Tea
HENRI MATISSE
In the years after the first World War, Matisse’s wild Fauvism waned, and he became less concerned with translating his pure expressions through brushstrokes and developed into a more sophisticated style. ‘Tea’ is the largest and amongst the most accomplished of this period, with touches of Impressionism in the dappled sunlight and broad strokes, it communicates the lushness and comfort of the scene with clarity and beauty. Yet look a little deeper and we see further clues of Matisse’s radical origins. The face of Marguerite is distorted and in the style of the African masks that both Matisse and Picasso found so much inspiration in. It is an extension of his seminal sculptures that increasingly abstracted a female face, yet here in exists in domestic harmony, less radical and more a part of everyday life. Matisse’s revolution was accepted by the world, and this painting is testament to it’s integration in daily life.
Henri Matisse
HENRI MATISSE, 191. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the years after the first World War, Matisse’s wild Fauvism waned, and he became less concerned with translating his pure expressions through brushstrokes and developed into a more sophisticated style. ‘Tea’ is the largest and amongst the most accomplished of this period, with touches of Impressionism in the dappled sunlight and broad strokes, it communicates the lushness and comfort of the scene with clarity and beauty. Yet look a little deeper and we see further clues of Matisse’s radical origins. The face of Marguerite is distorted and in the style of the African masks that both Matisse and Picasso found so much inspiration in. It is an extension of his seminal sculptures that increasingly abstracted a female face, yet here in exists in domestic harmony, less radical and more a part of everyday life. Matisse’s revolution was accepted by the world, and this painting is testament to it’s integration in daily life.
Self Portrait
REMBRANDT
Rembrandt’s house and possessions were repossessed. After years of success and acclaim, he had fallen on hard times and the year before this portrait was painted he had to satisfy his overdue creditors. In the midst of this personal turmoil, he did what he knew best and composed a self-portrait. Throughout his life, Rembrandt documented himself obsessively. We have so many self-portraits of the artist that they serve almost as a biography of his existence, tracking his meteoric rise and the joy of his artistry and success before moving into his reckoning with mortality and here, the reversion of his past glories. Rembrandt stares directly at us, his face sombre and his eyes heavy. The work is less technically perfect than much of his oeuvre, the paint thickly applied and lacking some of the fine detail of other portraits. Yet this leads to a more expressive work – the stresses and tribulations of his recent ordeals captured in tactility. He relinquishes technicality to show pain and sadness as raw, direct, and honest.
Rembrandt Van Rijn
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, 1659. OIL ON CANVAS.
Rembrandt’s house and possessions were repossessed. After years of success and acclaim, he had fallen on hard times and the year before this portrait was painted he had to satisfy his overdue creditors. In the midst of this personal turmoil, he did what he knew best and composed a self-portrait. Throughout his life, Rembrandt documented himself obsessively. We have so many self-portraits of the artist that they serve almost as a biography of his existence, tracking his meteoric rise and the joy of his artistry and success before moving into his reckoning with mortality and here, the reversion of his past glories. Rembrandt stares directly at us, his face sombre and his eyes heavy. The work is less technically perfect than much of his oeuvre, the paint thickly applied and lacking some of the fine detail of other portraits. Yet this leads to a more expressive work – the stresses and tribulations of his recent ordeals captured in tactility. He relinquishes technicality to show pain and sadness as raw, direct, and honest.
Bathers
KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF
In an artists colony by the Baltic Sea, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and his colleagues within the German Expressionist group Die Brücke practiced a back to nature, free love, bohemian lifestyle. Their summers were as much an extension of their avant-grade art as their paintings were, living true to the same principles they applied to canvas. Nude bathers, taking the form of anonymous and objectified female forms, blend into a landscape with few signifiers save for sparse grass and loose dune like shapes. The image intentionally reveals little, it aspires instead to a universal sensation of summertime - the deep ochre acting as an oppressive sun that coats all it touches and the grit of the brushstrokes like the coarse grains of sand against the revellers bodies. Schmidt-Rottluff’s evocative images laid the groundwork for the Expressionists that followed him but few captured a lifestyle in harmony with their art quite so potently.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS.
In an artists colony by the Baltic Sea, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and his colleagues within the German Expressionist group Die Brücke practiced a back to nature, free love, bohemian lifestyle. Their summers were as much an extension of their avant-grade art as their paintings were, living true to the same principles they applied to canvas. Nude bathers, taking the form of anonymous and objectified female forms, blend into a landscape with few signifiers save for sparse grass and loose dune like shapes. The image intentionally reveals little, it aspires instead to a universal sensation of summertime - the deep ochre acting as an oppressive sun that coats all it touches and the grit of the brushstrokes like the coarse grains of sand against the revellers bodies. Schmidt-Rottluff’s evocative images laid the groundwork for the Expressionists that followed him but few captured a lifestyle in harmony with their art quite so potently.
The Opera 'Messalina' at Bordeaux
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
Toulouse-Lautrec captured the decadence of his age. The publicity, the cabaret, the drama, the cafes, the restaurants and the spectacle of the turn of the century exudes from his oeuvre, capturing the subtleties and lack thereof that he lived within. The Opera was a recurring theme for him, sexually charged, high society drama replete with costumes and theatre – the subject and the painter were natural bedfellows. Born into aristocracy, a childhood accident rendered him very short as an adult due to his undersized legs and in Paris he found more comfort and kindness in the brothels and bars than the upper-class world of his birth. Yet he participated in both, an outsider who was allowed in and could keenly observe the idiosyncrasies and beauty of these mirroring existences.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, 1900. OIL ON CANVAS.
Toulouse-Lautrec captured the decadence of his age. The publicity, the cabaret, the drama, the cafes, the restaurants and the spectacle of the turn of the century exudes from his oeuvre, capturing the subtleties and lack thereof that he lived within. The Opera was a recurring theme for him, sexually charged, high society drama replete with costumes and theatre – the subject and the painter were natural bedfellows. Born into aristocracy, a childhood accident rendered him very short as an adult due to his undersized legs and in Paris he found more comfort and kindness in the brothels and bars than the upper-class world of his birth. Yet he participated in both, an outsider who was allowed in and could keenly observe the idiosyncrasies and beauty of these mirroring existences.
Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest
HENRI ROUSSEAU
It was Rousseau’s lack of training that allowed his genius to flourish. His unfamiliarity with the technical skills and historical knowledge, that those dominating the avant-garde had, set him apart and gave him the space to rise above them all and establish himself as one of the leading artistic figures of the post-impressionist movement. Working as a tax collector until he was 49, Rousseau retired from his lifetime job and began to work as an artist full time. He was ridiculed by critics for his naïve style, for the uncanny sense of strangeness that pervaded his work, it’s imperfections, formal idiosyncrasies and disarming scale marked down to inability rather than genius. It was Picasso, who saw a painting of Rosseau’s offered by a street seller as a used canvas to paint over, who realised that though the style was naïve, it was the world who was behind. His childish style would go on to influence a new world of avant-garde painting, spurring figures of the 20th century to try and paint like a child, or more accurately, paint in the way that was so innate to Rousseau.
Henri Rousseau
HENRI ROUSSEAU, 1905. OIL ON CANVAS.
It was Rousseau’s lack of training that allowed his genius to flourish. His unfamiliarity with the technical skills and historical knowledge, that those dominating the avant-garde had, set him apart and gave him the space to rise above them all and establish himself as one of the leading artistic figures of the post-impressionist movement. Working as a tax collector until he was 49, Rousseau retired from his lifetime job and began to work as an artist full time. He was ridiculed by critics for his naïve style, for the uncanny sense of strangeness that pervaded his work, it’s imperfections, formal idiosyncrasies and disarming scale marked down to inability rather than genius. It was Picasso, who saw a painting of Rosseau’s offered by a street seller as a used canvas to paint over, who realised that though the style was naïve, it was the world who was behind. His childish style would go on to influence a new world of avant-garde painting, spurring figures of the 20th century to try and paint like a child, or more accurately, paint in the way that was so innate to Rousseau.
Portrait of Thomas Cromwell
HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
Thomas Cromwell was a layman, the son of brewer, who worked his way up English society to be the right- hand man of King Henry VIII and one of the architects of the Reformation. His power would not last and he was ultimately executed by the King after an ill-fated plan of marriage lost the monarch popularity. But at the height of his powers, Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein, the irregular court painter of Henry VIII, to paint this portrait of himself. Some 5 years earlier, Holbein had painted a remarkably similar portrait of Thomas More, Cromwell’s counterpart on the other side of the reformation and his sworn enemy. Yet in the years since More’s portrait was painted, Cromwell had helped engineer his downfall and when he came to commission his own, it is hard not to read it as a snub against his conquered enemy.
Hans Holbein The Younger
HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER, c.1532. OIL ON PANEL.
Thomas Cromwell was a layman, the son of brewer, who worked his way up English society to be the right- hand man of King Henry VIII and one of the architects of the Reformation. His power would not last and he was ultimately executed by the King after an ill-fated plan of marriage lost the monarch popularity. But at the height of his powers, Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein, the irregular court painter of Henry VIII, to paint this portrait of himself. Some 5 years earlier, Holbein had painted a remarkably similar portrait of Thomas More, Cromwell’s counterpart on the other side of the reformation and his sworn enemy. Yet in the years since More’s portrait was painted, Cromwell had helped engineer his downfall and when he came to commission his own, it is hard not to read it as a snub against his conquered enemy.
No. C.A.9
YAYOI KUSAMA
A constant battle for the infinity within the mind to exist in the world. From a young age, Kusama hallucinated – seeing nets of interconnected dots that expanded into infinity overlayed across her field of vision. People, flowers, furniture became backgrounds to a world playing out inside her head, and her father brought her paints and canvas to try and help her express what she felt. Over 70 years, she has dealt with this same theme, working from the psychiatric institution she checked herself into in 1970 and then never left, in performance, painting, sculpture and installation. But in 1960, she had just moved to New York, leaving behind a world of domestic house-wifery that her parents wanted for her, and she translated her visions in the simplest way she knew how, by painting them as she saw them. These Infinity Nets are works of mental struggle, and testament to the power of art to not just quiet thoughts but invite your viewer into the loudness your own mind,
Yayoi Kusama
YAYOI KUSAMA, 1960. OIL ON CANVAS.
A constant battle for the infinity within the mind to exist in the world. From a young age, Kusama hallucinated – seeing nets of interconnected dots that expanded into infinity overlayed across her field of vision. People, flowers, furniture became backgrounds to a world playing out inside her head, and her father brought her paints and canvas to try and help her express what she felt. Over 70 years, she has dealt with this same theme, working from the psychiatric institution she checked herself into in 1970 and then never left, in performance, painting, sculpture and installation. But in 1960, she had just moved to New York, leaving behind a world of domestic house-wifery that her parents wanted for her, and she translated her visions in the simplest way she knew how, by painting them as she saw them. These Infinity Nets are works of mental struggle, and testament to the power of art to not just quiet thoughts but invite your viewer into the loudness your own mind,
Montauk Highway
WILLEM DE KOONING
A car speeds out of the city at breakneck speed, careening round a corner it blurs the landscape ahead of it in an urgent wonder. In a flurry of brushstrokes, De Kooning evokes as much the process of his painting as the need to escape in order to reach it, vibrant and bright colours evoke a flash of movement while the vast space of yellow conjures the open planes of the countryside, blinding in the summer sun. Willem De Kooning spent two summers in the early 1950s hiding out in East Hampton before settling there with his wife Elaine. The landscape and lifestyle inspired him, softening his darker palette into an altogether more joyous, calmer but no less visceral language. Montauk Highway exists in a tension between representation and abstraction, depicting movement and freedom just as much as it explores colour and form as simulacra of emotion.
Willem de Kooning
WILLEM DE KOONING, 1958. OIL AND COMBINED MEDIA ON PAPER.
A car speeds out of the city at breakneck speed, careening round a corner it blurs the landscape ahead of it in an urgent wonder. In a flurry of brushstrokes, De Kooning evokes as much the process of his painting as the need to escape in order to reach it, vibrant and bright colours evoke a flash of movement while the vast space of yellow conjures the open planes of the countryside, blinding in the summer sun. Willem De Kooning spent two summers in the early 1950s hiding out in East Hampton before settling there with his wife Elaine. The landscape and lifestyle inspired him, softening his darker palette into an altogether more joyous, calmer but no less visceral language. Montauk Highway exists in a tension between representation and abstraction, depicting movement and freedom just as much as it explores colour and form as simulacra of emotion.
Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
Following the death of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene retreated to a life of solitude and quiet penitence, communing privately with God through prayer. This period in life was a favourite subject of artists of the Renaissance, but it was Gentileschi who brought it to life. Her saintly attributes, an ornament jar, crucifix, and skull, that were traditionally included to help the viewer identify the subject are gone. She is not in a state of penitence or atonement, but in a moment of overwhelming ecstasy, taken with the spirit of God she enters into a deeply personal and powerful moment. Gentileschi brings her close to us, almost voyeuristically, to that we are in the room with her during this quiet moment. It is sensual, her bare skin exposed, and the work of a female painter, rare in the time of the Renaissance, is clear in her deft handling of the folds of skin and the strength of passion she feels, that never moves into eroticism. Gentileschi brings a private movement with God into the public, and does so in a way that feels relatable, familiar to us the viewer, thus encouraging us to lose ourselves in ecstasy with a higher power.
Artemisia Gentileschi
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, c.1620. OIL ON CANVAS.
Following the death of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene retreated to a life of solitude and quiet penitence, communing privately with God through prayer. This period in life was a favourite subject of artists of the Renaissance, but it was Gentileschi who brought it to life. Her saintly attributes, an ornament jar, crucifix, and skull, that were traditionally included to help the viewer identify the subject are gone. She is not in a state of penitence or atonement, but in a moment of overwhelming ecstasy, taken with the spirit of God she enters into a deeply personal and powerful moment. Gentileschi brings her close to us, almost voyeuristically, to that we are in the room with her during this quiet moment. It is sensual, her bare skin exposed, and the work of a female painter, rare in the time of the Renaissance, is clear in her deft handling of the folds of skin and the strength of passion she feels, that never moves into eroticism. Gentileschi brings a private movement with God into the public, and does so in a way that feels relatable, familiar to us the viewer, thus encouraging us to lose ourselves in ecstasy with a higher power.
Winter Hunt
HELEN FRANKENTHALER
Is color more important than gesture in art? This was the question Helen Frankenthaler was addressing and for her, the answer was clear. Pioneering a ‘soak-stain’ technique, she would pour paint directly onto untreated canvases and let it sink into the fabric, leaving behind vibrant and uncontrolled stains. This was in stark opposition to her male Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, Jackson Pollock amongst them, who used violent brushstrokes and expressive gesture in their works. Frankenthaler was part of a group of female artists that included Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell, who’s works speak to a natural beauty, emphasising the palette that existed around them, rather than trying to create something alien. In Winter Hunt, an empty top half emphasises the interplay of the palette below, allowing the beauty of the rich stains to stand out. Though the human hand is not obvious, the drops and swirls clearly from a pouring technique, there is harmony to the work that is unmistakably human, albeit one in touch with the world around them.
Helen Frankenthaler
HELEN FRANKENTHALER, 1958. OIL ON CANVAS.
Is color more important than gesture in art? This was the question Frankenthaler was addressing and for her, the answer was clear. Pioneering a ‘soak-stain’ technique, she would pour paint directly onto untreated canvases and let it sink into the fabric, leaving behind vibrant and uncontrolled stains. This was in stark opposition to her male Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, Jackson Pollock amongst them, who used violent brushstrokes and expressive gesture in their works. Frankenthaler was part of a group of female artists that included Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell, who’s works speak to a natural beauty, emphasising the palette that existed around them, rather than trying to create something alien. In Winter Hunt, an empty top half emphasises the interplay of the palette below, allowing the beauty of the rich stains to stand out. Though the human hand is not obvious, the drops and swirls clearly from a pouring technique, there is harmony to the work that is unmistakably human, albeit one in touch with the world around them.
Summer Night
WINSLOW HOMER
In England, after a decade of painting scenes of American idyll, Homer lost his innocence. The spontaneous, bright, and almost doll house quality of his early work, one preoccupied with a vision of his country and its beauty, dissipated and in its place came something more universal, touching a higher plane. It was this return from his 2 years away, that he moved to a small house some seventy feet from the sea in Maine and his subject matter became informed by the swell, the danger and the shimmering beauty of the water that he saw from his window each day. ‘Summer Night’ is a study of restraint, revealing just enough to create a sense of longing, but not so much that we can’t see ourselves in the scene. The soft focus of two dancers, watched by a group in shadows as the light glistens from the stormy sea behind them, captures a poignant romance that each of us can understand.
Winslow Homer
SUMMER NIGHT, 1890. OIL ON CANVAS.
In England, after a decade of painting scenes of American idyll, Homer lost his innocence. The spontaneous, bright, and almost doll house quality of his early work, one preoccupied with a vision of his country and its beauty, dissipated and in its place came something more universal, touching a higher plane. It was this return from his 2 years away, that he moved to a small house some seventy feet from the sea in Maine and his subject matter became informed by the swell, the danger and the shimmering beauty of the water that he saw from his window each day. ‘Summer Night’ is a study of restraint, revealing just enough to create a sense of longing, but not so much that we can’t see ourselves in the scene. The soft focus of two dancers, watched by a group in shadows as the light glistens from the stormy sea behind them, captures a poignant romance that each of us can understand.
The Beach
MAURICE PRENDERGAST
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
Maurice Prendergast
MAURICE PRENDERGAST, c.1915. OIL ON CANVAS.
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings, and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
The Transparent Woman
GORDON ONSLOW FORD
Gordon Onslow Ford was the last of his kind – the final surviving surrealist who saw the world change in the image he had helped imagine. One of the few significant members of Breton’s group of surrealists and amongst the only native English speak, Onslow Ford abandoned a regimented and expected career in the Navy to live in Paris and fulfil his passion and purpose. Regularly attending the movements exclusive meetings at Cafè deux Magots in Paris, he ingratiated himself with every important member of the group, hosting them for summers at a chateau near Switzerland. Yet of all the group, it was his friendship with the architect Roberto Matta that most informed his work. Together, they studied the mathematical and the metaphysical, and from Matta’s architectural drawings he learned his own understanding of perspective. He combined the cosmic and the rational, bringing mystic and surrealist ideas into a mathematical framework to speak to an ordered chaos of reality.
Gordon Onslow Ford
GORDON ONSLOW FORD, c.1940. OIL ON CANVAS.
Gordon Onslow Ford was the last of his kind – the final surviving surrealist who saw the world change in the image he had helped imagine. One of the few significant members of Breton’s group of surrealists and amongst the only native English speak, Onslow Ford abandoned a regimented and expected career in the Navy to live in Paris and fulfil his passion and purpose. Regularly attending the movements exclusive meetings at Cafè deux Magots in Paris, he ingratiated himself with every important member of the group, hosting them for summers at a chateau near Switzerland. Yet of all the group, it was his friendship with the architect Roberto Matta that most informed his work. Together, they studied the mathematical and the metaphysical, and from Matta’s architectural drawings he learned his own understanding of perspective. He combined the cosmic and the rational, bringing mystic and surrealist ideas into a mathematical framework to speak to an ordered chaos of reality.
The Worship of the Golden Calf
WORKSHOP OF TINTORETTO
Within a single canvas, many stories from Exodus are told as time and place is flattened into a single plane. In the centre, the high priest collects ornaments to create a sculpture of the golden calf. The very same sculpture that far into the background we see him casting and, just in-front of that scene, we see completed, displayed on an altar and worshipped by a crowd of followers. At the top right, Moses receives the ten commandments high upon a hill, though the canvas was cut at some point destroying much of this scene. This impossible presentation of simultaneous events is framed by richly dressed onlookers, inviting us into the scene. Painted just after Tintoretto’s death by his studio, most likely looked over by his son, the composition is based on an earlier work painted by Tintoretto himself. The painting serves as a show of the workshops ability after the masters passing, and an allegory for the power of art to open the viewers eyes to new worlds.
Workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto
WORKSHOP OF JACOPO TINTORETTO, c.1954. OIL ON CANVAS.
Within a single canvas, many stories from Exodus are told as time and place is flattened into a single plane. In the centre, the high priest collects ornaments to create a sculpture of the golden calf. The very same sculpture that far into the background we see him casting and, just in-front of that scene, we see completed, displayed on an altar and worshipped by a crowd of followers. At the top right, Moses receives the ten commandments high upon a hill, though the canvas was cut at some point destroying much of this scene. This impossible presentation of simultaneous events is framed by richly dressed onlookers, inviting us into the scene. Painted just after Tintoretto’s death by his studio, most likely looked over by his son, the composition is based on an earlier work painted by Tintoretto himself. The painting serves as a show of the workshops ability after the masters passing, and an allegory for the power of art to open the viewers eyes to new worlds.
Woman Reading
JOHN STORRS
A new age had begun, one filled with technological wonders, hope and optimism. Yet but 1949, this had waned in the shadow of the war, and the open fields of potential seemed to yield less than they had promised. The human imagination that had so expanded at the turn of the century had been corrupted, and the artists who had first seized upon modernity, it seemed, had paid too much reverence to the bright future they saw ahead. Storrs was one such artist, having been part of the culture epoch in Paris that helped fuel the revolution in the new visual language. Yet his later work, like Woman Reading, addresses some of the naivety of his youth and the worship of the experienced world that had gone with it. Here, referential ties are still present, the figure and the setting are clear, but it has been reduced to simplicity, to something more formal and abstract that speaks to a universal detachment as much as it does his personal expression. Storr’s work grew with him, and it’s in subtle cues, showed the changing optimism of a new century becoming old.
John Storrs
JOHN STORRS, 1949. OIL ON CANVAS.
A new age had begun, one filled with technological wonders, hope and optimism. Yet but 1949, this had waned in the shadow of the war, and the open fields of potential seemed to yield less than they had promised. The human imagination that had so expanded at the turn of the century had been corrupted, and the artists who had first seized upon modernity, it seemed, had paid too much reverence to the bright future they saw ahead. Storrs was one such artist, having been part of the culture epoch in Paris that helped fuel the revolution in the new visual language. Yet his later work, like Woman Reading, addresses some of the naivety of his youth and the worship of the experienced world that had gone with it. Here, referential ties are still present, the figure and the setting are clear, but it has been reduced to simplicity, to something more formal and abstract that speaks to a universal detachment as much as it does his personal expression. Storr’s work grew with him, and it’s in subtle cues, showed the changing optimism of a new century becoming old.
Untitled
ROBERT RYMAN
In 1960, Robert Ryman was working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. His co-workers, working security and front desk respectively, were Dan Flavin, Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt. Ryman had moved to New York eight years earlier with the hopes of making it as a jazz musician, and took up the job at MOMA as a means for cash. Yet inspired by this environment, and the artistic contemporaries working alongside him, Ryman took up painting, though not in any traditional sense. Eschewing the vogue of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art, Ryman opted for austere, monkish works comprised mostly of thickly applied white paint. He stayed with these ideas for the better part of 6 decades. Ryman wanted to remove the distraction of colour, form and figure and create works that forced a focus on tactility and light. His works are incomplete until they exist in an environment, for the subtle changes of light and shadow complete the blank squares. The economy and simplicity are pleasing, but the works ultimate role is to ask a philosophical question; what is painting?
Robert Ryman
ROBERT RYMAN, 1965. ENAMEL ON LINEN.
In 1960, Robert Ryman was working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. His co-workers, working security and front desk respectively, were Dan Flavin, Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt. Ryman had moved to New York eight years earlier with the hopes of making it as a jazz musician, and took up the job at MOMA as a means for cash. Yet inspired by this environment, and the artistic contemporaries working alongside him, Ryman took up painting, though not in any traditional sense. Eschewing the vogue of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art, Ryman opted for austere, monkish works comprised mostly of thickly applied white paint. He stayed with these ideas for the better part of 6 decades. Ryman wanted to remove the distraction of colour, form and figure and create works that forced a focus on tactility and light. His works are incomplete until they exist in an environment, for the subtle changes of light and shadow complete the blank squares. The economy and simplicity are pleasing, but the works ultimate role is to ask a philosophical question; what is painting?
Ship in Stormy Sea
GUSTAVE DORÉ
“Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!”, so speaks the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s epic poem from 1798. A tale of desolation, horror, isolation and despair, its words on issues of faith, morality, and the very nature of man inspired artists from the moment it was published and continue to do so to this day. It is unsurprising then, that Gustave Doré, the most celebrated printmaker and illustrator of his day, chose Coleridge’s work, alongside Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and Cervante’s ‘Don Quixote’, as a text to illustrate. His wood engravings, printed in stark blacks, capturing the pervading sense of danger and loneliness that seeps from every line of the poem. There is something uncomfortably peaceful about the impending doom of this image, the riotous sea dissolving into delicate fractals as the boat is held suspended atop a wave, illuminated by the sharp white of moonlight atop the crests. Doré captures the essence of the poem in his images, transforming wood and ink into lyrical works that plunder the depths of our soul.
Gustave Doré
GUSTAVE DORÉ, 1876. WOOD ENGRAVING.
“Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!”, so speaks the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s epic poem from 1798. A tale of desolation, horror, isolation and despair, its words on issues of faith, morality, and the very nature of man inspired artists from the moment it was published and continue to do so to this day. It is unsurprising then, that Gustave Doré, the most celebrated printmaker and illustrator of his day, chose Coleridge’s work, alongside Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and Cervante’s ‘Don Quixote’, as a text to illustrate. His wood engravings, printed in stark blacks, capturing the pervading sense of danger and loneliness that seeps from every line of the poem. There is something uncomfortably peaceful about the impending doom of this image, the riotous sea dissolving into delicate fractals as the boat is held suspended atop a wave, illuminated by the sharp white of moonlight atop the crests. Doré captures the essence of the poem in his images, transforming wood and ink into lyrical works that plunder the depths of our soul.
Flash
GEORGES MATHIEU
Mathieu saw the movement of ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ that he created as a conclusion to the revolution of art history, following in the slipstream of freedom that avant-garde movements before him allowed. Impressionism freed the artwork from realism, Cubism from shapes, Geometric abstraction from the representation of perceived reality and lyrical abstraction was the final destruction. ‘Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world’, said Mathieu, ‘the sign precedes its meaning’. His work was freed from the requirements of meaning, he painted with gesture and passion, and painted in public in early happenings that broke down the barriers between artist and observer. He saw public creation as an act of true and joyful communion, a connection built from the shared focus on a visual impetus that requires no context to understand. Mathieu’s lyrical abstraction was not the conclusion he hoped it would be, movements after him returned meaning to their signs, but to look at his large scale works is to see an artist totally unchained, aesthetics that are freed from millennia of expectations to sing of total freedom.
Georges Mathieu
GEORGES MATHIEU, c.1965. OIL ON CANVAS.
Mathieu saw the movement of ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ that he created as a conclusion to the revolution of art history, following in the slipstream of freedom that avant-garde movements before him allowed. Impressionism freed the artwork from realism, Cubism from shapes, Geometric abstraction from the representation of perceived reality and lyrical abstraction was the final destruction. ‘Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world’, said Mathieu, ‘the sign precedes its meaning’. His work was freed from the requirements of meaning, he painted with gesture and passion, and painted in public in early happenings that broke down the barriers between artist and observer. He saw public creation as an act of true and joyful communion, a connection built from the shared focus on a visual impetus that requires no context to understand. Mathieu’s lyrical abstraction was not the conclusion he hoped it would be, movements after him returned meaning to their signs, but to look at his large scale works is to see an artist totally unchained, aesthetics that are freed from millennia of expectations to sing of total freedom.
Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
“I am not attempting likeness”, said Giacometti, “but resemblance”. After being interviewed Isaku Yanaihara, treating him as confidant and muse for the near decade that followed. He made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Yanaihara, and this is the second in his enduring series. The figure seems to appear as an apparition, ghostlike in the powerful glow that surrounds him. His body and face appear in allusions, confident brushstrokes that reveal little of detail but huge amounts of essence. In his sculptural work, Giacometti was a revolutionary who reinterpreted the human form into something otherworldly yet recognisable and the same quality appears in his paintings. Yanaihara is unrecognisable as an individual figure here, but a spirit of the man seems to shine through the canvas. His physicality disappears into thick oil paint leaving only the truth of his personality behind.
Alberto Giacometti
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, 1956. OIL ON CANVAS.
“I am not attempting likeness”, said Giacometti, “but resemblance”. After being interviewed Isaku Yanaihara, treating him as confidant and muse for the near decade that followed. He made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Yanaihara, and this is the second in his enduring series. The figure seems to appear as an apparition, ghostlike in the powerful glow that surrounds him. His body and face appear in allusions, confident brushstrokes that reveal little of detail but huge amounts of essence. In his sculptural work, Giacometti was a revolutionary who reinterpreted the human form into something otherworldly yet recognisable and the same quality appears in his paintings. Yanaihara is unrecognisable as an individual figure here, but a spirit of the man seems to shine through the canvas. His physicality disappears into thick oil paint leaving only the truth of his personality behind.
La Corniche Near Monaco
CLAUDE MONET
During trips to the French Riviera, Monet used his canvas a means to freeze time. His paintings here capture so potently and accurately an atmosphere, taking a single moment and imbuing it with the gift of eternity, that though they depict known landscapes it is not the place that we recognise but the feeling. The sun lowers in the sky over a bend in La Corniche, now the major road connecting Nice and Monaco but then little more than a dirt path, and the world seems to glimmer under its light. The sea shimmers and the plants are vibrant and frenetic, cliffsides soften under a sky that mirrors the water below it and a calmness washes over the viewer. Monet’s trips to this part of the world began after the death of his first wife, and he revisited the same areas over a 6-year period, finding in the pastoral landscape not motif but salvation.
Claude Monet
CLAUDE MONET, 1884. OIL ON CANVAS.
During trips to the French Riviera, Monet used his canvas as a means to freeze time. His paintings here capture so potently and accurately an atmosphere, taking a single moment and imbuing it with the gift of eternity, that though they depict known landscapes it is not the place that we recognise but the feeling. The sun lowers in the sky over a bend in La Corniche, now the major road connecting Nice and Monaco but then little more than a dirt path, and the world seems to glimmer under its light. The sea shimmers and the plants are vibrant and frenetic, cliffsides soften under a sky that mirrors the water below it and a calmness washes over the viewer. Monet’s trips to this part of the world began after the death of his first wife, and he revisited the same areas over a 6-year period, finding in the pastoral landscape not motif but salvation.