Prismes

Prismes (Gold Leaf)

 

 

The Summer Show at Cambridge Contemporary opens this weekend, and for the occasion I am debuting a new work  - Prismes. Prismes was primarily influenced by, and takes its title from a certain series of geometric abstractions by Sonia Delaunay (featured in my last post), namely her painted Prismes Électriques series. My new Prismes collages build on the gridded Struktur works of mine which were inspired by the women weavers of the Bauhaus weaving workshop. I found in my research that there were several similarities which connected both the lives and careers of some of the women artists of the Bauhaus weaving workshop and that of Sonia Delaunay. The Prismes series of mine like the Struktur works were also created during the vacuum of the pandemic lockdowns.

 

 

Struktur (gold, detail)

 

 

Delaunay's Electric Prism series attempted to capture the distinctive glowing effects of the newly installed electric lighting of the street lamps of Paris, and the colours cast by their artificial light on the pavements and buildings which she experienced whilst walking along the boulevard Saint-Michel. The paintings are full of colour, movement and rhythm.

 

 

Sonia Delaunay - Prismes Électriques, 1914

 

 

 Prismes Électriques No.41, 1913-1914

In my response to Delaunay's Prismes Électriques, I too have attempted to capture light effects using a series of concentric circles of gold and white papers, and the reflective qualities of light with a lustrous gold leaf surface. I have also tried to represent a sense of movement, and the way in which light can fracture surfaces through the placement and variety of different species of butterflies, interspersed on and between the arced panels. The shimmering effects of light are depicted with the addition of the carefully positioned gold dots, which are a recent development in my work here, and here.  I have created versions of Prismes in silver leaf, and also tones of reds and pinks from my collection of found papers. Experience Prismes for yourself this summer at Cambridge Contemporary Art.

 

 

Prismes (detail)

 

Prismes (Red)

 

Prismes (Gold)

 

 

 

Summer Show

26th June until 30th August

Cambridge Contemporary Art

6 Trinity Street

Cambridge

CB2

Sonia Delaunay: Rhythm and Colour

Sonia Delaunay - Projet de Couverture d'Album No.1, 1916

"The true new painting will begin when we understand that colour has a life of its own, that the infinite combinations of colour have their poetry and poetic language much more expressive than by the old means. It is a mysterious language related to vibrations, the very life of colour. In this field there are endless new possibilities." - Sonia Delaunay. 

 

André Villers - Portrait of Sonia Delaunay, c.1975

 

 

A rather small, but nonetheless perfectly formed exhibition this, from a key figure in the Paris avante-garde and early pioneer of abstraction. The stark, white cube backdrop of Bastian's gallery is the perfect foil for Delaunay's vivid geometric abstractions which punctuate the space with little bursts of colour. Two pictures in, and my eyes were captivated by her couleurs. I found myself dancing a delicious waltz to Delaunay's rhythmes. Most of the works here are from Delaunay's Rythmes-Couleurs series, gouaches reproduced as pochoir prints published in 1966. Early in her career she collaborated with Robert Delaunay (who became her husband), and together they developed the theory of Simultanism - their theory of colour contrasts, in which they both abandoned figurative art for pure abstraction and colour. Their work also became known as Orphism. As was typical of many female artists in the history of art, Delaunay sacrified her early art career to support that of her artist husband whilst rearing their children. During this period Delaunay pursued a different creative direction producing some fantastic textile designs and clothing for firms such as Metz & Co. and Liberty, as well as founding her own Casa Sonia shop in Madrid, where her designs adorned surfaces as diverse as clothing, magazine covers and automobiles. It wasn't until after her husband's death that Delaunay resurrected and established her own career as a 'serious' artist/painter and began to gain a reputation of her own. Delaunay has been called the 'mother of abstraction' but art historical revisionism perhaps, has seen this accolade being accorded to fellow female artist Hilma Af Klint (here), who used her engagement in the practice of Spiritualism to create her own series of purely abstract paintings before even those of Kandinsky, which she instructed to be released many years after her death. The intimate works by Delaunay on display here at Bastian range from her early career, investigating colour and shape to her more mature developments in abstraction. I haven't seen any of Delaunay's work exhibited in London since the excellent retrospective at Tate Modern which I visited in 2015 (here), so this little exhibition served as a timely reminder of just how good (and influential) Delaunay's art is, and has been on current artists (myself included).

 

Rythme Couleur, 1971

 

Rythme Couleur, 1971

 

 

Rythme Couleur, 1970

Rythme Couleur, 1971

 

Rythme Couleur, 1971

 

 

 Rythme Couleur, c.1970

 

Composition, 1977

Projet de tissu, 1926

 

Projet de Couverture d'Album No.1, 1916

 

Helice Olympie,1969

Red and Black Semi circles on Blue background, 1964

 

Untitled, 1966

 

Thunderbird, 1973

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sonia Delaunay: Rhythm and Colour

until 27th June

Bastian

8 Davies Street

London 

W1

Swinging London

 

Peter Blake - Roxy Roxy, 1965-1983

 

 

I really like Pop Art. It encapsulates a particular time period, and celebrates aspects of popular culture that the artists who created it engaged with when younger, in the infancy of their careers. We all identify with aspects of Pop (even if we don't particularly like the art of the movement) - the popular music, film, and television stars, and printed ephemera which shaped our youth, no matter which age we grew up in. It is an excercise in nostalgia, and that is exactly what I found, (and appreciated) in this small survey of Swinging London in the 1960s. I certainly identified with many elements of the artworks in this small show of artists who came to prominence in that "decade that went Pop!". It was a clear case of recognition/identification. My newer works have incorporated spots/circles, like those seen below in the works here of Richard Smith, Howard Hodgkin, and also the Ben-day dots of Gerald Laing's paintings which I employ in my use of certain found papers. I have also near exclusively been using endless sheets of gold leaf as seen here in Peter Blake's Gold Painting. Most of the work here seemed familiar stylistically. A complete unknown and real revelation to me though were Richard Smith's rather splendid, large, hand-made collages made from paper pulp which did deserve a room to themselves. Though not strictly of the "Swinging London" era of the 1960s, (having been created in the 1980s), I found their complex, layered, zig-zag shapes across the picture plane to be really dynamic, emphasised through Smith's choice of bold colours. They are a part of Smith's oeuvre that demands further investigation. They recall the vibrant patterns and rhythms of Francis Davison's collages (here).

 

 

Installation view

 

Richard Smith (1931-2016) - Tower Series 1-5, 1981

 

 

 

 

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) - Standing Figure, 1956

 

Peter Blake - Gold Painting, 1959

 

Peter Blake - Roxy Roxy, 1965-1983

 

Allen Jones - You Dare, 1967

 

Allen Jones - Study for Bus Painting, 1965

 

Richard Smith (1931-2016) - Tip Top, 1963

 

Patrick Caulfield (1938-2005) - Perfume Jar, 1964

 

Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017) - The Meeting, 1963-65

 

Gerald Laing (1936-2011) - Four Events in the Experience of an Astronaut, 1963

 

 

 

 

Swinging London

until (tbc)

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert

37-38 Bury Street

St James's

London

SW1

Arturo Herrera: From This Day Forward

 

Untitled, 2020

 

‘Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it? In which ways is the baggage that we bring to the new image relevant to the vivid recollections within our cultural context? I am attracted to juxtaposing invented images and readymade images without establishing explicit relations between elements.’ — Arturo Herrera

Installation view  

 

 

As a practitioner of the art of collage myself, I was eager to catch this exhibition of collages by Arturo Herrera, a consumate practitioner of this particular discipline. Many of the works here were completed in self-isolation during last years' initial lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. On the evidence presented here, just like myself, Herrera found that period of high anxiety to also be a particularly rich, creative and prolific term where we were afforded the space, time and opportunity to focus fully on our craft. The timing of this show of collaged artworks is quite appropriate given that it is roughly one hundred years since the art and technique of collage has come to be recognised and accepted as a legitimate form of modern/fine art. The technique of collage of course has existed in older cultures such as those of China, Japan, and the Middle Ages, but it was Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque's coining of the term Papier collé to refer to the magazine and newspaper clippings they attached to the surfaces of their art as well as the other found objects that distinguishes collage, and elevates it to its own distinct art form. Herrera really appears to have had fun referencing and plundering the history of collage in these works, as I detected not only homages to the works of Picasso and Braque, but also in his mainly black and white works below, references to the works of Max Ernst who created the seminal wordless collage novel - Une Semaine De Bonté (A Week of Kindness). These collage works by Herrera are wonderful, dizzying mash-ups of both found materials and discarded/recycled elements from the artists own ouevre, used to create new works with a certain depth, densely layering and drawing from elements of both high and low culture. They are a beautiful mash-up of painterly techniques and more immediate graphic materials. I also admired the way in which Herrera like Matisse wasn't afraid of scale with some of these collaged pieces and went really large in size in some instances. The way in which the collages were presented on the gallery walls with painted lines and text specifically for this exhibition also made for an immersive collage experience in itself.

 

 

detail

 

Arturo Herrera: From This Day Forward

until 6th June

Thomas Dane

3 & 11 Duke Street

St James's

London

SW1