BONNARD EQUALS BOX OFFICE-HOW MUSEUMS ABUSE MASTERPIECES

Bonnard: View of the River, Vernon . It is in fact a view of his garden at Vernonnet with the Seine in the distance. Painted 1923.Edinburgh.

I have been reading the catalogue of the current Bonnard exhibition at the Tate and it has caused me some concern.It took quite bit of study to work out just which works are in the exhibition and to the best of my calculation I believe that it contains 91 paintings, several drawings and modern prints of Bonnard's photographs.


The exhibition is founded on the excellent Bonnards from the collection of Tate Modern along with some accompanying drawings. It also includes the two fine Bonnards from Edinburgh. So for quite some time members of the public will be unable to see these excellent paintings without paying a substantial fee. They will also be exposed to the vicissitudes of travel to at least one other venue. As far as I can see all of the  paintings are going to the Denmark showing and possibly also to Vienna. In Vienna the venue is a kunsthalle which has no collection of its own from  which to contribute.

To the best of my knowledge the Tate paintings are not usually displayed together in their home, but they are in this show. A lover of Bonnard would like to see this but equally a lover of Bonnard would have grave concerns about the presentation of such gorgeous paintings in  that joyless, underinvigilated, inhospitable mausoleum known as Tate Modern. But better  that they are preserved  because I don't really think that the Tate is fit to have custody of them.They would be more at home in the National Gallery.

Do not buy the catalogue.It really does not contribute anything of substance to Bonnard studies at all.Also, many of the illustrations are dreadful reproductions of the originals.The catalogue for the earlier Tate show is much better and if you want a general book on Bonnard you might as well read Tim Hyman's text. At least a painter is reflecting on another artist's work.

Also in the exhibition are old standards such as the standing nude from Brussels, the couple from Paris and the Atelier with Mimosas also from Paris.I have seen many Bonnard exhibitions starting with the unsurpassable show at the R.A of 1966 and these paintings have been in most of them.  I yield to no one in my love for Bonnard but possibly the most interesting-because critical- review of the exhibition that I have seen come from-of all people- Adrian Searle in The Guardian. He admits that he is not one of Bonnard's greatest fans but I do find that some of his reservations are very understandable. It isnt the usual Bonnard=bonheur equation by any means. For that reason alone it is worth a look.

MILLICENT FAWCETT-MORE MEDIOCRE SCULPTURE

I have touched on the subject of modern figurative sculpture and the nature of sculptural  quality or lack of it in an earlier post. Here I discuss the very new  sculpture of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.It is another of Ms Wearing's productions.The following should really be read in conjunction with my earlier post which illustrates examples of what would generally be accepted as poor  or good quality modelling.

Millicent Fawcett staue, Parliament Square, Gillian Wearing,installed 2018. 

 It took until 2018 for a statue of an important suffragist to arrive in Parliament Square. In typical British fashion there isn't quite a consistent theme in the choice of subjects for sculptures in the Square.Is this some kind of British pantheon? But statues of Lincoln and Mandela  among many others are  there. Personally I can see no reason for Mandela's presence other than blind sentiment. I admire Lincoln but  both he and Mandela were foreigners. They only go to prove that, worthies though they may be the choice of subjects for public sculpture in the UK is at best capricious.  But this new sculpture is a mediocre piece of work and that is nothing to celebrate at all. It is true that most of the statues in Parliament Square are of poor quality.  And this example, on the evidence of photos is no exception.

 Ms Wearing is no modeller. Mrs Fawcett's head looks blocklike and lacking animation. She and her team have produced nothing which rivals Nigel Boonham's recent Martin Luther King.

It is obvious that I am not the only one wondering why Ms Wearing was chosen. Here is a letter to the Guardian from Martin Jennings with which-at least on the nature of the modelling- I agree. Mr Jennings is a sculptor. He is one of those catering to the current UK craze for commemoration. He is not correct to say that A Real Birmingham Family is her (only) "other misguided foray into the artform". She and her teams have produced similar works in Italy and Denmark. On photographic evidence it seems that the quality is again very poor.

Contemporary sculpture is a broad field comprising multiple forms of practice. Sculptors do their best work when they deploy their proven expertise rather than when they wander into other areas of which they have little experience. You wouldn’t appoint a plumber to fix your wiring, so why ask a conceptual artist to make your statue?
It is dismaying to see that Gillian Wearing, a celebrated and interesting conceptual artist, has been chosen to make the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square (Report, 14 April). There are several women sculptors in this country with the necessary years of specific experience required to erect a compelling statue in Parliament Square next to Epstein’s figure of Jan Smuts and Ivor Roberts Jones’s great monument to Churchill. Wearing is not one of them, as evidenced by her one misguided foray into the artform to date – the lamentably formless A Real Birmingham Family. We are told she was selected to make the statue of Fawcett by so-called “cultural leaders”. What bias led these experts to ignore the evidence that Wearing’s abilities lie elsewhere?
Martin Jennings
Witney, Oxfordshire

The term "cultural leaders " is indeed grotesque. Are we talking in artistic or anthropological terms? Did any of these cultural leaders have understanding of artistic quality, or knowledge of  sculptural tradition? It seems that the answer is "No".

At least this one was cast in the UK . It wouldn't have looked very good if it had been fabricated in China, would it?


I'll grant that Ms Wearing had a challenge in portraying a woman who was alive more than a century ago.How woud you depict her except in the clothing of her own day?

So what would she do? Ms Wearing has her holding out a sheet or banner with some of Mrs Fawcett's words. I am not the first to suggest that it looks as if she is hanging out washing. I also suggest that she grips the banner in a peculiarly  awkward and slightly uncomfortable manner-just look at her hands.

Her body- language is not proclaiming something to the effect that, these are my words, look at them and take notice.It is passive and apologetic, not unlike those silent people in you see in the street who hold religious leaflets in their hands which you can accept or ignore.But perhaps that is what was wanted, a figure frozen in expressive mid-gesture might not look so dignified; she wasn't an impulsive  Pankhurst after all. Mrs Fawcett may have been a respectable Victorian matron but I think that she could have managed a more dynamic pose.

I have tried to find something redeeming about this sculpture but it doesn't offer much.It was a reasonable idea to add photos to the base but the plinth seems rather half-hearted and there doesn't seem to have been much thought about it. The sculptors of the past could have designed their own plinths to emphasise and complement their figures. The lettering on the base is of only average  quality. Surely no letter carver of quality has worked here?

IONA NORTH END-FROM A PEPLOE VIEWPOINT

IONA NORTH END-FROM A PEPLOE VIEWPOINT

This is a gouache painting I made from a drawing done last year on Iona.I stood as near as possible to the spot in which  Peploe must have placed himself to do his oil. At this place you are surrounded by unusually shaped rocks. Some of these have been given names by the many artists who have flocked to Iona, especially in the C20. You are within yards of Cathedral Rock and Pulpit Rock.

As I said this is a gouache painting. If you haven't used gouache before let me say that it has two particular characteristics: it dries to a chalky, non-glossy surface  and it can be a little difficult to visualise the colour it will take when dry. Cadell would certainly have liked the idea of a chalky surface. But I don't see much evidence of his using gouache.In his time it would have been associated with commercial art where permanence was little valued. Nowadays the quality of gouache paint is vastly improved.

DAVID BOMBERG IN NEWCASTLE

David Bomberg: Mount Zion with The Church of the Dormition-by Moonlight, 1923.

The Bomberg show at the Laing until the end of May should give you a lot of pleasure if you care about British painting. Bomberg is important for his near abstracts and for his more figurative late work. he has a high claim to importance in both these areas.But he has also been considerably neglected in his own time and later.The exhibition is organised jointly by Pallant House and the Ben Uri Art Gallery.

This show is billed as the first "complete" Bomberg exhibition in X years. It does only occupy two rooms rather than the three allotted to the previous Nash exhibition . Bomberg's early work when he was near but certainly not of the Vorticists is represented by numerous drawings. But there is no Mud Bath, there is no Ju-Jitsu.It belongs to the Tate and perhaps because of its importance they might be reluctant to lend it to a provincial gallery.But there were other possibilities as I have mentioned. But here it is as a reminder of what Bomberg could do. Exhibiting tiny abstractions does not have the same effect as showing something like the Mud Bath. You could make out a good case that it is the most radical 20th British painting  ever. Full stop. But it is not on show. Some small oils from that period do appear.There are plenty of drawings with similar themes.

David Bomberg: The Mud Bath. 1914.NOT IN EXHIBITION.

Bomberg was a Londoner, Jewish, and from the East End.He was at the Slade during its best time-with Carrington, Gertler, Spencer and Paul Nash .He was quite successful at the Slade,it was where he met his fellow East-Ender Isaac Rosenberg-so soon to die in the First World War. Bomberg comitted himself to modernism  early on when he destroyed dozens of perfect Slade type drawings. He knew that he wanted to do something different.

He enlisted as a sapper in the army early in the First World War and towards the end of it he became a War Artist. But apart from a few relatively weak drawings this isn't really covered in the exhibition.He  worked  for the Canadian War Memorial Fund and produced a  large picture of sappers at work- eventually accepted in the second more conservative version.

Bomberg's war was quite harrowing. In distress  he shot  himself in the foot. The loss of a brother and the death of both Rosenberg and T E Hulme  brought home the futility of it all. Bomberg seems to have had an understanding adjutant who listened to his explanation of why he had wounded himself. He was punished fairly  lightly in view of the serious nature of the offence. What effect all this had on his mental health can only be imagined.

Why Bomberg did not continue with his cuboid sem-figuration is unknown to me. But that is the case. By the early 1920s it was fading away to be replaced by a more obviously figurative method.
 He did  paint some Jewish, east end subjects. Most notably there is the Ghetto Theatre which is present in two versions here.

David Bomberg: The South-East Corner of Jerusalem.

When you look at the paintings he did of Palestine-in the second room you will likely feel that you have stumbled onto the work of a different personality. But only recall that Bomberg had a Slade training and you will not be surprised by the structure and perspective especially in the Jerusalem paintings. Here he catches the light and everything is light and bright. The shadows which must often have been intense are painted with their own interior light and often the colour range is relatively high key. The paint  is luscious and has the suavity all its own. It is not as thick or sculptural as you will find in the adjacent Spanish paintings.There is only one painting of the Petra series. The best of these-and there is only one in the show- are delightful in colour.This one has pinks and attractive blue greys and an interesting cropped structure. Here indeed you may find a wall of colour.

You may see the Jerusalem paintings as topography but they are not quite that. Bomberg certainly knew that he had a market which he might consider. The British administration received him with some respect and Sir Reginald Storrs bought a painting for a decent price. To those involved his work would have appeared  modernistic. It looks to me as if they were painted in tranquility and that Bomberg was enjoying himself.For a while he had no serious money worries.

His vision of Spain is freer and more expressive. He was working entirely for himself at Ronda, Cuenca, Toledo and in the Picos de Europa.But he travelled also to Cyprus and Scotland in search of motifs. In Cornwall towards the end of his life  he found the subject for the Laing's own painting. In one of the glass cases you can see the letter to the gallery giving instructions as to where the cheque should be sent.These late landscapes become clouds of colour. Late Bomberg deserves another exhibition.

As he got older Bomberg became more isolated from other artists. Often he felt unable to paint for considerable periods at a stretch. He was  depressed for he had a good and well justified opinion of himself  which many of his contemporaries  didn't take seriously.In these circumstances what does a poor artist do? He can teach if he can find someone to employ him. Or he can teach on his own. In Bomberg's case he first tried to open an art school in Spain in  the1930s. He tried again in the 1950s. At one point  he tried to run a small hotel but was fleeced by some residents. At another his wife ran a small shop.He also taught in London. And this is where he became, through his powerful personality a tutor  for young artists such as Auerbach. But Bomberg was often depressed and there were lengthy periods when he did no work.

In the Second World War he was also engaged to do some war  work.The Bomb Store is the subject and two of the many works associated with this theme are shown. It seems that Kenneth Clark was not enthusiastic about the results. These works have no relation to the toytown decorativeness of Ravillious or the fluent drawings of Anthony Gross. These are gloomy and Bomberg took the commission seriously, though many of the works, even quite large ones were done in oil  on tracing  paper. These are not descriptive pieces in the manner of Muirhead Bone. It isn't easy to understand what is going on in the Store. It is a dark and dramatic place, we can see that in Bomberg's response. But there is no topographical or illustration like element to these works-and that was what the WAAC wanted.

David Bomberg:Self -portrait.Made circa 1913-14.Just before or perhaps contemporary with the Mud Bath.

There are quite a few portraits in the show. Early on we see the self portrait now in the NPG, it is a clear  modern drawing. Bomberg's Slade training is obvious. Later on the portraits become more cloudy, less defined. They are often unlike any other portraits you will have seen. Ghostly forms appear as though cowled . There may be little facial detail.

When I recently reread Richard Cork's standard book on the artist I was surprised to learn that Bomberg applied to become Professor of Fine Art at the University of Durham-at what is now the Dept of Fine Art at Newcastle University. If the appointment had been made the University would have acquired one of its most distinguished painters. Bomberg was noted for the intense manner of his teaching. He would have loved the contact with students but administration wouldn't have interested him very much. Newcastle's loss was the Borough Polytechnic's gain.Newcastle got Robin Darwin for a couple of years before  he decided that London was more exciting.

SEAN SCULLY IN NEWCASTLE-THE ARTIST AS PERFORMER

Sean Scully, who studied in Newcastle has two  exhibitions of his early work on show at the Hatton and the Laing until May 28 2018.The Laing also has a roomful of his early-and very negligible drawings.I have seen both and found that I came to the following thoughts and conclusions regarding his early work and his later  statements about his ideas.

It is obvious that Scully was very ambitious and determined to produce work which fitted the cutting edge of abstraction as it was seen circa 1970. He succeeded in this to a considerable degree. Within the very limited possibilities of abstraction he has produced some pleasing designs-but nothing more. Abstraction while it may sometimes be fun does seem like a sterile cul-de-sac to me. But Scully was entering into a cult and the cult was flatness, and the cult was New York.This place was the residence of the chief mystagogues and unto it  the young Scully did repair. The cult was the white studio with its inmate as hero.Vir Heroicus Sublimis indeed! (That was Barnett but it could be you too!) We need a philosopher/sociologist such as  Ernest Gellner to analyse this preposterous tendency: just as he did the shabby world of psychoanalysis.

 For an artist of Scully's age the paintings of 1970 are often quite mature. Scully was only 25. But the several paintings which look like the full-frontal elevations of boring modernist blocks of flats are indeed very tedious  and colourwise uninteresting.

I used to think that he improved with age but now I am not so sure. In later work his personal colour scheme seems frequently to be melancholy and sombre,with tarnished yellows and wine- like reds etc. Muted colours  abound.His walls of colour are too much of a muchness. The interventions which may seem to float or hover in front of some of the blocks of colour  just make one think, if these are important developments  then how impoverished is the  imaginative world of  such a painter ?

His best early paintings as shown in these exhibitions have certain illusionistic qualities which make them interesting. That was a surprise to me. There are not too many of them. East Coast Light#2 is good example. The amount of work and thought which has led to their construction is quite considerable. The illusionism is not accidental. In the best of them there is a kind of depth. Part of this is obtained by the use of spray paint which darkens but does not disguise the area behind broad assertive bands of colour which cut across the canvas, There are bands and there are stripes.In one case the stripes are toned in their centre which suggests a certain three dimensionality. But in the end it is just a giant form of basketwork.A pleasant form of basketwork it has to be said.

Scully likes the bridges over the Tyne which may have slightly influenced his work. It's the diagonals you see.

 There is variation in all the paintings  if you look long enough at them. I have to wonder if some of them are in effect palimpsests. If you work over an old painting with perhaps a general overpainting to produce some vague textures and then add broad stripes etc you get some variety in unity.

Projection of spiritual experience onto, for example,  the Tate  Rothkos or a painting by Scully is entirely in the mind of the beholder-as it must always be. But here you have to wonder how many have really thought about the problems of abstraction.One feels that people are saying what they are told to feel by the art establishment. To me abstractionist painters are deluding themselves if they believe as Rothko did that that they are painting about human lives and emotions. If they feel that they are doing this it is up to them. But if so many reject the message it does not mean that they are deaf to  it and the artist misunderstood.The idea of self-expression should certainly be questioned.Perhaps the medium cannot convey the message.

In writing this piece I have looked at some interviews with the artist. I was rather surprised by them. Scully  comes over as an oracular broth of a boy who emerged from extreme poverty, familial violence, a life of petty criminality and animal healing as a belligerent self-mythologiser. I conclude that he thinks of himself as some kind of performer. Time after time-ad nauseam- he mentions his own difficult past. Or maybe he is just playing to the gallery.In itself this will this give a thrill to intellectuals and journalists.You may well say that interviews, like obituaries always cover the same ground. Journalists read the cuttings and so know what buttons to press, but it is in the end the interviewee's choice of how to respond.

Here are excerpts from one of his most priceless,  self-regarding interviews -refering to Ai Wei Wei.The interview  is from VICE magazine.It is one of the few where Scully is seriously challenged by his interviewer.The interviewer, Jenny Stevens says;

You taught Ai Wei Wei in New York. What do you think about his work? He's obviously very critical of China.

It's an entirely different idea about how to improve the world. I'm not saying he's not trying to make the world better. His work deals with the symptoms – it's reactive to specific situations. My work deals with the the cause. Because abstraction – well, the best abstraction, not those nice big dopey paintings hanging in hotel lobbies – is about inner structures.

Of abstraction he says..... it's very difficult to censor it, because you can't really ever say what it is. This is where abstraction is very powerful – it's free. What's really interesting to me is that in England, there's democracy, but they can't really understand abstract art. I've always had a problem in England.

My work deals with  the the cause. Well, there you go! Artists are obviously powerful. Especially abstract ones.What sort of reaction does he really expect to an enormous piece of sham profundity as this? My politer answer  to him would be that abstraction isn't powerful at all. What are these inner structures? How can abstract painting  communicate, if that is the right word, about anything other than  what it is itself? Perhaps it will be objected that music is abstract also.That topic often comes up. But there is a traditional language in music which was part of common culture. It developed over centuries and was perhaps not so much invented as discovered. There is no such thing for abstraction and probably no possibility of there ever being such a system. As such it can easily be ignored by the powerful. In China for example. Scully's works may be closer to those nice big dopey paintings than he realises.
As he does not enlighten us about the nature of his profundity but merely claims it, one is forced to speculate. He seems more like one of the "inner necessity " brigade. Kandinsky has a lot to answer for.But if you make the vague and  grandiose claims that Scully does then you might be asked to justify them-and he is never challenged about this.But if you did challenge a mystagogue, what would you get but either, more waffle or expulsion from the group? He is certainly saying that his art is more profound than Ai's which deals with more superficial matters.But he does not say how his paintings work to that end. There is no explanation of how his paintings deal with causes or how abstract paintings can do so. If he can tell me how abstract paintings do this I will be very grateful. I don't much care for Ai's work as an artist but his work can certainly be seen as relating to the world as it is.

If abstraction is some kind of pure aesthetic experience then it couldn't deal with anything profound at all. Perhaps painters should just shut up.We can enjoy the purity but cannot do so for long before it will inevitably pall. It says nothing about the human condition.

When he is questioned about dissidents Scully refers to them as people who might want to bring down the state. And the Irish were a slave nation and he doesn't really understand what Ai's grievances might be and isn't really sympathetic anyway. He also refers briefly to he subject of Ai's alleged tax evasion.This is the ultimate naivety. The authorities cynically accused Ai of one of the very crimes in which they themselves specialise.Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't, but I'll tell you one thing, the charge was surely brought to put pressure on Ai and to discredit him. In a country where there is no independent legal system anything can happen.Habeas Corpus-forget it!

In the same interview Scully is reminded that Ai was locked up. But Scully implies that he visited him during this period and not in jail. I wasn't aware of this but then I'm not an Ai expert.Here are the quotes.
But he got put in prison.I went to see Ai Wei Wei when he was locked up. I go all the way out there to see him and he's not locked up at all. He's got this huge place. We go outside and get in this limo, go to this nice Japanese restaurant and drink sake all afternoon. That poor suffering boy.

Hang on, that was when he was incarcerated for 81 days?
Yes... We went out. Look – I can't speak about it with authority, because it's not my life. I don't know how it was with his father, I don't know what all these old grievances are. I don't have a lot of pity for it – the Irish were basically a slave colony for hundreds of years. I can't weep for somebody making a lot out of their past*. But if you go to New York, to Parsons where I taught him, you've got to be able to pay for it. There's difficulties in all the world. I remember the police in Britain used to hunt down homosexuals – and it's not that long ago.
He is quite right about the behaviour of UK police in times past. Thus he is positing a moral equivalence between the UK and China. What does Scully have to say about the position of homosexuals in China? The difference is of course that legislators could get the law changed in the UK. In China the "law" is mostly a tool for the Party.

Here from another interview is how he reacts when it is implied that there may be something unethical about exhibiting in Beijing.This is from the Irish Times.

"The Beijing show is the first major retrospective by a western artist in China. When asked if he’s concerned about having a show in China given its treatment of his fellow artists, he bridles."

So I should have a show in America, then . . . Is that okay? To have a show in England, where they invented the slave trade? Keep going and you could only have a show in Ireland,” he says. “There’s only one f***ing country in the world you can show in, then, because there’s only one f***ing country that never did anything to anybody, and that’s Ireland.

But "England"-actually the U.K. did not invent the slave trade. It certainly profited by it. And of course "England" -actually did something about it. And it still does try to combat slavery which exists in so many forms in the modern world.

He is quite keen on modern China but he is vague about Chinese history. Let him read something by Simon Leys whose texts are quite short and pungent.They originate before China's economic lift-off but are still relevant. There are plenty of Chinese writers and artists who have suffered at the hands of the communists. And it still goes on. For a modern view of China he could read Richard McGregor-The Party.In China, to ask for decency and openness in relations between citizen and state is to invite  threats, intimidation and abduction. One thinks of the case of  the helpless victims of the Sanlu milk scandal. Or indeed of Ai Wei Wei.....

*my italics!