Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World

To Milton Keynes Gallery for another photography exhibition – this time by Saul Leiter (1923-2013), a New York photographer and artist who captured his corner of the city for almost 60 years. He never photographed the obvious: he tended towards abstraction, with lots of blank space and puzzling perspectives/reflections, and was brilliant in making something strange from the familiar. Over the course of the exhibition you got to know what pressed his buttons: umbrellas, hats, canopies, the views from the elevated railway or through steamed-up windows.

The full quote of his from which the exhibition title is taken is:

Photographs are often treated as important moments but really they are little fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world

which I rather liked. Of course, I had to take my own photos!

John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger

Watching this was like eating too much chocolate cake. It’s a film accompanying the current exhibition at the Tate, which I’m going to see next week. The exhibition itself makes a big thing of the link between fashion and his society portraits; the film carries this to the point of overload. Images of beautiful people, beautifully rendered and beautifully clothed are everywhere today, so listening to someone about his experience of taking dozens of photographs of Helena Bonham-Carter or Tilda Swinton really isn’t the same thing as painting Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Sargent posed and clothed his sitters as he wanted them and made the most lustrous, perfect marks on the canvas to represent a single version of them. (Slightly elongated, I must say, as if they all had Barbie proportions.)

Having said that, the film was interesting about Sargent’s artistic training (in Paris) and some examples of his plein air works. Also the continuation of the full-length “swagger portrait” from Hals through Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Manchester art gallery

I had a couple of hours before lunch so I went to the small “Unpicking Couture” exhibition. It touched on the “sculptural” element of clothes and how they are conserved. It was an unabashed celebration of couture – very little about the waste, the social exclusion, preferred body shape, etc, that goes hand in hand with fashion – so I felt free to enjoy the elegance and joie de vivre of the beautiful clothes.

. . . And to gawp at the bustle. So much silk – a light fabric which, in other designs, fell in lovely folds from the shoulders or waist – to create a horrible padded straitjacket of a costume! Mundane thoughts about keeping so much fabric perfectly clean and stain-free rose to my mind. I learned that the clothes designed by Madame Vionnet are so fragile that there are very few of them left, I thought of how one would move in such clothes (no slouching, definitely), and I compared them to the exhilarating liberation that Mary Quant’s designs must have represented.

After that I found myself drawn back to the war artists – I couldn’t help but stare at Mervyn Peake’s flamenco-like glass-blower. And Evelyn Dunbar’s paintings – despite their questionable draughtwomanship – were evocative and earthy. Such complete contrasts!

Saltaire

To Saltaire to wander around the giant floors of the old mill. It’s a difficult space to use well, but it came into its own on the third floor, which was filled with David Hockney’s 2011 ipad paintings of spring near Bridlington. There are so luminous and so numerous that I immediately felt brighter on this dull winter’s day. It’s the same views over and over again across the course of five months: now with bare winter branches, now in a froth of may blossom. Up close, you really could see that he had used an ipad from the finger marks and the pen squiggles. I’d only seen them in reproduction, where the cerise paths and maroon branches look garish. But in real life they are something else.

Leeds University

A visit to the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery at the University. I was sure I hadn’t seen the Jacob Kramer before; I liked the simplicity and the colours and the fact that it encouraged exactly that state of mind of the painting’s subject. I also walked round to find the Mitzi Cunliffe sculpture, which I liked very much.

I had to come via Hebden Bridge. My goodness, what a steep valley that is!

South Asian miniatures

Milton Keynes Gallery yesterday for an exhibition on South Asian miniature painting from the 17th century onwards and newer work inspired by it. Since I wasn’t on my own and we were pressed for time, I may be mistaken in my impression that it was lacking in information and context: I was glad that I’d done a bit of pre-reading. The first room contained a selection of pages from the Padshahnama (The Book of Kings), commissioned by the Mughal Shah Jehan, and they were so wonderful that nothing else came near them.

European-style painting later overshadowed that traditional style (which was itself influenced by the Persians), and in the mid-20th century Indian artists studying in London discovered the V&A collection and were inspired by them. The exhibition also touched on the impact of colonialism and the re-appropriation of the tradition by modern artists from South Asia – enough to make me wish now that I had spent more time there.

Albrecht Dürer

To the Whitworth Gallery for an exhibition of prints by Dürer (and others), in the context of the contemporary material world and power structures. Personally I would have preferred more about the engraving and woodcuts along with the religious upheavals of the time . . . but no matter. It was a pleasure to look closely at the prints and marvel at the skill and precision that went into them. I was left with lots of questions – like how many of the copper plates (engravings), iron plates (etchings) and woodblocks still exist? How many prints were made? I spent some time mesmerised by the woodblock and print of St Veronica. Such skill!

I confess I didn’t like many of the images: too much suffering and martyring. The exceptions were the depiction of textures like fur collars and beards. The information panel for the portrait of Elector Friedrich states: “The artist used his burin to render 13 separate lines within a space covering 2mm”. And the sublime rendering of light coming through the opaque window panes of St Jerome’s study.

The more Manchester builds, the less I like it. It feels as if personal landmarks are disappearing. But heigh ho, that’s the way it goes. It rained all day, so seeing the playfulness of the (otherwise tosh) Lemn Sissay poem on a gable wall made me smile all the way back along Oxford Road.

The Wallace Collection

It felt liberating to head off to the Wallace Collection not knowing what to expect. My first impression was that it was another Musée Nissim de Camondo: all Madame de Pompadour and ormolu stuffed into an over-the-top town house. Fortunately it was more than that: galleries with paintings stacked high on the walls so that you ended up strolling past yet more Canalettos without barely a second look. I was drawn to the Dutch collection: lots of Rembrandts and a couple (which I preferred) by Pieter de Hooch. Amongst a slightly nauseating line-up of Greuze females came Gainsboroughs and Reynolds which seemed very familiar. (I swear Arthur Mee has at least three of them in sepia plates.) Even the rooms of armour held interest: I gazed at the chain mail and compared the intricacy of its manufacture to lace-making. I also discovered some slightly gruesome 3D miniatures of famous people made from glass, wax and wood – far more interesting than yet more Canalettos!

The National Gallery

I went to check on the Delft courtyard as I had promised myself: no, it doesn’t glow like Vermeer. But neither do the two Vermeers in the same room glow in the same way as the two in Amsterdam. I also clocked the Fabritius, Chardin and Bellows (you can just feel the cold).

It was such a pleasure to walk through London again after my stay in Rotterdam. Just as busy, but the scale and diversity were more appealing.

Den Haag and Scheveningen

My sense of smell returned today and I admit – shamefacedly – that my first thought was to make the most of it by having a really good meal. Dutch lunch (as opposed to dinner) menus are too often of the soup-and-sandwich variety, so I thought of heading to Scheveningen, where I could be sure of a good fish restaurant.

I returned to Den Haag (finally getting a photograph on the Van Nelle factory from the train) and caught a tram to the Gemeentemuseum. There I was stunned once again by Berlage’s design and had difficulty dragging myself away to look at the actual exhibits. I had to look at the porcelain displays and the De Stijl rooms, but I also went upstairs to look at the modern art. More Charley Toorop: I prefer her style when she paints inanimate objects. Also her father, Jan Toorop, who seems to have covered all styles. German Expressionists. A wonderful Dutch art nouveau room, which included batik wall hangings. And a couple of galleries where the idea outweighed the execution.

And then lunch! I walked back to the tram stop along the promenade in the murk.