Anish Kapoor

 

Anish Kapoor - The Night Encloses II

 

 

 

"I have an obsession with red. My favourite colour of all , the one I use by the ton, is Alizirin crimson. It's a very dark bloody Bordeaux wine red. What's interesting about red is that it links to black so incredibly easily. Red makes great darkness. And of course one might say red is fully a colour of the interior."  - Anish Kapoor.
 

 

Installation view
 

 

Known primarily for his sculptures this exhibition affords the visitor the chance to familiarise themselves with the lesser known aspect of Anish Kapoor's oeuvre, that of his paintings. It was certainly a side of his work that I was unfamiliar with so I took the opportunity to visit Lisson Gallery for a look. It was a shock to be confronted with a series of visceral, bloody canvases that hinted at ritualistic violence to the body, and landscapes rent by volcanic explosions - themes quite appropriate to this current Hallow'een season. The symbolism of the colours red and black are particularly powerful in the canon of art, and these are the colours that predominate here, executed in a physical, gestural style. I saw stylistic precedences in Kapoor's paintings in the fleshy, muscular works of Francis Bacon, Chaim Soutine and perhaps even those of Philip Guston with their thick, viscous impastoes and dynamic, gestural application. Kapoor even presents one work here (Diana Blackened Reddened) in the form of a triptych, a feature of many of Bacon's works. It is so beautifully painted, but I just kept seeing Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944. The landscape paintings by Kapoor here are interesting in that they resemble the spectacular, apocalyptic scenes we have been witnessing in the media recently in the eruption of the volcano on La Palma. Kapoor's paintings evoke this sensation with ruptured landscapes spilling their guts, and their surfaces of acid yellow paint, and thick, black, lava-like encrustations on the surface of the canvas. One can almost smell the sulphurous odours in the delicate wisps of paint emanating from the fissures in their volcanic forms. Two of Kapoor's sculptures are included here, and both similarly repulsed but fascinated me. They are reminiscent of scenes from an abattoir with metal machinery dripping  bloody entrails. Again the piece entitled Side Inside, recalled  Francis Bacon's work, being a metal framework hung with a sinewy carcass of blood red silicone entrails. Bacon used such frameworks frequently both as a device to demarcate space within his picture planes, and to isolate his figures. Side Inside is to my eyes like a three dimensional representation of the first panel of Bacon's Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981), with a bloodied, nightmarishly, surreal creature hanging from a framed structure. I'm not sure if the violent and bloody nature of these paintings were created by Kapoor purely for sensationalism to capitalise on the proximity and publicity of Frieze, or were conceived out of a genuine need to vent something dark which had been previously repressed until now, or are possibly a response to the emotional rigours endured during the pandemic, as many of the artworks were created during the lockdown. It doesn't really matter. Kapoor is an esteemed sculptor, and dark as the subject matter of these paintings is, he appears to acquit himself well as a painter too.

 

From a Dark House in Delhi, 2021

Oh Mother, Tell Me my Life Again, 2021

 Ritual Acts II and Ritual Acts

 

 Ritual Acts

 

 

 Diana Blackened Reddened, 2021

 

 Diana Blackened Reddened (detail)

 

 Diana Blackened Reddened (detail)

 

 Diana Blackened Reddened (detail)

Blackness From Her Womb, 2021

 

Blackness From Her Womb, (detail)

Sati, 2021

 

Sati, (detail)

 

Sacrifice, 2019

 

Sacrifice, 2019

 

Sacrifice, 2019 (detail)

Untitled, 2020

 

Untitled, 2020

 

Untitled, 2020

 

Side Inside, 2016

 

Side Inside, 2016

 

Side Inside, (detail), 2016

 

Side Inside, (detail), 2016

 

Side Inside, 2016

 

Side Inside, 2016

 

 All There Under My Skin, 2020

 

All There Under My Skin III, 2020

 

Babel II, 2021

Inhuman, 2020

 

The Night Encloses II, 2021

 

The Night Encloses II, (detail), 2021

Anish Kapoor

until 30th October

Lisson Gallery 

27 Bell Street

London

NW1

Elizabeth Neel I Limb after Limb

 

Elizabeth Neel - Disposal, 2021

 

 

"Sometimes you need to live with a painting for a while. Starting a painting can be easy, but finishing it... that's the skill of the painter, how you finally know when it's done."  - Elizabeth Neel.

 

 

Installation View

 

 

It can be really exciting to discover a new artist whose work both fascinates and inspires you. I found just such an artist at Pilar Corrias's new gallery on Savile Row, across the street from the Royal Academy of Arts. The paintings of Elizabeth Neel were a revelation to me. the language of her gestural, painterly abstractions had me fired up, and recognising many of the tropes of abstract expressionism that I have been researching of late. Neel comes from a fine artistic lineage, being the grand-daughter of esteemed portrait painter Alice Neel. According to the Pilar Corrias website this new body of work was concieved to be displayed in the nave, apse and transept of a deconsecrated church, and explores themes of physicality, suffering, transformation, resuscitation and redemption, created on her family's farm in Vermont during the pandemic. What drew me to Neel's work was the sense of urgency in her experimental, yet sophisticated range of mark-making. Neel employs a knowing array of painterly mark-making devices in her canvases such as the use of her fingers, mono-printing techniques, and painting rollers to make marks on the canvas. Also impressive among her repertoire is her technique of pouring paints onto the canvas then folding sections of her canvases to create Rorchach test-like mirror images in paint which she then works into further with more poured paint spatters, graphic symbolism, or feathery/painterly brushwork  to create something uniquely her own. The way in which she leaves negative space in the raw canvas around her painterly mark marking allowing the works to breathe was also admired.

 

 

Passing Strange, 2021

Stranger's End, 2021

Eve, 2021

 

Eve, 2021 (detail)

Installation View

 

Eve 2, 2021

Eve 2, 2021 (detail)

Eve 2, 2021 (detail)

 

Installation View

 

The Magda, 2021

Sinner/Saint, 2021

Paradise, 2021

 

 Paradise, 2021 (detail)

 

Life of a Flounder, 2021

 

 

Elizabeth Neel I Limb after Limb

until 23rd October

Pilar Corrias

2 Savile Row

London

W1S 3PA

Paula Rego

Paula Rego - The Dance, 1988 

 

 

 

"Art is the only place you can do what you like. That's freedom." - Paula Rego. 

 

 

 

 

 

Paula Rego has ploughed a singular field in art championing women's rights with her narrative paintings which are at turns serious, whimsical, harrowing and at times quite surreal. This big retrospective at Tate Britain nicely charts the developments of her art from the early abstracted figurations driven by her dislike of the dictatorial regime of António de Oliveira Salazar in her native Portugal, to the series of paintings of girls with men and dogs containing a sense of underlying menace that brought her to prominence in the 1980s, and ends with her current large series of pastel paintings addressing serious/difficult issues faced by women and the fight for the control of their bodies. Indeed the exhibition ends on a rather depressing note with a room full of pictures tackling the horrific subject of female circumcision and genital mutilation. As urgent as this issue is surely the curators could have sent us on our way on a more cheerful note. Rego was sent to Britain in the 1950s to escape Salazar's authoritarian regime by her father who seems to have played a pivotal role in her life. Here whilst attending the Slade she met and eventually married fellow artist Victor Willing. The messy intricacies of their relationship are frankly played out in paintings such as The Dance, (above), and recounted by Rego in the biographical documentary made by her son Nick Willing - Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories - which plays at the entrance to this exhibition and can occasionally be seen on BBC iPlayer. I had never experienced any of Rego's early collaged paintings in the flesh previously, so it was a pleasure to examine them up close, and recognise as someone else who works in collage what Rego describes as "the sensual act of cutting". Cutting whether into lino or paper has always been central to my practice so it was exciting to see the visceral pleasure that the act of cutting itself has brought to another creative recognised and acknowledged. Drawing though, is the practice that underpins all of Rego's work. I saw this previously here, and her mastery of draughtsmanship is again all too evident throughout this exhibition. This drawing is reinforced by a series of figurative dolls/models which Rego records from direct observation, created both by herself and her son-in-law, artist Ron Mueck. This exhibition features just one of Rego's models created from stitching skills learnt as a child. Pastel has become Rego's medium of choice in this later period of her career, and I would say that these later pastels of hers rival the power of those of Edgar Degas. Dog Woman, and the Untitled series in which Rego tackles the issue of women taking control of their bodies and avoiding the resulting unneccessary deaths through illegal backstreet abortions after a defeated vote in a Portugese referendum are particularly powerful. They are comparable to Degas' series of women frozen, crouching and washing themselves at their toilette. Rego's skills in drawing and evoking a sense of narrative in her compositions recall not just the artist Degas, but also other noted storytellers - Hogarth, Velázquez and Goya. This sense of the narrative and the Victorian sensibilities of Rego's work seems to put her at odds with the likes of the younger generation of conceptual artists who gave up on painting just as she came to prominence. Rego though, has acknowledged that her work isn't fashionable, stating - "I'm not fashionable at all, and the fact that I manage to sell pictures without being fashionable is thanks to my gallery". This singular vision and talent has served and continues to serve Rego well. Talent will out. All of the evidence can be witnessed here.

 

 

 

Paula Rego

until 24th October

Tate Britain

Millbank

London

SW1