Money

As readers of this blog know only too well, the ARTicle is not a fan of the once YBA Damien Hirst, so a piece by Julian Spalding ***  in this morning’s Independent has restored our faith in common sense.

Spalding may well be selling a new book, but his take on Hirst is a voice in the wilderness in Britain.

Only Robert Hughes, the one time  art critic of the New York Times has been THAT critical of Hirst’s work.  Spalding, however goes one better than Hughes  by stating that Hirst isn’t actually an artist, there, I’ve said it.  The ARTicle approves of  Spalding’s book title,  Con Art  contemporary conceptual art or a con ?

The ownership of art has been linked with wealth and privilege for centuries; nothing new there. What is a recent phenomenon is the type of art that people are buying now and the reasons they are buying it. Back in the good old Eighteenth century, for example, a rich landowner may have shown off his wealth by having someone paint a picture which showed his most important possessions, i.e. his land, his horses, his dogs, his wife and children (in that order).  This was art as a display of wealth and status, the Mrs in her best frock and jewels, very nice. If you were moneyed, you might have also started collecting art by an artist you admired. In both cases, it is likely that the artistic value of the piece was what mattered most. The painting hanging over the mantelpiece that you proudly showed off to your pals would have been produced primarily as a piece of art. Yes, we all know art was a commodity long before the 1960s and Warhol, but its production was as art.

***Please read the full Independent piece :  http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/julian-spalding-damien-hirsts-are-the-subprime-of-the-art-world-7586386.html

The Night Cafe Vincent van Gogh 1888

Vincent van Gogh painted the Night Cafe in 1888, it depicts the interior of  The Cafe de la Gare  in Arles. In  a letter Vincent tells his brother Theo that he is intending to start the painting:

I shall probably make a start today on the interior of the cafe where I live at night, by gaslight. It is what they call a night cafe (they are fairly common here) which stays open all night, “Night Owls” can take refuge there if they haven’t enough money to pay for lodgings, or they are too drunk to be taken in anywhere. 

This is a deeply disturbing  picture, van Gogh wanted us to feel uneasy and slightly shocked by this image.  The sulphur yellow floor leads our eyes into the picture and to the  open doorway at the back of the room, but our eyes can not rest there, the low hanging lamps, green ceiling and red walls make our eyes bounce around the image. The colours are vibrant, strong, and thickly painted. The perspective is slightly off, the lines are strong and agitated. The billiard table in the middle of the room casts the only shadow, the thick cloisonné outlines of the table emphasis its presence, as does the amount of space around it. The figure standing by the billiard table is the landlord Joseph Michel Ginoux.  The flat colours are similar to the Japanese prints van Gogh admired and collected. The cafe tables seem pushed to the edges of the image, this highlights those sitting around the tables  as they are also on the margins; the margins of society. The Night Cafe was frequented by  down and outs, various drunks and “ladies” of the night. The painting illustrates  Vincent’s fascination with lower classes.
In a letter to Theo Vincent explains what he was trying to achieve:

I have tried to express the idea that the cafe is a place where one can destroy oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.

He goes to say:

All this is in an atmosphere of an infernal  furnace in pale sulphur, to express the powers of darkness in a common tavern, and yet an outward show of Japanese gaiety. 

A very telling line, Vincent was acutely aware of the sinister and dark masquerading as ‘normal’ and bright and cheerful.

Vincent told Theo that it was one of the ugliest paintings he had ever made.

Van Gogh was trying to achieve  emotional expressionism in this image, which did later influence  expressionist artists as well as Fauves such as Matisse.
It is said that Vincent went to the cafe on three consecutive nights to paint which apparently caused much amusement/bemusement to the cafe’s customers.

As with other paintings by van Gogh this is not the work of a madman it is carefully thought out and executed, it is not painted from memory in a manic episode as some commentaries would have it.

Gauguin
Shortly after Vincent painted the Night Cafe  Paul Gauguin went to  Arles to live with van Gogh. Whilst there Gauguin also painted at the cafe, but he eschewed the same scene and concentrates on  painting the landlord’s wife Marie Ginoux. Gauguin does not give us a view of the full cafe; he gives us an off centre portrait of Mrs Ginoux, a view of the billiard table and customers in the background, including Van Gogh’s much painted postman Joseph Roulin.

Gauguin’s painting is softer, the lines not so hard and defined, the colours less harsh and warmer, overall it is  more inviting than Vincent’s cafe and it lacks Vincent’s sinister edge. However, it is  emotionally flat, it tells us little about the cafe or indeed Madame Ginoux. Even though he has depicted it as a much friendlier place to be  Gauguin did not like the cafe, he wrote that it made him feel uneasy.

He wrote to a friend:

… A cafe that Vincent likes a lot, and that I like less. At bottom it’s not my sort of thing and local low life doesn’t work for me. 

These two paintings clearly mark the contrast not only between the artist’s styles but also their attitudes to a subject and the way this affected their interpretation of a subject.

The Highway Code – Project Ability

01 Mar 2012 – 14 Apr 2012
Location: PA Gallery, Trongate 103  Glasgow
Admission: Free

In collaboration with artists from three Canadian organisations (The Garth Homer Society, The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts and In-Definite Arts), Project Ability presents The Highway Code, an alternative Museum of Transport.

This exhibition is the first of a series of creative partnerships which seeks to connect artists with disabilities and features new work from Canada’s leading artist studios on the theme of transport; a recurring subject in the Project Ability studio and also a mutual interest of the exhibiting Canadian artists.

Check out web site for further details

http://www.project-ability.co.uk/exhibitions/transportation

Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography
9. Mar – 29. Apr 12
Royal West of England Academy Bristol

In 1984, Irving Penn commented that he saw his role at Vogue as ‘selling dreams, not clothes’. Selling Dreams is the first touring exhibition from the V&A’s Collection to explore the work of international fashion photographers and to draw together such a broad range of important historic and contemporary fashion images.

See RWA website for more details …   http://www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2012/02/exhibitions-selling-dreams/

Composition VI (1913) image wiki commons

The Kandinsky Code?

Has The ARTicle gone  all Dan Brown on us?

No, we wouldn’t do such a thing;  but Kandinsky was a fairly complicated chap, and his art isn’t just the colourful combination geometric shapes it might appear.
So what’s this “code” thing all about?
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866; he was part of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) movement in Munich (1911-14). From 1922- 33, Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus in Germany.
Kandinsky based much of his work on his beliefs in the pseudo religion Theosophy which was cooked up by a Russian woman called Madame Blavatsky; Piet Mondrian and other abstract artists were also believers . The basic idea of  Theosophy being that one day the material world would vanish leaving behind an “essence” of its former self, only the Geist or spirit would remain.  Of course, a favoured few would survive, and they would need a special language to communicate with each other. The only art would be abstract; which was nice and handy for an abstract artist like Kandinsky.  Much of Kandinsky’s work is based on trying to work out a visual language in which colours and shapes would have the same semantic meaning as words themselves. He condemned abstract art for its own sake; for him, it had to be linked to spirituality.  He believed that the likes of van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and the Fauves had gone some way to freeing colour, but it was still subservient to representational form in their work.
He also believed that visual art should bring together other art forms, there should be a direct transfer from one sense to another; a painting should make you think of music, or dance; his idea was that all arts borrow from music.
In somewhat flowery language Kandinsky said that;

Colour is the keyboard; the eyes are the harmony, the soul the piano with many strings; the artist is the hand that plays, touching one note or another to cause vibrations in the soul.

We know from the work of the great Oliver Sacks and others, that those with synaesthesia  link colours to numbers and words and might ‘see’ colours and shapes when listening to music.  (see  the Dr Sacks video below for more info)

There is a lot of debate as to whether Kandinsky had neurological synaesthesia or if his work only showed the artistic state of synaesthesia that he, and other abstract artists were striving for.  Certainly, Kandinsky had a strong sense of an abstract language of colour and was able to visualise shapes, colour, tones, and location of objects because of his strong eidetic memory (photographic memory).  He said that all the forms he used ‘came from themselves’ and they would present themselves in front of his eyes , he only had to copy them.

He felt colour in the same way as others feel a sound; fingernails on a black board style of thing.
Kandinsky firmly believed that the artist was someone with a loftier spiritual vision than the average bloke on the Clapham omnibus, and abstract art was THE purer way of communicating this vision to people. He strived to produce specific responses in the viewer. This is all well and good but as ideas of theosophy are (largely) unknown, we are left with Kandinsky’s art, sans any theosophical code, and to a large extent sans meaning.

Whether  the viewers in his own time ever truly ‘got’ his art as he intended is debatable. Even if Kandinsky had neurological synaesthesia we know that it is NOT some sort of universal  ’language’ ; it is a very individual thing,  so his shapes and colours could have meant something completely different to a viewer with neurological synaesthesia.

To be able to interpret any abstract language or “code”; a viewer would need to ‘see’ the same language as the artist. In the end, abstraction did not become the universal language that Kandinsky and others hoped it would.
Where does that leave the 21st century viewer?

We are left with Roland Barthes edict that the artist is ‘dead’ as soon as the work is finished we are free to construct our own meaning.

Ruben's copy of the Battle of Anghiari - wiki commons

Today it was reported that Dr Maurizio Seracini has found paint behind Giorgio Vasari’s work at the Salone dei Cinquecento – the Hall of the 500 – in Florence that may be from Leonardo da Vinci’s lost painting the Battle of Anghiari.
We know that da Vinci abandoned the painting in 1506, and that Raphael and others went to the Hall of the 500 to copy the painting. The painting is supposed to be the biggest that da Vinci undertook; three times bigger than the Last Supper. The scene of clashing horses then seemed to vanish. However, in 1563 the artist, historian, and biographer  Giorgio Vasari painted scenes of the Medici family winning battles and being brave, etc. as they had returned to power.
In 1975 Dr Seracini spotted that one of the flags in the Vasari fresco bore the legend “Cerca Trova”  meaning; he who seeks finds.  Knowing that Vasari, a huge admirer of da Vinci’s work would have been very unlikely to deface a da Vinci work Seracini thinks that Vasari painted on  a wall built-in front of the Battle of Anghiari.  The words on the flag took on a new meaning, was the battle of Anghiari behind the Vasari painting?

For the last 30 years Seracini has been trying to find out. Finally, he obtained permission to drill tiny holes in the Vasari enabling him to take samples of the paint on the wall behind.
This has not happened without comment from some in the art world; Seracini’s critics range from those who think he is maliciously destroying the Vasari, to those who do not believe the Battle of Anghiari exists, anywhere.
Others think it is some huge publicity stunt, if it is he has waited 30 years you have to admire his tenacity.
Yes, this kind of scientific exploration may look scary and even reductionist to many art historians; it is not in our text books. But, as long as the Vasari work is not harmed I do not see what the fuss is about.

If you have based your career and publications on denying such a painting ever existed, or have claimed that da Vinci had the whole thing artexed over – stipple effect- in a fit of temper, then yes, you will be in danger of losing face if Seracini is right.

Nevertheless, Seracini is not just some crazy to have walked in off the streets with a cordless Black and Decker drill; he does have proper accreditation. I am hoping that Seracini finds evidence of the da Vinci; enough evidence to persuade the powers that be to take down the Vasari and reveal whatever might be left of the da Vinci.

I am hoping he can confound his critics; we do not learn about art or expand the body of  knowledge  by denying its existence or denying experts from another discipline a chance to seek with the hope of finding.

Good luck Dr Seracini.

14 March – 5 June 2012
Sainsbury Wing

National Gallery London

J.M.W Turner Fighting Téméraire wiki commons

Turner’s paintings and sketches shown with the works of the 17 th century artist Claude. Turner left paintings to the NG on the condition that would be exhibited alongside two works by Claude.

FOR more information go to:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/turner-inspired?gclid=CKH0g_v10a4CFYImtAod01e9CA

White on White image wiki commons

The work is by the Russian ‘supremacist’ Kasimir Malevich. It was painted the year following the October Revolution. It shows an asymmetric white square on a slightly warmer toned white field. Brush marks, and the uneven pencil line of the square can be clearly seen. It shows us the process of painting; it is not devoid of the human hand.

Malevich

But what does it represent?

To answer this question we need to look at Russian suprematism as a movement.

In 1915 Malevich started a new art form which aimed to move away from traditional art.  Malevich had seen many of Picasso’s works in Russia and had at first dabbled with cubism, which consisted of fragmented forms, but in 1915,  he broke away entirely from any (even marginally) representational form in his work. He wanted his work to be free from political and social meaning and to become purely aesthetic dealing with feelings. . In 1915 he wrote that;

In my desperate attempt to free art from the burden of the object, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square floating on a white field.
He exhibited the picture in Petrograd in 1915, placed in a corner of the room, a place usually given over for the display of Russian icons.

Malevich strived for a purity of shape, particularly the square, so by 1918, he wanted an entirely new visual language for a new world.

Malevich described the supremacist as striving for the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art.

The visual phenomenon of the objective world is meaningless; the significant thing is feeling as such quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth the artist can be a creator only when forms in his picture have nothing in common with nature. Forms must not be given life and the right to individual existence.

He said that cubism was too grounded in reality  it  ”did not convey even an inkling of the presence of universal space.” 

If we think of traditional work as governed by reality, things on the earth  controlled by gravity etc.  Suprematism is like floating off into space, where we are freed from seeing reality as it is.

Malevich said the square was “a vivid and majestic newborn, the first step of pure creation in art.”

Colours also had meaning for Malevich, white meant motion,  black unlimited potential and red meant (of course) revolution.

That answers questions about the painting’s representation, it does not represent anything.

Because our visual system searches for patterns and attempts to see real objects in abstract shapes, it is natural that we try to make some ‘human sense’ of this work, but there is none to be had. Ironically, Malevich thought he was freeing the viewer from a search for visual meaning, and his work was egalitarian. We should not try to ‘make sense’ of it, just go with the floating square and see where it takes you.

White on White is pure abstraction. It takes us to the limits of abstract painting, it as about as far as you can go in a move to free art from any role of depicting or representing real objects. Unlike the works in our  Brushing out the Poor  articles it has no social or political meaning, intended or otherwise.

I like this painting because …. it is very imaginative and creative. He is such an outstanding artist to do a painting like that. In this AMAZING painting there are willow branches hanging down. Plus the sun is shining on a peaceful, little waterfall. Also there are water-lilies at the bottom of the waterfall. I think this is an impression of his garden.

Tweet your favourite painting to us @thearticle1

We all know that the pictures are ‘exquisite’ and important pieces of work by one the finest artists of the Cinquecento. Agreed, it is nice that they can stay in the UK – shared between Scotland and England 60/40 – so we can all make the pilgrimage to view. What is worrying about all this is this odd notion that we should ‘save’ them for the ‘Nation’.

This is a phrase usually employed by hardy heritage types when talking about buildings or monuments. The phrase usually implies the objects originated in Britain and are, more often than not, in danger of crumbling into obscurity. The implication is that we have a collective ownership and therefore an obligation to save these objects for future generations, or they will be lost, forever.

Can we really apply this phrase to the Titians?

The paintings were owned by the Sutherland family, infamous for chucking crofters off their land during the Highland clearings. They loaned the pictures to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1945.  This may have been an amazing piece of philanthropic behaviour on the Sutherland’s part, more likely it was a reaction to crippling taxes imposed after WW2. The fact that art loans equalled tax benefits probably may have had a lot to do with it.  Whatever the reason, it is clear the paintings ended up at the NGS only because they happened to be in Scotland at the time.

An Italian artist produced the paintings in Italy; there is not a hint of tartan or anything else to connect them with Scotland in the subject matter. The paintings do not naturally belong in Scotland, or England.

So why are they important to the “Nation”?

I am not advocating that they should go back to Italy, because that would just be very boring. Some artefacts belong in the cultural context of their production the Titians do not.
Yes, yes, it will be great to have the paintings still in Britain but we do not need all the heritage spin.

What would have happened if the “Nation”  had failed to raise the cash the Duke of Sutherland wanted?

Most likely scenario: the artworks would have gone to an overseas buyer. The buyer would probably have been  a private buyer, as museums simply have no cash. With luck, the paintings would have been put on public display somewhere in the world. In any event, the paintings would  still have existed.

Let us just get it straight; there was no lunatic wanting to buy the Titians so they could drive a steamroller over them. No one was threatening to paint over them with household emulsion. The paintings were not in desperate need of restoration. They did not need ‘saving’ in the way that some of our crumbling buildings and monuments do. They were not candidates for the urgent do-something-about-it-now-or-they-will-be-gone-forever mode of saving stuff.

Therefore, gentle Titian fans there was no need to panic. Even if the paintings had left this Sceptred isle, they would have survived.

The heritage industry is huge. Ideas of what is and what is not part of our heritage are constantly changing, but we shouldn’t get carried away. Sixty-three years of the Titians in Scotland is not heritage, it is a tradition.

The NGS and NG could have been less dramatic when they asked

Titian wiki Commons

the public for cash to keep the Titians in the UK.
They could have just said, actually we think it would be awfully nice to keep them in the UK.

Okay, it does not have the same ring as the ‘saving them for the Nation’ heritage hype, but it is a more truthful approach.