Week Seven : Critical Review
(Detail from Lewis, W, c.1921 PRAXITELLA [oil paint on canvas] | Staircase displays Brown, C. 2021 Unmoored From Her Reflection)
Experiments in visual language
. . .
> continue experimenting with techniques, materials
> as though tutors are clients ― it’s all good practice
Embracing Harvard Referencing
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I’ve long loved a spreadsheet as a way of recording and marshalling information, so can’t resist creating a Harvard Referencing grid to catalogue my Gallery visit. Details shown here are my collection of animals spotted tucked in the corner of Major Works of Art, which will be great inspiration for my children’s book illustration project. This skills study training has been especially timely as I’m starting work on an anthology for publication and knowing how to record precise references and create a bibliography will be invaluable.
Gallery visit | Barbican Curve Gallery | Soheilaa Sokhanvari \ Rebel Rebel
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There couldn’t be a starker contrast with my trip to The Courtauld later in the week. Patterns exploded in exquisite detail from intricately detailed portraits framed simply in funereal black, mounted on walls painted with geometric patterns that extended across floor and ceiling, transforming the gallery itself into a work of art. A tangible sense of an artist revelling in her cultural inheritance and the collision of tradition with global modernity. So exhilarating to experience a female artist celebrating female artists in a riot of everything contemporary art can be.
It was a fleeting pre-theatre visit, and before I learned the art of Harvard Referencing, so I’m pleased to find the exceptional resources on the exhibition website. Particularly interesting to discover that Sokhanavari’s ‘jewel-like miniatures’ are painted using egg tempera ― an ancient technique employed in many of the medieval iconographies I’d see on display at the Courtauld in triptychs similarly ‘designed to dizzy the beholder so that they could contemplate . . . The greatness of God’. I did indeed ‘enter a world in which painting, sculpture and sound combine to induce an equivalent kind of feminist delirium’ and I loved it (also the pink velvet beanbags!)
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No bean-bags in sight at the ‘home to one of the greatest art collections in the UK’ ― and certainly no feminist delirium. I think of the Courtauld as a lovely place to visit with a godparent, and I was interested to see the impact of the ￡50m make-over. I hadn’t remembered the non-impressionists in the collection and enjoyed the chic serenity of this very grown up-feeling space that allows for close contemplation of technique and composition. I find the gallery itself invites intellectual interrogation rather than an emotional or inspirational response; though it’s always a thrill to encounter well-loved icons of art in the flesh (often literally). There’s a lot that’s troubling beneath the surface here, to a liberal feminist’s eye, and I’m looking forward to exploring some of that in my critical review next week.
Details + gallery descriptors
(Harvard Reference for Works of Art: Family name, INITIAL(S) (of the artist). Year. Title. [Material type]. At: Place: holding institution, department (if applicable). Identifier (if applicable).)
. Renoir, P-A, 1908, Portrait of Ambrose Vollard [oil paint on canvas]. Samuel Courtauld gift, 1932. Weston Gallery and LVMH Great Room.
“Vollard is represented examining the statuette of a kneeling female nude by the contemporary sculptor Aristide Maillol. Such depictions of learned collectors belong to a long tradition stretching back to the Renaissance.”
. Gaugin, P, 1897, Te Rerioa (The Dream) [oil paint on canvas]. Samuel Courtauld gift, 1932
“The exoticising representation of Polynesia was intended to appeal to a white European audience”
Exhibition note from the nearby Nevermore (1897)
“For modern viewers, her youth is the most disconcerting aspect. She is sometimes identified as Paul Gauguin’s 15-year-old companion Pahura.”
Paul Gauguin painted this when he was 49. I find it interesting that they use the word ‘companion’ ― there is a softness in the way these issues are skirted in the descriptors that sits extremely uncomfortably with me.
. Bell, V., around 1913-16, A Conversation [oil paint on canvas]
“Vanessa Bell is one of the few female artists currently represented in the collection . . . Bell was a pivotal figure among the artists and writers known as the Bloomsbury Group. Perhaps she was paying tribute to the friendship and debate they found so vital.”
. Kokoschka, O, 1950, The Myth of Prometheus (Triptych), The Apocalypse (centre) [oil paint and mixed media on canvas] (c) Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/DACS 2021. Katharine and Nicolas Tangen 20th Century Gallery.
“Kokoschka believed that humanity’s best hope of salvation was to return to what he considered female and maternal values of compassion and the protection of new life.”
Also absolutely loved the juxtaposition of Lee Miller’s striking black and white portraits of Kokoschka work in progress, displayed on the opposing wall.
As I left the gallery, sketches of this wonderful medieval horse (Daddi, B. 1398) and Don Quixote’s steed (Daumier, H. c.1870 [oil on canvas]) tucked under my arm, who should be riding by but the Cavalry ― attended by a truck bearing the legend Inns of Court and City Yeomanry ‘The Devil’s Own’.
About the staircase (Courtauld display notes)
“This impressive staircase was conceived as a symbolic ‘journey to enlightenment’. Progressing upwards through the building, visitors moved from dark to light to . . . contemplate the contemporary art on offer.
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Critics ridiculed the spectacle of chaotic crowds scrambling up the staircase to the Summer Exhibition . . . [Thomas Rowlandson’s caricature Stare Case] crude and sexist satire targeted both the unruly visitors and the lofty pretensions of the Royal Academy, which aspired to a more refined type of audience. The tension between the ideal and the real visitor was a constant feature of the Academy’s time at Somerset House.”
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