Edinburgh Festival Art shows
Nov. 6th, 2007 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningThe Edinburgh Festival finishes in early September, but the major art exhibitions run on until late October; as usual, I left it to the very last moment to catch some of the exhibitions (except one, which I saw back in July - either early or late!).
There were four big shows at the National Galleries; I adored one, loathed one, and found the other two interesting although flawed.
I loved the Richard Long at the Gallery of Modern Art. Long was given a large space, and occupied it well. Long works in the environment, using found objects and materials; he paints in mud using his hands, he creates sculpture from rocks. Some of his work is very site specific, and what hangs in the gallery might be photographs of these (which is the art - the original creation or the photograph we can see?).
The main room contained just one work, a painted inverted arch of mud handprints stretching twenty feet or more. It was startlingly beautiful - so simple. Outside in the garden was a cross made of slate - in dull clouded light this didn't grab me, but when the sun came out and the texture of the slate was picked out, adding to the depth and detail. (There is a slate circle by Long on permanent display outside at the nearby Dean Gallery.)
There were certain, recent small works on display which I didn't like so much - naive sculpture made of found wood - and some older works which I loved (documented walks in the wilderness - making art out of walking resonates strongly with me). I enjoyed this exhibition so much that I meant to go back; but I failed to do so.
I once went to a show of Long's in a London gallery where he had again painted in mud on a wall; the work was for sale, and I asked how they would move the work to the purchaser (I wondered if the plaster would be taken down, transported and reassembled). I was told that in fact he would come along and make a new work on the wall of the buyer; so it would be a different picture, the original being destroyed; it both pleases me to think the work is so site specific and saddens me to think that the giant arch will be - by now, must have been - destroyed.
I was surprised how much I disliked the Andy Warhol show at the National Gallery; I was expecting to really like it. Outside, they had playfully turned the Royal Academy's pillars into Campbell's soup cans, making thousands of passers by smile.
Inside, there was an overview of Warhol's work; and it was underwhelming. There were some pieces that I liked - the more childlike, innocent work - children's toys; pillows filled with a mixture of helium and air that floated and moved in the air currents - but most of the works on display I just didn't like. There was an air of manipulation and death - one of the series of photographic screen prints featured images of death - and perhaps much of Warhol's work concerned death (the blurb tried to make out that his images were life affirming, death being another, necessary side to life). But mostly I found it a rather nasty, unpleasant show. Or perhaps I was just in a bad mood!
The Dean Gallery featured an exhibition of Picasso's drawings and sketches - Picasso on Paper - taken from all stages of his career. There were many very beautiful pictures, drawn with a simplicity of line; but most of all, the exhibition seemed to document his many, turbulent affairs. His wives and lovers featured frequently in his pictures, either by themselves or as a foil to an expression of his character: he would often appear as a bull or a minotaur.
Perhaps it is just me, but whilst I love Picasso's art, he seems to have been a very flawed individual, cruel and mentally abusive to the women and children in his life. Seeing so many of his pictures gathered in one place, it is this feeling of his life, rather than his work, which remains.
The show at the National Portrait Gallery was called Naked Portraits, a term borrowed from Lucien Freud. There was a lot of flesh, most of it unclothed; a lot of nudes, then. Is naked different from nude? Nude sounds more deliberate - more arty, perhaps. Some of the "naked portraits" were clothed, though; naked in their creation perhaps, or their intention, the nakedness being in the expression and rendering.
There is a lot of flesh in much of today's media, too - advertising hoardings, newspapers, tv, the cinema (perhaps even on the radio; or is that just my imagination?). Sex sells. It was interesting to see this collection of nakedness from the 20th century, in several different media: some of it portrayed flesh as sexual or erotic, but much of the exhibition simply conveyed the human condition.
It was split over two floors, but there didn't seem to be any deep organisation to the show - although with the rooms of the first floor featuring portraits of others and those of the second seemingly containing self-portraits, I thought I had found a pattern, until the last room of the second floor reverted to portraits of others.
The many photographs struck me as being the most effective. Just through the door, the first image to grab one is a huge Richard Avedon print, three times life size, the male face staring out: a striking, haunting image of a miner. There was much beauty and a fair degree of eroticism, although I was also struck and disturbed by the way that some of the artists - the paintings of Freud and Stanley Spencer, for instance - make the female form appear like dead flesh, devoid of sexuality.
If photography was the medium that worked best for me (many of the paintings being little more than photographs in paint), it fascinated me that the black and white portraits worked better than the colour photographs: the colour being too lurid or too life like, whilst black and white, by removing the choice of colour actually added to the texture of the pictures.
In all, I am not sure the exhibition held together: the curation had brought together pictures with an apparent theme, but I couldn't necessarily see the theme in the pictures. It was large, and I believe it would have benefited from being smaller, tighter, more coherent.
There were four big shows at the National Galleries; I adored one, loathed one, and found the other two interesting although flawed.
I loved the Richard Long at the Gallery of Modern Art. Long was given a large space, and occupied it well. Long works in the environment, using found objects and materials; he paints in mud using his hands, he creates sculpture from rocks. Some of his work is very site specific, and what hangs in the gallery might be photographs of these (which is the art - the original creation or the photograph we can see?).
The main room contained just one work, a painted inverted arch of mud handprints stretching twenty feet or more. It was startlingly beautiful - so simple. Outside in the garden was a cross made of slate - in dull clouded light this didn't grab me, but when the sun came out and the texture of the slate was picked out, adding to the depth and detail. (There is a slate circle by Long on permanent display outside at the nearby Dean Gallery.)
There were certain, recent small works on display which I didn't like so much - naive sculpture made of found wood - and some older works which I loved (documented walks in the wilderness - making art out of walking resonates strongly with me). I enjoyed this exhibition so much that I meant to go back; but I failed to do so.
I once went to a show of Long's in a London gallery where he had again painted in mud on a wall; the work was for sale, and I asked how they would move the work to the purchaser (I wondered if the plaster would be taken down, transported and reassembled). I was told that in fact he would come along and make a new work on the wall of the buyer; so it would be a different picture, the original being destroyed; it both pleases me to think the work is so site specific and saddens me to think that the giant arch will be - by now, must have been - destroyed.
* * *
I was surprised how much I disliked the Andy Warhol show at the National Gallery; I was expecting to really like it. Outside, they had playfully turned the Royal Academy's pillars into Campbell's soup cans, making thousands of passers by smile.
Inside, there was an overview of Warhol's work; and it was underwhelming. There were some pieces that I liked - the more childlike, innocent work - children's toys; pillows filled with a mixture of helium and air that floated and moved in the air currents - but most of the works on display I just didn't like. There was an air of manipulation and death - one of the series of photographic screen prints featured images of death - and perhaps much of Warhol's work concerned death (the blurb tried to make out that his images were life affirming, death being another, necessary side to life). But mostly I found it a rather nasty, unpleasant show. Or perhaps I was just in a bad mood!
* * *
The Dean Gallery featured an exhibition of Picasso's drawings and sketches - Picasso on Paper - taken from all stages of his career. There were many very beautiful pictures, drawn with a simplicity of line; but most of all, the exhibition seemed to document his many, turbulent affairs. His wives and lovers featured frequently in his pictures, either by themselves or as a foil to an expression of his character: he would often appear as a bull or a minotaur.
Perhaps it is just me, but whilst I love Picasso's art, he seems to have been a very flawed individual, cruel and mentally abusive to the women and children in his life. Seeing so many of his pictures gathered in one place, it is this feeling of his life, rather than his work, which remains.
* * *
The show at the National Portrait Gallery was called Naked Portraits, a term borrowed from Lucien Freud. There was a lot of flesh, most of it unclothed; a lot of nudes, then. Is naked different from nude? Nude sounds more deliberate - more arty, perhaps. Some of the "naked portraits" were clothed, though; naked in their creation perhaps, or their intention, the nakedness being in the expression and rendering.
There is a lot of flesh in much of today's media, too - advertising hoardings, newspapers, tv, the cinema (perhaps even on the radio; or is that just my imagination?). Sex sells. It was interesting to see this collection of nakedness from the 20th century, in several different media: some of it portrayed flesh as sexual or erotic, but much of the exhibition simply conveyed the human condition.
It was split over two floors, but there didn't seem to be any deep organisation to the show - although with the rooms of the first floor featuring portraits of others and those of the second seemingly containing self-portraits, I thought I had found a pattern, until the last room of the second floor reverted to portraits of others.
The many photographs struck me as being the most effective. Just through the door, the first image to grab one is a huge Richard Avedon print, three times life size, the male face staring out: a striking, haunting image of a miner. There was much beauty and a fair degree of eroticism, although I was also struck and disturbed by the way that some of the artists - the paintings of Freud and Stanley Spencer, for instance - make the female form appear like dead flesh, devoid of sexuality.
If photography was the medium that worked best for me (many of the paintings being little more than photographs in paint), it fascinated me that the black and white portraits worked better than the colour photographs: the colour being too lurid or too life like, whilst black and white, by removing the choice of colour actually added to the texture of the pictures.
In all, I am not sure the exhibition held together: the curation had brought together pictures with an apparent theme, but I couldn't necessarily see the theme in the pictures. It was large, and I believe it would have benefited from being smaller, tighter, more coherent.