'Maniacs or Pioneers'.

We spent a lovely afternoon yesterday, visiting the Van Gogh exhibition currently on display at Compton Verney, Warwickshire. This exhibition features paintings gathered from all over the world, and covering Van Gogh's artistic life. Apart from being Van Gogh paintings they all share in the fact that they were originally collected or owned by British 'Pioneer Collectors'!
Alongside the paintings there are catalogues, bills of sale, newspaper cuttings, photographs and cartoons, all adding to the history of Van Gogh and his reputation.
The painting above 'Long Grass with Butterflies' was painted while he was a patient at the asylum at St-Rémy, near Arles, from May 1889 to May 1890 and together with Olive Trees really captured my attention, having never seen them before. So many interesting paintings, included, 'Oleaners' 1888, (see below) 'Peach Blosson in the Crau' 1889 and oh so many more!
Van Gogh's work was first exhibited in Britain in 1910 as part of an exhibition at London's Grafton Galleries, entitled Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Lewis Hind, the Daily Chronicle art critic, reported on heated exchanges at the opening, and he wrote '...they are maniacs of art, or they are pioneers opening new avenues of expression and emotion'. It is interesting that what Hind described as 'the fiery spirit of revolt' has 'become some of the most recognised images in the history of art and are commercially reproduced throughout the world'.
Compton Verny is a Robert Adam mansion, set in 120 acres of parkland, landscaped by 'Capability' Brown. Nice coffee shop too :-)

Enjoying the Talent!

The lads have added a new song to their Rigo Jancsi My Space site, Everything and Nothing, complete with a drop down lyric box so I can read the words! I'm making a daily pilgrimage there at the mo! LOL

While visiting the RJ site, I can't resist clicking on Some Best Friend they have two songs there which I've grown to really like, such a sunshiney sound! There is so much unrecognised talent out there, so glad that the fun keeps going!

We're off to Birmingham on 29th April, meeting up with a couple of friends to see Low! (the professionals!!!) Can't wait :-)

post script on 31.5.2006 Have just been to Some Best Friend and he's added a new song, and taken his Waiting for the Sun and Blindfolded Love off! I'm so disappointed! :-(

Reflecting?

After annihilating TMA02, or maybe it annihilated me! I'm sitting here surrounded by opened books, highlighted passages, scrappy notes, and crumpled papers! But what does this tell me? Well, that I've spent the last two or three weeks with the Cubists, particularly Braque and Picasso. I've never really understood all those little boxes that seem to make up a Cubist painting, so this has been an interesting insight into the works, the artists and the times in which they painted in this style.

Cubism really emerged in about 1907 following Picasso's famous painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. It's all about flattening the picture and taking out any depth, (analytic Cubism). There is no clear lighting and perspective disappears, the key word is flatness. That's why the modernist loves them, concentrating on the pure aesthetic pleasure of the object. But all those little facet-planes? In 1914 Fernand Léger wrote this:

'If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it ... When one crosses a landscape by automobile or express train, it becomes fragmented ... The view through the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with the speed, has altered the habitual look of things. A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist'.

France was involved in African colonialism and lots of masks and objects were to be found in Paris at that time, primitive art. The flip side to the modernists will point to the similarities between this primitive tribal art and the Cubists. Don't forget those masks on the faces of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Of course the Cubists also worked in collage (synthetic Cubism) sticking all those unconnected pieces of paper, music, newsprint, bits of wood, rope, tickets, handbills...whatever, on their canvases. The modernists would say it was restoring a certain amount of pictorial depth to the work and that it all comes together in a monumental unity!!! But society in Paris at the time was fractured by high and low culture and the economy delivered 'capitilist commodity production'! Disjointed and materialistic society found many implausible adjacencies and social art historians claim that those collages direct the viewer outwards and away from any internal unity of the work. So... what do I reckon? It seems to me that these artists were young, probably drunk a lot and had a good time straddling the 'high' and 'low' culture of the city, and they picked up ideas from everywhere and created original art, because they liked it and they could sell it!!
Above image Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass after 18 November 1912, pasted paper, gouache and charcoal, 48x37cm.
Thanks for the pic!
Great article from 'Facets of Cubism' from Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
View here.
Link to MFA.
Nice quote from Picasso (1881-1973)
'Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anybody else but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?'. 'Picasso Speaks' AiT p.216

My Friend Braquers!

Thanks to Laura who sent me this link, I now have a quacking new friend! Say hello to him! Click on him and he'll quack back, and feed him some toast! :-)

adopt your own virtual pet!

Look outside... it's Spring!!!

It's been a beautiful morning here, very inspirational for getting to grips with TMA02 which is due in on Friday! (Who am I kidding!) Very excited to discover that we have two goldcrests busying about in our garden, and think they are nesting in our fir tree:-)