At this time of year, stay away from the big galleries and swerve round to the smaller spaces. London pre-Christmas is crazy, crackers!
The importance of seeing Art up close and personal cannot be overestimated. Thinking you know or understand Art, its language, its subtlety, its nuance, from studying it on the Internet is impossible. From Turner to the Wilton Diptych is the Tate to the National Gallery, and all the van Goghs in the universe; you might know every Monet until you stand before them to be judged; you cannot speak the language.
If Art is about anything, it’s about feeling, and that sings off canvases. In a way, this is what Warhol’s Factory was against, its originality, but with it sounded the key that created its own simultaneously. The lack of its brushstrokes is cold, simple factory repetition, as feeling whether you want or like it is up to you.
So when I saw Govinda Sah’s Images sent to me via an e-mail invite I wasn’t too bothered yeah whatever but I wanted to go back to the October gallery that was part of my misspent youth William barras the beat poets Fran landesman Michael horvitz etc I couldn’t remember where it was exactly except for the doorway I remembered that in the vast main room but what I wasn’t prepared for was the paintings sauls massive all engulfing cosmos and molecules simultaneously the dreaming inside the swell of their magnitude an out of body experience that reduces you to an aunt of an Organism growing within amne biotic fluid.
Staying close to them and beginning to scrutinise the detail, you imagine you’re looking through a microscope; you pull and push out simultaneously, floating in the universe, Ben, like Captain Nemo at the bottom of the ocean, fast and tiny, minuscule, and enormous. I don’t know a computer game that does this successfully. Still, I’m sure they’re working on one, yet this happens in songs, paintings, through the use of colour and the movement of paint, we are manipulated as viewers.
I could stare at these for hours, these Nepalese wonders that contradict their images. See and tell me what you find within them.
Jane England & Co. is showing From the Slade to Surrealism – a tale of two toffs privileged enough not to really worry about earning a living but surviving two world wars after meeting at The Slade in 1913.
The story is a Netflix costume drama waiting to happen: how they marry, get into Surrealism, and hang out with the art gang of Wadsworth Nash and Hillier before John Bigge gets to be part of the fabulous International Surrealist show in London in 1936. No matter that she won all the prizes at the Slade, it is, of course, he who gets collected by the major institutions, you know the story… Ruth is busy with the kiddies; there is no time for painting. By the time the second war breaks out, they are living in Portugal, and he meets a pretty Czech girl and absconds, leaving Ruth with the kids and a grandchild. She manages to get them back to Blighty, but thanks to John, he’s awarded a medal and then inherits a baronetcy the way you do. I knew none of this before entering the gallery, other than husband and wife, and all I knew was that I was invariable, being drawn to the paintings signed by Ruth, call me psychic, and he strangely surreal and sexual fruit and veg reminded me of Ithell Colquhoun, not quite as oblique, but something stirs amongst the vegetation. Considered vivid small paintings, yes.
Apparently, no one in my family knew she painted. She died in the early 60s. My husband went on for another 10 years, not bad, analytically balanced work, but it is clear who the natural colourist painter of sensitivity and balance is.
Painting is a mysterious art one person can veil this on a five by eight canvas also mysteriously the Art of hanging, Jane england’s is consummately hung not so The Boundary Gallery show which is a shame because I was drawn there by the title of the show At Vivienne Roberts Project – La Madeleine de Proust, which is such a good idea for a show, the transformative affect of the sensory, And yet I keep thinking of a few pieces Fiona G Roberts stands out amongst the confusion, for me it’s like going into a bookstore and seeing nothing is in the correct alphabetical placing I want three hang the show bring clarity to the conversation the naturally exists between paintings yeah some stick out and yell put me in a corner I Vant to be alone! Remembrance of things past indeed!
I suppose this is because I was brought up speaking Art I feel most comfortable outside of home near books and Art where for others they can feel just awkward I take the language for granted like a bilingual person art is a language just like any foreign language you have to listen look and get used to the sound of it daily so that it has a chance to worm its way into you I wonder if the visual language is transmitted into our DNA but just as some kids have a natural propensity to speak other languages the visual one can be passed down two is that nature or nurture? Meanwhile, at the London museum in Docklands… By appointment only, curated by the Romany artist Corrina Eastwood. It is both history, Art and memory. All that we store in our bodies seeps through to our Art in Karina’s piece; it is caught in the eyes of her father’s business, his hands holding the Royal Doulton sugar bowls, both tender and brutal. The smell of the rubber tyres lingers with you, Dan???
A piece of all the things made by Romani’s is put together as one, like an impossible ladder. And then the red dress made from all the trophies and the Dorothy shoes by Le Bas, who was up for last year’s Turner Prize. On the back wall is a timeline of dates and government laws against Romani people, proving we treated them like legal slaves well after enslaved people were freed. The more you learn about this country we live in, the more shame you feel for what we thought and did to others, seeing them as less than human. Im not sure how anyone waves a St George flag in pride, they obviously haven’t had time to read about our brutal violence as if they were heroic acts. Humans are as mysterious as the Art they produce. Perhaps the answer is to spend more time creating Art and less time making politics? Now that seems like a sensible Christmas feeling to end with. Enjoy your Art responsibly, cheers! Merry Christmas!