Portrait of Walter Serner
CHRISTIAN SCHAD
Living with his subject, Schad was instrumental in creating a movement that he himself ultimately wanted no part of. Walter Serner, depicted here, was the founder of a seminal Dada magazine that Schad, as his roommate, was credited as co-founder and contributed most of the graphic design for. Together in Zurich the two men had front row seats to the radical group that recontextualised the very meaning of art he began to paint inspired, as if through osmosis, by Dada, Cubism, Futurism and Impressionism. The fractured, geometric forms that overtake the portrait create a sense of a broken mirror, and the fallability of all portraiture. Yet, in the following years, Schad spent increasing time in Italy and the movements that had existed around him paled in comparison to the beauty he saw in Rafael, in the delicate, incisive brushstrokes of the Renaissance that he all but abandoned the visual style of the avant-garde, creating works of traditional and breath-taking beauty that dealt with the same conceptual ideas as his contemporaries but owed their debt to a time gone by.
Christain Schad
CHRISTIAN SCHAD, 1916. OIL ON CANVAS.
Living with his subject, Schad was instrumental in creating a movement that he himself ultimately wanted no part of. Walter Serner, depicted here, was the founder of a seminal Dada magazine that Schad, as his roommate, was credited as co-founder and contributed most of the graphic design for. Together in Zurich the two men had front row seats to the radical group that recontextualised the very meaning of art he began to paint inspired, as if through osmosis, by Dada, Cubism, Futurism and Impressionism. The fractured, geometric forms that overtake the portrait create a sense of a broken mirror, and the fallability of all portraiture. Yet, in the following years, Schad spent increasing time in Italy and the movements that had existed around him paled in comparison to the beauty he saw in Rafael, in the delicate, incisive brushstrokes of the Renaissance that he all but abandoned the visual style of the avant-garde, creating works of traditional and breath-taking beauty that dealt with the same conceptual ideas as his contemporaries but owed their debt to a time gone by.
Study for “Swing Landscape”
STUART DAVIS
In Jazz music, a basic chord structure is improvised on by musicians, creating new and unlikely combinations and songs from a base starting point. Stuart Davis’ paintings can be understood in the same way; he worked within a theme, painting series of similar images where he would alter the color, the geometric composition and scale but retain the base formal components. Employed by the Works Progress Administration, that gave artists jobs painting murals during the Great Depression, he was fiercely patriotic, depicting America in joyous reverie. His works are jazz ballads, loose and unstructured by rich in emotion in movement. This is a fragment of a preparatory work of his masterpiece, “Swing Landscape”. It depicts workers at a dock, abstracted and frenetic. There is an inherent optimism to Davis’ paintings of contemporary life, he renders labour and leisure in the same vivid style, uplifting the everyday occasion into musicality.
Stuart Davis
STUART DAVIS, 1938. OIL ON CANVAS.
In Jazz music, a basic chord structure is improvised on by musicians, creating new and unlikely combinations and songs from a base starting point. Stuart Davis’ paintings can be understood in the same way; he worked within a theme, painting series of similar images where he would alter the color, the geometric composition and scale but retain the base formal components. Employed by the Works Progress Administration, that gave artists jobs painting murals during the Great Depression, he was fiercely patriotic, depicting America in joyous reverie. His works are jazz ballads, loose and unstructured by rich in emotion in movement. This is a fragment of a preparatory work of his masterpiece, “Swing Landscape”. It depicts workers at a dock, abstracted and frenetic. There is an inherent optimism to Davis’ paintings of contemporary life, he renders labour and leisure in the same vivid style, uplifting the everyday occasion into musicality.
Flower Day
DIEGO RIVERA
What appears at first as a quaint depiction of Mexican street life hides radical and political ideas behind it’s metropolitan idealism. Rivera casts a long shadow across the history of 20th Century Art, synthesising Pan-American influences, Renaissance frescoes, cubist philosophies, Aztec culture and socialist realism into an aesthetically powerfully and socially engaged oeuvre. Flower sellers were a subject he would return to repeatedly across his career, visiting them in murals, frescoes and paintings, but this is his first ever depiction of the theme that would stay with him for decades. The piece praises labour, it can be read as a celebration of work with the flower seller as it’s hero. It is notably, too, that she sells goods with a purely aesthetic value, and remains dignified in doing so – Rivera saw himself and all artists in the quiet power of the flower selling, ensuring that the work of creation visual beauty was seen as dignified.
Diego Rivera
DIEGO RIVERA, 1925. OIL ON CANVAS.
What appears at first as a quaint depiction of Mexican street life hides radical and political ideas behind it’s metropolitan idealism. Rivera casts a long shadow across the history of 20th Century Art, synthesising Pan-American influences, Renaissance frescoes, cubist philosophies, Aztec culture and socialist realism into an aesthetically powerfully and socially engaged oeuvre. Flower sellers were a subject he would return to repeatedly across his career, visiting them in murals, frescoes and paintings, but this is his first ever depiction of the theme that would stay with him for decades. The piece praises labour, it can be read as a celebration of work with the flower seller as it’s hero. It is notably, too, that she sells goods with a purely aesthetic value, and remains dignified in doing so – Rivera saw himself and all artists in the quiet power of the flower selling, ensuring that the work of creation visual beauty was seen as dignified.
The Kiss
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI
Two lovers are dissolved into a pure, single, abstract form in the first sculpture of modernism. Brancusi’s choice of a kiss to make this radical, revolutionary action was no mistake. In a fell swoop he was situating himself in pantheon of art history and making all the painted and sculpture depictions of romance that came before him seem old fashioned. Throughout the rest of his life he would come back again and again to this sculpture, creating new versions that were simpler, more formalistic than the ones before. Yet here is the first, a proto-cubist rendering that reduces the most natural of acts into art that approaches geometry. Inspired by African, Assyrian and Egyptian art, ‘The Kiss’ created a new language of Western Sculpture by subverting one of its most sustained motifs.
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, 1908. PLASTER.
Two lovers are dissolved into a pure, single, abstract form in the first sculpture of modernism. Brancusi’s choice of a kiss to make this radical, revolutionary action was no mistake. In a fell swoop he was situating himself in pantheon of art history and making all the painted and sculpture depictions of romance that came before him seem old fashioned. Throughout the rest of his life he would come back again and again to this sculpture, creating new versions that were simpler, more formalistic than the ones before. Yet here is the first, a proto-cubist rendering that reduces the most natural of acts into art that approaches geometry. Inspired by African, Assyrian and Egyptian art, ‘The Kiss’ created a new language of Western Sculpture by subverting one of its most sustained motifs.
Sunflowers
JOAN MITCHELL
Balanced on fragile stalks, the sunflower is a pure concentration of mass and color that forces its way upwards to bloom in splendour, only to droop and wilt so visibly as to almost express the sadness of its mortality. This oddly human quality was exactly what Mitchell saw in the flowers, treating them ‘like people’ and returning to them over 40 years. The title of her works were decided after they were painted, drawing on the feelings and states she was in during their production. So, the Sunflower series are made in momnts of pride and fradility, their frenetic confident brushstrokes a mask for the delicateness of spirit. “If I see a sunflower drooping, I can droop with it”, she explained, “and I draw it, and feel it until its death”.
Joan Mitchell
JOAN MITCHELL, 1991. OIL ON CANVAS
Balanced on fragile stalks, the sunflower is a pure concentration of mass and colour that forces its way upwards to bloom in splendour, only to droop and wilt so visibly as to almost express the sadness of its mortality. This oddly human quality was exactly what Mitchell saw in the flowers, treating them ‘like people’ and returning to them over 40 years. The title of her works were decided after they were painted, drawing on the feelings and state she was in during their production. So, the Sunflower series are made in moments of pride and fragility, their frenetic, confident brushstrokes a mask for the delicateness of spirit. ‘'If I see a sunflower drooping, I can droop with it,' she explained, 'and I draw it, and feel it until its death.'
Christ Carrying The Cross
EL GRECO
El Greco wasn’t telling a story. This work is not narrative, unlike so much religious art — instead, it is a moment in time, a devotional image to meditate on and consider. We see Christ in a moment of personal reflection, his gaze upwards towards God and his hands gently wrapping around the instrument of his death. We find him in the quiet; alone, a storm brewing behind him, and we join him in this contemplation. It is raw, expressive, immersive, and aching. Deeply human as we see the pain bubbling into Christs eyes yet all the while, the scene is otherworldly. Every decision El Greco made was in service of this duality, from the deep, rich colors of Christ’s dress to the fluid, organic brushstrokes that define his hands and body, Greco is not hiding his act of creation in this work. El Greco was not telling a story because he was asking us to consider a moment, to exist in a feeling and find ourselves and our meaning within it.
El Greco
EL GRECO c.1580. OIL ON CANVAS.
El Greco wasn’t telling a story. This work is not narrative, unlike so much religious art — instead, it is a moment in time, a devotional image to meditate on and consider. We see Christ in a moment of personal reflection, his gaze upwards towards God and his hands gently wrapping around the instrument of his death. We find him in the quiet; alone, a storm brewing behind him, and we join him in this contemplation. It is raw, expressive, immersive, and aching. Deeply human as we see the pain bubbling into Christs eyes yet all the while, the scene is otherworldly. Every decision El Greco made was in service of this duality, from the deep, rich colors of Christ’s dress to the fluid, organic brushstrokes that define his hands and body, Greco is not hiding his act of creation in this work. El Greco was not telling a story because he was asking us to consider a moment, to exist in a feeling and find ourselves and our meaning within it.
The Flight of the Dragonfly in Front of the Sun
JOAN MIRÓ
In the 1960s, Joan Miró began stripping away anything superfluous until all he was left with was unadulterated expression. Gone were the playful flourishes of his earlier abstractions, the human-like quality of his shapes, the kinetic movement and subtle shading of his figures and planes. In their place, plumbed from the depths of his consciousness, was simplicity. The flight of the dragonfly needs nothing more than a line to speak of its movement and it is dwarfed by the enormity, and irregularity, of the sun. Miro began to paint not seeking representation or even emotion but a sort of unplaceable familiarity. If he reduced the world around him to core elements, and depicted the world as filtered through memory and experience, he could capture the purest essence of existence. The flight of the dragonfly is not about the dragonfly but about how both the smallest being and the largest concepts should take up the same space together.
Joan Miró
JOAN MIRÓ, 1968. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the 1960s, Joan Miró began stripping away anything superfluous until all he was left with was unadulterated expression. Gone were the playful flourishes of his earlier abstractions, the human-like quality of his shapes, the kinetic movement and subtle shading of his figures and planes. In their place, plumbed from the depths of his consciousness, was simplicity. The flight of the dragonfly needs nothing more than a line to speak of its movement and it is dwarfed by the enormity, and irregularity, of the sun. Miro began to paint not seeking representation or even emotion but a sort of unplaceable familiarity. If he reduced the world around him to core elements, and depicted the world as filtered through memory and experience, he could capture the purest essence of existence. The flight of the dragonfly is not about the dragonfly but about how both the smallest being and the largest concepts should take up the same space together.
Untitled
HANS ARP
In the face of meaningless war, wanton destruction and the spectacle of collective genocide that seems sanctioned by society, a group of artists across Europe felt that they were left with no option but to reject the very foundation their modern world was built on. It was logic and reason, capitalism and society that had got the world to where it was in 1916, and so these same tools were useless to get it out. Enter Dada, a loose movement built on the embrace of nothingness and the absence of meaning, its very name a manifesto for the chaotic, irrational and absurd. Dada was designed to offend, not in content but in sensibility, flying boldly in the face of conceptions of aesthetics and art, ideas that the artists saw little use for. Arp was one of the founders of this movement, though sects sprang up across the continent, and he worked across mediums, applying the dada anti-philosophy to poetry, sculpture, art and collage. His work still puzzles and entices, for we still need an embrace of chaos when logic seems to fail us.
Hans Arp
HANS ARP, 1919. ENGRAVED WOOD BLOCK PRINT AND COLLAGE.
In the face of meaningless war, wanton destruction and the spectacle of collective genocide that seems sanctioned by society, a group of artists across Europe felt that they were left with no option but to reject the very foundation their modern world was built on. It was logic and reason, capitalism and society that had got the world to where it was in 1916, and so these same tools were useless to get it out. Enter Dada, a loose movement built on the embrace of nothingness and the absence of meaning, its very name a manifesto for the chaotic, irrational and absurd. Dada was designed to offend, not in content but in sensibility, flying boldly in the face of conceptions of aesthetics and art, ideas that the artists saw little use for. Arp was one of the founders of this movement, though sects sprang up across the continent, and he worked across mediums, applying the dada anti-philosophy to poetry, sculpture, art and collage. His work still puzzles and entices, for we still need an embrace of chaos when logic seems to fail us.
Juggler in April (Gaukler im April)
PAUL KLEE
‘First of all,’, said Paul Klee when asked what was most important for a good life, ‘the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.’ Of course, Illustrations were more than mere income for Klee, they instead became some of the most important works of the 20th Century, but his tongue-in-cheek response has more truth than he lets on. Klee was a wildly individual artist, refusing the modes of the day and merging influence into a unique style. A soldier, a thinker, a writer, and a teacher at the Bauhaus School alongside his closest friend Wassily Kandinsky – Klee’s genius moved across mediums, but it is perhaps, against popular knowledge, his writing that was his greatest impact. Klee’s notebooks are amongst the most important pedagogical documents of modern art, his perspective exists beneath so much of the post-war and contemporary works we know today. Chiefly, that art was a serious pursuit best pursued unseriously, like a child approaches the blank page.
Paul Klee
PAUL KLEE, 1928. ETCHING.
‘First of all,’, said Paul Klee when asked what was most important for a good life, ‘the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.’ Of course, Illustrations were more than mere income for Klee, they instead became some of the most important works of the 20th Century, but his tongue-in-cheek response has more truth than he lets on. Klee was a wildly individual artist, refusing the modes of the day and merging influence into a unique style. A soldier, a thinker, a writer, and a teacher at the Bauhaus School alongside his closest friend Wassily Kandinsky – Klee’s genius moved across mediums, but it is perhaps, against popular knowledge, his writing that was his greatest impact. Klee’s notebooks are amongst the most important pedagogical documents of modern art, his perspective exists beneath so much of the post-war and contemporary works we know today. Chiefly, that art was a serious pursuit best pursued unseriously, like a child approaches the blank page.
The Gust
WILLEM VAN DE VILDE II
In a world with immediate access to images, it’s easy to forget the utility that painting held for millennia. It was the primary medium of visual documentation, serving as not just an art form but a vehicle for posterity. In 1674, after a successful career in the Netherlands cut short by the economic collapse of the country, van de Velde and his father entered the service of Charles II with the remit to capture the glory and truth of the British Navy. His paintings are scientific and obsessive in their accuracy, every rope, rivet, sail and facet of the ship are depicted with complete faithfulness and they remain the most valuable resource that maritime historians have to understand the types of ships used in the 17th century. Yet, for all the required information they contain, van de Velde’s genius was in his ability to communicate this information within the context of drama and emotion. ‘The Gust’ is a work of urgent feeling, the precarious situation of the ship, with its collapsing sail, is mirrored in the ominous sky that seems to engulf it as it joins with the waves. Painting may have been a form of utility, but in the hands of master, it remained an art form of emotion.
Willem van de Velde II
WILLEM VAN DE VELDE II, c.1680. OIL ON CANVAS.
In a world with immediate access to images, it’s easy to forget the utility that painting held for millennia. It was the primary medium of visual documentation, serving as not just an art form but a vehicle for posterity. In 1674, after a successful career in the Netherlands cut short by the economic collapse of the country, van de Velde and his father entered the service of Charles II with the remit to capture the glory and truth of the British Navy. His paintings are scientific and obsessive in their accuracy, every rope, rivet, sail and facet of the ship are depicted with complete faithfulness and they remain the most valuable resource that maritime historians have to understand the types of ships used in the 17th century. Yet, for all the required information they contain, van de Velde’s genius was in his ability to communicate this information within the context of drama and emotion. ‘The Gust’ is a work of urgent feeling, the precarious situation of the ship, with its collapsing sail, is mirrored in the ominous sky that seems to engulf it as it joins with the waves. Painting may have been a form of utility, but in the hands of master, it remained an art form of emotion.
Esther and Mordecai
HENDRICK VAN STEENWIJK
How does a painting sound? Looking at Esther and Mordecai, the sonics are clear. Hushed tones bounce off stone walls, the whispers seem to travel through the corridor and out of the canvas. Hendrick van Steenwijk the Younger, a master of the early Flemish Baroque, activates every sense with his brushstrokes. Predominantly a painter of Architectural scenes, Van Steenwijk would include narrative vignettes within the worlds he portrayed, often snippets from biblical fables. In this way, he flattened time, depicting antiquity within his contemporary worlds and bringing faith into a recognisable modernity. His paintings are visceral; in the case of Esther and Mordecai we can feel the painting, the cold stone sends shivers, the hushed tones flutter to our ears and the musk of an ancient hallway fills our noses. Van Steenwijk was an alchemist who turned oil and wood into tangible, sensory worlds and shortened the length between centuries.
Hendrick van Stenwijk the Younger
HENDRICK VAN STEENWIJK THE YOUNGER, 1616. OIL ON PANEL.
How does a painting sound? Looking at Esther and Mordecai, the sonics are clear. Hushed tones bounce off stone walls, the whispers seem to travel through the corridor and out of the canvas. Hendrick van Steenwijk the Younger, a master of the early Flemish Baroque, activates every sense with his brushstrokes. Predominantly a painter of Architectural scenes, Van Steenwijk would include narrative vignettes within the worlds he portrayed, often snippets from biblical fables. In this way, he flattened time, depicting antiquity within his contemporary worlds and bringing faith into a recognisable modernity. His paintings are visceral; in the case of Esther and Mordecai we can feel the painting, the cold stone sends shivers, the hushed tones flutter to our ears and the musk of an ancient hallway fills our noses. Van Steenwijk was an alchemist who turned oil and wood into tangible, sensory worlds and shortened the length between centuries.
Band in Boston
ROBERT IRWIN
Painting was the not the medium that would come to define Irwin’s practice, but the same ideas, same themes, same grasps towards the unanswerable and unknowable are present here. Irwin was one of the leaders of the ‘Light and Space’ movement, alongside James Turrell, that shaped California’s post war art scene. In the late 60s, he moved away from works on canvas to create site-specific instillations and dynamic sculptures made with illuminated rods of neon and halogen bulbs. Yet we see, in this simple canvas, the architectural enquiry that existed in his practice across mediums. The square is broken up by simple, irregularly spaced lines – it is elegant and beautiful but we cannot quite understand why. “This world is not just somehow given to us whole.”, said Robert Irwin, ‘We perceive, we shape the world, and as artists we discover and give value to our human potential to ‘see’ the infinite richness in everything, creating an extended aesthetic reality.”
Robert Irwin
ROBERT IRWIN, 1962. OIL ON CANVAS.
Painting was the not the medium that would come to define Irwin’s practice, but the same ideas, same themes, same grasps towards the unanswerable and unknowable are present here. Irwin was one of the leaders of the ‘Light and Space’ movement, alongside James Turrell, that shaped California’s post war art scene. In the late 60s, he moved away from works on canvas to create site-specific instillations and dynamic sculptures made with illuminated rods of neon and halogen bulbs. Yet we see, in this simple canvas, the architectural enquiry that existed in his practice across mediums. The square is broken up by simple, irregularly spaced lines – it is elegant and beautiful but we cannot quite understand why. “This world is not just somehow given to us whole.”, said Robert Irwin, ‘We perceive, we shape the world, and as artists we discover and give value to our human potential to ‘see’ the infinite richness in everything, creating an extended aesthetic reality.”
Annunciation
MAURICE DENIS
Avant-garde sensibility and traditional religious thought are rectified in Denis’ work, quite unlike any of his contemporaries. From his teenage years, the French artist of humble means understood his role in life was to be a Christian painter, and while he was a seminal figure in various movements of radical modernity, he never deviated from this mission. Denis built a philosophy and theory around art-making that saw its purpose as a continuation of the act of Creation, as in the Genesis stories. The essence of art, for him, was the expression of love and faith and to serve as a refuge from the darkness of the world. He did not see beauty around him in the everyday, so attempted to find it in his paintings as a way of showing his faith and trust in God’s creation. Yet while these ideas about the function of art had existed for centuries before him, it was the style in which he applied them that made Denis so unique amongst religious artists. He was a founding member of the Nabis, a key Impressionist and a godfather to Cubism, Fauvism and Abstract art. While his contemporary artists were forsaking traditional roles across their lives as they forged a new artistic language, Denis remained personally traditional, living a stable and austere life that found joy in faith and family.
Maurice Denis
MAURICE DENIS, 1912. OIL ON CANVAS.
Avant-garde sensibility and traditional religious thought are rectified in Denis’ work, quite unlike any of his contemporaries. From his teenage years, the French artist of humble means understood his role in life was to be a Christian painter, and while he was a seminal figure in various movements of radical modernity, he never deviated from this mission. Denis built a philosophy and theory around art-making that saw its purpose as a continuation of the act of Creation, as in the Genesis stories. The essence of art, for him, was the expression of love and faith and to serve as a refuge from the darkness of the world. He did not see beauty around him in the everyday, so attempted to find it in his paintings as a way of showing his faith and trust in God’s creation. Yet while these ideas about the function of art had existed for centuries before him, it was the style in which he applied them that made Denis so unique amongst religious artists. He was a founding member of the Nabis, a key Impressionist and a godfather to Cubism, Fauvism and Abstract art. While his contemporary artists were forsaking traditional roles across their lives as they forged a new artistic language, Denis remained personally traditional, living a stable and austere life that found joy in faith and family.
Untitled Composition
JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCIA
There are no contradictions. Nothing is incompatible. These were the tenets that guided Torres-Garcia’s life, the life of a writer, painter, sculptor, teacher, theorist, muralist, novelist and architect; a renaissance man of the highest order. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1874, he emigrated to Catalunya, Spain in 1891 and began a career as an artist. Over the next 50 years, he would go on to found numerous schools, groups and movements including the first European Abstract art group and push the art and culture of Europe and South America to its vanguard. It was the duality of his homeland and his adopted nations that drove Torres-Garcia, and his ability to hold this duality together in a single mind. He existed between places, carrying the identity of Uruguay with him everywhere, and in doing so he was able too to carry the new and the old, the classical and the avant-garde, reason and feeling, figuration and abstraction. There are no contradictions, he said, nothing is incompatible.
Joaquín Torres-Garcia
JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCIA, 1929. OIL ON CANVAS.
There are no contradictions. Nothing is incompatible. These were the tenets that guided Torres-Garcia’s life, the life of a writer, painter, sculptor, teacher, theorist, muralist, novelist and architect; a renaissance man of the highest order. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1874, he emigrated to Catalunya, Spain in 1891 and began a career as an artist. Over the next 50 years, he would go on to found numerous schools, groups and movements including the first European Abstract art group and push the art and culture of Europe and South America to its vanguard. It was the duality of his homeland and his adopted nations that drove Torres-Garcia, and his ability to hold this duality together in a single mind. He existed between places, carrying the identity of Uruguay with him everywhere, and in doing so he was able too to carry the new and the old, the classical and the avant-garde, reason and feeling, figuration and abstraction. There are no contradictions, he said, nothing is incompatible.
Sleeping Woman - Julia
LYONEL FEININGER
The human becomes landscape, as mountains emerge from the angles of her face and folds of her clothes. The chaise longue she reclines upon take on the tones of earthliness while the drapes and walls behind her become a sky, framing the subject in her duality. The subject, Julia, is Feininger’s wife and this is perhaps his most intimate study of her. A New York born artist of German heritage, as a teenager Feininger was sent to Hamburg to study where he was introduced to an burgeoning avant-garde movement that was sweeping Europe. Profoundly influenced by cubism, but not a member of the close-knit group of artists who developed it, he brought the ideas and philosophies of this new style back to America. This merged with an American optimism and a German romanticism to create a style distinctly his own, one which pays homage to the contemporary European scene and the modern styles of the day, while speaking to a spiritual love of his partner and the natural world that seem to blend into one before his eyes.
Lyonel Feininger
LYONEL FEININGER, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS.
The human becomes landscape, as mountains emerge from the angles of her face and folds of her clothes. The chaise longue she reclines upon take on the tones of earthliness while the drapes and walls behind her become a sky, framing the subject in her duality. The subject, Julia, is Feininger’s wife and this is perhaps his most intimate study of her. A New York born artist of German heritage, as a teenager Feininger was sent to Hamburg to study where he was introduced to an burgeoning avant-garde movement that was sweeping Europe. Profoundly influenced by cubism, but not a member of the close-knit group of artists who developed it, he brought the ideas and philosophies of this new style back to America. This merged with an American optimism and a German romanticism to create a style distinctly his own, one which pays homage to the contemporary European scene and the modern styles of the day, while speaking to a spiritual love of his partner and the natural world that seem to blend into one before his eyes.
The Canale Della Guidecca, Venice, towards Sunset, with Boats Moored off the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute
J.M.W TURNER
For the specificity of its title, Turner’s work of ‘Canale Della Guidecca’ is full of inaccuracies, half-truths and imagination. Most of the buildings pictured are non-existent, and those that are have been moved from their locations for the sake of balance and beauty. Yet John Ruskin, the greatest art critic of his time, said ‘without one single accurate detail, the picture is the likest thing to what it is meant for – the looking out of the Guidecca landwards, at sunset – of all that I have ever seen’. Turner’s genius was that he was able to capture the essence of a place or an event, and he understood that essence was more about the feeling it provoked than anything else. You can stand at the Guidecca today, look out towards sunset, feel the calm, gentle, soft majesty wash over you and know that Turner’s painting might not have been accurate, but it was truthful.
J.M.W. TURNER
J.M.W. TURNER, 1840. GRAPHITE AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER.
For the specificity of its title, Turner’s work of ‘Canale Della Guidecca’ is full of inaccuracies, half-truths and imagination. Most of the buildings pictured are non-existent, and those that are have been moved from their locations for the sake of balance and beauty. Yet John Ruskin, the greatest art critic of his time, said ‘without one single accurate detail, the picture is the likest thing to what it is meant for – the looking out of the Guidecca landwards, at sunset – of all that I have ever seen’. Turner’s genius was that he was able to capture the essence of a place or an event, and he understood that essence was more about the feeling it provoked than anything else. You can stand at the Guidecca today, look out towards sunset, feel the calm, gentle, soft majesty wash over you and know that Turner’s painting might not have been accurate, but it was truthful.
Untitled
MORRIS LOUISE
In a 12 by 14 foot apartment, Morris Louise lay down a canvas measuring 8 by 11.5 feet. Living in quiet isolation in New York, Louise had grown apart from the New York artists that together had pioneered the idea of Colour Field Painting. His work towards the end of the 1950s kept core philosophies from this movement, examining the idea of what a finished painting was meant to be, but a visit to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio had opened his eyes to a new world of techniques and he began combining the ideas of his past contemporaries, such as Pollock, with Frankenthaler’s medium driven ‘Stain Paintings’. So shuffling along the edges of the canvas, his back pressed against the wall, he poured a home-made mix of paint, thinned with acrylic resin and turpentine, and let it was over the unprimed canvas. The result is staggering, and exemplary of Louise’s mastery of form and colour theory. The soft hues mix into darkness, the streaks seem to explode out of their origin in a display of natural fireworks. Between the completion of this work and his death two years later, Louise created more than 150 canvases of this scale, finally feeling like he had found his artistic home.
Morris Louise
MORRIS LOUISE, 1960. MAGNA ON CANVAS.
In a 12 by 14 foot apartment, Morris Louise lay down a canvas measuring 8 by 11.5 feet. Living in quiet isolation in New York, Louise had grown apart from the New York artists that together had pioneered the idea of Colour Field Painting. His work towards the end of the 1950s kept core philosophies from this movement, examining the idea of what a finished painting was meant to be, but a visit to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio had opened his eyes to a new world of techniques and he began combining the ideas of his past contemporaries, such as Pollock, with Frankenthaler’s medium driven ‘Stain Paintings’. So shuffling along the edges of the canvas, his back pressed against the wall, he poured a home-made mix of paint, thinned with acrylic resin and turpentine, and let it was over the unprimed canvas. The result is staggering, and exemplary of Louise’s mastery of form and colour theory. The soft hues mix into darkness, the streaks seem to explode out of their origin in a display of natural fireworks. Between the completion of this work and his death two years later, Louise created more than 150 canvases of this scale, finally feeling like he had found his artistic home.
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.
Ground Swell
EDWARD HOPPER
A far-off storm felt under clear skies, ground swells are harbingers of things to come, messengers of danger. When Hopper painted this work in 1939, he could feel a change brewing in the air. The Second World War was looming and American isolationism was beginning to wane, it would not be long before they were a part of the conflict happening across the sea. To this uneasy world, Hopper responds with a depiction of freedom, of youth, and of the surging promise of youth, The boys on the boat look out to a buoy in the water, ringing with the motion of the waves. They are sun drenched and the sea water spits up gently, but they are off kilter. Small waves rock their boat ever so slightly, but the waves seem unrelenting. Hopper was most known for his depictions of urban loneliness and melancholy and this picture, with its vibrant blues and idyllic scene, seems anomalous. Yet the same themes pervade, on a grander, more cosmic scale. Hopper depiction of a happy American scene is perhaps his most ominous of all.
Edward Hopper
EDWARD HOPPER, 1939. OIL ON CANVAS.
A far-off storm felt under clear skies, ground swells are harbingers of things to come, messengers of danger. When Hopper painted this work in 1939, he could feel a change brewing in the air. The Second World War was looming and American isolationism was beginning to wane, it would not be long before they were a part of the conflict happening across the sea. To this uneasy world, Hopper responds with a depiction of freedom, of youth, and of the surging promise of youth, The boys on the boat look out to a buoy in the water, ringing with the motion of the waves. They are sun drenched and the sea water spits up gently, but they are off kilter. Small waves rock their boat ever so slightly, but the waves seem unrelenting. Hopper was most known for his depictions of urban loneliness and melancholy and this picture, with its vibrant blues and idyllic scene, seems anomalous. Yet the same themes pervade, on a grander, more cosmic scale. Hopper depiction of a happy American scene is perhaps his most ominous of all.
The Return of the Prodigal Son
REMBRANDT
Approaching death, the greatest painter of his age leaves us with a final word of hope for forgiveness and salvation. A son, wretched and wasteful has spent the fortune his father gave him on frivolity and decadence and returns home begging for a lowly position to redeem himself, but is instead welcomed in open arms and embraced not for his sins but his penitence. This is the story that Rembrandt - master painter, portraitist and hero of the Dutch golden age - depicts as amongst the final works before he passes away and it is hard not to read it as a plea for how he will be treated in the afterlife. He does not represent it with biblical accuracy, but brings in unknown characters: a women, barely visible, most likely his mother and a seated figure representing a tax collector and his own ambivalence at the wealth he has built. Rembrandt is both the young son, coming home ashamed, and the older son, dissatisfied with the lack of reward for his loyalty in contrast to his brother. Both need salvation, both hope to come home and both, as Rembrandt, long for the embrace of a loving father to forgive them for the life they have led.
Rembrandt
REMBRANDT, c.1668. OIL ON CANVAS.
Approaching death, the greatest painter of his age leaves us with a final word of hope for forgiveness and salvation. A son, wretched and wasteful has spent the fortune his father gave him on frivolity and decadence and returns home begging for a lowly position to redeem himself, but is instead welcomed in open arms and embraced not for his sins but his penitence. This is the story that Rembrandt - master painter, portraitist and hero of the Dutch golden age - depicts as amongst the final works before he passes away and it is hard not to read it as a plea for how he will be treated in the afterlife. He does not represent it with biblical accuracy, but brings in unknown characters: a women, barely visible, most likely his mother and a seated figure representing a tax collector and his own ambivalence at the wealth he has built. Rembrandt is both the young son, coming home ashamed, and the older son, dissatisfied with the lack of reward for his loyalty in contrast to his brother. Both need salvation, both hope to come home and both, as Rembrandt, long for the embrace of a loving father to forgive them for the life they have led.