artfirstprimo at the South London Gallery

It's your last chance to see Dara Birnbaum's exhibition this year! We are open until 6pm today (& reopen on 3 Jan) http://bit.ly/vfY7D2

 

Yes, you do indeed find me at the South London Gallery, just a few days ago on 23rd December, looking at the video installation work of American artist Dara Birnbaum.  A cascade of music greets one in the dark expanse of the main exhibition space here at the UK premiere of Dara Birnbaum's Arabesque at the SLG. There's several clips of only women playing Schumann's Arabesque, with just one of Clara Schumann's little known piece Romanze 1, opus 11.  The purpose of Birnbaum's work becomes clear quite quickly, but I must say I really loved the rare opportunity to sit and listen to the Schumann's work in an unusual an somewhat reverential atmosphere created here at the SLG by the artist, Gallery and curator.

artfirstprimo at the Ashmolean

On 16th December I visited the Claude Gellee 1604/5?-1682 (called Claude Lorrain) exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.  It was quite refreshing to have been informed by some of the invigilators in the rooms that this exhibition has no proscribed route.  Indeed the Claude exhibition is simply divided into three rooms: drawings, paintings, and etchings. For me this was infinitely preferable as  am somewhat lothed to follow the convyer-belt-like fashion of visiting exhibitions, which usually results in me starting exhibitions at the end.

In the room of Claude's drawings in this Ashmolean exhibition are some fascinating drawings on the wall devoted to compositions.  Claude's compositions included drawings made not for paintings, but made from paintings as works of art in their own right.  Among the compositional drawings we see a drawing made after Claude's Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.  The drawing in pen & ink & brown wash is from the Staatliche museum, Berlin, but painting it's taken from is in the National Gallery, London.  The drawing of Seaport with Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, with its long dark shadows retains all the drama of its painted counterpart.  But in some ways Claude's Seaport composition even manages to surpass even his own painting of the scene in its apparent immediacy.

Another notable drawing on this wall is the Adoration of the Golden Calf, it's the largest of four scenes dedicated to this popular subject. The dancing maidens in the Adoration of the Golden Calf clearly have a deliberate antique quality to them and reminds one of Greek caryatids, such as on sees on the Erectheon in Athens. Ironically the Golden Calf is almost imperceptible, being as it were dwarfed by the ornate neoclassical composite column upon which it stands.  Other than his religious scenes the composition are of Arcadian rustic idylls; i.e. peasants and livestock in the landscape and nobility on horseback surveying their land and ultimately looking down on the "happy peasants".  Such Virgilian rustic idylls reminds one of similar scenes found in the work of the Dutch painter from Dordrecht, Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691).

In the room of paintings we are confronted with 12 large-scale pictures that with classical scenes imported into them, and one small landscape.  In Landscape with the Judgement of Paris, Claude follows the Renaissance tradition of interest in this subject, but Claude also hints at a more prosaic outcome to the famous story with a barely visible couple of rutting goats in the left foreground.  On the opposite wall are Claude's late mythological and historical landscapes paintings.  These large-scale painted works by Claude Lorrain are visibly colder in colour when compared to the opposite wall.  They also in some cases have peculiarly and impossibly elongated figures that apparently indicative of his late style, but reminds this reviewer of late mannerist painting or even the strange forms one finds in the works of Botticelli.

Unlike the ever-popular Leonardo exhibition in London the Claude exhibition is not busy, which means one can observe the, tiny and intricate, etchings that Claude produced at close quarters.  There is even a cabinet in this room of exquisite engravings that shows one the materials and techniques needed to achieve an engraving.

The Claude exhibition at the Ashmolean, Oxford is refreshing, very well curated and well worth seeing. Claude is certainly an artist that warrants re-discovering beyond his occasional chocolate box image.

artfirstprimo back at the National Gallery

Welcome back art lovers. For those of you who don't yet know, let me remind you the National Gallery, London offers free lecture tours everyday at the same times of 11:30 and 14:30; leaving from the new part of the building - The Sainsbury Wing, just next to the main shop.  On 12th December I, artfirstprimo, conducted both 60 minute tours of the NG, from 11:30-12:30 and from 14:30-15:30. Both the 11:30 and 14:30 tours of the National Gallery featured eleven different paintings from the National Gallery's Permanent Collection, which consists of over 2,500 paintings.

I hope that those of you who were able to attend one of my talks at the National Gallery yesterday, Monday 12th December, enjoyed them, but if you missed them or just want a reminded of which pictures we looked at so you can visit them again with a friend. here is a list of those paintings:

We began with: Sandro Botticelli (about 1445-1510), Venus & Mars (about 1485).  Next on the tour was: Andrea Mantegna (about 1430/1-1506) The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome (1505-6).  This was followed by the four canvases in room 11 by: Joachim Beuckelaer (active 1563-1575) The Four Elements (1569-70).  Next we looked at the unknown painter called: The Master of Delft (active early 16th century), Scenes from the Passion (about 1510). We finally ended with: John Constable (1776-1837), The Cornfield (1826). This painting was eventually named by the National Gallery not John Constable.

And if you missed my 14:30 tour of the same day or just need a reminder of the paintings we looked at to see them again with a friend, here's a reminder list: We began with: Masaccio (1401?-1428) The Virgin & Child, 1426 and Gentile da Fabriano (1385-1427) Madonna and Child with Angels, 1425.  Next on the 14:30 tour was: Carlo Crivelli (1430/5?-1494) La Madonna della Rondine (The Madonna of the Swallow), about 1490-2.  The 14:30 tour then looked at the Baroque master: Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Peace & War, 1629-1630.  This was then followed by the master of chiaroscuro: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) The Supper at Emmaus, 1601, and the last picture on my 14:30 tour was: Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891) Bathers at Asnieres, 1884. 

My next free tours of the National Gallery will be: Weds 4th Jan 2012. The tours will be at 11:30-12:30 and from 14:30-15:30. See you there.

artfirstprimo - Winter Chocolate tasting and Neil MacGregor at the Purcell Rooms

On the 10th December, the day after visiting the Leonardo and OMA/Progress, I took a walk London's South Bank to experience the Winter Festival.  But, I must say it probably should have been re-named the Winter Chocolate Festival;I've never seen so many chocolate purveyors in the same place.  For a chocolate disciple such as myself this experience is certainly worth braving the icy-cold conditions as it was then, although, as any chocolate fan will tell you, a good chocolate is best served at room temperature.  Please do not let any philistine persuade you to put your chocolate in the fridge. But now I must get back to the serious business of chocolate tasting.  My eventual chocolate choices were Damian Allsop sublime individual artistic creations in beautiful packaging, and  the wonderful bar curiously called Duffy.

But I must admit to not being here at the South Bank just for the Chocolate tasting, I am in fact here at the South Bank Purcell Rooms to listen to a talk by the Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor.  The subject of Neil's talk is the Book of his Radio 4 program A History of the World in 100 Objects...It was a marvellously informative and amusing talk, filled with highlights such as a suggestion that an object that could represent this century might by a football shirt belonging to the Francophile footballer Drogba; the shirt itself made in China, the footballer a French speaker from Africa playing football for an English football team. Although the talk was interrupted by a member of the audience being taken ill this was quickly solved by a request for a doctor.  And consummate with having a middle-class audience five doctors appeared all at once, and the person was eventually taken to hospital.  Neil MacGregor handled this incident with aplomb by reminding us how safe we were in such an audience.  At the end of Neil MacGregor's talk at the South Bank Purcell Rooms I joined a queue to get my copy of his book signed - of course he remembered my name.

artfirstprimo reflects on Leonardo and OMA

On 9th December I returned once again to the Leonardo exhibition for a short visit to marvel at the works not only of the master himself, but to also marvel at the work of Leonard's close associates and followers too. In this visit I will mostly be concentrating on drawings. In particular the exquisite tiny drawing of a youth in profile by Francesco Gali called Napoletano (died 1501).  Napolitano's drawing demonstrates a fine delicate handling of pen and ink to produce subtle effects of shading comparable only to the Master himself.  Napolitano's shading is especially effective in the facial areas akin to Leonardo's sfumato effects in paint.  Also I could not resist including at least one painting in this report, the profile portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza.  This painting by Ambrogio de Predis (about 1455-1510) demonstrates such wonderful handling of light effects in her gold brocaded dress.  Among Leonardo's beautiful drawings are those of the dogs paws and the Bear's head, they demonstrate Leonardo's real sensitivity to the animals he depicts in every metalpoint line delicately drawn upon the prepared paper.

Following an absolutely splendid afternoon tea at the fairly newly opened Delaunay, a Viennese style eatery on Kingsway;I now am on my way across town to the Barbican to see the OMA/Progress (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) exhibition. Upon arriving it seems I have entered through an entrance that gives me an introduction to the exhibition without being the full exhibition.  In this part of the exhibition there are several cardboard cut outs of people who mimic the attitudes and positions one would exhibit as one walk around any show such as this.  They have the effect of seemingly to be real as you catch them out of the corner of your eye. I now head in to the exhibition itself.  On entering the exhibition one is confronted with grey empty walls that seem to be of an unfinished exhibition, indeed the grey paint on the seemingly hastily built walls barely disguises the text from a past exhibition.  In one room there is so much information that one is invited to construct ones own book by taking away pages of ones own choice.  On the walls of this room, called 'Current Preoccupations' new words abound, such as: optioneering, megalopoli(tic)s and creatification.  The deliberate information overload in this exhibition, especially within the so called 'secret room', perhaps brings one close to what it may have been like if one were able to walk into the mind of Leonardo.  In the centre of the exhibition we are presented with a moving representation of this sensory overload.  Projected on a large screen are a myriad of ideas, overlapping each other continuously, of an architecturally real and imaginary future.  Samples of materials and textures also abound in this exhibition, alongside the many ideas.

There is a paranoia in this exhibition, around these ideas, regarding taking photos, which one is frequently reminded is strictly forbidden, indeed it has taken the staff some time to realise that my smart phone is being used for tweeting not photo taking.  My overall view of this exhibition is that this Barbican space particularly lends itself well to architectural exhibitions such as this, however, this is not art in the conventional sense of art, it is an outpouring of idea, but what is art if not an outpouring of ideas.  And if the Leonardo exhibition and this exhibition tell us anything it is that art is first and foremost the idea and even Leonard's art was not seen as conventional in its time.


This OMA/Progress exhibition here at the Barbican demonstrates that it is the art of design and its approach to the human scale as a microcosm of the world has much in common with Leonardo's approach to his art and the world around him in his time.

artfirstprimo day of exhibitions - continued

And so upstairs the private view continues at Tate Britain where you join me in my 3rd exhibition of the day on December 6th.  I am afraid I know next to nothing about the sculptor Barry Flanagan, but from what I can see here at this Tate Britain exhibition Barry Flanagan works in a variety of materials, but mostly hessian, rope, sand and wood. Flanagan seems to be experimenting with perceptions of dimensions and textures and as with many contemporary artists this work is very much a cerebral affair. Alas, while I understand Flanagan's work, my cerebral engagement with his works leave me cold and without an emotional engagement. 

artfirstprimo at the Tate Britain private view of the John Martin exhibition

Welcome back, here is a little catch-up on my recent activities. With the Vermeer exhibition now a distant memory, but the images still very much in my mind, also on December 6th I moved from the sublime to the extraordinary, because I was back in London in time for a private evening viewing of the John Martin exhibition at Tate Britain . John Martin's pictures are truly spectacular. However, they are, as one critic put it, 'A bold experiment in public taste'.  Martin's pictures are huge and full on technicolour. But big and more colour is not necessarily better, they are essentially bombastic and generic in their conception. Take Martin's epic painting, Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still Upon Gibeon has so much going on that it inevitably lacks a focal point.  Martin's Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, is again on a grand scale and mostly red to stand out from the crowd as if this was needed.  It would seem that in many of John Martin's picture everyone is doomed, death and destruction abound as in the expansive Fall of Babylon, and his demonic Pandemonium based on Milton's Pandemonium. Martin loves his thunder bolts, whenever there's destruction, there they are.  Martin's Eve of the Deluge reminds one of some of the truly awful science fiction air-brush paintings that feature on some sci-fi book covers.

I then sat in a room in the exhibition that has been appropriately arranged in a cinema like fashion to view Martin's great triptych. The images of the triptych are: The Plains of Heaven, The Last Judgement, and The Great Day of His Wrath. Martin's triptych is extraordinary and I remember being wowed by them on a school visit. But now I'm just in time for something that probably would not have been possible when I was at school; a special light-show and audio treatment given to Martin's triptych. It's a magic lantern spectacular in which individual parts of each of the paintings are lit, projected on with identical images, and virtually animated by this magical light show; also accompanied by Jeff Wayne-like War of the Worlds commentary.  It is quite a sight to behold, but is it art? Well of course it is, it's a kind of art that appeals to those who love a sense of fun and showmanship and don't take their art too seriously, and I must say I do like a bit of fun occasionally.

And so the John Martin exhibition ends with the appropriately ironic image by contemporary artist Glen Brown,The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dali, a perfect way to end the show. 

arfirstprimo at the Fitzwilliam

Welcome back art people, here is  little catch-up on my recent activities. On 5th December I stayed at the Moller Centre, Cambridge.  I was in Cambridge to give a talk on the origins of the Renaissance to the Young Arts Award Students for the Cambridge Decorative & Fine Arts Society.  The talk itself would take place the next day on 6th December, it was also night after Martin Boyce picked up this years Turner Prize,

indeed, early Renaissance artist laid the path that would be followed by Leonardo & Michelangelo, indeed without them there would be no Turner Prize. But of course one could not visit Cambridge without going to its preminent museum and at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge I was luckily able to see the exhibition, Vermeer's Women: Secrets & Silence. 

 

As there are so few of Vermeer's paintings existing this exhibition affords us the opportunity to view some of Vermeer's contemporaries.  Many of Vermeer's contemporary painters are now not as well known, but it does not meet they not every bit as intriguing as Vermeer. In this exhibition we witness the Eavesdropper by Nicolaes Maes (1655-1693) that let's the viewer into a secret world of an affair, we are also confronted by the beautifully conceived Girl Peeling Apples by Cornelis Bisschop (1630-1674). However, the overall image reminds one of an annunciation.  But Jacobus Vrel's mysterious (c.1650-62) image of a Woman at a Window, Waving at a Girl, shows us a ghostly image of a little girl. Vrel's image dispenses with light from without to give us light from within the interior only. The result, a black window and fully lit room.

The perfect perspectival view in Cornelis de Man's (1621-1706) Interior with a woman sweeping is somewhat compromised by the clearly later addition of cat, evident by it partial fading with time to reveal the original background.  However, one of the stars of this exhibition is Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681). His exquisite handling of paint to create texture is quite sublime. Highlights by ter Borch include: Woman drinking wine and holding a letter and Woman sewing by a cradle. But of course the true stars are the Vermeer's (1632-1675) especially the image that is possibly one of his largest, The music lesson, and Vermeer's tiny but iconic Lacemaker on loan from the Louvre. The texture of the canvas and what is being sown almost becoming one.

 

One gets so few chances to experience Vermeer and his world and this exhibition not only explores Vermeer and the contemporary world of painting in Delft, but it manages to do so in a quiet, understated, and most effective way.  

artfirstprimo at the Don McCullin exhibition at the Imperial War Museum

Welcome back. On Wednesday 23rd November, just a day after giving my lecture on Leonardo at the Court of Milan to the High Weald Decorative and Fine Arts Society in Staplehurst, Kent, I made a visit to the Imperial War Museum, London to witness and experience the overwhelming and the shear power of Don McCullin's photographs.

 

The emotion in Don McCullin's pictures, taken decades ago by this great photographer is still palpable. Amongst the images that moved me were Don McCullin's image of pain and anguish on the face a Turkish Cypriot woman, that for me brings to life the emotions seen in Massacre of the Innocents Pulpit at Sant' Andrea in Pistoia, Italy (1301) by the Renaissance sculptor Giovanni Pisano (c.1245/50-after 1314).

 

From these powerful images to Don McCullin's black and white still life image of flowers with its crisp painterly-like qualities to his haunting landscapes; one can experience, as McCullin says, 'a darkness inside' of him, that in the case of his non-war pictures bring a sublime beauty to his work.

 

Don McCullin's Shaped by War exhibition is at the Imperial War Museum until 15th April 2012.

'Leonardo da Vinci: Maestro del Disegno at the Court of Milan' a new lecture by artfirstprimo

Welcome back. Earlier this week on Tuesday 22nd Novemeber those that follow me on twitter joined me on a train heading for Staplehurst, East Sussex to give a brand new lecture to the High Weald DFAS.  The High Weald Decorative and Fine Arts Society heard the lecture: Leonardo da Vinci - Maestro del Disegno at the Court of Milan.  This lecture has of course been specially written to accompany the blockbuster Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery, London. 

The National Gallery exhibition covers a substantial part of Leonardo's life at the court of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan the late 15th century.  With such a unprecedented and comprehensive exhibition it has been a struggle to keep this lecture within the regulation one hour. Fine arts societies such as High Weald require lectures to be an hour only, the lecture as it stands will struggle to be under an hour.  And so back to my train journey where I began this blog. After passing Sevenoaks, through the blackness of two tunnels, upon emerging for the darkness of the tunnels there is still less visibility as the entire countryside is now shrouded is a thick mist, and as the train rounds a corner into to Tonbridge station its front end seems to disappear into this heavy Autumn fog; soon I will arrive at Staplehurst station and I will be greeted and taken to another lecture hall.

So here I am at the lecture hall. An over full house greeted me at the High Weald DFAS for my lecture on Leonardo to accompany the exhibition.  It was indeed heart-warming to have such a large audience for this very new lecture. A listing and synopsis of 'Leonardo da Vinci: Maestro del Disegno at the Court of Milan' is now available on my website: primoartdiscoverytours.co.uk

artfirstprimo in the contemporary world of art in Cork

Welcome back. On Wednesday 30th November I found myself in Cork, Southern Ireland at Crawford College of Art and Design for a lecture given by the curator Sean Lynch.  Lynch spoke about the exhibition he is curating at the nearby Crawford Art Gallery that looks at Irish art in the 70s and 80s. We were given an introduction to Sean Lynch by the ever effusive Trish Brennan director of Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design.

In a very informal style that is more a seminar than a lecture Lynch takes us through shows that he has been involved in, such as a show at the Camden Art Gallery, London and others that stirred his interest, such as a show in Santa Monica that reinstated the framework past false walls past exhibitions in the exhibition space in the Santa Monica gallery.  Both shows dwell on resonances of past shows re-imagined, layered and re-realised in their original spaces.

Lynch then revisited Joseph Beuys' work and visit to the Crawford in the 70s. At which point the talk is briefly interrupted by someone tying to seek the whereabouts of the owner of a silver Laguna.  However, the talk then moved on to the point where we are shown photographs of the proposed site of an Irish pavilion in Venice for the Bienniale. It was never built, so we view the resonances of the space the pavilion would have occupied through these photographs.

Lynch also spoke about the utilisation of cultural objects, illustrating this with episode of the so called Tau Crosses (possibly 6th or 13th century objects), which were removed from their places of origin (in Irish fields) to accompany contemporary art exhibitions from the 60s onwards.  Over-arching theme of Lynch's talk was that of resonances of works that were never made, and the controversy surrounding work that was made, but pilloried and even vandalised by the society at the time (70s), such as a large steel sculpture in Kinsale and an artist's nude self-portrait with an erection.

All these events were of course seen strictly from a contemporary and Irish perspective and thus did not mention the fact that art work has been pilloried and vandalised by members of society for at least the past 6 centuries and more. With iconoclasms occurring between 730 and 787, 814 and 842, and the many incidents that occurred in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517 that resulted in Reformation. Indeed protests against images remain with us today in the form of attacks on works of art in galleries, some of which have occurred as recently as in the last 5 years and the last 6 months in national institutions in the UK.

So with the talk now over you now join me in the Crawford Art Gallery viewing some of the pieces discussed by Sean Lynch in his talk earlier today, such as the Tau Cross incident, represented here in old newspaper cuttings, and the works by the artist Nigel Rolfe, including a video piece of the artist himself falling into a bog. It will take me some time to understand this piece. But unfortunately our time has unexpected run out due the rather early closing of the Crawford at 17:00, I am ushered in a somewhat uncouth fashion by an official that clearly does not enjoy his job and should be doing something else, but lacks the courage to do so. This together with the almost non-existant signage, making it difficult to locate part 2 of the exhibition, which was split over two floors, made for a quick and unsatisfying visit to this exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.