London « Art Blart

Archive for the 'London' Category

Apr

Exhibition: ‘The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography’ at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London

Categories: beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, London, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space and time
Tags: Antarctic, Antarctic exploration, Antarctic Photography, Antarctica, bravery, British Antarctic Expedition, Buckingham Palace, Captain Lawrence Oates, Captain Lawrence Oates and Siberian ponies on board Terra Nova, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Captain Scott, Elephant Island, Endurance, English artist, English photographer, exploration, Frank Hurley, Frank Hurley Sir Ernest Shackleton arrives at Elephant Island to take off marooned men, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Herbert Ponting, Herbert Ponting Captain Lawrence Oates and Siberian ponies on board 'Terra Nova', Herbert Ponting Captain Scott, Herbert Ponting Grotto in an iceberg, Herbert Ponting The ramparts of Mount Erebus, heroism, Mount Erebus, nature, Queen Alexandra, queen elizabeth ii, Scott, Scott of the Antarctic, Shackleton, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography, Siberian ponies, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir Ernest Shackleton arrives at Elephant Island to take off marooned men, South Pole, Terra Nova, The Heart of the Great Alone, The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, The Queen's Gallery, The ramparts of Mount Erebus, The Royal Collection, tragedy, travel, union jack, Union Jack taken by Scott to the South Pole

Exhibition dates: 21st October 2011 – 15th April 2012

Continuing my fascination with all things Antarctic, here are more photographs from the Scott and Shackleton expeditions. The photograph Captain Lawrence Oates and Siberian ponies on board ‘Terra Nova’ by Herbert Ponting (1910, see below) is simply breathtaking.

Many thankx to The Royal Collection for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Herbert Ponting
Captain Lawrence Oates and Siberian ponies on board ‘Terra Nova’
1910
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Frank Hurley
Sir Ernest Shackleton arrives at Elephant Island to take off marooned men
30 August 1916
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

.
This photograph was actually taken at the time of the ‘James Caird’s’ departure on 24 April. Hurley has altered it to represent the moment of rescue, with the arrival of Shackleton on the ‘Yelcho’. The actual rescue was not photographed.

Union Jack taken by Scott to the South Pole
1911-12
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

.
This Union Jack was given to Scott by the recently widowed Queen Alexandra on 25 June 1910 for him to plant at the South Pole. The flag was recovered with Scott’s body and returned to the queen by his wife, Kathleen, on 12 July 1913

“The photographs of Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley may be stencilled into the collective memory after nearly a century of over-exposure. But it’s not often you get to see them away from the printed page, and they certainly bring out fresh depths and new perspectives…

It turns out to be highly instructive seeing Hurley and Ponting hung in neighbouring rooms. I’ve always taken Ponting to be somehow the lesser snapper. Hurley had the greatest photostory ever captured land in his lap when Shackleton’s ship the Endurance was trapped in ice floes and held fast for months before pressure ridges eventually crushed it like a dry autumn leaf. Like a good journalist Hurley recorded these traumas and more while also taking the chance to experiment with the strange light and baroque shapes supplied by his surroundings.

Ponting’s story was different. Four or so years earlier, and on the other side of the Antarctic land mass, he didn’t stray far from the expedition base, and indeed was left on the Terra Nova while Scott’s polar party were still out on the ice, trudging balefully towards immortality. There’s something about Ponting’s floridly unmodern moustache which sets him apart from the clean-shaven younger men in either expedition, as if he never quite left the studio behind.

But the photographs are astonishing… The story here is the unequal battle between man and ice, the castellations and ramparts of bergs dwarfing explorers with dogs and sledges placed at their foot to give a sense of scale. Ponting also has a beautiful eye for filigree detail, never more than in one picture of long spindly icicles echoing the adjacent rigging of the Terra Nova.

One of the revelations is that the originals play up the drama of Ponting’s work much more than Hurley’s, which are printed at half the size. For all the astonishing pictures – a field of ice flowers, the masts of the Endurance all but shrouded by Brobdingnagian ice clumps – the final impact of Hurley’s collection lies in the fact that they exist at all… That is partly why Ponting trumps Hurley in this show. His pictures of Scott’s men have never felt more immediate.”

Rees, Jasper. Review of “The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography, Queen’s Gallery” on the Arts Desk website. Thursday, 27 October 2011 [Online] Cited 06/04/2012.

Herbert Ponting
The ramparts of Mount Erebus
1911
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

.
Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Ross Island which last erupted in 2008, was first climbed in 1908 by members of Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition. Ponting has contrasted the overwhelming size of the natural world against the tiny human figure pulling a sledge, in the lower left corner of the photograph.

“It is a story of heroism and bravery, and ultimately of tragedy, that has mesmerised generations. One hundred years on from their epic voyages to the very limits of the Earth, and of man’s endurance, the legends of Scott and Shackleton live on.

To mark the centenary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, the Royal Collection brings together, for the first time, a collection of the photographs presented to King George V by the official photographers from Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910-13 and Shackleton’s expedition on Endurance in 1914-16, and unique artefacts, such as the flag given to Scott by Queen Alexandra (widow of King Edward VII) and taken to the Pole.

The exhibition documents the dramatic landscapes and harsh conditions the men experienced, through the work of expedition photographers Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley. These sets of photographs are among the finest examples of the artists’ work in existence – and the men who took them play a vital part in the explorers’ stories. Highlights from Scott’s voyage include Ponting’s The ramparts of Mount Erebus, which presents the vast scale of the icescape, and the ethereal The freezing of the sea. Among the most arresting images from Hurley’s work on Shackleton’s expedition are those of the ship Endurance listing in the frozen depths and then crushed between floes.

The photographs also give insights into the men themselves. For instance, at the start of the journey Scott appears confident and relaxed, with his goggles off for the camera. In contrast, a photograph taken at the Pole shows him and his team devastated and unsmiling, knowing they had been beaten. The exhibition also records the lighter moments of expedition life, essential for teams cut off from the outside world for years at a time. On Shackleton’s expedition, a derby for the dogs was organised – with bets laid in cigarettes and chocolate. A menu for Midwinter’s Day, on 22 June 1911, shown in the accompanying exhibition publication, includes roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, ‘caviare Antarctic’ and crystallised fruits.

Antarctic adventurer David HemplemanAdams has been closely involved in the exhibition and has written an introduction to the catalogue. First given the taste for adventure by The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme, he was inspired, like generations of school children, by the tales of discovery. As a South Pole veteran, the first Briton to reach the Pole solo and unsupported, he is still in awe of Scott and Shackleton’s achievements – and will return with his daughter this year to mark the centenary. David Hempleman Adams said: “We have a big psychological advantage today: We know it is possible to reach the South Pole. Nowadays you can go on Google Earth and see what’s there. Back then, it was just a big white piece of paper. Scott and Shackleton had no TVs, radios or satellite phones – they were cut off from the outside world – and in terms of equipment, the tents, skis and sledges, today, we carry about one tenth of what they carried, over the same mileage. What they achieved, with what they had, is really magnificent. This is the 100th anniversary and the legend has stood the test of time. Even in this modern world, there’s still just as much interest.”

As the photographs show, animals played an important part in the expeditions. There are portraits of the ponies and of individual sledge dogs. In his diaries, Scott describes the relationship he struck up with the badtempered husky Vida: “He became a bad wreck with his poor coat… and… I used to massage him; at first the operation was mistrusted and only continued to the accompaniment of much growling, but later he evidently grew to like the warming effect and sidled up to me whenever I came out of the hut… He is a strange beast – I imagine so unused to kindness that it took him time to appreciate it.”

Ponting also photographed wildlife, including seals, gulls and penguins. Scott writes of the moment Ponting tried to photograph killer whales and how the creatures crashed through the ice to catch him. Scott, watching but unable to help, observes, “It was possible to see their tawny head markings, their small glistening eyes, and their terrible array of teeth – by far the largest and most terrifying in the world.”

The inspirational qualities of the explorers were recognised by King George V. In his book, The Great White South, Ponting records what the Monarch said to him when he went to Buckingham Palace to show his Antarctic film: “His Majesty King George expressed to me the hope that it might be possible for every British boy to see the pictures – as the story of the Scott Expedition could not be known too widely among the youth of the nation, for it would help to promote the spirit of adventure that had made the Empire.”

Royal interest in polar exploration began with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who followed the fortunes of the early adventurers, such as Sir John Franklin and William Bradford, and it continues to this day. The Duke of Edinburgh, who has written a foreword to the exhibition catalogue, has been the patron of many of David HemplemanAdams’s expeditions and has himself crossed the Antarctic Circle. HRH The Princess Royal is Patron of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.”

Press release from The Royal Collection website

Herbert Ponting
Grotto in an iceberg
5 January 1911
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Herbert Ponting
Captain Scott
February 1911
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

.
This photograph of Scott, with Mount Erebus in the background, was taken at the start of the expedition. He is wearing fur gloves with an attached cord, leather boots, gaiters and thick socks

The Royal Collection
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

Opening hours:
Open daily, 10.00 – 17.30

The Queen’s Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Feb

Exhibition: ‘Memory Remains: 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17 by Francesc Torres’ at the Imperial War Museum, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, book, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, London, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, reality, sculpture, space, surrealism and time
Tags: 9/11, 9/11 10th anniversary, 9/11 artifacts, 9/11 as seen live on television in Barcelona Spain, Because the Last Column had inscriptions and attachments on all sides, Cortlandt Street subway station, death, Deputy Battalion Chief Dennis Cross, During the recovery at the site some ironworkers would cut religious or other symbols, Firefighter Christian Regenhard, first responders, Francesc Torres, Francesc Torres 9/11 as seen live on television in Barcelona Spain, Francesc Torres Because the Last Column had inscriptions and attachments on all sides, Francesc Torres During the recovery at the site some ironworkers would cut religious or other symbols, Francesc Torres Steel beams taken from ground zero for storage at John F. Kennedy International Airport's Hangar 17, Francesc Torres The collapse of the twin towers created a series of iconic objects, Francesc Torres These three panels offering a view of the Statue of Liberty from 1977, Francesc Torres Though most of the vehicles at Hangar 17 came from first responders, Francesc Torres Twisted steel beams from ground zero dominate the space in JFK International Airport's Hangar 17, Francesc Torres View through a portion of the broadcast antenna that fell from the top of the north tower, Ground Zero, hangar 17, Hangar 17 at John F Kennedy International Airport, imperial war museum, jfk international airport, John F Kennedy International Airport, kennedy international airport, Last Column, memory, Memory Remains, Memory Remains: 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17 by Francesc Torres, Port Authority, remains, September 11 attacks, Statue of Liberty, Steel beams taken from ground zero for storage at John F. Kennedy International Airport's Hangar 17, terrorism, The collapse of the twin towers created a series of iconic objects, the Last Column, These three panels offering a view of the Statue of Liberty from 1977, Though most of the vehicles at Hangar 17 came from first responders, twin towers, Twisted steel beams from ground zero dominate the space in JFK International Airport's Hangar 17, victim, View through a portion of the broadcast antenna that fell from the top of the north tower, war, war museum london, World Trade Center

Exhibition dates: 26th August 2011 – 26th February 2012

Many thankx to the Imperial War Museum, London for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Francesc Torres
Steel beams taken from ground zero for storage at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Hangar 17
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
Twisted steel beams from ground zero dominate the space in JFK International Airport’s Hangar 17, where 9/11 artifacts were housed for study and safekeeping
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
View through a portion of the broadcast antenna that fell from the top of the north tower. A number of fragments of the 360-foot antenna were kept at Hangar 17
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
The collapse of the twin towers created a series of iconic objects, transformed by force and fire from their daily uses into artifacts that tell a story. At Hangar 17, tented enclosures were built for artifacts of various kinds that, in the view of curators and conservators, needed the added protection of humidity control and stillness. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this transformation could be found inside the vehicle tent, where trucks and cars, normally left outside in all conditions, were given shelter
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
Because the Last Column had inscriptions and attachments on all sides, it was raised onto a specially constructed steel cradle at Hangar 17 so conservators had enough clearance to work. A mirror provides a glimpse of tributes on the underside of the column. Visible on the facing side are the taped-on memorials for Firefighter Christian Regenhard, 28, and Deputy Battalion Chief Dennis Cross, 60
2009
© Francesc Torres

“The empty shell of Hangar 17 at JFK Airport became a storehouse of memories when it was filled with the material cleared from the World Trade Center site following the September 11 attacks on New York City.

Marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Francesc Torres’s work features over 150 projected images which explore inside the hangar and reflect on the emotional power of what remained, from personal belongings to steel girders distorted by the force of the attacks. Alongside the photographs is a section of raw rusted steel over two metres in length from the ruins of the World Trade Center. As well as larger piece (over 1 tonne) that is due to go on display at IWM North in October, these objects are the first pieces of steel from Ground Zero to go on display in the UK. The exhibition will also be on display at the International Centre for Photography in New York and at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

Throughout his career, Spanish-American artist Francesc Torres has reflected on the diverse manifestations of culture, politics, memory and power. His latest exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, Memory Remains, is a bold and haunting amalgam of all four.

In 2009, Torres was granted rare access to Hangar 17 at John F Kennedy International Airport, a gaping space of over 80,000-square-feet. Within the hangar lie the remnants deemed worth preserving from the September 11 attacks, taken from the 1.8 million tonnes of debris from Ground Zero. For five weeks Torres daily confronted the legacy of terror and the ghosts of that fateful late-summer day, capturing images of objects that stand as symbolic substitutes to the victims.

“Look at it this way”, says Torres, relaying his experience, “it’s a hanger constructed to house a plane, which was transformed into a weapon used for the attack on the towers and now the sediment of that attack is here. With the sound of planes constantly flying overhead it was absolutely surreal.”

According to the photographer, the experience of walking around the hanger after the first day was so emotionally draining that he slept from four o’clock in the afternoon through to ten o’clock the next morning.

“I was absolutely exhausted; physically and emotionally… every single iota of energy I had was gone.”

His efforts have produced some exceptional results, however, displayed on a rolling slideshow in a small room near the entrance of the museum. Among the objects photographed are large shards of rusted, burnt steel, crumpled filing cabinets and a plethora of flattened Port Authority vehicles. Some unexpected pieces of detritus were also found, including a nine-foot, three-dimensional Bugs Bunny, made completely bizarre when juxtaposed by a sign whose letters read chillingly: “That’s All Folks!”

Prior to the Hangar 17 project, Torres documented the excavation of a mass Spanish Civil War grave that he said drew certain comparisons with the material at JFK.

“The clothing is something that just grabs you,” he says, “it’s very uncanny that nothing changes with the victims as historical subjects. The clothing [in Hangar 17] was exactly the same as the clothing I’ve seen in Spain or in the former Yugoslavia; it all has the same patina. The victim becomes universal… the remains have that quality.”

Along with the photographs, the museum has also acquired a section of steel from the structure of the World Trade Center, displayed outside the projection room. It is the first section of raw rusted steel from the ruins at Ground Zero – thought to be the box section from one of windows – to be displayed in the UK.

For the past year, pieces from the hangar have made their way to be placed in memorials in each of the 50 American states, as well as seven other countries across the globe. Some, but not all, of the remaining pieces will be housed in the 9/11 Memorial Museum near the site of the attack, which is something that concerns Torres.

“We have to preserve the hanger as a container. It’s an unbelievable narrative apparatus that had been created almost on the run,” he says.

With a lifelong interest in questions of human memory and meaning, Torres’ work is based on the concept that it is through the remains of history that memory remains. His latest show is an unforgettable testament to those horrendous attacks that capped the 20th century almost a decade ago.”

Francesc Torres
These three panels, offering a view of the Statue of Liberty from 1977, were salvaged from the Cortlandt Street subway station under the World Trade Center. The spray-painted markings indicate that the area nearby had been searched by rescue workers for survivors or victims
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
9/11, as seen live on television in Barcelona, Spain. Photographed at roughly 3 p.m. local time by Maria Iturrioz de Torres, Francesc Torres’ mother, while they spoke by phone
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
Though most of the vehicles at Hangar 17 came from first responders, this taxi, an emblem of daily life in New York, was also preserved. At right, the tags hanging from the frame indicate its Port Authority inventory number (white) and mark its selection for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Memorial Museum (yellow)
2009
© Francesc Torres

Francesc Torres
During the recovery at the site, some ironworkers would cut religious or other symbols out of pieces of steel from the World Trade Center and give them as keepsakes to family members or other visitors
2009
© Francesc Torres

Imperial War Museum, London
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom
T: 020 7416 5000

Opening hours:
Daily from 10am – 6pm

Imperial War Museum, London website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Jan

Exhibition: ‘Gerhard Richter: Panorama’ at Tate Modern, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 6th October 2011 – 8th January 2012

Many thankx to the Tate Modern for allowing me to publish the artwork in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gerhard Richter
Reader
1994
Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
© Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter
Mustang Squadron
1964
Private Collection
© Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter
Abstract Painting
1990
Tate. Purchased 1992
© Gerhard Richter
Photo: Lucy Dawkins

Gerhard Richter
Forest (3) and Forest (4)
1990
Private collection (left) and The Fisher Collection, San Francisco (right)
© Gerhard Richter
Photo: Lucy Dawkins

“Gerhard Richter is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today. Spanning nearly five decades, and coinciding with the artist’s eightieth birthday, Gerhard Richter: Panorama is a major retrospective that groups together significant moments of his remarkable career.

As evoked by the title Panorama this exhibition presents a broad look at the wide range of Richter’s practice, discovering contradictions and connections, continuities and breaks. Each room is devoted to a particular moment of his career showing how he explored a set of ideas. While the focus is on painting, the exhibition includes glass constructions, mirrors, drawings, and photographs, and explores how Richter uses these media to ask questions about painting.

The exhibition includes many of Richter’s most well-known works such as Ema (Nude descending a staircase) 1966, Candle 1982, Betty 1988 and Reader 1994. There are also important works that are rarely shown: the first Colour Chart from 1966, 4 Panes of Glass 1967, a triptych of Cloud paintings from 1970, and, for the first time outside Germany, Richter’s monumental twenty metre long painting Stroke (on Red) 1980, based on a photograph of a brush stroke. There are several groups of important abstract paintings including a room of brightly coloured works from the early 1980s, a room of monumental squeegee paintings from the 1990s, and the Cage series 2006.

Richter was one of the first German artists to reflect on the history of National Socialism, creating paintings of family members who had been members, as well as victims of, the Nazi party. In the late 1980s, looking back to the history of radical political activity in West Germany in the 1970s, he produced the fifteen-part work 18 October 1977 1988, a sequence of black and white paintings based on images of the Baader Meinhof group. At the same time as developing a complex body of abstract work, often using squeegees to drag paint across the surface of his canvases, Richter has continued to respond to significant moments in history. In 2005 he painted September, an image of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, which is shown for the first time in the UK in this exhibition.

Richter is often celebrated for the diversity of his approaches to painting. His practice can seem to be structured by various oppositions, with paintings after photographs as well as abstract pictures; traditional still-lifes alongside highly charged subjects; monochrome grey works and multicoloured grids. Some paintings are planned out and ordered; others are the result of unpredictable accumulations of marks and erasures. Richter sometimes maintains these oppositions, but at other times he undoes them. This exhibition shows how he often brings abstraction and figuration together, and explores related ideas in very different looking works. The exhibition reveals breaks and new beginnings in his career, but it also reveals questions that he has asked throughout his life.

Short Biography

Richter was born in Dresden in 1932 and after training in the East, moved to West Germany in 1961. He was part of a group of painters working in Düsseldorf, that included Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg, who turned to image-based painting during the emergence of American Pop art. Major solo exhibitions include the 36th Venice Biennale in 1972, his first large-scale retrospective at Städtische Kunsthalle und Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf in 1986 and Forty Years of Painting, a large-scale retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002. He installed Black Red Gold in the foyer of the Reichstag building in Berlin in 1999 and the window that he designed for Cologne Cathedral was completed in 2007. Richter lives and works in Cologne.”

Press release from the Tate Modern website

Gerhard Richter
Abstract Painting
1990
Private Collection
© Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter
Demo
1997
The Rachofsky Collection
© Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter
Cage 4
2006
Tate. Lent from a private collection 2007
© Gerhard Richter

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

Opening hours:
Sunday – Thursday, 10.00 – 18.00
Friday – Saturday, 10.00 – 22.00

Tate Modern website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Dec

Exhibition: ‘Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven’ at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: exhibition, landscape, light, London, painting and space
Tags: A. Y. Jackson, A. Y. Jackson Totem Poles, Algoma, Algonquin Park School, Arthur Lismer, Batchewana Woods, Canada, Canadian artists, Canadian Rocky Mountains, Cloud Red Mountain, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Falls Montreal River, Frank (Franz) Johnston, Franklin Carmichael, Franklin Carmichael Autumn Hillside, Frederick Horsman Varley, Frederick Horsman Varley Cloud Red Mountain, Frederick Horsman Varley Peter Sandiford at Split Rock, Frederick Horsman Varley Stormy Weather, Frederick Horsman Varley West Coast Sunset, Georgian Bay, Group of Seven, J. E. H. MacDonald, J. E. H. MacDonald Falls Montreal River, J. E. H. MacDonald Lake O’Hara, J. E. H. MacDonald Mount Biddle, J. E. H. MacDonald Mount Oderay, J. E. H. MacDonald The Little Falls, J.E.H. MacDonald Autumn Leaves, Kitwanga, Lake O’Hara, Lake Superior, Lawren Harris, Lawren Harris Isolation Peak, Lawren Harris Lake Superior, Lawren Harris Tamaracks and Blue Hill, Lawren Harris Trees and Pool, Lawren Harris Untitled Mountain Landscape, Montreal River, Mount Biddle, Mount Oderay, Painting Canada, Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Path behind Mowat Lodge, Peter Sandiford at Split Rock, Rocky Mountains, Tamaracks and Blue Hill, The Jack Pine, The Little Falls, Tom Thomson, Tom Thomson A Northern Lake, Tom Thomson Path behind Mowat Lodge, Tom Thomson The Jack Pine, Tom Thomson Winter Thaw in the Woods, Totem Poles Kitwanga, Untitled Mountain Landscape, Vancouver, West Coast Sunset Vancouver, Winter Thaw in the Woods

Exhibition dates: 19th October 2011 – 8th January 2012

What a wonderful posting to end 2011. I had no idea how magnificent Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven was. The paintings are sublime, full of light, colour and texture: they perfectly capture the atmosphere of outback Canada. As the curator observes, ‘These artists produced some of the most vibrant and beautiful landscapes of the twentieth century’. I couldn’t agree more. A joy to see, these impressions leave one spellbound. Finally, something delicious in landscape painting!

Many thankx to the Dulwich Picture Gallery for allowing me to publish the artwork in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Frederick Horsman Varley
Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay
1921
Oil on canvas
132.6 x 162.8 cm
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© Varley Art Gallery, Town of Markham
Photo © NGC

Franklin Carmichael
Autumn Hillside
1920
Oil on canvas
76 x 91.4cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario,
Gift from the J.S. McLean Collection, Toronto
© Courtesy of the Estate of Franklin Carmichael

Frederick Horsman Varley
Peter Sandiford at Split Rock, Georgian Bay
1922
Oil on wood panel
21 x 26.7cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario
© Varley Art Gallery, Town of Markham

Frederick Horsman Varley
Cloud, Red Mountain
1927-8
Oil on canvas
87 x 102.2 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario
© Varley Art Gallery, Town of Markham

Frederick Horsman Varley
West Coast Sunset, Vancouver
c. 1926
Oil on wood
30.4 x 38.1 cm
The Thomson Collection
© Art Gallery of Ontario

Lawren Harris
Lake Superior, Sketch XLVII
c. 1923
Oil on panel, 30 x 37.5 cm
Collection: A. K. Prakash
© Family of Lawren S. Harris

Lawren Harris
Isolation Peak
c. 1939
Oil on panel
30 x 37.5 cm
Collection: A. K. Prakash
© Family of Lawren S. Harris

Lawren Harris
Untitled Mountain Landscape
c.1927-28
Oil on canvas
122.3 x 152.7 cm
Thomson Collection, AGO
© Art Gallery of Ontario
© Family of Lawren S. Harris

Lawren Harris
Tamaracks and Blue Hill
c. 1919
Oil on panel
26.7 x 34.7 cm
Art Gallery of Ontario
© Family of Lawren S. Harris

Lawren Harris
Trees and Pool
c. 1920
Oil on panel
26.7 x 35.6 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario
© Family of Lawren S. Harris

“Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Bicentenary year of momentous exhibition fi rsts is to continue in October with Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. The exhibition forms part of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s North American series showcasing the work of artists rarely seen in the UK.

Painting Canada will feature some of Canada’s most iconic landscape paintings. These bold and exciting works were first celebrated not in Canada, but in London, at the British Empire exhibitions at Wembley in 1924 and 1925. Since then, despite becoming greatly revered in Canada, the work of Thomson and the Group of Seven has been virtually unknown on the international stage. This major exhibition will reintroduce them to the British public, with an astonishing 122 paintings on display as well as Tom Thomson’s sketchbox.

Tom Thomson and J. E. H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael met as employees of the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. The other two members of the Group were A. Y. (Alexander Young) Jackson from Montreal and Lawren Harris, effectively the Group’s leader, and a man of considerable personal wealth. They often met at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto to discuss their opinions and share their art.

The artists, sometimes known as the ‘Algonquin Park School’ at this stage, received indirect monetary support from Harris (heir to the Massey-Harris farm machinery fortune) and direct support from Dr. James MacCallum a wealthy Toronto ophthalmologist and colllector. Harris and MacCallum collaborated to build a studio building that opened in 1914 to serve as a meeting and working place for the proposed new Canadian art movement.

The progress of this informal group of artists was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I and a further severe blow came in 1917 when Thomson died while canoeing in Algonquin Park. The circumstances of his death and subsequent burial have remained mysterious, the source to this day of myriad conspiracy theories.

Thomson’s seven artist friends reunited after the war. They continued to travel throughout Canada, sketching the landscape and developing techniques to represent such wild and diverse terrain in their art. In 1920 they finally came together as the Group of Seven and held their first exhibition under that name. Prior to this, the art establishment’s view of the Canadian landscape was that it was either unpaintable or too wild and uncouth to be worthy of being painted. Reviews for the 1920 exhibition were mixed, but as the decade progressed the Group came to be recognised as pioneers of a new, Canadian, school of art. Nowadays, the Group and Tom Thomson are iconic in their native country; every schoolchild is familiar with masterpieces such as Thomson’s The Jack Pine, arguably the most famous and beloved painting in Canada.

Dulwich Picture Gallery is proud to partner with the National Gallery of Canada on this exhibition, with generous support of loans also coming from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Art Gallery of Ontario and other lenders. These institutions are lending some of the most famous paintings in Canada. Additionally, a special revelation of the show is provided by the rich group of works to be found in private collections.

Painting Canada has been planned as a journey through Canada, framed by two grand rooms dedicated individually to Tom Thomson’s electrifying sketches and paintings of Algonquin Park and Lawren Harris’s other-worldly paintings of the Arctic and the Rocky Mountains. Between these two ‘poles’, a selection of the very best work of Thomson and the Group of Seven will be on display. A special feature of the show will be the juxtaposition, wherever possible, of the initial sketch with the finished canvas. One room will in fact be devoted entirely to a display of these vibrant sketches, which represent one of the most impressive contributions of Canada to twentieth-century art.

Ian Dejardin said: “These artists produced some of the most vibrant and beautiful landscapes of the twentieth century. The Canadians have kept this particular light under a bushel for far too long – I am proud, and frankly amazed, that this is to be the very first major exhibition of their work to be held in this country since the sensation of their first showing here in 1924. As for Tom Thomson – what he achieved in his tragically short career (just 4 or 5 years) is extraordinary. He is Canada’s very own Van Gogh – prepare to be dazzled.”

A. Y. Jackson
Totem Poles, Kitwanga
1926
Oil on panel
21.25 x 26.25 cm
© Collection: A. K. Prakash

J. E. H. MacDonald
Falls, Montreal River
1920
Oil on canvas
121.9 x 153 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario

J. E. H. MacDonald
Autumn Leaves, Batchewana Woods, Algoma
c. 1919
Oil on composite woodboard
21.6 x 26.7 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario

J. E. H. MacDonald
The Little Falls
1918
Oil on composite woodboard
21.6 x 26.7 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario

J. E. H. MacDonald
Mount Oderay
1930
Oil on canvas
40 x 52.5 cm
© Collection: Ash K. Prakash

J. E. H. MacDonald
Mount Biddle
1930
Oil on composite woodboard
21.5 x 26.7 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario

Tom Thomson (1877 – 1917)

Tom Thomson was born near Claremont, Ontario on 5 August, 1877. A turning point in his life came in 1909 when he joined the staff of Grip Ltd., a prominent Toronto photo-engraving house. The firm’s head designer, artist-poet J.E.H. MacDonald, contributed much to Thomson’s artistic development, sharpening his sense of design. However, Thomson’s career as a fine artist lasted barely four or fi ve years; it was cut short in July 1917, when his canoe was found floating on Canoe Lake, empty. His body surfaced days later, triggering decades of speculation as to his fate. More sensational than these stories, however, was the burst of creativity that had preceded his death. In his last two years, Thomson had developed an artistic language that seemed to capture the unique qualities of the Canadian landscape – painterly, vibrant in colour, in tune with the subtle change of the seasons. The Canadian wilderness had been previously considered too wild and untamed to inspire ‘true’ art.

His fellow employees at Grip Ltd. included Arthur Lismer, F.H. Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Frank Johnston – all adventurous young painters who often organised weekend painting trips to the countryside around Toronto. After Tom’s death, a memorial exhibition was arranged and these men, together with Lawren Harris and A. Y. Jackson, would go on to form in 1920 the Group of Seven, probably the most famous artistic force in Canadian art history. Along with Thomson they created a landscape style that to this day infl uences the way Canadians visualise their own country and their best paintings have become national icons.

Lawren Harris (1885 – 1970)

Lawren Harris was born on 23 October 1885, in Brantford, Ontario. He attended St. Andrew’s College in Toronto before studying art in Berlin, Germany, from 1904 to 1908. He then returned to Toronto, where he began painting post-impressionist street scenes of its older and poorer areas. By 1919 Harris’s landscapes had become increasingly sombre and his brush stroke more expressive. His affection for Scandinavian landscape painting was one of the key factors in the formulation of the Group of Seven’s approach to the Ontario woods, which Harris himself painted with gusto and attention. His later style was grandly beautiful and austere, finding its most characteristic subject matter in the awesome landscapes of Lake Superior, the Rockies and the Canadian Arctic.

A. Y. Jackson (1882 – 1974)

Alexander Young Jackson, or “A. Y.” as he was fondly known, was born in Montreal on 3 October, 1882. Like other members of the Group of Seven he was trained as a commercial artist and for many years made his living by that means. He apprenticed to a Montreal lithographer at the age of 12, and though he later spent two and a half years in France studying painting, he was soon back in Canada paying his rent by designing cigar labels. In the following years after the formation of the Group of Seven he painted the Arctic, the West Coast, the Prairies, and Ontario’s north woods, as well as his beloved St. Lawrence, where his countless sketching expeditions earned him the nickname Père Raquette-Pappa Snowshoe.

Arthur Lismer (1885 – 1969)

Arthur Lismer celebrated the powerful beauty of the Canadian landscape in his own expressionist style. His paintings are characterized by vivid colour, deliberately coarse brushwork and a simplified form. Lismer was born in Sheffield, England. At the age of 26, he immigrated to Canada seeking work as a commercial illustrator. It was at Grip Ltd. in Toronto that he met a group of other talented young artists who were to become the Group of Seven. Together, they organized trips to explore and sketch the wilderness – capturing the spirit of Canada in their work, and setting Canadian art on a bold and original new course. Although Lismer painted throughout his life, he devoted the majority of his time to art education. A gifted teacher, Lismer pioneered the field of child art education across Canada and around the world.

Frederick Horsman Varley (1881 – 1969)

Varley was born in 1881 in Sheffield, England. He studied painting at Sheffield and Antwerp and went to work in London as a commercial illustrator. In 1912 he came to Canada, where he found himself working in the same commercial studio as Tom Thomson. With Thomson and the others he took to painting Northern Ontario landscapes, and also began to do considerable work as a portrait painter. In 1926 Varley moved to Vancouver to become Head of Drawing, Painting & Composition at the newly formed Vancouver School of Decorative & Applied Arts. In 1933 he founded his own school, the British Columbia College of Arts, but this venture led to his bankruptcy in 1935 and by then his marriage had also collapsed. The next years were difficult for Varley, most of them spent suffering from alcoholism in Montreal. In 1945, however, he returned to Toronto and slowly began to work again. He died in Toronto in 1969.

Franklin Carmichael (1890 – 1945)

Carmichael, the son of a carriage maker, was born in Orillia, Ontario on 4 May, 1890. He arrived in Toronto in 1911 with some training in commercial art, and soon found himself the associate of Tom Thomson and a number of other commercial artists who were teaching themselves to be serious painters. In 1913 he went to Antwerp to study painting but was soon back in Ontario to participate in the founding of the Group of Seven, of which he was the youngest member. In 1932 he was appointed Head of Graphic and Commercial Art at the Ontario College of Art. He died in Toronto in 1945.

Frank (Franz) Johnston (1888 – 1949)

Johnston was an original member but only showed in the Group’s first exhibition. Johnston’s style and technique – he very often painted in tempera – differed from that of the other Group of Seven members. His work was extremely decorative, and sold well – a fact that led to his early departure from the Group, since he felt he could earn more disassociated from the initial critical outrage that greeted the first Group exhibitions.

J. E. H. MacDonald (1873 – 1932)

John Edward Hervey MacDonald challenged and vastly broadened the scope of Canadian Art. MacDonald believed that art should express the “mood and character and spirit of the country”, and he portrayed his vision in vast panoramas using dark, rich colours and a turbulent patterned style. MacDonald was born in Durham, England, and moved to Canada at the age of fourteen. He trained as an artist in Hamilton and Toronto, pursuing a career in commercial art. In 1895 he joined Grip Ltd. in Toronto where he met and encouraged other staff members, including Tom Thomson, Frank Carmichael, Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley, to paint with him on weekends – laying the groundwork for what would later become Canada’s famous Group of Seven. He was the oldest member of the Group. His early death led directly to the disbanding of the Group in 1933.

Tom Thomson
The Jack Pine
1916-1917
Oil on canvas
127.9 x 139.8 cm
© National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Photo © NGC

Tom Thomson
Winter Thaw in the Woods
1917
Oil on composite woodpulp board
21.6 x 26.8 cm
Thomson Collection, AGO
© Art Gallery of Ontario

Tom Thomson
A Northern Lake
c. 1916
Oil on composite wood-pulp board
21.6 x 26.7 cm
© Art Gallery of Ontario

Tom Thomson
Path behind Mowat Lodge
1917
Oil on wood
26.8 x 21.4 cm
Thomson Collection, AGO
© Art Gallery of Ontario

Dulwich Picture Gallery
Gallery Road, London
SE21 7AD
T: 020 8693 5254

Opening hours:
Tue – Fri 10am – 5pm
weekends Bank Holiday Mondays 11am – 5pm
Closed Mondays except Bank Holidays

Dulwich Picture Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Nov

Exhibition: ‘Postwar Propliners in Miniature: Models from the Collection of Anthony J. Lawler’ at SFO Museum (SFOM), San Francisco International Airport

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, gallery website, London, photographic series, photography and sculpture
Tags: Aeroflot, Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-114 Rossiya, aeroplane models, Air France, Air France Breguet 763 Provence, airlines, Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador, American Overseas Airlines Lockheed L-049 Constellation, Anthony J. Lawler, BEA, BEA Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador, BOAC, BOAC Bristol Britannia 300, Breguet 763 Provence, Bristol Britannia 300, British European Airways, British Overseas Airways Corporation, Burbank California, Collection of Anthony J. Lawler, Constellation, Douglas DC-6, flight, KLM, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Douglas DC-6, La Maquette d'Etude et d'Exposition à Aubervilliers, Lockheed, Lockheed 1049H Super Constellation, Lockheed 1649 Starliner, Lockheed Aircraft Company, Lockheed L-049 Constellation, Maarten Matthys Verkuyl, miniature aeroplane models, model aircraft, model passenger aircraft, models, passenger aircraft, passenger plane models, Peter V. Nelson, Peter V. Nelson Trek Airways Lockheed 1649 Starliner, postwar propliners, Postwar Propliners in Miniature, Postwar Propliners in Miniature: Models from the Collection of Anthony J. Lawler, propliners, Raise-Up Models, Raise-Up Models REAL (Redes Estaduais Aéreas Limitadas) Transportes Aéreos Lockheed 1049H Super Constellation, REAL, REAL (Redes Estaduais Aéreas Limitadas) Transportes Aéreos Lockheed 1049H Super Constellation, Redes Estaduais Aéreas Limitadas, Royal Dutch Airlines, Royal Dutch Airlines Douglas DC-6, San Francisco, San Francisco International Airport, scale model airliners, SFO Museum, SFOM, Shawcraft Models, Shawcraft Models BEA Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador, Starliner, Trek Airways, Trek Airways Lockheed 1649 Starliner, Tu-114, Tupolev, U.S.S.R., U.S.S.R. Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-114 Rossiya, Uxbridge England, Westway Models, Westway Models BOAC Bristol Britannia 300

Exhibition dates: June 2011 – December 2011

Location: Aviation Museum and Library 1 – Front Wall Cases

One of my favourite postings in a long while. As an inveterate collector how I would love to have these in my collection. What beautiful aircraft; what graceful models; what simple, gorgeous photographs by photographer Chad Michael Anderson. The Lockheed Constellation /Starliner has to be one of the most delirious aircraft ever made!

Many thankx to John Hill, Assistant Director, Aviation for his help and to SFO Museum for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs. Attribution for the photographs is to the SFO Museum (actual photographer unknown). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Lockheed Aircraft Co., Burbank, California
American Overseas Airlines Lockheed L-049 Constellation
c. 1946
Scale 1:44
metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

Maarten Matthys Verkuyl (Dutch)
KLM (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij) Royal Dutch Airlines Douglas DC-6
c. 1950
scale 1:48
metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

Shawcraft Models, Uxbridge, England
BEA Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador
1950s
scale 1:48
wood, metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

La Maquette d’Etude et d’Exposition à Aubervilliers, France
Air France Breguet 763 Provence
1950s
scale 1:50
wood, plastic, metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

“Immediately following the end of World War II in 1945, airlines and passengers benefited from a surplus of inexpensive, advanced propeller-driven transport aircraft, or “propliners.” Over the next fifteen years, commercial aviation expanded rapidly as airlines persistently requested improved propliner designs to lower costs, attract new customers, and gain advantages over competitors. In meeting these demands the manufacturers of North America and Europe developed increasingly superior aircraft. These included the jet-powered turboprop airliners that flew successively faster, higher, and farther.

Making scale models of these airliners was an important part of the design, manufacturing, and marketing process during this period. Crafted by in-house model shops or independent model makers, they represented the new designs in miniature for convenient three-dimensional analysis. Accurately painted livery schemes on the models helped the airlines to imagine the new airliner operating within their fleet. Carriers also commissioned the making of models to promote their improved services in airline offices and travel agencies. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, they were usually made of sheet or cast metal and complemented with metal bases often formed into unique streamline shapes. By the late 1950s, models began to be produced from plastic, which was easier to mold into intricate shapes and reflected the proliferation of new synthetic resins.

These models represent the age of postwar propliners, which lasted until the 1960s when faster, more fuel-efficient and propeller-less turbojet airliners began to supersede them. They are from the collection of Anthony J. Lawler, an aviation industry professional and avid airplane model collector since first seeing the De Havilland Comet – the world’s first jetliner – fly over his boyhood home in Rhodesia. Mr. Lawler has spent decades assembling one of the finest collections of scale airliner display models, most of which were acquired while working as a senior sales representative for Airbus North America during the 1980s and 1990s. His collection spans a century of commercial aviation design innovation.”

Text from the SFO Museum website

Raise-Up Models, Rotterdam, Netherlands
REAL (Redes Estaduais Aéreas Limitadas) Transportes Aéreos Lockheed 1049H Super Constellation
1950s
metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

Peter V. Nelson, Reading, England
Trek Airways Lockheed 1649 Starliner
early 1960s
scale 1:62
metal, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

Westway Models, London, England
BOAC Bristol Britannia 300
late 1950s
scale 1:72
metal, plastic, wood, paint
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

U.S.S.R.
Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-114 Rossiya
early 1960s
scale 1:100
metal, paint, plastic
Collection of Anthony J. Lawler

SFO Museum
San Francisco International Airport
P.O. Box 8097
San Francisco, CA 94128 USA
T: 650.821.6700

SFO Museum website

Back to top

Sep

Exhibition: ‘Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters’ at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, gallery website, landscape, light, London, memory, painting, photography, space and time
Tags: american artist, Arcadia, Arcadian Painters, Bacchanalia, Bacchanalia-Fall (5 Days in November), classical mythology, collage, Cy Twombly, Cy Twombly Bacchanalia-Fall (5 Days in November), Cy Twombly Hero and Leandro, Cy Twombly Pan, Cy Twombly Quattro Stagioni: Autunno, Cy Twombly Quattro Stagioni: Estate, Cy Twombly Quattro Stagioni: Inverno, Cy Twombly Quattro Stagioni: Primavera, Dulwich Picture Gallery, french artist, gouache, Hero and Leandro, Nicolas Poussin, Nicolas Poussin Rinaldo and Armida, Nicolas Poussin The Nurture of Jupiter, Nicolas Poussin The Triumph of David, Nicolas Poussin The Triumph of Pan, Nicolas Poussin Venus and Mercury, Quattro Stagioni: Autunno, Quattro Stagioni: Estate, Quattro Stagioni: Inverno, Quattro Stagioni: Primavera, Renaissance painting, Rinaldo and Armida, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Rauschenberg Cy and Relics, Rome, Tacita Dean Edwin Parker, The Four Seasons, The Nurture of Jupiter, The Triumph of David, The Triumph of Pan, Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters, Venus and Mercury

Exhibition dates: 29th June – 25th September 2011

Many thankx to the Dulwich Picture Gallery for allowing me to publish the images in the posting. Please click on them for a larger version of the image.

Robert Rauschenberg
Cy and Relics
1952
Photograph
© The Rauschenberg Foundation

Nicolas Poussin
The Triumph of Pan
c. 1636
Pen and ink with wash over stylus and black chalk
581 x 410 x 29 mm
Lent by Her Majesty the Queen. The Royal Collection
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Cy Twombly
Bacchanalia-Fall (5 Days in November) Blatt 4, InvNr. UAB 457
1977
collage, oil, chalk, gouache, on fabriano paper, graph paper
101.2 x 150.5 cm
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Museum Brandhorst, München
Leihgeber: Udo Brandhorst, © Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly
Pan
1975
148 x 100cm
Private Collection
© Cy Twombly, Courtesy: Cy Twombly Archive

Nicolas Poussin
The Triumph of David
1628-1631
© By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Cy Twombly
Hero and Leandro
1985
202 x 254cm
Private Collection, Courtesy Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich
© Cy Twombly

“I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.”

Cy Twombly

Dulwich Picture Gallery is proud to announce a revelatory exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly and Nicolas Poussin. Organised to celebrate the Bicentenary of the Gallery, this major show will explore, for the first time, the unexpected yet numerous parallels and affinities between the two artists. The exhibition will draw upon the world-class permanent collection of works at Dulwich Picture Gallery by Nicolas Poussin, alongside other works from major collections around the world by both Poussin and Twombly.

In 1624 and 1957, the two artists, aged around thirty, moved to Rome. Nicolas Poussin and Cy Twombly subsequently spent the majority of their lives in the Eternal City, and went on to become the pre-eminent painters of their day. Rather than recent exhibitions that have sought to compare and contrast old masters with contemporary artists through superficial visual appearances, this groundbreaking show will instead juxtapose works which may seem radically disparate in terms of style, yet ones that share deep and timeless interests. Both Poussin and Twombly were artists of prodigious talent who found in the classical heritage of Rome a life-long subject. Both spent their lives studying, revivifying and making newly relevant for their own eras antiquity, ancient history, classical mythology, Renaissance painting, poetry and the imaginary, idealised realm of Arcadia.

Curated by Dr. Nicholas Cullinan, Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern, the exhibition examines how Twombly and Poussin, although separated by three centuries, nonetheless engaged with the same sources and will explore the overlapping subjects that the two artists have shared. It will consist of around thirty carefully-chosen paintings, drawings and sculptures, structured thematically around six sections devoted to key shared themes, from both artists’ early fascinations with Arcadia and the pastoral when they first moved to Rome, Venus and Eros, Anxiety and Theatricality, Apollo, Parnassus and Poetry, Pan and the Bacchanalia, through to the theme of The Four Seasons.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the British premiere of Tacita Dean’s new 16mm film portrait of Cy Twombly, Edwin Parker (2011). The film documents Twombly in his studio in Lexington, Virginia, and follows on from Dean’s series of filmed depictions of subjects such as the choreographer Merce Cunningham, the poet Michael Hamburger and the artist Mario Merz, where the inner life of the sitter is implied through their physical demeanour and surroundings. A series of talks will also accompany the exhibition, including Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, in conversation with Dr. Nicholas Cullinan on the topic of curating Twombly, and Malcolm Bull (Ruskin School of Drawing, University of Oxford) and T. J. Clark (Professor Emeritus of Modern Art at the University of California, Berkeley; and Visiting Professor, University of York) who will discuss the work of Poussin and Twombly and the themes raised by the exhibition.

Ian Dejardin, Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery explains that the exhibition “fits in with a philosophy I have pursued here – that exhibitions can conduct a dialogue with the permanent collection. In the past Howard Hodgkin, Lucian Freud and Paula Rego have all hung their paintings within the collection, so Poussin and Twombly seemed like a natural extension of those experiments.”

The exhibition has received enthusiastic support and loans from major private and public collections around the world, including The National Gallery and Tate in London; The Royal Collection; The Duke of Devonshire; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Museo del Prado, Madrid; The Brandhorst Museum, Munich and The Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition has been developed in close collaboration with Cy Twombly himself, and will include works that have never been exhibited before.”

Press release from the Dulwich Picture Gallery

Nicolas Poussin
Rinaldo and Armida
c. 1630
© By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Nicolas Poussin
The Nurture of Jupiter
mid 1630s
© By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Cy Twombly
Quattro Stagioni: Primavera
1993-5
Acrylic, oil, crayon and pencil on canvas
3230 x 1996 x 67mm
Tate: Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members 2002
© Tate, London, 2010, © Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly
Quattro Stagioni: Estate
1993-5
Acrylic and pencil on canvas
3241 x 2250 x 67mm
Tate: Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members 2002
© Tate, London, 2010, © Cy Twombly

Nicolas Poussin
Venus and Mercury
c. 1627/1629
© By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Cy Twombly
Quattro Stagioni: Autunno
1993-5
Acrylic, oil, crayon and pencil on canvas
3230 x 2254 x 67mm
Tate: Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members 2002
© Tate, London, 2010, © Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly
Quattro Stagioni: Inverno
1993-5
Acrylic, oil and pencil on canvas
3229 x 2300 x 67mm
Tate: Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members 2002
© Tate, London, 2010, © Cy Twombly

Dulwich Picture Gallery
Gallery Road, London, SE21 7AD

Opening hours: Tue – Fri 10am–5pm
Weekends and Bank Holiday Mondays 11am–5pm
Closed Mondays except Bank Holidays

Dulwich Picture Gallery website

Back to top

Sep

Films, Events and Symposia: ‘Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Dates: 7th – 18th September 2011

His photographic works are rare and remain largely unknown according to Wikipedia. They shouldn’t be.

“Jack Smith (November 14, 1932 in Columbus, Ohio - September 25, 1989 in New York City) was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer, though his photographic works are rare and remain largely unknown.

Smith was one of the first proponents of the aesthetics which came to be known as ‘camp’ and ‘trash’, using no-budget means of production (e.g. using discarded color reversal film stock) to create a visual cosmos heavily influenced by Hollywood kitsch, orientalism and with Flaming Creatures created drag culture as it is currently known. Smith was heavily involved with John Vaccaro, founder of The Playhouse of The Ridiculous, whose disregard for conventional theater practice deeply influenced Smith’s ideas about performance art. In turn, Vaccaro was deeply influenced by Smith’s aesthetics. It was Vaccaro who introduced Smith to glitter and in 1966 and 1967, Smith created costumes for Vaccaro’s Playhouse of The Ridiculous. Smith’s style influenced the film work of Andy Warhol as well as the early work of John Waters. While all three were part of the 1960s gay arts movement, Vaccaro and Smith refuted the idea that their sexual orientation was responsible for their art.

After his last film, No President (1967), Smith created performance and experimental theatre work until his death on September 25, 1989 from AIDS-related pneumonia.”

Text from Wikipedia entry

Many thankx to the ICA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Jack Smith
Untitled
c.1958-1962/2011
Analog C-print hand printed from original color negative on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Jack Smith
Untitled
1982
Mixed media on paper
6 1/8 x 8 7/8 inches (15.6 x 22.5 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Jack Smith
Untitled
c.1958-1962/2011
Black and white gelatin silver print
10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

“Legendary American artist, filmmaker and actor Jack Smith (1932-1989), described by Andy Warhol as the only person he would ever copy and by John Waters as “the only true underground filmmaker”, is celebrated at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in film, performance and debate with a retrospective of Smith’s work from 7 to 18 September 2011.

Working in New York from the 1950s until his death in 1989, Smith unequivocally resisted and upturned accepted conventions, whether artistic, moral or legal. Irreverent in tone and delirious in effect, Smith’s films, such as the notorious Flaming Creatures (1963), are both wildly camp and subtly polemical. Smith is best known for his contributions to underground cinema but his influence extends across performance art, photography and experimental theatre.

A Feast for Open Eyes: Jack Smith maps out the breadth of Smith’s practice, from his collaborative film productions to his individual writings, and looks at his legacy in the UK drawing upon a generation of New York artists with whom Smith was closely involved, including Jonas Mekas and Penny Arcade, and younger artists and filmmakers whom he influenced. John Zorn, a long-term Smith collaborator selects records to accompany an installation of slides documenting Smith’s work, as he used to in collaboration with Smith in the 1970s and 80s.

The retrospective opens with a screening of Flaming Creatures introduced by Chris Dercon, Director of Tate Modern, who was a close friend of Smith’s. The film is followed by the screening of an interview, recorded exclusively for the ICA this summer, with Jonas Mekas, a founder member of Anthology Film Archives who faced obscenity charges for defending Flaming Creatures in the 1960s. The presentation is introduced by Dominic Johnson, author of the forthcoming monograph Glorious Catastrophe: Jack Smith, Performance and Visual Culture (Manchester University Press) and co-curator of A Feast for Open Eyes.”

Press release from the ICA website

Jack Smith
Untitled
c.1978
Mixed media on paper
13 x 20 3/4 inches (33 x 52.7 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Jack Smith
Untitled
c.1958-1962/2011
Black and white gelatin silver print
10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Jack Smith
Untitled
c. 1958-62
Color negative
2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches  (5.7 x 5.7 cm)
Copyright Estate of Jack Smith
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall,
London,
SW1Y 5AH

Opening hours:
Monday – Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 12 noon – 11pm
Thursday – Saturday 12 noon – 1am
Sunday 12 noon – 9pm

ICA website

Back to top

May

Exhibition: ‘A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875′ at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, London, Melbourne, painting, Paris, photographic series, photography, pictorialism, portrait, psychological, space and works on paper
Tags: A Ballad of Love and Death, A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain 1848-1875, A Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day, albumen print, Amy Hughes, And Enid Sang, Bolton Abbey, Carbon print, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Caroll), Charles Lutwidge Dodgson Amy Hughes, daguerreotype, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Jane Morris the blue silk dress, early photographic processes, English artist, English photographer, Fading Away, Ferns and brambles, Fougères et ronces, Frederick Crawley, Frederick Crawley Fribourg, Frederick Pickersgill, Frederick Pickersgill Sunshine and Shade, Fribourg, Henry Peach Robinson, Henry Peach Robinson Fading Away, Henry Peach Robinson She Never Told her Love, Henry White, Henry White Ferns and brambles, Henry White Fougères et ronces, James Sinclair, James Sinclair Avenue à Weston, James Sinclair Weston Avenue Warwickshire, Jane Morris, Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti, Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti, Jane Morris the blue silk dress, John Robert Parsons, John Robert Parsons Jane Morris posant dans la maison de Rossetti, John Robert Parsons Jane Morris posant dans le jardin de la maison de Rossetti, John Robert Parsons Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti, John Robert Parsons Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti, John Ruskin, John Ruskin Fribourg, John William Inchbold, John William Inchbold La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey, John William Inchbold The Vault of Bolton Abbey, Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Margaret Cameron And Enid Sang, Julia Margaret Cameron Le tournesol, Julia Margaret Cameron Maud, Julia Margaret Cameron The sunflower, Lewis Caroll, Lewis Caroll Amy Hughes, Maud, Pre-Raphaelite, Pre-Raphaelite Photography, Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, Roger Fenton, Roger Fenton Bolton Abbey, Rossetti, She Never Told her Love, Sir John Everett Millais, Sir John Everett Millais A Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day, Sunshine and Shade, The British Museum, The sunflower, The Vault of Bolton Abbey

Exhibition dates: 8th March – 29th May 2011

Julia Margaret Cameron – you are one of my heroes!

Many thankx to the Musée d’Orsay for allowing me to publish the photogaphs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Henry White
Fougères et ronces (Ferns and brambles)
1856
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
19.1 x 24.1 cm
Collection particulière
© Droits réservés

Frederick Crawley, under the direction of John Ruskin
Fribourg, Suisse, Rue de la Palme et Pont de Berne (Fribourg, Switzerland, Palm Street and Berne Bridge)
about 1854 or 1856
Daguerréotype
11.5 x 15.1 cm
Angleterre, Courtesy K. & J. Jacobson
© Droits réservés

Roger Fenton
Bolton Abbey, fenêtre ouest
1854
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
25.1 x 34.5 cm
Bradford, National Media Museum
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

John William Inchbold
La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey (The Vault of Bolton Abbey)
1853
Huile sur toile
50 x 68.4 cm
Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery
© Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery

Henry Peach Robinson
Fading Away
1858
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
28.8 x 52.1 cm
Bradford, The Royal Photographic Society Collection au National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

Henry Peach Robinson
She Never Told her Love
1857
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
18.6 x 23.3 cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Frederick Pickersgill
Sunshine and Shade
1859
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
16.4 x 19.4 cm
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

“The historian and art critic, John Ruskin, had a great influence in Great Britain not only on the Pre-Raphaelite movement created in 1848, but on the development of early photography in the 1850s. The leading Pre-Raphaelite painters, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Ford Madox Brown and their followers, wished to change the pictorial conventions laid down by the Royal Academy, and in order to demonstrate the transformations in modern life, invented a radically new idiom marked by bright colours and clarity of detail.

Pre-Raphaelite painters and photographers frequently made similar choices of subjects, and the photographers, particularly Julia Margaret Cameron, David Wilkie Wynfield and Lewis Carroll, were often had close links with the painters.

When painting landscapes, the Pre-Raphaelite artists answered Ruskin’s call, meticulously observing nature in order to capture every nuance of detail. For their part, photographers, such as Roger Fenton, Henry White, William J. Stillman and Colonel Henry Stuart Wortley, experimented with the new process of wet plate collodion negatives that allowed much greater image detail, and achieved similar effects. Although highly impressed at first by the daguerreotype, which enabled the eye to see tiny, overlooked details, Ruskin was nonetheless still very critical of landscape photography, which could not reproduce the colours of nature and in particular of the sky. This failing also gave rise to a major debate amongst photography critics.

In portraiture, there were clear links between the painted portraits of Watts and Cameron’s photographic portraits. By using special lenses and photographing her models in close-up, Cameron, achieved, with a glass negative, exactly the opposite effect to the clear image advocated by Ruskin, and her work was distinctive for the breadth of relief and contour, as well as the compositions evoking Raphael’s paintings, also a source of inspiration for Watts.

The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti repeatedly drew and painted Jane Morris, a model with whom he was infatuated, and he asked Robert Parsons to produce a series of photographs, under his personal direction, which captured the fascinating presence of the young woman as effectively as his own paintings.

Just like the Pre-Raphaelite painters, Victorian photographers would turn to religious or historical subjects, finding a shared inspiration in the poems of Dante, Shakespeare and possibly Byron, and above all in the Arthurian legend made popular once more by Lord Tennyson, the poet laureat. From a formal point of view, Millais’ Ophelia, one of his most successful paintings, was a source for Henry Peach Robinson’s photograph, The Lady of Shalott, even though it had a different theme.

Finally, Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian photographers both liked to present scenes from modern life with a moralising undertone: hence She Never Told Her Love, a photograph by Robinson that was very successful when exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1858, William Holman Hunt’s painting, Awakening of Conscience, and Rossetti’s Found, a painting depicting a countryman who comes across his former sweetheart, now a prostitute in the city.

In the 1880s, Pre-Raphaelite painting would be transformed, with artists and writers like William Morris, Burne-Jones, Whistler and Oscar Wilde, into a very different movement concerned only with the cult of beauty and rejecting Ruskin’s concept of art as something moral or useful. British photographers, however, inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites would inspire the Pictorialist movement that flourished in the 1890s, encouraged by the writings of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson, extolling artistic photography.”

Press release from the Musée d’Orsay website

James Sinclair 14th Earl of Caithness
Avenue à Weston, Warwickshire (Weston Avenue, Warwickshire)
c. 1860
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
23 x 18.3 cm
New York, Courtesy George Eastman House Rochester
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Julia Margaret Cameron
Le tournesol (The sunflower)
1866 – 1870
Épreuve sur papier albuminé
35.2 x 24.3 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Fond Paul Mellon
© National Gallery of Art, Washington

John Robert Parsons, under the direction of Rossetti
Jane Morris posant dans la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti)
summer 1865
Épreuve moderne
22.6 x 17.5 cm
London, Victoria and Albert Museum
© V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

John Robert Parsons
Jane Morris posant dans le jardin de la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti)
summer 1865
Épreuve albuminée
Collection particulière
© Tim Hurst Photography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Jane Morris, the blue silk dress
1868
Huile sur toile
110.5 x 90.2 cm
Londres, The Society of Antiquaries
© Kelmscott Manor Collection, by Permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Caroll)
Amy Hughes
1863
Austin, The University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center, Gernsheim Collection
© Droits réservés

Julia Margaret Cameron
Maud
1875
Épreuve au charbon
30 x 25 cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Sir John Everett Millais
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge
1851-1852
Huile sur toile
91.4 x 62.2 cm
Collection Makins
© The Makins Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

Sir Edward Burne-Jones
Princess Sabra (The King’s Daughter)
1865 – 1866
Huile sur toile
105 x 61 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Julia Margaret Cameron
“And Enid Sang”
1874
Épreuve sur papier albuminé, négatif verre au collodion, contrecollée sur carton
35 x 28 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)

Musée d’Orsay
62, rue de Lille
75343 Paris Cedex 07
France

Opening hours:
9.30am to 6pm
9.30am to 9.45pm on Thursdays
Closed on mondays

Musée d’Orsay website

Back to top

May

Exhibition: ‘Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures’ at Deichtorhallen Hamburg

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 25th February – 22nd May 2011

“We are unhealthy, middle-aged, dirty-minded, depressed, cynical, empty, tired-brained, seedy, rotten, dreaming, badly-behaved, ill-mannered, arrogant, intellectual, self-pitying, honest, successful, hard-working, thoughtful, artistic, religious, fascistic, blood-thirsty, teasing, destructive, ambitious, colourful, damned, stubborn, perverted and good. We are artists.”

Gilbert & George, 1980

Exhibition: ‘ANALOG: trends in sound and picture’ at The Riflemaker Gallery, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 10th January – 3rd March 2011

I started my life as an artist as a black and white photographer. I spent many hours ensconced in the enveloping black and red safety light of the darkroom, listening to the sound of running water – a nurturing, womb-like environment despite the toxic nature of the chemicals involved. It was magical to see the image appear in the developing tray out of nothing, an alchemical process that never ceased to amaze me, a link to the early days of photography and the wonder that those first images would have generated. At that time the photography course at Phillip Institute (soon to become part of RMIT University) had 3 huge darkrooms; now they have one with only a couple of enlargers.

Working in those darkrooms did teach you a solid foundation for your art practice: for one thing, the value of developing a working methodology – choosing a good negative that you wanted to print, spending time with it, adjusting the enlarger to obtain optimum size and printing it beautifully – for in a good day I could only print one or possibly two negatives a day. Then there was the process of washing the chemicals out of the paper and drying the prints. The whole process taught you patience, precision and dedication to the task at hand so that the negative revealed in the print something else that might be present, some ‘other’ that photography has the ability to capture if you take time, are aware and receptive to this illumination. These disciplines have held me in good stead during the following years.

I still love analogue colour and black and white photographs. To me it is like the difference between an LP and a CD. The CD might have it all over the LP in terms of information captured but there is this ineffable feeling about an LP with it’s scratches and pops, it’s atmosphere. The same goes for an analogue print and it is something that you can’t quite put your finger on. I believe that there is still a place for analogue prints in the world – for the magical process, for their beauty, sensitivity and downright inspiration. Long may they live.

Many thankx to The Riflemaker Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Richard Nicholson
‘Roy Bass darkroom, Michael Dyer Associates, Covent Garden’
2006
Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker

The End of Professional Photographic Darkrooms and Music Recording Studios

The impact of digital technology on print photography and music production is the subject of ANALOG at Riflemaker, Soho from 10 January 2011. The exhibition invites us inside the last of London’s photographic darkrooms as well as taking a visit to a working reel-to-reel music studio, courtesy of an installation by Lewis Durham of the band Kitty, Daisy & Lewis.

Richard Nicholson. “A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms 2006 – 2010″

1979. The year my father constructed a darkroom and introduced me to photography. I was immediately entranced by the printing process and cherished the long hours spent in this dark, private space; standing in the gloom of the red safelight, slowly rocking the print tray, watching the ghost-like image reveal itself through the gently lapping developer solution. As I experimented with the many formulas and techniques detailed in my father’s guidebooks, I often found the most interesting prints were the chemically stained accidents pulled from the bin at the end of a session. The darkroom became a bolt-hole for me; a private space where I could escape from the noise of family life. As I passed through school, university and various jobs, I often sought out a darkroom to escape from the crowd. But as I honed my skills -solarizing, masking, bleaching, split-toning, hand-colouring – my prints began to attract public attention.

2006. I’m working in London as a photographer. I’m still shooting film, but digital is becoming ubiquitous. The photographic manufacturer Durst announces that it will no longer be producing enlargers. Annual sales have dropped from a peak of 107,000 units in 1979 to just a few hundred units in recent years. The darkroom has always been integral to my practice as a photographer. But for how much longer? Once bustling hire darkrooms have become eerily quiet, and London labs are dropping like flies. Joe’s Basement, Primary, Metro Soho, Keishi Colour, Ceta, Team Photographic, Sky – all gone. Polaroid has stopped making instant film and Kodak and Fuji are discontinuing one emulsion after another. The recently introduced Canon 5d camera has persuaded many diehard film photographers that digital is the future, and those who remain unconvinced are facing clients who no longer have the budgets for film, Polaroids, clip-tests, contact-sheets and prints. The darkroom’s days are numbered.

Against this backdrop, I begin to look at the darkroom in a new light. My enlarger (a handsomely engineered GeM 504) has been an invisible tool, but now it presents itself as a sad and lumpen creature in the face of extinction. With its long neck, heavy head and inviting focus handles, the thing has a human form which elicits sympathy – the surrounding matt black walls add an air of theatricality. Hearing tales of noble machines being unceremoniously dumped in skips when labs close down, I decide to document them before they all disappear.

I chose to photograph professional darkrooms because they are often shrouded in mystery; hidden behind the tidy glass facade of the lab’s front desk. As a keen printer myself, I was curious to see the workspaces of the master printers; craftsmen who had spent their working lives in darkness. The spaces I discovered were often haphazard and brimming with personal details; coffee cups, CD collections, family snapshots, unpaid invoices, curious knick-knacks brought back by globe-trotting photographers. These human elements transformed what might have been a detached typology of modernist industrial design into something more intimate and nuanced.

I photographed each darkroom on large format film. Working in total darkness, I carefully painted these normally dingy spaces with a flashgun, seeking to reveal the beauty of the machinery, and shed some light on the clutter stained with the patina of time. Some of the darkrooms were busy, whilst others were neglected (all attention being given to the new inkjet printer in the adjoining corridor). Many of the darkrooms were facing imminent closure. (The one with the slogan pinned to the wall, ‘I want to stay here forever’, was dismantled the day after I photographed it and is currently being converted into luxury apartments.)

Many of the iconic images of recent decades were crafted in these rooms. Mike Spry’s high contrast lith prints of U2 and Depeche Mode for music photographer Anton Corbijn, Peter Guest’s black and white prints of the Trainspotting cast for portrait photographer Lorenzo Agius, or Brian Dowling’s intricately masked colour prints for fashion photographer Nick Knight. Such commercial work is now routinely carried out in Photoshop and professional printers have had to seek out new avenues for their skills. The art market is perhaps the last bastion for traditional darkroom printing, but even this area is being taken over by digital machines – Lightjet, Lambda, and Chromira printers. But suddenly there is a resurgence of interest in analog processes amongst younger photographers who were brought up on digital. Left cold by the clinical nature of the virtual workspace, they seek depth and authenticity via the chemical ambience of the traditional darkroom. Alternative processes from the early history of photography are being rediscovered, Polaroid instant film has been relaunched, and the craze for poorly engineered Russian and Chinese film cameras (Lomo, Holga, Diana etc) continues unabated.

I wonder at this enthusiasm. Like many committed film photographers, I experienced a belated epiphany when I finally switched to digital. My darkroom skills were easily transferred to the digital realm, and I soon discovered that Photoshop offered creative printmaking possibilities that far exceeded what I could achieve in the darkroom. Whilst I don’t miss the chemistry of the darkroom – much of it highly toxic – I do miss the aura of the red safelight and the soothing sound of running water. I miss the excited sense of performance when making a complicated print (there’s no ‘undo’ button in the darkroom), and the physicality of dodging and burning – the manual shaping of the light. With film I had a network of contacts across London and felt embedded in the city, whereas with digital I feel disembodied. The history of photography is young and fast moving. The darkroom era was shortlived. This collection of images represents its apotheosis.”

Richard Nicholson, November 2010

I would like to thank all the printers who kindly allowed me to photograph their darkrooms.

Nicholson, Richard. “A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms 2006 – 2010,” in Taylor, Tot (ed.,). ANALOG: trends in sound and picture book. London: Riflemaker, 2011, pp. 17-19. ISBN 978-0-9563571-6-8.

Richard Nicholson
‘Peter Guest darkroom’
2006
Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker

Richard Nicholson
‘Roy Snell darkroom, Earlsfield’
2006
Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker

Richard Nicholson
‘Gordon Bishop Associates, Paddington Street’
2006
Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker

The Riflemaker Gallery
79 Beak Street, Regent Street,
London W1

Opening hours:
Monday – Friday 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Saturday 12.00 pm – 6.00 pm

Riflemaker website

Back to top

Art Blart RSS feed

RSS - Posts

Art Blart Email Subscription

Marcus Bunyan website – please click on images to view new series ‘Vertical’ 2011

NEW BODY OF WORK: 'Vertical' 2011

Lastest tweets

'Entre Nous' at AIC artblart.com #symbolism #fantasy #the_visible #reality #appearance #French #Lucy_Schwob #France #French_artist 2 days ago
'Entre Nous' at Art Institute of Chicago artblart.com #poetry #assemblage #collage #desire #Suzanne_Malherbe #theatre_of_objects 2 days ago
'Entre Nous' at Art Institute of Chicago artblart.com #eroticism #women #feminine #politics #Jersey #the_resistance #World_War_Two 2 days ago
'Entre Nous' at Art Institute of Chicago artblart.com #women #feminism #autoportrait #subversion #metamorphosis #poetics #androgyny 2 days ago
'Entre Nous: The Art of Claude Cahun' at Art Institute of Chicago artblart.com #sexuality #gay #lesbian #love #partnership #portrait 2 days ago
'Entre Nous: The Art of Claude Cahun' at Art Institute of Chicago artblart.com #Entre_Nous #Claude_Cahun #Cahun #identity #gender 2 days ago

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes the Art Blart blog which reviews exhibitions in Melbourne, Australia and posts exhibitions from around the world. He has a Dr of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently studying a Master of Art Curatorship at The University of Melbourne.

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS BY NAME AND POSTING AT THIS LINK

INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS BY NAME AND POSTING AT THIS LINK

Art Blart

Archive for the 'London' Category

Exhibition: ‘The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography’ at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London

Exhibition dates: 21st October 2011 – 15th April 2012

Exhibition: ‘Memory Remains: 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17 by Francesc Torres’ at the Imperial War Museum, London

Exhibition dates: 26th August 2011 – 26th February 2012

Exhibition: ‘Gerhard Richter: Panorama’ at Tate Modern, London

Exhibition dates: 6th October 2011 – 8th January 2012

Exhibition: ‘Postwar Propliners in Miniature: Models from the Collection of Anthony J. Lawler’ at SFO Museum (SFOM), San Francisco International Airport

Exhibition dates: June 2011 – December 2011

Location: Aviation Museum and Library 1 – Front Wall Cases

Exhibition: ‘Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters’ at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Exhibition dates: 29th June – 25th September 2011

Films, Events and Symposia: ‘Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London

Dates: 7th – 18th September 2011

Exhibition: ‘A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875′ at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Exhibition dates: 8th March – 29th May 2011

Exhibition: ‘Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures’ at Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 25th February – 22nd May 2011

Exhibition: ‘ANALOG: trends in sound and picture’ at The Riflemaker Gallery, London

Exhibition dates: 10th January – 3rd March 2011

The End of Professional Photographic Darkrooms and Music Recording Studios

Richard Nicholson. “A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms 2006 – 2010″

Art Blart RSS feed

Art Blart Email Subscription

Marcus Bunyan website – please click on images to view new series ‘Vertical’ 2011

Recent Posts

Lastest tweets

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Top Posts

Archives

Categories

Interesting Links

Follow “Art Blart”