tate Modern’s collection.

Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that Britain was slow to accept Picasso. Historically, the Brits have been a bit slow in adopting anything which causes a disturbance of the traditions which they have always held to be dear. Just look at House of Lords reform – the labour government tried to reform the upper house of Parliament in 1999, but clearly found the disturbance of tradition so ultimately unsettling that they have left the reforms only half completed to this day, a house of semi-herditory peers suspended in history. Even in his time, Turner’s later, more impressionist works proved to be somewhat controversial, even though, by the time the French Impressionists rose to the fore, Turner, cited as a huge influence for the likes of Monet, was held dear to the hearts of the British public. When Picasso came along, the Brits were only just swallowing the new craze of impressionist work coming over from France. Picasso’s cubism and misplaced faces proved a little too radical for most. It is for this reason that Britain, by contrast with the likes of MOMA in New York, holds comparatively few Picasso’s in its public collections (Perhaps this is why Britain is trying to make up for it’s past vacillation by so readily accepting crappy modern art work like Tracey Emin and Martin Creed (you know – lights on, lights off) into its folds? Yes, once again, Britain is out of touch it seems).

Picasso, Weeping Woman (26 October 1937)

Wyndham Lewis, A Reading of Ovid (Tyros)

But despite all those years when Picasso was conspicuous by his absence in the UK’s public galleries, this did not do anything to prevent our budding young artists from being heavily influenced by his work. The second thread of Tate’s exhibition demonstrates how comprehensively Picasso influenced the works of British artists of the time. Duncan Grant, for example, saw many of Picasso’s works when he was in Paris mixing with the likes of Leo and Gertrude Stein. Grant quickly adopted the African-style works which predominated in Picasso’s work around the time of Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, as well as responding to the collages pioneered by Picasso and his Cubist colleague, Georges Braque. So too was Wyndham Lewis, leader of the Vorticist movement, influenced by Picasso’s work, although he actually sought to criticise Picasso who he considered to be overly sentimental and putting the modern movement “under a cloud”. In fact Lewis’ painting A Reading of Ovid (1920-1) (one of my favourites from the exhibition, sought to criticise Picasso’s return to large curvaceous classical figures at that time (such as The Source, below).

Of other artists influenced by Picasso over the years, amongst them Ben Nicholson (whose first abstract works were notably cubist in style) and Francis Bacon (who readily adopted Picasso’s screaming figures from the Guernica era), one of the most strikingly influenced is British sculptor extraordinaire, Henry Moore. The exhibition proficiently sets up direct comparisons between many of Moore’s sculptural forms and drawings and Picasso’s work. For example in his 1936 Reclining Figure, you can see a direct reference to Picasso’s classical work, The Source. Meanwhile, Moore’s incredibly unsettling and violent work, Three Points (1939) appears to reflect the screaming mouths of Picasso’s Guernica figures, painted two years earlier.

Picasso, The Source (1921) and above, Henry Moore's Reclining Figure (1936)

Henry Moore, Three Points (1939-40)

Picasso's Screaming Horse (1937)

Probably my favourite of the British artists on show was Graham Sutherland, whose works had largely escaped my radar before I saw some of his works a few months back at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Sutherland, who acknowledged his debt to Picasso and in particular to Guernica as he set about painting a number of unsettling works during wartime Britian, particularly in his images of the bomb-damaged English cityscapes and his thorn-like figures, is probably best known for his Crucifixion which he was commissioned to paint for the church of St Matthew, Northampton. One such work related to the commission was included here – a blue-backed crucifixion which I just adored.

Graham Sutherland, Crucifixion (1946)

Some critics who have been to this exhibition had derided the British artists included in the show, pointing out that next to Picasso, their works fall by the wayside. I disagree. Of course it is clear that many artists owe a great debt to the superbly imaginative, constantly changing oeuvre of Picasso (me included), but this is what artists have always done throughout history – borrowing from one another – just like Picasso himself did when he worked relentlessly on reimagining Las Meninas by Velazquez as well as works by Manet and Delacroix. Nonetheless, all of the British works show an originality and vibrancy of their own, from the undisputed sculptural genius of Henry Moore, to the next level of cubism – photographic cubism, advocated by David Hockney. Of course the true star of this exhibition is Pablo Picasso, but then, that kind of is the point of the show.

Picasso and Modern British Art runs until 15 July 2012 – well worth a visit!

PS Other works I loved…