Latest Painting in Britain Features @ Latest Painting in Britain Features @ <a href="/features/feed"></a> Curators Corner: Review of J.W. Waterhouse Exhibition <p>A couple of weeks ago, I went to see the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to see their current exhibition, <em>John William Waterhouse: Garden of Enchantement</em>.&nbsp; Not only is an exhibition like this a unique experience (it has been since the 1970s since Waterhouse had his last retrospective show), but it is a chance to see some of the most beautiful, romantic, and magical paintings of the late nineteenth century.</p> <p><img class="blog_item_image_small" src="" /></p> <p>Waterhouse is a bit of a sphinx; not a lot is known about his life.&nbsp; Although he left behind a great body of work, the man himself remains to this day a bit of a mystery.&nbsp; His work is often associated with the style of the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the mid nineteenth century; he was in fact born in the year of the group's first major exhibition.&nbsp; Although his style is reminiscent of artists like Dante Rossetti, he was active from the 1870s onward, and developed his own unique visual language.&nbsp; His paintings show romantic and mystical visions of ancient myths and&nbsp;the medieval era.&nbsp; His subjects are often women (many femme fatales), and their radiant natural beauty is totally captivating.</p> <p><img class="blog_item_image_small" src="" /></p> <p>From a fashion history point of view, Waterhouse's work gives insight into the dress reform movement that was well underway by the 1880s, and also the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain.&nbsp; Mainstream fashions of the late nineteenth century were characterized by the hourglass corset; an often painful garment that could deform the body, and cause women much restriction in their daily lives.&nbsp; Waterhouse often depicted women from eras that predate the corset (like ancient Egypt or the Medieval era), their bodies are natural and free under beautifully draped robes.&nbsp; Many Pre-Raphaelite painters hung out with avant garde women who would wear looser, historically inspired fashions.&nbsp; While these women were not mainstream fashion leaders, their unconventional good looks and looser garments definately had an impact on the artists they associated with.&nbsp; Many Pre-Raphaelite painters preferred dramatic looking women, and their preference for red-headed beauties is clear from looking at Waterhouse's femme fatales.</p> <p><img class="blog_item_image_small" src="" /></p> <p>One of my favorite aspects of the exhibition was the inclusion of Melissa auf der Maur's recent short film, <em>Out of Our Minds</em>.&nbsp; Auf der Maur has said in the past how much she loves the work of Waterhouse, and how for years she carried around an image of his masterpiece The Lady of Shallot as a kind of personal talisman.&nbsp; The magical watery world depicted in her film, and the fact that redhead&nbsp;Auf der Maur looks like a&nbsp;Waterhouse beauty was a nice contemporary twist&nbsp;at the end of a great retrospective. &nbsp;This exhibition is on display now until February 7, 2010&nbsp;at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.</p> <p><img class="blog_item_image_small" src="" /></p> Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:57:06 +0000 The Function of the Studio: A Panel Discussion Between Contemporary Artists <p>Last week, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London hosted a panel titled "The Function of the Studio: Four Artists in Conversation" with artists Shezad Dawood, Gautier Deblonde, Antony Gormley and Andrew Grassie.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />From the program for the evening, as advertised by the Institute: <em>'In 1971 the French artist Daniel Buren published an essay titled &lsquo;The Function of the Studio&rsquo; in which he expounded his &ldquo;distrust&rdquo; of the studio and its &ldquo;simultaneously idealising and ossifying function&rdquo;. As a manifesto for his own critical practice, Buren&rsquo;s essay proposed the &ldquo;extinction&rdquo; of the studio, paving the way for what has since been called a &lsquo;post-studio&rsquo; era. Despite this, however, artists today still choose to work from studios, whether they be isolated work spaces or entrepreneurial offices. And many, in keeping with a long art historical tradition, continue to make the artist&rsquo;s studio the subject of their work. This discussion will bring together Shezad Dawood, Gautier Deblonde, Antony Gormley and Andrew Grassie &ndash; four internationally-acclaimed artists working in a variety of media &ndash; to ask &lsquo;What is the function, and significance, of the studio for artists working today?'</em>&nbsp; The speakers were all interesting, and each had a very different relationship to and perception of the studio space and its role in artistic practice.<br /><br />Gormley, perhaps the best-known of the artists on the panel, began the discussion with his thoughts on his personal work space. He said, "The studio is a very old concept. I think of the studio I work in as an industrial space for creative work. It's a very movable feast. When I think of what I do, it's impossible not to say "we," the studio (with his eight assistants) is a much larger organism." Though he has a custom-built studio, Gormley still insists that "it's the work that makes the work. The work also gives directives to those who work with me. It is grounds for experimentation. "The studio is a space of transformation, a place for memory," continued Gormley. "With the work making new demands it could no longer negotiate an old steam laundry in Peckham." Gormley's new studio suits his work better. "It's a context for creative community, it radically changed my ability to work-- it had proved its potency with the most important elements: silence, space, and light."&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gormley is very much connected to his studio space and sees it as the cradle of his production process. Though some claim we live in a post-studio era, Gormley could not create works of the same mass or scale without such a dedicated work space.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Photographer Gautier Deblonde followed Gormley and spoke about his series of photographs he makes of artists' studios. He spoke about trying to find visible evidence of an artistic process in a tangible space. It was interesting to hear how he photographs: he waits to be left alone in the studio, without the artist present. There he tries to capture both the artist and their process in their absence. One interesting case study was a comparison of two of Deblonde's photographs: he simultaneously showed a photograph he took of Gerhard Richter's studio and a photograph he took of Paula Rego's studio. Richter refused to let Deblonde photograph works in progress, and what we see is a clean, slick, white box space with finished canvasses hung in an orderly row across the walls. There is no sign of process or personality. Rego's studio, on the other hand, is full, messy, and lively. Set pieces and fabric mannequins take up most of the room, brushes, paints and ladders litter the floor. While Richter seems reluctant to communicate a relationship with the studio (perhaps as a post-studio artist?), Rego is evident in her studio-- perhaps even more than in her paintings.&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Painter Andrew Grassie has a much more complicated relationship with the studio space. As an artist who meticulously paints photorealistic "portraits" of studio spaces, he is most interested in the studio's potential for self-reflexivity. He said, "At art college, you are given a studio, left in a white room, and told to get on with it. These studios are a mix of public and private, a white space without any external parameters." Grassie's work is a reflection of and reaction to such white spaces, as he paints hyper-realistic quiet spaces without external references. For Grassie, the studio is more a subject than a place. He finds that painting such works freed him from "the responsibility of invention."<br /><br />Shezad Dawood's idea of the studio is less defined by its traditional role. Dawood is more itinerant, less reliant on space. He constantly "creates spaces," though often they are not tangible. In describing his film "Feature," in which he brought together a real-life underground gay cowboy subculture with a group of born-again Christian wild West re-enactors, Dawood says this was a creation of a kind of studio space. "I like to create a space where things can happen," Dawood said. "That's my kind of studio." As a truly post-studio artist, more than the other speakers on the panel, Dawood spoke to the restlessness of a restrictive studio. He is less interested in having a creative locus, and more invested in a "struggle for value and meaning."<br /><br />The term "studio" only came into common usage in the early nineteenth-century. Before then, artists had workrooms, workshops, ateliers. Is "studio" still a valid term? Or are the terms "places of performance" or "place of display" more accurate in the twenty-first century? I'd like to read more on the subject, and this fantastic panel inspired a new string of questions.<br /></p> Wed, 27 May 2009 16:27:27 +0000 Painting as a Metaphor for Sex <p>(</p> <p>Neville Wakefield&nbsp;is the Curator of Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair.</p> <p>Cecily Brown is an English painter working in New York.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Here is a short and funny interview of Cecily. &nbsp;It provides insight into the way she works. &nbsp;Most people think she makes de Kooningesque paintings of sex scenes. &nbsp;But perhaps a bit more goes on:</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>NEVILLE WAKEFIELD: What have you been doing lately?</p> <p>CECILY BROWN: Several large paintings, nine foot square, which are quite complex. And then I wanted to do something much more specific, as sort of an antidote to the big ones, so I've been working on paintings that are of just a single male figure in the midst of a canvas.</p> <p>NW: Nude, I presume.</p> <p>CB: No, semi-clad. Some are wearing shirts, some are wearing underwear. But most of them have their dicks out.</p> <p>NW: Are they recognizable as portraits?</p> <p>CB: No, they're fairly anonymous. But each one has a distinct personality.</p> <p>NW: Where does the personality reside, in the dick?</p> <p>CB: In the dick, in the clothes, in the face. I suppose the men are mostly wanking. But it's a challenge to do it so it's not the first thing you see, and not the only thing you see. I tried to do one figure with his pants on, and that ended up being the only painting that is, like, pornographic. But I don't want people to think they're just about shock value. Dicks just seem like an interesting thing to paint.</p> <p>NW: You started out making these Bacchanalian bunny scenes, a bit like Beatrix Potter on Viagra, followed by large, all-over paintings of orgiastic body parts. With your new work you continue to use sexual imagery to explore the relationship of flesh to paint.</p> <p>CB: I've heard them described as if they're sexual imagery obscured by a painterly flourish. Which I think is completely wrong. I think they're more about tension than the depiction of sex.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>NW: You once said that painting is a metaphor for sex. . . .</p> <p>CB: I kind of wish I hadn't said that.</p> <p>NW: [laughs] Why?</p> <p>CB: Because I think sometimes the sexual content gets in the way of people seeing any further. Sometimes people just stop there and don't realize what else is going on, though I think painters usually do. In a way, these works are painters' paintings, because there are so many formal things going on. The paintings are really meant to draw you in and keep revealing themselves.</p> <p>NW: But the subject is perhaps what prevents people from seeing the wood from the trees?</p> <p>CB: Well, I hope people can get past that, and I think you can from the way I've painted them. What's interesting is the dick actually takes up a small amount of the canvas, in terms of actual inches. But people look at it first, and they can't stop staring at it. And so far, it's straight men who have had a bit of a problem with them. I don't think men are even aware they're being made uncomfortable, but they instantly don't like my painting. Most women really like them.</p> <p>NW: Finally, where do you draw the line between art and pornography?</p> <p>CB: I think it's in the eye of the beholder. It's really down to the viewer in the end. I don't think my paintings are pornographic. They may bring on a certain state of mind, but I don't think they're arousing. There's too much else going on. I think it's pretty hard to make a pornographic painting, because you're juggling so many things.</p> <p>NW: Have you tried?</p> <p>CB: No, I haven't. I've done a lot of straightforward depictions of sexual acts, though I don't think I've made a pornographic painting. And I don't care if I have, because I think pornography's OK. [laughs] You know, anything that brings a little joy into the fold.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Thu, 21 May 2009 22:31:46 +0000