Joseph Cornell - Royal Academy

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy), 1942-52

Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust is at the Royal Academy until 27 September 2015.
I love Joseph Cornell's work even though it is rich in qualities that I generally dislike or resist (in art and in life): whimsy, sentimentality, nostalgia, fantasy, surrealism. However, there is a poetry in the best of his work which completely transcends those tropes. His boxed (sometimes 'caged') assemblages of found objects - balls, bottles, feathers, shells, maps, photographs - achieve a deeply affecting melancholy and mystery which make them much more interesting than the sum of their parts. Film stars and faces from Renaissance paintings trapped in arcane 'slot machines' gaze out sadly; maps, souvenirs and labels evoke the romance and 'memory' of foreign travel never taken. Assembled by a shy man, who lived at the gloriously named Utopia Parkway (New York), these objects constitute a remarkable and visionary body of work.
Read a feature article by Olivia Laing and reviews by Laura Cumming, Alastair Sooke, Martin Gayford, Rachel Cooke and Jonathan Jones.
Click on images to enlarge; NB images have been selected before visiting the exhibition so may not all be included in the show.

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Soap Bubble Set), 1936

Joseph Cornell, Tilly Losch, c1935

Joseph Cornell, L'Egypte de Mlle Cléo de Mérode, cours élémentaire d'histoire naturelle, 1940

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), 1945-46

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Medici Princess), c1948

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Medici Prince), c1952

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (The Hotel Eden), c1945

Joseph Cornell, Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery, 1943

Joseph Cornell, Toward the "Blue Peninsular", 1951-52

Postcard from Anglesey: Anthony Garratt

Anthony Garratt, Black Point Toll, 2015 (The view to Puffin Island from Penmon)

A recent flying visit to Anglesey was enlivened by the discovery of Anthony Garratt’s installation of landscape paintings in the landscape itself. Four such works have been positioned around the coast facing north, south, east and west (see here for precise locations). The paintings were executed on site and mounted onto robust steel structures. They have been in place since March and will remain, exposed to the elements, until October. (The contributions of seagulls were, in places, hard to distinguish from the artist’s gestural splatters.) 
I got to see 3 of the works (south, east and west) and rather enjoyed the experience.
(Click on images to enlarge.)

View to the east: to Puffin Island from Penmon.

Anthony Garratt, Black Point Toll, 2015
(The view to Puffin Island from Penmon)

Anthony Garratt, Black Point Toll, 2015 (detail)
(The view to Puffin Island from Penmon)

 View to the south: across the Menai Straits to Snowdonia and Caernarfon Castle

Anthony Garratt, [A View to Caernarfon Castle], 2015

Anthony Garratt, [A View to Caernarfon Castle], 2015 (detail)

Anthony Garratt, view of the steel support structure for [A View to Caernarfon Castle], 2015

View to the west: from Rhoscolyn

Anthony Garratt, Rhoscolyn, 2015

I didn't get to see the fourth picture, the view to the north from Lligwy towards Ynas Dulas. The photograph below is by Richard Broomhall.

Anthony Garratt, [Lligwy], 2015 (photo. by Richard Broomhall)

Postcard from Newport (Mon.)

Newport Transporter Bridge viewed from below.

I grew up just down the A48 from Newport (in Chepstow) and have always had a fondness for the town, immortalised in the wonderful video Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind). However, my teenage memories of the town don’t really extend much beyond browsing pop albums in the W.H. Smiths basement and knowing that Newport was the ‘Home of the Mole Wrench’*.  Since then I have passed through it many times, mostly on the M4, where the principal impressions are made by the looming hilltop mass of Celtic Manor Resort and the excitement of the Brynglas tunnels, which (according to Wikipedia) were "the first tunnels in the British motorway network and are still the only bored tunnels". So it was with considerable pleasure that I joined a day-long expedition of Newport with the C20 Society - expertly led by Judi Loach.
(NB click on images to enlarge.)

Highlights of the day included:
Newport Civic Centre

Designed by Cecil Howitt, construction of the Civic Centre was begun in 1937, but suspended at the outbreak of War; building recommenced in 1950, but the clock tower was not begun until 1963 - and then despite a public vote objecting to its cost. Our visit was principally to see the suite of murals by Hans Feibusch (assisted by Phyllis Bray) executed between 1961 and 1964. The murals tell the story of local history. We were subsequently privileged to view a portfolio of Feibusch's original drawings and cartoons for the murals held at Newport Art Gallery.

Hans Feibusch, murals at Newport Civic Centre: (l to r) The Burning of Newport Castle, The Battle of Agincourt, The Surrender of Raglan Castle, 1961-4

Hans Feibusch, The Battle of Agincourt, (detail of murals at Newport Civic Centre), 1961-4

Hans Feibusch, Steelworks, (detail of murals at Newport Civic Centre), 1961-4

Hans Feibusch, The Building of the George Street Bridge, (detail of murals at Newport Civic Centre), 1961-4

Odeon Cinema
An excellent example of Art Deco cinema architecture by Harry Weedon and Arthur J. Price, built 1937-38

Harry Weedon, Odeon Cinema, Newport, 1937-8

Harry Weedon, Odeon Cinema, Newport, 1937-8 (detail)

Newport Transporter Bridge
This was a real treat! The bridge, opened in 1906, is beautiful - much more slender and delicate that I had imagined from seeing it in the distance. It was thrilling to climb up the tower and walk across the upper deck looking down to the River Usk below, descend on the other side, and return as a passenger on the suspended 'gondola'. Wonderful.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

View across the upper deck - walkways are to the right and left.

View up river from upper deck - click on image to see full width

View down river from upper deck - click on image to see full width

Belle Vue Park
A public park laid out in 1892-4 to designs by Thomas Mawson, featuring an elegant Edwardian pavillion and conservatory, and a bandstand.

View of Newport Transporter Bridge from the terrace at Belle Vue Park

The expedition also included visits to the Church of Sts. Julian & Aaron, Holy Trinity Church, Christchurch, and Duffryn housing estate.
Thanks to the C20 Society and Judi Loach, in particular, for a splendid day.

* For what seemed like years (back in the late 1960s/early 1970s?) all local letters were franked by the Post Office with the legend Newport (Mon) The Home of the Mole Wrench; I had no idea what a Mole Wrench was. Evidently, it is a self-grip wrench (allegedly) invented by Thomas Coughtrie in 1955 and manufactured by M.K. Mole and Son, based, from 1960, in Newport.

Philip Guston - Timothy Taylor

Philip Guston, Head and Bottle, 1975

Philip Guston is at Timothy Taylor until 11 July 2015.
What an extraordinary painter Philip Guston was. Born in 1913 he was of the same generation as Jackson Pollock - in fact he and Pollock became friends when they studied at the same college in the late 1920s - and, like Pollock, Guston became a successful and respected Abstract Expressionist in the 1950s. Yet in the 1960s he abandoned abstraction in favour of figuration, deploying a completely original, seemingly crude, cartoon-like iconography of clocks, bottles, shoes, light bulbs, books and paint brushes, and a one-eyed, disembodied head - taken to represent the artist himself. It is hard now to appreciate what a brave, even outrageous, move this was - Peter Schjeldahl writing in 1984 recalled his own response: "I hated it. It seemed a rank indecency, a profanation, a joke in the worst conceivable taste". As he further recounts, gradually "my resistance disintegrated, and the very paintings I had abhorred started giving me surges of pleasure ." Guston is a 'painter's painter' - the eyes of those  to whom I mentioned this show lit up when they heard his name; Schjeldahl, again: "The paint-handling is beautiful, with a beauty that in the comfortless context [of the iconography] is heartbreaking." Guston eventually became a key influence on a generation of 'neo-expressionists' emerging in the 1980s.
This small show brings together some wonderful paintings, including a late abstraction - Traveler III, and some very fine examples of his 'neo-expressionist' work from 1969 up to 1979 (Guston died in 1980) and a selection of ink and charcoal drawings.
Read reviews by Adrian Searle and Fisun Güner.
(Peter Schjeldahl quotes are from his essay on Guston in "Art of Our Time: The Saatchi Collection", vol.3, London: Lund Humphries (1984), pp12-13)

Philip Guston, Traveler III, 1959-60

Philip Guston, The Hill, 1971

Philip Guston, Frame, 1976

Philip Guston, Story, 1978

Installation view of drawings and small works by Philip Guston at Timothy Taylor