Crucible 2 - Gloucester Cathedral (Part 2)

John Hoskin, Cantilever Square, Welded Steel

Crucible 2 is at Gloucester Cathedral until 31 October 2014.
Some supplementary images to main blog entry here. Click on images to enlarge.

Ralph Brown, Pomona, Bronze

John Buck, Underdog, Bronze and Lead

Ann Christopher, Split Shadow, Plaster

Nigel Hall, Southern Shade III, MDF

Marcus Harvey, Victoria, Bronze

Steve Hurst, Gloucester in Berlin, Bronze, Steel and Wood (detail)

Alistair Mackie,  Untitled (Sphere),  Mouse Skulls, Wood and Glass

Jordi Raga, Thames, Marble

Peter Randall-Page, Maquette for Seed, Bronze

On Kawara, 1933 - 2014

SEPT. 9, 2014
I GOT UP AT 6.50 A.M.
I AM STILL ALIVE

ON KAWARA IS [NOT] STILL ALIVE.
HE WAS ALIVE FOR 29,771 DAYS (APPROX.)

"Each Date Painting in his Today series, the magnum opus that he began in 1966, is a monochrome field on which is written the date the painting was executed, in the language and according to the calendar of the country where Kawara was at the time. If he does not complete a painting by midnight, he destroys it. Some days he makes two paintings; very occasionally, he makes three; but most days he makes none.

"Every painting in the series conforms to one of eight sizes, all horizontal in orientation, ranging from eight by ten inches to sixty-one by eighty-nine inches. For every painting the artist mixes the paint afresh, so that the color of each is unique. Tonalities in the brown-gray and blue-black range have dominated the last decades. Four or five coats of acrylic are evenly applied to the canvas, creating a dense matte surface. Letters, numbers, and punctuation marks are then built up by hand, rather than with the aid of stencils. Initially he used an elongated Gill Sans typeface, later a quintessentially modernist Futura. Variations in the letters or hues are of no symbolic significance, nor is the choice of a work’s color more connotative than its measurements." (Dia Art Foundation)

 
On Kawara was born 2 January 1933 and died June or July 2014.  Read obituaries by Jonathan Watkins and Roberta Smith.

Crucible 2 - Gloucester Cathedral

Lynn Chadwick, Jubilee IV, Bronze

Crucible 2 is at Gloucester Cathedral until 31 October 2014.
It's a tough gig exhibiting modern British sculpture in the glorious Gothic setting of Gloucester Cathedral; however, Gallery Pangolin  (the exhibiting arm of the sculpture foundry, Pangolin Editions, in Chalford, near Stroud) has taken on the challenge for a second time  (the first Crucible exhibition was in 2010) - and it (mostly) works.
100 sculptures by 61 artists are distributed in and around the Cathedral. Fittingly, work by Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003), effectively greets visitors to the Cathedral and exhibition (see above). Chadwick, (whose centenary year this is) not only had strong local connections - he lived at Lypiatt Park, near Stroud - but was instrumental in the origins of Pangolin Editions: Chadwick had a small foundry at Lypiatt Park and in 1981 employed Rungwe Kingdon, fresh from Art School in Cheltenham, to run it. In 1987 Kingdon and his wife Claudia Koenig established a commercial foundry on an industrial estate in Chalford and have since grown an international reputation for casting sculpture. (See Birks, Tony (1998) The Alchemy of Sculpture, Pangolin Editions) 
Chadwick is in the company of an impressive list of names including Anthony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Henry Moore, David Nash, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Tucker, Gavin Turk and others.
There is a lot to see - some is a bit sentimental, some a little kitsch, but overall it is a pretty impressive display. I haven't seen it all yet but below is a sample (in alphabetical order) from my first visit. See Part 2 for some supplementary images. (Personal favourites, so far: John Hoskin and Sarah Lucas.) Click on images to enlarge.

Anthony Abrahams, Man with Raised Arm, Marble

Bruce Beasley, Breakout II, Bronze

Daniel Chadwick, Constellation 2014, Stainless steel, acrylic sheet, motor and timer

Lynn Chadwick, Sitting Couple on Bench, Stainless steeel

Michael Cooper,  Snail, Bronze

Steve Dilworth, Owl, Oak, horn and enclosed owl

Anthony Gormley, Pose, Cast iron

Damien Hirst, Anatomy of an Angel (Black), (detail), Bronze

John Hoskin, Cantilever Square, Welded steel

Sarah Lucas, Nahuiollin, Bronze

Charles Lutyens, Outraged Christ, Wood

William Tucker, Emperor, Bronze

Gavin Turk, Nomad, Bronze

Malevich - Tate Modern

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, '1913'/1915

Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art is at Tate Modern until 26 October 2014.
In his very entertaining book, 1913: The Year  before the Storm, Florian Illies cites that year as the zero point of modern art:
"In December 1913 the first 'ready-made', the bicycle wheel on a wooden stool, is turning at the hand of Marcel Duchamp in Paris, while the first 'Black Square' comes into being in Moscow - the twin starting-points of modern art... We should always think of the 'Black Square' when we think of 1913." (Illies (2013) p247)
However, the precise dating of 'Black Square' is tricky: the image above appears on the Tate's website and is labelled 1913 - but, most accounts (including the Tate's) state that Malevich actually painted the first Black Square in 1915 and subsequent versions in 1923 and 1929 and a final one possibly in the early 30s which was dated '1913'! Malevich's rationale for the latter move was that the idea was conceived in 1913 - and, indeed, his 1913 stage designs for the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun do anticipate the iconic Black Square.

Kazimir Malevich, Stage design for 'Victory over the Sun', 1913

Today, a century on (give or take a year!), Duchamp's and Malevich's radical gestures are still provocative, even if familarity has dulled their shock value. While Duchamp and Malevich can, I think, be justly seen as key figures of the radicalism in modern art, even they were responding in different ways to the innovations of Picasso's and Braque's Cubism (c.1908-14).
This exhibition presents an overview of Malevich's remarkably varied and radical work - he, effectively, worked through the avant-garde styles of the early 20th century - Fauvism, Futurism, Cubism - before arriving at the revolutionary, abstract style he called Suprematism, launched at the "0.10" exhibition in Petrograd in December 1915. Malevich later returned to figuration in the 1920s.
Read reviews by Laura Cumming,  Adrian Searle, Waldemar Januszczak, Andrew Lambirth, Claudia Pritchard, and an article by Frances Spalding: Kazimir Malevich:The Man Who Liberated Painting.

Kazimir Malevich,  Self-Portrait, 1908-10

Kazimir Malevich,  Shroud of Christ, 1908

Kazimir Malevich,  The Woodcutter, 1912

Kazimir Malevich,  Englishman in Moscow, 1914

View of "0.10" exhibition in Petrograd, 1915

Kazimir Malevich,  Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions), 1915

Kazimir Malevich,  Suprematist Painting (with Black Trapezium and Red Square), 1915

Kazimir Malevich,  White on White, 1918

Kazimir Malevich,  Woman Worker, 1933

Kazimir Malevich,  Self-Portrait, 1933

Where Were You? - Lisson Gallery

The Mekons, 1978: Where were you?

When I was waiting in a bar, where were you?
When I was buying you a drink, where were you?
When I was crying at home in bed, where were you?
When I watched you from a distance did you see me?
You were standing in a queue did you see me?
You had yellow hair, did you see me?
I want to talk to you all night, do you like me?
I want to find out about your life, do you like me?
Could you ever be my wife, do you love me?

Great band, great song. Listen here.
Where were you?, at the Lisson Gallery until 23 August 2014, explicitly takes its title from the Mekon's song. To be honest, I am not exactly clear about the connection between the song and the 'post-Minimalist' work on show which is described as follows:
"a group show of paintings, prints, relief objects and works on canvas that seem to require minimal intervention on the artists’ behalf, but actually belie the often complex ideas or extended periods of time spent contemplating, reworking and refining these processes... Where Were You? focuses on the work of nine artists, five of which have not shown in the UK before. Each of them articulates a minimalist aesthetic through abstraction, repetition or interruptions in surface and structure, foregrounding the intention, scale and execution of their gestures as both subjects for their work and as performative records of transient actions or incomplete thoughts." (Lisson Gallery)

Where Were You?, installation at Lisson Gallery

Of the artists featured - Allora & Calzadilla, Cory Arcangel, N. Dash, Robert Janitz, Paulo Monteiro, David Ostrowski, Michael Rey, Julia Rommel, Dan Shaw-Town  only the wonderfully named Cory Arcangel (see below) is at all familiar to me. But I like the sound of what they do - and I love the Mekons' song, so I am looking forward to this. 

Images below are 'illustrative', ie not necessarilly work in the exhibition.

Allora & Calzadilla

Allora & Calzadilla, Shape Shifter, 2013 (sandpaper on canvas)

 Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel, Photoshop CS: 84 by 66 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, sqaure pixels, default gradient "Blue, Red, Yellow", mousedown y=2300 x=8600, mouseup y=2600 x=8600, 2011 (Chromogenic print)

 N. Dash

N. Dash, installation view (2012) at Untitled, New York

 Robert Janitz

Robert Janitz, Machaco, 2012

 Paulo Monteiro

Paulo Monteiro, installation view in Sao Paolo

David Ostrowski

David Ostrowski, F (Dann lieber nein),2011

Michael Rey

Michael Rey, [title unknown], 2014

Julia Rommel

Julia Rommel, Big Soda, 2012

Dan Shaw-Town

Dan Shaw-Town, Untitled, 2011 (Graphite and spray enamel on paper with metal grommets)