No. 8 - Special
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
For years, Georgia O’Keeffe translated the intangible, strange feelings into shapes and structures she had long stored in the recesses of her minds. She called these her ‘unknowns’, and they are a sort of marriage between matter and emotion, an arranged pairing of found visuals and unclear feelings, together creating an explanation and a purpose for both. O’Keeffe created a form of Organic Abstraction that could be considered the first truly American modern art movement, and so much of her painterly work is rooted in the natural world as not just environment, but extension of the human mind. The spiral, as seen here, reappeared again and again in her work over the course of her career, both in landscapes, flowers, and rippling waters as well as smoke emitted from trains and the heaving, falling weight of skyscrapers. But here, it is removed from the context of anything other than emotion - an unfurling form that speaks to regeneration as much as it does to the descent into something darker.
Georgia O’Keeffe
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, 1916. CHARCOAL ON PAPER.
Renoir could hardly hold a paintbrush in 1910. Rheumatoid arthritis had rendered his body feeble and the exacting brushstrokes of his youth impossible. Retreating to the French countryside he refused to give up. Instead, in his final years, he developed an entirely new artistic style fitting to the requirements of his ailing body. In his last self portraits, the canvas became a mirror to the soul of the artist, a celebration of the past and a defiant statement of life in the face of increasingly clear mortality. Renoir represented the end of an artistic journey of portraiture that started with Reubens nearly 400 years earlier. He was the last of his kind, a painter steeped in tradition, embrassing tentatively the Impressionist present he found himself in. In this self-portrait, Renoir immortalizes not just himself, but the essence of artistic endeavor—a testament to the enduring dialogue between creator and creation, between past and future, and between the mortal and the immortal.
Self-Portrait
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
Renoir could hardly hold a paintbrush in 1910. Rheumatoid arthritis had rendered his body feeble and the exacting brushstrokes of his youth impossible. Retreating to the French countryside he refused to give up. Instead, in his final years, he developed an entirely new artistic style fitting to the requirements of his ailing body. In his last self portraits, the canvas became a mirror to the soul of the artist, a celebration of the past and a defiant statement of life in the face of increasingly clear mortality. Renoir represented the end of an artistic journey of portraiture that started with Reubens nearly 400 years earlier. He was the last of his kind, a painter steeped in tradition, embrassing tentatively the Impressionist present he found himself in. In this self-portrait, Renoir immortalizes not just himself, but the essence of artistic endeavor—a testament to the enduring dialogue between creator and creation, between past and future, and between the mortal and the immortal.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, 1910. OIL ON CANVAS.
Renoir could hardly hold a paintbrush in 1910. Rheumatoid arthritis had rendered his body feeble and the exacting brushstrokes of his youth impossible. Retreating to the French countryside he refused to give up. Instead, in his final years, he developed an entirely new artistic style fitting to the requirements of his ailing body. In his last self portraits, the canvas became a mirror to the soul of the artist, a celebration of the past and a defiant statement of life in the face of increasingly clear mortality. Renoir represented the end of an artistic journey of portraiture that started with Reubens nearly 400 years earlier. He was the last of his kind, a painter steeped in tradition, embrassing tentatively the Impressionist present he found himself in. In this self-portrait, Renoir immortalizes not just himself, but the essence of artistic endeavor—a testament to the enduring dialogue between creator and creation, between past and future, and between the mortal and the immortal.
PH-585 (1952-A)
CLYFFORD STILL
A field of colour, torn at the seams. The movement is visceral across the canvas, almost ominous as the dark blues seem to grow across the background of brightness and then, in the corner, a flash of yellow comes alive, emerging out of the oppression. Clyfford Still may not be a household name in the way that Pollock or Rothko have become, but it was him who laid the foundations of the entire movement. In 1938, years before his contemporaries, he moved away from figurative work into pure abstraction, allowing colours and the movement of paint to communicate emotion quite unlike any had done before. Dragging palette knives across the paint, the works took on a sense of motion. He combined the two styles of ‘Colour Field’ painting and ‘Action Painting’, to create meditative works that felt tangibly alive, even angry, and this influence can be seen across the movements that followed him.
Clyfford Still
CLYFFORD STILL, 1952. OIL ON CANVAS.
A field of colour, torn at the seams. The movement is visceral across the canvas, almost ominous as the dark blues seem to grow across the background of brightness and then, in the corner, a flash of yellow comes alive, emerging out of the oppression. Clyfford Still may not be a household name in the way that Pollock or Rothko have become, but it was him who laid the foundations of the entire movement. In 1938, years before his contemporaries, he moved away from figurative work into pure abstraction, allowing colours and the movement of paint to communicate emotion quite unlike any had done before. Dragging palette knives across the paint, the works took on a sense of motion. He combined the two styles of ‘Colour Field’ painting and ‘Action Painting’, to create meditative works that felt tangibly alive, even angry, and this influence can be seen across the movements that followed him.
Pasture
ANNI ALBERS
Anni Albers took to weaving reluctantly. As a young woman studying at the Bauhaus, there were few opportunities for her, and the workshops she wanted to attend were not permitted for women. So, out of misogyny and requirement, she took a class on weaving, headed by the school’s only female ‘master’. “"In my case it was threads that caught me, really against my will.”, she said, “To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over." And the world is indebted still to the threads that tangled her, for Albers revolutionised the world with her art. She blurred the lines between traditional craftwork and fine art, which had long been separated, gendered pursuits. Her marriage to fellow artist Josef Albers was amongst the most consequential partnership of post-war art, and while he redefined the study of colour, Anni revolutionised forms and patterns. Together, they created a new visual language that we still speak today, and Anni’s embrace of craft weaving, giving new dimensions to her work that other mediums couldn’t match, was one of the most consequential reluctant decisions ever made.
Anni Albers
ANNI ALBERS, 1958. MERCERIZED COTTON.
Anni Albers took to weaving reluctantly. As a young woman studying at the Bauhaus, there were few opportunities for her, and the workshops she wanted to attend were not permitted for women. So, out of misogyny and requirement, she took a class on weaving, headed by the school’s only female ‘master’. “"In my case it was threads that caught me, really against my will.”, she said, “To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over." And the world is indebted still to the threads that tangled her, for Albers revolutionised the world with her art. She blurred the lines between traditional craftwork and fine art, which had long been separated, gendered pursuits. Her marriage to fellow artist Josef Albers was amongst the most consequential partnership of post-war art, and while he redefined the study of colour, Anni revolutionised forms and patterns. Together, they created a new visual language that we still speak today, and Anni’s embrace of craft weaving, giving new dimensions to her work that other mediums couldn’t match, was one of the most consequential reluctant decisions ever made.
Table Tops
HENRI BURKHARD
Like so many American artists at the turn of the century, Henri Burkhrad had to leave his native land for Paris in order to find his painterly voice. Paris was the centre of the avant-garde, a melting pot of radical ideas, experimentation, and wild characters who encouraged each other to push the envelope further in a single minded journey towards subjective truth. Burkhard had a by-the-numbers artistic education, attending three of the great Académies in the city and honing the traditional skills he had learnt as a young man in New York to novel effect. He returned home shortly before this work was painted, bringing with him the new way of thinking he had learnt overseas, and was quickly celebrated as a leading figure in the American modernist movement, exhibiting extensively at major galleries and museums across the country. Burkhard fell into relative obscurity later in life, and his contribution to a uniquely American painterly style is rarely discussed, but his cubist inspired still lives still retain a sense of potency today.
Henri Burkhard
HENRI BURKHARD, 1928. OIL ON LINEN.
Like so many American artists at the turn of the century, Henri Burkhrad had to leave his native land for Paris in order to find his painterly voice. Paris was the centre of the avant-garde, a melting pot of radical ideas, experimentation, and wild characters who encouraged each other to push the envelope further in a single minded journey towards subjective truth. Burkhard had a by-the-numbers artistic education, attending three of the great Académies in the city and honing the traditional skills he had learnt as a young man in New York to novel effect. He returned home shortly before this work was painted, bringing with him the new way of thinking he had learnt overseas, and was quickly celebrated as a leading figure in the American modernist movement, exhibiting extensively at major galleries and museums across the country. Burkhard fell into relative obscurity later in life, and his contribution to a uniquely American painterly style is rarely discussed, but his cubist inspired still lives still retain a sense of potency today.
Figure
PABLO PICASSO
Picasso tries to quiet the chaos of the world and find himself. Cubism has faded, society is suspended on the precipice of disaster, caught between the jubilant freedom of the 1920s, the start of The Great Depression and the sense of brewing conflict – Picasso begins to look backwards in order to look forwards. In a newly purchased Chateau in Normandy, with his wife Olga and his mistress Marie-Therese staying down the road, Picasso returns to the image of the Harlequin from 20 years earlier. He distorts her, simplifies her, reduces her not quite to pure form but to an essence of womanhood as he understands it. A serpent like head curls around in a half circle, balanced precariously on a drop of liquid, a triangle unites the head and geometry brings a body to life. These simple shapes making up a figure appeared again and again in 1930 for Picasso, reworked in luminous colour, soft pencil markings and, like here, graphic monochrome. In a world confused, Picasso questioned the very physicality of man.
Pablo Picasso
PABLO PICASSO, 1930. OIL ON WOOD.
Picasso tries to quiet the chaos of the world and find himself. Cubism has faded, society is suspended on the precipice of disaster, caught between the jubilant freedom of the 1920s, the start of The Great Depression and the sense of brewing conflict – Picasso begins to look backwards in order to look forwards. In a newly purchased Chateau in Normandy, with his wife Olga and his mistress Marie-Therese staying down the road, Picasso returns to the image of the Harlequin from 20 years earlier. He distorts her, simplifies her, reduces her not quite to pure form but to an essence of womanhood as he understands it. A serpent like head curls around in a half circle, balanced precariously on a drop of liquid, a triangle unites the head and geometry brings a body to life. These simple shapes making up a figure appeared again and again in 1930 for Picasso, reworked in luminous colour, soft pencil markings and, like here, graphic monochrome. In a world confused, Picasso questioned the very physicality of man.
Standing Man
ALEXANDER CALDER
A mechanical engineer who applied the mathematics of movement to art making and created a revolution of sculpture. Alexander Calder stands alone in the history of 20th century art, with his dynamic mobiles and wire sculptures finding a remarkable balance between play and theory, at once rigorous in their creation and ideation and open to the whims of his wild experimentation. Calder’s obsession was the circus, and the movement of acrobats, performers, dancers, and animals who populated the big top. In everything he did, whether directly or indirectly, the kinetic, joyous exuberance of the circus is present, and his artworks capture the fantastical feeling of a day spent watching the show. This playfulness is clear here, in Calder’s Standing Man - a quick sketch on paper that nonetheless shows his mastery of balance in two dimensions as well as three. A naive figure emerges from abstract shapes that feel at once primal and reminiscent of a delicately made musical instrument, and in few brushstrokes Calder creates a work of happy harmony.
Alexander Calder
ALEXANDER CALDER, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER.
A mechanical engineer who applied the mathematics of movement to art making and created a revolution of sculpture. Alexander Calder stands alone in the history of 20th century art, with his dynamic mobiles and wire sculptures finding a remarkable balance between play and theory, at once rigorous in their creation and ideation and open to the whims of his wild experimentation. Calder’s obsession was the circus, and the movement of acrobats, performers, dancers, and animals who populated the big top. In everything he did, whether directly or indirectly, the kinetic, joyous exuberance of the circus is present, and his artworks capture the fantastical feeling of a day spent watching the show. This playfulness is clear here, in Calder’s Standing Man - a quick sketch on paper that nonetheless shows his mastery of balance in two dimensions as well as three. A naive figure emerges from abstract shapes that feel at once primal and reminiscent of a delicately made musical instrument, and in few brushstrokes Calder creates a work of happy harmony.
The Swing
JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD
Derided for its frivolity, ‘The Swing’ came to represent the best and worst aspects of 18th Century French High Society. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw the painting, a masterpiece of Rococo, as emblematic of the rotten core of the whole era - extravagant wealth concerning itself with eroticism and playfulness, existing in a fantasy world removed from reason, rationality and truth. Yet ‘The Swing’ has persisted as a great work for these reasons and more. An aristocratic woman is pushed on a swing, her shoe flying off her feet in exuberant ecstasy, as her lover hides in the bushes below, glimpsing up her dress with each swing. It is lewd and risqué, the two figures playing an illicit sexual game as a statue of Cupid keeps their secret. The lush garden unfolds behind them into impossibility, and the world is soaked in soft erotic light. It is as close to “let them eat cake” as a painting has ever come.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD, 1767, OIL ON CANVAS.
Derided for its frivolity, ‘The Swing’ came to represent the best and worst aspects of 18th Century French High Society. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw the painting, a masterpiece of Rococo, as emblematic of the rotten core of the whole era - extravagant wealth concerning itself with eroticism and playfulness, existing in a fantasy world removed from reason, rationality and truth. Yet ‘The Swing’ has persisted as a great work for these reasons and more. An aristocratic woman is pushed on a swing, her shoe flying off her feet in exuberant ecstasy, as her lover hides in the bushes below, glimpsing up her dress with each swing. It is lewd and risqué, the two figures playing an illicit sexual game as a statue of Cupid keeps their secret. The lush garden unfolds behind them into impossibility, and the world is soaked in soft erotic light. It is as close to “let them eat cake” as a painting has ever come.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. VI
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
The last painting in her much revered series, O’Keeffe takes the flower to its abstract conclusion. She turns the stigma into a surreal form, the hues of the petals become a expansive background to a winding road. She reduces nature into something formal and emotional, and requires the viewer to read it as they like. “I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown.” Said O’Keeffe, “So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.” When she began her Jack-in-the-Pulpit series, which sees the flowers move across four canvases from reality to abstraction, Georgia O’Keeffe was all but unknown. A female modernist painter in a male dominated world, attempting to carve a name for herself. By the time the series was completed, she had gained reputation and with it, speculation. Every viewer tried to create their own narrative of the artist from her paintings of flowers, casting her as an artist of repression, of longing, of lust, of feminism, of tradition. But O’Keeffe has long defied any easy narrative, she is an artist of America and as broad and complicated as the country she captured, through its abstraction and its reality.
Georgia O’Keeffe
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, 1930. OIL ON CANVAS.
The last painting in her much revered series, O’Keeffe takes the flower to its abstract conclusion. She turns the stigma into a surreal form, the hues of the petals become a expansive background to a winding road. She reduces nature into something formal and emotional, and requires the viewer to read it as they like. “I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown.” Said O’Keeffe, “So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.” When she began her Jack-in-the-Pulpit series, which sees the flowers move across four canvases from reality to abstraction, Georgia O’Keeffe was all but unknown. A female modernist painter in a male dominated world, attempting to carve a name for herself. By the time the series was completed, she had gained reputation and with it, speculation. Every viewer tried to create their own narrative of the artist from her paintings of flowers, casting her as an artist of repression, of longing, of lust, of feminism, of tradition. But O’Keeffe has long defied any easy narrative, she is an artist of America and as broad and complicated as the country she captured, through its abstraction and its reality.
River Valley
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Each new art movement offers a new interpretation of the world, a novel way of representing that which we all see slightly differently. In the twentieth century, it seemed that these ways of seeing were never stagnant, each new decade bringing with it multiple, radical new conceptions of existence. For Roy Lichtenstein, one of the great masters of Pop Art in the American 1960s, his interest was in exploring, subverting, and adapting these representations in ways that spoke directly to the contemporary age. His most famous realisation of these ideas comes in his Benday Dot paintings, where he would reproduce panels from comic books or adverts, meticulously painting a mechanical process of reproduction. Yet, later in his life when he began his ‘Landscape Series’, which this painting is from, he began to flatten his influences into kaleidoscopic beauty. His River Valley contains within it decades of different artistic styles and different interpretations of the natural world, from the expressive brushstrokes and painterly hand to the rigorous lines and modern flourishes - it is an homage to art history, and a declaration that though times have changes, all painters are simply trying to find new ways to see the world.
Roy LIchtenstein
ROY LICHTENSTEIN, 1985. OIL AND MAGNA ON CANVAS.
Each new art movement offers a new interpretation of the world, a novel way of representing that which we all see slightly differently. In the twentieth century, it seemed that these ways of seeing were never stagnant, each new decade bringing with it multiple, radical new conceptions of existence. For Roy Lichtenstein, one of the great masters of Pop Art in the American 1960s, his interest was in exploring, subverting, and adapting these representations in ways that spoke directly to the contemporary age. His most famous realisation of these ideas comes in his Benday Dot paintings, where he would reproduce panels from comic books or adverts, meticulously painting a mechanical process of reproduction. Yet, later in his life when he began his ‘Landscape Series’, which this painting is from, he began to flatten his influences into kaleidoscopic beauty. His River Valley contains within it decades of different artistic styles and different interpretations of the natural world, from the expressive brushstrokes and painterly hand to the rigorous lines and modern flourishes - it is an homage to art history, and a declaration that though times have changes, all painters are simply trying to find new ways to see the world.
Noontide in Late May
CHARLES BURCHFIELD
On the back of this painting, Burchfield describes his intentions to "interpret a child’s impression of noon-tide in late May—The heat of the sun streaming down & rosebushes making the air drowsy with their perfume.” This drowsiness is apt, the painting is alive with the intoxication of spring, a scene of vivid imagination seen through sun drenched eyes. Like so many of his contemporaries, Burchfield found nature an exhilarating subject, and painted a series of works depicting the seasons, of which this is one. His intention was not to document the world, but capture the mood of it with a youthful fascination, and recreate his childhood adoration for the gardens he spent many hours in. This work is of his neighbours backyard in Salem, Ohio, and was painted after an unhappy sojourn in New York City. It is perhaps the return to a rural, natural world after the imposing urbanity that charges this painting with such vitality, joy, and exuberance.
Charles Burchfield
CHARLES BURCHFIELD, 1917. WATERCOLOR AND PENCIL ON PAPER.
On the back of this painting, Burchfield describes his intentions to "interpret a child’s impression of noon-tide in late May—The heat of the sun streaming down & rosebushes making the air drowsy with their perfume.” This drowsiness is apt, the painting is alive with the intoxication of spring, a scene of vivid imagination seen through sun drenched eyes. Like so many of his contemporaries, Burchfield found nature an exhilarating subject, and painted a series of works depicting the seasons, of which this is one. His intention was not to document the world, but capture the mood of it with a youthful fascination, and recreate his childhood adoration for the gardens he spent many hours in. This work is of his neighbours backyard in Salem, Ohio, and was painted after an unhappy sojourn in New York City. It is perhaps the return to a rural, natural world after the imposing urbanity that charges this painting with such vitality, joy, and exuberance.
CH22 Chair
HANS WEGNER
Simplicity, functionality, elegance and an influence from nature are the tenets of Danish design. Wegner captures them all in his CH22 Lounge chair. The form pressed back follows the curves of a leaf, while the arm supports seem reminiscent of axe handles and yet the whole thing is so simple, seems so obvious, you hardly notice it’s brilliance. Wegner was prolific, and obsessed with Chairs. He designed over 500 different models in his life, striving for a single perfect seat. Nearly all of these chairs in some way compliment each other, none would look out of place in a room filled with them, but it was never enough for Wegner. ‘If only could design just one good chair in your life,’ he said, ‘but you simply cannot’.
HANS J. WEGNER
HANS J. WEGNER, 1950
Simplicity, functionality, elegance and an influence from nature are the tenets of Danish design. Wegner captures them all in his CH22 Lounge chair. The form pressed back follows the curves of a leaf, while the arm supports seem reminiscent of axe handles and yet the whole thing is so simple, seems so obvious, you hardly notice it’s brilliance. Wegner was prolific, and obsessed with Chairs. He designed over 500 different models in his life, striving for a single perfect seat. Nearly all of these chairs in some way compliment each other, none would look out of place in a room filled with them, but it was never enough for Wegner. ‘If only could design just one good chair in your life,’ he said, ‘but you simply cannot’.
Saint Jerome in His Study
ALBRECHT DÜRER
We are gifted a moment of quiet, at once intimate and grand, and become spectators to a Saint’s contemplation. In the study, Saint Jerome is engrossed at his desk and the objects of his life are laid out around him in use and mess - the ceilings are low and the room looks almost familiar, strangely human. Yet as one looks deeper, impossibility arises. The perspective creates intimacy but positions us as viewing from somewhere unplaceable, and the objects that at first seem to make sense within the room, are revealed to defy laws of physics. Then there is the lion that rests on the floor, next to a dog - a traditional part of Jerome’s iconography teamed with a symbol of domesticity, co-existing together. Dürer draws this duality across the work, perhaps most obviously in the line from Jerome’s glowing halo, through the crucifix, to the skull on the windowsill, with an hourglass positioned above. This is a story in objects, of death and mortality to resurrection, and redemption through belief and prayer.
Albrecht Dürer
ALBRECHT DÜRER, 1514. ENGRAVING
We are gifted a moment of quiet, at once intimate and grand, and become spectators to a Saint’s contemplation. In the study, Saint Jerome is engrossed at his desk and the objects of his life are laid out around him in use and mess - the ceilings are low and the room looks almost familiar, strangely human. Yet as one looks deeper, impossibility arises. The perspective creates intimacy but positions us as viewing from somewhere unplaceable, and the objects that at first seem to make sense within the room, are revealed to defy laws of physics. Then there is the lion that rests on the floor, next to a dog - a traditional part of Jerome’s iconography teamed with a symbol of domesticity, co-existing together. Dürer draws this duality across the work, perhaps most obviously in the line from Jerome’s glowing halo, through the crucifix, to the skull on the windowsill, with an hourglass positioned above. This is a story in objects, of death and mortality to resurrection, and redemption through belief and prayer.
Twin Heads
ALFRED HENRY MAURER
Fusing the composition of Cubist art with the potently affecting feeling of Expressionism, Maurer’s dual heads occupied him for much of his career but it was only in his maturity that they realised their greatest forms. This one, painted just two years before he died from suicide at 64, is haunting. The two female figures become one, though their fusion seems almost unwilling, their eyes filled with trepidation. This uneasy duality was something the artist felt both personally, and in his artistic practice. Maurer began his career painting landscapes in a far more naturalist style, but began to look internally and found within himself a more abstract feeling. “It is impossible to present an exact transcription of nature”, he said, “It is necessary for art to differ from nature. Perhaps art should be an intensification of nature; at least it should express an inherent feeling which cannot be obtained from nature except through a process of association… The artist must be free to paint his effects. Nature must not bind him.”
Alfred Henry Maurer
ALFRED HENRY MAURER, c.1930. OIL ON CANVAS.
Fusing the composition of Cubist art with the potently affecting feeling of Expressionism, Maurer’s dual heads occupied him for much of his career but it was only in his maturity that they realised their greatest forms. This one, painted just two years before he died from suicide at 64, is haunting. The two female figures become one, though their fusion seems almost unwilling, their eyes filled with trepidation. This uneasy duality was something the artist felt both personally, and in his artistic practice. Maurer began his career painting landscapes in a far more naturalist style, but began to look internally and found within himself a more abstract feeling. “It is impossible to present an exact transcription of nature”, he said, “It is necessary for art to differ from nature. Perhaps art should be an intensification of nature; at least it should express an inherent feeling which cannot be obtained from nature except through a process of association… The artist must be free to paint his effects. Nature must not bind him.”
Study of a Sailboat at Sea
EDWARD HOPPER
In city and in countryside, you can find solitude. Loneliness is the pervading emotion of Hopper’s career, whether in the small of the evenings at a counter bar or battling waves against soaring blue skies, his paintings are imbued with a sense of tension between the individual and their environment, and a conflict between tradition and progress. Even in this work, perhaps no more than a simple doodle from a restless mind who expressed himself through gestural strokes, we can find the same ideas at play. Composed of few and determined lines, it’s subject matter is at charming odds with the insurance company letterhead it is drawn on. Hopper could have just have easily done an urban scene, a depiction of solitary business and quiet work that may have made more sense with the corporate medium he chose. Instead, traditional bursts forth - a small sloop sails with gusto, battling against the wind and the dark seas and the bare perceivable outline of three men look towards the horizon, searching for a different world.
James Castle
EDWARD HOPPER, c.1897. GRAPHITE ON PAPER.
In city and in countryside, you can find solitude. Loneliness is the pervading emotion of Hopper’s career, whether in the small of the evenings at a counter bar or battling waves against soaring blue skies, his paintings are imbued with a sense of tension between the individual and their environment, and a conflict between tradition and progress. Even in this work, perhaps no more than a simple doodle from a restless mind who expressed himself through gestural strokes, we can find the same ideas at play. Composed of few and determined lines, it’s subject matter is at charming odds with the insurance company letterhead it is drawn on. Hopper could have just have easily done an urban scene, a depiction of solitary business and quiet work that may have made more sense with the corporate medium he chose. Instead, traditional bursts forth - a small sloop sails with gusto, battling against the wind and the dark seas and the bare perceivable outline of three men look towards the horizon, searching for a different world.
(KOOL)
JAMES CASTLE
In rural Idaho, in the final year of the 19th Century, James Castle was born. Profoundly deaf, he attended school only briefly and never learnt to read, write, or sign properly, he lived a largely uncommunicative life and was only understood by his loving family. Yet, despite his inability to speak or engage with words, Castle had something to say. Developing a sort of charcoal from a mix of soot collected from the fireplace and his own spit, he created hundreds of thousands of artworks using his fingers, sharpened sticks, or peach pits as tools, drawing on found paper and creating books from discarded objects such as this cigarette packet. Unaware of the art world developing around him, his work runs concurrently with the modes and movements across the western world - his own creations often predating mainstream ideas by years. He drew scenes of his domestic existence, of the rural characters he encountered, and the landscape and architecture he loved with an almost photographic memory. He drew across styles, creating works at times naive and abstract and others figurative and exacting - unbeknownst to him, Castle’s mind contained within it an understanding of almost every significant art movement of the 20th century.
James Castle
JAMES CASTLE, c1910-1977. ARTIST’S BOOK WITH SOOT AND SPIIT ON FOUND PAPER.
In rural Idaho, in the final year of the 19th Century, James Castle was born. Profoundly deaf, he attended school only briefly and never learnt to read, write, or sign properly, he lived a largely uncommunicative life and was only understood by his loving family. Yet, despite his inability to speak or engage with words, Castle had something to say. Developing a sort of charcoal from a mix of soot collected from the fireplace and his own spit, he created hundreds of thousands of artworks using his fingers, sharpened sticks, or peach pits as tools, drawing on found paper and creating books from discarded objects such as this cigarette packet. Unaware of the art world developing around him, his work runs concurrently with the modes and movements across the western world - his own creations often predating mainstream ideas by years. He drew scenes of his domestic existence, of the rural characters he encountered, and the landscape and architecture he loved with an almost photographic memory. He drew across styles, creating works at times naive and abstract and others figurative and exacting - unbeknownst to him, Castle’s mind contained within it an understanding of almost every significant art movement of the 20th century.
Object to Be Destroyed
MAN RAY
Like the stages of grief, a readymade object moved through ideas of destruction over forty years. When Man Ray first affixed the photograph of a women’s eye to a wooden metronome, it was merely to keep him company as he painted. The monotony of the metronome helped him regulate his brushstrokes, and he found he enjoyed the sensation of being watched by this detached voyeur until, in a moment of fury, he destroyed the metronome, birthing the artworks as ‘Object to Be Destroyed’. In the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, the work caused a stir on debut and was regarded as a significant work of modern art almost immediately. Some 10 years later, Ray was left by his partner, the photographer Lee Miller, and replaced the anonymous eye on the metronome with a photograph of hers, renaming the work ‘Object of Destruction’ - its context changing from companion to judge, watching over him as a reminder of what he lost. In the 1950s, a group of Parisian student protesters broke into a museum showing the work and took Ray’s title seriously, destroying the original piece. Ray responded by creating 100 new editions, and titling it ‘Indestructible Object’, it’s context moving beyond the physical metronome and photograph and being an idea that can will live forever in the mind.
Man Ray
MAN RAY, 1923/1932/1964. WOODEN METRONOME, PHOTOGRAPH.
Like the stages of grief, a readymade object moved through ideas of destruction over forty years. When Man Ray first affixed the photograph of a women’s eye to a wooden metronome, it was merely to keep him company as he painted. The monotony of the metronome helped him regulate his brushstrokes, and he found he enjoyed the sensation of being watched by this detached voyeur until, in a moment of fury, he destroyed the metronome, birthing the artworks as ‘Object to Be Destroyed’. In the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, the work caused a stir on debut and was regarded as a significant work of modern art almost immediately. Some 10 years later, Ray was left by his partner, the photographer Lee Miller, and replaced the anonymous eye on the metronome with a photograph of hers, renaming the work ‘Object of Destruction’ - its context changing from companion to judge, watching over him as a reminder of what he lost. In the 1950s, a group of Parisian student protesters broke into a museum showing the work and took Ray’s title seriously, destroying the original piece. Ray responded by creating 100 new editions, and titling it ‘Indestructible Object’, it’s context moving beyond the physical metronome and photograph and being an idea that can will live forever in the mind.
Two Women
LEONOR FINI
“I paint pictures which don’t exist”, said Leonor Fini, “and which I would like to see”. But her quest to create worlds as she wanted them to exist extended far beyond her paintings and into the very fibre of her daily being. An Italian Argentinian, renowned for talent and beauty so much that she was known as the Queen of Paris during the 1930s, Fini blazed a trail defined by no one. She rejected the title of Surrealist, despite appearing in multiple exhibitions and publications and counting many of the surrealists as her closest friends and occasional lovers, as she refused to give up her independence to the often dictatorial whims of the group’s founder Andre Breton. She did not want to be defined, not as a female artist, nor one who depicted erotic scenes of lesbian love, but instead only wanted to create the world in her vision, unapologetically, and let everyone else follow behind.
Leonor Fini
LEONOR FINI, 1939. OIL ON CANVAS.
“I paint pictures which don’t exist”, said Leonor Fini, “and which I would like to see”. But her quest to create worlds as she wanted them to exist extended far beyond her paintings and into the very fibre of her daily being. An Italian Argentinian, renowned for talent and beauty so much that she was known as the Queen of Paris during the 1930s, Fini blazed a trail defined by no one. She rejected the title of Surrealist, despite appearing in multiple exhibitions and publications and counting many of the surrealists as her closest friends and occasional lovers, as she refused to give up her independence to the often dictatorial whims of the group’s founder Andre Breton. She did not want to be defined, not as a female artist, or one who depicted erotic scenes of lesbian love, but instead only wanted to create the world in her vision, unapologetically, and let everyone else follow behind.
Still Life, Fruit
FRANK STELLA
With boundless creativity, and a seemingly endless will to experiment, Joseph Stella felt restrained by every country he inhabited. In his native Italy, he found the shadow of the Renaissance omnipresent, even in the fledgling futurist movement he could feel its presence and its constriction on his desire for the new. His first stint in America was challenging and unenjoyable, he found the land and climate unbearable and the nation not willing to accept the beauty of its modernity. Travels around Europe and time in Paris brought him into contact with increasingly more avant-garde movements, and he absorbed the principles of Cubism, Fauvism, and the now established Futurism. He took these movement with him and returned to America, finding the country more open to his restless mind, and accepting of the radical art he made. Stella is ultimately remembered for his cityscapes, his wild and energetic paintings of New York’s architecture, but this still life is notable for how elegantly it combines tradition, simplicity, with the sharp geometry and abstraction. It captures a man between worlds, who could absorb ideas from across time and place and create something uniquely his own.
Joseph Stella
JOSEPH STELLA, c.1925. WATERCOLOR ON PAPER.
With boundless creativity, and a seemingly endless will to experiment, Joseph Stella felt restrained by every country he inhabited. In his native Italy, he found the shadow of the Renaissance omnipresent, even in the fledgling futurist movement he could feel its presence and its constriction on his desire for the new. His first stint in America was challenging and unenjoyable, he found the land and climate unbearable and the nation not willing to accept the beauty of its modernity. Travels around Europe and time in Paris brought him into contact with increasingly more avant-garde movements, and he absorbed the principles of Cubism, Fauvism, and the now established Futurism. He took these movement with him and returned to America, finding the country more open to his restless mind, and accepting of the radical art he made. Stella is ultimately remembered for his cityscapes, his wild and energetic paintings of New York’s architecture, but this still life is notable for how elegantly it combines tradition, simplicity, with the sharp geometry and abstraction. It captures a man between worlds, who could absorb ideas from across time and place and create something uniquely his own.
The Resurrection of Christ
PETER PAUL RUBENS
Christ rises triumphant, the glory of god emanating from him in bright light with such strength that it blinds those around him. With St. John the Baptist on the left panel and St. Martina on the right, Peter Paul Rubens directs our focus to Christ alone, and allows the other figures to existence in the darkness of deference. The altarpiece, still in its original chapel in Antwerp, was commissioned as a funeral piece for a wealthy business man and his wife. It’s function as an artwork perfectly matches its content - a monument to he memory of the dead, and a reminder that through God all will live again. The story of the resurrection, and Ruben’s masterful rending of it, tell us that God’s eternal, repressible, unstoppable love will always triumph over death. Christ rising from his tomb is the foundational tale of Christianity, and Ruben’s gives it the importance and credit it deserves, depicting his return as a warrior returning to battle for the souls of the living.
Peter Paul Rubens
PETER PAUL RUBENS, 1612. OIL ON PANEL.
Christ rises triumphant, the glory of god emanating from him in bright light with such strength that it blinds those around him. With St. John the Baptist on the left panel and St. Martina on the right, Peter Paul Rubens directs our focus to Christ alone, and allows the other figures to existence in the darkness of deference. The altarpiece, still in its original chapel in Antwerp, was commissioned as a funeral piece for a wealthy business man and his wife. It’s function as an artwork perfectly matches its content - a monument to he memory of the dead, and a reminder that through God all will live again. The story of the resurrection, and Ruben’s masterful rending of it, tell us that God’s eternal, repressible, unstoppable love will always triumph over death. Christ rising from his tomb is the foundational tale of Christianity, and Ruben’s gives it the importance and credit it deserves, depicting his return as a warrior returning to battle for the souls of the living.