Winter Hunt
HELEN FRANKENTHALER
Is color more important than gesture in art? This was the question Helen Frankenthaler was addressing and for her, the answer was clear. Pioneering a ‘soak-stain’ technique, she would pour paint directly onto untreated canvases and let it sink into the fabric, leaving behind vibrant and uncontrolled stains. This was in stark opposition to her male Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, Jackson Pollock amongst them, who used violent brushstrokes and expressive gesture in their works. Frankenthaler was part of a group of female artists that included Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell, who’s works speak to a natural beauty, emphasising the palette that existed around them, rather than trying to create something alien. In Winter Hunt, an empty top half emphasises the interplay of the palette below, allowing the beauty of the rich stains to stand out. Though the human hand is not obvious, the drops and swirls clearly from a pouring technique, there is harmony to the work that is unmistakably human, albeit one in touch with the world around them.
Helen Frankenthaler
HELEN FRANKENTHALER, 1958. OIL ON CANVAS.
Is color more important than gesture in art? This was the question Frankenthaler was addressing and for her, the answer was clear. Pioneering a ‘soak-stain’ technique, she would pour paint directly onto untreated canvases and let it sink into the fabric, leaving behind vibrant and uncontrolled stains. This was in stark opposition to her male Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, Jackson Pollock amongst them, who used violent brushstrokes and expressive gesture in their works. Frankenthaler was part of a group of female artists that included Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell, who’s works speak to a natural beauty, emphasising the palette that existed around them, rather than trying to create something alien. In Winter Hunt, an empty top half emphasises the interplay of the palette below, allowing the beauty of the rich stains to stand out. Though the human hand is not obvious, the drops and swirls clearly from a pouring technique, there is harmony to the work that is unmistakably human, albeit one in touch with the world around them.
Summer Night
WINSLOW HOMER
In England, after a decade of painting scenes of American idyll, Homer lost his innocence. The spontaneous, bright, and almost doll house quality of his early work, one preoccupied with a vision of his country and its beauty, dissipated and in its place came something more universal, touching a higher plane. It was this return from his 2 years away, that he moved to a small house some seventy feet from the sea in Maine and his subject matter became informed by the swell, the danger and the shimmering beauty of the water that he saw from his window each day. ‘Summer Night’ is a study of restraint, revealing just enough to create a sense of longing, but not so much that we can’t see ourselves in the scene. The soft focus of two dancers, watched by a group in shadows as the light glistens from the stormy sea behind them, captures a poignant romance that each of us can understand.
Winslow Homer
SUMMER NIGHT, 1890. OIL ON CANVAS.
In England, after a decade of painting scenes of American idyll, Homer lost his innocence. The spontaneous, bright, and almost doll house quality of his early work, one preoccupied with a vision of his country and its beauty, dissipated and in its place came something more universal, touching a higher plane. It was this return from his 2 years away, that he moved to a small house some seventy feet from the sea in Maine and his subject matter became informed by the swell, the danger and the shimmering beauty of the water that he saw from his window each day. ‘Summer Night’ is a study of restraint, revealing just enough to create a sense of longing, but not so much that we can’t see ourselves in the scene. The soft focus of two dancers, watched by a group in shadows as the light glistens from the stormy sea behind them, captures a poignant romance that each of us can understand.
The Beach
MAURICE PRENDERGAST
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
Maurice Prendergast
MAURICE PRENDERGAST, c.1915. OIL ON CANVAS.
“Genius is the power of assimilation”, said Prendergast, and if so, ‘The Beach’ is the crowning achievement of his genius. Reworking an existing composition of his, of a subject he returned to regularly in his career, Prendergast seems to fill this painting with every imaginable influence, borrowing techniques, styles and images in equal measure from Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as modernist works of Pointillism and Impressionism and, even more directly, making over nods to Cezanne, Signac and Renoir. The painting becomes a work of fragments, a sort of jigsaw puzzle for the art historian who can spot Cezanne’s mountains in the background, poses from Northern Renaissance etchings, and colour fields from the titans of French avant-garde. Yet all this is not to condemn the painting, nor make any judgement against its quality – Prendergrast for all of his influence is not derivative, instead he absorbs influence and translates them in multi-lingual beauty. He is able to see the scope of history and turn it into a definitively contemporary work.
The Transparent Woman
GORDON ONSLOW FORD
Gordon Onslow Ford was the last of his kind – the final surviving surrealist who saw the world change in the image he had helped imagine. One of the few significant members of Breton’s group of surrealists and amongst the only native English speak, Onslow Ford abandoned a regimented and expected career in the Navy to live in Paris and fulfil his passion and purpose. Regularly attending the movements exclusive meetings at Cafè deux Magots in Paris, he ingratiated himself with every important member of the group, hosting them for summers at a chateau near Switzerland. Yet of all the group, it was his friendship with the architect Roberto Matta that most informed his work. Together, they studied the mathematical and the metaphysical, and from Matta’s architectural drawings he learned his own understanding of perspective. He combined the cosmic and the rational, bringing mystic and surrealist ideas into a mathematical framework to speak to an ordered chaos of reality.
Gordon Onslow Ford
GORDON ONSLOW FORD, c.1940. OIL ON CANVAS.
Gordon Onslow Ford was the last of his kind – the final surviving surrealist who saw the world change in the image he had helped imagine. One of the few significant members of Breton’s group of surrealists and amongst the only native English speak, Onslow Ford abandoned a regimented and expected career in the Navy to live in Paris and fulfil his passion and purpose. Regularly attending the movements exclusive meetings at Cafè deux Magots in Paris, he ingratiated himself with every important member of the group, hosting them for summers at a chateau near Switzerland. Yet of all the group, it was his friendship with the architect Roberto Matta that most informed his work. Together, they studied the mathematical and the metaphysical, and from Matta’s architectural drawings he learned his own understanding of perspective. He combined the cosmic and the rational, bringing mystic and surrealist ideas into a mathematical framework to speak to an ordered chaos of reality.
The Worship of the Golden Calf
WORKSHOP OF TINTORETTO
Within a single canvas, many stories from Exodus are told as time and place is flattened into a single plane. In the centre, the high priest collects ornaments to create a sculpture of the golden calf. The very same sculpture that far into the background we see him casting and, just in-front of that scene, we see completed, displayed on an altar and worshipped by a crowd of followers. At the top right, Moses receives the ten commandments high upon a hill, though the canvas was cut at some point destroying much of this scene. This impossible presentation of simultaneous events is framed by richly dressed onlookers, inviting us into the scene. Painted just after Tintoretto’s death by his studio, most likely looked over by his son, the composition is based on an earlier work painted by Tintoretto himself. The painting serves as a show of the workshops ability after the masters passing, and an allegory for the power of art to open the viewers eyes to new worlds.
Workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto
WORKSHOP OF JACOPO TINTORETTO, c.1954. OIL ON CANVAS.
Within a single canvas, many stories from Exodus are told as time and place is flattened into a single plane. In the centre, the high priest collects ornaments to create a sculpture of the golden calf. The very same sculpture that far into the background we see him casting and, just in-front of that scene, we see completed, displayed on an altar and worshipped by a crowd of followers. At the top right, Moses receives the ten commandments high upon a hill, though the canvas was cut at some point destroying much of this scene. This impossible presentation of simultaneous events is framed by richly dressed onlookers, inviting us into the scene. Painted just after Tintoretto’s death by his studio, most likely looked over by his son, the composition is based on an earlier work painted by Tintoretto himself. The painting serves as a show of the workshops ability after the masters passing, and an allegory for the power of art to open the viewers eyes to new worlds.
Woman Reading
JOHN STORRS
A new age had begun, one filled with technological wonders, hope and optimism. Yet but 1949, this had waned in the shadow of the war, and the open fields of potential seemed to yield less than they had promised. The human imagination that had so expanded at the turn of the century had been corrupted, and the artists who had first seized upon modernity, it seemed, had paid too much reverence to the bright future they saw ahead. Storrs was one such artist, having been part of the culture epoch in Paris that helped fuel the revolution in the new visual language. Yet his later work, like Woman Reading, addresses some of the naivety of his youth and the worship of the experienced world that had gone with it. Here, referential ties are still present, the figure and the setting are clear, but it has been reduced to simplicity, to something more formal and abstract that speaks to a universal detachment as much as it does his personal expression. Storr’s work grew with him, and it’s in subtle cues, showed the changing optimism of a new century becoming old.
John Storrs
JOHN STORRS, 1949. OIL ON CANVAS.
A new age had begun, one filled with technological wonders, hope and optimism. Yet but 1949, this had waned in the shadow of the war, and the open fields of potential seemed to yield less than they had promised. The human imagination that had so expanded at the turn of the century had been corrupted, and the artists who had first seized upon modernity, it seemed, had paid too much reverence to the bright future they saw ahead. Storrs was one such artist, having been part of the culture epoch in Paris that helped fuel the revolution in the new visual language. Yet his later work, like Woman Reading, addresses some of the naivety of his youth and the worship of the experienced world that had gone with it. Here, referential ties are still present, the figure and the setting are clear, but it has been reduced to simplicity, to something more formal and abstract that speaks to a universal detachment as much as it does his personal expression. Storr’s work grew with him, and it’s in subtle cues, showed the changing optimism of a new century becoming old.
Untitled
ROBERT RYMAN
In 1960, Robert Ryman was working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. His co-workers, working security and front desk respectively, were Dan Flavin, Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt. Ryman had moved to New York eight years earlier with the hopes of making it as a jazz musician, and took up the job at MOMA as a means for cash. Yet inspired by this environment, and the artistic contemporaries working alongside him, Ryman took up painting, though not in any traditional sense. Eschewing the vogue of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art, Ryman opted for austere, monkish works comprised mostly of thickly applied white paint. He stayed with these ideas for the better part of 6 decades. Ryman wanted to remove the distraction of colour, form and figure and create works that forced a focus on tactility and light. His works are incomplete until they exist in an environment, for the subtle changes of light and shadow complete the blank squares. The economy and simplicity are pleasing, but the works ultimate role is to ask a philosophical question; what is painting?
Robert Ryman
ROBERT RYMAN, 1965. ENAMEL ON LINEN.
In 1960, Robert Ryman was working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. His co-workers, working security and front desk respectively, were Dan Flavin, Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt. Ryman had moved to New York eight years earlier with the hopes of making it as a jazz musician, and took up the job at MOMA as a means for cash. Yet inspired by this environment, and the artistic contemporaries working alongside him, Ryman took up painting, though not in any traditional sense. Eschewing the vogue of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art, Ryman opted for austere, monkish works comprised mostly of thickly applied white paint. He stayed with these ideas for the better part of 6 decades. Ryman wanted to remove the distraction of colour, form and figure and create works that forced a focus on tactility and light. His works are incomplete until they exist in an environment, for the subtle changes of light and shadow complete the blank squares. The economy and simplicity are pleasing, but the works ultimate role is to ask a philosophical question; what is painting?
Ship in Stormy Sea
GUSTAVE DORÉ
“Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!”, so speaks the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s epic poem from 1798. A tale of desolation, horror, isolation and despair, its words on issues of faith, morality, and the very nature of man inspired artists from the moment it was published and continue to do so to this day. It is unsurprising then, that Gustave Doré, the most celebrated printmaker and illustrator of his day, chose Coleridge’s work, alongside Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and Cervante’s ‘Don Quixote’, as a text to illustrate. His wood engravings, printed in stark blacks, capturing the pervading sense of danger and loneliness that seeps from every line of the poem. There is something uncomfortably peaceful about the impending doom of this image, the riotous sea dissolving into delicate fractals as the boat is held suspended atop a wave, illuminated by the sharp white of moonlight atop the crests. Doré captures the essence of the poem in his images, transforming wood and ink into lyrical works that plunder the depths of our soul.
Gustave Doré
GUSTAVE DORÉ, 1876. WOOD ENGRAVING.
“Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!”, so speaks the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s epic poem from 1798. A tale of desolation, horror, isolation and despair, its words on issues of faith, morality, and the very nature of man inspired artists from the moment it was published and continue to do so to this day. It is unsurprising then, that Gustave Doré, the most celebrated printmaker and illustrator of his day, chose Coleridge’s work, alongside Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and Cervante’s ‘Don Quixote’, as a text to illustrate. His wood engravings, printed in stark blacks, capturing the pervading sense of danger and loneliness that seeps from every line of the poem. There is something uncomfortably peaceful about the impending doom of this image, the riotous sea dissolving into delicate fractals as the boat is held suspended atop a wave, illuminated by the sharp white of moonlight atop the crests. Doré captures the essence of the poem in his images, transforming wood and ink into lyrical works that plunder the depths of our soul.
Flash
GEORGES MATHIEU
Mathieu saw the movement of ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ that he created as a conclusion to the revolution of art history, following in the slipstream of freedom that avant-garde movements before him allowed. Impressionism freed the artwork from realism, Cubism from shapes, Geometric abstraction from the representation of perceived reality and lyrical abstraction was the final destruction. ‘Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world’, said Mathieu, ‘the sign precedes its meaning’. His work was freed from the requirements of meaning, he painted with gesture and passion, and painted in public in early happenings that broke down the barriers between artist and observer. He saw public creation as an act of true and joyful communion, a connection built from the shared focus on a visual impetus that requires no context to understand. Mathieu’s lyrical abstraction was not the conclusion he hoped it would be, movements after him returned meaning to their signs, but to look at his large scale works is to see an artist totally unchained, aesthetics that are freed from millennia of expectations to sing of total freedom.
Georges Mathieu
GEORGES MATHIEU, c.1965. OIL ON CANVAS.
Mathieu saw the movement of ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ that he created as a conclusion to the revolution of art history, following in the slipstream of freedom that avant-garde movements before him allowed. Impressionism freed the artwork from realism, Cubism from shapes, Geometric abstraction from the representation of perceived reality and lyrical abstraction was the final destruction. ‘Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world’, said Mathieu, ‘the sign precedes its meaning’. His work was freed from the requirements of meaning, he painted with gesture and passion, and painted in public in early happenings that broke down the barriers between artist and observer. He saw public creation as an act of true and joyful communion, a connection built from the shared focus on a visual impetus that requires no context to understand. Mathieu’s lyrical abstraction was not the conclusion he hoped it would be, movements after him returned meaning to their signs, but to look at his large scale works is to see an artist totally unchained, aesthetics that are freed from millennia of expectations to sing of total freedom.
Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
“I am not attempting likeness”, said Giacometti, “but resemblance”. After being interviewed Isaku Yanaihara, treating him as confidant and muse for the near decade that followed. He made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Yanaihara, and this is the second in his enduring series. The figure seems to appear as an apparition, ghostlike in the powerful glow that surrounds him. His body and face appear in allusions, confident brushstrokes that reveal little of detail but huge amounts of essence. In his sculptural work, Giacometti was a revolutionary who reinterpreted the human form into something otherworldly yet recognisable and the same quality appears in his paintings. Yanaihara is unrecognisable as an individual figure here, but a spirit of the man seems to shine through the canvas. His physicality disappears into thick oil paint leaving only the truth of his personality behind.
Alberto Giacometti
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, 1956. OIL ON CANVAS.
“I am not attempting likeness”, said Giacometti, “but resemblance”. After being interviewed Isaku Yanaihara, treating him as confidant and muse for the near decade that followed. He made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Yanaihara, and this is the second in his enduring series. The figure seems to appear as an apparition, ghostlike in the powerful glow that surrounds him. His body and face appear in allusions, confident brushstrokes that reveal little of detail but huge amounts of essence. In his sculptural work, Giacometti was a revolutionary who reinterpreted the human form into something otherworldly yet recognisable and the same quality appears in his paintings. Yanaihara is unrecognisable as an individual figure here, but a spirit of the man seems to shine through the canvas. His physicality disappears into thick oil paint leaving only the truth of his personality behind.
La Corniche Near Monaco
CLAUDE MONET
During trips to the French Riviera, Monet used his canvas a means to freeze time. His paintings here capture so potently and accurately an atmosphere, taking a single moment and imbuing it with the gift of eternity, that though they depict known landscapes it is not the place that we recognise but the feeling. The sun lowers in the sky over a bend in La Corniche, now the major road connecting Nice and Monaco but then little more than a dirt path, and the world seems to glimmer under its light. The sea shimmers and the plants are vibrant and frenetic, cliffsides soften under a sky that mirrors the water below it and a calmness washes over the viewer. Monet’s trips to this part of the world began after the death of his first wife, and he revisited the same areas over a 6-year period, finding in the pastoral landscape not motif but salvation.
Claude Monet
CLAUDE MONET, 1884. OIL ON CANVAS.
During trips to the French Riviera, Monet used his canvas as a means to freeze time. His paintings here capture so potently and accurately an atmosphere, taking a single moment and imbuing it with the gift of eternity, that though they depict known landscapes it is not the place that we recognise but the feeling. The sun lowers in the sky over a bend in La Corniche, now the major road connecting Nice and Monaco but then little more than a dirt path, and the world seems to glimmer under its light. The sea shimmers and the plants are vibrant and frenetic, cliffsides soften under a sky that mirrors the water below it and a calmness washes over the viewer. Monet’s trips to this part of the world began after the death of his first wife, and he revisited the same areas over a 6-year period, finding in the pastoral landscape not motif but salvation.
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.”