Art & Photography

Monday, 16 March 2015

Richard Diebenkorn - Royal Academy

Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #57, 1955

Richard Diebenkorn is at the Royal Academy of Arts until 7 June 2015.

I had looked forward to this exhibition: I was not disappointed. In fact, my expectations were exceeded: this is a terrific show.

I have, until now, had little opportunity to see Diebenkorn's work: despite his high standing in the US and his place in the histories of modern art (see, eg, Robert Hughes' Shock of the New (1980) pp159-60) he is, I believe, represented in the UK only by a single print in the Tate. Perhaps, for this reason his unfamiliar work seems so fresh.

As this modestly scaled exhibition makes clear, Diebenkorn began as an abstract painter, turned to figuration, and then turned again to abstraction and to what is generally regarded as the apotheosis of his career: the Ocean Park series. Somewhat to my surprise I particularly liked the middle period figurative work. However, all the work is marked by a finely tuned judgement, a precise balance of colour and form. Beautiful.

Read reviews by Laura Cumming, Richard Dorment, Jackie Wullschlager and Robin Greenwood.

Click on images to enlarge.

Richard Diebenkorn, Albuquerque #4, 1951

Richard Diebenkorn, Seated Man, 1956

Richard Diebenkorn, Woman by the Ocean, 1956

Richard Diebenkorn, Girl on a Terrace, 1956

Richard Diebenkorn, Seawall, 1957

Richard Diebenkorn, Scissors, 1959

Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1, 1963

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #43, 1971

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #79, 1975

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #116, 1979

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Richard Long - Alan Cristea Gallery

Richard Long, Fingers on Fire, 2014 (2 panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long: The Spike Island Tapes is at Alan Cristea Gallery until 2 April 2015.
This is exciting. Richard Long has made a series of big prints, many in uncharacteristically vibrant colours. They are carborundum relief prints - as I understand it, a carborundum paste is (in this case) spread by hand onto 4 x 8 foot aluminium plates, sometimes with areas masked out; the paste dries to a rock hard textured surface which is inked, then wiped so that the ink remains within the texture; prints are then taken onto damp watercolour paper. The large sheets are then hung, sometimes combined to form 2, 3 or 4 panel pctures. Impressive stuff.
Click on images to enlarge.

Richard Long, Honky Tonk Women, 2014 (single panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long, Missippi River Blues, 2014 (4 panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long, Black Mountain Rag, 2014 (3 panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long, Simple Twist of Fate, 2014 (2 panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long, Sweet Old World, 2014 (Single panel carborundum relief)

Richard Long, The Spike Island Tapes, 2015, installation view)

Richard Long, Guitats, Cadillacs, 2014 (2 panel carborundum relief)

Frank Stella - RA Courtyard

Frank Stella's Inflated Star and Wooden Star is on display in the Royal Academy's Annenberg Courtyard until 12 May 2015.
Stella's 7 metre high, teak and aluminium sculpture is a recent work (2014) by one of the major artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Now 79, Stella was, in 1970, the youngest artist ever to be accorded a retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A major lifetime retrospective will be held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the autumn of 2015.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

Marlene Dumas - Tate Modern

Marlene Dumas, Evil is Banal, 1984

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden is at Tate Modern until 10 May 2015.
Marlene Dumas is one of the most interesting painters working today, and this is the first opportunity to see a substantial exhibition of her work in the UK.
Dumas' style is very distinctive: her oil paintings, principally of faces and bodies, typically worked from photographic sources, have the delicacy of watercolours, at once ethereal yet forcefully present. As Adrian Searle puts it, The images coalesce out of almost nothing. Her themes are intimate and compelling: sex, death and politics, love and shame. However, the pictures are not weighted with earnest messages, rather they intrigue and disturb. Exciting stuff.
Read an article by Rachel Cooke and reviews by Adrian Searle, Laura Cumming, Karen Wright, Alastair Smart, Martin Gayford, Waldemar Januszczak, Emily Spicer, Jackie Wullschlager, Ben Luke, Roderick Conway Morris. Watch a short video of Dumas in conversation with Adrian Searle and of Dumas taking about Rejects.
Click on images to enlarge.

Marlene Dumas, The Painter, 1994

Marlene Dumas, Helena's Dream, 2008

Marlene Dumas, The White Disease, 1985

Marlene Dumas, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 2008

Marlene Dumas, Scope Magazine Pin-up, 1973

Marlene Dumas, The Kiss, 2003

Marlene Dumas, Out of Africa, 2006

Marlene Dumas, Lucy, 2004

Marlene Dumas, Waiting (For Meaning), 1988

Marlene Dumas, from Rejects, 1994-2002

Sunday, 22 February 2015

Sotto Voce - Dominique Lévy

Ben Nicholson, 1936 (White Relief), 1936

Sotto Voce is at Dominique Lévy until 18 April 2015.
Sotto Voce, the second exhibition at Dominique Lévy looks to be as aesthetically thrilling as the first (see below). All the pieces in this show are abstract white reliefs - exhibited on grey walls. Artists featured include: Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, Fausto Melotti, Günther Uecker, Luis Tomasello, Sergio Camargo and Mira Schendel.

Despite the seeming limitation of an exhibition consisting entirely of white monochromes, the works, which broadly span the period from the 1930s to the 1970s, demonstrate a rich range of tone (from spiritual harmony to unsettling aggression) and aesthetic affiliation ranging from Surrealism (Arp), to Constructivism (Nicholson), to Spatialism and the Zero Group (Manzoni, Fontana, Uecker).
Read articles by Sarah Kent, Wessie Du Toit and Natalia Rachlin.