"People see the artist as a medium possessed
by a certain force that he cannot control
or reason about.......I am fully aware of
what I am doing".
JACOB EPSTEIN
GAUGUIN: MAKER OF MYTH
My year began with a visit to the Tate Modern with my friend Ruth (yes that's two Ruths together, quite a rarity). We started at the Tate Gallery with the Paul Gaugin exhibition.
Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist who travelled globally. He was particularly drawn to Tahiti where he sought local culture, tropical scenery and primitive art. He likened himself to Christ, feeling misunderstood and often depicted himself as a demon or mythical character in his paintings.
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| Exhibition poster |
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| 'Nevermore' PAUL GAUGUIN 1897 |
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| Self-portrait PAUL GAUGUIN 1893-4 |
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| 'Two Tahitian Women' 1899 |
AI WEIWEI'S 'SUNFLOWER SEEDS'
We then visited the Turbine Hall where Ai Weiwei's 'Sunflowers Seeds' were 'scattered'. 100 million individually, hand-painted ceramic seeds. It was an incredible sight. We were so disappointed and frustrated that we were not allowed to walk over them or even touch them, as Ai Weiwei had intended. The Tate gallery made the decision not to permit this because of the potential problems with 'ceramic dust'...
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| Ai Weiwei and his sunflower seeds. |
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| Just touching... |
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| 100 million. All hand-painted... |
Ai Weiwei was imprisoned by the Chinese government in April 2011, a total shock to the rest of the world and although he has since been released, he is prohibited from leaving Beijing at present...
THE GLASGOW BOYS: PIONEERING PAINTERS 1880-1900
The 'Glasgow Boys' were Scottish icons. A group of men working in the city of Glasgow who were passionate about 'naturalism' and 'realism' and broke away from the traditional art establishment of Edinburgh.
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| The 'Glasgow Boys' Exhibition poster. |
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| 'To Pastures New' JAMES GUTHRIE 1882-83 |
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| This was my favourite painting but it was tiny... 'Japanese Lady with a Fan' GEORGE HENRY 1894 |
RADICAL BLOOMSBURY:
THE ART OF DUNCAN GRANT AND VANESSA BELL 1905-25
In June, Mandy and I meet up in Brighton for an exhibition of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell's work. Duncan and Vanessa were members of the 'Bloomsbury Group'. The radical group consisted of artists, philosophers, writers and intellectuals who lived, worked and studied together. The collection illustrated how they were influenced by what was going on in Europe (Post-Impressionism) and led the way to modernising British art. Their art is hugely familiar to both of us but we hadn't seen a number of paintings that were on show.
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| The sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. |
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| My favourite painting. 'A Room With a View' DUNCAN GRANT 1919 |
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| 'Summer Camp' VANESSA BELL 1913 |
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| 'Vanessa Bell' DUNCAN GRANT 1916-7 |
DEGAS AND THE BALLET: PICTURING MOVEMENT
The next exhibition 'Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement' I was able to view at the RA friends' preview with Chantelle. The paintings were prolific, exquisite and breathtaking and the photographs a revelation.
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| The Royal Academy with exhibition poster. |
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| 'La Danse Grecque' EDGAR DEGAR 1895-90 |
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| 'Two Dancers on the Stage' EDGAR DEGAS 1874 |
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| 'The Rehearsal' EDGAR DEGAS 1874 |
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| 'The Dance Lesson' EDGAR DEGAS 1879 |
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| 'The Ballet Rehearsal' 1878 and 'Ballet Rehearsal' 1873. EDGAR DEGAS |
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| 'Dancer, Study for L'Attente' 1882, 'Three Studies of a Dancer in Fourth Position' 1878-81 'The Studio of a Dancer' 1879 EDGAR DEGAS |
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| photograph taken by Edgar Degas taken 1895-6 I thought that this photograph was incredibly beautiful... |
This stunning exhibition finished with a few very poignant and moving seconds of an unauthorised silent film, showing an elderly Degas,with a long white beard, walking through a Parisian street.
TOULOUSE LAUTREC AND JANE AVRIL: BEYOND THE MOULIN ROUGE
The collection of paintings brought together here illustrated how close the friendship was between Jane Avril and Henri De Toulouse Lautrec. Jane was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge reknowned for her 'crazy dancing' and was painted many times by Lautrec before he tragically died at the age of 37 years. He managed to cram a huge number of paintings into a very short time period.
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| 'Le Divan Japonais' HENRI DE TOULOUSE LAUTREC |
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| 'Jane Avril au Jardin de Paris' HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 1893 |
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| 'Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge' HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 1892 Here, Lautrec shows a different tender side to the solitary dancer. |
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| 'At the Moulin Rouge' HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 1892-5 |
The final exhibition of my 50th year was the David Hockney 'A Bigger Picture' shown at the Royal Academy in London. Chantelle and I viewed the paintings at a friends' of the RA preview.
David Hockney had to fill some huge spaces, so he painted huge canvases specifically for the exhibition. I didn't like all of his work and found some of the huge paintings quite garish with Rolf Harrisesque brushwork. To me there was no comparison with Monet's waterlillies...
I loved his early 'Nichols Canyon' and the fecund smaller oils and water colours of East Yorkshire. Particularly the tunnels, logs and hawthorn series. The large Ipad drawings blew me away, having never seen any artwork quite like this before.
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| The exhibition 'The Bigger Picture' |
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| I loved this painting with Fauve colours 'Nichols Canyon' DAVID HOCKNEY 1980 |
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| 'The Road Across the Wolds' DAVID HOCKNEY 1997 Perhaps, better viewed wearing sunglasses... |
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| 'The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire' (Ipad drawing) DAVID HOCKNEY 2011 |
"Everyone wants to understand art.
Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird?
why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us,
without trying to understand them?
If only they would realise above all that an artist works of necessity,
that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world,
and that no more importance should be attached to him,
than to plenty of other things which please us in the world,
though we can't explain them;
people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
PABLO PICASSO
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