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!
An exhibition looking at the contribution of London’s Jewish tailors, dressmakers and milliners to global style. There was little that I wasn’t already aware of so I found it slightly underwhelming, but it was interesting to consider how some quintessentially British brands – like Alexon, Chelsea Girl and Moss Bros – originated in the East End of London. As a site for garment manufacturing it was preceded by the Huguenot silk-weavers and, by the time I worked near there, largely replaced by sari shops. Some of the displays were very local such as seamstresses turning out bespoke items of clothing or wedding dresses. Others spoke of mass manufacture but didn’t dwell on the inevitable sweatshop aspect to that. Looking up close at the craft and skill involved was, as ever, fascinating. Tailoring was an eminently portable skill – sadly useful in a world where you might have to flee persecution.
There was a definite sense of the disappearance of the world it commemorated. All those famous brands have now gone, and its “fashionability” barely outlived the sixties. As I walked back to Tower Hill along Cable Street a noisy jeep-type vehicle with two Palestinian flags roared past. Πάντα ρεί.
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!
I went to see the new exhibition about Roman legionaries. Not my usual thing – and definitely not at the weekend – but train strikes have kept me in London and it seemed interesting enough.
As indeed it was. Curmudgeon that I am, I could have done with a less family-friendly vibe – but they’re the exhibition-goers of the future, not me. These are the other thoughts that I took away from my visit:
There was a shield from AD 200s – the only surviving wooden long shield (scutum) – which was discovered in Syria. Next to it was a boss from AD 100s of the kind that would have covered the central hole and protected the elbow. That was discovered in . . . the River Tyne. As an example of the reach and standardisation of the Roman empire, these two items together take some beating.
Lots of artefacts – monuments, armour, weapons – on loan from German museums, particularly along the Rhine. It made me feel guilty about always giving Landesmuseums the go-by when I’m in Germany.
I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that a century consisted of 80 soldiers, not 100.
Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of artefacts found in Britain: I felt quite at home with the Ribchester and Crosby Garrett helmets (bizarre as it was to think of them as armour).
Roman soldiers signed on for 25 years. Until Caracalla made all free men in the Roman empire citizens, army service was one way to gain citizenship. On display was a bronze diploma of citizenship awarded to a soldier (plus one wife and their children) who had completed his 25 years. He retired in Britain and the diploma was discovered in Hungary.
And then, after three days of roaming among familiar cultures and eras, I decided I wanted a complete change and (with Tokyo Story in mind) headed to the Japanese galleries. Instead of the desired shift, however, I only saw continuities: earthenware pots, jewellery and iron weapons – pretty much the same kind of artefacts that you get from European civilisations from the BC era. Even the decorative art from the Edo period (1603-1868) looked entirely familiar – one Kakiemon-style hexagonal pot (admittedly made for export to Europe) had its Doppelgänger in the European gallery – this time manufactured in Meissen. Like the Roman shield, it triggered a few thoughts about early globalisation.
Despite the morning’s encounter with plenty of Roman armour and weapons, the items that struck me as most unusual were the samurai armour and the sword guard. The armour was made of metal, paper, lacquer, stencilled leather, hemp fibre, water buffalo horn, wood and gold . . . and was embellished with pink ribbons. The sword guard, with its hare, crescent moon and plants, was so lovely that it instantly went on my “to steal” list.
It was also dreadfully crowded – so many tourists (including me, of course) even in February. It deters me from doing this again. Places like Sambourne House seem far more attractive.
After such overload I had to recover in the restaurant over a l o n g lunch.
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 current exhibition at the Laing is on Yevonde Middleton (1893-1975), a London-based photographer who started with society portraits and later experimented with colour processing, producing some wonderfully vivid/garish images. I came out feeling a bit “meh”, which was unfair of me. It was just that, after the intriguing compositions of Vivian Maier and Evelyn Hofer, Yevonde seemed so glossily conventional and studio-bound. So many Tatler covers, so many debutantes . . . and the oddest of the lot: “Goddesses and Others”, a 1935 exhibition of society beauties dressed as characters from Greek mythology. It was too frivolous (IMHO) to provoke any profound thoughts on the “modern rendering of powerful female mythologies”.
However, Yevonde was something of a trailblazer. There had been women photographers before her; Yevonde herself was apprenticed to one and then set up her own studio in 1914. She was innovative in composition and production, and there was a playfulness in her early work which I liked. Her colour equipment was so large that it really didn’t lend itself to “street photography” (but but but . . . Herbert Ponting) but she pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved in the studio and dark room.
I came out intending to look at other paintings but got buttonholed by someone coherent but garrulous in front of the Stanley Spencer, so I made my excuses and left. Newcastle looked great in the winter sunshine – so much better than Manchester the other week, the thought of which still brings on a sense of gloom.
A couple of days in London to visit the National Portrait Gallery and the Photographers’ Gallery (to see the Evelyn Hofer exhibition).
The Hofer exhibition was brilliant. Not just the technical aspects, which I know little about (large format, dye transfer printing process), but composition, clarity and the sense of real people (Schiaparelli amongst her odd clutter, the unflustered Garrick waitress in contrast to Mrs Cibber behind her, the warehouseman with string for a belt and the foreman distinguishable by his bowler) and beautifully composed/observed still lifes. It inspired me to stop and photograph an old dairy warehouse I spotted on the way back, and – after seeing Hofer’s portrait of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I had to return to the NPG to compare it to John Singer Sargent’s pile-up of WWI top brass.
The Great Picture, possibly by Jan van Belcamp, c 1646 – the life and history of Lady Anne Clifford
I’d been intending to visit Abbot Hall again – it’s been closed since my last visit – and the Laing exhibition earlier in the week, with its reminder of Ruskin’s watercolours spurred me to finally go.
I was disappointed to find that practically the whole gallery was taken up with a single exhibition – “What is it that will last?” by Julie Brook – so my hopes of variety were dashed. However there was a Ruskin sketch of a peacock feather – detailed and exquisite. Moreover Brook had selected some works from the collection that had inspired her, and I was very much taken with a landscape by John Piper – a landscape which far surpassed any of Brook’s sloppy watercolours, IMHO.
What Brook did very effectively though, through her land art, was focus on the elements. Her firestacks combined earth, air, fire and water; watching the film of them burning brought to mind various emotions (cold, warmth, the feel of the rocks, the feeling of being soaking wet) and thoughts (transience, physicality vs frailty, the human habit of ritual to make sense of something not understood or mark time that will not stand still). The film of her building a stairway (“Ascending”) in a Japanese quarry – mostly, it suggested, alone – made me think of the weight and feel of the rock, the muscles required to lift it, the callouses on fingers at the end of the day. For me, it appeared a more informed, philosophical way of gazing into the coal fire or up at the clouds (a childhood habit) and making pictures from what I saw.
I spent some time looking at the triptych of Lady Anne Clifford. From L to R: as a studious, talented girl; in her mother’s womb with her father and brothers, who died young; as a lined and careworn woman (in her 50s!) after her decades-long struggle to claim her family’s estates, her books in disorder and a rather creepy-looking cat hiding behind her skirts. The more I encounter her (Skipton Castle, Brougham Castle, Appleby Castle), the more significant the painting becomes.
I was fed up with the weather and being indoors, so I caught trains to Newcastle to be indoors in a different place. I’d been intending to go ever since I’d seen the Clausen image that the Laing had used to publicise its current exhibition. I’m easily swayed like that.
It’s an exhibition of paintings in nature by British artists from 1850-1930, some from the north. William Bell Scott was in it: from 1834 he taught in the Government School for Design in Newcastle, so presumably was an influence on some of the other artists on display. Some of the works on display felt like “padding” – step forward, Charles Napier Hemy, although I appreciate he had a living to earn – but they were a useful counterfoil to the paintings that really stood out.
We began with the Pre-Raphaelites and their intense focus on colour, light and detail in the natural world. Ruskin was their spur: I remember being transfixed by one of his watercolours in the Abbot Hall gallery of something as banal as a feather or an eggshell. Here there was a spray of dead oak leaves, reflecting both the natural world and the architectural world of acanthus capitals. (As an aside, I have learned that “bodycolour” is watercolour mixed with white pigment to make it opaque.) William Holman Hunt was there, of course: hyperreal paintings of the Holy Land on a white base layer which made the colours glow.
Meticulous depiction and careful brushwork disappeared with the Rustic Naturalists and gave way to rural workers, high horizons and looser strokes – which is where Clausen and La Thangue come in. Then there were the coastal “art colonies”: Newlyn, Cullercoats, Staithes, which overlap with naturalism. There were even a couple of Glasgow Boys in there – which rather makes me give up trying to fit artists into neat categories. And everyone by the late 19th century seemed to be trying their hand at British Impressionism.
So, what do I recall in particular? That painters like Laura Knight, experimenting with a range of styles from Impressionism to Ladybird-book-style illustration, are ultimately more interesting than, say, Edward Hopper or Roy Lichtenstein, who found their groove and stuck to it. John Singer Sargent is just wonderful: yes, he could do the society portraits, but his use of colour and handling of light in the Mountains of Moab is sublime. In the bottom foreground he applied the paint so thickly that I wondered if he had anticipated Joan Eardley and actually got some sand into the oil. The Corfu Garden just made me long for Mediterranean light: the Davis (Dutch landscape crossed with Barbizon) shows the kind of light I’m used to! Peploe and Browning I include because they are so clearly imitating French painters. (Manchester’s very own Monet – Wynford Dewhurst – was also there.) Sheard’s Harvesters was very carefully executed – hyperreality again – but what the original showed was the gleam of the golden sheaves. In that it was absolutely stunning.
And so to my steals – Harvey’s blocks of colour and the cliffs that are obviously yet more blocks of colour and yet nevertheless cliffs. And Henry’s dabs and patterning – quite lovely.
Not something I would have chosen, but that’s no reason for not trying it. There was a church jumble sale feel to some rooms – and, in the case of the architecture room, a backstage-amongst-the-props-of-an-am-dram-production-in-the-village-hall vibe.
It was interesting to compare my visit here to last week’s visits to art galleries exhibiting well-known artists who have full colour plates in hardback books by the Phaidon Press. Here most artists were unknown, their works selected by a group of Royal Academicians (and wouldn’t it be interesting to watch them choosing! What are their criteria?) and hung several deep on the high walls. The theme was “Only Connect”, which made it very Zeitgeisty. There were far too many works to take in, and the last few rooms barely got a look in – even Paula Rego’s gruesome triptych we passed by.
There were some well-known contemporary artists in the exhibition – Michael Craig-Martin, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley – that stood out only because of their greater size. There were also a couple of enormous sculptures by Phyllida Barlow, whose obituary a few months ago I recalled. Yes, well. The photographs did them justice. Even allowing for all the things I’ve learned and read about modern art, I was underwhelmed.
I liked the kind of things I normally like: landscapes, muted colours, meandering abstracts. Portraits and figure painting left me cold and I found them inept – but when I consider the portrait by Marie-Louise von Motesiczky in the Hunterian last week, I realise how inconsistent I am. Perhaps I need the aura of another age to appreciate some kinds of art?
The chair – well, I don’t know. I just liked it. Perhaps some echo of Cadell’s Interior in the colours. We discussed whether the “draped mobile” would look better in a more muted colour, and I remembered post-minimalism. I realise, on reflection, that my steals – the chair and the shadowy boat painted on patched tarpaulin – belie the theme of the exhibition entirely!
Aides memoires part 3 
