joseph scissorhands: April 2022

Sunday 24 April 2022

Van Gogh. Self-Portraits

Vincent Van Gogh - Self-Portrait, Paris, Spring 1887

"People say that it's difficult to know oneself... but it's not easy to paint oneself either" - Vincent Van Gogh.

This is a small but fascinating exhibition compared to the large Tate exhibition of 2019 (here) which explored Van Gogh's years spent in London. This Courtauld show is set over two rooms containing fifteen of the 35 self-portraits created by Vincent Van Gogh. The small exhibition spaces allow for an up-close, intimate examination of these portraits. The exhibition charts not only the developing painting styles of the artist and stylistic transitions he made to find his own authentic voice or painterly language, but also the sad decline in his mental health and the crises of self-harm he underwent which would ultimately end his life. The premise of the exhibition seems to be that we should be focusing on looking at the portraits as vehicles for his artistic development rather than perceiving them solely through the perspective of his mental health struggles. Van Gogh made many of the portraits simply because he could afford to pay no other models, reasoning that if he could capture the complexities of his own likeness then, "I'll surely be able to paint the heads of the other fellows and women as well." The most radical shift in styles can perhaps be seen in the portraits from the last 3 years of Van Gogh's life where he chooses different personas for each portrait portraying himself as respectable middle-class gent, serious artist, and then recovering patient. Not all of the portraits are great, but their are just enough masterpieces here to justify the hype. Van Gogh's face contains such presence. His gaze is as intensely penetrating and serious as that of Picasso in some paintings, piercing you to the very soul, and so searchingly desperate, and that of a haunted, broken man in others. It is hard to seperate the psychological from the emotional when looking at certain of the artists portraits. Those made towards the end of his life where Van Gogh quite clearly appears sick and almost feral looking are particularly affecting. You just want to give him a hug. How wonderful that throughout his trials and tribulations materially as well as mentally, Van Gogh was able find solace in his art, and paint and found the courage to persevere, leaving such a fantastic legacy to share with us.

Self-Portrait with Felt Hat, Paris, December 1886-January 1887

Self-Portrait, Paris, Spring 1887

Self-Portrait, Paris, Summer 1887

Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Paris, Spring 1887

Self-Portrait, Paris, March-June 1887

Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Paris, August-September 1887

Self-Portrait Paris, Summer 1887

Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Paris, September-October 1887

Self-Portrait Paris, Spring 1887

Self-Portrait Paris, Autumn 1887

Self-Portrait as a Painter 1888

Self-Portrait late August 1889

Self-Portrait September 1889

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889

Van Gogh's Chair, 1888

Van Gogh. Self-Potraits

until 8th May

The Courtauld Gallery

Somerset House

Strand

London

WC2R

Sunday 17 April 2022

Mimei Thompson: Butterflies Through Other Eyes #60

Some lovely textures in these colourful paintings of butterflies, moths and other winged insects by artist Mimei Thompson.

Sunday 10 April 2022

Francis Bacon: The First Pope

Francis Bacon - 'Landscape with Pope/Dictator', c. 1946

"I don't know how the copy of the Velasquez will turn out. I have practically finished one I think.... it is thrilling to paint from a picture which really excites you." - Francis Bacon

Further to my last post on Francis Bacon's current retrospective across town at the Royal Academy, I couldn't pass up this opportunity to see the first ever painting in Bacon's Pope series at Gagosian Davies Street. Gagosian have form with elements of Bacon as the subject matter of their exhibitions (here, and here). This painting though, is the sole exhibit in a dramatically blackened gallery, like an altarpiece in a chapel. This is the first time this painting has been publicly exhibited since going into a private collection in 1967. The painting was only rediscovered as late as 2016 when a catalogue raisonné of Bacon's work was being compiled. The painting was previously untitled but has been titled 'Landscape with Pope/Dictator' (c. 1946), and is thought to have been created in Monte Carlo when Bacon resided there from 1946 to 1950. The Pope series are based on Velázquez's full-length Portrait of Innocent X at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome (here), which Bacon never visited but was familiar with from black and white reproductions in books. Other paintings from his papal series would have been informed by the half-length version at Apsley House, London, from the Duke of Wellington's collection, or photographs of living Pope Pius XII, who controversially failed to publicly condemn Nazism and the Holocaust. Bacon's personal collections contained pictures of dictators and rallies and he has included these elements in this painting, as well as neoclassical architectural elements such as the columns designed by Nazi architects such as Albert Speer. One surprising element of the painting given its dark tone is the inclusion of flowers at the bottom of the canvas. On the occasion of my visit I was lucky to have the gallery all to myself, the better to savour this important rediscovery from Bacon's oeuvre.

Francis Bacon: The First Pope

until 23rd April

Gagosian Davies Street

17–19 Davies Street
London

W1K 3DE

Sunday 3 April 2022

Francis Bacon: Man and Beast

Second Version Triptych 1944, 1988 (detail)

"We are meat, we are all potential carcasses" - Francis Bacon

John Deakin, Photograph of Francis Bacon in Front of a Door, c. 1967

To the RA for this much anticipated retrospective dealing with the representation of animals and the animalistic in relation to the human body in Bacon's oeuvre. The exhibition charts the development of Bacon's work, unfolding chronologically across the RA's main galleries, opening dramatically with Head I, given a whole gallery space to itself, and continues to his final painting Study of a Bull in the last room of the exhibition. Bacon was a self-taught painter and you can certainly see limitations in his work. The failings in his draughtsmanship are particularly evident in some paintings, but he manages to cover this up in later paintings with the development of his own powerful visual language and idiosyncratic style of painting. The animalistic has perhaps always seemed to be an important part of Bacon's oeuvre, whether it be straighforward depictions of animals and the big game that he observed first-hand on visits to Africa, or the snarling, primal screams of his series of Popes. Mouths, open, baring fangs, threatening to bite, in all of their savagery are one of the most distinguishing features here of Bacon's work serving to underscore the theme and links between animals and the human figure. Bacon also took inspiration from the groundbreaking photographs of Eadweard Muybridge which accurately document animal and human locomotion. One of the most shocking paintings in the exhibition for me was Paralytic Child Walking on all Fours, which again like the snarling mouths captured in other works harks back to something primal in mans evolution. It is so beautifully painted, but hard to look at for too long as it is genuinely disturbing. Animalistic impulses were also famously played out in Bacon's private life where he engaged in sadomasochistic relationships with his various lovers. One, Peter Lacy was particularly brutal, and was reported to want Bacon 'chained to a wall like an animal, sleeping and shitting on a bed of straw'. This equation of sex with violence is best seen in the room in the exhibition here containing the Bullfight series. Here we see the ritualistic, potentially fatal dance in which matadors fuse with the muscular brawn of the bulls. The surfaces of these paintings are streaked with the ejaculations of white paint. 'Bullfighting is like boxing - a marvellous aperitif to sex', Bacon is reported to have observed. This is a really powerful survey which confirms Bacon's contribution to the development of 20th C. art, and just why Bacon is one of the most important painters of the last century.