The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos
JAN VAN EYCK
A painting once imbued with the indulgence of forgiveness, Jan Vos, the monk Patron who is pictured kneeling before the Virgin Mary, ensured that any who said ‘Ave Maria’ before the image would receive forty days off their time in purgatory. The indulgence, however, was only valid so long as the painting remained in the Carthusian order for which it was commissioned, so when it was purchased in 1954 its powers of penance were lost. Van Eyck filled this commission with not only his signature style and unparalleled artistic ability, but also his trademark iconography. Behind Mary, an imagined city scape appears through the arches and in the cupola of Barbara’s tower, a statue of the deity Mars resides. Van Eyck places Jan Vos in the centre of the work, flanked by two saints, as he pays his respect and reverence to Mary and the infant Jesus. He collapses modernity into antiquity, imagination into reality and religious power into oil paint.
Jan Van Eyck
JAN VAN EYCK, c.1442. OIL ON MASONITE.
A painting once imbued with the indulgence of forgiveness, Jan Vos, the monk Patron who is pictured kneeling before the Virgin Mary, ensured that any who said ‘Ave Maria’ before the image would receive forty days off their time in purgatory. The indulgence, however, was only valid so long as the painting remained in the Carthusian order for which it was commissioned, so when it was purchased in 1954 its powers of penance were lost. Van Eyck filled this commission with not only his signature style and unparalleled artistic ability, but also his trademark iconography. Behind Mary, an imagined city scape appears through the arches and in the cupola of Barbara’s tower, a statue of the deity Mars resides. Van Eyck places Jan Vos in the centre of the work, flanked by two saints, as he pays his respect and reverence to Mary and the infant Jesus. He collapses modernity into antiquity, imagination into reality and religious power into oil paint.
Abstraction
OSKAR FISCHINGER
How can music be made visual? This was the question, decades before it entered the public consciousness, that Oskar Fischinger was asking. A pioneer of the a modern renaissance of the art form known as Visual or Color Music, Fischinger was a German emigree to the United States, who’s work in Germany had been banned under obscenity laws. Fischinger created colourful, abstract animations composed tightly to musical pieces so to expand the audio world into something engulfing of all senses. His work is optical poetry, affecting and hypnotic while being undefinable. What Kandinsky had done of the canvas, Fischinger did in motion, hand drawing thousands of cells of undulating, expanding, exploding circles that seem to dance in harmony with their orchestral soundtrack. Though he worked mostly in moving images, Fischinger’s many paintings seem imbued with the same life as he films, and you can almost hear the music in his abstract landscapes.
Oskar Fischinger
OSKAR FISCHINGER, 1943. OIL ON PANEL.
How can music be made visual? This was the question, decades before it entered the public consciousness, that Oskar Fischinger was asking. A pioneer of the a modern renaissance of the art form known as Visual or Color Music, Fischinger was a German emigree to the United States, who’s work in Germany had been banned under obscenity laws. Fischinger created colourful, abstract animations composed tightly to musical pieces so to expand the audio world into something engulfing of all senses. His work is optical poetry, affecting and hypnotic while being undefinable. What Kandinsky had done of the canvas, Fischinger did in motion, hand drawing thousands of cells of undulating, expanding, exploding circles that seem to dance in harmony with their orchestral soundtrack. Though he worked mostly in moving images, Fischinger’s many paintings seem imbued with the same life as he films, and you can almost hear the music in his abstract landscapes.
Le Cheval Blanc
PAIL GAUGUIN
Gauguin roamed through Tahiti, exploring the wild countryside and mountainous regions of the country. He was enchanted by an abundant natural beauty that seemed missing form his life in France and studied the flora and fauna obsessively. Yet this painting is a synthetic vision, an idealised and manufactured version of the landscape borne out of his imagination. He presents the landscape as a paradise; a white horse, tinged green by the plant life its sheen reflects, drinks from the river while two nude figures ride off in the distance. In Tahiti, Gauguin saw a sort of Eden and the two nude figures in the background, a part of nature rather than separate from it, can be understood as Adam and Eve. Now considered one of his masterpieces, the Tahitian pharmacist who commissioned the work rejected it on the basis that the horse was two green.
Paul Gauguin
PAUL GAUGUIN, 1898. OIL ON CANVAS.
Gauguin roamed through Tahiti, exploring the wild countryside and mountainous regions of the country. He was enchanted by an abundant natural beauty that seemed missing form his life in France and studied the flora and fauna obsessively. Yet this painting is a synthetic vision, an idealised and manufactured version of the landscape borne out of his imagination. He presents the landscape as a paradise; a white horse, tinged green by the plant life its sheen reflects, drinks from the river while two nude figures ride off in the distance. In Tahiti, Gauguin saw a sort of Eden and the two nude figures in the background, a part of nature rather than separate from it, can be understood as Adam and Eve. Now considered one of his masterpieces, the Tahitian pharmacist who commissioned the work rejected it on the basis that the horse was two green.
The Swan No. 9
HILMA AF KLINT
Hilma Af Klint wanted her true work to remain hidden for 20 years after her death, aware of how ground-breaking it was. The instructions of her will were followed; for two decades more than 1200 artworks of one of the centuries most important artists were kept in sealed boxes, seen by no-one, known about by very few. Klint was, by all measures, the very first purely abstract artist – a mystic and a painter with a deep interest and understanding of spirituality, she represented spiritual ideas in a unique visual language of colour, geometry and line. Her work predates those considered the fathers of Abstraction by more than a decade, building an new art movement in total secrecy save for a group of four other women who, together, called themselves The Five. They would meet to discuss spiritualism and mysticism, holding seances where the practiced automatic drawing, where the hand moved free from conscious decisions of the mind. This technique would be picked up and become central to Surrealism some twenty years later. Making her living as a traditional landscape painter, she hid her abstract forms from the world, showing it publicly only a few times in her life at conferences and events on spiritualism and theosophy.
Hilma af Klint
HILMA AF KLINT, 1915. OIL ON CANVAS.
Hilma af Klint wanted her true work to remain hidden for 20 years after her death, aware of how ground-breaking it was. The instructions of her will were followed; for two decades more than 1200 artworks of one of the centuries most important artists were kept in sealed boxes, seen by no-one, known about by very few. Klint was, by all measures, the very first purely abstract artist – a mystic and a painter with a deep interest and understanding of spirituality, she represented spiritual ideas in a unique visual language of colour, geometry and line. Her work predates those considered the fathers of Abstraction by more than a decade, building an new art movement in total secrecy save for a group of four other women who, together, called themselves The Five. They would meet to discuss spiritualism and mysticism, holding seances where the practiced automatic drawing, where the hand moved free from conscious decisions of the mind. This technique would be picked up and become central to Surrealism some twenty years later. Making her living as a traditional landscape painter, she hid her abstract forms from the world, showing it publicly only a few times in her life at conferences and events on spiritualism and theosophy.
Perseus and Andromeda
GIAMBATTISTA TIEPOLO
The love between Perseus and Andromeda was told first in myths, second in stars and then concluded, some two millennia later, by Tiepolo’s soaring testament. In the original myth, on a rock in the sea Andromeda is shackled and guarded by the sea monster Cetus, a blood sacrifice to Poseidon. Perseus flies in with winged sandals, beheads the monster with his harp and frees Andromeda in a blaze of passion that turned to marital love. Ptolemy granted their union eternity in his original 48 constellations, ensuring that their marriage would last forever in the stars above us. Yet Tiepolo deviates from the original myth; Perseus rides in on Pegasus, Jupiter awaits them above and cupids dance around them. Almost all the figures in the top half of this work were to become deified in the constellations. His interpretation of the story focuses on glory, beauty, and kinship – two lovers sanctioned by god ride off on a white steed.
Giambattista Tiepolo
GIAMBATTISTA TIEPOLO, c.1730. OIL ON CANVAS.
The love between Perseus and Andromeda was told first in myths, second in stars and then concluded, some two millennia later, by Tiepolo’s soaring testament. In the original myth, on a rock in the sea Andromeda is shackled and guarded by the sea monster Cetus, a blood sacrifice to Poseidon. Perseus flies in with winged sandals, beheads the monster with his harp and frees Andromeda in a blaze of passion that turned to marital love. Ptolemy granted their union eternity in his original 48 constellations, ensuring that their marriage would last forever in the stars above us. Yet Tiepolo deviates from the original myth; Perseus rides in on Pegasus, Jupiter awaits them above and cupids dance around them. Almost all the figures in the top half of this work were to become deified in the constellations. His interpretation of the story focuses on glory, beauty, and kinship – two lovers sanctioned by god ride off on a white steed.
Cold Shoulder
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
There is the deception of ease in Lichtenstein’s paintings. So accurately does he recreate the medium of comic books and mass production that one can forget the painstaking work he undertook to hand-paint each benday dot, flat plane and standardised type. Recontextualising frames from the comic books, in this case DC’s ‘Girls Romance’, which were experiencing a new renaissance by the early 1960s, he brought the visual language of the masses into high art. By isolating single frames, outside of the narrative in which they were intended, Lichtenstein frees them to interpretation and makes us question why we see them as different worth if shown on the page versus the canvas. “I don’t think that whatever is meant by the artist it is important to art.”, he said. Instead, we are free to interpret these images, conceived first by comic book artist and then by Lichtenstein, however we please. This, ultimately, is the difference between the source material and finished work – removing the context and narrative removes the intention of the artist, leaving the viewer to finish the piece simply by looking at it.
Roy Lichtenstein
ROY LICHTENSTEIN, 1963. OIL AND MAGNA ON CANVAS.
There is the deception of ease in Lichtenstein’s paintings. So accurately does he recreate the medium of comic books and mass production that one can forget the painstaking work he undertook to hand-paint each benday dot, flat plane and standardised type. Recontextualising frames from the comic books, in this case DC’s ‘Girls Romance’, which were experiencing a new renaissance by the early 1960s, he brought the visual language of the masses into high art. By isolating single frames, outside of the narrative in which they were intended, Lichtenstein frees them to interpretation and makes us question why we see them as different worth if shown on the page versus the canvas. “I don’t think that whatever is meant by the artist it is important to art.”, he said. Instead, we are free to interpret these images, conceived first by comic book artist and then by Lichtenstein, however we please. This, ultimately, is the difference between the source material and finished work – removing the context and narrative removes the intention of the artist, leaving the viewer to finish the piece simply by looking at it.
Flower Day
DIEGO RIVERA
What appears at first as a quaint depiction of Mexican street life hides radical and political ideas behind it’s metropolitan idealism. Rivera casts a long shadow across the history of 20th Century Art, synthesising Pan-American influences, Renaissance frescoes, cubist philosophies, Aztec culture and socialist realism into an aesthetically powerfully and socially engaged oeuvre. Flower sellers were a subject he would return to repeatedly across his career, visiting them in murals, frescoes and paintings, but this is his first ever depiction of the theme that would stay with him for decades. The piece praises labour, it can be read as a celebration of work with the flower seller as it’s hero. It is notably, too, that she sells goods with a purely aesthetic value, and remains dignified in doing so – Rivera saw himself and all artists in the quiet power of the flower selling, ensuring that the work of creation visual beauty was seen as dignified.
Diego Rivera
DIEGO RIVERA, 1925. OIL ON CANVAS.
What appears at first as a quaint depiction of Mexican street life hides radical and political ideas behind it’s metropolitan idealism. Rivera casts a long shadow across the history of 20th Century Art, synthesising Pan-American influences, Renaissance frescoes, cubist philosophies, Aztec culture and socialist realism into an aesthetically powerfully and socially engaged oeuvre. Flower sellers were a subject he would return to repeatedly across his career, visiting them in murals, frescoes and paintings, but this is his first ever depiction of the theme that would stay with him for decades. The piece praises labour, it can be read as a celebration of work with the flower seller as it’s hero. It is notably, too, that she sells goods with a purely aesthetic value, and remains dignified in doing so – Rivera saw himself and all artists in the quiet power of the flower selling, ensuring that the work of creation visual beauty was seen as dignified.
St. Francis in Ecstasy
GIOVANNI BELLINI
St. Francis steps out into the sun and prepares himself to transcend from his mortal self. Golden rays shine down on him as he receives stigmata, the wounds of crucifixion on your hands and feet, and in doing so becomes something closer to the divine. Bellini, the revolutionary of the Venetian Renaissance, was from a family of artists and, by the time this work was painted, was himself well established and well-trained, with a growing reputation as an artist of singular talent. So it is with total knowledge of conventions that Bellini chooses to break them. Iconographic motifs that appear across religious works and are used as a sort of codex to identify figures by the objects that appear around them or physical characteristics that are exaggerated are totally ignored in Bellini’s representation. Instead, he paints a masterful landscape, worthy of the glory of the divine, and places St. Francis alone, with no angels or heavenly representatives to aide him in his transform, in its beauty.
Giovanni Bellini
GIOVANNI BELLINI, c.1480. OIL ON PANEL.
St. Francis steps out into the sun and prepares himself to transcend from his mortal self. Golden rays shine down on him as he receives stigmata, the wounds of crucifixion on your hands and feet, and in doing so becomes something closer to the divine. Bellini, the revolutionary of the Venetian Renaissance, was from a family of artists and, by the time this work was painted, was himself well established and well-trained, with a growing reputation as an artist of singular talent. So it is with total knowledge of conventions that Bellini chooses to break them. Iconographic motifs that appear across religious works and are used as a sort of codex to identify figures by the objects that appear around them or physical characteristics that are exaggerated are totally ignored in Bellini’s representation. Instead, he paints a masterful landscape, worthy of the glory of the divine, and places St. Francis alone, with no angels or heavenly representatives to aide him in his transform, in its beauty.
The Bard
JOHN MARTIN
A battle cry against civility, against progress and technology, against domination by others – the Bard is a celebration of the primitive, the natural, and the spiritual. As King Edward I’s forces march on to conquer Wales, they are stopped by a Welsh Bard who curses the king, conjures his victims and predicts the rise of Wales and a new dawn of language in Britain – that of the Romantic Poets. Martin’s painting is inspired by the poem of the same name by Thomas Gray, capturing the drama of the scene and power of the bard, his proportion inhuman compared to the landscape and the invading army. Yet Martin captures something the poem could not: a breadth of beauty within the landscape, imposing and magic it unfurls ahead of us and dwarfs Edward’s men. The Bard, however, fits right in, his flowing robe mirrored in the rocks, trees and clouds around him. It is clear that this is his land and Martin deflty shows us why it is worth protecting. “Enough for me: with joy I see / The different doom our Fates assign. / Be thine Despair, and scept'red Care, / To triumph, and to die, are mine." / He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height / Deep in the roaring tide he plung'd to endless night.”
John Martin
JOHN MARTIN, c.1817. OIL ON CANVAS.
A battle cry against civility, against progress and technology, against domination by others – the Bard is a celebration of the primitive, the natural, and the spiritual. As King Edward I’s forces march on to conquer Wales, they are stopped by a Welsh Bard who curses the king, conjures his victims and predicts the rise of Wales and a new dawn of language in Britain – that of the Romantic Poets. Martin’s painting is inspired by the poem of the same name by Thomas Gray, capturing the drama of the scene and power of the bard, his proportion inhuman compared to the landscape and the invading army. Yet Martin captures something the poem could not: a breadth of beauty within the landscape, imposing and magic it unfurls ahead of us and dwarfs Edward’s men. The Bard, however, fits right in, his flowing robe mirrored in the rocks, trees and clouds around him. It is clear that this is his land and Martin deflty shows us why it is worth protecting. “Enough for me: with joy I see / The different doom our Fates assign. / Be thine Despair, and scept'red Care, / To triumph, and to die, are mine." / He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height / Deep in the roaring tide he plung'd to endless night.”
The Red Coat
ALBERT ANDRÉ
Albert André is perhaps best remembered as Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s closest friend, and André was devoted to this friendship past Renoir’s death. Arriving in Paris in 1889 as an industrial designer, he began to study at the Academie Julien where he met the new class of French artists shaping the world around them. Yet he never formally joined a movement or integrated himself in the milieu until his paintings caught the eye of Renoir. Though much older than him, the two became friends quickly and Renoir served also as a mentor to the young André. When Renoir died, it was André who produced the most significant monograph and he who persevered above all else to cement his friend’s legacy. He saw in his mentor that which he struggled to find himself, a pure and true genius and he was devoted to the sharing of this. Yet André was a skilled painter in his own right, learning from Renoir but with a unique eye, his work stands alone, vibrant, moody and revelatory. He sacrificed recognition of his own in awe and admiration of his friend.
Albert André
ALBERT ANDRE, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS.
Albert André is perhaps best remembered as Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s closest friend, and André was devoted to this friendship past Renoir’s death. Arriving in Paris in 1889 as an industrial designer, he began to study at the Academie Julien where he met the new class of French artists shaping the world around them. Yet he never formally joined a movement or integrated himself in the milieu until his paintings caught the eye of Renoir. Though much older than him, the two became friends quickly and Renoir served also as a mentor to the young André. When Renoir died, it was André who produced the most significant monograph and he who persevered above all else to cement his friend’s legacy. He saw in his mentor that which he struggled to find himself, a pure and true genius and he was devoted to the sharing of this. Yet André was a skilled painter in his own right, learning from Renoir but with a unique eye, his work stands alone, vibrant, moody and revelatory. He sacrificed recognition of his own in awe and admiration of his friend.
Hardedge Line Painting
LORSER FEITELSON
In the late 50s and early 60s in California, a group of artists reacted against the gestural, painterly style of abstract expression to create a new genre known as ‘Hard-Edge Painting’. It is as the name suggests defined by abrupt transitions from one plane of colour to another, decisive and sudden with no gentle movement. At the heart of this burgeoning movement was Lorser Feitelson who distilled the abstract forms of figurative art into evocative, hypnotic, and ambiguous compositions. A working artist since 1945, Feitelson’s career reads as a microcosm of art history, moving from Cubism to surrealism, to abstraction and finally to the style that defined him and offered him the home he had been searching for, Hard-Edge painting. Feitelson was informed by the biomorphic curves of the body and of the nature around him but reduced it into simple formal elements. His work is one of geometric beauty, elegantly proportioned and sensuous in its clarity.
Lorser Feitelson
LORSER FEITELSON, 1963. ENAMEL ON CANVAS.
In the late 50s and early 60s in California, a group of artists reacted against the gestural, painterly style of abstract expression to create a new genre known as ‘Hard-Edge Painting’. It is as the name suggests defined by abrupt transitions from one plane of colour to another, decisive and sudden with no gentle movement. At the heart of this burgeoning movement was Lorser Feitelson who distilled the abstract forms of figurative art into evocative, hypnotic, and ambiguous compositions. A working artist since 1945, Feitelson’s career reads as a microcosm of art history, moving from Cubism to surrealism, to abstraction and finally to the style that defined him and offered him the home he had been searching for, Hard-Edge painting. Feitelson was informed by the biomorphic curves of the body and of the nature around him but reduced it into simple formal elements. His work is one of geometric beauty, elegantly proportioned and sensuous in its clarity.
Acrobat and Young Harlequin
PABLO PICASSO
As the circus in Montmatre, Paris, closed for the night, Picasso would stay behind and converse late into the night with the performers. They existed in these hours in a kind of netherworld, a liminal space between the cosmopolitan reality outside and the escapist spectacle that had just been. It was this bridge-like state between two worlds that drew the young Picasso to them, finding refuge, solace, and solidarity as he was navigating a similar transition. Painted at the very end of his ‘Blue Period’, characteristic by the morose subjects and blue hues, and as he began to enter his ‘Rose Period which was more optimistic and livelier and ultimately brought him his first taste of the fame and success that would follow, this work is one of ambiguity. The two performers stare out listlessly, the dimensionless background behind fades into them as they stand, with the suggestion of applause yet it brings them neither joy nor sadness – instead they exist between the two.
Pablo Picasso
PABLO PICASSO, 1905. OIL ON CANVAS.
As the circus in Montmatre, Paris, closed for the night, Picasso would stay behind and converse late into the night with the performers. They existed in these hours in a kind of netherworld, a liminal space between the cosmopolitan reality outside and the escapist spectacle that had just been. It was this bridge-like state between two worlds that drew the young Picasso to them, finding refuge, solace, and solidarity as he was navigating a similar transition. Painted at the very end of his ‘Blue Period’, characteristic by the morose subjects and blue hues, and as he began to enter his ‘Rose Period which was more optimistic and livelier and ultimately brought him his first taste of the fame and success that would follow, this work is one of ambiguity. The two performers stare out listlessly, the dimensionless background behind fades into them as they stand, with the suggestion of applause yet it brings them neither joy nor sadness – instead they exist between the two.
Self Portrait with Dishevelled Hair
REMBRANDT
Few painters documented themselves as prolifically and honestly as Rembrandt. More than 70 self-portraits are known, not including the numerous works of biblical stories where he inserted his image as a bystander, a saint, or a historical figure. He spent hours staring into a mirror, contemplating his face and the minutiae of changes different expressions produced – often using these as studies for larger works. He was, in this way, his own muse, finding inspiration for soaring works of religious significance in the lines of his mouth and the lilt of his face. Yet this work, early in his oeuvre, is something altogether different. It is not preparatory or in service of a greater work but a complete artwork in its own right. The artist is in shadows, quiet contemplation looks out from his eyes as if asking the viewer for reassurance of the painting’s quality. As Rembrandt aged, his self-portraits became more explicit, more comfortable in the bright light that revealed the intricacies of his character, yet here there exist a youthful lack of surety that retreats into the safety of darkness.
Rembrandt
REMBRANDT, 1628. OIL ON OAK WOOD.
Few painters documented themselves as prolifically and honestly as Rembrandt. More than 70 self-portraits are known, not including the numerous works of biblical stories where he inserted his image as a bystander, a saint, or a historical figure. He spent hours staring into a mirror, contemplating his face and the minutiae of changes different expressions produced – often using these as studies for larger works. He was, in this way, his own muse, finding inspiration for soaring works of religious significance in the lines of his mouth and the lilt of his face. Yet this work, early in his oeuvre, is something altogether different. It is not preparatory or in service of a greater work but a complete artwork in its own right. The artist is in shadows, quiet contemplation looks out from his eyes as if asking the viewer for reassurance of the painting’s quality. As Rembrandt aged, his self-portraits became more explicit, more comfortable in the bright light that revealed the intricacies of his character, yet here there exist a youthful lack of surety that retreats into the safety of darkness.
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 Ascension of Christ
SALVADOR DALÍ
In the 1950s, still reeling from the psychological shock of the atomic bomb and frustrated with the growing ‘I, Me, Mine’ mindset of post war individualism, Salvador DalÍ found his faith. Integrating a fascination with atomic physics with Spanish mysticism, DalÍ began to see the two schools of thought as one and the same. The atom took on a metaphysical form, representing the unity of the universe, Christ himself. We see this clearly in this most strange of religious painting, as a foreshortened Christ, seen as if from a human perspective as he rises above and away from us on the ground. His body forms a triangle representing the holy trinity and he moves towards a glowing, yellow circle, the nucleus of an enlarged atom. DalÍ plays with perspective, each element of the painting seemingly seen from a different viewpoint and as Christ ascends, he does so not into some distant nothingness or faraway heaven but towards a nearby sun, into the atom that binds all of us together as one.
Salvador Dalí
SALVADOR DALÍ, 1958. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the 1950s, still reeling from the psychological shock of the atomic bomb and frustrated with the growing ‘I, Me, Mine’ mindset of post war individualism, Salvador Dalí found his faith. Integrating a fascination with atomic physics with Spanish mysticism, Dalí began to see the two schools of thought as one and the same. The atom took on a metaphysical form, representing the unity of the universe, Christ himself. We see this clearly in this most strange of religious painting, as a foreshortened Christ, seen as if from a human perspective as he rises above and away from us on the ground. His body forms a triangle representing the holy trinity and he moves towards a glowing, yellow circle, the nucleus of an enlarged atom. Dalí plays with perspective, each element of the painting seemingly seen from a different viewpoint and as Christ ascends, he does so not into some distant nothingness or faraway heaven but towards a nearby sun, into the atom that binds all of us together as one.
I Await You
YVES TANGUY
A strange alien landscape in gradated shades of grey that offer no clear horizon, only an infinite expanse towards nothingness. On the front plane, a dense smattering of anthropomorphic objects that appear at a glance familiar reveal themselves to be wholly unknowable on inspection. Yves Tanguy met the father of Surrealism in 1925 and, a year later, wholeheartedly joined the movement, with his involvement reaching something of a culmination in this large scale canvas that meticulously depicts the impossible world of our dreams, while calling towards the desolate Brittany landscape of Tanguy’s childhood. The work was called, with typical surrealist mystery, ‘I Await You’, and three years after its completion it enraptured an American painted named Kay Savage. She arranged an introduction through a mutual friend and within a few years they began a marriage that lasted the rest of their lives. There were no coincidences in surrealism – Tanguy painted with the subconscious knowledge that someone was missing from his life and it was the painting, not him, that found her.
Yves Tanguy
YVES TANGUY, 1934. OIL ON CANVAS.
A strange alien landscape in gradated shades of grey that offer no clear horizon, only an infinite expanse towards nothingness. On the front plane, a dense smattering of anthropomorphic objects that appear at a glance familiar reveal themselves to be wholly unknowable on inspection. Yves Tanguy met the father of Surrealism in 1925 and, a year later, wholeheartedly joined the movement, with his involvement reaching something of a culmination in this large scale canvas that meticulously depicts the impossible world of our dreams, while calling towards the desolate Brittany landscape of Tanguy’s childhood. The work was called, with typical surrealist mystery, ‘I Await You’, and three years after its completion it enraptured an American painted named Kay Savage. She arranged an introduction through a mutual friend and within a few years they began a marriage that lasted the rest of their lives. There were no coincidences in surrealism – Tanguy painted with the subconscious knowledge that someone was missing from his life and it was the painting, not him, that found her.
Univers
BANG HAI JA
As a sickly child growing up in South Korea, Bang Hai Ja lay in bed and watched through the window as light danced off a stream in her grandparents garden. While other children played, she became obsessed with sunlight and how she could capture its illusive beauty through brushes and paints. When she died at the age of 85, Hai Ja was known the world over as ‘the artist of light’, and so celebrated for her depictions of light in all of its forms that the young girl looking out her window would not believe how well she accomplished her dream. Hai Ja’s dedication to light was not purely aesthetic, she understood light as the beginning and end of the everything, the first creation of the universe and to where the universe and its being will all return. This is reflected not just in the work, but in the process. Hai Ja only uses natural materials, infusing her work with the lifeblood of the universe, and begins each piece with a crumpled piece of handmade paper placed in the centre, from which the rest of the composition is built around. This is the first light, the origins of the universe, brought alive by Hai Ja again and again.
Bang Hai Ja
BANG HAI JA, 1989. NATURAL PIGMENT AND HANJI PAPER ON CANVAS.
As a sickly child growing up in South Korea, Bang Hai Ja lay in bed and watched through the window as light danced off a stream in her grandparents garden. While other children played, she became obsessed with sunlight and how she could capture its illusive beauty through brushes and paints. When she died at the age of 85, Hai Ja was known the world over as ‘the artist of light’, and so celebrated for her depictions of light in all of its forms that the young girl looking out her window would not believe how well she accomplished her dream. Hai Ja’s dedication to light was not purely aesthetic, she understood light as the beginning and end of the everything, the first creation of the universe and to where the universe and its being will all return. This is reflected not just in the work, but in the process. Hai Ja only uses natural materials, infusing her work with the lifeblood of the universe, and begins each piece with a crumpled piece of handmade paper placed in the centre, from which the rest of the composition is built around. This is the first light, the origins of the universe, brought alive by Hai Ja again and again.
Two Triangles within a Square #2
ROBERT MANGOLD
An architect’s lines against a field of colour with hues so subtle it almost becomes transparent. Robert Mangold’s work takes the simplest formal objects, the base geometric shapes, and through subtle manipulation, makes us dwell on them. Working as a security guard at the MOMA in 1962, his colleagues were Robert Ryman, Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin and Lucy Lippard, and he began to develop his abstract language. His career has been uncompromising and certain, developing a single theme for more than 50 years in various iterations, he stands amongst a small group who have been able to sustain their position. He relies on the intuitive, and the apparent reductiveness of his paintings gives way to a complex understanding of space. Painting is, for Mangold, “the most difficult art to grasp”. “If you come into a room where there’s an installation or a sculpture, you know to walk around it, it exists in your space with you; there’s no way to kill time in front of a painting.”
Robert Mangold
ROBERT MANGOLD, 1975. ACRYLIC AND COLORED PENCIL ON CANVAS.
An architect’s lines against a field of colour with hues so subtle it almost becomes transparent. Robert Mangold’s work takes the simplest formal objects, the base geometric shapes, and through subtle manipulation, makes us dwell on them. Working as a security guard at the MOMA in 1962, his colleagues were Robert Ryman, Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin and Lucy Lippard, and he began to develop his abstract language. His career has been uncompromising and certain, developing a single theme for more than 50 years in various iterations, he stands amongst a small group who have been able to sustain their position. He relies on the intuitive, and the apparent reductiveness of his paintings gives way to a complex understanding of space. Painting is, for Mangold, “the most difficult art to grasp”. “If you come into a room where there’s an installation or a sculpture, you know to walk around it, it exists in your space with you; there’s no way to kill time in front of a painting.”
Untitled
MILTON AVERY
At the start of his career, in the first quarter of the 20th Century, Milton Avery was overlooked for being too radical, too abstract and not figurative enough for the vogue of the day. Some 20 years later, when Abstract Expression rose to be the dominant American art movement, Milton Avery was overlooked once again for being too figurative and not abstract enough. An artist perpetually caught in the middle, he was nonetheless a hugely respected figure and a mentor and inspiration to a young Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottleib who saw a way forward through his abstracted, flat, colourful images. Avery and his wife Sally created what became known as the Avery Style, developing a color plane style of painting and color theory to go alongside, they were considered on par only with Matisse in their understanding of palettes. Today, Avery’s images feel contemporary and familiar, so influential and stolen has his style been. Yet more than 100 years, Avery was taking unknown steps into representation, striving towards a new future that was as beautiful as it was colorful.
Milton Avery
MILTON AVERY, 1954. OIL ON CANVAS.
At the start of his career, in the first quarter of the 20th Century, Milton Avery was overlooked for being too radical, too abstract and not figurative enough for the vogue of the day. Some 20 years later, when Abstract Expression rose to be the dominant American art movement, Milton Avery was overlooked once again for being too figurative and not abstract enough. An artist perpetually caught in the middle, he was nonetheless a hugely respected figure and a mentor and inspiration to a young Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottleib who saw a way forward through his abstracted, flat, colourful images. Avery and his wife Sally created what became known as the Avery Style, developing a color plane style of painting and color theory to go alongside, they were considered on par only with Matisse in their understanding of palettes. Today, Avery’s images feel contemporary and familiar, so influential and stolen has his style been. Yet more than 100 years, Avery was taking unknown steps into representation, striving towards a new future that was as beautiful as it was colorful.
Monte Carlo Bond
MARCEL DUCHAMP
Part joke, part conceptual artwork, part legally binding financial document, the Monte Carlo Bonds capture so much of what was brilliant, chaotic and confounding about the great Marcel Duchamp. Having once again tried to abandon his calling as an artist, Duchamp spent night after night in the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, devising what he thought was a perfect system for roulette involving increasingly intricate dice rolls to decide the numbers to bet on. It was slow, economical and, he said, played over enough time tipped the odds to give him a slight edge over the house, guaranteeing eventual profit. Yet the process was slow using Duchamp’s capital and so he looked outwards, offering friends the chance to buy into his scheme if only they would front him the money. Those that did, received these bonds in return, which entitled them to profit shares after every 100,000th roll on the wheel. Even in his attempted rejection of art, Duchamp made the world conceptual and beautiful.
Marcel Duchamp
MARCEL DUCHAMP, 1924. PHOTO-COLLAGE ON LETTERPRESS.
Part joke, part conceptual artwork, part legally binding financial document, the Monte Carlo Bonds capture so much of what was brilliant, chaotic and confounding about the great Marcel Duchamp. Having once again tried to abandon his calling as an artist, Duchamp spent night after night in the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, devising what he thought was a perfect system for roulette involving increasingly intricate dice rolls to decide the numbers to bet on. It was slow, economical and, he said, played over enough time tipped the odds to give him a slight edge over the house, guaranteeing eventual profit. Yet the process was slow using Duchamp’s capital and so he looked outwards, offering friends the chance to buy into his scheme if only they would front him the money. Those that did, received these bonds in return, which entitled them to profit shares after every 100,000th roll on the wheel. Even in his attempted rejection of art, Duchamp made the world conceptual and beautiful.