JACKSON POLLOCK'S 'MURAL' OF 1943

Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’ of 1943

This is a brief summary of the article that was published in the Guardian newspaper on 25 April 2015: ‘The painting that heralded a new era in art: Jackson Pollock’s Mural is reborn in Venice’, by Jonathan Jones.

Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’ of 1943

A photograph taken in about 1946 shows Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock standing in front of Pollock’s ‘vast swirling abstract painting’.  The meeting of these two people ‘changed art forever’: the painting is Pollock’s ‘Mural’.

In the late 1940s Peggy Guggenheim settled in Venice at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni: this is now a museum of her art collection.  In mid-April 2015 the painting ‘Mural’, by Pollock was taken to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where it will be on show until 16 November 2015 in an exhibition entitled ‘Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible’.

‘Mural’ is over 6 metres wide and almost 2.5 metres high: it ‘made Pollock into Pollock and gave birth to the art of our time’.

Peggy Guggenheim came from one of New York’s wealthiest families.  In the early 1940s she bought many works from artists who were fleeing the Nazis.  She was married, briefly, to Max Ernst – until 1943.  

Pollock was a struggling young American artist who had grown up in rural poverty.  His early works, shown in the show in Venice, resemble illustrations to country tales.  Peggy Guggenheim’s first response to a Pollock work in the early 1940s was disdain, but her advisor – Piet Mondrian – urged her to reconsider.  Consequently, Guggenheim gave Pollock a show in her gallery and commissioned him to paint a mural for her New York townhouse.  The works by Pollock in that show were ‘predominately mythic women which he was painting in imitation of his heroes Picasso and Miro’. 

‘Mural’ is regarded by many art historians as a turning point.  Until now it has rarely been seen outside the University of Iowa, which Peggy Guggenheim donated it to in 1951.  The painting has been cleaned and restored for the show in Venice.

‘Mural’ is a ‘wild release’: it is the beginning of Pollock’s ‘idea of throwing or pouring paint’ and of his ‘mind-expanding sense of scale’.  Pollock was a poor communicator.  He had been excused military service because of alcohol dependency and depression.  He died in a car crash in 1956.  ‘Mural’ shows Pollock emerging from his solitude and celebrating life in a way that embraces the viewer.  

Jones concludes by describing Pollock as ‘America’s noblest savage’.

SONIA DELAUNAY AT THE TATE MODERN

Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern: 15 April to 9 August 2015

This is a brief summary of two articles that were published in the Guardian newspaper on 28 March and on 14 April 2015.  Both articles previewed the retrospective exhibition of work by Sonia Delaunay which opened at the Tate Modern on 15 April and which runs until 9 August.

The first article to be published was by Kathleen Jamie and was entitled ‘The dance goes on’.

The second article to be published was by Adrian Searle and was entitled ‘Fascinating rhythms’.

Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern: 15 April to 9 August

Kathleen Jamie on Sonia Delaunay

The article by Kathleen Jamie describes Sonia Delaunay’s origin in Odessa, Ukraine, and the move that she made as a child to live with her uncle and aunt in St.Petersburg.  Sonia Delaunay was Jewish. 

Sonia Delaunay married – as a convenience – Wilhelm Uhde, who was homosexual.  This enabled Sonia to leave Russia and settle in Paris.  The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1910 Sonia and Robert Delaunay married and became ‘quite the avant-garde power couple’.

Delaunay was painting before she left Russia: her works appear to have been influenced by Gauguin.  She worked figuratively and in abstraction. 

The Delaunays counted as friends Kandinsky and Chagall, and the poets Apollinaire and Cendras. 

The blanket that Sonia Delaunay stitched for her young son in 1911 is included in the show: it indicates her move from figurative work to abstraction; it shows Russian folk art merging with 20^th Century Paris.  The blanket is an early example of Sonia Delaunay’s ‘simultane’ style. 

Sonia worked increasingly in needlework – maybe to give her husband space to paint.  Her style showed Russian folk art influences.  The ‘simultane’ style - which both Sonia and Robert practised - juxtaposed contrasting colours and shapes to create lively movement and rhythm. 

The Delaunays’ easy movement in the avant garde of the arts was stopped by the Russian Revolution.  This ended Sonia’s income from property that she had owned in St.Petersburg.  Sonia’s needlework skills came to the fore and she designed ballet costumes and sold textiles and clothing, and had her own fashion house – ‘Sonia’.

The question is posed: Sonia’s aesthetic was unvarying but her works became dominated by marketing and commerce, so ‘is it art, or design, or both at once?’  Kathleen Jamie also expresses the question by referring to the ‘simultane’ motif of opposites placed alongside each other to make a unified and attractive whole.  Jamie suggests that Sonia Delaunay was engaged in ‘performance art’.

The Nazi occupation forced Sonia and Robert to move to the south of France.  Robert Delaunay died in 1941 and Sonia took up painting again in an abstract style.

Sonia died in 1979.

An essay in the exhibition catalogue by Griselda Pollock presents Sonia Delaunay as a feminist pioneer whose significance became lost as the art history of the 20^th Century came to be written in the 1950s by ‘masculinist fogeys’.  Sonia Delaunay ‘moved fluidly between art and design’ and this reduced her perceived significance in comparison with her painter husband.  The task now is to see Sonia’s works fully in their own light.

Sonia Delaunay is quoted as having said: ‘Abstract art is only important if it is the endless rhythm where the very ancient and the distant future meet’.

Adrian Searle on Sonia Delaunay

Adrian Searle also describes Sonia Delaunay’s origins in Ukraine and Russia and her move to Paris.  Searle refers to Wilhelm Uhde’s role as an art critic and dealer, who knew Picasso.  Uhde showed the work of Henri Rousseau and gave Sonia an exhibition.

Searle praises the Tate Modern exhibition: it originated in Paris. 

Sonia Delaunay is described as having ‘sought to extend art into the everyday and the broader material culture’.  Her clothes were ‘paintings to be worn’. 

BACON AND THE MASTERS AT THE SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS

Bacon and the Masters: a searing preview by Jonathan Jones of the exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts starting 18 April

This is a brief summary of the article by Jonathan Jones which previews the exhibition starting on 18 April at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Bacon and the Masters

Jones’ article is entitled: ‘Cruel exposure of Bacon is shocking and devastating’. 

Jones describes Bacon as ‘the divine devil of modern British art’.  He refers to the ‘monstrous sensuality’ and ‘massive power’ of Bacon’s ‘pummelling of human flesh’. 

Jones writes, after the exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts: ‘I don’t know if I can ever take Francis Bacon seriously again’.

Jones describes Bacon’s life work as having been an attempt to ‘reinvent the work of the great Masters’.  Velazquez and Michelangelo in particular inspired Bacon’s portraits.  But the juxtaposition of Bacon’s works with works by some of the Masters ‘is a massacre, a cruel exposure, a debacle’.   

The show is unmissable because of the number of great works on display, but the effect on Bacon is that he is shown to be both an ‘aesthetic failure’ and a ‘moral failure’.

Bacon’s works are described as ‘melodramatic’ and ‘painfully contrived’.  The Masters’ works are compassionate and humane but Bacon’s are ‘weightless’, ‘insincere’, and ‘morbid’.  The exhibition shows that Bacon ‘tries too hard to be different’.  In contrast, the Masters’ works are ‘relaxed and honest’.

Masters, whose works are mentioned as being in the show include: Matisse, Bernini, Rodin, Titian, Picasso.  Many of these works are from the Hermitage in St.Petersburg, and have  been loaned in exchange for a previous loan by the Sainsbury family of their Bacons to the Hermitage.

ALBERT IRVIN: OBITUARY

Albert Irvin: Obituary

This is a brief summary of the obituary of Albert Irvin who died at the age of 92 years on 26 March 2015.  The obituary was published in The Guardian newspaper on 28^th March 2015: its author was Mike Tooby

Albert Irvin: Obituary

In the 1980s and 1990s Irvin’s work came to the fore in public awareness through widespread exhibition and reproduction.  This marked Irvin’s emergence as a successful painter when he was in his 60s. 

He ‘created an extraordinary body of abstract paintings, watercolours and prints’.  The ‘expression of the life force within the space of the image’ was the motivation for Irvin’s works and his ‘celebratory approach’.

Irvin was born in south east London and was evacuated to Northamptonshire at the outbreak of the Second World War.  He was able to attend Northampton School of Art, and here he met the Revd Walter Hussey who was Vicar of St.Matthew’s Church in Northampton.  Hussey became an advocate of churches commissioning contemporary art: he owned works by Spencer and Sutherland and he had a profound influence on ‘Irvin’s emerging sense of the potency of art’.

Irvin flew with the RAF with 236 Squadron and took part in bombing raids on Germany.  The experience of flying over a landscape with a map made an important impression on Irvin, as did the destruction of bombing.  In 1947 Irvin resumed art studies – at Goldsmiths Collage in London.

Irvin and his wife Betty Nicholson worked together on art projects to earn a living including early fabric designs for Laura Ashley.  Irvin’s works in the 1940s and 1950s were ‘initially abstract, in the terminology of the day’.  Irvin met the artists associated with Cornwall such as Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost but his works became more influenced by the New York school of abstract expressionism: they took on a ‘more gestural approach’ and became ‘freed from connection to observational drawing’.

In the late 1970s Irvin made crucial changes to his style: he took up acrylics in place of oils: the relative thinness of the newer medium is noteworthy.   In 1980 Irvin took up screen printing.  Three of Irvin’s large works are at Homerton Hospital, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and Warwick University Arts Centre.

Irvin was deeply influenced by music, and in particular by his experience of hearing Rostropovich playing Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall. London, in 1961.

ROGER CECIL: OBITUARY

Roger Cecil: Obituary

This is a brief summary of the obituary of Roger Cecil who died at the age of 72 years on 22^nd February 2015.  The obituary was published in The Guardian newspaper on 20^th March 2015: its author was Peter Wakelin.

Roger Cecil

Roger Cecil is the archetypal artist who is disregarded whilst alive – and he was always uninterested in success.  The landscape of his home town of Abertillery, and of his home area – the valleys of the Welsh coalfield and the moorland on the hill tops – provided direct inspiration to him.  Born to a coal miner father and a home-based mother, Cecil was based in Abertillery for his whole life. 

Cecil used a variety of materials as paint, and he worked over time to achieve his desired finished works which were often textured.  Cecil’s works can stand comparison ‘with international masters such as Antoni Tapies and Pierre Soulages’.

After attending Newport College of Art, Cecil gained a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London but he rejected this, believing that it would not be in the best interests of his art.  The BBC programme about the 21 year-old Cecil made in 1964 – ‘Quiet Rebel’ – featured Cecil and his rejection of a place at the Royal College of Art. 

Cecil earned a living by labouring and occasional sales of works.  Only a small number of his works are in public collections.  In the 1990s Cecil attended Central Saint Martins College in London and he taught A level art in Ebbw Vale.

Cecil had shows at various galleries in Wales in the 1990s and 2000s.  In 2010 an exhibition of his work was held at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Ebbw Vale.