Thursday, 29 April 2010
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
some info
Matthias Weischer
Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK
In Edwin A. Abbot’s book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) the protagonist, Mr A. Square - a citizen of a two-dimensional world - is visited by a three-dimensional, spherical being. Square does not have the sensory capacity to perceive all three dimensions, but he does have the insight to comprehend the anomaly. In the virtual space of his imagination he pieces together the increasing, then decreasing, circles as they intersect with his plane of existence, to construct the illusion of the sphere. Matthias Weischer describes his paintings as places in which the perceptual and possible meet, as regions of illusory experimentation. Contained spaces - yards, rooms or communicating passages - challenge architectural norms. A patterned wall may give way to an unexpected portion of an interior, immediately understood as truncated or spilling beyond its boundaries.
Time also plays a role in his fictions. In the essay ‘The Journey Pretending to Be’ (2003) Weischer declares his awareness of the implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: ‘Time is converted into space, with vision building the visual space during the course of time.’ The act of looking becomes an implicit part of the fabrication of imagery; our stitching together of Weischer’s composite fragments is like the final visual utterance in the chain of command.
Weischer tends towards a somewhat theatrical presentation of interior and pictorial space. He shows us a room as if we were seated square-on in the auditorium and we become the classic fourth wall. He is almost as comfortable with this spatial scheme as the Dutch painter René Daniels, whose three-walled rooms recur as floating bow-tie motifs. Weischer does, however, fill his rooms with enough ballast - patterning, furniture and ornaments - to anchor them in an albeit spooked physical reality. Yard (all works 2003) is the dumping ground for a framed photographic portrait, some unidentified fabric and unnaturalized geometric forms - an impossible scaffolding structure of white bars, a solid pink wedge and some painterly monochromatic rainbows. This yard is like an inner-city meeting place for a multicultural array of visual languages.
The objects and décor within the paintings are suffused with the aura of epochs past and present, as if, by travelling into the picture plane, they have accrued the cultural equivalent of air miles. A stocky wicker chair throws a shadow across a purple floor in an offhand manner (one of the legs casts no shadow at all), while a half-glimpsed woman in a picture on the wall behind stands arms akimbo with historical authority. These objects are historicized archetypes, knowingly chosen for their radiation of ambiguity. Similarly, in Dice the connotations of a pair of dice on a covered pool table are at once unsettling and comforting, a classic case of the unheimlich.
The textural schizophrenia of Weischer’s paintings compounds his collage-like approach to imagery. Sections of board intersect, sometimes not quite flush with one another. At times the painted imagery will carry across the join, at others the join will be accentuated by a change in illusory plane, with the introduction of an interrupting wall or obscuring screen. We are often held away from the pictorial nub of the painting, condemned to the purgatory of surface; yet sometimes we are rewarded with a sighting of the central character, the all too often absent instigator of these fictional environments. In Invented Man, for instance, the none too welcoming room is dotted with clues as to its inhabitant’s lifestyle: a portable television, indecipherable objects on a high shelf, vague accoutrements of lunch and askance views of geometric imagery pinned loosely to wall. This by no means prepares us for the oddity that sits in front of the television - a composite humanoid silhouette made up of a painted medalla (positioned at the lower back, just like in painkiller advertisements) and a head that is part wood-effect, part framed picture. The figure shimmers in and out of existences, from illusion to allusion, so that we have a lot of assembly work left to do.
Weischer’s paintings are the result of over-painting, rewrites and Frankensteinian construction, conveying the caprices and judgements that this way of working must absorb - repetition and novelty, drips and masking tape, the overt and the cryptic. It’s as if they’re a mapping of Weischer’s thoughts on painting itself, while their physical anomalies (impossible shadows, unrealistic architecture and thwarted narrative) are signposts for perception’s instability.
Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK
In Edwin A. Abbot’s book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) the protagonist, Mr A. Square - a citizen of a two-dimensional world - is visited by a three-dimensional, spherical being. Square does not have the sensory capacity to perceive all three dimensions, but he does have the insight to comprehend the anomaly. In the virtual space of his imagination he pieces together the increasing, then decreasing, circles as they intersect with his plane of existence, to construct the illusion of the sphere. Matthias Weischer describes his paintings as places in which the perceptual and possible meet, as regions of illusory experimentation. Contained spaces - yards, rooms or communicating passages - challenge architectural norms. A patterned wall may give way to an unexpected portion of an interior, immediately understood as truncated or spilling beyond its boundaries.
Time also plays a role in his fictions. In the essay ‘The Journey Pretending to Be’ (2003) Weischer declares his awareness of the implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: ‘Time is converted into space, with vision building the visual space during the course of time.’ The act of looking becomes an implicit part of the fabrication of imagery; our stitching together of Weischer’s composite fragments is like the final visual utterance in the chain of command.
Weischer tends towards a somewhat theatrical presentation of interior and pictorial space. He shows us a room as if we were seated square-on in the auditorium and we become the classic fourth wall. He is almost as comfortable with this spatial scheme as the Dutch painter René Daniels, whose three-walled rooms recur as floating bow-tie motifs. Weischer does, however, fill his rooms with enough ballast - patterning, furniture and ornaments - to anchor them in an albeit spooked physical reality. Yard (all works 2003) is the dumping ground for a framed photographic portrait, some unidentified fabric and unnaturalized geometric forms - an impossible scaffolding structure of white bars, a solid pink wedge and some painterly monochromatic rainbows. This yard is like an inner-city meeting place for a multicultural array of visual languages.
The objects and décor within the paintings are suffused with the aura of epochs past and present, as if, by travelling into the picture plane, they have accrued the cultural equivalent of air miles. A stocky wicker chair throws a shadow across a purple floor in an offhand manner (one of the legs casts no shadow at all), while a half-glimpsed woman in a picture on the wall behind stands arms akimbo with historical authority. These objects are historicized archetypes, knowingly chosen for their radiation of ambiguity. Similarly, in Dice the connotations of a pair of dice on a covered pool table are at once unsettling and comforting, a classic case of the unheimlich.
The textural schizophrenia of Weischer’s paintings compounds his collage-like approach to imagery. Sections of board intersect, sometimes not quite flush with one another. At times the painted imagery will carry across the join, at others the join will be accentuated by a change in illusory plane, with the introduction of an interrupting wall or obscuring screen. We are often held away from the pictorial nub of the painting, condemned to the purgatory of surface; yet sometimes we are rewarded with a sighting of the central character, the all too often absent instigator of these fictional environments. In Invented Man, for instance, the none too welcoming room is dotted with clues as to its inhabitant’s lifestyle: a portable television, indecipherable objects on a high shelf, vague accoutrements of lunch and askance views of geometric imagery pinned loosely to wall. This by no means prepares us for the oddity that sits in front of the television - a composite humanoid silhouette made up of a painted medalla (positioned at the lower back, just like in painkiller advertisements) and a head that is part wood-effect, part framed picture. The figure shimmers in and out of existences, from illusion to allusion, so that we have a lot of assembly work left to do.
Weischer’s paintings are the result of over-painting, rewrites and Frankensteinian construction, conveying the caprices and judgements that this way of working must absorb - repetition and novelty, drips and masking tape, the overt and the cryptic. It’s as if they’re a mapping of Weischer’s thoughts on painting itself, while their physical anomalies (impossible shadows, unrealistic architecture and thwarted narrative) are signposts for perception’s instability.
New Leipzig school YGA
Eitel, Tim
Fabritius, Tom
Gogel, Sebastian
Loy, Rosa
Rauch, Neo
Rink, Arno
Ruckhaberle, Christoph
Schnell, David
Weischer, Matthias
Fabritius, Tom
Gogel, Sebastian
Loy, Rosa
Rauch, Neo
Rink, Arno
Ruckhaberle, Christoph
Schnell, David
Weischer, Matthias
Hoax
Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960
1st edition
Author
William Boyd
Publisher
Edition Stemmle
Publication date
June 1998
ISBN
1901785017
OCLC Number
38934333
Nat Tate - An American Artist 1928-1960 is a 1998 fictional (hoax) biography by William Boyd.
1st edition
Author
William Boyd
Publisher
Edition Stemmle
Publication date
June 1998
ISBN
1901785017
OCLC Number
38934333
Nat Tate - An American Artist 1928-1960 is a 1998 fictional (hoax) biography by William Boyd.
Plot summary
Boyd's story - of young Tate's rise as a second-generation abstract expressionist, supported by critics and dealers and sought after by collectors - appears to be a satire on the New York art world at its first great moment of commercial and critical success
Nat Tate was an orphan who, according to his biographer, was 'notionally of the New York School'; a friend of Picasso's and Braque's and a lover, although somewhat short-lived, of Peggy Guggenheim. The story ends with Tate's suicide, after a visit to Georges Braque, in whose studio he sees what true artistic mastery is. Understanding his own mediocrity, Tate grasps the meaning of his success and, "the presaging of a future he did not welcome ... Tate was one of those rare artists who did not need, and did not seek, the transformation of his painting into a valuable commodity to be bought and sold on the whim of a market and its marketeers."
At 31, having first destroyed all of his artwork, Tate committed suicide. He bought a ticket for the Staten Island Ferry, walked to the stern, climbed onto the railing, and threw himself overboard; his body was never found.
The book, written in the form of a monographic essay, includes photographs, documents, notes and guest appearances by real art-world figures (as well as a character from Boyd's other fiction.) Gore Vidal, for example, is also quoted in the book as remembering Tate as "essentially dignified, drunk with nothing to say". Boyd also has Hans Hofmann, as Nat Tate's teacher, espousing views he didn't hold and a supposed poem by Frank O'Hara (mostly written by Boyd himself).
An art hoax
Boyd published the book as a hoax, presented as a real biography. Gore Vidal, John Richardson (Picasso's biographer), and David Bowie (a board member of Modern Painters magazine and director of 21 Publishing, which published the book) were all participants in the hoax. Nat Tate's name is a combination of two London art galleries, the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. Boyd and his co-conspirators set about convincing the New York glitterati (social elites) that the reputation of this influential abstract expressionist needed to be re-evaluated. Bowie held a launch party on April Fool's Day, 1998, and read extracts from the book, while Richardson talked about Tate's friendships with both Picasso and Braque.
Some of the biggest names in the arts world (including artists, collectors, art historian, art dealers, New York based writers like Paul Auster, and editors of literary journals) eventually realized that Nat Tate was a complete fake and that they had been the victims of an elaborate set up. Some of the paintings featured in the book were reportedly painted by Boyd and the hoax was made more believable by Gore Vidal's endorsement on the book's dust cover. Also, the photographs of Nat Tate that feature in the 'biography' are of unknown people from Boyd's own photographic collection.
The literary editor of The Independent, who was at the New York launch, said that no one he spoke to claimed to know Tate well, but no one claimed not to have heard of him. Lister stated that he sniffed something fishy, since he appeared to be the only person in the room who had never heard of Tate. His suspicions were confirmed when he discovered that none of the galleries mentioned in the book actually existed.
Karen Wright, one of Bowie's co-directors at 21 Publishing said the hoax was not meant to be malicious.
“
Part of it was, we were very amused that people kept saying 'Yes, I've heard of him'. There is a willingness not to appear foolish. Critics are too proud for that.
”
References
^ "Imagining Imaginary Artists". The New York Times. 1998-06-14.
^ "Biography of William Boyd". BookBrowse.com. http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=851. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
^ a b "Bowie and Boyd hoax art world". BBC. 1998-04-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/75207.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
^ "Work of fiction fools literary world". The Indian Express (Bombay). 1998-04-11. http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980411/10150314.html. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
External links
"21 Publishing Website". www.21publishing.com. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/p8.html. "
Boyd's story - of young Tate's rise as a second-generation abstract expressionist, supported by critics and dealers and sought after by collectors - appears to be a satire on the New York art world at its first great moment of commercial and critical success
Nat Tate was an orphan who, according to his biographer, was 'notionally of the New York School'; a friend of Picasso's and Braque's and a lover, although somewhat short-lived, of Peggy Guggenheim. The story ends with Tate's suicide, after a visit to Georges Braque, in whose studio he sees what true artistic mastery is. Understanding his own mediocrity, Tate grasps the meaning of his success and, "the presaging of a future he did not welcome ... Tate was one of those rare artists who did not need, and did not seek, the transformation of his painting into a valuable commodity to be bought and sold on the whim of a market and its marketeers."
At 31, having first destroyed all of his artwork, Tate committed suicide. He bought a ticket for the Staten Island Ferry, walked to the stern, climbed onto the railing, and threw himself overboard; his body was never found.
The book, written in the form of a monographic essay, includes photographs, documents, notes and guest appearances by real art-world figures (as well as a character from Boyd's other fiction.) Gore Vidal, for example, is also quoted in the book as remembering Tate as "essentially dignified, drunk with nothing to say". Boyd also has Hans Hofmann, as Nat Tate's teacher, espousing views he didn't hold and a supposed poem by Frank O'Hara (mostly written by Boyd himself).
An art hoax
Boyd published the book as a hoax, presented as a real biography. Gore Vidal, John Richardson (Picasso's biographer), and David Bowie (a board member of Modern Painters magazine and director of 21 Publishing, which published the book) were all participants in the hoax. Nat Tate's name is a combination of two London art galleries, the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. Boyd and his co-conspirators set about convincing the New York glitterati (social elites) that the reputation of this influential abstract expressionist needed to be re-evaluated. Bowie held a launch party on April Fool's Day, 1998, and read extracts from the book, while Richardson talked about Tate's friendships with both Picasso and Braque.
Some of the biggest names in the arts world (including artists, collectors, art historian, art dealers, New York based writers like Paul Auster, and editors of literary journals) eventually realized that Nat Tate was a complete fake and that they had been the victims of an elaborate set up. Some of the paintings featured in the book were reportedly painted by Boyd and the hoax was made more believable by Gore Vidal's endorsement on the book's dust cover. Also, the photographs of Nat Tate that feature in the 'biography' are of unknown people from Boyd's own photographic collection.
The literary editor of The Independent, who was at the New York launch, said that no one he spoke to claimed to know Tate well, but no one claimed not to have heard of him. Lister stated that he sniffed something fishy, since he appeared to be the only person in the room who had never heard of Tate. His suspicions were confirmed when he discovered that none of the galleries mentioned in the book actually existed.
Karen Wright, one of Bowie's co-directors at 21 Publishing said the hoax was not meant to be malicious.
“
Part of it was, we were very amused that people kept saying 'Yes, I've heard of him'. There is a willingness not to appear foolish. Critics are too proud for that.
”
References
^ "Imagining Imaginary Artists". The New York Times. 1998-06-14.
^ "Biography of William Boyd". BookBrowse.com. http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=851. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
^ a b "Bowie and Boyd hoax art world". BBC. 1998-04-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/75207.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
^ "Work of fiction fools literary world". The Indian Express (Bombay). 1998-04-11. http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980411/10150314.html. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
External links
"21 Publishing Website". www.21publishing.com. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/p8.html. "
Friday, 9 April 2010
Monday, 15 March 2010
Ahh this is lovely
Nine Green Bottles: 'Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964'
Morandi was 'a man intent, not simply a painter of bottles… but a man intent on exploring subtle equations of forms, placing and atmospheric effects… separating their volumes and colour and then interlocking them again through an alchemy he alone understood.' It is not inappropriate today to compare him to Mark Rothko, another painter who created his own inner world that reflected all humanity and its tragedy, and communicated it for all time.
Of course, to understand better about Morandi, it is necessary to observe this condition, of a massive and obsessive repetition, by visiting the Morandi oeuvre held and displayed en masse at the Morandi Museum in Bologna, his home town. Here, even more so than in New York, there is something about Morandi works en masse that chills the soul, no less. Morandi was a devotee of Cézanne, whose repeat paintings of Mont St Victoire never do seem to pall. Cézanne's 'Apples' can be read as fulfilling the whole world of emotions, running from the calmest stage of meditation to abjectly distraught feelings, or to the heights of pleasure and delight. In contrast, Morandi's still life paintings seem on occasion to be static and lifeless. One wonders why the early landscapes (for example, 'Landscape with Farm House in Distant Hills', 1929; or the earlier 'Landscape' of 1921, which pays and repays dividends to the observer with its subtle, enigmatic shadings of green; or 'Landscape with Pink Houses', 1925) - of such quality as masterly works - seem to have been pushed along the shelf of Morandi's oeuvre in comparison with the remorseless repetitiveness of the still life works of the middle period. The pristine 'Still Life' (1918) suggests a still young artist shaping up for fame in the realm of the modern masters. Was there then perhaps some psychiatric condition that gradually overwhelmed this emergent and precocious talent of the young modernist? So it seems.
The years of the Second World War found Morandi producing a notable output. There were close on 80 landscapes, and 130 or so still life works, from all of which the Metropolitan has selected a strong representation in its 100 or so exhibits. Clearly, Morandi was traumatised by the effects of war on his society, and perhaps this was, so to say, hidden in his personality rather than self-evident. The effects are more evident in his paintings, especially the still life works. Efforts to break out of any straightjacket are revealed in the tortured still life wartime works such 'Still Life' (1943). After the war, a new lyricism crept back into Morandi's work, expressed now through the still life works after 1945. Some of the old homage to Cézanne re-emerged in the domestic and village landscapes of the 1950s. The still life works of the 1957-60 period exhibit a new and magical tone of blue. Certainly, Morandi's inner turmoil was coming to reach a resolution through his paintings in the final decade. The landscapes after 1960 were his triumph.
It has been predictable that certain contemporary reviewers have sought to flush out a discrete sexuality in Morandi's standpoint. It is misleading to seek any such 'quivering' quality in the work of any period. Rather, there can be found a solid level of containment, which strengthened Morandi's creative and artistic consistency. This exhibition has now provided an opportunity to re-assess Morandi's particular and unique talent as a painter, of whom Italy can now at last be justly proud. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has ably accomplished this revision. And given the financial turmoil affecting the citizens of New York right now, there could be nothing better than to step into the Morandi exhibition and selectively focus on, say five, works there, perhaps two landscapes and three still lifes. (A limited but effective de-stress palliative.)
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