No. C.A.9
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,
The Treachery of Images
MAGRITTE
Magritte does not tell us anything we don’t know. And yet in a single graphic, paired with a single line so obvious it goes without saying, he turns the world of art on its head. This is not a pipe, he proclaims in cursive lettering under a drawing that is unmistakably of a pipe. It is, this painting reminds us explicitly, a mere representation, it is a painting of a pipe and can never transcend its medium. It was a radical proposition to make, that artworks are signifiers and not to be mistaken for the actualities. For most of history, artworks were cherished, worshipped things depicting unbridled truth, and even as modernity crept up with Impressionism and the dawn of abstraction, paintings still were vessels of emotion, feeling and showed the world as it really was. This painting was a flag in the ground declaring revolution, marking a new age where surrealism would thrive and the painting would be freed from any requirements of truth or reality. All of a sudden, a painting needed to be nothing but a painting.
René Magritte
RENÉ MAGRITTE, 1929. OIL ON CANVAS.
Magritte does not tell us anything we don’t know. And yet in a single graphic, paired with a single line so obvious it goes without saying, he turns the world of art on its head. This is not a pipe, he proclaims in cursive lettering under a drawing that is unmistakably of a pipe. It is, this painting reminds us explicitly, a mere representation, it is a painting of a pipe and can never transcend its medium. It was a radical proposition to make, that artworks are signifiers and not to be mistaken for the actualities. For most of history, artworks were cherished, worshipped things depicting unbridled truth, and even as modernity crept up with Impressionism and the dawn of abstraction, paintings still were vessels of emotion, feeling and showed the world as it really was. This painting was a flag in the ground declaring revolution, marking a new age where surrealism would thrive and the painting would be freed from any requirements of truth or reality. All of a sudden, a painting needed to be nothing but a painting.
Montauk Highway
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.
Bal du Moulin de la Galette
RENOIR
The totality of a single moment, frozen in time, is captured on canvas. Each Sunday, working class Parisians would gather at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, dress up in their finest clothes and dance, drink, and eat late into the evenings. Renoir’s depiction of this ritual came not from his mind nor his memory but rather from intense observation of the scene. Each figure depicted is representative of someone Renoir knew, each relationship painted is storied, complicated and real, and for many of the figures, they themselves modelled for Renoir, adopting the poses they had thrown organically weekends before. This painting is considered, rightly so, one of the masterpieces of Impressionism. It contains all of the technical trademarks, from fluid depictions of movement, richness of form and sun-dappled lighting. Yet, more than this, it captures so perfectly, so precisely and so poetically, a snapshot, an impression that lives in the mind as well as the canvas.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, 1876. OIL ON CANVAS.
The totality of a single moment, frozen in time, is captured on canvas. Each Sunday, working class Parisians would gather at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, dress up in their finest clothes and dance, drink, and eat late into the evenings. Renoir’s depiction of this ritual came not from his mind nor his memory but rather from intense observation of the scene. Each figure depicted is representative of someone Renoir knew, each relationship painted is storied, complicated and real, and for many of the figures, they themselves modelled for Renoir, adopting the poses they had thrown organically weekends before. This painting is considered, rightly so, one of the masterpieces of Impressionism. It contains all of the technical trademarks, from fluid depictions of movement, richness of form and sun-dappled lighting. Yet, more than this, it captures so perfectly, so precisely and so poetically, a snapshot, an impression that lives in the mind as well as the canvas.
The Picture From Thibet
EMIL CARLSEN
Regarded as one of the greatest painters of his day, Carlsen struggled financially throughout his career. He worked mainly in still lives, beautifully and delicately rendered in a palette of soft hues and fine brushwork, and he held many prestigious teaching posts across America. Yet, still lives were hard to sell, having fallen out of vogue in favour of portraits, nudes and landscapes. It would take the Cubists to resurrect the medium some decades after he Carlsen reached prominence, and Carlsen found himself a master of an art-form considered dead. Despite that, he persisted, sure in the importance of the medium and his creations. “The simplest and most thorough way of acquiring all the knowledge of the craft of painting and drawing”, he said, “[is] the study of inanimate objects, still life painting, the very surest road to absolute mastery over all technical difficulties.”
Emil Carlsen
EMIL CARLSEN, c.1920. OIL ON CANVAS.
Regarded as one of the greatest painters of his day, Carlsen struggled financially throughout his career. He worked mainly in still lives, beautifully and delicately rendered in a palette of soft hues and fine brushwork, and he held many prestigious teaching posts across America. Yet, still lives were hard to sell, having fallen out of vogue in favour of portraits, nudes and landscapes. It would take the Cubists to resurrect the medium some decades after he Carlsen reached prominence, and Carlsen found himself a master of an art-form considered dead. Despite that, he persisted, sure in the importance of the medium and his creations. “The simplest and most thorough way of acquiring all the knowledge of the craft of painting and drawing”, he said, “[is] the study of inanimate objects, still life painting, the very surest road to absolute mastery over all technical difficulties.”
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.
Glass and Checkerboard
GRIS
At the age of 19, Juan Gris gave up everything. He sold his possessions and moved to Paris, ingratiating himself with Apollinaire, Matisse, Braque and, a little later, Picasso. He worked as a satirical cartoonist, painting rarely but learning throughout from those who surrounded him, falling deep into the cubist world they were creating. It was not until 1911, however, after seeing Metzinger’s work ‘Tea Time’, that he found a painting practice that spoke to him. Metzinger, for Gris, had unified mathematics and art on canvas, his cubist portrait less free flowing than Braque or Picasso but rigid in its grid structure. Gris seized upon this and developed his own style that he named Analytical Cubism. The subject’s deconstruction is more rigorous and scientific, as if each element has been carefully taken apart and rearranged. His paintings alight something primal, our desire for order and straight lines, yet also express a freeness and spiritual understanding of the world. Gris was amongst the most distinctive of the cubists for this marriage between the rational and the impossible.
Juan Gris
JUAN GRIS, c.1917. OIL ON WOOD.
At the age of 19, Juan Gris gave up everything. He sold his possessions and moved to Paris, ingratiating himself with Apollinaire, Matisse, Braque and, a little later, Picasso. He worked as a satirical cartoonist, painting rarely but learning throughout from those who surrounded him, falling deep into the cubist world they were creating. It was not until 1911, however, after seeing Metzinger’s work ‘Tea Time’, that he found a painting practice that spoke to him. Metzinger, for Gris, had unified mathematics and art on canvas, his cubist portrait less free flowing than Braque or Picasso but rigid in its grid structure. Gris seized upon this and developed his own style that he named Analytical Cubism. The subject’s deconstruction is more rigorous and scientific, as if each element has been carefully taken apart and rearranged. His paintings alight something primal, our desire for order and straight lines, yet also express a freeness and spiritual understanding of the world. Gris was amongst the most distinctive of the cubists for this marriage between the rational and the impossible.
Wall-Eyed Carp/ROCI JAPAN
RAUSCHENBERG
Robert Rauschenberg saw the beauty in everything. Throughout his career, he experimented with countless mediums, taking inspiration from disparate movements before him and anticipating those that came after. He was a graphic artist, a painter, printmaker, a sculptor, photographer and performance artist, and each medium could not contain the breadth of ideas he wanted to express. After studying at Black Mountain College, he spent several years creating single colour works in the vein of Malevich, huge soaring canvases of pure white, black, or red. Yet in 1954 he began to work in the medium he called ‘Combines’. Rauschenberg collected discarded objects from the streets of New York and integrated them into painted works. More than simply found artworks, the objects entered a dialogue with colour, movement and Rauschenberg’s mind. For him, everything could be beautiful – from the Japanese kite in this work to toothpaste tubes and roadkill. ‘I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly’, he said, ‘because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.’
Robert Rauschenberg
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, 1987. ACRYLIC AND FABRIC COLLAGE ON CANVAS.
Robert Rauschenberg saw the beauty in everything. Throughout his career, he experimented with countless mediums, taking inspiration from disparate movements before him and anticipating those that came after. He was a graphic artist, a painter, printmaker, a sculptor, photographer and performance artist, and each medium could not contain the breadth of ideas he wanted to express. After studying at Black Mountain College, he spent several years creating single colour works in the vein of Malevich, huge soaring canvases of pure white, black, or red. Yet in 1954 he began to work in the medium he called ‘Combines’. Rauschenberg collected discarded objects from the streets of New York and integrated them into painted works. More than simply found artworks, the objects entered a dialogue with colour, movement and Rauschenberg’s mind. For him, everything could be beautiful – from the Japanese kite in this work to toothpaste tubes and roadkill. ‘I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly’, he said, ‘because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.’
Untitled Composition
ROTHSCHILD
Judith Rothschild’s artistic journey was marked by experimentation and evolution. Gaining success as a young artist in New York in the 1940s, she moved through styles and subjects, informed by the cultural milieu that surrounded her. A part of the group of radical abstract artists known as the Jane Street Artists, she was involved in a proto-abstract expressionism, exploring emotional states through colour and non-figurative form. Yet, Rothschild, rather out of fashion, burned a flame for Cubism and Piet Mondrian especially was her most constant source of inspiration as she matured. She moved away from biomorphic forms and gestural brush work into compositional explorations that brought order and feeling to simple colors and organisations. Throughout her life she collected artworks by those who inspired her and, since her death, has become more known for her post-mortem philanthropy, her estate selling the works she accumulated to support lesser-known artists, of which she considered herself one.
Judith Rothschild
JUDITH ROTHSCHILD, 1945. OIL ON CANVAS.
Judith Rothschild’s artistic journey was marked by experimentation and evolution. Gaining success as a young artist in New York in the 1940s, she moved through styles and subjects, informed by the cultural milieu that surrounded her. A part of the group of radical abstract artists known as the Jane Street Artists, she was involved in a proto-abstract expressionism, exploring emotional states through colour and non-figurative form. Yet, Rothschild, rather out of fashion, burned a flame for Cubism and Piet Mondrian especially was her most constant source of inspiration as she matured. She moved away from biomorphic forms and gestural brush work into compositional explorations that brought order and feeling to simple colors and organisations. Throughout her life she collected artworks by those who inspired her and, since her death, has become more known for her post-mortem philanthropy, her estate selling the works she accumulated to support lesser-known artists, of which she considered herself one.
Untitled
ROTHKO
Rothko’s works are not intellectual. To try and understand them academically is to miss the point entirely. Though he exists in the genre of colour-field painting, mentored by none other than the father of modern colour theory Josef Albers, Rothko digested the ideas and conceptualisation and synthesised them into works of pure, unbridled emotion. Inspired by vases of antiquities with colour bands, Native American spiritual art and European surrealism, these paintings, now signatures of the artist, did not come out of nowhere. They developed slowly, from early figurative work Rothko fell more and more into a world of expression unaltered and uncorrupted by figuration. Rothko chose not to title these works unless it was numerical, ensuring that the viewer was free from context in their experience. Rothko’s work do not depict an external world but an interior one, and to see them in person is to get lost in a expanse of total feeling.
Mark Rothko
MARK ROTHKO, 1957. PIGMENTED HIDE GLUE AND OIL ON CANVAS.
Rothko’s works are not intellectual. To try and understand them academically is to miss the point entirely. Though he exists in the genre of colour-field painting, mentored by none other than the father of modern colour theory Josef Albers, Rothko digested the ideas and conceptualisation and synthesised them into works of pure, unbridled emotion. Inspired by vases of antiquities with colour bands, Native American spiritual art and European surrealism, these paintings, now signatures of the artist, did not come out of nowhere. They developed slowly, from early figurative work Rothko fell more and more into a world of expression unaltered and uncorrupted by figuration. Rothko chose not to title these works unless it was numerical, ensuring that the viewer was free from context in their experience. Rothko’s work do not depict an external world but an interior one, and to see them in person is to get lost in a expanse of total feeling.
Leaf Forms #8 (Copy)
LEWIS
“The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development”, said Norman Lewis, “And in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture.” These two concepts – aesthetic expression and cultural reflection – define Lewis’ career of two halves. Born to two Bermudan parents in Harlem, Lewis discovered a passion art through a mentee relationship with Augusta Savage when he was working in a textile shop and tailor above her studio. Lewis began to paint social realism, depicting the scenes in Harlem with spirit and energy. Yet he struggled to capture the social conflict and communicate the truth of his existence through figurative work. It was out of this dissatisfaction that Lewis turned to the burgeoning Abstract Expressionism movement. He felt that his art was not able to make the social change he needed, and a dissatisfaction with post-war America led him to reject realism in favour of purely aesthetic work. Yet, despite his suggestions that these works rejected social issues, they are laden with both anger and beauty, reflecting politics implicitly in their feeling.
Norman Lewis
NORMAN LEWIS, 1953. INK ON PAPER.
“The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development”, said Norman Lewis, “And in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture.” These two concepts – aesthetic expression and cultural reflection – define Lewis’ career of two halves. Born to two Bermudan parents in Harlem, Lewis discovered a passion art through a mentee relationship with Augusta Savage when he was working in a textile shop and tailor above her studio. Lewis began to paint social realism, depicting the scenes in Harlem with spirit and energy. Yet he struggled to capture the social conflict and communicate the truth of his existence through figurative work. It was out of this dissatisfaction that Lewis turned to the burgeoning Abstract Expressionism movement. He felt that his art was not able to make the social change he needed, and a dissatisfaction with post-war America led him to reject realism in favour of purely aesthetic work. Yet, despite his suggestions that these works rejected social issues, they are laden with both anger and beauty, reflecting politics implicitly in their feeling.
Jackie Triptych
WARHOL
John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Andy Warhol turned his, the nations, and Jackie’s pain into art. Dissatisfied with the media coverage, and acutely aware of the symbol that Jackie Kennedy was becoming, without agency or choice, Warhol re-enacted the event over and over again by silk-screening images of the grieving Kennedy taken from Life magazine. The work is at once compassionate and detached; by focusing on the first lady’s face, he emphasis and reminds us of her bravery, her courage and her grief, but he also participates in the process of removing her humanity and making her become an image, a representation of the nation and a historical event. Warhol, in 1964, was only beginning to get to grips with the new art of screen-printing, having started less than two years earlier. The Jackie works marked a turning point, as he realised the power of a repeatable medium, and how the images that were flooding public consciousness could be replicated, distorted and recontextualised to speak to a wider idea permeating the culture.
Andy Warhol
ANDY WARHOL, 1964. ACRYLIC PAINT, SILKSCREEN INK AND SPRAY PAINT ON LINEN.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Andy Warhol turned his, the nations, and Jackie’s pain into art. Dissatisfied with the media coverage, and acutely aware of the symbol that Jackie Kennedy was becoming, without agency or choice, Warhol re-enacted the event over and over again by silk-screening images of the grieving Kennedy taken from Life magazine. The work is at once compassionate and detached; by focusing on the first lady’s face, he emphasis and reminds us of her bravery, her courage and her grief, but he also participates in the process of removing her humanity and making her become an image, a representation of the nation and a historical event. Warhol, in 1964, was only beginning to get to grips with the new art of screen-printing, having started less than two years earlier. The Jackie works marked a turning point, as he realised the power of a repeatable medium, and how the images that were flooding public consciousness could be replicated, distorted and recontextualised to speak to a wider idea permeating the culture.
Study for “Swing Landscape”
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.
Christ at the Sea of Galilee
TINTORETTO
Mannerism emerged in direct opposition to the natural perfection of the High Renaissance. Where da Vinci, Rafael and Michelangelo were depicting the harmonious beauty of the world with astute realism, the Mannerists were exaggerating the features they deemed most beautiful to create artificial scenes. Their figures are elongated and irregularly proportioned to produce unnatural elegance. The balance and symmetry of the renaissance gave way to compositional tension and asymmetry, creating dynamic and vivid scenes. Alongside El Greco, Tintoretto stands tall amongst the Mannerists; known as ‘il Furioso’ in his native Italy, he drew with abandon and speed, his brushwork bolder than any that had come before. While he mostly depicted scenes of Venice, his religious works are some of the masterpieces of the movement. Here, Jesus is rendered in few strokes, his body long and weightless as he looks out to the sea at his disciples in a boat below an ominous sky. The colours guide us from the dark sky to the luminescent Christ and the loose, unnatural landscape creates a powerful sense of drama.
Jacopo Tintoretto
JACOPO TINTORETTO, c.1570s. OIL ON CANVAS.
Mannerism emerged in direct opposition to the natural perfection of the High Renaissance. Where da Vinci, Rafael and Michelangelo were depicting the harmonious beauty of the world with astute realism, the Mannerists were exaggerating the features they deemed most beautiful to create artificial scenes. Their figures are elongated and irregularly proportioned to produce unnatural elegance. The balance and symmetry of the renaissance gave way to compositional tension and asymmetry, creating dynamic and vivid scenes. Alongside El Greco, Tintoretto stands tall amongst the Mannerists; known as ‘il Furioso’ in his native Italy, he drew with abandon and speed, his brushwork bolder than any that had come before. While he mostly depicted scenes of Venice, his religious works are some of the masterpieces of the movement. Here, Jesus is rendered in few strokes, his body long and weightless as he looks out to the sea at his disciples in a boat below an ominous sky. The colours guide us from the dark sky to the luminescent Christ and the loose, unnatural landscape creates a powerful sense of drama.
Number 7, 1951
POLLOCK
Jackson Pollock was rediscovering his creativity after a long battle with alcoholism and an adjustment to his newfound fame. Recently moved in with his new wife Lee Krasner, he allowed himself to experiment and bring in forgotten elements of his work. He began to draw again, and exercise greater control and restraint over his work. The automatic works of the abstract subconscious merged with his draughtsman origins. He combined passion with rigour to create these sparse and lyrical paintings, no less affecting than his preceding works. He began also to reintroduce bodily figures, contorted and distressed, they bring Pollock out of representations of his mind and place him as a person in the canvas and the world. It is perhaps not surprising that these figures come into his oeuvre after he has got sober and settled, his internal fight has waned, and he can see himself as part of the wider world. On the right-hand side, the enamel paint is dispensed with a turkey baster and allows collaboration with his materials. No. 7 can be seen as a dialogue between a past Pollock and a present one, and an ability for the two to live in harmony.
Jackson Pollock
JACKSON POLLOCK, 1951. ENAMEL ON CANVAS.
Jackson Pollock was rediscovering his creativity after a long battle with alcoholism and an adjustment to his newfound fame. Recently moved in with his new wife Lee Krasner, he allowed himself to experiment and bring in forgotten elements of his work. He began to draw again, and exercise greater control and restraint over his work. The automatic works of the abstract subconscious merged with his draughtsman origins. He combined passion with rigour to create these sparse and lyrical paintings, no less affecting than his preceding works. He began also to reintroduce bodily figures, contorted and distressed, they bring Pollock out of representations of his mind and place him as a person in the canvas and the world. It is perhaps not surprising that these figures come into his oeuvre after he has got sober and settled, his internal fight has waned, and he can see himself as part of the wider world. On the right-hand side, the enamel paint is dispensed with a turkey baster and allows collaboration with his materials. No. 7 can be seen as a dialogue between a past Pollock and a present one, and an ability for the two to live in harmony.
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.
Still Life: The Table
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.
The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence
TITIAN
Under the cover of darkness, Saint Lawrence dies for his faith. Titian depicts the seen in frenetic chaos, illuminated only by the coals that heat the gridiron he is killed on, and the light that breaks through the clouds, as Lawrence reaches up for salvation. From above and below, we can see the scene due to violence, and due to hope. Titian was working off an painting of the same subject he made some nine years earlier, but this piece is more expressive, more tortured as he loosened his style as he aged. It was in this later period that Titain became pre-occupied with those who rebelled against authority, and the prices they paid for their rebellion. His work lost some of the vividness and luminosity of colour, but in their place came subtlety, this revolutionary painter painting revolutionaries with the freedom that comes with affinity. The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is hopeful and violent, torturous and divine and an allegory for the world Titian saw.
Titian
TITIAN, c.1567. OIL ON CANVAS.
Under the cover of darkness, Saint Lawrence dies for his faith. Titian depicts the seen in frenetic chaos, illuminated only by the coals that heat the gridiron he is killed on, and the light that breaks through the clouds, as Lawrence reaches up for salvation. From above and below, we can see the scene due to violence, and due to hope. Titian was working off an painting of the same subject he made some nine years earlier, but this piece is more expressive, more tortured as he loosened his style as he aged. It was in this later period that Titain became pre-occupied with those who rebelled against authority, and the prices they paid for their rebellion. His work lost some of the vividness and luminosity of colour, but in their place came subtlety, this revolutionary painter painting revolutionaries with the freedom that comes with affinity. The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is hopeful and violent, torturous and divine and an allegory for the world Titian saw.
Tennis Tournament
BELLOWS
When he passed away at the age of 42, George Bellows was regarded as one of the greatest American artists of his day. Today, his fame has waned and he is no longer the household name he once was. Yet Bellows is well worth remembering for his vivid, enigmatic and striking portraits of New York, that straddled class and politics. Bellows was part of a group of anarchist, liberal artists and activists known as ‘The Lyrical Left’, advocating for individual rights and freedom. Yet Bellows was often at odds with the group – he saw artistic freedom as tantamount, and far more important than ideological politics. Bellows depicted tenement housing, boxing matches and the lower classes of the city, but he also mingled with the high society. Here, he depicts a tennis tournament in Rhode Island as both a social event and a sporting one. His interest is in the setting, the atmosphere, the palpable, searing heat, more than it is about the tennis. He captures a slice of life, a vignette of existence in broad, vivid strokes.
George Bellows
GEORGE BELLOWS, 1920. OIL ON CANVAS.
When he passed away at the age of 42, George Bellows was regarded as one of the greatest American artists of his day. Today, his fame has waned and he is no longer the household name he once was. Yet Bellows is well worth remembering for his vivid, enigmatic and striking portraits of New York, that straddled class and politics. Bellows was part of a group of anarchist, liberal artists and activists known as ‘The Lyrical Left’, advocating for individual rights and freedom. Yet Bellows was often at odds with the group – he saw artistic freedom as tantamount, and far more important than ideological politics. Bellows depicted tenement housing, boxing matches and the lower classes of the city, but he also mingled with the high society. Here, he depicts a tennis tournament in Rhode Island as both a social event and a sporting one. His interest is in the setting, the atmosphere, the palpable, searing heat, more than it is about the tennis. He captures a slice of life, a vignette of existence in broad, vivid strokes.
Apartment Houses, Paris
DUBUFFET
In 1923, Jean Dubuffet read ‘Artistry of the Mentally Ill’ and developed a lifelong interest in work made by those with no formal training, suffering from mental illness. But Dubuffet was in no rush, he was a man of curiosity for the first half of his life; an occasional artist, winemaker and scholar, Dubuffet rejected anything that confined him as he strove for knowledge and travelled the world. He immersed himself in the study of noise music, of ancient languages, of lost wisdom and poetry, picking up and putting down the paintbrush every decade or so. But some twenty two years after reading Hans Prizhorn’s book, the eventual progenitor of the art brut (raw art) movement finally formalised those ideas of art made by the alienated and insane and began his life’s practice. He tried to emulate the work of someone expressing pure emotion, however muddled it might be, using only the tools at their disposal. Experimenting with non-traditional new materials, he incorporated mud, sand, gravel, and, notably, plant matter into his compositions. Here, the urban world of Paris reached into the very earth it was built upon, becoming a Frankenstein monster of man and nature.
Jean Dubuffet
JEAN DUBUFFET, 1946. OIL, SAND, AND CHARCOAL ON CANVAS.
In 1923, Jean Dubuffet read ‘Artistry of the Mentally Ill’ and developed a lifelong interest in work made by those with no formal training, suffering from mental illness. But Dubuffet was in no rush, he was a man of curiosity for the first half of his life; an occasional artist, winemaker and scholar, Dubuffet rejected anything that confined him as he strove for knowledge and travelled the world. He immersed himself in the study of noise music, of ancient languages, of lost wisdom and poetry, picking up and putting down the paintbrush every decade or so. But some twenty two years after reading Hans Prizhorn’s book, the eventual progenitor of the art brut (raw art) movement finally formalised those ideas of art made by the alienated and insane and began his life’s practice. He tried to emulate the work of someone expressing pure emotion, however muddled it might be, using only the tools at their disposal. Experimenting with non-traditional new materials, he incorporated mud, sand, gravel, and, notably, plant matter into his compositions. Here, the urban world of Paris reached into the very earth it was built upon, becoming a Frankenstein monster of man and nature.