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.

Visiting the British Museum

Visiting the British Museum. May 2019

First I go to book to see the Eduard Munch finding out that they don't accept my press pass but

also that there is a little publicised half price deal if you are old enough after 12 noon on Mondays.

The buzzing hall where the shops and tickets are has the acoustics of a swimming pool and bright

lights that combined make me feel a bit woozy. I leave choosing between plastic cups decorated

with the writing from the Rosetta Stone, plaster copies of the Lewis chessmen and a thousand

other mementos until later and negotiate the stairs to the subterranean loos wth their noisy hand

driers.

The Parthenon frieze is as subtle and attractive as ever and I fancy more Greeks than any other

nation are there to admire the spoils of the British aristocracy. I find myself photographing friezes of

visitors, come to process around our Empire's collections.

There are two fairly new and stunning Islamic galleries where calligraphy appears written before

your eyes right to left in various scripts on illuminated screens. You can handle some objects, in my

case a thirteenth century ingenious wooden lock mechanism and an elaborate hollow silver

bracelet with volunteer knowledgeable attendant to explain all about them. Further on I find a

single ear piece, through which I hear intricate oud music whist seeing the instrument before

slotting the speaker back into its magnetic place.

Alongside the old exhibits there are contemporary pieces such as two porcelain doves printed with

the forms that Saudi Arabian women have to submit to be allowed to travel without male escorts.

There is much evidence in the displays of earlier times when people and animals were allowed as

decoration under previous islamic rulers.

At one point the cheerful babble of a school party of Muslim infants stops abruptly as their teachers

signal them to listen.

Down in the basement the African Benin bronzes from Nigeria are found alongside contemporary

masquerade figures. From the video I at last get it clear in my head how the Benin metal lost wax

casting is done.

There's a general air of wonderful interest and delighted reverence for craft and art in the visitors

quiet appreciation and it encourages for the lone visitor an occasional cheerful exchange about the

objects we see glowingly lit in the gloom or where to find the pizza restaurant with the varieties of

ice cream.

Queuing to have your bag searched on the way in, paying to leave your coat and avoiding the

instructions requesting £5 donations all seems worth it to be visiting the world's cultures without your feet leaving the ground.

Aesthetics of the body. 'Naked Beach' - tv channel 4

'Naked Beach'. Aesthetics of the body. The shy and the proud. April 2019,  TV channel 4

Three people said to be ashamed of their bodies are sent to stay on a Greek island with a larger

group who are proud of how they look. This supposedly helps the worried 3 accept their bodies

and be happier. By the end the three bare all or almost all and go naked bathing with the confident.

It's interesting and unusual to see an array of naked bodies that don't fit current ideals.

There are a few odd things happening.

Would men and women who have a problem being seen naked really want to be shown without

clothes on tv?

The ashamed and the proud share an obsession with their own bodies.

Each week includes someone whose body looks to have only a slight imperfection such as small

stretch marks or minor areas of impetigo.

Each week one is reported to have gone on to make a business designing lingerie or clothes for

larger figures. Maybe they expected more publicity for this than a brief mention of it with no trade

names?

None of the shy mind repeatedly hugging all and sundry naked.

The confident ones appear at first covered in highly decorative body paint and g strings and later

the shy ones are similarly decorated and applauded. We don’t see who body paints them or discussions of the designs.

Although the program advocates uninhibited nudity some shots show women coyly covering their

breasts and there are few full frontal images.

Women refer to trimming their pubic hair as though to leave it growing would be distasteful.

Each shy one pairs with a non-shy person of the same sex to compare bodies behind towels.

No mention is made of sexual orientations or sexual activity.

It's a mixture of the coy and the flamboyant. There's immense peer pressure to join in parading

about in the nude and a lot of whooping and cheering when this happens.

The shy ones seem genuinely newly delighted with themselves.

One of the unashamed ones has his shoulder and arm missing but we don't find out why.

We do find out a bit more about the nervous ones personal lives.

The attractive black male doctor keeps his clothes on as he talks about research and procedures from a distant location.

The glorious camouflage afforded by body paint or clothing becomes emphasized as we view the

sort of overweight flesh that hasn't been popularly admired since Rubens or the Willendorf Venus.

No one discusses how or why our ideals have evolved or why some people have body dysmorphia

and others are vastly overconfident.

Next week's episode will be virtually a repeat just like all the other many programs with set formats.

I have heard no one discussing the program and wonder if the audience figures could be

revealing?

Has 'Naked Beach' got its heart in the right place or is it voyeuristic pandering to an uneasy

  audience?

Invisible Narratives - Newlyn Gallery until June 15 2019

Invisible Narratives - new conversations about time and place. 

23rd March to 15th June 2019 at Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall.

curated by L.Himid.

Downstairs Rebecca Chesney has a 3 screen video making a loud roaring sea sound. On the left a

 lighthouse, centre an arrow shape , right a buoy with flashing light, seen at various

times of day and night. It makes an impression, the dangers at sea, the immense

power of it, is evoked.

Upstairs she has acres of pencil graphs and screenprints of data that make my heart sink.

They are about deforestation and sea levels I read.

Magda Stawarska-Beavan shows  paintings of places, complex images in greens or

browns.  

 She  has a desk with a map of Zanzibar and cleverly projected video of the sea on the

page of a book. 

The projector is  secreted within the desk lamp. I got so interested in how

this was done that the why escaped me.

Lubaina Himid shows an old dressing table with paintings inside the drawers. Unusual but

the meanings again were uncertain.

On the stairs she showed a  very small paintings on

zinc of the sea, placed subtly and easily missed, and an abstract painting of rough

coloured overlapping lines.

I have heard Lubiana Himid speak interestingly on past projects about images of black

people. I found the book provided about her fascinating.

However, although this show is intriguing up to a point, it's an inconclusive foggy point leaving me

all at sea about if these works say anything in particular put together

Mary Fletcher

EX LIBRIS -Newlyn Society Aril 2019

'Ex Libris' - in response to chosen writings, Newlyn Society of Artists at Tremenheere Gallery, 

Penzance, Cornwall 

3 - 21 April , Tues to Sunday, 11 - 4.30 Free admission.

The preview was full of people, many of them artists who knew one another, and had a lively buzz which errupted  after an introductory talk.  Dr. Ryya Bread curated the show.

Each work had the writing that inspired it also in the wall, not always exhibited at a good height for reading. Some of the writings were poems by very famous dead poets so that it was a challenge to respond with any visual art that could rival an often well known and loved piece.

The Newlyn Society having lost its original Newlyn Gallery space has found Neil Armstrong's attractive gallery next to his remarkable sculpture park, restaurant, shop and plant stall, is a useful alternative. Members, selected from applicants by a committee, have then to submit their works on a chosen theme for further selection each time the Society mount a show.

There is enough variety amongst probably 50 works for visitors to find something to like or hate, to make them think or of which to  despair of making any sense.

Upstairs Susannah Clemence quoted from Milton's Paradise Lost where Eve is wondering whether to tell Adam about the tree of knowledge and her richly coloured oil painting showed Eve amongst foliage, holding an apple and nearby the serpent. I hadn't thought about this, that if the woman gave Adam the apple to eat  there was a moment when she could decide to keep it for herself.

Nearby there was a painting of the coast from St.Agnes, showing patterns of light on the water. This was by Stuart Ross, but made more noteworthy by the words next to it 'Painting of a rice cake' which referenced a thirteenth century text, 'a painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger', and commentary about this, about the nature of reality and painted images. The two works held up equally as worthy of attention.

Andrew Swan had etched on aluminium an image of a female head representing homeless women next to statistics about this outrageous circumstance and a stamp with the same head replacing that of the Queen, provocatively next to the lyrics of God Save the Queen.

Downstairs Duncan Walters offered a chalk drawing of a computer on slate done so understatedly and cleverly that I at first walked by it thinking it was a laptop. It was on a table with one leg propped up on books and called 'The reference section'.

Gordon Ellis - Brown offered 'Houston we have a problem' , as a title but also printed on his aluminium panel next to a group of women like Steptford wives, a smiling but sad looking group, almost merging into the background, maybe the wives of the spacemen, maybe representing the parallel exploration of how to rethink the status quo to accommodate the feminist demands of women in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

Karen Lorenz made reference to a Roland Barthes essay. Her work was about dementia, the death of the person in a way as broken up jumbled images on video played within a printed book, the text upside down and a tiny paper house on top. This was not only clever but very eloquently sorrowful.

A show with many memorable images which repays time and attention. A show which demanded that artists grapple with ideas and which maybe shows a welcome  trend to comment on contemporary life seriously.

Rebecca Harper talk at Tate St.Ives and exhibition at Anima Mundi, 2nd March to 6th April 2019

Rebecca Harper talk at Tate St.Ives.

Rebecca Harper has a show at Anima Mundi gallery in St.Ives.

Bloody bean bags to sit on and thankfully a few chairs and Tate just have not got to grips with

getting their speakers to project their voices although I asked them to speak louder.

Rebecca Harper is likeable with quite a bit of nervous laughter but she does try to answer peoples'

questions.

She spends a lot of time applying for opportunities and says she has been fortunate. Anima Mundi

emailed her as a result of seeing images on Instagram.

She draws on canvas, unstretched, on a roll on the wall, using observational sketches, memory

etc. She then paints on unprimed canvas but using a ground, sometimes fluorescent, colouring life

size figures on the floor, avoiding drops and feeling more in the centre of her work than seeing it

separate on a wall. The large scale is important to her..

She thinks it helps her career to be in London and would like to visit New York.

She enjoyed art school for the lively conversation and motivation and says the peer group are

important when you leave and want to organise shows and applications. She went to The Drawing

School in London and did an unaccredited Taps course.

Rebecca Harper at Anima Mundi, St.Ives, Cornwall

‘Chameleons and Urban Nomads’  March-April 2019

‘Cinema [Between Two Worlds]’ is a painting about 6 feet high with the unusual subject of some people in a cinema, although the film screen looks more like a painting or a shot of a painting in the film. Its painted fluently, the seats look like plush. its a cinema with small tables between seats,  and two young men are turning to speak to a young woman. It evokes comfort and enjoyment and escapism.

‘Peckham High Street’ similarly has a scene that seems to be on a canvas in a room. One seated figure inside the room looks out at a figure outside on the canvas, or outside a window painted on the picture within the picture. Other figures outside look in at the seated figures. The paint is sloshed on, the colours are luscious, there’s plenty to look at and notice and it reminds me in a way of Gauguin - a frieze with life going on and you don’t know what exactly is happening except just whatever passes by somewhere where people pass by. The way the paint is put on reminds me a bit of the work of Michael Andrews, painting swimmers.

There’s a couple in a jungle, maybe somewhere like the Eden project but with monkeys, or on a stage set with a painting of monkeys but the leaves from the trees are coming into the space where the couple are seated. Its called ‘Insight’.

So I see this as Rebecca Harper playing with what is a painting or a painting within a painting. her subjects come from contemporary life, from her own experiences and the scale of the figures being life -size helps to make the viewer feel part of the scene.

There is a lot in the blurb issued by the gallery about ‘the diasporic condition’, about ‘global citizens with itinerant lifestyles’ but to me this is imagined. There is nothing to say whether  these people are travellers or have lived in these spaces all their lives. I don’t see the work as very profound or having something political to say. I do see it as very enjoyable, confident and exuberant.

Somehow Rebecca Harper by producing such large scale works is claiming attention and it seems she has launched herself successfully into a high priced circuit of exhibiting and selling, an arena where she has been chosen for projects and galleries and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Porthmeor Programme, St.Ives School of Painting, at Penwith Gallery, St.Ives March 9-23rd 2019

There are 18 artists in the show, all women, who have been on a year long course consisting of

several weekends at the school and working Inbetween from where they live, receiving tutorials

and paying a considerable amount for the experience.

At first sight the large beautiful gallery at the back of the Penwith looks a bit subdued and quiet but

in fact there is quite a variety of work and it comes over as genuine explorations by keen students

who are not yet set in their ways.

For the Penwith it's unusual in having a sound element to accompany Stephanie Wright’s frieze illustrating 

her experience of a special awareness of a moment, all the more cherished now she has aterminal illness. 

The delicate sweet sound of a nightingale floats through the space, thus permeating the whole of the show.

Also unusual for the ultra conservative Penwith is pile of notebooks arranged on the floor with a

tiny chair and fairy lights, and a padded red coat hanger. This is by Karole Langer

and she cites the influences of beuys, Messenger and Kiefer.

An aspect I really liked was the acknowledgement of influences of other artists which each

exhibitor included in their statements. One had avoided the house style for the statement and I

question why everyone else had accepted this uniformity which deprived them of their individual

way of expressing their ideas.

Roz Hamer had a project to obtain hand prints from members of a village and remarks about how

they used their hands and whether they felt part of a community or not. The hand prints were then

reduced in size to make butterfly shapes, placed as a collection in a glass case. I wasn't sure why

this was done as it brought connotations of Victorian pinning down of dead specimens collected

whereas the project in its social engagement had a more positive feeling.

Susan Watt made a revolving wire object related to her making of toys for her child. I thought it could 

have had more dramatic lighting to throw shadows but it was very likeable and intricate .

Jane Buckroyd had been folding paper with amazing precision to make three dimensional forms in grey and cream

Tara Leaver goes wild swimming.

Most of the artists connected their art to their life experiences. There was also a lot of reference to

places and a lot of sensitive use of marks and surfaces.

Rather like the members' and associates' shows at the Penwith there wasn't much depiction of

people. The Penwithy abstract marks referring loosely to landscape have quite a hold on the art in

St.Ives but many of the students brought different ways of working.

I thought the show was impressive. The tutors have fostered diversity