I went along to The Tate and perhaps felt a bit worried about being the only photography student amongst a bunch of very impressive drawing and art students but I do love it at The Tate and I am also loving learning about art forms other than photography, and especially as I begin to see how I might tie in my interests and skills with work I do using a camera. I tentatively wonder what is possible but remember advice from Andrew C about not worrying about being self-indulgent (which I said I was) as that will only stop me from exploring and finding out what I might do. I guess for now, I feel that most of what I am doing is either highly derivative or over-processed and pretty crass or both. But every now and again I look at something I worked on and think it's going in the right direction. Seeing as much other work as I can and as wide a variety of work as possible I know is the answer, and allowing that work to influence and affect me. I wish I could see what it was I was aiming for - that might help, but I can't really, so all I can do it keep going the way I'm going and not worry to much about it, or worry about it later as advised.
Anyway, we spent time in the Structure and Clarity: Minimalism Gallery to begin with and then looked at the Louise Bourgeois exhibition including plates and accompanying parables from her book He Disappeared Into Complete Silence, drawings she did towards the end of her life called Works on Paper and finally a collection of red paintings she also did towards the end of her life.
I found it really interesting to hear about the different artists tutor Michelle Charles had known or worked with and she was a fascinating guide. Her evident interest and enthusiasm for the artists we looked made the visit even better than it might have been. I will discuss some of the people we looked at although there were several more.
Ellsworth Kelly; This was interesting for me because of the way in which the works interacted with the space and the walls. Beautiful shadows were created by the work so the gallery becomes part of the art. Michelle used the word expansive: the art does not simply stay within itself. It leads the eye up and out and across and makes the viewer work to take it in. When I think of photographs which are usually framed within a square or rectangle I am struck by the difference. Photographs are flat two dimensional representations of a world within a frame. The Ellsworth Kellys are not framed and continue to work beyond the confines of themselves. This art is about art and how it relates to the world in which it exists. I wonder if and how photography ever does this.
Hans Haake: The Condensation Cube was very compelling because inside a perspex cube there is some liquid which then creates condensation so in effect a little bit of life is going on inside there. The way the curator has placed the object looks like the cube is relating to and watching work by Jo Baer. I'm not sure if this is what the artist would have wanted or if it suggests too much to the viewers, or if that was just my own very personal and particular interpretation. The condensation reminded me of breath, of life. I enjoyed photographing this object. I love it when you are allowed to take photographs in a gallery as they offer great opportunities but I always feel somewhat like a thief, taking other people's art and trying to make something of my own with it - maybe that is the nature of photography, that it is a little bit like 'stealing' moments, trying to retain aspects of what we see and experience where ever those moments take place. I suspect there are some artists who would like that people 'keep' their work through photography and some that wouldn't at all.
Louise Bourgeois: We saw a lot of LB's work but He Disappeared into Complete Silence which was probably some of the oldest on show has probably made the biggest impression on me. I found this art highly relevant to the current section of TAOP. Here LB has compiled initially 9 but later 11 engravings and presented them in a bound book each (except the final two in the later editions) alongside a short parable which she wrote herself. I bought a book about this as I felt it would be a useful bit of inspiration for the narrative section of TAOP. However, I am of course slightly concerned that I am once again heading off into the wilderness and about to do something that maybe wasn't asked for or expected.
Depending on what you read the parables should not relate directly to the images. They are images that are open to interpretation, less so the parables although they too are strange and surreal at times. The words in them (for me anyway) give you much more direction and trigger ideas that seem familiar such as loss, motherhood, relationships, loneliness, anxiety. The images are more troubling because they are harder to pin down and seem like motifs from dreams, from childhood sensations. I read quite a disparaging review of LB in The Guardian and I cannot say whether that journalist has any validity in what he says but it seems to me that for someone to be able to tap into that level of unconscious creativity so effectively they must have a fairly impressive ability.
The book I bought is a collection of essays in relation to he He Disappeared into Complete Silence. In the introduction we are told by Laurie Cluitmans and Arnisa Zeqo who compiled the book that some art works are 'like an inexplicable love, which holds some kind of hidden power over us' and that this is how LB's book is for them. Her subjects are phobias and that she 'eschews the Freud-filled mystifications of classic surrealism in favour of devastating plainness.' (Perhaps this is what the journalist mentioned above finds so awkward to accept.) I found LB's work to be direct and frank about loneliness, female sexuality in all it's guises - i.e. from eroticism to the basic plain facts of reproduction. The writers also state that the book explores 'intimate alienation, simultaneously "being with" and "being apart" - LB's sense that her loneliness was not alleviated but worsened by being with others whom she could not relate to, and that is why in the end she surrounded herself with lost souls who became her family. I found it weird and wonderful that Melanie Klein and object relations are mentioned (I discuss this in A4): although there is some reluctance on their part to accept any Kleinien interpretation: 'we might now be in a position to free Bourgeois from autobiography and symbolism without allowing her to disappear completely into Kleinien part-objects".
I loved the suggestion that one of the parables, about a son who is loved to distraction but who does not want to be loved that way, who slams the door and doesn't come back could be how LB feels about her work. She finds it so painful to make and create her art, give birth to it in effect, nurture it into existence, only to have to let it go and be absorbed by the world who will understand it as it sees it and not how she intended.
I have not read all of the book yet but am learning about narratives that are open to understanding. I am thrilled by by these ideas but wish I were more educated and found some of the ideas less alien, less difficult to get my head round. It will take me time but I do feel inspired by what I have seen.
Finally there was also a room filled with red roughly-made paintings which were of breasts and childbirth and family. The red reminded me of menstruation and childbirth. There is so much about motherhood and nature and sexuality in LB's work and I can't help thinking, "Yay!" I have spent the last 12 years reading and trying to understand all I can about the nature of motherhood across all species, not only our own. And so there is a lot I feel able to take away from LBs work and hope it will inform some of mine. I have been contemplating using red as a colour for something - either my own work or something to do with TAOP Narrative and so it was extraordinary timely that I went to see this exhibition just now. So, even though I was the only photography student there and felt a little like I was intruding (I know I wasn't really, just a silly worry) I am very glad I went along and feel I will go again quite soon to look at LBs work.
Quotes from: He Disappeared Into Complete Silence, Rereading A Single Artwork by Louise Bougeois, De Hallen Haarlem/Onomatapee complied and edited by Laurie Cluitmans and Arnisa Zeqo, 2011
Some photographs from the exhibition
Showing posts with label Tate Modern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tate Modern. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Gallery Visit: Richard Hamilton, Tate Modern, 21st May 2014
I am interested in co-incidences and synchronicity: in how and why we project our inner world onto our outer world and the how we make sense of, or try to fathom, those two positions, as well as the interplay and tensions between our conscious and unconscious minds.
Is it a co-incidence that I keep going to
see work by people who work with the idea of montage, with collage or simply
cutting out and pasting shapes, physically and by placing different styles and
media together?
I did not notice the date when I set out on
the 21st of May. However, it
was in fact my late father’s birthday and he would very much have enjoyed
visiting the exhibition with me despite his painful feet and inability to stand
for very long.
I mention my father because his death seems
to have been the trigger for the beginning of my photographic odyssey. Shortly before he died he mentioned how much
he admired a photograph I took, and which was framed for me by my
ex-husband. The night he died, unbeknownst
to me at the time, I dreamed that that photograph was no longer on the wall and
in the dream the sense of its absence was overwhelmingly troubling to me. Utter nothingness where once there was something. The
next day I rang the police when I could not get hold of my father and they discovered
that he had died in quite strange circumstances less than 24 hours previously –
the night I had had my very powerful dream.
Photography, my father’s death and the new
direction I have taken in life are all in my mind connected.
What is more, Richard Hamilton’s work spans
from the late 40s to 2011. My father was
born in 1939 and died in 2011. Because Hamilton’s work can, I think, be read as
a ‘social documentary’ of those years, as a commentary on British preoccupations,
mood and changing attitudes, it seems intrinsically connected to the world in
which my father lived.
******
Although Hamilton is not primarily a
photographer, he was interested in and utilized photography in his work, not
only in preparatory work but also as a medium in itself. There are lots of photographic works in the
exhibition, which contains over 200 altogether, and also includes installation,
painting, print, film and sculpture. I
tend to focus on installation in this written work.
Hamilton was born in 1922 and died in
2011. He was English but more than any
other British artist, ‘associated with international colleagues’[1],
‘a champion of Marcel Duchamp in the post-war era, he befriended and
collaborated with American and European artists from Roy Lichtenstein to Dieter
Roth.’[2] Hamilton studied at Slade following a
succession of jobs in advertising, design and production after leaving school at
14.
I know virtually nothing about Pop Art (to
be honest I’m beginning to comprehend that I know virtually nothing at all and
have a growing awareness of a hideous sense of ignorance which with everything
I learn becomes grows greater and can’t possibly be overcome sufficiently in the
remaining 30, maybe 40 years if I’m lucky, that I have left – it’s annoying; my
fractured un-education is annoying.) Hamilton is, I have read, understood to be the
founding father of this movement – I think I might have assumed it was Warhol
but perhaps he is merely the most populist of the pop artists.
There is an enormous body of work in the
exhibition – it really is quite prolific - so I will discuss a small selection
of those that I found most interesting here:
Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different
and appealing? 1956,
which was a collage to be used in the catalogue representing an installation
called, The ‘fun house’, one of twelve
in the This is tomorrow exhibition
held at the Whitechapel gallery as part of a collective, referred to as ‘the
now infamous icon of Pop Art’[3](although I have struggled to discover why infamous), instantly reminded me of
Hoch’s work (again!) which I’d seen at the Whitechapel a few months ago.
The collage for me contains a great deal of
humour with its pastiche of Adam and Eve, and contains a number of contemporary
aspirational objects such as a vacuum cleaner, tape player, television, and a
tinned ham (I remember eating that!). I’m
not sure if the ham is meant to indicate what I see as the ‘ theatrical hamming’
physicality of the couple but if so, I can’t help reading a kind of ridicule of
all the very materialistic desires of modern ‘keeping-up-with the-Jones’
habits and sentimentalities.
“Like Hamilton’s exhibition strategy, the
image was complied from a tabulated list of image requirements…”[4]
which served to outline and determine a basic foundation for Pop Art itself:
Popular, Transient, Expendable, Low Cost, Mass Produced, Young, Witty, Sexy,
Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big Business.
Hamilton worked alongside artist, John
McHale and architect John Voelcker.
“Their installation consisted of an a-symmetrical, dramatically angled
structure, the ‘Fun house’, covered with an over-sized image of Marilyn Monroe
which, along with a large scale replica bottle of Guinness, mimicked the
monumental scale of city hoarding and cinema advertising, although an aesthetic
tension was set up between these mass –culture images and the mass-consumption
poster of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers hung
on the wall as a work of Art”[5].
I have to say when I first returned to
England, aged 16 (having been born in the UK but emigrated to South Africa aged 6 weeks) I was struck by the visual bombardment of
advertising in London. It had a definite
impact on me and contributed to the sense of cultural shock I experienced for
some years. Although I returned in the 80s and not in the 50s, that
cultural trend probably began with such alacrity three decades earlier and Hamilton and his
collaborators’ commentary on it resonates profoundly with me.
I am also struck by the irony of the title,
which in retrospect becomes a joke – This
is in fact yesteryear but also a comment on the future impact of
materialism.
There was a jukebox playing music from the era which was incredibly evocative. I
do think that sound-scapes and music in a gallery is an immensely powerful means
of communicating and creating a mood. It
harks back to my experience in theatre and I’m tentatively and perhaps a little bashfully drawn to the idea of creating art that is almost a 'production' of sorts.
I know this is not right for all art and think often such a collage of
aural, visual, and spatial sensations is likely to be overwhelming and
undermining of the individual aspects in many cases – but for me I think it
might be something to think about as my appreciation of what is possible
grows.
The Critics Laugh, 1968 is not covered in the catalogue book a great deal which means I must
try to make sense of it alone. The work
encompasses several photographs, actual items, design drawings and and an
advertisement and it really struck a chord with me. Hamilton’s work is intrinsically tied up in
modern design and engineering. He seemed
obsessively interested in the detail of design and this preoccupation runs
throughout the exhibition. I suppose
what stood out for me with this work in particular is the humour and Surrealist
nature of it. The utterly ridiculous
fake set of false teeth (a memento his son bought back from a seaside holiday)
is attached to the handle of a Braun toothbrush. Hamilton always admired Braun and did a lot
of related work around the design of Braun items. To me Braun has always been around in the background
of existence I suppose but I’ve only ever seen it as a logo on functional and
quotidian objects in the home. Hamilton
sees the beauty of design but by attaching it to the teeth creates an hilarious
and bizarre object that has some sort of feedback loop on itself – a toothbrush
that shakes and rattles a set of false teeth.
There is something about the ridiculousness of human sexuality here
which made me laugh out loud when I watched the very funny advert, a spoof of
overtly sexualized advertising which has been so prominent in our media. I thought this was one of the highlights of
the whole exhibition but perhaps that is because I have an infantile sense of
humour. I do, however, like the Surrealism – sex, death, inner worlds colliding in fantasy and dreams with
outer worlds. And humour is immensely
powerful.
Treatment Rooms 1984
is another installation but one that is very different in tone and temperament
to the one discussed earlier. Although there is an innate criticism about
commercialism and materialism in This is
tomorrow, there is also a sense of optimism and hope. This is utterly gone by the time Hamilton
created Treatment Room for the Arts
Council Group exhibition titled Four Rooms
in 1984. There is an Orwellian sense of
despair and oppression in the austere, unhappy rooms. Hamilton “found the spirit of the 80s to be
one of contrasting ‘depression’, and determined his room would be ‘inspired by
the bleak, disinterested, seedily clinical style of the establishment
institution”[6].
In one of the rooms there is a hospital
bed/table and a less than comfortable looking blanket strewn upon it, just
underneath a TV monitor, which plays silent footage of one of Margaret Thatcher’s
Conservative Political party Broadcasts.
‘The installation dealt with the workings of power through surveillance (the
monitor reminding the viewer of CCTV cameras in Public spaces) and
indoctrination (the patient cured by the image of the leader”[7]. What I am struck by is the foretelling and warning
about the growth of mass surveillance, and the critique of what that might do
to individuals in society, possibly robbing them of something precious and
fundamental to life. Whilst the
accompanying literature sardonically talks of indoctrination ‘healing’ the patient I of course read the image as one where the patient is in fact killed off – empty
hospitable beds with crumpled bedding seem symbolic of someone having been
removed. Nothingness where once there
was something.
I wonder what my father would have made of
this installation – an avid Thatcher supporter and defender.
Finally, I was struck by Lobby,
1988, another installation (seems I like such
things) which is a work inspired by a postcard Hamilton owned of the German
hotel lobby. It is a room: at the back
of the room covering the entire wall is a painting of the postcard, containing a
pillar, which is covered floor to ceiling in mirror. Then the lobby is recreated in actuality in
the room, a pillar covered from floor to ceiling in mirror. A set of stairs in the postcard is also there,
although in the real room you’re standing in, the stairs of course lead
nowhere. Dotted about the room are
smaller paintings of the lobby plus drawings.
The carpet in the painting is on the floor of the actual recreated
lobby.
Even though the sense created by Lobby is
one of loneliness, isolation, disorientation and detachment I found it a
magical work. You are able to step into
and walk around the artwork and it reminded me of Broadway Danny Rose, a Woody Allen film where
one of the characters steps out of the film – reality and fantasy merge. Here the same thing happens only the other
way round, and the fantasy is a pretty miserable one at that. The mirror maintains a sense of never-ending
blurring between the two dimensions and this blurring is something that
interests me a great deal. I was really
quite over-awed by this particular work.
I must end otherwise this may be the
longest Gallery Visit write up ever, but wanted to say there were so many works
which I have not had time to mention here which I found interesting and
compelling. I am not sure what my father
would have made of Hamilton’s view of the world – perhaps too left wing and
bleak for him, a bleak, despite his profession as a comic, but right wing individual. He would have certainly appreciated the
intellect, Hamilton’s immense knowledge and broad use of
media. While some of the work did not
immediately draw me in, there was much that did, and I have found his use of so many
different styles and media inspirational and fantastic to see.
I think there was so much unconscious ‘stuff’
about my decision to visit the Tate on the 21st, and I think it will
take me a while to think about and make sense of it. But I am very pleased I went because I sense I
am beginning to appreciate just how much of an impact art can have, and in a
way that I haven’t done before.
Hamilton’s relationship with Surrealism and
then pop art suggest to me that he was dealing with the tension between our inner
and outer worlds, connections, projections and the various levels of reality we
humans must contend with as we navigate through life both as individuals and in
terms of the state. I think I will be
considering some of what I picked up on during this visit for a good while to
come.
[1] Richard Hamilton, 2014 Tate Modern exhibition accompanying handout
– Introduction.
[2] Richard Hamilton, 2014 Tate Modern exhibition accompanying handout
– Introduction.
[3] Page 73, Richard Hamilton catalogue, Published by Tate Modern
Publishing, 2014 originated by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and TF
Editores, Madrid.
[4] Page 73, Richard Hamilton catalogue, Published by Tate Modern
Publishing, 2014 originated by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and TF
Editores, Madrid.
[5] Page 73, Richard Hamilton catalogue, Published by Tate Modern
Publishing, 2014 originated by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and TF
Editores, Madrid.
[6] Richard Hamilton, 2014 Tate Modern exhibition accompanying handout
– Room 12.
[7] Richard Hamilton, 2014 Tate Modern exhibition accompanying handout
– Room 12.
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Gallery visit: Matisse The Cut-Outs 14th May 2014, Tate Modern
I am learning a great deal about art the
moment and I don’t think there is enough time in the day to take it all in
(given that I nearly fell asleep this evening doing bedtime for my youngest
child, it must be true that there really aren’t enough hours!) Matisse in particular is a huge subject just
by himself and I am currently reading a book about him, but since I should try
to keep up with these entries and am behind a little, I will give a very brief
account of his life before discussing my response to the exhibition.
Matisse was born in 1869 and died in
1954. His life covers an incredibly
active and extraordinary time from our history.
He was born at what seems to be the beginning of modern life, before all
the inventions that propelled human existence into something quite unlike
anything that has gone before; cars, planes, trains, industrialization and
modernism[1]. The changes when looked back at from the
present seemed to have happened so speedily and I have often wondered what it
must have been like for people to live through all these changes, not to
mention the extreme violence and political upheaval, two world wars,
revolutions, nation and empire building as well as the dismantling that
occurred.
Matisse’s work “Open Window was
exhibited at the landmark Salon d'automne of 1905, where Matisse and other
fauve painters were greeted with critical skepticism and public disdain. The
"fauve" (savage beast) label itself originated in the art critic
Louis Vauxcelles' newspaper review of the exhibition.”[2] Matisse’s work seemed to blatantly defy
tradition and culturally excepted norms in art, and was instead shockingly
primitive in form with huge brush strokes and broad colours. However be became on the of the grand names
of Modernism and produced an enormous body of work continuing to paint, draw
and sculpt throughout all the social upheaval that happened during the first
half of last century.
Thirteen years before the end of Matisse’s
life he nearly died but survived although in great pain, often consigned to a
wheel chair and as he described ‘mutilated’[3]. During this time and despite his ongoing
health problems Matisse invented a new way of working. He no longer painted but instead began to cut
out coloured shapes with a huge pair of tailor’s scissors. With the help of assistants he pinned these
shapes to the walls around him and created art that was vibrant, significantly
more primitive than his earlier work and also difficult for contemporaries to accept. In fact there were those that thought he’d
gone quite mad, cutting bits of paper out.
He understood that the world would not appreciate and understand this
work until much later: ‘the creators of a new language are always 50 years
ahead of their time’[4]. The new language he created went on to be
used in models for stained glass windows, theatre and book designs and an
entire church including liturgical vestments.
I am not surprised that people found the
work difficult to understand. It is not
easy work in my mind and the departure from any notions of ‘classical’ painting
must have made it hard to comprehend as ‘art’ when you consider the context in
which it was first produced. Nowadays we
are used to seeing beds with sheets crumpled up and stuffed sharks and dots and
blurry photographs described as art, so we are probably less hindered by the
classical conditioning people may have been in the 40s and 50s. However, even so, I did not respond to the
exhibition as I did others I have recently been to.
I can appreciate the primitive colours and
patterns, the playfulness and intensity, the bravery of how broad, bold and
ambitious the cut-outs are, to a sense of creativity that is utterly without
classical conditioning, that says, ‘here, I am’ so stridently. I see that the patterns he created are
extraordinarily rhythmical and alive, containing a sense of explosiveness,
which is wonderful to be surrounded by.
But the art is so very primal that I actually find it quite difficult to
access. Maybe I am 50 years behind my
time!
I am, however, immensely grateful to the
universe for a bizarre co-incidence, where I have attended several consecutive
visits to exhibitions that concentrate on cutting and pasting, or pinning in
Matisse’s case, as it has demonstrated to me that these artists, Hoch, Matisse,
William S Burroughs and most recently Richard Hamilton were, in much of their
work, having fun. I do not mean the work
was not serious for I truly believe it was, and that with the work came pain
and distress and difficulty.
Nevertheless the artists I have looked at this year have repeatedly
shown me that artistic activity can be made with whatever medium you choose,
provided you commit, are dedicated to it, to fulfilling the expressiveness of
what you’re exploring. Does any of that
make sense? I’m just beginning to see
the possibilities and perhaps am still forming the words to explain what I am
becoming aware of.
I should also say that my companion at the
Matisse exhibit, my 2-year-old son, evidently had a much more visceral, uncomplicated
response to the cut-outs than me. He
told me towards the end that he was scared, the paintings were scary and that
he wanted to go home. This surprised me
but they are really big and bright and intense and so I can begin to see what
he was saying. It’s helpful having an
unadulterated, unconditioned, uncomplicated small person with you sometimes.
Some links:
[1] http://www.henri-matisse.net/artofmatisse.html
[2] http://www.henri-matisse.net/artofmatisse.html
[3] Page 5, Henri Matisse, A Second Life, Alastair Sooke, Penguin, 2014
[4] Page 8 Henri Matisse, A Second Life, Alastair Sooke, Penguin, 2014
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