Monte Carlo Bond
MARCEL DUCHAMP
Part joke, part conceptual artwork, part legally binding financial document, the Monte Carlo Bonds capture so much of what was brilliant, chaotic and confounding about the great Marcel Duchamp. Having once again tried to abandon his calling as an artist, Duchamp spent night after night in the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, devising what he thought was a perfect system for roulette involving increasingly intricate dice rolls to decide the numbers to bet on. It was slow, economical and, he said, played over enough time tipped the odds to give him a slight edge over the house, guaranteeing eventual profit. Yet the process was slow using Duchamp’s capital and so he looked outwards, offering friends the chance to buy into his scheme if only they would front him the money. Those that did, received these bonds in return, which entitled them to profit shares after every 100,000th roll on the wheel. Even in his attempted rejection of art, Duchamp made the world conceptual and beautiful.
Marcel Duchamp
MARCEL DUCHAMP, 1924. PHOTO-COLLAGE ON LETTERPRESS.
Part joke, part conceptual artwork, part legally binding financial document, the Monte Carlo Bonds capture so much of what was brilliant, chaotic and confounding about the great Marcel Duchamp. Having once again tried to abandon his calling as an artist, Duchamp spent night after night in the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, devising what he thought was a perfect system for roulette involving increasingly intricate dice rolls to decide the numbers to bet on. It was slow, economical and, he said, played over enough time tipped the odds to give him a slight edge over the house, guaranteeing eventual profit. Yet the process was slow using Duchamp’s capital and so he looked outwards, offering friends the chance to buy into his scheme if only they would front him the money. Those that did, received these bonds in return, which entitled them to profit shares after every 100,000th roll on the wheel. Even in his attempted rejection of art, Duchamp made the world conceptual and beautiful.
Supper at Emmaus
CARAVAGGIO
In domesticity, holiness can appear. The sublime enters daily life and interrupts routine, and we may not recognise it without being told. Such is the story of the resurrected Jesus appearing in the town of Emmaus that the great Renaissance master Caravaggio depicts here. Two disciples, Luke and Cleophas, and an innkeeper are having dinner when Christ appears in a different form, here represented as without his beard, and joins them. They do not recognise him at first, and it is only when he has broken bread to they realise that they are in the presence of their teacher and the Son of God, risen from the dead. Just as soon as they do, he vanishes before their eyes and is not seen again. Caravaggio paints this moment of realisation, the two men in awe while the innkeeper looks on, seemingly oblivious to their moment of clarity. The painting does not emphasise holiness, Christ’s glory is unexalted, he is but a man, though more delicate and pure than the rugged disciples either side of him. This is the height of Jesus’ humanity, so at one with the mortal that he is able to join them for dinner as an equal and Caravaggio urges us not to ignore where the glory of god may appear in our daily, domestic lives.
CARAVAGGIO
CARAVAGGIO, 1601. OIL ON CANVAS
In domesticity, holiness can appear. The sublime enters daily life and interrupts routine, and we may not recognise it without being told. Such is the story of the resurrected Jesus appearing in the town of Emmaus that the great Renaissance master Caravaggio depicts here. Two disciples, Luke and Cleophas, and an innkeeper are having dinner when Christ appears in a different form, here represented as without his beard, and joins them. They do not recognise him at first, and it is only when he has broken bread to they realise that they are in the presence of their teacher and the Son of God, risen from the dead. Just as soon as they do, he vanishes before their eyes and is not seen again. Caravaggio paints this moment of realisation, the two men in awe while the innkeeper looks on, seemingly oblivious to their moment of clarity. The painting does not emphasise holiness, Christ’s glory is unexalted, he is but a man, though more delicate and pure than the rugged disciples either side of him. This is the height of Jesus’ humanity, so at one with the mortal that he is able to join them for dinner as an equal and Caravaggio urges us not to ignore where the glory of god may appear in our daily, domestic lives.
Still Life: The Table
GEORGES BRAQUE
To upend art history, you have to be committed to its traditions. For Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who together created the visual vocabulary of modernity, this tradition began and would be dismantled with the ‘Still Life’. Using the motifs, objects and arrangements that have pervaded painted works for centuries, they disorientate the viewer while giving just enough context and knowledge to ground them. To look at Braque’s work today is to see it fitting neatly within the very art history he sought to topple, but this still life was a radical work. We are given the base of a table, its legs strangely foreshortened but it places us within a known entity. So too, the objects are familiar iconography – fruit, a guitar, a stoneware jug, music sheets and others. Yet each object has it’s own perspective, it does not conform within a singular vision but instead shows a world of multiplicity. Braque’s table could be viewed from infinite angles and still the objects upon it would never unify.
Georges Braque
GEORGES BRAQUE, 1928. OIL ON CANVAS.
To upend art history, you have to be committed to its traditions. For Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who together created the visual vocabulary of modernity, this tradition began and would be dismantled with the ‘Still Life’. Using the motifs, objects and arrangements that have pervaded painted works for centuries, they disorientate the viewer while giving just enough context and knowledge to ground them. To look at Braque’s work today is to see it fitting neatly within the very art history he sought to topple, but this still life was a radical work. We are given the base of a table, its legs strangely foreshortened but it places us within a known entity. So too, the objects are familiar iconography – fruit, a guitar, a stoneware jug, music sheets and others. Yet each object has it’s own perspective, it does not conform within a singular vision but instead shows a world of multiplicity. Braque’s table could be viewed from infinite angles and still the objects upon it would never unify.
Vase with Flowers
PIERRE BONNARD
Art was Pierre Bonnard’s only option. After failing his entry examination to practice law, he fell in with a group of disparate but commonly ambitious young artists who soon became known as the Nabis. They were unified by a common idea – that a work of art was not about a depiction of nature but rather a synthesis of metaphors and symbols into a unified aesthetic work. Their name derived from the Hebrew term for prophet, as this group of radical young creatives were, even in their contemporary age, ushering in a new way of understanding. Bonnard was the greatest of the Nabis, a prophet among prophets who unified a love of Japanese art, graphic illustration and Gaugin’s paintings into works of decadent, detailed, simple beauty.
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Pierre Bonnard
PIERRE BONNARD, 1920. OIL ON CANVAS.
Art was Pierre Bonnard’s only option. After failing his entry examination to practice law, he fell in with a group of disparate but commonly ambitious young artists who soon became known as the Nabis. They were unified by a common idea – that a work of art was not about a depiction of nature but rather a synthesis of metaphors and symbols into a unified aesthetic work. Their name derived from the Hebrew term for prophet, as this group of radical young creatives were, even in their contemporary age, ushering in a new way of understanding. Bonnard was the greatest of the Nabis, a prophet among prophets who unified a love of Japanese art, graphic illustration and Gaugin’s paintings into works of decadent, detailed, simple beauty.
Jean Cocteau
BERNARD BUFFET
In the 1950s, Bernard Buffet was one of the most famous artists in the world. Talked about in the same breath as Picasso, at the age of 21 he was a star of Post-War Paris with a prolific output of paintings and solo shows every year. Buffet was known as a ‘Miserabilist’, an art movement of just one that was characterised by his long faced subjects, thick, impassioned black lines, palette of grays, and often bleak subject matter. He was internationally famous, escaping the confines of the art world to become a known entity to the general public who caused stampedes with each new exhibitions and work that adorned magazines, albums, plastic bags, postage stamps, and posters. Yet as his fame rose, so did his wealth and he began to live a wildly decadent life complete with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce and a castle in the countryside. His life seemed to be at odds with the style and subjects of his paintings, and as images of this decadence became proliferated, the public turned against Buffet. By the late 1960s, he was but a footnote in art history, though to look at his paintings now is to still see the same power, intensity, and misery that was the cause for so much celebration in the post-war years.
Bernard Buffet
BERNARD BUFFET, 1955. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the 1950s, Bernard Buffet was one of the most famous artists in the world. Talked about in the same breath as Picasso, at the age of 21 he was a star of Post-War Paris with a prolific output of paintings and solo shows every year. Buffet was known as a ‘Miserabilist’, an art movement of just one that was characterised by his long faced subjects, thick, impassioned black lines, palette of grays, and often bleak subject matter. He was internationally famous, escaping the confines of the art world to become a known entity to the general public who caused stampedes with each new exhibitions and work that adorned magazines, albums, plastic bags, postage stamps, and posters. Yet as his fame rose, so did his wealth and he began to live a wildly decadent life complete with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce and a castle in the countryside. His life seemed to be at odds with the style and subjects of his paintings, and as images of this decadence became proliferated, the public turned against Buffet. By the late 1960s, he was but a footnote in art history, though to look at his paintings now is to still see the same power, intensity, and misery that was the cause for so much celebration in the post-war years.
Jeanne Lanvin
ÉDOUARD VUILLARD
Vuillard was a Nabi. A member of the semi-secret, semi-mystic group of artists who met at apartments and coffee shops in the late 1800s, plotting a revolution of art by stripping it down to its most base elements. Yet Vuillard’s ambitions and influences could not be contained, and when the group splintered and split up at the turn of the century, he found a new freedom of expression. Integrating a love of Japanese art, theatre and set design and decorative arts, he returned to interior scenes he had painted as a Nabi with a newfound vigour. Vuillard matches his subject with their surroundings, spending more time in the exterior world around them than on the subject themselves. Here, the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin exists in exquisite harmony with the room, each object, detail, brushstroke of the interiors reveals something of Lanvin’s interior life.
Edouard Vuillard
EDOUARD VUILLARD, 1933. DISTEMPER ON CANVAS.
Vuillard was a Nabi. A member of the semi-secret, semi-mystic group of artists who met at apartments and coffee shops in the late 1800s, plotting a revolution of art by stripping it down to its most base elements. Yet Vuillard’s ambitions and influences could not be contained, and when the group splintered and split up at the turn of the century, he found a new freedom of expression. Integrating a love of Japanese art, theatre and set design and decorative arts, he returned to interior scenes he had painted as a Nabi with a newfound vigour. Vuillard matches his subject with their surroundings, spending more time in the exterior world around them than on the subject themselves. Here, the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin exists in exquisite harmony with the room, each object, detail, brushstroke of the interiors reveals something of Lanvin’s interior life.
La Poésie Est Comme Lui. Voila Haviland
FRANCIS PICABIA
Dada was raging, the machines were taking over, and Francis Picabia was amongst the most celebrated artists in the world. Automation, industrialization and war were in the air, and the avant-garde responded with the embrace of nonsense. In precarious times, why pay any attention to logic, reason, or the accepted philosophies of the day when they had led to nothing but pain and strife? It was in this epoch that Picabia began his ‘mechanical drawings’, inspired equally by the machine like works of Duchamp as he was by the military illustrations of weaponry, he drew works of aesthetic rigidity, seemingly educational at first glance, but which fell apart into surreal irrationality with any close inspection. This work is from a series of portraits depicting his friends as various mechanical objects. Here, the photographer and critic Paul Haviland is shown as a desk lamp, disconnected from his power source as he left New York to look after his father. The translation of Picabia’s fittingly absurd title is simple: ‘Poetry is like him. Here is Haviland’
Francis Picabia
FRANCIS PICABIA, 1915. MIXED MEDIA ON BOARD.
Dada was raging, the machines were taking over, and Francis Picabia was amongst the most celebrated artists in the world. Automation, industrialization and war were in the air, and the avant-garde responded with the embrace of nonsense. In precarious times, why pay any attention to logic, reason, or the accepted philosophies of the day when they had led to nothing but pain and strife? It was in this epoch that Picabia began his ‘mechanical drawings’, inspired equally by the machine like works of Duchamp as he was by the military illustrations of weaponry, he drew works of aesthetic rigidity, seemingly educational at first glance, but which fell apart into surreal irrationality with any close inspection. This work is from a series of portraits depicting his friends as various mechanical objects. Here, the photographer and critic Paul Haviland is shown as a desk lamp, disconnected from his power source as he left New York to look after his father. The translation of Picabia’s fittingly absurd title is simple: ‘Poetry is like him. Here is Haviland’
Untitled
ETEL ADNAN
“ Every painting by [Paul] Klee”, Annan once said of her artistic hero and early influence, “is like an act of discovery, achieved through a process of exploration, like a boat in the ocean.” To look at her work is to see much the same process - a compositional world rife with color and figuration that seems to morph and change before our very eyes. Centered with a sun like mass, simple forms in rudimentary but perfectly balanced color move around it, offering interpretations of landscape but not requiring such formal or prescriptive description. It is unsurprising, not just in looking at Adnan’s paintings, to see a kinship between herself and Paul Klee, one of the great geniuses of early 20th century modernism. Like Klee, Adnan cannot be defined simply by one practice, and does not want to be. She is considered one of the most important and certainly most celebrated Arab writers of the modern age. As a poet, essayist, and journalist, Adnan pushes the written word to bold, unusual, tender, and exciting spaces - writing on myriad topics yet finding such lyrical life in all of them. Her visual art, like Klee’s, should not be seen or understood differently, simply as a different medium to express consistent ideas and questions; her brilliance can not be bound to simply paper or canvas alone, and throughout her life she let it find its home wherever it sought refuge.
Etel Adnan
ETEL ADNAN, 2010. OIL ON CANVAS.
“ Every painting by [Paul] Klee”, Annan once said of her artistic hero and early influence, “is like an act of discovery, achieved through a process of exploration, like a boat in the ocean.” To look at her work is to see much the same process - a compositional world rife with color and figuration that seems to morph and change before our very eyes. Centered with a sun like mass, simple forms in rudimentary but perfectly balanced color move around it, offering interpretations of landscape but not requiring such formal or prescriptive description. It is unsurprising, not just in looking at Adnan’s paintings, to see a kinship between herself and Paul Klee, one of the great geniuses of early 20th century modernism. Like Klee, Adnan cannot be defined simply by one practice, and does not want to be. She is considered one of the most important and certainly most celebrated Arab writers of the modern age. As a poet, essayist, and journalist, Adnan pushes the written word to bold, unusual, tender, and exciting spaces - writing on myriad topics yet finding such lyrical life in all of them. Her visual art, like Klee’s, should not be seen or understood differently, simply as a different medium to express consistent ideas and questions; her brilliance can not be bound to simply paper or canvas alone, and throughout her life she let it find its home wherever it sought refuge.
Untitled (Hand-Shell)
DORA MAAR
In the public imagination, Dora Maar is perhaps most readily known as Picasso’s great lover and the subject of Weeping Woman, amongst his most important and famous works. Yet this understanding is grounded in so much historical misogyny, and the constant erasure and redefinition of female artists as muses for their male counterparts. Maar was seismic and seminal in her own right, one of the most important photographers in the mediums burgeoning days, and a pioneering image maker across the camera and brush. Studying painting and photography at one of Paris’ most progressive art schools in the 1920s, she quickly began creating remarkable works, combining her images into surreal photomontages and staging eerie, uncanny scenes. She was commissioned by fashion brands, advertisers, and galleries to construct her strange worlds that seemed to blend dreams and reality, with a level of subconscious eroticism throughout them all. Alongside this, she worked as a street photographer, documenting the increasing poverty in Europe with a fast action Rollei-Flex, which she would in turn sometimes use in her collages. Maar has, in recent years, reclaimed her place as a pioneering and foundation figure of surrealism, and a leader of early centuries’ photography movement, on par with Man Ray.
Dora Maar
DORA MAAR, 1934. GELATIN SILVER PRINT.
In the public imagination, Dora Maar is perhaps most readily known as Picasso’s great lover and the subject of Weeping Woman, amongst his most important and famous works. Yet this understanding is grounded in so much historical misogyny, and the constant erasure and redefinition of female artists as muses for their male counterparts. Maar was seismic and seminal in her own right, one of the most important photographers in the mediums burgeoning days, and a pioneering image maker across the camera and brush. Studying painting and photography at one of Paris’ most progressive art schools in the 1920s, she quickly began creating remarkable works, combining her images into surreal photomontages and staging eerie, uncanny scenes. She was commissioned by fashion brands, advertisers, and galleries to construct her strange worlds that seemed to blend dreams and reality, with a level of subconscious eroticism throughout them all. Alongside this, she worked as a street photographer, documenting the increasing poverty in Europe with a fast action Rollei-Flex, which she would in turn sometimes use in her collages. Maar has, in recent years, reclaimed her place as a pioneering and foundation figure of surrealism, and a leader of early centuries’ photography movement, on par with Man Ray.
Tänzerin
JEAN ARP
An animalistic figure, at once grotesque and elegant with flowing blue hair, a sprawling bust, and strange heeled legs dances across a golden plain. After some years away from the Dada movement, of which he had been a founding member, Tänzenir is a sort of reconnection with the humour and irony that defined the group. It is playful and surreal, defying our expectations of how a dancer should be represented - the figure is not graceful in a classic sense, their body seems to escape its confines at each turn and the bright primary colors of their form add a playful, childlike energy to the movements. Arp’s wife, Sophie Tauber-Arp, was herself a great artist and also a dancer and this ethereal evocation can be understood as a representation of her modernist choreography, making this a surreal, humorousness portrait of a wife by her husband.
Jean Arp
JEAN ARP, 1925. OIL ON CUT AND GLUED WOOD.
An animalistic figure, at once grotesque and elegant with flowing blue hair, a sprawling bust, and strange heeled legs dances across a golden plain. After some years away from the Dada movement, of which he had been a founding member, Tänzenir is a sort of reconnection with the humour and irony that defined the group. It is playful and surreal, defying our expectations of how a dancer should be represented - the figure is not graceful in a classic sense, their body seems to escape its confines at each turn and the bright primary colors of their form add a playful, childlike energy to the movements. Arp’s wife, Sophie Tauber-Arp, was herself a great artist and also a dancer and this ethereal evocation can be understood as a representation of her modernist choreography, making this a surreal, humorousness portrait of a wife by her husband.
Portrait of a Lady
ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN
A portrait hides elegant geometry. Rogier van der Weyden was breaking from the traditional norms across multiple planes. He rejected the Western Renaissance’s attempt to create idealised figures, instead focusing on naturalistic depictions of his subjects. Their imperfection is their beauty, and he attempted to capture his sitters as he saw them, emphasising their features with dramatic lighting that creates an almost gothic realism. Yet if you un-focus your eyes, the work becomes a study of mathematics. The rectangles of her veil, the triangle of her neckline and sharp angles of her face turn the sitter into a figure of profound compositional simplicity. Van der Weyden’s portrait of an unnamed woman has become amongst the most famous and revered portraits in history. It’s power lies in it’s remarkable austerity, capturing a moment of emotion told in the lines and sight of a face.
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Rogier van der Weyden
ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN, c.1460. OIL ON OAK PANEL.
A portrait hides elegant geometry. Rogier van der Weyden was breaking from the traditional norms across multiple planes. He rejected the Western Renaissance’s attempt to create idealised figures, instead focusing on naturalistic depictions of his subjects. Their imperfection is their beauty, and he attempted to capture his sitters as he saw them, emphasising their features with dramatic lighting that creates an almost gothic realism. Yet if you un-focus your eyes, the work becomes a study of mathematics. The rectangles of her veil, the triangle of her neckline and sharp angles of her face turn the sitter into a figure of profound compositional simplicity. Van der Weyden’s portrait of an unnamed woman has become amongst the most famous and revered portraits in history. It’s power lies in it’s remarkable austerity, capturing a moment of emotion told in the lines and sight of a face.
Segments
JOSEF ALBERS
When the Bauhaus closed in 1933 under the order of the Nazi party, Josef and Anni Albers fled Germany to America where they became the first permanent faculty at the Black Mountain College. A radical centre for artistic education that became a breeding ground for so many of the figures who defined American modernity, the Albers were a central part of the cultural and creative ecosystem. Both in Germany, and in America, Josef Albers primary concern was color, and his ‘Homage to a Square’ series was produced throughout his life and laid the foundation for contemporary color theory. Yet coming to rural North Carolina from the flatlands of Weimar seemed to open up a new geometric, formal interest in Albers. As illustrated with this print, made just a year after his arrival, he explores how organic curves and gentle forms play with sharp, rigid lines. Produced in monochrome, this is a work uninterested in color and fascinated with shape, a work that represents new possibilities in the face of such devastation.
Josef Albers
JOSEF ALBERS, 1934. LINOCUT PRINT ON JAPANESE PAPER.
When the Bauhaus closed in 1933 under the order of the Nazi party, Josef and Anni Albers fled Germany to America where they became the first permanent faculty at the Black Mountain College. A radical centre for artistic education that became a breeding ground for so many of the figures who defined American modernity, the Albers were a central part of the cultural and creative ecosystem. Both in Germany, and in America, Josef Albers primary concern was color, and his ‘Homage to a Square’ series was produced throughout his life and laid the foundation for contemporary color theory. Yet coming to rural North Carolina from the flatlands of Weimar seemed to open up a new geometric, formal interest in Albers. As illustrated with this print, made just a year after his arrival, he explores how organic curves and gentle forms play with sharp, rigid lines. Produced in monochrome, this is a work uninterested in color and fascinated with shape, a work that represents new possibilities in the face of such devastation.
Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge)
BRICE MARDEN
Inspired by the poems of Hanshan, a 9th Century Chinese poet who lived in willing exile in the mountains where he wrote his poems on rocks, trees and cave walls, Marden created 6 large scale works. Hanshan’s poems are immensely spirituality in the Taoist and Zen traditions, and Marden’s work are implicitly informed by this. Bridging a gap between the real and the imagined, the formal and the abstract, the natural and the unnatural, Cold Mountain 6 is about the in-between space where peace lives. He painted the canvases from the bottom to top and left to write, so as to mirror the Chinese writing system and in this way the painting can be seen also as calligraphic abstractions. What is left behind when we remove meaning from beauty?
Brice Marden
BRICE MARDEN, 1991. OIL ON LINEN.
Inspired by the poems of Hanshan, a 9th Century Chinese poet who lived in willing exile in the mountains where he wrote his poems on rocks, trees and cave walls, Marden created 6 large scale works. Hanshan’s poems are immensely spirituality in the Taoist and Zen traditions, and Marden’s work are implicitly informed by this. Bridging a gap between the real and the imagined, the formal and the abstract, the natural and the unnatural, Cold Mountain 6 is about the in-between space where peace lives. He painted the canvases from the bottom to top and left to write, so as to mirror the Chinese writing system and in this way the painting can be seen also as calligraphic abstractions. What is left behind when we remove meaning from beauty?
Sticks Framing A Lake
ANDY GOLDSWORTHY
Goldsworthy is not monumental; he is but a vehicle to amplify the world he loves. Small, subtle interventions in the landscape are the root of his practice. Sculptures that last as long as nature dictates, piles of leaves painstakingly organised are dispersed with the wind and formations of sticks live at the will of the tides. In their brief moments of life, Goldsworthy’s works are exemplars of staggering beauty, but this beauty can only exist if we accept that they are transient. Nature is Goldsworthy’s collaborator and his teacher. “I take the opportunities each day offers”, he says, “if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.”
Andy Goldsworthy
ANDY GOLDSWORTHY, 1986. FOUND STICKS.
Goldsworthy is not monumental; he is but a vehicle to amplify the world he loves. Small, subtle interventions in the landscape are the root of his practice. Sculptures that last as long as nature dictates, piles of leaves painstakingly organised are dispersed with the wind and formations of sticks live at the will of the tides. In their brief moments of life, Goldsworthy’s works are exemplars of staggering beauty, but this beauty can only exist if we accept that they are transient. Nature is Goldsworthy’s collaborator and his teacher. “I take the opportunities each day offers”, he says, “if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.”
The Angelus
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET
The Angelus took on spiritual and religious significance far beyond its painter’s intentions. It spawned a patriotic fervour when it nearly left France, inspired a madman to attack it with a knife, became an obsession of Salvador Dali, spawned an artistic revolution that informed Van Gogh, Matisse, Seurat and Cezanne and is well regarded as one of the greatest religious works of all time. All of this for a work of tranquil reverence, made from nostalgia Millet felt towards his grandmother. It depicts two labourers, upon hearing the church bell toll for the end of the day, in quiet prayer. Millet did not paint it as a religious work, yet he captured the essence of faith, of the serenity of devotion across society. It is not grand nor biblical, but honest and humble, truer to religious values that so many works of splendour. The significance of The Angelus comes from its depiction of the seemingly insignificant.
Jean-François Millet
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET, 1859. OIL ON CANVAS.
The Angelus took on spiritual and religious significance far beyond its painter’s intentions. It spawned a patriotic fervour when it nearly left France, inspired a madman to attack it with a knife, became an obsession of Salvador Dali, spawned an artistic revolution that informed Van Gogh, Matisse, Seurat and Cezanne and is well regarded as one of the greatest religious works of all time. All of this for a work of tranquil reverence, made from nostalgia Millet felt towards his grandmother. It depicts two labourers, upon hearing the church bell toll for the end of the day, in quiet prayer. Millet did not paint it as a religious work, yet he captured the essence of faith, of the serenity of devotion across society. It is not grand nor biblical, but honest and humble, truer to religious values that so many works of splendour. The significance of The Angelus comes from its depiction of the seemingly insignificant.
House Behind Trees
GEORGES BRAQUE
Under the strong light of Southern France, Georges Braque started a brief and important affair with Fauvism. He joined the movement late and left early, the whole relationship lasting less than a year and few works resulting from it. Within a year of this work, together with Picasso, Braque would lay the foundations of Cubism, bring sharp geometry and simultaneous perspective to a more subdued colour palette, but it was his time in southern France as temporary Fauvist that allowed this revolution to happen. Braque painted most of his Fauvist works in the fishing villages of La Ciotat and l’Estaque, favourites of Paul Cézanne. Under the shadow of Cézanne’s legacy, Braque drew the ordinary ahead of him and imbued it with magic. Cubism was, for Braque, purely an extension of the ideas Cézanne had started a half-century before, and Braque’s affair with Fauvism was, more than anything, an affair with the spirit of Cézanne who guided him to stranger, more powerful things.
Georges Braque
GEORGES BRAQUE, 1906-7. OIL ON CANVAS.
Under the strong light of Southern France, Georges Braque started a brief and important affair with Fauvism. He joined the movement late and left early, the whole relationship lasting less than a year and few works resulting from it. Within a year of this work, together with Picasso, Braque would lay the foundations of Cubism, bring sharp geometry and simultaneous perspective to a more subdued colour palette, but it was his time in southern France as temporary Fauvist that allowed this revolution to happen. Braque painted most of his Fauvist works in the fishing villages of La Ciotat and l’Estaque, favourites of Paul Cézanne. Under the shadow of Cézanne’s legacy, Braque drew the ordinary ahead of him and imbued it with magic. Cubism was, for Braque, purely an extension of the ideas Cézanne had started a half-century before, and Braque’s affair with Fauvism was, more than anything, an affair with the spirit of Cézanne who guided him to stranger, more powerful things.
Kitchen Scene, Yellow House
BILL TRAYLOR
Bill Traylor was born into slavery in rural Alabama in the mid 1950s. He spent most of life after emancipation working as a sharecropper until he moved, in 1939, to Montgomery and at the age of 85 took up a pencil and scraps of cardboard and began to document his past. Drawing on street corners and selling his wares to passers-by, over the next 3 years he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art. Like so many outsider artists, Traylor could have remained unknown, and despite having a solo show in 1940, it was not until the late 1970s, some 30 years after his death, that his work began to receive wide attention. Today, Traylor is considered one of the most important 20th century artists in American history, and a leader in the folk art movement. Traylor’s works are unflinching in their depiction of the brutality of his life and American history, yet as works of a self-taught artist, their naivety is able to express raw emotion quite unlike more technical works. Traylor’s works are the only substantial collection of artworks created by someone born into slavery and they serve as a testament to perseverance and a poignant reflection of his country’s history.
Bill Traylor
BILL TRAYLOR, c.1942. PENCIL AND COLORED PENCIL ON CARDBOARD
Bill Traylor was born into slavery in rural Alabama in the mid 1950s. He spent most of life after emancipation working as a sharecropper until he moved, in 1939, to Montgomery and at the age of 85 took up a pencil and scraps of cardboard and began to document his past. Drawing on street corners and selling his wares to passers-by, over the next 3 years he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art. Like so many outsider artists, Traylor could have remained unknown, and despite having a solo show in 1940, it was not until the late 1970s, some 30 years after his death, that his work began to receive wide attention. Today, Traylor is considered one of the most important 20th century artists in American history, and a leader in the folk art movement. Traylor’s works are unflinching in their depiction of the brutality of his life and American history, yet as works of a self-taught artist, their naivety is able to express raw emotion quite unlike more technical works. Traylor’s works are the only substantial collection of artworks created by someone born into slavery and they serve as a testament to perseverance and a poignant reflection of his country’s history.
Untitled (Bolsena)
CY TWOMBLY
In a lonely farmhouse, just north of Rome, the world changed around Cy Twombly. An artist who had always dealt with the ancients, an artist of myths and antiquity, of the twin forces of Dionysus’ chaos and Apollo’s order, was thrust into modernity when a Rocketship took three men to the moon. The Bolsena series was painted in the shadow of the Apollo mission, the very name almost a challenge to the artist to update his ancient associations. In these works, he embraces the rationality and order of the God Apollo to deal with contemporary events, a rare instance in his artistic career. Thoughts of space and science, of numbers, calculations and ascension filled his mind as he worked, after a summer spent closely watching the news of the mission. Twombly translated his primal mark making style into something that could speak to its opposite, to an undisputed mark of progressed civilization. His work becomes almost diagrammatic, the lyricism of his fluid style seem like calculations, the diagonal arc capturing a sense of the rocket’s movement across the sky. The painting exists in a tension, between gravity and weightlessness, movement and stasis, antiquity and technology. Twombly was reckoning with his place as a contemporary artist who had, up until now, not dealt with his contemporary world.
Cy Twombly
CY TWOMBLY, 1969. OIL, WAX CRAYON, GRAPHITE AND FELT-TIP ON CANVAS.
In a lonely farmhouse, just north of Rome, the world changed around Cy Twombly. An artist who had always dealt with the ancients, an artist of myths and antiquity, of the twin forces of Dionysus’ chaos and Apollo’s order, was thrust into modernity when a Rocketship took three men to the moon. The Bolsena series was painted in the shadow of the Apollo mission, the very name almost a challenge to the artist to update his ancient associations. In these works, he embraces the rationality and order of the God Apollo to deal with contemporary events, a rare instance in his artistic career. Thoughts of space and science, of numbers, calculations and ascension filled his mind as he worked, after a summer spent closely watching the news of the mission. Twombly translated his primal mark making style into something that could speak to its opposite, to an undisputed mark of progressed civilization. His work becomes almost diagrammatic, the lyricism of his fluid style seem like calculations, the diagonal arc capturing a sense of the rocket’s movement across the sky. The painting exists in a tension, between gravity and weightlessness, movement and stasis, antiquity and technology. Twombly was reckoning with his place as a contemporary artist who had, up until now, not dealt with his contemporary world.
Green Tea
LEONORA CARRINGTON
In the verdant landscapes of Leonora Carrington’s mind, nothing is hidden for long. Nighttime and strangeness lurk under the surface, and the veneers of domesticity cannot contain them. Carrington was born into the British upper class, raised in a Gothic mansion that provoked imagination at every turn. She ran away as a teenager, escaping an ordered and predictable life to travel across Europe, America, and South America. In each city, she found herself at the centre of the avant-garde and became one of the most significant figures in 20th century art, defining the late surrealist movement across the globe. Carrington’s pristine, suffocating childhood remained with her, and here we see it in the labyrinthine garden that extends behind her. She is wrapped in a cow-skin straitjacket and magical beasts are chained to gentle, English trees. The underworld is visible below the grass, bats, cadavers, and strange birds that protect new life. As above so below, there is darkness in the light and light in darkness, and Carrington embraces it all.
Leonora Carrington
LEONORA CARRINGTON, 1942. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the verdant landscapes of Leonora Carrington’s mind, nothing is hidden for long. Nighttime and strangeness lurk under the surface, and the veneers of domesticity cannot contain them. Carrington was born into the British upper class, raised in a Gothic mansion that provoked imagination at every turn. She ran away as a teenager, escaping an ordered and predictable life to travel across Europe, America, and South America. In each city, she found herself at the centre of the avant-garde and became one of the most significant figures in 20th century art, defining the late surrealist movement across the globe. Carrington’s pristine, suffocating childhood remained with her, and here we see it in the labyrinthine garden that extends behind her. She is wrapped in a cow-skin straitjacket and magical beasts are chained to gentle, English trees. The underworld is visible below the grass, bats, cadavers, and strange birds that protect new life. As above so below, there is darkness in the light and light in darkness, and Carrington embraces it all.
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.”