Approaching Paintings

The Abstract Expressionist artist, Richard Poussette-Dart, once said, "Paintings are like people.  They must be approached, won friendship with, known and loved as people are, if they are to open up and reveal themselves."

When you look at his paintings, even in digital form, it is easy to understand why he said that.  His work is elegantly intellectual, each canvas well worth studying and embracing as a "friend".

Hieroglyph #2, Black  1974. (Image courtesy of The Estate of Richard Poussette-Dart.) 

This is just one image that caught my eye (since I seem to be attracted especially to work in black at present) - Hieroglyph #2, Black painted in 1974. I could imagine living very rewardingly with such a work.

The way we all approach paintings is conditioned on so many things, from our mood at the moment, to the time we have to look at a work of art, to our life experience and tastes and even the current fashions in art appreciation.  Nonetheless, I am sure that most people have rounded a corner in a gallery or museum and come face to face with a work which stops one short, calling out to come closer and look.  Just like catching sight of someone who attracts one's attention, pulling one out of the humdrum busy world, sending implicit messages that this person might be worth getting to know.  In truth, it does not even have to be an encounter with a work of art in a gallery: sometimes, on the Web or in a book, an image leaps out at one, saying that they are worthy of much closer attention and appreciation.

I was going back through the catalogue chapters prefacing an exhibition of Watercolours that I saw last year at Tate Britain, and suddenly saw a most beautiful reproduction of work by the British artist, Rebecca Salter. Again, her work demands a closer approach, to savour and learn of what each painting has to say, with its layers of allusion to Japanese art, light, texture, and our pared-down world.

Untitled AB4, 2010, mixed media on linen. Rebecca Salter (Image courtesy of teh artist)

In the same spirit of work on black, I chose this mixed media on linen painting from 2008, MM42, which talked to me (image courtesy of Rebecca Salter).  Its understated elegance attracts me enormously - and I am left regretful that I missed her show, Into the Light of Things 1981-2010", at the Yale Center for British Art last year.

The delight and interest of constantly acquiring "new friends" in works of art seem to one of the magical aspects of all art, of whatever period.  We are all potentially enriched when we open our eyes to art, in all forms - and in these times of angst, violence and division, I think we all need to concentrate on seeking new friends who can sustain and nourish our lives.

A Gift of Colour and Light

The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, is a place of such contrasts. Dread and hope, anxiety and tranquility, fears and laughter. Yet it is often a vessel of transformations and healing alchemy.

There are sculptures gracing the lawns, fountains play in the different lakes, live oak trees shade camellias in bloom - all help calm and center the visitors to the Clinic.

There is, however, an even more beautiful gift of colour and light at the moment, in the Mayo building, en route to the hospital. It is a small exhibition of work by the Scottish Colourists, owned and lent by the major Mayo benefactors, Isabelle and Robert Davis.

I have always loved the bold, elegant work of the Scottish Colourists, a small group of artists who included Samuel John Peploe(1871-1935), John Duncan Fergusson(1874-1961), Francis Campbell BoileauCadell (1883-1937) and George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931). They achieved a wonderful fusion of French artistic influences that ranged from Manet to Cezanne and Gauguin, in composition, brushwork, colour and their choice of humble everyday objects that became monumental. Post Impressionist in their approach, they all worked together, often travelling to different locations to work as companions. Fergusson and Hunter were essentially self-taught, while the Academie Julian in Paris played an important role in their collective development, along with the artistic ferment of early 20th century France, where Matisse, Picasso or the Fauves were supplanting the Impressionists.

Still life - Peonies and Fruit, Samuel John Peploe

Whilst he painted many landscapes, Peploe loved to paint still lifes, such as this Peonies and Fruit, one of his many carefully arranged compositions. "There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not - colours, forms, relations" he said. "I can never see mystery coming to an end."

Fergusson was also very much influenced by Manet and even Velazquez. He was a pivotal figure amongst the Scottish quartet of artists, and he in turn influenced other artists such as the young American artist, Anne Estelle Rice, (1877-1959), who had been trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, before coming to Paris.

Anne Estelle Rice, drawing, John Duncan Fergusson

Fergusson painted some fine portraits of Rice; this is a drawing he did of her in preparation for a painting. She too produced some wonderfully strong and simple still life paintings, such as the one displayed at the Mayo, Still Life with Dahlias.

Anne Estelle Rice in Paris - Closerie des Lilas, 1907, oil on canvas, John Duncan Fergusson

Still Life, oil on canvas, Anne Estelle Rice

Her friend, Fergusson, produced a huge body of work: at a 1961 memorial exhibition, his artist friend, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, wrote, ""His art is a deep and pure expression of his immense love of life. Endowed with a rare plastic feeling, almost sculptural in its quality. he joined with it an exceptional sense of colour, outspoken, ringing colours, rich and splendid in their very substance." This late painting is a perfect example of his love of life.

The Red Sail, oil on canvas, John Duncan Fergusson

Frank "Bunty" Cadell studied in Paris and became noted for his portraits of glamorous women. He returned to Scotland, where he discovered the island of Iona, an important turning point in his development as an artist. He served in world War I, as did his fellow Scottish Colourists, and he reacted to the horrors of war with optimism and heightened joie de vivre, both of which were reflected in his subjects and the joy with which he painted them. He returned often, after the War, to his utopia, Iona, where he summered, alone or with Peploe in 1920. A fellow artist noted, "It seems to me more than ever clear that your forte lies in a gift of colour and light." The joyous mid-1920s painting above of Iona would bear out that statement.

Iona, oil on canvas, Frank "Bunty" Cadell

George Leslie Hunter moved from Scotland to California with his family as a young boy, but as an adult, he spent time in Scotland, France, Italy and America. He was recognised early on as a skilled draughtsman and drawing remained one of his great strengths. Like Cadell with Iona, Hunter found Largo, in Scotland, to be a place of great inspiration, as is shown in this painting. He was also noted for his treatment of light and sense of colour.

Lower Largo, George Leslie Hunter

The Davis collection of Scottish Colourists being shown at the Mayo is also rounded out beautifully by exquisite canvases by three artists who had links to the Scottish Colourists - Anne Estelle Rice, the American artist whom Fergusson both encouraged and celebrated in portraits.

Still life with fruit and flowers, Anne Estelle Rice  (recently sold at Sotherbys)

Another Scottish artist, Anne Redpath (1895-1965), was a student of the Scottish Colourists while she was studying in Edinburgh. She later moved to the South of France with her husband where they became part of the Scottish Colourists circle. In her work, she was, to an extent, one of their heirs, being especially influenced by Peploe and Cadell.

Flowers on a White Table, Anne Redpath (Image courtesy of Portland Gallery)

Her celebration of familiar household objects in her still lifes and her use of colour harmonies of cool contrasting with warmer hues were hallmarks of her work. This wonderful flower study, Flowers on a white tablecloth, was in her collection at her death.

The last artist represented in the Mayo exhibition was a British artist, Robert Bevan (1865-1925). The link with the other Scottish artists was that he too studied at the Academie Julian in Paris. He also spent time in Brittany and was linked to the Pont-Aven school of artists who were experimenting with the use of colour and form. During his life, his work was considered controversial and too avant-garde, with one critic labelling his use of colour "garish". However, by the time he died in 1925, he was celebrated in art circles and hailed for his "modernist powers".

Near Applehayes, Robert Bevan

By the time I had finished savouring of the beautiful and interesting exhibition in the Mayo building, I had become sadly aware of how many preoccupied people had hastened past this gift of colour and light. All I can hope is that they will find a moment of peace and delight the next time they pass that way. They would be rewarded.

Landscape Painting

Back in March of this year, in The Spectator, Angela Summerfield discussed Peter Frie:Last Summer, an exhibition of landscapes by a Berlin-based Swedish artist, Peter Frie. In view of the fact that tomorrow, I am planning to work plein air on landscape drawings, this statement in Summerfield's article came back to me.

I quote, "Landscape painting has not fared well within the dictates of modernist and post-modernist art definitions. It is as if an urban-centric, text-driven and often anti-aesthetic dogma has stifled both alternative discourse and individual human expression. Yet our experience of landscape, and by association Nature, is fundamental to the development of our senses, perceptual vocabulary and cognitive awareness.

Eliopainting No. 3   Peter Frie, oil on canvas, (image courtesy of Eskilstuna Konstmuseum.)

This statement resonates for me in a number of ways. Since I live in non-urban environments, I find most of my daily delights and inspiration in Nature, in one way or another. I am also very aware that my tastes are therefore different from those of countless millions of people who live in big cities, where the dragooned green trees along streets and in artificially-constructed parks are the major remnants and reminders of the natural world, apart from weather conditions.

The world in which we all live is indeed mostly text-driven, a fact which again contributes, according to this thought-provoking book that I am reading, Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer, to our collective loss of the capacity for memory. Because we can all rely on books, Google, digital files or whatever to recuperate facts, our memories have virtually abdicated, as compared to the memory of Greeks, Romans and medieval notables.

In those early times, people could remember vast amounts of knowledge, from all the names of soldiers in an army to long, involved speeches or treatises. After Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1436, our memories took a hit. In the same way, only well-trained artists retained the capacity to remember innumerable details of landscape or human form. Familiarity with landscapes and Nature's ways became the domain of the few in the art world.

Today, that is indeed true. Yet unless we artists somehow learn how Nature "works", an enormous chunk of our personal vocabulary is stunted. It is as if we try to learn French, but never hear how the words are correctly pronounced. We thus never understand the nuances, the cadences and accentuations, let alone the words themselves, that convey a world of meaning.

Ultimately, I fear that Angela Summerfield's rather pessimistic outlook about landscape painting will continue to pertain. I don't see art collectors returning en masse to support landscape painting (and drawing). Nonetheless, for those of us who believe landscapes and Nature in general have much to offer, there is the comfort that personally, we are enriched, and that there are indeed some people with whom landscape painting resonates. Hurray for "alternative discourse and individual human expression"!

Peter Frie's version of a "Blue Morning" (image courtesy of artfinders.co.uk.)

Just look at  Frie's Blue Morning.  He should give us all encouragement and hope to follow our own paths vis-a-vis Nature.

Artists' Ways of Seeing Things

I am reading a book entitled "Moonwalking with Einstein. The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by Joshua Foer. The title is self-explanatory, the style is highly readable as Foer is a seasoned writer for such publications as the New York Times, National Geographic, Slate, etc. The content is totally fascinating - about how science is slowly understanding better how the human brain works, especially in terms of memory.

I still have many pages to go, but one page started me thinking about the parallels between artists and the master chess players that Foer was discussing. In the 1940s, Adriaan de Groot, a Dutch psychologist and chess player, decided to investigate what separated a good chess player from a master chess player - what was going on in their heads? Were the top players able to think further ahead in their moves, did they have better mental tools or a more honed intuition for the game? From past high level games,De Groot selected a series of board positions where there was one correct move to make which was not all that obvious. He then asked a group of top flight chess players to ponder these boards and to think aloud as they selected the proper move.

To De Groot's astonishment, the players mostly did not think many moves ahead, nor did they consider more possible moves. What they did was to see the right move, and almost immediately. After analysing the players' commentaries, De Groot realised that the chess experts were reacting, rather than thinking, and they could do this because their long experience of playing had taught them to think about "configurations of pieces like 'pawn structures' and immediately noticed things that were out of sorts, like exposed rooks". They had learned to see the whole chess board and thirty-two chess pieces as systems and groups. Later studies of top players' eye movements confirm that they literally see a different chess board, for they see more edges of the squares, which means they are encompassing whole areas at once. They also move their eyes across greater distances, without lingering for long at any one spot. Those places on which they do focus tend to be the key areas linked to making the right move.

This description of how master chess players function made me think of artists who have honed their skills day after day, year after year. Their eye-hand coordination has been perfected, their senses of composition/design, colour and content are developed. When they draw a nude, for instance, or work on a landscape painting plein air, for instance, they are not looking at just one spot. Rather, they are encompassing the whole so that almost intuitively, they can adjust their composition, their values and colour in the work for the best results. Their powers of observation and concentration are almost unthinking, because they are trained and disciplined.

The Red Canoe, 1889, watercolour, Winslow Home (Image courtesy of the Peabody Art Collection, Baltimore, Maryland)

To me, Winslow Homer is an example of a highly skilled painter, producing amazingly fresh landscapes, frequently plein air, and often in watercolour. One such example is "The Red Canoe" (image courtesy of the Peabody Collection, the Athenaeum).

Foer goes on to comment on the master chess players' amazing memories. I suspect that the great artists, past and present, also intrinsically rely on their memories quickly to understand a subject after a brief moment of studying it, Like the chess players, they can also call upon past experiences to bolster and inform their present work. The saying, "Been there, done that" applies, in a very positive sense, to an artist as well as chess players. Perhaps one should just add, "umpteen times"!

Landscape Painting and Politics

There has been a small but fascinating exhibition tucked into the National Gallery rooms in London. "Forest, Rocks, Torrents. Norwegian and Swiss Landscape Paintings from the Lunde Collection" had just opened when I saw it in late June but it runs until the 18th September.

Two rooms, but expansive views of Norwegian and Swiss mountains, rivers and dramatic natural scenery that take one far away from the tourist-filled Trafalgar Square outside. It was a collection of small and beautiful paintings assembled by Asbjorn Lunde, a major art collector/lawyer from New York. Not only did this exhibition of art delight and inform, but it made me think about the role of landscape painting in national politics and national identity. This was mainly because of a fascinating and informative piece, "Two Traditions", in the catalogue written by Christopher Riopelle. Curator of post-1800 Painting at the National Gallery.

Ancient Rome celebrated its landscapes in frescoes, such as those which survived from Pompeii. However, in the Western art tradition, basically relgious motifs and classical narratives provided the major impetus for painting themes and subjects until the 17th century. At that time, the Dutch begain to celebrate their flat, luminous countryside, where the northern light and ever-present sea predominated. They had regained control of their land (and church) from the Spanish and by the 17th century, Holland was linking political identity with the Dutch landscape. In fact, the very word landscape, used in relationto painting, comes from the Dutch language, where landschap first meant a cultivated patch of land and then an image.

 View of Harlem with Bleaching Fields, 1670-75, Jacob van Ruisdael, (Image courtesy of  Kunsthaus Zurich)

Jacob van Ruisdael was a major protagonist of Holland's land and wide skies in his art in the 17th century, as one can judge in this "View of Harlem", above. Much of this landscape art was produced in studio after plein air studies had first been done.

Salomon van Ruysdael specialised more in maritime scenes, but he too represented the Dutch landscape in remarkable fashion.

The River Scene,  Salomon van Ruysdael, 1632(image is courtesy of the National Gallery.)

These and many other artists were projecting the new self-confidence of a successful maritime nation whose trading stretched across the globe and brought home great wealth. These relatively small landscape paintings were bought by the affluent burghers as part of this new national celebration.

The same phenomenon occurred in Britain in the 18th century as the landed gentry and newly-affluent townspeople started to identify with their green, gentle island whose power was spreading far abroad. There were many great landscape artists working then, and even those more famous for portraiture, such as Thomas Gainsborough, were meeting this demand for landscapes. His 1748 "Landscape in Suffolk" is one such example. In subsequent decades, John Constable and J.M.W.Turner, amongst other artists, also allowed the English to be proud of their island, its landscapes, people and history, through their paintings.

Landscape in Suffolk,1748  Thomas Gainsborough (courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum),

Harwich Lighthouse, c. 1820, John Constable (image courtesy of the Tate)

Constable painted this canvas of "Harwich Lighthouse" about 1820. His renditions of skies and clouds show the results of his many, many wonderful cloud studies and knowledge of Britain's climatic conditions.

Turner was equally attentive to light and climate as he painted, as can be judged by this astonishing canvas from 1816, "Chichester Canal". Apparently, the Indonesian volcano, Mt. Tambora, had erupted very violently in 1815, and the ash travelled around the world, causing dramatic atmospheric conditions. The 3rd Earl of Egremont commissioned the painting.

Chichester Canal, Joseph Mallord William Turner circa 1829 (Image courtesy of the Tate Collection).

While the British, the Russians, the Swiss, the Norwegians and other Europeans were identifying increasingly with their nations, thanks in large part to artists' depictions of the natural wonders and characteristics, the Americans were doing the same. As the Hudson River School, the Romantic and Luminist schools of landscape painters developed in the United States, the paintings of the country's natural splendours helped fuel the sense of nationhood and drive towards development of the West. Even the eventual creation of National Parks was made easier by the depictions of the marvels of Yosemite and Yellowstone. Manifest destiny was implicit in much of the 19th century landscape painting in America, where discovery, exploration and settlement were all driving forces in society.

The Oxbow. View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Mass. after a Thunderstorm", 1836, Thomas Cole , (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

British-born American artist Thomas Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School; he introduced the beauties of the Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains and upper New York/New England to an audience of appreciative fellow Americans. Second generation American landscape painters who continued to shape the political framework of America included such artists as Luminist John Frederick Kennsett. His work centered on the North East, but included work depicting the Mississippi and further afield.

Lake George, ca. 1860,John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872)
Oil on canvas, 22 x 34 inches (approx.)
Collection Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain,

Thomas Moran, meanwhile, was celebrating the wonders of the West. His depictions of Yellowstone were hugely instrumental in the National Park being created. His dramatic canvases were complemented by watercolours of many natural phenonmena, such as this 1873-74 watercolour of the "Shoshone Falls, Idaho" (image courtesy of the Chrysler Museum of Art).

Shoshone Falls, Idaho, 1873-74, thomas Moran,  (image courtesy of the Chrysler Museum of Art).

All these landscape artists, European, Russian, American... were part of an ever-swelling political discourse about national identity and aspirations. The 18th and 19th centuries were era of great social upheavals and changes, with the Industrial Revolution shaping new societies. With increasing urbanisation, the role of landscape underwent a subtle change: it was no longer such an important defining factor in perception of nation. Artists themselves were often urban dwellers who had to make trips to the countryside to paint landscapes. The French Impressionists built on this tendancy that the previous generation of artists had begun - from Daubigny to Millet and Rousseau. Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and their companions all made trips out from Paris in their early times as artists. But they also found increasing inspiration in urban scenes - railway stations, the French boulevards, the Seine river. As the artistic trends evolved, Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, Matisse and countless others began to turn away from landscape painting. There were, of course, others - Cezanne, the Fauves, Miró  - who still used the vocabulary of landscape to explore the role of man in society.

Nonetheless, I can't help wondering how much the influence of urban landscapes - concrete and stone boxes and towers, streets vanishing in distant perspectives, the geometry of man's creations - overwhelmed the artistic eye as the trend accelerated towards abstraction and away from organic natural shapes and scenes. With such a different artistic vocabulary, has our societal identification of land and nation altered? Even though today's world is saturated with high definition images of amazing landscapes, do we identify with our lands in the same way as people did in previous centuries with their artists' depictions of land/nation? Do we find it easier to airbursh/Photoshop ourselves out of involvement with the landscapes we are filling up and polluting and exhausting today? Easier than when we were being shown the beauties of our lands by artists who were, in essence, pictoral ambassadors for those splendors? Indeed, basically, the majority of today's populations live in some form of urban setting, where concrete obliterates the natural world and where political perceptions have been altered by those surroundings.

Today's landscape artists have a very different role, I suspect, from the nation-building one of the Dutch artists onwards. Now, perhaps, it is almost a rearguard action or one of recording natural beauties before they disappear. However, I have grave doubts as to whether any of today's landscape artists, seldom ones who make the headlines in the art world, have much sway amongst our politicians. Perhaps it would make society better if they did?

The Test of Time

How often do images of artwork remain with one long after going to the exhibition? I always find it to be a good test of how much I like a piece of art, how much it has spoken to me, and how it has become embedded in my mind.

I was thinking about this aspect of viewing art in relation, for instance, to the Summer Exhibition 2011 at the Royal Academy in London. I went to see this huge show in early June - it stays up until 15th August. Now, nearly six weeks after I saw the exhibition, I find that there are only a few of the thousand-plus works of art that remain fresh in my mind and still interest me. Naturally, as I invariably find, the art I like is seldom illustrated in any catalogue (let alone postcards in a museum)! So it is even more an acid test that I need to remember the artwork entirely without prompts, save for any notes or quick drawings I might have made at the time.

The RA Summer Exhibition, a selling exhibition, is a giant affair, with eminent Academicians in charge of hanging different rooms. Christopher Le Brun was the show's main co-ordinator; he operated under the thesis, "There are two ways of showing paintings. One is the classic orthodox hang with lots of space around every single piece. But here it's like a battle of the paintings - forty big pictures on one wall alone!" By contrast, Michael Craig-Martin, who curated another room, went in another direction. He explained, "Normally, the Royal Academicians are hidden among everyone else. I wanted to show their range and quality by focusing for the first time on RAs only, because there are lots of new ones and nobody quite realises that they have all arrived here."

Photographs, paintings, etchings and other prints, artist's books, architectural renderings and models, sculpture, drawings - the 1117 works gave everyone a taste of today's art. You need a few hours or several visits properly to absorb the diversity, quite apart from having to navigate the crowds which ebb and flow according to the hour. It makes the test of time even more demanding, in fact. But as I remember back, some works remain to delight me.

Frederick Cuming's large oils were a delight of subtle atmospherics, whose titles, "Crescent Moon and Sea" "Clouds Evening, Camber", "Clouds and Reflections" or "Dawn Garden, Frost" tell of his interest and skills in conveying almost abstractions that evoked northern climes. Later, I found his silkscreens, "Etna" and "Thaw", and promptly fell for them!

May Evening, Crescent Moon,  Fred Cumming, oil on board. (courtesy of the Artist)

Winter Sea Camber 14, Fred Cumming , oil on board (courtesy of the Artist)

At the other end of the spectrum, a warm evocative abstraction in reds, "Window Screen Ajanta" took one far to the tropics - it was an oil by the late William Baillie. I have to say it was positively miserably hung, and almost impossible to view - shame on the RA for such a disservice to the artist.

In between, of course, there were the large and dramatic, the small and delightful, the ugly and strident, but more importantly, the gems. One, for me, was Edmund de Waal's "Untitled, 2011" white lacquered cabinet, hung on the wall, with clear laminated glass, containing 70 diminuitive celadon and white vessels. Discreet and elegant, interesting and evocative of so much history eastern and western in the ceramics world, I was not surprised that it was already sold. The other reason for my pleasure at seeing it was that the artist is also the author of one of the best books I have read for ages, "The Hare with Amber Eyes".

Another series of eight drawings, "Marks on the Edge of Space" were a fascinating use of conte, graphite and mylar by Ann Christopher RA. Layers, stainless steel rivets to attach them, use of shadows to evoke water, fields of grass, trees – so many plays of tone and shape to delight. Very sophisticated, lovely work.

THE LINES OF TIME -15, Pastel / graphite / crayon, Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

THE LINES OF TIME -20, Pastel / graphite / crayon , Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

THE LINES OF TIME -21,  Pastel / graphite / crayon, Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

There was another delight in the drawing section - a silverpoint. Small and quiet in its faintness, it was a lovely portrait, "Dulcie" by Dylan Waldron. Marvellous to find another silverpoint artist!

Dulcie, silverpoint, Dylan Waldron

Of course there were many other stimulating or beautiful works of art at the RA. Nonetheless, the artworks which have stood the test of time for me and that come first to mind are, as I have mentioned above, but a handful. Of course, that is just my personal selection: vive la difference is definitely the operative phrase at a show like the RA Summer Exhibition. It is worth going to the exhibition if you are in London, for it is a good way of testing the pulse of a wide selection of British artists.

Another Beautiful Art Form

Circuses and high-flying trapeze artists are part of every child's education, I suspect. Those moments of delighted amazement that accompany feats of grace and daring on slender ropes and bars high above the ground are the stuff of circus legend. Circuses have long been the subject of artists too - think of Toulouse-Lautrec's penetrating and ultimately sad and solitary depictions of circus performers, Chagall's vibrant versions of circus life and of course, Pablo Picasso's Rose Period paintings of circus harlequins.

Au cirque Fernando, l'écuyère, 1888,  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Circus Horse, 1964, Marc Chagall

Circus Family, the Tumblers, 1905, oil, Pablo Picasso

James Tissot, an accomplished French painter from Nantes, who lived from 1836-1902. painted Women of Paris, the Circus Lover,  showing the fascination audiences had with the high bars. Below, too, is the famous - but unfinished - Georges Seurat pointillist painting from 1890-91, The Circus.

Women of Paris, the Circus Lover, James Tissot, 1883-85, (Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

The Circus,  1890-91,  Georges Seurat, (image courtesy of the Museé d'Orsay)

Perhaps one of the most wonderful images of circus grace and skill is Edgar Degas' Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, a mastery of draftsmanship. This oil painting, in the National Gallery, London, was painted in 1879 from four preparatory drawings Degas did at the Circus.

Cirque Painting - Miss Lala At The Cirque Fernando, Edgar Degas, 1889, (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London)

Other artists have painted dramatic pictures of the circus.  It is astonishing to find how many artists have been attracted by the subjects of clowns and circuses!

The Circus, 1917, watercolour and graphite, Charles Demuth, (Image courtesy of the Columbus Museum of Art)

The Clown, Wassily Kandinsky

The Horse, the Rider and the Clown, in the Jazz  series, 1943,  Henri Matisse

The same sense of wonder at seemingly effortless soaring and beauty, high above one, was what I experienced last night at a performance of Canopy Studio at the Ashantilly Center in Darien, GA. As the sun set and the swallows called high above the wide lawn in the evening sky, the lights came up slowly beneath an ancient, graceful live oak. Rigged carefully from its limbs were different harnesses, scarlet "ropes" and other lines.

These were for a performance of the "Royal Sequined Aerial Circus", with solo and duo aerial ballets that were diverse and beautiful. A wide selection of music allowed the young, beautifully trained women (and one delicious small girl) to move in ways that were true ballet, yet ballet that almost defied gravity. Against the backdrop of the mighty oak tree, it was magical.

I kept feeling that I should be trying to draw all the flowing, elegant movements, but the other half of me just wanted to sit there and savour of the pure beauty.

Trapeze Artists, pl 20 from portfolio Le Cirque, Pablo Roig Cisa, 1911, colour lithograph (Image courtesy of Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco)

It did make me all the more aware of those 19th century artists who, long before cell phone cameras or other means of capturing images instantly, caught the essence of the aerial ballets they watched under circus tops.

Skies

After the many glorious days of cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine, today was cloudy and grey. A bit of a shock, in a way. The change in the light and the sense of space was marked.

Skies, for an artist involved in any depiction of the natural world, are so important. Their role in setting a tone, a mood in any painting or drawing, is key. As a child of Africa, where the vast skies arch brilliant and endless, I love the wide vistas across the salt water mashes of coastal Georgia because here too, the sky is so expansive. Such views allow a sense of liberty, an expansiveness of soul that are allied to a sense of the infinite vastness of nature, of space and those countless galaxies far beyond our world. All these feelings are often filtered through the art one creates, in spite of oneself. In essence, it is "painting about something", versus "painting something". Whether the something is the light, the space, or much more complex philosophical concepts, the sky is central to the art making.

The painting below is the famed Deadham Vale 1802 depiction of rural England, where Constable used the sky to set the whole tone of the landscape, to flood it with northern light and give it a gentle expansiveness that is memorable.

Dedham Vale with Ploughman, 1814, John Constable, (Image courtesy of Scottish National Gallery)

John Constable RA, Cloud Study, Hampstead, Tree at Right, 1821. (Image courtesy of the Royal Academy)

John Constable believed that the sky was "the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment" in a landscape painting. This 1821 Cloud Study, (above) a plein air study, is an example of his famed quick art done to record skies and weather conditions.

Despite the ever-increasing divorce between man and nature that we are witnessing today, there are still many artists who are enthralled - nay, obsessed - by skies and the wonders of light, clouds and atmospheric effects.  Graham Nickson, the British-American artist who is Dean at the New York Studio School since 1988, had a wonderful exhibition at the Jill Newhouse Gallery in 2009, entitled "Italian Skies".

Graham Nickson, Sarageto III, 2008 (Image courtesy of Jill Newhouse Gallery)

Jeffrey Lewis, who teaches are at Auburn University. He works in encaustic, and his series of paintings are lyrical in the extreme.

Towards Ontario mirus caelum, Jeffrey Lewis (Image courtesy of the artist)

Towards Ontario Vespers, Jeffrey Lewis (Image courtesy of the artist)

He speaks eloquently about the emotions that these skies inspire in him and what he seeks to convey in his paintings.

Towards Ontario Eventide, Jeffrey Lewis (Image courtesy of the Artist)

Photography too is a wonderful medium to celebrate skies, the light that emanates from them, and thus also the passage of time. One artist who has devoted much of her life to exploration of these subjects is Erika Blumenfeld, a Guggenheim Fellow and photographer. She discourses at length about such research and work in a recent fascinating interview with Art Interview, and clearly shares the same deep awareness of skies and their influence on all of us below their domes.

Background - Sky Scrolls, Erika Blumenfeld photographer (Image courtesy of the artist)

Colour in art, colour in our eyes

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humblebaek, Denmark, has just opened an exhibit entitled Colour in Art. They combined works from their own collections with others lent by major collectors, Werner and Gabrille Merzbacher, to explore the role of colour in art and thus in daily life.

Colour underpins most artists' concepts in some form or another. The most obvious domain of colour in art is in paintings, done in many media. The perception of colour has changed considerably over the last 150 years or so, as societies and cultures have evolved. There has also been a huge evolution in the actual production of pigments and types of paint, which have increasingly allowed more brilliance and a more flexible approach to the creation of art.

Colour choices can be very personal, as we all know from the famous example of art to match the sofa demonstrates. Every choice we make in decorating our home is involved with colour in some way or another. So it is is no surprise that for an artist, the absence of colour (in a monochromatic work) or its presence - and in what fashion - both dictate a great deal about the creation of that particular work of art. Once created, artwork will then appeal to people through the colours used, to a great extent, whether the collectors and viewers realise it or not. Moods are created through a certain spectrum of colour, and people respond to those harmonies, even if only subliminally.

The Fauves - Andre Dérain, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet and others - used a bright, almost strident palette of broken colour to evoke the brilliant light and intensity of colour in the landscapes of the French Mediterranean coast. Nothing downbeat at all. By contrast, Picasso's Blue Period paintings are almost monochromatic and convey deeply gloomy and sombre sentiments. Picasso's close friend, Carlos Casagemas, had committed suicide in Paris in 1901. This affected Picasso deeply, and the resultant paintings of that period use colour to convey the melancholy and resignation he experienced.

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait, 1901, (Image courtesy of Musée Picasso, Paris)

The exploration of colour intensified as the artists of the mid-19th century began to move outdoors from their studios (mostly set up with northern constant light). They then got all excited about conveying the brilliance of light and its ever-changing qualities, when they worked plein air. After the Impressionists had pushed out the boundaries of colour use and perception, the field was wide open for everyone to experiment. Thus the Fauves and everyone else who followed, up to our time.

Meantime the development of new artificial pigments, types of paint binder and their presentation in the marketplace were following a parallel explosion. This is explored in the Louisiana Museum show, Colour in Art. There is also the interesting dimension evoked of the commercial use of colour, for logos, advertisements, etc., and the same colours used in art. As is cited in the article on this exhibit on ArtDaily.org, the blue which Yves Klein developed for his famous brilliantly intense canvases would be unlikely to be confused with the blue used in the logos and names of the United Nations, the European Union or even Nivea cream. In other words, context of culture influences our perception of colour. I am sure that in our digital (and globalised) age, where colour is intensified even more than previously, even cultural perceptions are constantly evolving.

IKB 79. 1959, Yves Klein, (Image courtesy of the Tate)

Nonetheless, there is another dimension to colour, particularly in art. I found it an interesting juxtaposition to read about the Colour in Art exhibition and very soon afterwards, to find the following quote by Marc Chagall on Renée Phillips' Manhattan Arts International website: "In our life there is a single colour, as on an artist's palette, which produces the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love (my emphasis)".

Something for us to think about.

Off the beaten path in Mallorca

There are plenty of hidden gems in Mallorca that reward the explorer.  One of them that had long tantalised me is the Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation at Sa Bassa Blanca, just outside Puerto de Alcudia, on the eastern coast.

En route to Sa Bassa Blanca, Mallorca (Rundle Cook photographer)

Nestled on long slopes sweeping down to sapphire waters, the buildings and gardens that form the exhibition spaces are an interesting mixture of foreign exoticism and Mallorcan architecture.  The house and partial exhibition spaces were built by Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy, with white crenellated walls and an interior courtyard that harks back to the Alhambra.  Latticed windows and elements from Morrocco, Turkey and Andalucia all mingle to form an abode of great character, the backdrop to a collection of art and sculpture that underline Yannick and Ben Jakober's status of artist-citizens of the world.  Outside, oversized sculptures executed in Asia via Internet supervision by Yannick and Ben Jakober are scattered through the landscaped gardens.

View at the Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober, (Rundle Cook photographer)

The core collection that attracts visitors down the four kilometer country lane to the Foundation is hidden elsewhere.  Deep underground in a wonderfully converted Mallorcan "aljibe" or cistern is housed the "Nins" collection of children's portraits dating from the 16th to 19th century. 

The collection began when Yannick purchased a 19th century Mallorcan work by Joan Mestre, "Portrait of a Girl with Cherries" in 1972.

Joan Mestre i Bosch (Escuela mallorquina), Retrato de una niña con cerezas, c. 1843, oil on canvas, Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober, Mallorca

The collection has slowly grown to over a hundred works, mainly of the 16th and 17th century, mostly of children of important historical figures.  There are portraits from most European centres, from England to Italy.  About a third of the collection is on exhibit at any one time in the spacious "aljibe" galleries.

As you walk into the galleries, it is an introduction to aspects of art that are seldom underlined.  Not only are there lovely portraits, of all sizes and styles, many by well-known artists, but you learn how children were cared for, clothed and regarded down the ages.  Swaddled children are depicted, several times.  Little "adults" bedecked with elaborate accoutrements telling of their social status stare out seriously at the viewer.  Later, there were more informal portraits, when children were allowed to be a little more their real age.  Fashions changed, jewels evolved. Dogs come and go as companions, while birds often act as symbols.  Landscapes began to be introduced as backdrops to the portraits, rather than elaborately curtained interiors.  Some close-cropped head studies, particularly from the Netherlands and Spain, are poignant in their directness.  Others hint at illness and a complicated destiny.  Willy nilly, as you walk around the galleries, you find yourself caught up in the dramas and rarified atmospheres of these little children whose positions were often of such privilege that we know today of their existence in exquisite detail.  It is a unique experience to view this "Nins" collection.

Not only are there all these interesting aspects of art to savour, but in May, there is also a rose garden full of heritage roses of great beauty to enjoy.  Planted by Yannick Jakober, it is a perfect complement to everything else to visit at Sa Bassa Blanca.

The photographs above were taken by my photographer husband, along the road to the Foundation, and at the entrance to Sa Bassa Blanca.  Thank you, Rundle.