Into The Blue
BEAURY-SAUREL
A work of straightforward rebellion, Beaury-Saurel’s ‘Into The Blue’ is indicative of her life of fighting. A darling of the 1890 Paris Salon, matriarch of the Académie Julian, Beaury-Saurel’s portrait of a lady was shocking when first debuted. It would be another 40 years until women openly smoking became socially acceptable, and yet here we have our figure nonchalant, exhaling against a background of deep blue. Beaury-Saurel was a ‘femme moderne’, and wanted to depict similar women. She presents her subjects as strong and undaunted. In loose brush strokes she frees them from societal gaze and subjugation to become their own authors. Now faded into obscurity, Beaury-Saurel blazed a path for female painters in France to reclaim their image
Amélie Beary-Saurel
AMÉLIE BEAURY-SAUREL, 1894. PASTEL ON CANVAS
A work of straightforward rebellion, Beaury-Saurel’s ‘Into The Blue’ is indicative of her life of fighting. A darling of the 1890 Paris Salon, matriarch of the Académie Julian, Beaury-Saurel’s portrait of a lady was shocking when first debuted. It would be another 40 years until women openly smoking became socially acceptable, and yet here we have our figure nonchalant, exhaling against a background of deep blue. Beaury-Saurel was a ‘femme moderne’, and wanted to depict similar women. She presents her subjects as strong and undaunted. In loose brush strokes she frees them from societal gaze and subjugation to become their own authors. Now faded into obscurity, Beaury-Saurel blazed a path for female painters in France to reclaim their image.
The Calling of Saint Matthew
CARAVAGGIO
Caravaggio was a rebel, an outcast, a murderer, and a genius. Almost single-handedly, he shifted the Renaissance away from the heavens and brought it crashing down to earth. He cast prostitutes as life models for the mother Mary, pimps and street urchins as disciples, and found religion, salvation and divinity in the dark streets and underbelly of Rome. His paintings exist in back rooms, illuminated by the rare light that finds its way through cracks and dirty windows, and depict biblical stories as contemporary scenes, with all figures dressed in the garb of the day. The calling of Matthew is one of a series of painting depicting Matthew’s story, culminating in his vicious and visceral murder, all hanging at the French Church in Rome. They are a masterclass in chiaroscuro, the interplay between intense darkness and bright light, and exemplify a new understanding of religious art - one that is applicable and relatable to the everyman.
Caravaggio
MICHELANGELO MERISI DA CARAVAGGIO, 1600. OIL ON CANVAS.
Caravaggio was a rebel, an outcast, a murderer, and a genius. Almost single-handedly, he shifted the Renaissance away from heavens and brought it crashing down to earth. He cast prostitutes as life models for the mother Mary, pimps and street urchins as disciples, and found religion, salvation and divinity in the dark streets and underbelly of Rome. His paintings exist in back rooms, illuminated by the rare light that finds its way through cracks and dirty windows, and depict biblical stories as contemporary scenes, with all figures dressed in the garb of the day. The calling of Matthew is one of a series of painting depicting Matthew’s story, culminating in his vicious and visceral murder, all hanging at the French Church in Rome. They are a masterclass in chiaroscuro, the interplay between intense darkness and bright light, and exemplify a new understanding of religious art - one that is applicable and relatable to the everyman.
Still Life
GIORGIO MORANDI
Giorgio Morandi’s work is humble. It does not overtly place him in a lineage of art history, nor does it try to elevate or reach towards the eternal. It is unpretentious, his subjects are limited and his lines are technically imperfect. The works are quiet, receding, and do not shout. Yet, in any gallery, their singular character is unmistakable and unignorable. Morandi was a painter of household objects in muted colours, his restraint and deliberation almost monastic, yet he established himself as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This is partly because, Morandi was not really concerned with the objects but with the light, and the way it interacted with them and the colours it produced. It is this obsessive documentation of light, in the minutiae of it’s variations that made Morandi such a key figure for the color-field artists such as Rothko and minimalists like Donald Judd. Morandi elevated the mundane and ordinary to the exquisite and worthwhile.
Giorgio Morandi
GIORGIO MORANDI, c.1955. OIL ON CANVAS.
Giorgio Morandi’s work is humble. It does not overtly place him in a lineage of art history, nor does it try to elevate or reach towards the eternal. It is unpretentious, his subjects are limited and his lines are technically imperfect. The works are quiet, receding, and do not shout. Yet, in any gallery, their singular character is unmistakable and unignorable. Morandi was a painter of household objects in muted colours, his restraint and deliberation almost monastic, yet he established himself as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This is partly because, Morandi was not really concerned with the objects but with the light, and the way it interacted with them and the colours it produced. It is this obsessive documentation of light, in the minutiae of it’s variations that made Morandi such a key figure for the color-field artists such as Rothko and minimalists like Donald Judd. Morandi elevated the mundane and ordinary to the exquisite and worthwhile.
Tristan Tzara
MAN RAY
“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint”, said Man Ray, “and am working directly with light itself.” He was amongst the first to understand the importance of this liberation, for it was Man Ray, with a small group of others, who established photography as a medium for fine art. A multidisciplinary artist who had worked across different fields, when Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada and the man pictured in this image, introduced Ray to photography, he felt at home. The sculpture hanging over Tzara’s head is one of Ray’s, a sword of Damocles that seems to spell certain death for the avant-garde genius, for this picture was taking on the precipice of movements. Dada was starting to fade, taken over by the fledgling surrealist artists, their sexually charged works represented here by the spectre of a nude women that looms over the old leader. Ray indeed used the camera as a canvas, not restricting himself to depictions of tangible reality but painting visions with light.
Man Ray
MAN RAY, 1921. PHOTOGRAPH ON SILVER GELATIN PAPER.
“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint”, said Man Ray, “and am working directly with light itself.” He was amongst the first to understand the importance of this liberation, for it was Man Ray, with a small group of others, who established photography as a medium for fine art. A multidisciplinary artist who had worked across different fields, when Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada and the man pictured in this image, introduced Ray to photography, he felt at home. The sculpture hanging over Tzara’s head is one of Ray’s, a sword of Damocles that seems to spell certain death for the avant-garde genius, for this picture was taking on the precipice of movements. Dada was starting to fade, taken over by the fledgling surrealist artists, their sexually charged works represented here by the spectre of a nude women that looms over the old leader. Ray indeed used the camera as a canvas, not restricting himself to depictions of tangible reality but painting visions with light.
Number 7, 1951
JACKSON 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.
The Ascetic
PABLO PICASSO
In a deep depression, Picasso could paint in nothing but blue. For three years, he works became all but monochromatic; rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, they are overwhelming in their coldness and affecting in the totality of moroseness they represent. It was the suicide of a close friend that led Picasso into his aptly named ‘Blue Period’, and his art was changed not just in palette but in subject. He retreated into the darkness of society, finding solace in the outcasts: the sick, disabled, marginalised, and rejected, as he saw himself in his misery as equally apart from the world he once inhabited. The works made during this period are more than melancholy - they are entirely absent of joy, and amongst the most urgent and potent communications of sadness ever created. This work, of an older man, ailing with little food to eat, is an exemplary work of this period. There is something unsettling in his depiction, as he moves between dimensions his body seems to exist both as rounded, fully formed flesh in the face, neck and hands, and as a flat, false image in his torso and arms. The table appears to retreat back against the wall, trapping him in a purgatorial space between planes. In social position and depiction, Picasso’s unnamed subject exists as an outsider, unplaced within the physical world he is painted in and rejected by the one he inhabits.
Pablo Picasso
PABLO PICASSO, 1903. OIL ON CANVAS.
In a deep depression, Picasso could paint in nothing but blue. For three years, he works became all but monochromatic; rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, they are overwhelming in their coldness and affecting in the totality of moroseness they represent. It was the suicide of a close friend that led Picasso into his aptly named ‘Blue Period’, and his art was changed not just in palette but in subject. He retreated into the darkness of society, finding solace in the outcasts: the sick, disabled, marginalised, and rejected, as he saw himself in his misery as equally apart from the world he once inhabited. The works made during this period are more than melancholy - they are entirely absent of joy, and amongst the most urgent and potent communications of sadness ever created. This work, of an older man, ailing with little food to eat, is an exemplary work of this period. There is something unsettling in his depiction, as he moves between dimensions his body seems to exist both as rounded, fully formed flesh in the face, neck and hands, and as a flat, false image in his torso and arms. The table appears to retreat back against the wall, trapping him in a purgatorial space between planes. In social position and depiction, Picasso’s unnamed subject exists as an outsider, unplaced within the physical world he is painted in and rejected by the one he inhabits.
View of Saint Maurice lès Charencey
MAURICE DE VLAMINCK
Vlaminck ignored the details. From an early age he rejected the traditional teaching methods of copying masterpieces from museums, keen to make sure that his inspiration was pure and his style unadulterated by influence. Landscapes were but a vehicle for a violent expression told through brushstrokes. The subjects of the scenes were carefully considered but Vlaminck felt no allegiance or responsibility towards them, in both landscape and portraiture. Instead, he was deeply committed to himself, and prioritised the authenticity of his own expression above all else. A lifelong fauvist, art was for him a wild and personal thing, and he saw Picasso and Braques cubism as a dead-end that dragged painting into a state of confusion, away from the expression of human emotion and into something all the headier and more distant. This painting of Vue Saint Maurice tells us little of the road, but in the furious snow and aggressive sky, we learn a lot about Vlaminck.
Maurice De Vlaminck
MAURICE DE VLAMINCK, 1950. OIL ON CANVAS.
Vlaminck ignored the details. From an early age he rejected the traditional teaching methods of copying masterpieces from museums, keen to make sure that his inspiration was pure and his style unadulterated by influence. Landscapes were but a vehicle for a violent expression told through brushstrokes. The subjects of the scenes were carefully considered but Vlaminck felt no allegiance or responsibility towards them, in both landscape and portraiture. Instead, he was deeply committed to himself, and prioritised the authenticity of his own expression above all else. A lifelong fauvist, art was for him a wild and personal thing, and he saw Picasso and Braques cubism as a dead-end that dragged painting into a state of confusion, away from the expression of human emotion and into something all the headier and more distant. This painting of Vue Saint Maurice tells us little of the road, but in the furious snow and aggressive sky, we learn a lot about Vlaminck.
The Blank Signature
RENÉ MAGRITTE
Surrealists were delving the unconscious depths of their mind to create works that transcended reality, turning their dreams and visions of impossible worlds into visual actualities. Magritte, however, while participating in this element of the movement, was simultaneously exploring something altogether different. ‘The Blank Signature’ is not about the visions of the subconscious but instead about the inner workings of it. An optical illusion of the highest order - at first glance it is a simple scene, masterfully rendered, but on the second something seems off. Our brain constructs the picture we assume is there, that of a woman riding her horse through a forest, partially obscured by trees. Instead, the horse is bisected by nothingness, exists simultaneously in front of and behind the plane it rides on. We do not need painting to show us the world of our dreams, Magritte seems to say with this work, when the mind already constructs the impossible.
René Magritte
RENÉ MAGRITTE, 1965. OIL ON CANVAS.
Surrealists were delving the unconscious depths of their mind to create works that transcended reality, turning their dreams and visions of impossible worlds into visual actualities. Magritte, however, while participating in this element of the movement, was simultaneously exploring something altogether different. ‘The Blank Signature’ is not about the visions of the subconscious but instead about the inner workings of it. An optical illusion of the highest order - at first glance it is a simple scene, masterfully rendered, but on the second something seems off. Our brain constructs the picture we assume is there, that of a woman riding her horse through a forest, partially obscured by trees. Instead, the horse is bisected by nothingness, exists simultaneously in front of and behind the plane it rides on. We do not need painting to show us the world of our dreams, Magritte seems to say with this work, when the mind already constructs the impossible.
Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome
UNKNOWN RHENISH MASTER
The two men stand at ease as if caught unexpectedly in oil paint, a candid moment granted immortality. Yet for the naturalistic pose that Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome exhibit, they are laden with symbolism in every element of their depiction. The small, rather surreal lamb that sits atop St. John’s leather book is recognition of Christ as the sacrificial Lamb of God, while his camel hair tunic is testament to the patience of his faith and the power of endurance. Jerome is clad in red cardinal garments that honour his religious scholarship; bestowing upon him an honour that was not granted in his life. He holds the thorn he removed from a lions paw and a book, most likely the Bible that he translated into Latin from Hebrew. This symbolically and aesthetically dense work was most likely adornment for a larger painting of Christ’s crucifixion, a wing on a possible triptych, that has now been lost. For all of its visual poetry and the impossibility of the scene it depicts, for the two saints lived centuries apart, it feels strangely intimate, deeply personal and painted with the honesty of faith and respect.
Unknown Rhenish Master
UNKNOWN RHENISH MASTER, c.1478. OIL AND GOLD ON PANEL.
The two men stand at ease as if caught unexpectedly in oil paint, a candid moment granted immortality. Yet for the naturalistic pose that Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome exhibit, they are laden with symbolism in every element of their depiction. The small, rather surreal lamb that sits atop St. John’s leather book is recognition of Christ as the sacrificial Lamb of God, while his camel hair tunic is testament to the patience of his faith and the power of endurance. Jerome is clad in red cardinal garments that honour his religious scholarship; bestowing upon him an honour that was not granted in his life. He holds the thorn he removed from a lions paw and a book, most likely the Bible that he translated into Latin from Hebrew. This symbolically and aesthetically dense work was most likely adornment for a larger painting of Christ’s crucifixion, a wing on a possible triptych, that has now been lost. For all of its visual poetry and the impossibility of the scene it depicts, for the two saints lived centuries apart, it feels strangely intimate, deeply personal and painted with the honesty of faith and respect.
Venus
HENRI MATISSE
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse put down the paint brush and picked up the scissors. Cut paper became his primary medium, cutting paper into various shapes of vegetal and abstract form, and then arranging them in lively compositions. The cut-outs renewed Matisse’s commitment to form and color as his ability to paint the intricate, emotive works of his youth left him as his body aged. They were questioned everything that had come before, asking the nature of the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these. There is a tension inherent in this, the cut-outs existed between traditional artworks and decoration, they are at once a finished product and a work in process, drawings and colour fields. The cut-outs reduce formal ideas to simplicity, bringing Matisse towards the end of his life back to his most youthful self. Simple, unassuming, and remarkable in their depth.
Henri Matisse
HENRI MATISSE, 1952. GOUACHE ON PAPER.
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse put down the paint brush and picked up the scissors. Cut paper became his primary medium, cutting paper into various shapes of vegetal and abstract form, and then arranging them in lively compositions. The cut-outs renewed Matisse’s commitment to form and color as his ability to paint the intricate, emotive works of his youth left him as his body aged. They were questioned everything that had come before, asking the nature of the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these. There is a tension inherent in this, the cut-outs existed between traditional artworks and decoration, they are at once a finished product and a work in process, drawings and colour fields. The cut-outs reduce formal ideas to simplicity, bringing Matisse towards the end of his life back to his most youthful self. Simple, unassuming, and remarkable in their depth.
Apache Dancer
FRANZ KLINE
Franz Kline was a painter of his own life. He reflected the cultural milieu that surrounded him, and as he moved from figurative work to abstract expression his work never lost a personal representation. In 1940, after years working as a struggling artist in New York’s Greenwich Village, Kline was commissioned by the owner of Bleeker Street Tavern to create a series of ten murals to decorate the watering hole. He was paid five dollars apiece, and the works depict a night at the burlesque show, as requested by the proprietor in an attempt to attract male clientele to his bar. Yet Kline eschewed tradition and expectation, rejecting the graphic work that was standard for such commissions in favour of something altogether more emotional and personal. Kline’s murals mark a bridge in artistic history, the dawn of abstract expressionist work, his loose lines and brushstrokes marking things to come. He imbues his paintings with emotional depth that far exceeded commercial murals of the day, capturing the spirit not just of the burlesque entertainment but of the nation as a whole.
Frank Kline
FRANZ KLINE, 1940. OIL ON CANVAS BOARD.
Franz Kline was a painter of his own life. He reflected the cultural milieu that surrounded him, and as he moved from figurative work to abstract expression his work never lost a personal representation. In 1940, after years working as a struggling artist in New York’s Greenwich Village, Kline was commissioned by the owner of Bleeker Street Tavern to create a series of ten murals to decorate the watering hole. He was paid five dollars apiece, and the works depict a night at the burlesque show, as requested by the proprietor in an attempt to attract male clientele to his bar. Yet Kline eschewed tradition and expectation, rejecting the graphic work that was standard for such commissions in favour of something altogether more emotional and personal. Kline’s murals mark a bridge in artistic history, the dawn of abstract expressionist work, his loose lines and brushstrokes marking things to come. He imbues his paintings with emotional depth that far exceeded commercial murals of the day, capturing the spirit not just of the burlesque entertainment but of the nation as a whole.
The Arrival
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
Everyday reality crashes into surrealist mythology as perspectives warp and time flattens into a single, unknowable, unplaceable landscape. After a revelation in a Florence piazza, De Chicoro began to paint obsessively, trying to capture the uncanny feelings that could not be translated into anything but painting, allowing for his personal sensitivity to the strangeness of the human environment to create metaphysical works. The works are paradoxical, evoking a feeling of nostalgia as well as novelty, empty, forlorn and hopeless they nonetheless convey a sense of power and freedom. De Chirico condensed the enormity of feeling, the bombardment of daily life into metaphor – inspired by the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, he tried to capture the ominous existence beneath the surface of writing in oil paint. Predating the surrealists, his work established a foundation for warped perspective of existence to speak more truthfully than any attempts at representation ever could.
Giorgio de Chirico
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS.
Everyday reality crashes into surrealist mythology as perspectives warp and time flattens into a single, unknowable, unplaceable landscape. After a revelation in a Florence piazza, De Chicoro began to paint obsessively, trying to capture the uncanny feelings that could not be translated into anything but painting, allowing for his personal sensitivity to the strangeness of the human environment to create metaphysical works. The works are paradoxical, evoking a feeling of nostalgia as well as novelty, empty, forlorn and hopeless they nonetheless convey a sense of power and freedom. De Chirico condensed the enormity of feeling, the bombardment of daily life into metaphor – inspired by the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, he tried to capture the ominous existence beneath the surface of writing in oil paint. Predating the surrealists, his work established a foundation for warped perspective of existence to speak more truthfully than any attempts at representation ever could.
Dionysius
BARNETT NEWMAN
Long before he completed a painting he deemed worthy of public view, in 1933 Barnett Newman ran as a candidate for the Mayor of New York. Working a substitute teacher at the time, his campaign was based on the simple maxim that ‘only a society entirely composed of artists would be really worth living in'. It is unclear how many, if any, votes Newman got, and his political career ended with that election, but his vision for society remained with him forever. It would be nearly fifteen years before his artistic awakening with the development of his Onement series, a third way of painting that comprised of a single vertical line against a deep field of colour. Newman’s work, his new technique and idea of painting was primal, and in its primacy it was so accessible that anyone could understand it, if not create it themselves – he was creating in his work the possibility of a society filled with artists.
Barnett Newman
BARNETT NEWMAN, 1949. OIL ON CANVAS.
Long before he completed a painting he deemed worthy of public view, in 1933 Barnett Newman ran as a candidate for the Mayor of New York. Working a substitute teacher at the time, his campaign was based on the simple maxim that ‘only a society entirely composed of artists would be really worth living in'. It is unclear how many, if any, votes Newman got, and his political career ended with that election, but his vision for society remained with him forever. It would be nearly fifteen years before his artistic awakening with the development of his Onement series, a third way of painting that comprised of a single vertical line against a deep field of colour. Newman’s work, his new technique and idea of painting was primal, and in its primacy it was so accessible that anyone could understand it, if not create it themselves – he was creating in his work the possibility of a society filled with artists.
Untitled (String Quartet)
MARK ROTHKO
To think of Mark Rothko is to think of colour fields. Imposing canvases of thick paint, dark hues that engulf in a pure abstraction, ominous and potent in their scale, their simplicity and their size. Yet Rothko only came to these definitive works when he was well into his forties. For his early period, he created impressionist, representational works depicting urban scenes in small vignettes, as with the Quartet here. It is thrilling to see an artist working outside of their signatures, for hiding within Rothko’s painting are clues for what is to come. He tried, in this period, to paint as a child; inspired by ‘primitive art’, he saw a relationship between artistic works of early civilization and the naivety of a child’s representation of their world. Even in these early representational works, we can see a mastery of colour as a tool for emotion, the deep browns and greys are menacing and there is a sense of imposition across the work. Remove the string players and the background could be a work from 20 years later in his maturity. To see Rothko’s early work is to see an artist stripping back to purity, grappling with the same themes and emotions but distilling them down to their most powerful form.
Mark Rothko
MARK ROTHKO, 1935. OIL ON HARDBOARD.
To think of Mark Rothko is to think of colour fields. Imposing canvases of thick paint, dark hues that engulf in a pure abstraction, ominous and potent in their scale, their simplicity and their size. Yet Rothko only came to these definitive works when he was well into his forties. For his early period, he created impressionist, representational works depicting urban scenes in small vignettes, as with the Quartet here. It is thrilling to see an artist working outside of their signatures, for hiding within Rothko’s painting are clues for what is to come. He tried, in this period, to paint as a child; inspired by ‘primitive art’, he saw a relationship between artistic works of early civilization and the naivety of a child’s representation of their world. Even in these early representational works, we can see a mastery of colour as a tool for emotion, the deep browns and greys are menacing and there is a sense of imposition across the work. Remove the string players and the background could be a work from 20 years later in his maturity. To see Rothko’s early work is to see an artist stripping back to purity, grappling with the same themes and emotions but distilling them down to their most powerful form.
Homage to the Square
JOSEF ALBERS
Four squares of paint, applied to cheap pressed wood, directly from the tube. Josef Alber’s homages lasted for more than 25 years from 1950 to his death in 1976, occupying his mind obsessively. Having been a professor at the Bauhaus, he moved to America and taught at both Yale and Black Mountain College, there honing his framework and establishing a new vernacular of colour and form that would go on to define the 20th century. From the narrowest conceptual frameworks can the most extraordinary perceptual complexity arise. The ‘Homage to the Square’ went on to number more than 2,000 paintings, created sequentially. Singularly fascinated with the interaction of colour, each successive variation on Albers' basic compositional scheme brought new adjustments in hue, tone and intensity. His 1963 book ‘Interaction of Colour’ referred to such experiments as ‘a study of ourselves’. What at first glance would appear to be ‘just’ four squares belies Albers' true depth - that of chromatic harmony.
Josef Albers
JOSEF ALBERS, 1957. CASEIN AND OIL ON MASONITE
Four squares of paint, applied to cheap pressed wood, directly from the tube. Josef Alber’s homages lasted for more than 25 years from 1950 to his death in 1976, occupying his mind obsessively. Having been a professor at the Bauhaus, he moved to America and taught at both Yale and Black Mountain College, there honing his framework and establishing a new vernacular of colour and form that would go on to define the 20th century. From the narrowest conceptual frameworks can the most extraordinary perceptual complexity arise. The ‘Homage to the Square’ went on to number more than 2,000 paintings, created sequentially. Singularly fascinated with the interaction of colour, each successive variation on Albers' basic compositional scheme brought new adjustments in hue, tone and intensity. His 1963 book ‘Interaction of Colour’ referred to such experiments as ‘a study of ourselves’. What at first glance would appear to be ‘just’ four squares belies Albers' true depth - that of chromatic harmony.
The Assumption of the Virgin
PETER PAUL RUBENS
The Virgin Mary is a font of true light as she is assumed, meaning to ‘raise up’, into the heavens, accompanied by a multitude angels. At her feet, 12 apostles, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary’s two sisters are bathed in her divinity and her beauty. Ruben’s interpreted this story in his own way, seeing her ascension as analogous to the rising of the sun, as her purity and divinity is often talked about as a source of light. So Mary becomes the sun, the knot of angels that surround her bleed in and out of the clouds that they become. It is a work of reverence and praise, but from a distance it could be easily misinterpreted as a landscape. This duality was intentional not just as a compositional allegory but as an audition. This work was a presentation sketch for a larger painted version of the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral, and Rubens employed every tool in his arsenal to show his mastery and secure the job.
Peter Paul Rubens
PETER PAUL RUBENS, c.1612. OIL ON PANEL.
The Virgin Mary is a font of true light as she is assumed, meaning to ‘raise up’, into the heavens, accompanied by a multitude angels. At her feet, 12 apostles, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary’s two sisters are bathed in her divinity and her beauty. Ruben’s interpreted this story in his own way, seeing her ascension as analogous to the rising of the sun, as her purity and divinity is often talked about as a source of light. So Mary becomes the sun, the knot of angels that surround her bleed in and out of the clouds that they become. It is a work of reverence and praise, but from a distance it could be easily misinterpreted as a landscape. This duality was intentional not just as a compositional allegory but as an audition. This work was a presentation sketch for a larger painted version of the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral, and Rubens employed every tool in his arsenal to show his mastery and secure the job.
Lake George
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
For 16 years, Georgia O’Keefe left the desert and the city behind and spent her springtimes in the Adirondacks. Immersed in solitude and nature, her works softened through long walks and quiet meditation, looking out over Lake George. Pastoral, full of life and idyllic, O’Keefe fought her own rebellion to fall in love with the landscape. More known for her paintings of the desert, of yonic flowers and floating skulls, the works at Lake George are a departure of sorts. Read as an abstract work, this painting is a masterpiece of form and colour, the undulating mountains blurring into their own reflection to become a single unified motion. The soft hues that invite us into the canvas are removed the real world she was observing. In many ways, the New York countryside was too picture-postcard for O’Keefe, so her paintings reduce it to something all the more strange, peaceful and serene, with a sense of disquiet throughout. ‘There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees’, she said, ‘sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces’.
Georgia O’Keeffe
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, 1922. OIL ON CANVAS.
For 16 years, Georgia O’Keeffe left the desert and the city behind and spent her springtimes in the Adirondacks. Immersed in solitude and nature, her works softened through long walks and quiet meditation, looking out over Lake George. Pastoral, full of life and idyllic, O’Keeffe fought her own rebellion to fall in love with the landscape. More known for her paintings of the desert, of yonic flowers and floating skulls, the works at Lake George are a departure of sorts. Read as an abstract work, this painting is a masterpiece of form and colour, the undulating mountains blurring into their own reflection to become a single unified motion. The soft hues that invite us into the canvas are removed the real world she was observing. In many ways, the New York countryside was too picture-postcard for O’Keeffe, so her paintings reduce it to something all the more strange, peaceful and serene, with a sense of disquiet throughout. ‘There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees’, she said, ‘sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces’.
Esther and Mordecai
HENDRICK VAN STEENWIJK
How does a painting sound? Looking at Esther and Mordecai, the sonics are clear. Hushed tones bounce off stone walls, the whispers seem to travel through the corridor and out of the canvas. Hendrick van Steenwijk the Younger, a master of the early Flemish Baroque, activates every sense with his brushstrokes. Predominantly a painter of Architectural scenes, Van Steenwijk would include narrative vignettes within the worlds he portrayed, often snippets from biblical fables. In this way, he flattened time, depicting antiquity within his contemporary worlds and bringing faith into a recognisable modernity. His paintings are visceral; in the case of Esther and Mordecai we can feel the painting, the cold stone sends shivers, the hushed tones flutter to our ears and the musk of an ancient hallway fills our noses. Van Steenwijk was an alchemist who turned oil and wood into tangible, sensory worlds and shortened the length between centuries.
Hendrick van Stenwijk the Younger
HENDRICK VAN STEENWIJK THE YOUNGER, 1616. OIL ON PANEL.
How does a painting sound? Looking at Esther and Mordecai, the sonics are clear. Hushed tones bounce off stone walls, the whispers seem to travel through the corridor and out of the canvas. Hendrick van Steenwijk the Younger, a master of the early Flemish Baroque, activates every sense with his brushstrokes. Predominantly a painter of Architectural scenes, Van Steenwijk would include narrative vignettes within the worlds he portrayed, often snippets from biblical fables. In this way, he flattened time, depicting antiquity within his contemporary worlds and bringing faith into a recognisable modernity. His paintings are visceral; in the case of Esther and Mordecai we can feel the painting, the cold stone sends shivers, the hushed tones flutter to our ears and the musk of an ancient hallway fills our noses. Van Steenwijk was an alchemist who turned oil and wood into tangible, sensory worlds and shortened the length between centuries.
Madame Kisling
AMADEO MODIGLIANI
Modigliani is most famous for his female nudes, their elongated, distorted bodies are soft and fluid, his characteristic almond eyes make their faces almost mask like. Since Modigliani began painting, his figures have been the essence of modernity. Yet, they lived within a traditional of nude painting and portraiture, and while they subverted that tradition, they still existed within in. Here, in his portrait of his protégé Moise Kisling’s wife Renee Kisling, he epitomises modernity. She is dressed in the cutting edge vogue of the day, wearing men’s suiting and short thick hair. Modigliani traditionally curve lines give way here to sharp angles, gone are the undulations of almond shaped faces and in their place a decisive, almost aggressive bone structure quite unlike any of his other portraits, combining feminine strength and sensuality. Madame Kisling is an exception in Modigliani’s oeuvre, and his portrait of her cemented a changing of the tide as aesthetic modernity across mediums met in harmony.
Amedeo Modigliani
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, c1917. OIL ON CANVAS
Modigliani is most famous for his female nudes, their elongated, distorted bodies are soft and fluid, his characteristic almond eyes make their faces almost mask like. Since Modigliani began painting, his figures have been the essence of modernity. Yet, they lived within a traditional of nude painting and portraiture, and while they subverted that tradition, they still existed within in. Here, in his portrait of his protégé Moise Kisling’s wife Renee Kisling, he epitomises modernity. She is dressed in the cutting edge vogue of the day, wearing men’s suiting and short thick hair. Modigliani traditionally curve lines give way here to sharp angles, gone are the undulations of almond shaped faces and in their place a decisive, almost aggressive bone structure quite unlike any of his other portraits, combining feminine strength and sensuality. Madame Kisling is an exception in Modigliani’s oeuvre, and his portrait of her cemented a changing of the tide as aesthetic modernity across mediums met in harmony.
The Basket
RAOUL DUFY
Raoul Dufy was torn between two instincts. In 1905, he saw Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté and was immediately drawn towards Fauvism, becoming part of the circle of artists that included Matisse and Cezanne. Yet Dufy’s natural skill was as a draughtsman and he was a master of fine lines and detail, something quite counter to the ethos of Fauvism’s wild colours and impressionistic contours. His illustrator nature and fauvist ideals collided with glorious results, a tension clear in his work between two styles produced subtle and evocative paintings. The wild beast of fauvism was in some way tamed under Dufy, who’s fruitful contradiction produced work across mediums, from textile pattern and stationary design to city planning and scenic design. All of these disciplines informed his painting, where he used a technical ability and deep understanding of space to create pieces that seem at once totally real and wholly grounded in the imagination.
Raoul Dufy
RAOUL DUFY, 1926. OIL ON CANVAS.
Raoul Dufy was torn between two instincts. In 1905, he saw Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté and was immediately drawn towards Fauvism, becoming part of the circle of artists that included Matisse and Cezanne. Yet Dufy’s natural skill was as a draughtsman and he was a master of fine lines and detail, something quite counter to the ethos of Fauvism’s wild colours and impressionistic contours. His illustrator nature and fauvist ideals collided with glorious results, a tension clear in his work between two styles produced subtle and evocative paintings. The wild beast of fauvism was in some way tamed under Dufy, who’s fruitful contradiction produced work across mediums, from textile pattern and stationary design to city planning and scenic design. All of these disciplines informed his painting, where he used a technical ability and deep understanding of space to create pieces that seem at once totally real and wholly grounded in the imagination.