Pleasing Numbers
GIACOMO BALLA
While his contemporaries depicted their ideas of movement through violence, machines, and the violence of machines, Balla explored it with a lightness of touch, a sense of beauty and whimsy in the word and a pervading witticism. A leading Italian Futurist, a movement which as the name suggests was concerned with the dynamism of the hyper-modern, it’s speed, youth, automation and movement, Balla embraced the central philosophies of the movement while implicitly rejecting the sanctioned approach. He instead saw modernity as not something to be feared, not something lacking humanity in the face of machines but instead found the idiosyncrasies of the everyday experience and depicted them through the cerebral ideas of the contemporary age. In his depiction of numbers, Balla brought the warmth of the human and the beauty of imperfection to the great signifiers of rationality and objectivity. His title is revealing, by bringing mathematics into art, it not only helps the latter but makes the former pleasing, freeing them from the confines of their need for perfection.
Giacomo Balla
GIACOMO BALLA, 1919. OIL ON CANVAS.
While his contemporaries depicted their ideas of movement through violence, machines, and the violence of machines, Balla explored it with a lightness of touch, a sense of beauty and whimsy in the word and a pervading witticism. A leading Italian Futurist, a movement which as the name suggests was concerned with the dynamism of the hyper-modern, it’s speed, youth, automation and movement, Balla embraced the central philosophies of the movement while implicitly rejecting the sanctioned approach. He instead saw modernity as not something to be feared, not something lacking humanity in the face of machines but instead found the idiosyncrasies of the everyday experience and depicted them through the cerebral ideas of the contemporary age. In his depiction of numbers, Balla brought the warmth of the human and the beauty of imperfection to the great signifiers of rationality and objectivity. His title is revealing, by bringing mathematics into art, it not only helps the latter but makes the former pleasing, freeing them from the confines of their need for perfection.
The Ribalds
HONORÉ DAUMIER
A prolific artist and a professional caricaturist, these two pursuits, which to Daumier seemed hardly worth distinguishing, were at odds with each other in the public eye. Born into a working-class family, Daumier worked tirelessly from the age of 12 training as an artist and developing a keen eye for the details of society and a revolutionary witticism. By 20 he was producing caricatures for satirical political papers and was arrested for his unflattering depictions of the King Louis Philippe I. This brought with it renown and favour, his works were seen by many and well admired across society yet when he tried to show his paintings and his work as a fine artist, he was rejected almost outright for stepping out of his lane. Few recognised his artistic brilliance and saw his value only as a caricaturist. In the final year of his life, a solo show of his work was shown and, in the months before he died, he received the recognition that had been kept from him.
Honoré Daumier
HONORÉ DAUMIER, 1848. OIL ON CANVAS.
A prolific artist and a professional caricaturist, these two pursuits, which to Daumier seemed hardly worth distinguishing, were at odds with each other in the public eye. Born into a working-class family, Daumier worked tirelessly from the age of 12 training as an artist and developing a keen eye for the details of society and a revolutionary witticism. By 20 he was producing caricatures for satirical political papers and was arrested for his unflattering depictions of the King Louis Philippe I. This brought with it renown and favour, his works were seen by many and well admired across society yet when he tried to show his paintings and his work as a fine artist, he was rejected almost outright for stepping out of his lane. Few recognised his artistic brilliance and saw his value only as a caricaturist. In the final year of his life, a solo show of his work was shown and, in the months before he died, he received the recognition that had been kept from him.
Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN
Misery came not from surprise but from knowledge. The prophet Jeremiah had foreseen the destruction of Jerusalem and had urged penitence on behalf of those whose sinfulness was the root cause of the inevitable siege. Yet his calls had not been heeded, and that what he had foreseen came to light brought no satisfaction, only the sadness that he could not have changed the fate he saw in his visions. Rembrandt depicts him here as old and world-weary, having received the prophesies as a young man it is as if the weight of his knowing has taken its toll. He sits alone, the drama heightened by stark contrasts between the light and dark, and he appears as a solitary figure, made so by the unique knowledge of the future he was given by god. The riches in front of him offer no solace, and Rembrandt’s ode to this reluctant prophet is one of deep empathy, his personal suffering becomes analogous to that of Jerusalem.
Rembrandt van Rijn
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, 1630. OIL ON PANEL.
Misery came not from surprise but from knowledge. The prophet Jeremiah had foreseen the destruction of Jerusalem and had urged penitence on behalf of those whose sinfulness was the root cause of the inevitable siege. Yet his calls had not been heeded, and that what he had foreseen came to light brought no satisfaction, only the sadness that he could not have changed the fate he saw in his visions. Rembrandt depicts him here as old and world-weary, having received the prophesies as a young man it is as if the weight of his knowing has taken its toll. He sits alone, the drama heightened by stark contrasts between the light and dark, and he appears as a solitary figure, made so by the unique knowledge of the future he was given by god. The riches in front of him offer no solace, and Rembrandt’s ode to this reluctant prophet is one of deep empathy, his personal suffering becomes analogous to that of Jerusalem.
Saint George and the Dragon
ODILON REDLON
The action is obscured but the glory remains. Depicting the climax of the legend that sees the venerated soldier Saint George slay a dragon that has been terrorising either a British, Cappadocian, or Libyan city, depending what version of the legend you listen to, Redon pushes the violence and gore of the killing to the edge and shrouds it in the mist of oil paint. Instead, the work functions first as a landscape, with the Christian narrative serving as adornment to a beach scene at sunset. Yet the scene is not short on drama – the fierey red of the sun bounces off the greens and blues of a selling sea that seems to defy gravity. Clouds bloom overhead like plumes of smoke and the whole image seems to be participating in an act of pathetic fallacy. Redon commemorated St. Georges act of bravery by basking him in the glory of the natural world, not focusing on the act of violence he commits.
Odilon Redon
ODILON REDON, c.1910. OIL ON PAPERBOARD.
The action is obscured but the glory remains. Depicting the climax of the legend that sees the venerated soldier Saint George slay a dragon that has been terrorising either a British, Cappadocian, or Libyan city, depending what version of the legend you listen to, Redon pushes the violence and gore of the killing to the edge and shrouds it in the mist of oil paint. Instead, the work functions first as a landscape, with the Christian narrative serving as adornment to a beach scene at sunset. Yet the scene is not short on drama – the firey red of the sun bounces off the greens and blues of a selling sea that seems to defy gravity. Clouds bloom overhead like plumes of smoke and the whole image seems to be participating in an act of pathetic fallacy. Redon commemorated St. Georges act of bravery by basking him in the glory of the natural world, not focusing on the act of violence he commits.
The Jewel
JAY DEFEO
In 1958, Jay DeFeo began two works. One would take her eight years, end up weighing more than a ton, and cause her to take a four-year break from art – it’s final name would be The Rose and it is regarded as a seminal piece of 20th century creation. The other, The Jewel shown here, took a little over a year and shares many qualities with its birth partner. Monumental in scale, it is more than three metres tall and a metre wide, it shares the same composition of rays that emanate from a central point and both works seem to speak to a religious transcendence, a divine light that provokes and inspires. Above all, these paintings blur the line between mediums. Oil paint is layered on so thick, so repeatedly, that the two-dimensional canvases are transformed into three dimensional sculptures, the process of creation literally reaching out to the viewer, escaping from flatness to hold physical space in the gallery. Textural density combines with geometric abstraction to create a modern work of alchemy.
Jay DeFeo
JAY DEFEOM, 1959. OIL ON CANVAS.
In 1958, Jay DeFeo began two works. One would take her eight years, end up weighing more than a ton, and cause her to take a four-year break from art – it’s final name would be The Rose and it is regarded as a seminal piece of 20th century creation. The other, The Jewel shown here, took a little over a year and shares many qualities with its birth partner. Monumental in scale, it is more than three metres tall and a metre wide, it shares the same composition of rays that emanate from a central point and both works seem to speak to a religious transcendence, a divine light that provokes and inspires. Above all, these paintings blur the line between mediums. Oil paint is layered on so thick, so repeatedly, that the two-dimensional canvases are transformed into three dimensional sculptures, the process of creation literally reaching out to the viewer, escaping from flatness to hold physical space in the gallery. Textural density combines with geometric abstraction to create a modern work of alchemy.
Prìere Eclair de Soir
MARCEL JANCO
As one of the founders of Dada, alongside a group of 5 other artists living in Zurich during the first world war, Janco had abilities of creation that had not yet been invented. Joined by his brothers from their native Romania, he upturned the European consciousness with works of absurdism and chaos, fighting against a logic of rationality that seemed to imprison the youth in a life that hardly felt living. Yet, not 4 years after the founding of the group, Janco and his co-founder Hans Arp abandoned the movement to spread the word of Constructivism across Eastern Europe. In doing so he traded a rejection of the institutional ways of thinking that were still impacting contemporary life to a total embrace of hyper-modernity, and a way of creating that was not meant to be in rebellion to but in reflection of the modern age. This plaster relief was made only a few months before this dissent, and the constructivist influence is already clear, with sharp angular lines that pierce and aspire to perfection, but the Dada is in him too with a composition that warps perspective and ignores the laws of nature.
Marcel Janco
MARCEL JANCO, 1918. PLASTER RELIEF.
As one of the founders of Dada, alongside a group of 5 other artists living in Zurich during the first world war, Janco had abilities of creation that had not yet been invented. Joined by his brothers from their native Romania, he upturned the European consciousness with works of absurdism and chaos, fighting against a logic of rationality that seemed to imprison the youth in a life that hardly felt living. Yet, not 4 years after the founding of the group, Janco and his co-founder Hans Arp abandoned the movement to spread the word of Constructivism across Eastern Europe. In doing so he traded a rejection of the institutional ways of thinking that were still impacting contemporary life to a total embrace of hyper-modernity, and a way of creating that was not meant to be in rebellion to but in reflection of the modern age. This plaster relief was made only a few months before this dissent, and the constructivist influence is already clear, with sharp angular lines that pierce and aspire to perfection, but the Dada is in him too with a composition that warps perspective and ignores the laws of nature.
Girl with a Goat
PABLO PICASSO
Emerging out of years of melancholy, in which sadness so imbued every aspect of his life that his paintings existed in shades of sombre blue, Picasso’s so-called ‘Blue Period’ finally waned into what became known as his ‘Rose Period. Here, the paintings were characterised by roses and pinks, with subject matters of joy and playfulness and a pervading sense of optimism that shone through the canvas. When this work was painted, Picasso was, for the first time, financially well-off and he felt settled in his life, with a new relationship and a residence in Spain. It was perhaps his stability in his present, that made him begin to look so explicitly backwards. The titular girl of this work is posed as the ancient goddess Venus, arranging her hair, while the boy holding the water jug is directly in reference to classical Greek statues. There is the African influences that defines so much of his work in the woman’s face, but much of the painting’s power comes in how familiar it is, as if the scene exists in the western psyche, portrayed in various guises across thousands of years.
Pablo Picasso
PABLO PICASSO, 1906. OIL ON CANVAS.
Emerging out of years of melancholy, in which sadness so imbued every aspect of his life that his paintings existed in shades of sombre blue, Picasso’s so-called ‘Blue Period’ finally waned into what became known as his ‘Rose Period. Here, the paintings were characterised by roses and pinks, with subject matters of joy and playfulness and a pervading sense of optimism that shone through the canvas. When this work was painted, Picasso was, for the first time, financially well-off and he felt settled in his life, with a new relationship and a residence in Spain. It was perhaps his stability in his present, that made him begin to look so explicitly backwards. The titular girl of this work is posed as the ancient goddess Venus, arranging her hair, while the boy holding the water jug is directly in reference to classical Greek statues. There is the African influences that defines so much of his work in the woman’s face, but much of the painting’s power comes in how familiar it is, as if the scene exists in the western psyche, portrayed in various guises across thousands of years.
Woman with Pigeons
GUSTAVE COURBET
The subject of this unusual portrait seems either uninterested or unaware that she is being painted. None of the typical signs of portraiture are present – no polished pose, three-quarter turn, or watchful eyes rendered in oil paint. Instead, the woman is turned away from the viewer, the folds of her neck suggesting that she is in motion, her body occupied with the two pigeons she holds. Courbet was a virtuoso who had spent the start of his career painting scenes of the French peasant class before moving in his maturity to works that focused on animals. His uncanny ability for naturalistic depiction and his attempt to capture people in candid moments, despite the lengthy period of posing they would have to perform, set him apart from his French contemporaries. Here, the delicate brushstrokes of the birds and their owner invite comparison between the two, the flows of her curled hair turn like the feathers in motion, the glimmer of her earing matches the eyes of the pigeons and both she and the pigeon she holds closest to her chest year a ribbon that hangs loosely atop their heads.
Gustave Courbet
GUSTAVE COURBET, c.1865. OIL ON CANVAS.
The subject of this unusual portrait seems either uninterested or unaware that she is being painted. None of the typical signs of portraiture are present – no polished pose, three-quarter turn, or watchful eyes rendered in oil paint. Instead, the woman is turned away from the viewer, the folds of her neck suggesting that she is in motion, her body occupied with the two pigeons she holds. Courbet was a virtuoso who had spent the start of his career painting scenes of the French peasant class before moving in his maturity to works that focused on animals. His uncanny ability for naturalistic depiction and his attempt to capture people in candid moments, despite the lengthy period of posing they would have to perform, set him apart from his French contemporaries. Here, the delicate brushstrokes of the birds and their owner invite comparison between the two, the flows of her curled hair turn like the feathers in motion, the glimmer of her earing matches the eyes of the pigeons and both she and the pigeon she holds closest to her chest year a ribbon that hangs loosely atop their heads.
In the Month of July
PAUL JOSEPH CONSTANTIN GABRIËL
Gabriël’s paintings were acts of patriotism, intended not only to celebrate the beauty of his homeland but to make other’s see it in the glory that he did. An influential member of the Hague School, a group of artists working in The Hague and painting realist scenes rich in atmosphere and mood, he was an outlier within the group. So fond of muted tones and a limited, sombre palette, the Hague School is still today sometimes referred to as the ‘Gray School’. Yet Gabriël saw colour everywhere, and the Dutch country side swelled before him, ‘colorful, juice, [and] fat’. ‘Our country is saturated with color’, he wrote in a letter, ‘I repeat, our country is not gray, not even in grayweather’. In direct opposition to his contemporaries, he saw in front of him a bounty of shades, vivid and moving in their density and variety and hoped that all those who looked closely would see this beauty too.
Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël
PAUL JOSEPH CONSTANTIN GABRIËL, 1889. OIL ON CANVAS.
Gabriël’s paintings were acts of patriotism, intended not only to celebrate the beauty of his homeland but to make other’s see it in the glory that he did. An influential member of the Hague School, a group of artists working in The Hague and painting realist scenes rich in atmosphere and mood, he was an outlier within the group. So fond of muted tones and a limited, sombre palette, the Hague School is still today sometimes referred to as the ‘Gray School’. Yet Gabriël saw colour everywhere, and the Dutch country side swelled before him, ‘colorful, juice, [and] fat’. ‘Our country is saturated with color’, he wrote in a letter, ‘I repeat, our country is not gray, not even in grayweather’. In direct opposition to his contemporaries, he saw in front of him a bounty of shades, vivid and moving in their density and variety and hoped that all those who looked closely would see this beauty too.
The Past and the Present, or Philosophical Thought
HENRI ROUSSEAU
Ten years on from the death of his first wife, Henri Rousseau married again. He painted this double portrait in the same year, in the style he had developed known as ‘portrait-landscapes’, to commemorate the occasion of this second union to Josephine Noury. She too had been widowed, and they both came into the relationship with the baggage of lost love. Above their heads, floating over as ghostly custodians, are the portraits of their past spouses painted in loving homage and gentle respect. Rousseau was considered a naïve painter, not trained in image making and, when he began, ignorant of the styles of the day or the masters who came before him. Yet this naivety proved to be a gift; unshackled from convention he painted freely and truthfully, developing a style distinctly of his own. Compositionally, so much of art reappropriates the established styles that have come before, yet Rousseau knew little of these and so the physical arrangement of his figures and landscapes exist in a world entirely of their own, perhaps never clearer than in this masterful work.
Henri Rousseau
HENRI ROUSSEAU, 1899. OIL ON CANVAS.
Ten years on from the death of his first wife, Henri Rousseau married again. He painted this double portrait in the same year, in the style he had developed known as ‘portrait-landscapes’, to commemorate the occasion of this second union to Josephine Noury. She too had been widowed, and they both came into the relationship with the baggage of lost love. Above their heads, floating over as ghostly custodians, are the portraits of their past spouses painted in loving homage and gentle respect. Rousseau was considered a naïve painter, not trained in image making and, when he began, ignorant of the styles of the day or the masters who came before him. Yet this naivety proved to be a gift; unshackled from convention he painted freely and truthfully, developing a style distinctly of his own. Compositionally, so much of art reappropriates the established styles that have come before, yet Rousseau knew little of these and so the physical arrangement of his figures and landscapes exist in a world entirely of their own, perhaps never clearer than in this masterful work.
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
HELEN FRANKENTHALER
Having allowed chance and chaos to be collaborators for most of her career, pioneering color-field painting through the soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler began to wrest back some control. Shortly before painting this work, she had spent time in England working on a series of welded sculptures and contemplating large public commissions of her work. These two ideas were front of her mind when painting ‘Nature Abhors a Vacuum’ as the large swathes of colour so synonymous with her paintings find themselves, for almost the first time, with hard edges. She used wood and tape to block the flow of paint from differing areas of the canvas, restricting the freedom that the paint had once enjoyed, and relegating its status from collator to assistant. Having long embraced a lack of control, here Frankenthaler guides the outcome more, suggesting a maturity in her relationship to her process. ‘You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it”, she said, ‘So that the whole surface looks felt and born at once”.
Helen Frankenthaler
HELEN FRANKENTHALER, 1973. ACRYLIC ON CANVAS.
Having allowed chance and chaos to be collaborators for most of her career, pioneering color-field painting through the soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler began to wrest back some control. Shortly before painting this work, she had spent time in England working on a series of welded sculptures and contemplating large public commissions of her work. These two ideas were front of her mind when painting ‘Nature Abhors a Vacuum’ as the large swathes of colour so synonymous with her paintings find themselves, for almost the first time, with hard edges. She used wood and tape to block the flow of paint from differing areas of the canvas, restricting the freedom that the paint had once enjoyed, and relegating its status from collator to assistant. Having long embraced a lack of control, here Frankenthaler guides the outcome more, suggesting a maturity in her relationship to her process. ‘You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it”, she said, ‘So that the whole surface looks felt and born at once”.
Untitled
GEORGES MATTHIEU
One must create fast. This was a tenet that Georges Matthieu stood by, believing in the primacy of speed to avoid any interference from the conscious mind. He worked with the goal to remove the context of existence, the knowledge gained and ideas informed by a life lived within a system from artworks. Nothing in the process of creation should be premeditated, no shapes should be painted that can be conceived of in memory nor should any visuals within the work have pre-existing references and ultimately, the artist must find a way to create in total, ecstatic isolation. If one could follow these principles, they could participate in the movement that Matthieu created known as lyrical abstraction and, in doing so, participate in the final transition away from a style of art that has been fermenting since the ancient times. Every movement, Matthieu believed, was simply an extension or interpolation of that ancient art of our ancestors, and it was only by breaking free from this context that we as a society could begin to think anew.
Georges Matthieu
GEORGES MATTHIEU, 1954. OIL ON CANVAS.
One must create fast. This was a tenet that Georges Matthieu stood by, believing in the primacy of speed to avoid any interference from the conscious mind. He worked with the goal to remove the context of existence, the knowledge gained and ideas informed by a life lived within a system from artworks. Nothing in the process of creation should be premeditated, no shapes should be painted that can be conceived of in memory nor should any visuals within the work have pre-existing references and ultimately, the artist must find a way to create in total, ecstatic isolation. If one could follow these principles, they could participate in the movement that Matthieu created known as lyrical abstraction and, in doing so, participate in the final transition away from a style of art that has been fermenting since the ancient times. Every movement, Matthieu believed, was simply an extension or interpolation of that ancient art of our ancestors, and it was only by breaking free from this context that we as a society could begin to think anew.
Solitude
THOMAS HARRISON ALEXANDER
Trained as an engineer, Harrison approached nature as a scientist, searching endlessly for something new, something unseen, that revealed truth and beauty. Spending summers at a ramshackle cottage on the Brittany coast, he would race to the dunes each evening and watch the sun set over the water, observing the colours change successively with new variations and gradients appearing each night. It was not that Harrison was a lover of nature, rather he was a lover of art and admired nature only in service of art itself. He saw the scale of the earth, and the beauty in that scale, and spent his life trying to capture it in all of its poetic light and colour. Solitude is somewhat unusual in Harrison’s oeuvre, though large in scale like the others, it appears not to be of the sea in its dramatic splendour but of a lake in its quiet tranquillity. A figure stands, nude, at the end of a still rowboat while the oar balances delicately on the surface, not breaking the water tension, and catches the brightness of the moonlight. The work is both peaceful and ominous, one sentence in a lifelong love letter to the water.
Thomas Alexander Harrison
THOMAS ALEXANDER HARRISON, 1893. OIL ON CANVAS.
Trained as an engineer, Harrison approached nature as a scientist, searching endlessly for something new, something unseen, that revealed truth and beauty. Spending summers at a ramshackle cottage on the Brittany coast, he would race to the dunes each evening and watch the sun set over the water, observing the colours change successively with new variations and gradients appearing each night. It was not that Harrison was a lover of nature, rather he was a lover of art and admired nature only in service of art itself. He saw the scale of the earth, and the beauty in that scale, and spent his life trying to capture it in all of its poetic light and colour. Solitude is somewhat unusual in Harrison’s oeuvre, though large in scale like the others, it appears not to be of the sea in its dramatic splendour but of a lake in its quiet tranquillity. A figure stands, nude, at the end of a still rowboat while the oar balances delicately on the surface, not breaking the water tension, and catches the brightness of the moonlight. The work is both peaceful and ominous, one sentence in a lifelong love letter to the water.
Red Madras Headress
HENRI MATISSE
Two connected lines, filled with a simple black circle, somehow penetrate into the depth of our soul with a look of knowing, pity, and compassion. Amelie Matisse, the artists wife and the subject of this work, was a frequent muse for her partner and it is her face that adorned so many of his ideas of revolution. Here, he renders her simply, distorting her shapes and her body so that she becomes a canvas for pattern, for geometry, and for colour. As with all expressionist paintings, the work is not so concerned with depicting reality but with evoking emotional experiences. There is a reductive simplicity in the painting, almost naïve in it’s depiction that at once elevates the work into something approaching purity. Freed from the need for photo-realism or accurate representation, Matisse embraces the bias eye with which he sees his wife. He paints her in glory and elegance, she becomes an artwork to inspire as much as a woman to love.
Henri Matisse
HENRI MATISSE, 1907. OIL ON CANVAS.
Two connected lines, filled with a simple black circle, somehow penetrate into the depth of our soul with a look of knowing, pity, and compassion. Amelie Matisse, the artists wife and the subject of this work, was a frequent muse for her partner and it is her face that adorned so many of his ideas of revolution. Here, he renders her simply, distorting her shapes and her body so that she becomes a canvas for pattern, for geometry, and for colour. As with all expressionist paintings, the work is not so concerned with depicting reality but with evoking emotional experiences. There is a reductive simplicity in the painting, almost naïve in it’s depiction that at once elevates the work into something approaching purity. Freed from the need for photo-realism or accurate representation, Matisse embraces the bias eye with which he sees his wife. He paints her in glory and elegance, she becomes an artwork to inspire as much as a woman to love.
The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers
JAN DE BAEN
Artworks can write history in their image, defining a cultural event beyond its factual happening and representing the age through a quiet artistic bias. In the modern world, we are familiar with this idea after more than a century of photography, taken as truth, defining our understanding of the past and the present, yet we often think of paintings differently. When two brothers who had influence in Dutch parliament for many years were lynched by an angry mob in the late 1600s, it was a national story, and sketches composed by onlookers were reproduced in newspapers across the country. Jan de Baen used these sketches and accounts from attendees to construct his own version of events – trying, as was the philosophy of the Dutch Golden Age, to be as accurate as possible. Yet he still painted with his own astute eye, and the work is aesthetically beautiful not simply by accident. Decisions were made in every brushstrokes and the work was of such quality that it became enormously famous still to this day. The murder of the DeWitt Brothers is now remembered almost entirely through de Baen’s painting, and the truth of what happened on that day no longer matters – art has trumped truth to define the past.
Jan de Baen
JAN DE BAEN, c.1674. OIL ON CANVAS.
Artworks can write history in their image, defining a cultural event beyond its factual happening and representing the age through a quiet artistic bias. In the modern world, we are familiar with this idea after more than a century of photography, taken as truth, defining our understanding of the past and the present, yet we often think of paintings differently. When two brothers who had influence in Dutch parliament for many years were lynched by an angry mob in the late 1600s, it was a national story, and sketches composed by onlookers were reproduced in newspapers across the country. Jan de Baen used these sketches and accounts from attendees to construct his own version of events – trying, as was the philosophy of the Dutch Golden Age, to be as accurate as possible. Yet he still painted with his own astute eye, and the work is aesthetically beautiful not simply by accident. Decisions were made in every brushstrokes and the work was of such quality that it became enormously famous still to this day. The murder of the DeWitt Brothers is now remembered almost entirely through de Baen’s painting, and the truth of what happened on that day no longer matters – art has trumped truth to define the past.
Venus Verticordia
NIKOLAUS PFAFF
In early 1600s Europe, while Rudolph II ruled Austria, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor, the height of sophistication was the Kunstkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities. These were decadent cabinets intended to be filled with objects, art works, artefacts and tokens that showed the wealth, culture and worldliness, and it was these cabinets that defined the aesthetic philosophies of the day. Nikolaus Pfaff was a court artist of Rudolph, and one of the most renowned sculptors of his day, working primarily in organic material and finding his speciality in the carving of ivory. This type of work was seen as a collaboration with the divine, where the artist elevated the beauty of life’s building blocks into artistic perfection that highlighted the genius of both creators. Pfaff’s work was mystic and spiritual, combining ideas of antiquities with mythical and folkloric detailing to create pieces of profound wonder.
Nikolaus Pfaff
NIKOLAUS PFAFF, c.1609. CARVED IVORY ON EBONY PEDESTAL
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.
The Beach
MAURICE PRENDERGAST
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
Maurice Prendergast
MAURICE PRENDERGAST, c.1915. OIL ON CANVAS.
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
Piano Mover’s Holiday
CHARLES DEMUTH
A new world was being built, one defined by sleek lines, mass-production, factories that churned out repetitive perfection and removed the individual from the act of the creation. The shadows of skyscrapers hung heavy over the east coast, joined by the chimney stacks of manufacturing that blew white smoke into the air as if heralding the change to a modern age. While in Europe, artists were responding to this with obstruction that took the form of Cubism’s abstraction and Futurism’s dynamism, a group of American painters led by Charles Demuth developed a style known as Precisionism. Like the European movements that influenced it, it reduced the work to its simple geometric shapes but, unlike them, it did not attempt to obscure them but to celebrate the immaculate perfection of a machine-tooled world. Demuth’s intentionally obfuscating titles nod to the absurdist that seemed present but his sharp, cohesive and proud lines spoke to a pride with his American identity and laid the groundworks for Pop Art, that took celebration of American commerce to its logical extreme.
Charles Demuth
REMBRANDT, c.1668. OIL ON CANVAS.
A new world was being built, one defined by sleek lines, mass-production, factories that churned out repetitive perfection and removed the individual from the act of the creation. The shadows of skyscrapers hung heavy over the east coast, joined by the chimney stacks of manufacturing that blew white smoke into the air as if heralding the change to a modern age. While in Europe, artists were responding to this with obstruction that took the form of Cubism’s abstraction and Futurism’s dynamism, a group of American painters led by Charles Demuth developed a style known as Precisionism. Like the European movements that influenced it, it reduced the work to its simple geometric shapes but, unlike them, it did not attempt to obscure them but to celebrate the immaculate perfection of a machine-tooled world. Demuth’s intentionally obfuscating titles nod to the absurdist that seemed present but his sharp, cohesive and proud lines spoke to a pride with his American identity and laid the groundworks for Pop Art, that took celebration of American commerce to its logical extreme.
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.
Woodland Pond at Sunset
GERARD BILDERS
‘It is not my aim and object’, said Bilders, ‘to paint a cow for the cow’s sake or a tree for the tree’s, but by means of the whole – to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with the most simple means’. As a boy, Bilders visited museums in The Hague and there got lost in the 17th century Dutch Landscape paintings, falling headfirst into the framed scenes and finding refuge in the nature that he depicted. It was the all-encompassing pastoral beauty of these works that drove him to capture the landscape in its totality, and in doing so create works of abundant calm and beauty. It was not the individual elements of the natural world that enthralled him, but the unity and wholeness of the whole scene that was essential for his work. Bilders lived in the nature he created, finding his home in represented lands until he died from tuberculosis at the age of 26.
Gerard Bilders
GERARD BILDERS, c.1862. OIL ON CANVAS.
‘It is not my aim and object’, said Bilders, ‘to paint a cow for the cow’s sake or a tree for the tree’s, but by means of the whole – to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with the most simple means’. As a boy, Bilders visited museums in The Hague and there got lost in the 17th century Dutch Landscape paintings, falling headfirst into the framed scenes and finding refuge in the nature that he depicted. It was the all-encompassing pastoral beauty of these works that drove him to capture the landscape in its totality, and in doing so create works of abundant calm and beauty. It was not the individual elements of the natural world that enthralled him, but the unity and wholeness of the whole scene that was essential for his work. Bilders lived in the nature he created, finding his home in represented lands until he died from tuberculosis at the age of 26.