Christmas Wishes

A year of progress!

I would like to thank The Rowley Gallery, Cambridge Contemporary Art,

all individuals who have purchased work,

and of course readers of this blog.

Wishing You

A Very Merry Christmas!

 

Gauguin Portraits

Paul Gauguin - Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière, 1888/9

I was so looking forward to visiting this survey dedicated to aspects of portraiture from the oeuvre of Paul Gauguin. His paintings are among some of the works that I particularly admire of art at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition opens with a self-portrait of him as an expectant young artist, and ends with a portrait of him as a reflective, isolated older man. Most critics in reviews of this exhibition mindful of the #MeToo movement appear only too eager to point out what a difficult character he was to be around, and his repugnant behaviour in taking child 'brides' whilst living in the islands of Polynesia, making him out to be predatory because of his proclivity for younger girls (which is pretty indefensible), despite the complicity of local traditional customs of offering up their young girls to older influential men. Gauguin wasn't the first artist to behave monstrously to those around him, and as history shows he certainly won't be the last. As co-curator of the exhibition Cornelia Homburg points out "if we were to ignore artists who behaved appallingly 80 per cent of art history wouldn't take place". Problematic as his personality and his behaviours could be though, Gauguin really could paint, and was a consummate colourist, using colour in unusual juxtapositions to define form and delineate space in his paintings. In this exhibition we also get to see Gauguin's work in other media creating portraits in ceramics, sculpture, wood-carving and bronze casts. I was intrigued by the "surrogate portraits" in which he arranged objects which reminded him of the presence of former sparring partners (sunflowers for Vincent van Gogh), in still lives to evoke their memory. This exhibition only hints at his greatness, but a more complete picture of what Gauguin was capable of in terms of his art can be seen in exhibitions I witnessed in Paris two years ago both here and here.

Self Portrait, 1885

 Self Portrait (Near Golgotha), 1896

Christ in the Garden of Olives, 1889

 Self Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1890-91

Self Portrait 'à l'ami Daniel', 1896

 Self Portrait, 1890/94

Anthropomorphic Pot, 1889

Young Breton Woman, 1889
 

Portrait of a Pont-Avennoise (Perhaps Marie Louarn), 1888

Portrait of Louis Roy, 1890-91
 

 Portrait of Madame Roulin, 1888
 

Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891
 

Vahine no te vi (Woman with a Mango), 1892

Merahi metua no Tehamana (The Ancestors of Tehamana), 1893
 

Tehura (Teha'amana), 1891-3

 

Self Portrait 'Oviri', 1894-5
 

 Self Portrait with Manao tupapau (front), 1893-4 
 

Portrait of William Mollard (back, upside down), 1893-4
 

Young Christian Girl, 1894

 Self Portrait with Idol, about 1893

Still Life with 'Hope', 1901

Still Life with Apples, a Pear, and a Ceramic Portrait Jug, 1889

Barbarian Tales, 1902

Self Portrait, 1903

Gauguin Portraits

until 26th January 2020

The National Gallery

Trafalgar Square

London

Cambridge Contemporary Art's Christmas Soirée

Following the success of last year's Christmas event, Cambridge Contemporary Art are having another pre-Christmas soirée on December 11th. Food will be provided by local delicatessen Meadows and cheesemonger Hum-closen, to be enjoyed and washed down with a glass of wine whilst you enjoy the artworks in the gallery's current Winter Show.
Cambridge Contemporary Art will also be giving away free exclusively designed tote bags to carry away your possible purchases. RSVP the gallery for the event which will take place between 6 and 7.30pm on Wednesday 11th December. One of my latest works Sospiri (gold leaf version) features in the current CCA window display below, left. Contact the gallery for details.

Sospiri (Gold leaf)

Cipher (Silver leaf)

Cambridge Contemporary Art

6 Trinity Street

Cambridge

CB2 1SU

Tel: 01223 324222

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things

Making photographs, to me, is really a kind of dream state. As you tour your imagination, you want to photograph what you are seeing... but the only way you can do this is by really utterly, absolutely, passionately firmly believing. - Tim Walker



To the V&A to see Wonderful Things, a terrific exhibition of Tim Walker's fashion and portrait photography. There had been a fairly comprehensive retrospective of his work 7 years ago at Somerset House (here), which included some of the outsized props he employs to give the illusion of magic, fantasy and surrealism, all trademarks which exemplify his work. This exhibition though is a slightly different beast which still features some of those wonderful props but focuses on a personal selection of objects from the V&A's vast collection to which Walker was invited to respond to in his own inimitable way. He has called in favours from muses of the likes of Grace Jones, Tilda Swinton et al to create an exciting body of work which breathes new life and interpretations into the pictures and objects he has selected. I enjoyed the theatricality of the staging of the different areas of the exhibtion, where each object/picture has been given its own distinct space to relate a narrative through Walker's photographs. There is also a foray into the moving image by Walker with short film - The Steadfast Tin Soldier, his homo-erotic re-telling of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, which can be found upstairs in the V&A's Photography galleries.

The Dream Department

"Fashion photography is the dream department of photography. When you're a fashion photographer, everything is an illusion from the start". 

Chapel of Nudes

 

"The nude has been eternally inspiring to artists, but its a subject I've only started to photograph in recent years. We are all exquisite beings nude and that's something I want to celebrate".

Wonderful Things

Illuminations

"I love vibrant, transparent colour - Christmas lights, sweet wrappers, the red lightbulb in a photographic darkroom... Translucent colour provokes an immediate emotional in me and is central to this photoshoot".

Tobias and Sara on their Wedding Night, ca. 1520

Triumph of Death over the Laity, ca. 1520-1530 and Triumph of Death over the Clergy, ca. 1520-1530

Death as a Drummer - Joachim Henne, about 1670

"Throughout history, Death is frequently depicted as a personnified force or skeleton... This figure was created as a reminder of the unstoppable drumming of Death summoning everyone to their inevitable end. This drummer looks less like the Grim Reaper, and more like a wild, joyful dancer - encapsulated in my photos of Grace Jones".

Pen and Ink


 

Aubrey Beardsley - The Peacock Skirt, 1893

"I've always been seduced by the inky blackness, confidence and eroticism of Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations.... When I saw the prints close up, I could visualise them as 

photographs immediately". 

Cloud 9


 

Chess Set, about 1790

"Exploring the V&A's historical paintings from South Asia reminded me of how I feel when I'm in that part of the world. I've always been drawn to India..."

Box of Delights


 

Embroidered casket (about 1675)

"We all have a need to store our secrets in a private world that we love. The embroidered box in this room feels like an expression of that need... It suggests a world in which you can safely be whoever you want to be. James Spencer bursts out of his family home and into that world dressed as a beautiful woman..."

Chamberlain's key (about 1680)

Court Mantua, 1755-60

Lil' Dragon

Snuffbox about 1745, gold mounts about 1800

"The museum has a dazzling collection of intricately decorated snuffboxes. As soon as I saw this one with a dragon on it, I visualised the empress walking her pet dragon at night and picking a flower that only blooms at full moon..."

The Land of Living Men 

"I'm fascinated by the spectrum of masculinity in all its glorious manifestations. The V&A collection includes diverse representations of the male nude. The title is from an 1891 novel by William Morris displayed in the museum's British Galleries".

Fig Leaf for David, (about 1857)

Museum legend goes that this fig leaf was created for the plaster cast of Michelangelo's David because Queen Victoria was shocked by the nudity. The leaf was fixed to the figure before each royal visit to the museum until the 20th century.

Michelangelo - David, V&A Cast Courts

Handle With Care 

"These pictures are a love letter to the conservators, curators, and archivists at the museum. The work they do is vital. Without their sensitivity and care, there would quite simply be nothing here. seeing the dress by Alexander McQueen exquisitely wrapped up at the V&A's Clothworker's Centre, it became a beautiful ghost."

Why Not Be Oneself?

"The poet Dame Edith Sitwell had a striking personal style and was incerdibly photogenic, especially in her later years... Her flamboyant wardrobe included brocade robes velvet gowns, turbans and golden shoes. For this series of portraits, actor Tilda Swinton a distant relative of Edith's inhabited the role of the poet".

Sitwell's gold bag and fabulous shoes

Soldiers Of Tomorrow 

The Bayeux Tapestry - 1873, Cundall & Co. 

"Among the 800,000 photographs in the V&A collection is one that measures 65 metres long. It's the biggest photograph I've ever seen, and it depicts the Bayeux Tapestry, an object that's always fascinated me. It inspired me to produce photographs that evoke both the chaos and beauty of the tapestry".

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things
until 8th March
Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London
SW7