This is a very beautiful exhibition. I feel it was perhaps misnamed. It wasn’t quite what I expected (I expected portraits and figures only) and it has been described to me by another visitor as ‘a bit of a muddle.’ But once I understood what it was about, I thought it was amazing. The clue, I think, is in the introductory panel which ends with a quote from Sickert who describes his, and his peers, work as trying to portray: ‘the sensation of a page torn from the book of life.’ Wouldn’t ‘A page torn from the book of life in London’ be a better title? All the artists in the exhibition either worked or exhibited in London and are concerned to portray humanity, and human emotion and perhaps the impact of human behaviour on emotion (although one or two works don’t quite fit this description, e.g. the Kossoff painting of Dalston from his window that I think does not include any human figures).
The exhibition starts with a room of works by David Bomberg, Walter Sickert, Chaim Soutine and Stanley Spencer who worked or exhibited in London in the first half of the 19th century and were all influential for the generation of post war artists that followed.
One does rather wonder why THESE particular artists and why not others. Why not, for example, Bratby who is totally concerned with humanity and human relationships? It is not made explicit, but I think it is because most of the artists are connected with the hugely influential Slade school of art and/or exhibited alongside others in the ‘Euston Road’ school? The curator were clearly interested in showing how one generation of Slade artists influenced the next and I thought they did this extremely well. For example, William Coldstream became professor of art at Slade in 1949 and taught Euan Uglow there in the late 40s and early 50s. He also employed Freud to teach there in the early 50s. Coldstream insisted on analysis, measurement and intense scrutiny.
The exhibition is dominated by male artists, and at one point I thought perhaps ‘All too male’ could be a better title, but a room of Paolo Rego, who exhibited in London alongside Auerbach and Kossoff redeemed this view. I wondered about the inclusion of F.N Souza too. Souza is a contemporary of Auerbach and Kossoff and lived in London from the mid 50s-60s – his exhibited works are from this period. Although I love these paintings, I am not sure how they fit into the exhibition if it is about the development of ‘London’ art focused on human life during the second half of the 19th c. Inclusion of works such as these helped to muddy the theme of the exhibition – in my view – and I have the sneaking suspicion they were perhaps chosen so that the exhibiting artists were not only not all male, but also not all white. (nb I chose to use the word ‘London’ specifically rather than ‘britain’ because it seems the artists were situated geographically in a very small area of London).
Did the curator realise, when nearing post millennium art, that only two women artists were represented – and therefore decided that ALL the post millennium artists should be female? Anyway, that said, the works are, with only a couple of exceptions (in my view) stunning, and the period from 1950-s to the end of the 19th C was a particularly exciting one from the point of view of producing emotionally charged art by artists based in London.
For me, the inclusion of more contemporary works was questionable. Their link to the earlier artists was unclear – yes they paint people but so do many contemporary artists. Jenny Saville has garnered a following and reputation. Personally I do not like her work. It is on a monumental scale – I think this self portrait is about 7 or 8 feet wide by about 5 feet length. For this reason it is imposing – also because she applies oil paint in such a way that the surface glistens and the red is very like blood. The reason I dislike Saville’s work is that she seems to want to shock, rather than (as many of the other artists here, particularly Bacon and perhaps Sikert) create a deep empathy in the viewer and love for humanity as a deeply troubled species. I was also unclear about the inclusion of Yiadom-Boakye, although I did like Cecily Brown’s painting, and think it interesting both because of the seamlessness between figure and background, but also because of the way it implicates the viewer as voyeur. I think of all the works exhibited here, again I love Francis Bacon the most. But I was also touched by the Michael Andrews work, and I was incredibly glad to see Paulo Rego’s amazingly detailed and beautifully constructed works – not least because of all the artists she is the only one who uses medium other than oil or acrylic paint.
Perhaps a final comment relates to the shift from an insistence of always painting the human figure in the presence of that figure – from life – that Coldstream and his students, including Lucien Freud, insisted on – to a contemporary insistence that painting from the photograph is acceptable – as do Cecily Brown and Jenny Saville. This is interesting in relation to the quote we started with about trying to portray the ‘sensation of a page torn from the book of life’. The sensation we are seeking, I guess, is empathy, identification, recognition. I wonder whether the artist who paints from the page already created by the camera, is to some extent distancing themselves from that book of life, and so then further distancing the viewer from it?
So many wonderful paintings deserve a second look and I hope to return to see the exhibition a second time.
Exploring Drawing Media 