Bonnard, Van Gogh and Munch in London, May 2019

Bonnard, Van Gogh and Munch, all exhibited in London, April 2019 - at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and British Museum respectively.

These three artists are so well known from books but I still have such an urge to see the actual

works that I am willing to spend considerable time, money and energy to get myself to London from

Cornwall. Even an English breakfast so lukewarm and disappointing that I tell an American in my

hotel lift that I feel I should go round the dining room apologising for it hasn't dampened my joy at

the prospect of firsthand encounters with the pictures.

The Bonnard evokes the south of France so powerfully that I can smell the mimosa, taste the cake

and want to rush down to the sea. 

He's a rare artist whose pictures of his bathing wife seem

suffused with love, not exploiting a woman's body to leering glances. 

There's old black and whitefootage of him holding his little daschund, looking sensitive and slight. However did those colours in those proportions come to his mind, vibrating like ciccadas through the afternoon? I want him to be as wonderful as his art and wish I didn't know he was unfaithful to his wife and his mistress killed herself. After all who knows the circumstances? I share those lingering moments of joy he depicted.

With Van Gogh and Munch I also know quite a lot about their lives.

Vincent shows the heavy solid grief of a woman so strongly,

 then the wild hot landscapes with twisted tree trunks and brush strokes that make a dance all over the surface.

 Everyone wants a moment to be in the centre of the Starry Starry Night,

 to take their own photo of it, a hot glittering

night of passion, of beauty, despite a lonely life, an unsuccessful career, a brother who although he

was an art dealer couldn't sell his work.

Munch is even more tragic, a claustrophobic space, very dark, the pictures and prints on a

scale so much more impressive than on a page. 

I keep seeing people with white tragic faces,

identifying with Munch. When I come out there's a man slumped on a seat looking so sad and full

of grief as if exhausted by it all.

In each case the artist has balanced the subjects, the content, with the form so exactly that I can't

separate them.

The gift shops are a light relief, a bridge back to the everyday life outside. I buy a knitted daschund

to make myself feel more like Bonnard, who my art teacher at school sincerely told me painted like

me. 

I avoid a Vincent key ring, insufficiently like him, or a Munch Scream pendant, too gruesome to

wear.

Yes it as worth the effort. Yes art IS an experience that enriches my life and a sustenance through

sorrow.

Images of Women

Images of Women

In the seventies and eighties I was involved with groups of women artists in London who wanted to take a stand against women being depicted as objects, things, just bodies, faceless or headless, legs and arms cut off to reduce them to a carcass, meat, torsos.

Around that time a woman, I forget who, showed a photo of a naked woman holding a bowl of apples under her breasts and smiling in a coy way, a nineteenth century saucy postcard perhaps. Next to this was a naked man holding a tray of bananas under his penis and smiling in a way that looked so silly but was so similar. It brought out the contrast in how naked images of women and men were used or not.

I still feel that to make more images of naked women is very difficult to do in any decent way that shows respect for women. Its a difficult matter. Some nude figures are done to learn how to draw. Often people fudge the head because they can’t draw very well.

A lot of people admire Greek ancient statues, so do I, but their mutilations were by accident, the arms got knocked off etc.

I’ve been to life classes, I was piling up images of naked women, what for ? To perpetuate a sort of bland version of page three ? To learn about the body? But in that case why show them? Pianists learn scales but they don’t have whole concerts of scales, they’re a means to later ends.

Bonnard painted his wife without clothes, having baths etc. To my mind these are not ‘nudes’ they are Bonnard’s beloved wife about to have a bath and he manaages to show his love and respect in them. She is a person: there is a context.

Manet painted ‘Olympe’ to make a point, it was shocking because she was so clearly a person, she looks out at us, not being observed secretly. 

Degas also I feel shows great respect for the women he depicts.

Contrast with the ghastly bloke who made a woman into a table, the horrid Sarah Lucas stuff, you can’t criticize degradation by joining in with it.

You can’t pretend a naked woman has only the same significance as an apple. This was pointed out to me in the 60’s at college, where we were doing life studies day and night for a term before life drawing was completely abandoned.

Much later I painted the above picture to make this point.

So I plead with people to take care if they want to show a naked woman, What is it for, what is your motive? What effect does it have? What does selling this image mean?