MASAHISA FUKASE

Masahisa Fukase desperately sought control. Both the first and second wives of the 'anti-self-portraitist' suffered under his incessant, obsessive documentation of their likenesses. It was only after his second divorce, returning on the mournful JE-train from Tokyo to his hometown of Hokkaido, that Fukase first glimpsed what was to become his defining obsession. Collected first as ‘The Solitude of Ravens’, the original title explains much of Fukase's intention - wallowing in depressive bachelorhood. The photographer spent the next eleven years in his birthplace, spiralling through his ceaseless fascination with its growing population of ‘ravens’. In all fact, the majority of the birds were anything but - for Hokkaido has few raven roosts, outnumbered in their hundreds by the myriad crows. It was the idea of ravens that compelled Fukase; in 1982, his journal read “karasu ni nata (I have become a raven)”.

MAX ERNST

As a young child, Max Ernst stood in-front of German forests and felt an overwhelming sense of fear and wonder. The wood loomed over him with ‘delight and oppression and what the Romantics called ‘emotion in the face of Nature.’’, said Ernst many years later. He captures this spiritual relationship, one of feeling part of the invisible world that hides within nature, in this painting, produced during one of his most prolific and inspired periods. Using his radical technique of ‘frottage’, whereby he rubbed pencil, charcoal, or pigment creates a relief from natural matter behind the paper. Ernst created a forest out of wood. The effect of petrified trees came from bark itself, folded and adapted to form the shape that Ernst desired. In this way, as much as the painting deals with Ernst’s feelings of smallness in the face of grand nature, it also represents a conquering of the very elements that caused him feelings of such oppression as a child.

ANN BROCKMAN

In the book of Genesis, we are told the story of two angels who visit Lot, his wife, and children in the sinful city of Sodom. They warn the family of the impending disaster that the iniquity of the place will bring, and to leave right away for their own safety, and not look back in the process. As they flee, Lot’s wife turns back to look at the home she has left behind and, because this directly disobeyed the rule of the angels, she is turned into a pillar of sand. The story has its roots in many mythological tales, with the theme of turning to look back a feature of the fables of ancient cultures. Lot’s wife is never given a name further than this, she is an object of possession and her significance in Genesis is purely to serve as a reminder of the dangers of revealing that which you truly desire. Yet Brockman takes a tired story with an ignored protagonist and elevates into a work of gentle, powerful defiance with deftness and beauty.