Art & Photography

Saturday, 11 March 2017

Jannis Kounellis, 1936 - 2017

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1969

Jannis Kounellis died 16 February 2017.
Kounellis was a key figure in Arte Povera, a movement which flourished in the late 1960s through to the 1970s. Arte Povera was a term coined by Italian art critic Germano Celant; it means, literally, 'poor art' - 'poor' in the sense of using everyday, commonplace or 'raw' materials. In Kounellis' case this included, for example, wood, coal, sacking, steel, wool and fire. However, his most notorious works were, perhaps, those employing horses (Untitled - an installation of 12 horses first presented in Rome in 1969 and reprised on various occasions, most recently in New York in 2015) and live birds, such as the macaw perched in front of a grey, monochrome panel as part of Untitled, 1967.
However, more typically, Kounellis' installations featured steel shelving units, blocked doorways and windows and the juxtaposition of contrasting materials to effect a poetic transformation of the architectural space so that the viewer's perception of the materiality of the world is enriched.
Read an obituary by Christopher Masters.

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1960

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1967

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1967 (detail)

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1968

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1969

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 2014

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled,2014

Jannis Kounellis, gallery installation 2014

Jannis Kounellis, Dodecafonia, installation in the deconsecrated church of Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, 2015

Friday, 10 March 2017

Howard Hodgkin, 1932 - 2017

Howard Hodgkin, Clean Sheets, 1982-84

Howard Hodgkin died on 9 March 2017.
Hodgkin was an idiosyncratic painter who claimed to "hate painting... It's always been agony"; he was an apparently abstract painter who insisted that he was actually "a figurative painter of emotional situations"
I have tended to fall in and out of love with Howard Hodgkin's (mostly) modestly-sized, richly-coloured, paintings on wood panels. It is 30 years since my first infatuation - inspired by his exhibition Forty Paintings at the Whitechapel in 1985. Occasionally, the sensuous richness of his colours has, like too much rich food, left me yearning for something more ascetic. However, at their best Hodgkin's paintings are thrilling and intoxicating hits of colour.
Absent Friends, an exhibition of portraits by Hodgkin will be at the National Portrait Gallery from 23 March - 18 June 2017.
Read a (very good) obituary by Michael McNay, and an appreciation by Mark Hudson; read five tributes. See more paintings on the artist's website.
(Click on images to enlarge.)

Howard Hodgkin, Bombay Sunset, 1972-73

Howard Hodgkin, The Moon, 1978-80

Howard Hodgkin, After Corot, 1979-82

Howard Hodgkin, Waking up in Naples, 1980-84

Howard Hodgkin, Patrick in Italy, 1992-93

Howard Hodgkin, Storm, 1996-97

Howard Hodgkin, Open the Door Richard, 1998-2000

Howard Hodgkin, In the Bedroom, 2004-05

Howard Hodgkin, Old Books, 2006

Howard Hodgkin, Morning, 2015-16

Sunday, 27 November 2016

Anselm Kiefer - White Cube, Bermondsey

Anselm Kiefer, Rorate Caeli Desuper, 2016

Anselm Kiefer: Walhalla is at White Cube, Bermondsey until 12 February 2017

Kiefer’s big themes – German history and mythology, creation and destruction – are fully present in this hugely ambitious show which summons both the Walhalla of Norse myth - the enormous hall to which the dead battle-heroes, chosen by Odin, were led by the Valkyries - and the 19^th century Walhalla, the marbled-monument to Germanic heroes created by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. However, in place of the gold of myth and the splendid polished marble of Ludwig’s neo-classical temple, Kiefer’s Walhalla is in the colours of concrete and lead.

Kiefer has transformed the central corridor of White Cube’s huge Bermondsey gallery into a bleak, gloomy, dormitory of steel beds made up with lead sheets and pillows. In the galleries leading off the corridor are sculptures, vast paintings and installations – one, installation, Arsenal, replete with giant lead books fills an entire gallery; the paintings, made of oil, acrylic, emulsion, clay and lead are of ruined concrete towers in a scarred landscape under apocalyptic skies.

Astonishing – a Gesamkunstwerk.

Listen to Kiefer interviewed about the exhibition on Radio 4’s Front Row; read reviews by William Cook, Emily Spicer, Caroline Elbaor and Jonathan Jones.

Listen to Wagner’s Entry of the Gods into Walhalla from Das Rheingold.
See also blog entries on Kiefer's 2014 RA exhibition here and here.
Click on images to enlarge.

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Arsenal, 1983-2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, San Loreto, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view

Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view

Anselm Kiefer, from Walhalla, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 2016

Sunday, 20 November 2016

Jason Martin - Lisson Gallery

Jason Martin, Sawa, 2015

Jason Martin is at the Lisson Gallery until 7 January 2017

Jason Martin has been making gorgeous, textured, monochrome paintings for more than twenty years now. His new show at Lisson Gallery includes an intriguing development in the form of relief sculptures. Martin has made silver-plated casts of thick impasto, plaster forms shaped by his painterly gestures. They look fabulous.
Read a review by Matthew Rudman.

Watch a short video of Martin talking about this work. (Don’t read the Lisson’s press release - except as a master class in artspeak!)
(Click on images to enlarge)