Blue: To Infinity and Beyond

Inspired by ‘A History of the World in Three Colours: Blue’ BBC4 documentary by Dr James Fox

Since the dawn of mankind, we have looked out to the distant horizon or up into the sky and wondered what is out there. Blue is the colour that embodies our insatiable curiosity for the unknown.

Venice: 1000BC, a boat arrived at the port with a precious cargo of the strangest object the Venetians had seen: a bright blue rock. Arabs brought this blue rock, Lapis Lazuli, from a distant land that is now Afghanistan. They traded it for gold and returned home, leaving the Italians to perfect a method of turning the incredibly hard rock into pure blue pigment for paint. In his documentary Dr James Fox visits a contemporary Italian artist who describes this process of refinement “a testament to the importance of art that they worked so hard to make it as beautiful as possible”. The Italians called the colour ‘Ultramarine’ which means ‘from beyond the sea’, from a land unknown.

Ultramarine was used in moderation by monks to decorate illuminated manuscripts, but in 1303 Giotto went against moderation when he decorated the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. He painted the entire ceiling a deep blue and dotted it with golden stars and saints. Giotto represented heaven in blue and it quickly came to represent the colour of the unknown paradise; he had rendered the colour sacred. From then on the church tried to restrict the use of the colour blue. Only the Virgin Mary was allowed to be depicted wearing it. The church’s control of Lapis Lazuli inflated its price until it became more expensive than the gold the Arabs had traded it for.

The church succeeded in its control of the use of ultramarine until 1523 when Titian smeared it all over the canvas of Bacchus and Ariadne. No longer just for the Virgin Mary, he clothed a pagan Greek goddess in it, and even an anonymous female reveller! The church was outraged. Three years later Titian struck again, this time with a painting which sees St Peter take the centre stage draped in a splendid blue robe, whilst the Virgin Mary is pushed to the side with only a scrap of blue cloth about her waist. Pesaro Madonna was blasphemy in paint in the eyes of the church, but the damage was already done; Titian had liberated blue, it became the colour of freedom.

During the Romantic era of the 18^th Century blue took on another guise, due to the publishing of a book by Novalis called Heinrich von Ofterdingen. The eponymous young hero becomes obsessed with the search for a blue flower, yet his search takes place only in his mind. The book may have been largely forgotten, but at the time was highly influential in transforming blue into the embodiment of the unattainable.

The 18^th Century also gave birth to the saying ‘blue devils’ meaning a bout of depression and delirium. In the early 20^th Century ‘blue devils’ inspired the naming of the ‘Blues’ style of music, it’s why when we’re down we say we’ve ‘got the blues’. Furthermore, the 20^th Century saw the instigation of a psychological analysis of the link between blue and depression. One of the first to explore this connection was famous psychiatrist Carl Jung with his analysis of Pablo Picasso. After the suicide of his best friend, Picasso spent three years repeatedly painting about the tragedy, using a palette almost entirely of blue. Jung hypothesised that Picasso was expressing his deepest emotions through the medium of blue because it was the colour of death in Ancient Egypt, of hell and of the unknown. This act of catharsis led to the group of paintings we call Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’. As his emotional wounds began to heal, Picasso gradually reintroduced other colours into his paintings.  
The Cote d’Azure in the1940s, amidst the glamour and excess of Nice one young man looked up at the blue sky and dreamed of escape. His name was Yves Klein. After many varied career attempts, Klein decided to be an artist. Ever since his childhood he had been obsessed with blue, for him it symbolised ‘the void’: deep seas, infinite skies and spirituality. Klein believed that monochrome could be an "open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of colour." He took his obsession further when he enlisted a chemical technician called Edouard Adam to engineer the purest blue possible, which he achieved by mixing a new colourless medium with the ultramarine pigment. He named this substance International Klein Blue (IKB), and proceeded to paint objects and whole canvases in this single, penetrating hue. Klein experimented with performance art and in one infamous trick photograph he appears to leap out of a window. Klein died tragically young; in life he was constantly trying to escape; in death he was finally free.

It was from an unexpected source that our concept of blue finally changed. In 1967 the Apollo 8 space mission sent a group of astronauts to orbit the moon. Once in orbit they were instructed to take photographs of the moon’s surface. Upon returning from the dark side of the moon one man took a photograph of something never seen by human eyes before: our blue planet Earth. Dr James Fox explains how this photograph, ‘Earth Rise’, circulated around the globe and lead us to realise the irony of it all: “Blue was the colour of the great beyond, the unknown, but when we finally breached that horizon, we found that blue was the colour of home.”

Related links:

A History of Art in Three Colours website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l9mf

Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel: http://www.cappelladegliscrovegni.it/index.php/en/the-scrovegni-s-chapel/history-of-scrovegni-s-chapel

Titian’s Pesaro Madonna: http://www.italianrenaissance.org/titian-pesaro-madonna/

Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-bacchus-and-ariadne

Carl Jung’s 1932 article on Picasso: http://web.org.uk/picasso/jung_article.html

About Novalis: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/novalis.htm

Yves Klein biography: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-klein-yves.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold and Society

Response inspired by ‘The History of Art in Three Colours: Gold’ BBC4 documentary by Dr James Fox

Gold gives us status, and not just in the sense of a material social standing. Gold will always lead us to the fundamental ideology of an era, for gold is always used to represent what is most important to a society. An example of this is the smattering of gold related sayings there are in our language: ‘gold standard’, ‘golden rule’, ‘golden age’, all of which reinforce the idea of gold representing the best, the most important, and the marker that everything else can be measured by.

Gold was first used by ancient civilisations to depict the sun. The sun was seen as a mystical object appearing and disappearing on a constant cycle. Awe-struck by its presence, ancient societies worshipped the ‘sun-god’ and the elder tribe members used golden representations to teach the others of the sun’s importance.

Sun worship was a key element of Egyptian culture in 1400 BCE when Tutankhamen was Pharaoh. Even more important to him than life was the afterlife. Leaving nothing to chance, Tutankhamen was encased in gold to journey to other side, hoping it would bring him eternal life. His tomb was discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. Tutankhamen’s treasures were not intended to be seen by mortal eyes, his status mattered only to the Gods.

In 300CE Constantin, the emperor of Rome converted to Christianity, eschewing polytheism for the worship one god. Christianity was a religion for the everyman, including the poor and as such rejected the use of gold to worship their god. It was centuries later that gold began to be used to represent Jesus, more particularly the halo surrounding his head. This gold was not depicting an object, but something immaterial – the light of God. In his documentary Dr Fox visits a contemporary artist making Christian iconography. He explained why gold has been used through the ages to depict the light of God: “Through reflection of light on the gold, God is interacting with the painting and then with us because he is the light, he is dynamic”. These paintings were intended to be viewed up close by candle light, the glow would have been so blinding it would have seemed other-worldly. The Basilica San Vitale in Italy is the most over the top example of gold being used in Christian art. The interior of the building is encrusted with gold faced glass mosaic tiles, which catch the light and appear to shine.

By the time of the Renaissance, gold was being used not to show the purity of God, but the power of kings. Florence became the centre of the gold-smithing world, and the kings and queens of Europe were hooked on the jewels produced there; none more so than ‘Augustus the Strong’ of Saxony. The Golden Rider in Dresden is a colossal horse mounted statue of himself, in gold, mimicking the Roman emperors of old.  So obsessed with gold was Augustus that he kidnapped a young alchemist who claimed he could turn base metals into the desired material. Imprisoned for a decade, the alchemist worked tirelessly to produce gold, but was unsuccessful and eventually executed.

However, in 1850 the miracle seemed to have happened. George Elkington of Birmingham invented a machine which would change the status of gold forever; he could turn any object into gold. He called his process ‘Electro-plating’. Suddenly anyone could afford a piece of mass-produced gold; replicas of ancient ceremonial objects were churned out in their thousands losing all their original meaning. All society cared about now was ownership, showing off their bit of ‘bling’, gold was now longer a rare sacred material.

During the early 20^th Century an old romantic tried to reverse the onslaught of mass-production and make gold sacred again. His name was Gustav Klimt. Glittering with gold leaf and paint, Klimt’s painting ‘The Kiss’ shocked the art world with its avant-garde composition, but the true meaning behind this image was the oldest ideal. Klimt used gold to represent the most sacred thing we have: love. But his dream could never truly work, the industrial revolution had changed us forever, we all loved ‘The Kiss’ too much and had to have a piece of it. Klimt’s master piece has been reproduced so often and onto the cheapest of objects, its original meaning has been almost entirely dissolved.

But what does gold mean to us today? As always gold represents society’s foremost desire, and in the 21^st Century that is money. The boom in the ‘Cash for Gold’ market typifies this ideal; we are melting down any gold we can get our hands on for its monetary worth. That money buys us the latest electronic gadgets so we can be like everyone else and keep the status quo.

Related links:

A History of Art in Three Colours website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l9mf

About Tutankhamen: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/t/tutankhamun,_king_of_egypt_13.aspx

Basilica San Vitale: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/ravenna-san-vitale

Gustav Klimt article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17689920

 

 

 

 

London’s best kept secret:

The Courtauld Gallery

I first visited The Courtauld Gallery on a chilly Saturday morning in October searching for Cézanne. What I found was a sublime sanctuary.

A beautiful spiral staircase delivers you to a painterly heaven; pastel hued rooms quietly housing impressionist masterpieces. Unlike larger London galleries, there I felt no need to rush, so spent a long time contemplating the fate of the girl in The Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Edouard Manet. Her melancholy is so absorbing, and the more you analyse the painting the less sense it makes, an almost surrealist mystery.

 

Never before had I fully appreciated the true beauty of Two Dancers on a Stage by Degas. The composition is pure perfection; the delicate angle of the ballerina’s arms is mimicked by the lines on the stage and the position of the dancers upon it. The large area of empty stage is contrasted on a diagonal with the detailed dancers and blossoming scenery behind. The spotlight on the ballerina’s face is so realistic that for a second you could believe you were sitting in The Royal Opera House in Paris.

 

In the adjoining room I found the treasures I had been seeking: works by Cézanne. Unfortunately The Montagne Sainte-Victoire had gone on loan to Budapest, but Lac d’Annecy was still hanging there in all its splendour.  Reproductions never give justice to its vibrant blue tones. A precursor to cubism; its flattened perspective and emphasised lines are mesmerising. Cézanne was the master of the new still life, showing more than one angle of the objects at a time to give a truer reality. The Courtauld owns some of his best

 

The next level provided further impressionist wonders from the landscape genre, as well as an impressive display of 20^th Century art including works by the Fauves, The Bloomsbury Group and German Expressionists. My stand-out piece from this collection was Female Nude by Modigliani. The tilt of the woman’s head could be read as both shyness and provocation Its strength is in its simplicity; the restraint of colour and detail, save for the loose strand of hair that has fallen onto her chest, clinching a realism that gives the painting its warmth.

 

I was further indulged upon discovering a new display of recently acquired etchings by Lucien Freud. As an art student I borrowed a heavy hardback of these etchings from my local library and attempted to copy them in pencil, in the vague hope that some of Freud’s genius would rub off. I never made much of an artist but I adored those etchings. Freud has always been noted for his intense gaze when observing his subjects which in turn produced his detailed work. His etchings are a perfect example of this process, more so than his brush dabbed portraits in paint, as the intricate nature of etching commands attention to detail. Small scale and in monotone they present a delicate alternative to his large fleshy paintings.

 

The best galleries these days provide something in the way of refreshment, and the Courtauld does not disappoint. Its basement café offers majestic homemade cakes and mouth-watering seasonal lunches. Suffering from a sore throat, their fresh lemon and ginger ‘tea’ with honey was true salvation. I must confess that I sneakily devoured the whole dish of honey!

 

 

 

Shell House Gallery, 36 The Homend, Ledbury

Shell House Gallery in Ledbury is well worth a visit for all art lovers.  Three floors of fantastic contemporary art are contained inside this quirky Georgian house.

You enter through its distinctive shell-hood doorway and are invited to explore. On my visit, the first room contained the delicate watercolours of Christine Phillips. Her style was like nothing I’d ever come across before. Using line, colour and space she presents the English countryside as a patchwork of saturated hues. Christine’s time spent studying at the Bauhaus in the 1970s has clearly influenced her work, but my initial connection was to the linear designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 

After climbing up the wonderfully creaky wooden staircase, also lined with prints and paintings, I was confronted by the awe-inspiring work of Dave Cormack. Mountain ranges jutted out of the wall at me, so abstract and yet so real. I was stunned. Cormack uses thick, impasto oil paint on large box canvases to create his magnificently textured landscapes. You really have to see them in the flesh to experience their high-impact atmospheric beauty. I highly recommend it.

Shell House Gallery is a commercial gallery; in addition to all the works in the main galleries they sell prints, cards, jewellery and ceramics. I was very impressed by the beautiful art books they stocked, for both children and adults (and adults with childlike curiosity like me!). They also provide picture framing and photo restoration services.

Whilst leafing through the collection of prints for sale I came across some very interesting pieces by Peter Horrocks. Using earth pigments rubbed across incised boards, Peter has developed a range of highly individual abstract landscapes. The rich, ochre pigment is sourced from the locations that inspire his work, including The Forest of Dean, Roussillion in France and Australia.  In utilising the natural rhythms and elements of the earth, Peter’s compositions really speak to the soul.

Shell House Gallery is building up a highly admirable reputation for exhibiting local artists. It continues in this trend for its next exhibition of works by David Prentice from 3 - 24 November. I will definitely be back for another visit!

Related Links:

http://www.shellhousegallery.co.uk

http://shellhousegallery.blogspot.co.uk/

http://davecormackartist.co.uk/

http://www.peterhorrocks.co.uk

 

Cornish Colony Collaborations: David Tovey on Dame Laura Knight

Colwall Village Hall - Saturday 13th October

Did you know that during World War One artists were not allowed to paint the horizon on the coast? When Dame Laura Knight visited St Ives in 1915 to paint, the local constable kept a close eye on the progress of her paintings to ensure that their location was kept secret! He also objected to her painting the children who were not wearing swimming trunks. In fact it is believed that ‘Boys Bathing’ was altered at a later date by a vigilante censor!

These are just some of the eye opening facts about the career of Dame Laura Knight that David Tovey revealed to the audience at his talk ‘Cornish Colony Collaborations’.  Part of the ‘Autumn In Malvern Festival’, this illustrated talk looked at paintings by Dame Laura Knight and her husband Harold that were created in St Ives and the surrounding area between 1915 and 1949, comparing them with their Cornish contemporaries.

Tovey began his presentation by describing Laura’s education. Whilst studying at Nottingham School of Art she visited an exhibition of the Newlyn School at Nottingham Castle. This exhibition of 1894 was described at the time as containing the most important works of the century. The Newlyn School’s style was inspired by the French revolutionary movement Impressionism.

Laura married Harold Knight in 1903 and after many holidays to Cornwall between 1904 and 1907, the Knights moved there. They befriended many acclaimed Cornish artists including: Dod Procter, Charles Simpson, Alfred Munnings, Harold and Gertrude Harvey, and Lamorna Birch.

All of the above artists painted outside (en plein air) just as the Impressionists had done. Tovey explained how different locations affected the subject matter of Cornish artists. The light is perfect in St Ives for painting marinescapes, however the south facing position of Newlyn meant that marinescapes would have to be painted towards the sun, therefore artists there tended to paint figures and landscapes.

It was refreshing to see Tovey give such importance to female artists, expressing their camaraderie and close friendships. Knight was made a Dame in 1929 for her services to art and in 1936 became the first woman to become a Royal Academician.

Tovey pointed out how unusual both Laura Knight and Dod Procter were as women painting female nudes, a subject matter attributed to male artists with connotations of voyeurism. Were they trying to be seen as equals to men with no subject matter barred to them? Were they trying to present the female nude in a more sensitive way? Or did they themselves harbour voyeuristic tendencies? We will probably never know.

In shedding light on a different aspect of Dame Laura Knight’s life, I believe the audience (many of them Friend’s of the Dame Laura Knight Society) were left with the realisation that “the more you find out the less you know”. I have definitely been inspired to find out more about this fascinating local artist.

This talk was presented in association with The Friends of Dame Laura Knight Society

Key Paintings (by Dame Laura Knight):

‘The boys’

‘Lamorna Birch and his Daughters’

‘Girls Bathing’

‘Lizzie at the Wash Basin’

Also:

‘Morning Light’ Robert Borlase Smart

‘Vera and Phyllis’ Charles Simpson

‘Gone To Cliff’ Alfred Munnings

Related Links:

http://www.damelauraknight.com/index.html

http://www.malvernfestival.co.uk/

 

 

Will Gompertz at Cheltenham Literature Festival 5th October 2012

‘150 Years of Modern Art’

“Cubism isn’t really about cubes” exclaims Will Gompertz from the stage at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. He reaches for a cardboard box he’s hidden behind the lectern which he then unfolds flat. “It’s about showing all the sides of an object at once.”

Gompertz has been described as “the best teacher you never had” by The Guardian and I’d have to agree. Along with the cardboard box trick, he brought his book alive by asking three members of the audience to act it out as he was reading. He read an account of the day that Duchamp acquired his infamous urinal.

Whilst laughing at his stumbling ‘actors’ on stage, I couldn’t help noticing how unpretentious and easy to understand Gompertz’ writing style was. After years of struggling through art history books with a well-thumbed dictionary at my side, I relish the prospect of reading a comprehensible account of modern art!

Gompertz expressed theories that I hadn’t previously considered; he suggested that Duchamp stole his idea for ‘ready-mades’ from Picasso, who had placed cheap materials from the hardware store into his collages, thus transforming cheap materials into high art.

He also described the difference between the philosophies of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The former is based on the Freudian ideas of the individual subconscious, whereas the latter takes its inspiration from the Jungian theory of the group consciousness. In this way the Abstract Expressionists were aiming to reach out to their audience and let them feel pure emotion whilst looking at their paintings, instead of projecting strange worlds loaded with symbolic meaning to decode. Gompertz says that for him, that is what makes good art.

Carrying on from the philosophies behind Abstract Expressionism, Gompertz finished with a favourite quote from Rothko: “lonely people can look at my paintings and know that they’re not alone”.

In the question and answer session Gompertz was asked: “What is art and what is not?” To which he replied, “In simple terms art is anything that does not have a function, an iPhone is not a work of art, because it has a function.” He went on to explain that taste is a different matter.

A curator from Bristol Art Gallery asked: “What, in your opinion, is a dynamic modern art gallery?” Gompertz replied “Britain has many great modern art galleries, but I feel that they are missing a trick. The curators and dealers are so concerned with flattering artists, especially those that are still alive, to increase prices that we have lost true subjectivity. What I’d like to see is a brave curator go to the Tate Collection and pick out artworks that they dislike and put on an exhibition of ‘bad art’ to provoke honest discussion. Perhaps the reason why no one has done it is because the only person who has was Hitler!”

A suitably controversial note to end.

One Night Stand

MOVEMENT, Forgate Street Station, Worcester.
October 4th 2012

One Night Stand is a travelling exhibition of nine UK artists, on show for one night only.

The pieces explore all aspects of a one night stand. The emotions of guilt, fear, disappointment, rejection, attraction, danger, hope. The looks across the dance floor, the morning after, the awkward exit.

The paintings display confidence and shyness, ugliness and beauty, despondency and hope. They explore the human race’s innate need to be wanted and loved.

They are asking for your attention.

Curated by Gordon Dalton from Mermaid and Monster art agency.

Participating Artists:
Nina Coulson
Yelena Popova
Gordon Dalton
Merlin James
Neil McNally
Tom Goddard
Neal Jones
Lloyd Durling

The exhibition has also been shown at Tradfe Gallery, Nottingham and Goat Major Projects, Cardiff.

Related Links:

http://www.mermaidandmonster.com/

http://www.movementtimetable.com/