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!

HOWICK HAVEN-WHERE THE TADORNE WAS WRECKED

Howick Haven: gouache by James Holland


Here is a gouache I did one day last Spring. I have painted this view at least three times. You can sit in the lee of some of the masonry which remains near the site of the old boathouse. The painting measures about 29X39cms.In the distance you can see part of the Tadorne's boiler. I am convinced that I can remember another part nearer inshore-but I could be wrong. It is a tranquil enough place in my painting but what you can see is just how close inshore the ship must have been (presuming that the boiler hasn't moved very much).
(My review of the interesting recent booklet  about the tragedy by Mrs A Meakin can be found here.)

MARTIN LUTHER KING AND OTHERS- GOOD AND BAD IN MODERN MONUMENTS

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

 I am  certain that  public sculpture is in a bad way in Britain. Almost without exception railway stations and public places are becoming infested with the trash which modern sculptors are producing. Whether it is a sentimental portrait of a well known middle-brow poet and architecture critic or a crass memorial to a battle from the Second World War, London in particular is being deluged with rubbish. But there are still exceptions which crop up now and again.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

Nigel Boonham's sculpture of Martin Luther king was recently unveiled at the University of Newcastle to commemorate the visit which Dr King made in 1967 on the occasion when he was awarded an honorary degree.In its quality it is certainly an exception to the current trend.

The sculpture stands in a small, quiet courtyard and it has only a minimal plinth. The focus is on the Doctor in Dr King who stands, dignified, in academic dress, confronting you at the entrance to a building.He is leaning slightly backwards and the work is slightly larger than life size. The scale is appropriate to the small site. His thoughts are inscribed on the pavement surrounding the figure. This sculpture is the second by Boonham in Newcastle. His earlier figure of Cardinal Basil Hume stands outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral near the Central Station. Boonham is working very much in the tradition of figurative sculpture. in terms of conception and symbolism, But the modelling shows that it is of its time.The head is crisp and modern. Or should that be crisp and traditional?

It is interesting to note that Boonham was an apprentice of Oscar Nemon and learned his trade by hands on work. He is better than Nemon in many ways. He probably could not have obtained appropriate training in a British art school.

Boonham has really gone to town on the complications of academic dress, indeed he is on record as searching for someone to model the figure,gown,cap etc.He explained that he needed to work from photographs because the folds of  an academic gown change all the time even with the models slightest movement.He has made the academic dress work as a way of giving interesting form to the sculpture.It is quite convinvcing as the clothing of a human form.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

As a portrait the modelling is bold and clear. As a likeness it often seems to show a good resemblance.  I am confident that Dalou would have recognised this to be the case. And here to set a standard, so to say, is Dalou's head of Delacroix which was made for the monument in the Luxembourg gardens. Let me remind you that makers of monuments usually do not get the chance to work from life. Not Boonham,not Dalou. But is both cases the modelling is clear and frank.

Dalou: Head of Delacroix.

I would like to compare these  works with the recent sculptures by Gillian Wearing in Birmingham and the new work which is to go in Parliament Square in London.They illustrate a somewhat different view of the idea of a public monument and how it is produced.To me it shows  the acceptance of mediocrity because; well, because nobody involved seemed to know any better.

An Ordinary Birmingham Family by G Wearing.

Ms Wearing chose the subjects to represent an ordinary Birmingham family.This seems to be the third in a series including, An ordinary Trentino Family, and an An Ordinary Danish Family.

Ms Wearing is of course a conceptual artist and the choice of two lone parents, single mothers was probably meant to be challenging. They are indeed ordinary Birmingham people with no claim to fame or national recognition.The only males are their young children.Conceptually that is fine by me. Why shouldn't ordinary folk be honoured just as much as the famous? There aren't many public sculptures in which one of the figures is pregnant.

As far as I can learn Ms Wearing, as a conceptual artist and is most unlikely to have had any training in  sculpture such as modelling the human form, visualising how to plan a figure for casting and so on. Perhaps she would not want it. Perhaps she doesn't think it necessary, because as far as I can learn the work was made in China by unnamed craftsmen-or women.

 My guess would be that photographs were sent to a firm which specialised in model making for the film world, or perhaps some organisation which is still able to produce work tableaux such as  communist propaganda used to require.Or perhaps there is some sculpture department in China carrying out this kind of work. You could of course use 3D computer apps such as filmmakers also use for 3D effects etc.This tableau, like Ms Wearing's other "Ordinaries" seems to me to have something of that kind of banality.

But as a sculpture it is seriously deficient in portrayal of form. Compared to Dalou or Boonham the Birmingham group is banality personified.The modelling of the clothes is blandly uninteresting.All garments seem to be made out of the same material. The boots and the skirt.The artist maybe a conceptualist but the visual intent is surely traditional. As photographs show it the group seems to be modelled out of lard.It is not frank and powerful-as in the Dalou head of Delacroix. It seems as if the conception is so powerful to the artist that nothing else matters.

 My thoughts on Ms Wearing's latest public sculpture-the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square can be found here.