Tate Britain Rehang – Review

May 22, 2013 • Art Review, Portraiture • by

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1933

The recent rehang of Tate Britain’s collections, or Walk Through British art (I censor the distasteful prefix of BP – that ubiquitous sponsor) perpetuates the quintessential nature of a permanent collection: one that aims to discard all subjectivity. In controversially discarding thematic hanging stamped with the curator’s imprint, explanatory captions and other embellishments and opting for a purely chronological hang, the last 500 years of British Art is reduced to its simplest visual form, each gallery delineated by a date emblazoned upon its floor. We are invited to look and seek as opposed to look and be guided. Because this laissez-faire curation encourages us to progress from beginning to end rather than dip in randomly, we are given a curious facility to identify simultaneously both a gradual development of style and thematic content as a whole, and the variations within it. While thematic arrangement can work to the exclusion of other contemporary movements, here the juxtaposition of works irrespective of school arguably allows the greatest degree of illustrative context.

This is most successful in the earliest galleries; the first painting is Lady with a Starling by Holbein ca.1526 (on loan from the National Gallery), yet adjacent is an exceptionally crude panel showing four saints whose faces have been mutilated. Despite the crudity which might otherwise prevent its being shown, the comparison flags up an important passage in Post-Reformation art; the Iconoclasm attacking hagiographic depictions which essentially constricted most artists to painting domestic scenes and portraits, into which categories the majority of paintings in this first room fall.

Henry Fuseli - Titania and Bottom, ca.1790

William Beechey, Portrait of Sir Francis Ford’s Children Giving a Coin to a Beggar Boy (exhibited 1793)

Similarly, see also the juxtaposition of an example of the Sublime movement – Fuseli’s Titania and Bottom ca.1790 – with William Beechey’s Portrait of Sir Francis Ford’s Children Giving a Coin to a Beggar Boy (exhibited 1793), a domestic portrait. The former is an unnerving hallucination of pixies and fantastical creatures of distorted proportions, exaggerated light and shadow, rendered in paint so thick its surface has bubbled. Part of a series of blackly comic grotesque creations, it contrasts sharply with its neighbour, a cringingly sentimental portrait flattering the patron’s offsprings by depicting their modest generosity in donating to the unfortunate; the paintwork soft, soggy and as limpid as the childrens’ earnest gaze. Their sheer thematic and stylistic differences serve to highlight their respective artistic functions existing in parallel during this one point in time.

Several critics have complained that the hang is unforgiving to individual works; Laura Cumming suggests that a subdued piece by Gwen John is bawled out by its brash neighbours. It is true that the structure of this hang inevitably alienates some pieces, certainly in this aesthetic sense. However if each painting in this enormous three-dimensional web was hung to ensure deliberate comparison, or – inversely – hung visually to find aesthetically complementing juxtapositions, this would defeat the very methodology of hanging chronologically in an attempt to avoid subjectivity. As with Fuseli and Beechey, their very difference highlights the dearth of movements and explorations going on in art at any one time. However I suspect I would be overly sympathetic were I to declare that this hanging according to what physically fits on the wall is a conscious attempt to evoke the identical method used for the historic Royal Academy hangs as mentioned in the history of collecting introducing this show.

It is towards the twentieth century that this structure becomes untenable; due both to the expansion into different media, and to the inexplicable decision to cram the earlier collections into the West wing, reserving the East to the Modern. At least unto this point the visual possibilities present at any one time were confined to two dimensional paintings and the occasional bronze or marble; the range of forms that could be classified as art by the later galleries however introduce so many variables as to hinder constructive aesthetic comparison. The situation is compounded by a kind of gallery Lebensraum; such as the awful naïve daubs of ca.2010 by Rose Wylie which were clearly given disproportionately large wall space by someone with no eyes (see Brian Sewell for a less forgiving opinion). Wylie’s room equals that of Henry Moore’s (incidentally decked out in a grey tone with just enough blue to best complement his bronzes), suggesting her equality to that colossus.

It is pleasing that the hang bridges the gap between historic and contemporary; the ‘greatest hits’ of the YBAs previously at home at Tate Modern are now at the pinnacle of the gallery. Happily, Sarah Lucas, Jake and Dinos Chapman – the best exponents of late 90s British yob culture and satirical commercialism respectively – are present while their vacuous contemporary, Tracey Emin, is not. Unhappily, the presence of the equally vacuous Damien Hirst suggests that he is now unfortunately included in British ‘art history’.

While certainly problematic, this chronological hang is a definitive assertion by Tate Britain as an ‘institution’; presenting British Art with dignity and importance on a par with the heavyweights of the National Galleries. Even the use of uniform grey throughout the hang is a technique copying that of the Musée D’Orsay, the definitive collection of Impressionism et al. What is encouraging above all is that the collection feels newly revitalised and relevant, and essentially more inclusive.

 

 

In Fine Style – The Art of Tudor & Stuart Fashion at the Queen’s Gallery – Review

May 19, 2013 • Art Review, Portraiture • by

Amongst the various elements which make up the mounting of an exhibition it can occur that two factors vie so powerfully for the curators’ efforts as to become mutually exclusive. I recently reviewed the BritishMuseum’s Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, arguing that securing the travel of such a number of precious works from Naples effectively starved the curatorial effort, resulting in captions that were disappointingly superficial. The opposite is true of In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion at the Queen’s Gallery: such is the wealth and sheer concentration of the finest and most significant paintings already in the collection (I could see no loans amongst the vast number displayed) that the curators – free from the agonising stress of negotiating loans, transport and insurance – must have had the easiest (and most enviable) ride in delivering this finely judged, academically balanced and thoroughly absorbing show.

Given the existing wealth of objects in the collection the organisers have only had to decide with what slant to examine them. This has resulted in a two-tiered structure split between the Tudor and Stuart eras existing within the umbrella theme on costume. The scant extant examples of the former era has restricted the possible modes of investigation to one of delineating the distinct periods in dress – 1490s, 1540s, 1630s and 1690s – alongside some dynastic concerns (those surviving paintings being almost exclusively English regal), while the more comprehensive, later collection allows for a leisurely thematic study: large sections of the show compare various examples of dress ‘For Battle’ or ‘For the Hunt’ throughout Europe. ‘Leisurely’ is the key term to appreciating the latter half; the sheer concentration of quality in this exhaustive collection, combined with the decision to display thematically – therefore concentrating on stylistic content rather than historical context –negates the need for more thorough academic investigation.

Hans Holbein the Younger, Woman Believed to be Anne Boleyn ca.1533–6

The restriction in the former section is at times frustrating; amongst the impressive drawings by Hans Holbein is one believed to be of Anne Boleyn, dated circa 1533–6. Disarmingly intimate, it shows the sitter in ‘black satin nightgown’. The caption suggests this garment may match one listed in contemporary inventories as a gift from Henry VIII. In 1534 Henry passed the first Act of Supremacy, breaking the English church from Catholicism and the Papal See, allowing him to obtain a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. The implications therefore of this portrait in dynastic terms are enormous, yet ignored by the curators. The crux of the issue, left absent – that Boleyn was actually crowned in 1533 around the time of this portrait – would have communicated to us the real depth and significance of the intimate nature of the drawing and the gift of the expensive black satin. This is not to diminish the assiduously researched and meticulous attention paid to identifying the type of each garment depicted in the works on show, but acknowledging the key historical facts behind certainly these earlier, regal paintings – themselves additionally relevant to the costumes – are integral to understanding their importance.

Portrait of an unknown man in red, ca. 1530–50

Where the fantastic resources of the Queen’s Gallery really sing is an academic and scientific investigation determining the identity and provenance of a mysterious portrait in the collection (which I nearly missed as it’s shoved in a tiny side-room). Portrait of a Man in Red ca. 1530–50 is a full length figure of nearly two metres in height, dressed entirely in brilliant red, with a countenance that is so disturbing in its physiognomy that one wonders how on earth it was originally sold to Charles II in 1660 as a portrait of Henry VIII. Pleasingly, several observations on the dress help determine its date: records of Henry VIII stated he often ordered outfits fashioned entirely in one colour; red fabric of this sort was fashionable during the first half of the sixteenth century; black embroidery of this type was prominent in England ca. 1540. Dendrochronology suggests the wood panels were made from Baltic oak felled between 1527–1543. Radio spectronomy analysing the paint layers determines the expensive bright red pigment was used only on the top layer; interestingly this pigment was made from left-over dye used to create the actual clothes depicted. This example alone confirms the essential role dress and fashion plays – most successfully in combination with further academic investigation – in understanding the society and context within which they were created.

Life and Death at Pompeii and Herculaneum – British Museum, Review

May 7, 2013 • Art Review • by

Cave canem

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum represents a major coup for the British Museum; securing the loan of 250 articles of staggering quality and significance – many of which recent discoveries, or travelling outside Italy for the first time – in negotiation with Archaeological Superintendency of Naples and Pompeii has ensured the Museum has an unmissable sensation of a blockbuster on its hands. The most famous of examples can be checked off: the Cave Canem mosaic warning to ‘beware of the dog’ replicated on a hundred versions of the sign in use today; the sensational sea life mosaic in which different species are lovingly detailed in micro-mosaic, along with objects of domesticity in excellent states of preservation. This is evidently where all effort has been concentrated; no curatorial drive or academic investigation has been taken other than to present this loot as ‘everyday Roman life’, cutely arranged to mirror a villa structure. It is the sheer humanity and immediacy of these items that speak for themselves which has perhaps encouraged the curators to slack; their captions are so disappointingly anaemic and, in places, frankly embarrassing that the phrase ‘art history-lite’ continually sprang to mind.

The introductory plaque mentions Pompeii as a changing society, fails to expand, then quickly forgets about it. Adjacent are two full length statues of the priestess of Venus in Pompeii during the first century, Eumachia, and Empress Livia, responsible for perpetrating the imperial cult of Concordia Augustus. Not even the most basic observations have been made; the physical appearance of the women, significance of poise or the purpose of the works, the difference in material (marble and bronze respectively). An acknowledgement of the distinctive number of layers of dress and arrangement typical of the Augustan era visible in the latter would have informed us on even the most basic element of ‘society’. Does the lone visitor wanting more intellectual satisfaction than a shrug of ‘look at this awesome stuff we’ve charged you £15 to see’ have to instead fork out for the catalogue? There is a duty of the curator to make an exhibition accessible to the widest range of people; by withholding more detailed text on the exhibits the show is – inversely – made inaccessible.

Sea life mosaic

 A brief section outside the ‘villa’ plays exceedingly annoying street sounds including a dog barking which in retrospect seems so simplistic an addition as to insult the sophistication of the articles which followed. A dearth of wall paintings, startlingly intact, detailed more vividly and succinctly everyday life. A sequence of panels, cartoon-like, show figures drinking in a bar, originally painted crudely in simplistic brisk strokes onto a tavern wall; tiny dialogue captions function in a similar fashion to speech bubbles, revealing a surprising relevance and familiarity to the drinking culture we know today. From the crude and bawdy Roman pub life, to the civility of domestic society in a fabulous painted walled garden of exceedingly accomplished craftsmanship; grotesque work, flora and fauna so technically accurate as to distinguish the species, and busts of satyrs and putti showed clearly the expenditure of the owner in employing specialist workshops for the commission and the social importance attached to this lavish decoration in this area of the villa. One can’t argue against the honesty and immediacy of such works in illustrating life in these cities as interrupted by Vesuvius in 79AD.

Indeed, it seems that the undeniably compelling power of these items has been translated into a giddy enthusiasm in their captions: the most glaring example being a particularly sophisticated statue of Bacchus, accompanied by the assertion that such is its quality that it must have been made by Greek workshops. This is a hangover from the early Twentieth Century historiography which perpetuated that the Greeks invented heights of naturalism which succeeding Roman artists were incapable of reaching, and would have the toes of any self-respecting art historian curling in embarrassment. That the objects themselves remain the sole reason for viewing this show in spite of lazy curation is a testament to their vitality; this is truly essential viewing.

 

George Bellows: Modern American Life at the Royal Academy

April 29, 2013 • Art Review, Portraiture • by

You might be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into an extra floor’s worth of Manet paintings upon entering George Bellows: Modern American Life. Indeed his works present a continuation, or a bringing up to date if you will of the emphasis on bold, unflinching and fluid paintwork prevalent in the works of the so-called ‘Father of Impressionism’. It feels however as if this is the sole reason for putting on the Bellows show; radical, violent paintwork is the most captivating element in an otherwise quietly studious, inoffensive deconstruction of his oeuvre, and nowhere is Bellows regarded particularly as a pioneer or visionary; his work technically notable though short of spectacular. This is a retrospective clearly chosen to complement the blockbuster Manet show, reducing the comparison to one of superficiality where – unfortunately for Bellows – the American work comes off as second rate.

A common characteristic of Manet’s portraits is their population of stark, isolated and frontally lit figures picked out in bold swathes of light against sombre, impenetrable backgrounds. Velazquez also typically rendered portraits full length, the figures emerging from an opaque, uniform blank. The RA rightly notes the latter’s methods channelled in Bellows’ portraits such as Nude Girl (Miss Leslie Hall) (1909) where stark, bulbous flesh glows against vast emptiness. However, where there is a lightness of touch in Velazquez – the master of creating life and presence using the fewest of brush-strokes – here there is laboured heaviness; shadows are pasted in thick swathes, the flesh a mass of savage strokes. Bellows wantonly renders the portrait glaring outwards deliberately ugly.

(Nude Girl) Miss Leslie Hall (1909)

Indebted to Manet and Velazquez in these works, so is Bellows indebted to Goya in his lithographs on the atrocities of war, a deliberate updating of his Disasters of War etchings of the 1810s; the universal theme here applied to the American involvement in the First World War for which Bellows was in favour. Noted for his expansion of the medium as a fine art, the content and theme of Bellows’s lithographs nonetheless bind them more closely to their predecessors in Goya, in whose shadow he inevitably remains. A better case for Bellows as political commentator of American society is made in his appropriation of Goya via his famous pugilist sequences. Here, bestial spectators are defiantly rendered in crude, broad strokes; all gaping mouths and tiny puncture holes for eyes, echoes of the horrific cackling faces in Goya’s Witches Sabbath (1823). Combined with similarly startling violent paintwork rendering the struggling grappling flesh of the pugilists, applying the fantastical, maniacal creatures of Goya’s world as the modern attendees of a boxing match startlingly highlights an underlying barbarity still prevalent in the seemingly sophisticated society of early twentieth-century New York.

Both Members of This Club (1909)

More directly stating his own political stance are Bellows’s larger scaled pieces such as Return of the Useless (1918), commenting on the state of soldiers returning from the front, perhaps the best marriage of his technical style with deliberate iconographic content. The use of saturated colour combined with bloated, shapeless figures paying little heed to anatomical specifics makes for an image grounded in nightmarish fantasy as opposed to a detailed recording of actual events. These methods are deployed in figures scaled up to what we might call ‘monumental’ proportions, and one might imagine these large pieces spatially occupied to their full by bulbous, heaving characters as perfectly suited to a political mural. The series is calculated – though depicting real, recorded events – to emphasise the sheer ‘wrongness’ of the situation using dizzying colour, grotesque proportions and stark, opaque action, therefore more definitively occupying a stance of protest.

 

Return of the Useless (1918)

More direct, perceptive comments on American society at the turn of the century would help distinguish Bellows in art historical terms above just the credit applied to his technical painting. Yet even then, the amount of noticeable gratitude afforded to the recognised masters who preceded him effectively undoes our admiration for his own distinctive painting style and technicality. As such, while diverting and certainly accomplished, Bellows never reaches the dizzying heights achieved in the blockbuster downstairs.

 

 

Manet: Portraying Life, Royal Academy 9.2.13

February 9, 2013 • Art Review, Portraiture • by

Nowhere but in Manet’s oeuvre is the polarity more marked between artworks that have been produced from personal urgency and passion, and those dutiful commissions painted simply to return bread-and-butter money.

The Royal Academy’s exhibition Manet: Portraying Life, by focusing on portraits, emerges successfully from the shadow of the behemoth retrospective held at the Musée D’Orsay in 2011; that institution clings to its Olympia and Déjeuner sur l’Herbe fiercely as its bastions of Impressionist importance, forcing this alternative approach. The display here of lesser known works presents some under-appreciated gems, but also some paintings that are startlingly lacklustre – painfully incompetent in places – primarily revealed in the quality of brushwork. Lightning speed application displays nakedly the enormous spectrum between the inspired, bold, risk-taking strokes, to the flabby and impatient canvas-filling daubs.

The arrangement of rooms further emphasises the undulating degree of quality by categorising the sitters – into family portraits or ones of society and wealth for example – avoiding a chronological layout. The glaring inadequacies of some portraits are therefore not subsumed within the question of the artist’s technical development throughout the progression of his career.

The artist’s wife depicted in Mme Manet in the Conservatory (1879) is typical in demonstrating his intense understanding of the power of the sitter’s gaze, with much of the surrounding articles secondary – even incidental – the details glossed over impatiently. The three-quarter profile here is intently rendered; brushstrokes quick and thick, though keen to compose the solid wholeness of the face, the tangible veneer of the pale skin flushed with pink blush, rather than an impression of one, as is evident in the remaining components of the piece. Indeed, everything from the hands folded in her lap to the expansive green foliage bulking out the frame are barely represented, thin and hastily swiped using broad strokes. That the paint in these areas is as thin as a watercolour wash is indicative of their purpose to fill out the frame as economically as can be got away with. For Manet, the portrait resonates from that invisible beam of focus emanating from his wife’s eyes; the rest is an unfortunate necessity, its presence demanded by the duty of representational painting.

The paramount status of the gaze above all else is perhaps most evident in Berthe Morisot in Mourning (1874), completed two weeks after her father’s death. Such a brief lapse of time suggests Manet’s urgency to capture this intense, emotionally wracked face, to seize the chance before the grief diminished. One cannot help but feel the reluctance in Morisot’s presence, sitting not in a begrudging manner, but almost in a mode of grief-induced self-flagellation as her contorted face is rendered in daringly chunky, deliberately heavy blows. The palate, limited to stark extremes of black mourning encasing her emaciated, pale face emphasises the effect. The portrait is a result of Manet’s visual need to capture a gruelling, raw emotion; as such he gladly has little use for the decorational padding of foliage or scenery and the background remains an unforgiving uniform hue.

Contrast this with The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet) (1865). Laboured and leaden, the usually nimble application of paint is overly worked and forced. A commission from the fashionable actor, this represents Manet at his most uninterested, bearing little emotional connection to the sitter; the only intensity of glare resonates not from the eyes but from the actor’s professional composure; thereby naturally rendering it to be false. Tellingly, Rouvière complained that it did not capture his likeness, and indeed it looks as if it was a real struggle to conjure the prescriptive features accurately from the visage’s lumpen white matter. Add to this an awkward pose; the right hand’s index finger neither supporting its drapery nor pointing decidedly to the floor, and an alarming disparity of balance: the right leg that – by its rigidity – denotes that which carries the bodyweight is positioned disturbingly far from the centre of balance along the spine. One feels Manet couldn’t get the commission done and cheque cashed quickly enough.

Such is the artist’s understanding of what communicates best a sitter’s purpose and stature via the outward appearance of the face, his impatience is doubly ominous throughout the ‘filler’ details making up the rest of the pictorial space. It is the degree of discipline he chooses to apply to his brushwork that reveals most clearly which works have his heart, and those with which he simply regards as a chore; many of the works on show have captions stating ‘Not shown during the artist’s lifetime’, to which one cannot help thinking: “With good reason”

Review – Constable, Gainsborough, Turner at Royal Academy

January 12, 2013 • Art Review • by

Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited © Royal Academy of Arts, London

The Royal Academy’s exhibition Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscapes boldly posits this heavyweight trio as the key proponents of a thoroughly modernising influence in landscape painting, which elevated the genre to the more ‘worthier’ ranks alongside History painting. From its basic function as background scenery or ineffectual draughtsmanship practice, the Modern mentality viewed landscapes as imbued with moral, philosophical or religious significance, reflected in works which treated the organic features enfolding the figurative inhabitants with something like awe and reverence, eventually touching the loftier concepts of the Sublime and the Beautiful.

Such is this seismic shift in approach that the RA chooses to open the exhibition with a room entirely situated in the Contemporary; a black slab of Indian black granite, Untitled (2011) by John Maine RA confronts the viewer on entry. A poem by Richard Long – the British Land Artist for whom art and nature are inextricably linked in his works – suitably encapsulates the awe that the exhibition seeks to suggest was the key factor in these painters’ new approach to landscape. A confident and bold hypothesis that is fundamentally undermined by several problems in this intense, concentrated show.

First, there are at least two rooms which function to set the scene before the three painters’ entry. Certainly there is merit in establishing the prototypes visible in the French, Italian and Dutch schools of the second half of the Eighteenth Century. Etchings after figures as diverse as Rubens and Poussin in this context convincingly set the stage for the introduction of more moralistic and dramatic treatment of the landscape. Yet this diversity, and the absence of any significant presence of the painters in question until room four, smacks of an awful reliance on ‘padding’. Similarly, room three focuses on engravings by Richard Wilson RA and Thomas Smith of Derby, expounding on the economic properties of this medium over oil painting. If the exhibition began with the Contemporary, it immediately structured its argument as one of chronological development; we were to see The Making of Landscape and how it arrived to its current incarnation. Given the range of artists on display, their sheer number, and this strange deviation into economic issues, the study felt a little grasping in its effort to trace this Modern mentality in the treatment of landscape to how it appears in Maine’s Untitled.

It was refreshing, then, to feature a room devoted to the technical appreciation of watercolour as the medium which best allowed Turner to develop these Modern expressions. Indeed, we see the established topographical tradition now imbued with a greater lyricism; there is real searching exploration through watercolour technique to communicate the reverence Turner clearly felt for the landscape. Even the presence of his fishing rod serves to demonstrate his commitment to immersing himself in nature. Perhaps this is where the exhibition is most effective in expounding on its hypothesis.

The show finally reaches its pinnacle with the entrance of major large scale paintings. Gainsborough’s Romantic Landscape (1873) is an ode to the inherent unforgiving power of nature; its awesomeness reflected in the title which dares not use a mythological or historical scene to justify its existence. Gainsborough certainly constructed the billowing trees, precarious and mighty boulders and rocks towering over the tiny figure to exaggerate their precarious potential, rather than copied studiously from a real situation, such is their imposing presence. The lighting is greatly dramatic and brooding rather than naturalistic, exaggerating dark shadows matched by suitably intense deep colour. The figure trapped below such a storm seems dwarfed, insignificant and incidental. Interestingly, I immediately thought of the apocalyptic landscapes of John Martyn as better examples of the potential power of nature, though good luck fitting these enormous canvases into the parlours of the RA.

Similarly, a trio of mezzotints after Constable’s The Lock (1834), The Rainbow, Salisbury Cathedral (1837) and The Cornfield (1834), though not the actual works themselves, accurately convey the painter’s deliberate staging and construction of the various elements comprising the image – as opposed to faithfully copying – with the similar agenda to treat the landscape as of interest in itself rather than a narrative scene.

Adjacent to these works are a series of oil studies by Turner made briefly and feverishly to capture an immediate scene; Hampstead Heath 27th September (1821) for example, of Cloudy Study, Tree at Right (1821). Returning to the technical element explored in the watercolour section, here Turner’s Modern relationship with nature is reflected in his recognition of its temporal status, its living and changing properties that emerge and vanish, and his searching for the best technical methods by which to capture it.

An admirable attempt has been made to trace chronologically the change in technique and mentality perpetrated by these three painters from which the era of Modernism would follow. It is disappointing, then, that so few examples are actually present, and even these are surrounded by thick wadding of prints and etchings that deviate from the hypothesis (did Tate Britain simply refuse to lend any of its huge repertoire of important Turners?). That the show employs a chronological method to expound on the development of landscape is fundamentally undermined by its abrupt halt immediately after the period in question; by the end there is no summary of how we have ended up with the Contemporary pieces witnessed long ago in the opening. Some mention of the natural progression into the moral concerns of the Pre-Raphaelites’ use of landscape, or even the constructed rollercoaster landscape work by John Martyn would have been welcome.

Technique – painting fur

January 4, 2013 • Portraiture • by

Fur is unfamiliar territory; if Hogarth listed the average number of tonal shades required to model a face as 5, how many should thus make up the entire depth of a blade of fur, and how many blades of fur make up a skin? A formidable quantity.

See Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More above (1527), which treats the fur in sections using three distinct tones, cutting this effort considerably. A mid brown ochre tone is deployed first throughout the entire area, then the sections of fur as it undulates and folds is delineated by the darkest and lightest shades. Only these latter two hint at individual strands, and even then these are gathered into groups as dictated by the physical shape of the skin. The effect is that of densely thick fur, with individual blades relatively indistinct, denoting a certain fineness.

As my sitter wore rabbit fur (top image), the blades are more openly spaced, the sections of grouped strands more chunky, as opposed to the finer, closely packed skin of Holbein’s. I started from the darkest ground first covering the entire area, then using a thick chisel brush about half an inch wide, loaded with the next tone lighter, to denote these wide, thick clumps. The next tone up further divided these areas using a rounded brush around half a centimetre wide. The highlights had to lighten the whole thing without appearing ‘glossy’ or ‘greasy’; too easily it sunk into the synthetic type fake fur appearance. These were applied at the mid point of each strand, within each mid tone area, giving a unified appearance of shine. Only a tiny dot for each blade, then using a stiff hogshair fan brush, swept into the grain of the fur.

Once upon a time in Anatolia – Mini review

December 14, 2012 • Film • by

Anatolia – Trailer

Composed for recent Guardian.co.uk poll for best film of 2012. Viewed in May 2012

A glacial pacing interspersed with almost ponderous symbolic observations – notably an apple tumbling down an embankment – make for a mesmerising and unremittingly absorbing tale. Or, more accurately, a non-tale; there is no thundering narrative signposting key plot or protagonist developments. Instead the film demands that the viewer decide for himself the real significance contained within the slowly unfolding events.

The result is simultaneously alienating and involving. The viewer is posited as a bystander, listening in on seemingly incidental conversations between the characters which hint in their suggestive content deeper emotional anguish and, if one listens hard enough, crucial factors to solving the riddles of the elusive plot. Such a level of concentration demanded of the viewer, sustained over the extensive running time, make for an exhausting but thoroughly rewarding viewing.

Called “Once upon a time..” the film refers both to this individual crime case, reinforced by a dearth of everyday physical detail expounded in the lengthy procedural, and the wider function of a morality fable: the tragedies witnessed here are result of so base a human instinct that the they are applicable to any point in time; the problems and personal worry of each character as relevant to anyone trying to survive in society. In another context therefore, the pivotal central scene whereby an Official’s daughter serves police and prisoners tea, would not have been as emotionally crushing. A truly intense and devastating experience.

Untitled (Thread) Review, Who’sJack Magazine

December 12, 2012 • Portraiture, Press • by

The thirteenth artist from EXHIBITIONISM at The Courtauld Institute of Art is Olivia McEwan…

The intimate and passionate depiction of the female nude in Olivia McEwan’s work marks a significant moment in the artist’s practice; her recent exploration of themes of sex and destruction is increasingly abstract. McEwan works on untreated canvas on which she paints with commercial pigments, as well as red wine and blood; the latter two change their appearance with time.

McEwan’s piece is constructed upon a vertical line that divides the picture plane in half. This marks a folding line around which both abstract and non-abstract shapes are arranged symmetrically. The method, as well as the effect it produces, recalls the famous Rorshach tests. However, the symmetry in McEwan’s painting is only fragmentary; subtle differences on either side of it remind one more of organic forms than technically produced images. Moreover, the painting – due to the materials used – is likely to change, thus the associations it evokes may alter over time. The possible dynamism of the interpretation is, more importantly, related to the complexity of the piece.

The recognisable features of the figure are hands, legs and head; the inscription of the remaining parts of the body remains within the realm of the imagination. The rupture in the centre of the painting is highly disturbing. What was initially reminiscent of Rorshach’s inkblots produces the distressing association of blood when seen in connection to the void in the centre. It seems as if the figure is torn apart; the dramatic vulnerability and feeling of exposure are intertwined with passion.

The image of a fractured female body establishes a perverse dialogue with the viewer. The painting – in offering an anguished vision of sexuality and femininity – creates a psychological barrier and feeling of repulsion we tend to experience when faced with the unsettling. On the other hand, McEwan’s painting conditions the act of looking as penetration, and as such establishes an intimate engagement with the spectator. The feeling of exposure – both of the viewer and of the artist – seems to be crucial here. Through revealing her vision of female sex, McEwan’s work immediately launches a wordless dialogue with the spectator; the penetrating gaze the work stimulates in the viewer does not allow for disengagement. Thus, the painting confronts us with exposure and intimacy while at the same time forcing us to respond.

This emotional ambivalence is characteristic of McEwan’s work; it is impossible to establish whether we are witnessing ecstasy, suffering, or, perhaps, both at the same time. The artist herself states that the work explores ‘sex as degenerative, destructive action’. The painting offers a subjective and intimate vision of feminine sexuality; it is seductive and frightening at the same time. Sexual passion, the offering of one’s body, appears as both an ecstatic and destructive act. It seems that only through ultimate exposure it is possible to achieve completeness.

Untitled (Thread), 2009

Oil and mixed media on canvas

Taken from: http://www.whosjack.org/
Text by Malgorzata Misniakiewicz 2009

Tussauds vs Portraiture, and the Uncanny Valley

February 28, 2012 • Portraiture • by

How the wax figure represents a ‘Non-portrait’ – a neutral capture of a person in three dimensional form, with which the viewer physically and emotionally interacts – embodies the uncanny by allowing the viewer to impress his own psyche onto it. This is diametrically opposite to the painted, photographed or drawn portrait, which captures not the generic person, but one expression from a library of many through which the character presents itself, and introduces the factors of specific locations, time and situations. This type of image is inpenetrable to the viewer’s psyche and therefore falls well outside the threatening ‘Uncanny Valley’.
 
The term ‘Uncanny’ or ‘das unheimliche’ was coined by Ernst Jentsch to define the paradoxical situation whereby an image, by its extreme familiarity to the viewer, provokes a reaction of both attraction and repulsion simultaneously. In 1919 Freud expounded on this phenomenon in describing how the image unconsciously reminds us of the primitive impulses of our id, which are controlled by the super ego, producing an effect of threat and dread; the image ultimately embodies our anxiety as we are reminded of our repressed primitive desires.
 
In robotics and three dimensional animation, the more sophisticated the synthetic emulation of human likeness, the greater the viewer’s emotional response. Since such emulations inevitably fall short of the actuality, the most extreme degree of likeness provokes an emotional revulsion in the viewer – called the ‘Uncanny Valley’. (See graph).

File:Mori Uncanny Valley.svg
 
The waxworks created at Tussauds fall deeply into this category. They seek to capture the essence of a person, however the method achieves exactly the opposite. A person’s visual conception of another is formulated from a collection of physical impressions;  a range and type of expression and movement. The physical state of a face at any one time is one of a range of many potential others. In portraiture the artist seeks only one expression to encapsulate the sitter, so as to produce a specific effect in the final portrayal. In my own experience of portraiture, sitters contain wildly diverse degrees of potential expression; the most interesting face is that which contains a seemingly inexhaustive number of potential depictions to choose from. It is thus impossible to truly capture the ‘essence’ of a person. Certainly, one portrait may well capture a character trait which many would regard to be the person’s most distinctive, though this represents only a small segment of the person’s psyche. Indeed, even an excessive number of depictions of a person’s character can in no way amount to his true ‘essence’.
 
If capturing the ‘essence’ remains elusive to the methodology of the portraitist, so it also remains to that of Tussauds. The wax models seek to portray a ‘definitive’ version of the sitter, and as such the most generic, neutral position of the features is sought, rather than one specific expression. This method not only fails to capture any segment of the character, but effectively subverts the whole notion of the portrait in itself . 
 
The intention of Tussauds is akin to that of developing robotics and 3D animation; to achieve the most lifelike form possible. The agenda behind the choice of depictions additionally demands it. Marie Tussaud herself in the 1770s chose to model Voltaire, Jean-Jaques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin; deliberately well known characters so as to generate interest in her exhibit with the public. So the method continues, with recent additions including such popular icons as Lady Gaga and Taylor Lautner of the Twilight film series. However, as mass media has over this time expanded to such omniscient proportions, the need for accuracy of depiction has become more essential than ever with a public already well familiar with the physical appearance of their favourite celebrities. Why should today’s public pay an entrance fee to view a generic, vacant version of a person when they can glean a more rounded impression of their character from the hundreds of photographs showing a huge degree of character traits freely at the touch of the button online? This is where the factor of viewer participation plays a defining role, pushing the wax depictions well into the arena of the Uncanny Valley.
 
Due to the rise of freely available imagery, the appeal for Tussauds has shifted from simply facilitating the public to view an  accurate image of famous people, to the now pivotal factor of the physical presence (by proxy) of the famous, with which the viewer can interact.  The experience a viewer has with a two dimensional portrait is one of distinct separation; because the image shows only one expression, one time, location and situation, the viewer is well aware of its fictional, ‘unreal’ status. One is gazing upon a tiny specific segment in time. The ‘eternal’ nature of the Tussaud model, due to its generic, non-expression, coupled with its three dimensional realness, presents a far more immersive experience for the viewer, setting the ground for him to impress his own psyche onto it. His memory of the experience is coloured by his own physical relationship to it; he remembers comparing his height, and how he positioned himself in relation to it when he had his photo taken for example. Unconsciously, his impression of the model is grounded to a significant degree on the knowledge and experience of his own physical form. Therefore the work of Tussauds inadvertently conjures the uneasy personal threat that Freud describes. To my mind it epitomises the definition of a ‘non portrait’.

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