Will Gompertz has a London-Tube-style map of movements in modern art, here. I don’t agree with all his expressed or implied linkages, and he evades the challenge of meaningfully classifying most current art by simply calling it “Art Now”, but the chart does provide a good starting-point for reflection and discussion.
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
Page 4 of 7
Exhibitions concat
A list, sometimes annotated, of various exhibitions and installations I have seen and wish to remember:
- Raphael. National Gallery London, June & July 2022.
- Women War Photographers. Musee de la Liberation de Paris, France, April 2022.
- Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire. National Gallery London, September 2018.
Gallery concat
For the record, a listing of fine art galleries and museums I have visited (AFAIR), in alpha order:
- 21er Haus, Vienna Austria
- Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen Scotland UK
- Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin Germany
- Altes Museum, Berlin Germany
- Altonaer Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Altona, Hamburg Germany
- American Folk Art Museum, New York City NY USA
- Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Greece
- Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington VA USA
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL USA
- Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco CA USA
- Asia Society Museum, New York City NY USA
- Ateneum, Helsinki Finland
- Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney Australia
- Australian War Memorial, Canberra Australia
- Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham UK
- Barbican Gallery, London UK
- Belvedere Museums, Vienna Austria
- Bletchley Park Museum, Bletchley UK
- Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool UK
- Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Bolton UK
- Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands
- BOZAR – Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels Belgium
- Bribie Island Seaside Museum, Bribie Island, Moreton Bay, Queensland Australia
- British Museum, London UK
- Bury Art Museum, Bury Lancashire UK
- Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris France
- Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris France
- Colegio del Patriarca, Valencia Spain
- Communist History Museum, Moscow RF
- Coptic Museum, Cairo Egypt
- Courtauld Gallery, London UK
- Cycladic Art Museum, Athens Greece
- Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, Paris France
- Dia: Beacon, Beacon NY USA
- The Drawing Center, New York City NY USA
- Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof, Kreuzberg, Berlin Germany
- Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra Australia
- Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London UK
- Ethnological Museum of Berlin, Dahlem, Berlin Germany
- Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge UK
- Frank Lloyd Wright Gallery, Chicago IL USA
- The Frick Collection, New York, USA
- Frida Kahlo House, Mexico DF, Mexico
- Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona Catalonia Spain
- Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris France
- Galleria Borghese, Rome Italy
- Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano (GAM), Milan Italy
- Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome Italy
- Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Australia
- Gallery Seomi, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- Gardiner Museum of Ceramics, Toronto Canada
- Gemaldegalerie, Berlin Germany
- Glypotek Museum, Copenhagen Denmark
- Guggenheim Museum, New York City NY USA
- Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich Switzerland
- Hayward Gallery, London UK
- Highgate Cemetary, London UK
- Hofburg Palace, Vienna Austria
- Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong PRC
- Hortamuseum, Victor Horta House, Brussels Belgium
- Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Sydney Australia
- Imperial War Museum, Duxford UK
- Imperial War Museum, London UK
- ING Art Centre, Place Royale, Brussels Belgium
- Insadong-gil galleries, Seoul Republic of Korea
- International Slavery Museum, Liverpool UK
- Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Eire
- Izumo-taisha Shinto Shrine, Izumo-shi, Shimani Prefecture, Japan
- Jewish Museum, Prague Czech Republic
- Kiasma – Museum for Contemporary Art, Helsinki Finland
- Kronborg Castle, Helsingor Denmark
- Kunsten – Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg Denmark
- Kunsthalle Hamburg und Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg Germany
- KunstHausWien, Vienna Austria
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Austria
- Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight, Wirral UK
- Lafcadio Hearn House, Matsue, Shimani Prefecture, Japan
- Lancaster City Museum, Lancaster Lancashire UK
- Landesmuseum, Zurich Switzerland
- Leopold Museum, Vienna Austria
- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek Denmark
- Luton Hoo, Luton Bedfordshire UK
- Manchester City Gallery, Manchester UK
- Marc Chagall National Museum, Nice France
- Martin Gropius Bau, Kreuzberg, Berlin Germany
- Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA), North Adams, MA USA
- Matthew Flinders Art Gallery, Bribie Island Community Arts Centre, Bribie Island, Qld, Australia
- Mauritshuis, Den Haag, The Netherlands
- Mayakovsky House, Moscow RF
- Memento Communist Sculpture Park, Budapest Hungary
- Mémorial de la France combattante, Mont Valérien, Suresnes, Paris France
- Mendelssohn Gesellschaft, Berlin Germany
- Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool UK
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City NY USA
- Modern Art Oxford Gallery, Oxford UK
- Moravian Museum of Bethlehem, Bethlehem PA USA
- Musée Bourdelle de Paris, Paris France
- Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris France
- Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris France
- Musée Libération Leclerc Moulin, Paris France
- Musée du Louvre, Paris France
- Musée Matisse, Nice France
- Musée national de la Marine, Trocadero, Paris, France
- Musée national Picasso, Paris France
- Musei Vaticani, The Vatican
- Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon Portugal
- Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo), Bologna Italy
- Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico DF Mexico
- Museo de Bellas Arts de Valencia, Valencia Spain
- Museo di Strumenti Musicali dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome Italy
- Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona Catalonia Spain
- Museum Bahara – National Maritime Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta Indonesia
- Museum of Asian Art, Berlin Germany
- Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra Australia
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL USA
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Australia
- Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo Egypt
- Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo Egypt
- Museum of Modern Art, New York City NY USA
- Museum of Popular Musical Instruments, Athens Greece
- Museum of Portuguese Music, Casa Verdades de Faria, Monte Estoril Portugal
- Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester UK
- Museum Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta Indonesia
- Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels Belgium
- Musikinstrumenten Museum Berlin Germany
- National Archeological Museum, Athens Greece
- National Computer Museum of Great Britain, Bletchley UK
- National Gallery, London UK
- National Gallery of Art, Washington DC USA
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Australia
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Australia
- National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare Zimbabwe
- National Jewish Museum, Budapest Hungary
- National Maritime Museum, Greenwich UK
- National Museum of Australia, Canberra Australia
- National Palace Museum, Taipei Taiwan RoC
- Neues Museum, Berlin Germany
- New Italy Museum, nr. Woodburn NSW Australia
- Palace Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing PRC
- Palais des Beaux-Arts (Bozar), Brussels Belgium
- Pergamon Museum, Berlin Germany DDR
- Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy
- Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Australia
- Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow RF
- Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Australia
- Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre, Canberra Australia
- Rose Seidler House, Wahroonga, Sydney Australia
- Royal Academy of Arts, London UK
- Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon Aerodrome, London UK
- Saatchi Gallery, London UK
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA USA
- Science Museum, London UK
- Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Scotland UK
- Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA USA
- Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC USA
- Sonoma Gallery of Shona Sculpture, Sonoma CA USA
- State Historical Museum, Moscow RF
- State Library of New South Wales, Sydney Australia
- Sudley House Gallery, Liverpool UK
- Tate Britain, London UK
- Tate Liverpool, Liverpool UK
- Tate Modern, London UK
- Tenterfield School of Arts, Tenterfield NSW Australia
- Trotsky House, Mexico DF Mexico
- Unhyeongung – Unhyeon Palace, Jongno-gu, Seoul Republic of Korea
- Verulamium Museum, St. Albans UK
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London UK
- Vikingeskibs Museet, Roskilde Denmark
- Walker Gallery, Liverpool UK
- The Wallace Collection, London UK
- Whitechapel Gallery, London UK
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City NY USA
- Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester UK
- Wiener Secessionsgebäude, Vienna Austria
Why draw?
Why do we draw?
Here is a first list of reasons for drawing:
- To observe
- To record some real phenomenon, such as a scene or a person’s face
- To play
- To explore, to follow a line
- To think
- To capture some essence of an object being drawn
- To become one with the object being drawn
- To communicate something, for example, an emotion, a mental state, an idea, a thought, an inference, . . .
- To express some prior internal emotion or mental state
- To express some internal emotion or mental state concurrent with drawing, something that arises in the act of drawing
- To invoke some emotion in the drawing
- To provoke some emotion or mental state in the viewer of the drawing
- To inspire viewers to action, as, for example, in political posters or satirical cartoons
- To achieve some internal emotion or mental state by drawing – for instance, to seek to become calm, to seek to enter a trance, to seek to be in the moment
- To better know oneself
- To seek mastery of the skills and arts of drawing, to train oneself in these arts, to undertake a practice (in the Zen sense of that word)
- To pray
- To communicate with non-material (spirit) realms
- To achieve or to progress towards religious salvation
- To provide soteriological guidance to others, as Shitao and his Buddhist contemporaries believed they were doing in China of the early Qing Dynasty (See: Hay 2001).
- To pass the time.
More on drawing-as-thinking here. For comparison, some reflections on the purposes of music here, and on music as thought here.
References:
Jonathan Hay [2001]: Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China. New York: Cambridge University Press, Research Monograph Series.
Visual Reasoning
Robin Boyd called the prevailing post-war urban style of anglo-saxon architecture “Featurism”, with each building shouting to passers-by, “Me! Me! Look at Me!”. Such self-promotion contrasts markedly with the dialectical approach of continental European architecture, where buildings engage in dialogue with the buildings and spaces around them. A nice example of the latter can be found in Liverpool, UK.
The Foundation Building is a modern, glass-fronted office building between the Metropolitan (Catholic) Cathedral in Liverpool and the University of Liverpool. Since its private-sector construction in 2006, it has been occupied by the senior administration of the University.
Upon first seeing it, I was intrigued by the 6 columns that navigate its semi-circular front. Why are there exactly 6 columns, and why are 4 of them equidistant, while the last 2 (shown here on the right of the photo) are much closer together? Such design decisions are rarely arbitrary; either there are engineering reasons for them or they indicate some great architectural subtlety. In this case, it the latter reason.
For, just across the street is the red-brick Mountford Hall, dating from 1911, and now part of the University of Liverpool’s Guild of Students.
The street facade of this building has a semi-circular first-floor balcony, supported by 4 equidistant columns, and a ceremonial front door, supported by 2 columns much closer together. The door is on the left in this photo, directly opposite the 2 closer columns on the Foundation Building.
I note here the architectural tip of the hat by the designer of the Foundation Building, and thank him or her for this pleasing subtlety.
Untitled (Helsinki 2003)
Contemporary Chinese ceramics: Liu JianHua
The image shows Container Series (2009), a ceramic installation by contemporary Chinese artist Liu JianHua, recently acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. From the description of the work by the AGNSW:
In this beautiful celadon work ‘Container Series’ 2009, Liu acknowledges the magnificent ceramic heritage of China by re-creating traditional ritual vessel shapes such as stem cups and ‘gu’ ( wine vessel), and placing them alongside more contemporary shapes to present an impressive installation of 37 pieces of varying size and shape. The pieces are randomly arranged, in contrast to the formal presentation of temple and imperial settings of the past. Arranged as an installation they are placed as on a blank canvas. Liu has used a celadon glaze, in emulation of the classic greenwares of the Song dynasty (960-1279). All the pieces look to be filled with a red liquid, but the ceramics are in fact hollow, with a red glaze on top of each piece giving the illusion of liquid. Like the celadon, the red is another classic of the Chinese ceramic repertoire, traditionally known as ‘sang de boeuf’ or oxblood (‘langyao hong’). The way the artist has used the two colours to dramatically contrasting effect is innovative and effective. The red colour evokes blood, and the work may be a homage to those whose blood has been spilt in the pursuit of specific goals. Each piece is handmade and thrown on a wheel. They were glazed first with the celadon then the red ‘langyao hong’ glaze, after which they were fired only once in a kiln at about 1342 degrees centigrade. Most parts were made in varying numbers of editions.
Eugene Tan has noted of Liu’s work that it, ‘reflects the complex ontological relation between the production of consumer goods in China and the international art system, thereby also reflecting the recent, rapid growth of the Chinese contemporary art market.’ (Tan, undated) As such, Liu’s work makes allusions to the present situation in China both culturally and economically.”
[Note: The commentary by Eugene Tan is dated 2009-07-02 on the web-page linked to here.]
A description of another installation of this artist can be found here.
Drawing as thinking, part 2
I have posted recently on drawing, particularly on drawing as a form of thinking (here, here and here). I have now just read Patricia Cain’s superb new book on this topic, Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner. The author is an artist, and the book is based on her PhD thesis. She set out to understand the thinking processes used by two drawing artists, by copying their drawings. The result is a fascinating and deeply intelligent reflection on the nature of the cognitive processes (aka thinking) that take place when drawing. By copying the drawings of others, and particularly by copying their precise methods and movements, Dr Cain re-enacted their thinking. It is not for nothing that drawing has long been taught by having students copy the works of their teachers and masters – or that jazz musicians transcribe others’ solos, and students of musical composition re-figure the fugues of Bach. This is also why pure mathematicians work through famous or interesting proofs for theorems they know to be true, and why trainee software engineers reproduce the working code of others: re-enactment by the copier results in replication of the thinking of the original enactor.
In a previous post I remarked that a drawing of a tree is certainly not itself a tree, and not even a direct, two-dimensional representation of a tree, but a two-dimensional hand-processed manifestation of a visually-processed mental manifestation of a tree. Indeed, perhaps not even always this: A drawing of a tree is in fact a two-dimensional representation of the process of manifesting through hand-drawing a mental representation of a tree.
After reading Cain’s book, I realize that one could represent the process of representational drawing as a sequence of transformations, from real object, through to output image (“the drawing”), as follows (click on the image to enlarge it):
It is important to realize that the entities represented by the six boxes here are of different types. Entity #1 is some object or scene in the real physical world, and entity #6 is a drawing in the real physical world. Entities #2 and #3 are mental representations (or models) of things in the real physical world, internal to the mind of the artist. Both these are abstractions; for example, the visual model of the artist of the object may emphasize some aspects and not others, and the intended drawing may do the same. The artist may see the colours of the object, but draw only in black and white, for instance.
Entity #4 is a program, a collection of representations of atomic hand movements, which movements undertaken correctly and in the intended order, are expected to yield entity #6, the resulting drawing. Entity #4 is called a plan in Artificial Intelligence, a major part of which is concerned with the automated generation and execution of such programs. Entity #5 is a label given to the process of actually executing the plan of #4, in other words, doing the drawing.
Of course, this model is itself a simplified idealization of the transformations involved. Drawing is almost never a linear process, and the partially-realized drawings in #6 serve as continuing feedback to the artist to modify each of the other components, from #2 onwards.
References:
Patricia Cain [2010]: Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner. Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Poem: Orchids
Shi Tao (c. 1642-1707) was an artist, poet and scholar born into a high aristocratic family during the last days of the Ming Dynasty. After the overthrow of the Ming in 1644 and the establishment of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Shi Tao was raised and lived initially as a Buddhist monk. This poem is #4 from an illustrated album of 12 poems and paintings, 6 landscapes and 6 flowers, called Returning Home, published in 1695. The brush styles of the calligraphy and the paintings match the mood of the respective poems in a superb fusion of text, image and idea. Orchids are associated with “virtuous gentlemen” in Chinese literature, and with the friendship between them. The last lines of the poem allude to the difficult political times in which the poem was written. Clicking on the image will reveal the brambles Shi Tao has placed amidst the orchids.
Orchids
Words from a sympathetic heart
Are as fragrant as orchids;
Like orchids in feeling,
They are agreeable and always joyous;
You should wear these orchids
To protect yourself from the spring chill;
When the spring winds are cold,
Who can say you are safe?
Reference:
Wen Fong [1976]: Returning Home. Tao-Chi’s Album of Landscapes and Flowers. New York, NY, USA: George Braziller. The translation is due to Wen Fong.
Documenta IX
The first documenta I attended was documenta IX, in 1992. Only two artworks there moved me: a minimalist piece by Jean-Pierre Bertrand, and a work of conceptual tropicalia by Cildo Meireles.
Jean-Pierre Bertrand (1937-, France) presented a wide rectangle hung on the wall, divided into 10 narrow vertical panels. Each panel was filled with organic materials mixed together and cooked (honey, fruit juice, cooking-salt solution) to make a smooth paste, which he then glazed. The panels were of two different colours: reading from the left, panels 1 and 9 were red, the others off-white. They shone quietly on the wall, their simplicity and timeless calm an antidote to the breathless featurism of the rest of documenta, a thousand artworks each shouting “Me! Me! Look at Me!”.
A later work by Bertrand, Bright yellow green no. 1, was acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW, described here. As with many post-war artists and composers, his art is profoundly concerned with the materiality of the medium he uses, the actual and specific physical attributes of the oils and paints, and the ways in which these attributes influence the visual image they are part of. This concern by visual artists goes back at least to Turner.
Cildo Meireles (1948-, Brazil) fitted a square room with 2000 loudly ticking clocks on the walls, all set to different times, and hung 7600 yellow folding tape measures from the ceiling. To walk through the room, one had to push through the tapes, unable to see more than a step or two in front at any time. Nothing so evoked a tropical jungle as this installation: unable to see much, having to push vines out of the way, and assaulted by an insect cacophony.
documenta 13 will be held in 2012, details here.