Artistic Licence

At the National Gallery I take a detour to the Sixteenth-Century paintings to indulge my soft spot for Titian, now I feel I have an Italian connection with him. En route I am impressed by El Greco’s The Adoration of the Name of Jesus (1578) – a small canvas packed with detail and symbolism.

Joachim Beuckelaer also seems to know a thing or two about symbolism, with his Four Elements series (1569) which represents said elements with seductive images of market produce. A small scene from the life and teachings of Christ lurks in the background of each picture – he is considered one of the earliest and most accomplished masters of the fusion of the New Testament narrative with everyday life (Beuckelaer that is, not Jesus - although he could probably stake a claim too). These pictures were made quickly with bold and broad brushstrokes. Beuckelaer reveals himself as a skilled colourist – repeating and echoing colours and patterns in order to guide the viewer’s eye across his compositions.

Water features the stallholders with seafood, while Christ in the background appears to the disciples and fills their empty nets with fish. In Earth vegetables tumble from a basket and cascade towards the viewer – the holy family cross a bridge in the background.

Poultry and other skinned haunches of meat are the foreground focus of Fire – a still life with a dramatic construction. Christ is seated with Mary and Martha in the background. The background image in Air is of the prodigal son parable, while the market scene is one of fowl and rabbits (both dead and alive) framed by piles of eggs and stacks of cheeses.

Titian’s An Allegory of Prudence (1565-70) has three faces which represent the past, present and future. Apparently the triple-headed wolf lion and dog stood for prudence in sixteenth-century art and literature – ‘learning from yesterday, today acts prudently, lest by his action he spoil tomorrow’. In his Portrait of a Man (1510-20) the man in question appears to have just turned to face the viewer. His elaborate blue sleeve dominates the picture, protruding over the parapet to enhance the 3D quality of the image. Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-3) is a celebrated work of classical mythology, but I can’t get over the fact that Bacchus looks like he’s bowling down the wicket.

My brain is now full of images, light, perspective and composition. Placement and framing is of utmost importance in these paintings but also, I realise in my photography and, even as I am sated with culture, I am refreshed with themes and ideas.

Artistic Impression

Moving on to ‘Painting Out of Doors’ at The National Gallery, the room is lined with panels by Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot depicting changing light through the trees and sky over the space of a day, with small figures for emphasis and perspective. The next room is ‘Manet, Monet and Impressionism’, and now we are into more familiar territory. We have Renoirs and Berthe Morisot’s Summer’s Day (1879) where two women relax in a boat on a river. Edouard Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian (1867-8) is a reconstructed canvas. It’s pretty big and shows the firing squad preparing for their mission – all we see of the victim himself is his hand.

Claude-Oscar Monet’s The Beach at Trouville (1870) proves his open-air style. In the sketch of his wife and a friend, grains of sand and shell are embedded in the paint surface. There is also one of his Gare St-Lazare (1877) paintings – of which there are twelve painted from the same spot, capturing the light at different times of the day.

A woman delivers beer to men watching a dancer on stage in Edouard Manet’s Corner of a Café-Concert (1877-80). Her attention is diverted by something off to the side of the canvas and she is looking in completely the opposite direction from everyone else – we wonder what has caught her eye.

Gustave Caillebotte’s A Man at His Bath (1884) is a fascinating study, as I realise there aren’t so many paintings of the male figure – it was considered not as acceptable as images of naked women. Interestingly, when I try to buy a postcard of this painting, there are none for sale. Plus ça change... The catalogue notes explain, ‘The male nude is a relatively infrequent subject in late nineteenth-century painting. The matter-of-fact presentation of the figure here, drying himself after emerging from the bath and leaving wet footprints on the floor of his Parisian apartment is particularly rare. Also unexpected is the painting’s larger-than-life scale.’

Monet’s work is still brilliant, whether his irises, poplars, Venice or Le Havre. The Snow Scene at Argenteuil (1875) evokes a cold winter atmosphere through a steely palette of blues, greys and occasional sharp accents of colour which give the painting depth. His water lilies and Japanese bridge are represented by paintings from 1924 and 1926 shortly before his death – his loss of eyesight led to thick foliage and strikingly bold greens where the ‘paint handling is particularly free’.

I like Alfred Sisley’s View of the Thames: Charring Cross Bridge (1874), with the boats on the water framed by the city sky-line, all rendered with his short stroke technique and ‘nervy brushwork’. Camille Pissarro’s Portrait of Felix Pissarro (1881) is a portrait of his third son when he was seven years old (the son, not the artist) wearing a red beret against a green background – it’s a great colour contrast.

We have now move on to ‘Beyond Impressionism’ apparently, with Pissarro, Seurat and others who adopted the pointillist style – notably Alfred William Finch who paints an austere scene in The Channel at Nieuport (1889) in which the water and sky meld almost imperceptibly into one to exude an atmosphere of emptiness and silence. Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Lake Keitele (1905) is a more naturalistic painting of a lake just north of Helsinki.

Theo van Rysselberghe uses simple colours to big effect in his pointillist homage, A Coastal Scene (1898). George Seurat’s Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp (1885) is a study of a promontory with birds and boats in the background. Even the borders are done in his dotty discipline.

I am reunited with Pierre Auguste Renoir’s At the Theatre (1876-7). I love this painting – the isolation of the young girl and her chaperone in the theatre box are the focus rather than the action on stage. Camille Pissarro’s shimmering brushwork and eclectic use of colour are evident in The Little Country Maid (1882) and The Pork Butcher (1883).

Paul Cezanne is also a master of colour and he broke away from the Impressionists with his use of colour rather than light to convey form. Examples include An Old Woman with a Rosary (1895-6); The Painter’s Father, Louis Auguste Cezanne (1862); The Store in the Studio (late 1860s) and Self Portrait (1880) in which he experiments with geometric structure and blocks of colour. Bathers (1888-1905) is outlined in blue to accentuate the serenity of the scene.

This room also contains work by Edouard Vuillard – The Earthenware Pot (1895) contains dots and dashes and such deep reds and bright flowers that the image of women sewing is like a lacquered vase itself.

Naturally Van Gogh is represented here, by Van Gogh’s Chair (1888) and Sunflowers (1888), but also by the less familiar Long Grass with Butterflies (1890), A Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889) and – a new favourite of mine – Two Crabs (1889).

I hear people with their banal comments on art appreciation: ‘I just love pointillism; it’s so aggravating’; ‘She must have sat still for hours’; ‘Fantastico!’; ‘That’s amazing, but where would you put it in your house?’; Parent to child – ‘His paintings are worth millions.’ Child – ‘Really?’ Another parent to another child – ‘Can you see the sunflowers?’

In the ‘Degas and Art around 1900’ room there are (obviously) pastels by Degas of dancers, ballerinas and peasants. I particularly like Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879) as she spins from her teeth, high in the air, unsupported by anything but a rope. We also have Klimt, more from Edouard Vuillard, and Surprised! (1891) by Henri Rousseau. By placing the trees along a diagonal axis he has conveyed a sense of wind in spite of the painting’s static and naive style. (‘See the tiger?’)

Artistic Merit

I have a morning in London to play with but I also have bags that I don’t want to carry around with me all day, so I decide to go to the National Gallery, check them into the cloakroom and admire some art. The building itself with its high cupola ceilings exudes calm and a sense of peace in one of the busiest cities in the world. I head for the 18th to early 20th Century paintings, as I know I’m not interested in fat Italian cherubs or dark Dutch masters.

Straight away I am impressed by Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice (1751) by Pietro Longhi. It really is a spectacle as the masked ladies stand out against the bare background. The keeper holds the rhino’s severed horn drawing attention to the degradation and suffering inflicted in the name of beauty and exoticism.

I’ve never admired Canaletto particularly so this is something of a conversion for me as I gaze at his massive canvases. Venice: A Regatta on the Grand Canal (circa 1740) is busy with gondolas and spectators – many wearing masks for the carnival. His handling of perspective is masterful, as it is in Venice: The Upper Reaches of the Grand Canal with Saint Simeone Piccolo (circa 1738) with its incredible use of light, reflections and ripples on the water. It is full of detail, right to the corners of the canvas. So too, Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day (1740) in which Canaletto captures all the glittering excess of the festival to commemorate the marriage of Venice to the sea. I am now a fan. It’s a sort of awakening – no reproductions can do these justice.

Moving through to British portraits and Hogarth and British painting we get a more austere approach. Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode series (1743) introduces a novel mode in painting as it depicts a state of debauchery and poverty arising from a loveless marriage – is it satire or simple moralising? Thomas Gainsborough painted fashionable members of society in landscape settings, hence Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748-9) who look perfectly smug and self-satisfied seated outdoors with bonnet and gundog.

Joseph Mallord William Turner paints large skies and scenes full of drama. I prefer his train to his ships, but The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken up (1838) was voted the greatest painting in Britain (despite its un-snappy title) in a Radio 4 Today/ National Gallery poll. Among the atmospheric studies of mist and cloud is Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway (1844) supposedly painted of a train crossing a bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead. A small hare (which I’ve never noticed before) runs for cover in front of the train. Earlier works, such as Calais Pier (1803) and Dutch Boats in a Gale (The Bridgewater Sea Piece) (1801) also focus on dramatic seas but with far more definition.

Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ studies the effects of light and shade heightened by candlelight in An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768). As a cockatoo is killed in the name of science, the tender-hearted children are upset. The moon breaks from behind the clouds and the scientist’s gaze is directed squarely at us – no one else’s is.

The commanding life-sized painting Whistlejacket (1762) was painted by George Stubbs for the racehorse’s owner – the second Marquess of Rockingham. His interest in classical sculpture may have inspired the unusual presentation of the Arabian stallion with its superb proportions and beautiful appearance against a blank background.

Back to Hogarth with his moral interpretations: The Graham Children (1742) features a cluster of infants including a baby, being pulled in a cart, who was dead before the painting was finished. The inclusion of a cat watching a bird and a statue of Father Time with a scythe draws attention to the fact that life is fleeting.

Constable is represented by several paintings – Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831); The Haywain (1821); The Cornfield (1826) amongst others. He revels in landscape and clouds, capturing the immediacy of effects produced by light and weather. I’m not a great admirer, but my favourite would have to be The Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1833-6) where a stag stands in the foreground of an autumn scene before a monument to Sir Joshua Reynolds, flanked by busts of Michelangelo and Raphael.

Another section focuses on 'The Academy' and the pictures they presented along their rules. I like the light and shadows in Honoré-Victorin Daumier’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (circa 1855), also in Theodore Gericault’s A Shipwreck (1817-18) in which the light and shade plays on the muscles of a man as he emerges naked, exhausted and dripping wet from the sea, clinging to a rock. Gustave Courbet’s Beach Scene (1874) is a study of clouds and atmospheric light, while Afternoon in the Tuileries Gardens (1867) shows off Adolph Menzel’s famous attention to detail in the depiction of a lively crowd.

Monsieur de Norrins (1811-12) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres stands out with his inscrutable expression. The subject was the chief of police in Napoleonic Rome; he is censorious with a hint of amusement – is this disapproval with slight admirations? Max Liebermann’s Memorial Service for Kaiser Friedrich at Kosen (1888-9) is striking for its sombre mood of mourners in a forest among the beech trees, all clad in black which highlights the blond-haired children.

Refer to Sender

The other day someone asked me if I knew a good builder I could recommend. Builders, car mechanics, hairdressers and dentists belong to a specific set of people: you put trust in them although you may know nothing about them personally, and it doesn't matter if you like them socially or not.

They are not chosen to be your friend; but they are your confidant. They know that beauty is only skin deep and what things really look like under your bonnet. If you get a good one you trust their judgement implicitly: can I tear down that wall; can you fix my handbrake; will I suit red hair; should I get my teeth pulled out?

If you have a bad experience your faith is shaken so badly it may take years to repair. I have a friend who has a pathological fear of hairdressers (apparently there is an official term for this - weaslaphobia) after what she shudderingly refers to only as 'the perm incident'. I think it happened about 20 years ago, but she still doesn't like to talk about it.

So if you can get a friend to recommend one of these contemporary shamen it gives you an added confidence in their services. But what happens if you don't like them? Does that then reflect badly on the referee? Does this mean you no longer trust their judgment? How much responsibility should be attached to a recommendation?

The same is true of books, films and theatre. If someone whose opinion I value recommends something that I think is awful, do I think less of them? Do they do the same regarding me? My dad used to say film recommendations from my aunt were uniformly reliable because he was guaranteed to dislike anything she championed and vice-versa.

I used to work in a book shop and I still regularly review books, film and theatre for national media. I know that a critical review is just one person's opinion, but if it has influence then it has importance. I have a friend (Our Gracious Hostess) whose recommendations have never been wrong. My mum's are pretty solid too - with the glaring exception of Jane Austen. It's a lot to live up to, but they take their responsibilty as seriously as I do. Maybe we're reading too much into it, but these are referrals on which I know I can rely, which is comforting in these uncertain times.

And incidentally, I know a pretty fine lift engineer/ electrician, but I'm not sharing!

Freedom at what price?

Earlier this week we received the good news that Nobel Peace Laureat Aung San Suu Kyi was released from the house arrest under which she has spent 15 of the past 21 years. This is not the end, however. The country in which she lives is ruled by a military junta which flagrantly breaks the Geneva Convention and routinely lists killings, torture, rape, destruction and appropriation of property, and taking of hostages among its violation of human rights and crimes against humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi has much Western backing, and support for her has become symbolic with the struggle to protect democracy and freedom of the individual. She has been released before. In 1995 she was released only to be attacked and there are fears that a similar thing could happen again. She may be out of 'custody' but as long as she speaks out against the abuse of human rights she is not safe. She also argues that she is not free.

"If my people are not free, how can you say I am free? We are none of us free."

Immediately Aung San Suu Kyi wants to work to free the more than 2,100 political prisoners still being held by the Burmese regime. Her intention is to gain global support and bring their plight to interantional attention. "This is a time for Burma when we need help. We need everybody to help in this venture. Western nations, eastern nations, all nations."

She displays an exemplary love of her country despite the treatment she has received and says of her captors, "I think we will have to sort out our differences across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree, or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our disagreement." We can only wish that others around the world were more rational and less bent on revenge.

In a speech of which a trade unionist would be proud, she said, "There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal." Crucially this assumes that we all have the same goal. Unfortunately while some seek personal advancement at all costs, and inevitably the expenxse of others, this can never be the case.

Dry Stone Walls

When people ask me (as they invariably do) what I miss about England, I respond; family, friends and football - in no particular order. I also miss English drama, comedy, theatre, sense of humour, beer and pubs. There are also certain things that have the capacity to make me homesick, but I never knew that the Public Footpath Network and dry stone walls were among them. It seems I am not alone in this.

When I posted photos of my trip home on My Week in Pictures, the Weevil told me it was those very walls that made her want to go home. So this is for her:

Geological Geometry

Grey lines dissect the green hills,

Marking out history with geological geometry.

Where the softer South grows hedges,

The stony North builds walls

To separate the sheep from the goats;

The cows from the arable crops;

The personal profits from the fallow fields.

There are stories in stones;

Placed by hands imparting human shape to the landscape

Following the contours of ancient shifts and rifts;

Settling the wrangles of nosy neighbours

And stopping the stock from wandering;

Retaining plain sailing on rolling pastures

Layering parallel lines with through stones.

Boundaries of boulders to guide and direct;

Selecting the right path and bypassing the pitfalls,

With occasional bolt holes to squeeze through

And narrate a particular past

Without words to cement sentences:

Two stones above a stone

And one above two.



 

 

 

Big Foot Strikes Again!

Recently the New Zealand media has been awash with hysteria over The Hobbit. Because some actors who were part of the union dared to ask for comparable wages with their American counterparts for doing the same job in the same conditions on the same film, the executives at Warner Brothers threatened to take the film off-shore. Suggestions were Poland or Czechoslovakia, because it’s cheaper. There was outcry.

This did lead to some interesting asides as an article in The Guardian speculated where certain scenes might be located if set in Britain (let’s not forget; where the book was originally written). The Shire is described thus; ‘Tranquil and pastoral, the Shire is home to the Hobbits, a bizarre race of tiny, shoeless, greedy, pipe-smoking, badly dressed little men and matronly wives.’ The suggested location was therefore Luton town centre. The forum was opened up to the public to propose where they would shoot The Hobbit – the first answer was, ‘I would shoot the hobbit in the face’. My, how I laughed.

According to some sections of the population The Hobbit can be set nowhere but New Zealand, never mind the fact that JRR Tolkien never even visited here. For a nation that has been proudly churning out ‘New Zealand-made’ garments from sweat-shops in China for years because it’s cheaper, the righteous indignation feels a little hollow. These are probably the same people who illegally download films and music, thereby killing the performance industry to save themselves a few dollars.

Many extras and people who don’t actually make a living through acting are claiming, ‘I’d do it free’. How helpful is that really? For some reason many sections of society seem to think that because actors love their job, they should be paid a starvation existence, if at all. I’m not sure I follow this argument – are we saying that lawyers and surgeons hate their work? After all, no one expects them to work for free.

It seems that the nation has finally woke up to the fact that people don’t adore them the way they think – they just use them because their labour is often cheaper than in other (generally unionised – i.e. fairly paid) countries. So I woke up one morning last week to find that John ‘I made fifty million pounds out of screwing people like you’ Key has changed the labour laws overnight, and denied one of the workers’ primary rights – that of collective bargaining. Yes, you read that right: 300 years of workers’ rights sold to Warner Brothers. It may not be Mickey Mouse, but it’s certainly goofy.

Corporate greed triumphs once again, as you would expect from the despicable I’m Alright Jack politics that epitomised the Thatcher era (during which this particular Jack made his millions), but the fact that a Prime Minister can directly intervene in a commercial venture and bribe a company to come to his country (Warner Brothers will receive $25 million in tax breaks) so it receives worldwide exposure is disgraceful. New Zealand scenery will once again be on the big screen and it will do wonders for the tourism industry (the same Guardian article points out that, ‘prior to those films it was just bungee jumping and binge drinking, but now the spectacular scenery is its own selling point’), but the actors will leave. He has made sure of that.

When all that is left are right-wing propaganda mainstream X-box American remakes in ten years time, people who voted for this slippery snake will have only themselves to blame. I will be boycotting the film of The Hobbit when it finally comes out, even if it does star Richard Armitage. Admittedly, I am only one person and will not make much of an impact on the American/oops, I mean New Zealand (there appears to be little difference) dollar, but like the actors who fought for their rights I am prepared to stand by my beliefs. (Plus The Hobbit is one of only two books I have ever started and not finished out of sheer boredom.)

Meanwhile in France, such things would not pass without a ripple. President Sarkozy’s attempt to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 drew mass protests and strike action from the workers. It was said to cost the national economy €400 million a day and yet 70% of people supported the unions who called for these strikes. Jean-Luc Hacquart, a representative of the CGT union in Paris (Confédération générale du travail) – the strongest union in France – said (albeit doubtless in French),

"Democracy is not a carte blanche given to people to do what they want between elections. It doesn’t work like that."

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” If only people were less apathetic and more socially minded in this country, the hard-fought rights of the workers would be safeguarded rather than tossed aside for the benefit of a group of hairy-footed cellar dwellers. I mean the fictional hobbits – what were you thinking?