MATISSE PICASSO

MATISSE                                                            PICASSO

1869-1954                                                           1881-1973

These two names are probably top of the list when we think of modern art, Matisse and Picasso changed the idea of painting and caused the biggest upheaval since the Renaissance. They made the art world rethink the whole idea of what art is and what it should look like.

Matisse first came to prominence with his Fauve style, creating pictures full of sensuous bright colours. He quickly established himself as one of the leading painters of the day and began to collect patrons who were prepared to commission many works and with in a short space of time his fame spread around the world. After WW1 his painting took on a slightly more realistic tone which combined with his use of line and colour produced some outstanding work. He explored the use of colour and pattern with influences from North Africa and Arabia as well as the light and colour of the south of France where he based himself from 1919 until his death in 1954. His subject matter was essentially interiors, still life and the female form, his ongoing experimentation of the use of line and colour created paintings of great beauty which were often saturated with deep sensuous colour. His work held a large influence over a great many painters (Picasso once said that Matisse was the only painter he could look in the eye as an equal) and has subsequently maintained his position as one of the greatest painters of the modern age if not of all time!

If we consider Matisse to be the great colourist then we should consider Picassos use of form. From the earliest days of his cubist experiments to the day he died he continuously pursued new ways of representing three dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. Picassos painting style varied greatly throughout his career, he once said that his style was decided by his subject. He continually pushed the boundaries of painting with new ways of seeing and representing what he saw, the 20th century became filled with style and movements that Picasso created, flirted with, influenced or inspired. His sheer diversity influenced every painter that came after him, even if it is not consciously acknowledged. Throughout his long career his work rate never dropped, he tirelessly and ceaselessly painted all the time he had, at one point it is thought that he was producing three canvas’s a day, today we estimate that there are over 20,000 works of art by Picasso.

As we look back at the art created in the 20th century these two giants are often considered equals, how ever human nature often requires us to judge who was the greatest, the most endearing, the most influential, perhaps after long analysis Picasso would be just one tiny step ahead, to many modern historians he is the greatest painter of them all.

ST IVES

The St Ives artists were a loose group of artists working in Cornwall from the late 1930’s to the 1970’s, during this time they were considered to be the avant-garde of British art. They took the concept of abstraction into many new areas. Now they are internationally renowned and considered to be among the great painters of the 20th century. When Nicholson and Wood went to Cornwall on a painting trip in the 1920s they were following an all ready established tradition, many painters (Turner,Sickert etc) had gone there to experience the light, atmosphere and landscapes, and the Newlyn School had already become an important part of English art history. This new generation of painters, that began to establish themselves in the 30s and 40s brought with them a new modernism from Europe, following on from Cubism and Constructivism, this combined with the naïve style of folk art of Alfred Wallis ( a Cornish fisherman ) produced a unique modern style now known as ‘St Ives’.


As London became isolated during WW11 the St Ives community flourished, by the 1950s a second generation had continued to develop this unique English abstract style, and they began to gain attention around the world, comparisons to the New York school( a subject of much discussion) helped to bring their work to a wider audience.

By the 1960s the attention of the art world was drawn else where, but the legacy of the St Ives style remains and can be recognised in British abstract painting today.

Abstract Expressionism

Although the term Abstract Expressionism was first used in 1919 in relation to the work of Kandinsky, today we associate it with post war American painting, the art critic R. Coates coined the phrase in 1946, when referring to the work of Gorky, Pollock and DeKooning, by the 1950s the term was in general use to describe all types of contemporary abstract painting.


Not all the artists associated with the term produced work that was either purely abstract or purely expressionist. What connected them was an artistic philosophy, based on existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating (painting) and not necessarily the finished work and a shared interest in Jung’s ideas of myth, ritual and memory. They conceived a romantic view of the artist and saw them selves as disillusioned commentators of contemporary American life after the Depression and the Second World War

There were two distinct groups within the movement; one has become known as Action Painting, largely because of the gestural techniques of the painters which includes the Surrealist theory of Automatism (subconscious mark making) as well as bold brush strokes, dribbles and splashes. The second group became known as the Colour Field painters whose work was generally large in size and consisted of more simplified and unified blocks of colour, both groups shared the same ideas, as mentioned above, and sought to express their subconscious through their art.

Abstract Expressionism evolved in the 1940s, peaked in the 50s but had declined by the end of that decade.

MARC CHAGALL

MARC CHAGALL 1887-1985


Russia - Paris - Russia 1906-1922

Chagall was born in 1887 in Vitebsk a small Jewish town in Russia. The oldest of eight children Chagall had a conventional Jewish childhood. After finishing his elementary education at the cheder, Chagall was enrolled at the official state school; it is unsure how this happened as Jews were banned from state education. It was here that he took violin, singing and drawing lessons, and learned to speak Russian.

Chagall’s desire to become a painter took him to St Petersburg in 1906 to study art, he eventually gained a residents permit (required by Jews to travel and reside in different areas) and ended up studying under Leon Bakst. Chagall discovered the world of art and a desire to visit Paris, which he eventually did in 1910. Like many other painter at this time Chagall was exposed to the different styles of painting and in particular Cubism. His work matured during this time and he developed an individual style that is unclassifiable, it contained a magical, poetic quality. Chagall started to achieve some success and held numerous exhibitions. He became friends with many of the great painters and poets including Picasso, Apollinaire and Modigliani.

In 1914 he gained a three-month visa to return to Russia, where he hoped to reacquaint himself with Bella Rosenfeld, a young lady he had fallen in love with in 1909. Chagalls three month stay was extended, he became trapped in Russia as the borders closed at the outbreak of the war in 1914. He married Bella in 1915 and had a daughter Ida, in 1916. During the revolution Chagall sided with the Bolsheviks and in 1917 was made Fine Arts Commissar for the Vitebsk region. He founded a modern art school in 1918 and taught along side Malevich and Lissitzky. By the 1920s Chagall had become disillusioned by the dictatorial behaviour of both the government authorities and the Constructivists and returned to Paris in 1922.

Frida and Tamara, Contrasting Visions

TAMARA DE LEMPICKA      




Born Maria Gorska, in Warsaw in 1898 or Moscow 1895(she preferred Warsaw 1902), of a wealthy middle class parents. After her parents divorced, she spent time with her rich grandmother who spoiled her with expensive clothes, travel and schooling in Switzerland. Later she moved to St Petersburg and lived with her millionairess aunt. She developed a taste for the high life that was to stay with her for life.

During the war she met and fell in love with a Russian count, Taduesz Lempicki, they married in 1916, then fled to Paris during the revolution. Now known as Tamara De Lempicka, she studied art and through out the 1920s established her self as a society portrait painter and became part of the exotic, sexy and glamorous Parisian social set that she epitomized in her paintings.

During the 1930s her glamorous life style continued with her second husband Baron Kuffner, a wealthy Hungarian. As the threat of war loomed they fled to America in 1939. In California Tamara became the toast of Hollywood as portrait painter of movie stars, in 1943 they moved to New York, where her success continued and the gossip columns dubbed her the “ Baroness with a brush”.

Her career halted in the 1950s, a combination of advancing age, ill health and the dominance of abstract expressionism made her work unfashionable. In 1978 she moved to Mexico and died there in 1980.

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FRIDA KAHLO 




Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born in Coyoacan, Mexico City in 1907 ( she prefers 1910 ). Frida contracted polio as a child, which left her with a deformed right leg and foot. As a student of the National Preparatory School, she came across the work of Diego Rivera and considered the idea of becoming an artist.

In 1925 she was seriously injured in a collision between a tram and the bus she was travelling on, it left her with multiple injuries which led doctors to doubt whether she would survive. During her convalescence she began to paint. Although she made an initial recovery, the injuries left her unable to have children, for the rest of her life she under went a continuing series of operations on her spine, pelvis and legs and had to endure long periods of great suffering.

In 1928 she joined the communist party and came in to contact with Rivera, they fell in love and married the following year. Frida’s work developed into paintings of intense self expression, often relating to her physical and mental health. She was greatly influenced by many aspects including her political beliefs, pre Columbian art, naïve folk art of Mexico and Surrealism. Her tempestuous relationship with Rivera is also an influence in her painting.

Although she died young (she was only 47) due to ongoing ill health, her paintings of the 1930s and 40s shows us that she is truly of the greatest artists of the 20th century, her work has the power to move people on all levels. In 1958 the Mexican government opened the Frida Kahlo Museum and gave her the status of national treasure.

These two female painters are contemporary, both worked in the 1930s and 40s, yet their work is in starck contrast to each other. Tamara's work shows the  lifestyle of glamour, she led the high life of sex, drugs and cocktail parties and the lives of the rich and famous are reflected in her paintings. Frida on the other hand comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, an ardent communist and a political activist. Her work shows her own personal suffering and is full of self expression. When looked at in comparison these two painters show us two very different attitudes to society. Tamara is often looked down on in the art world, she is seen as frivilous and shallow, a creator of pretty pictures and not much more. Whilst Frida is considered a very important artist, a feminist icon, who's self expression is a long and lasting influence in the world of painting.

GAUGUIN & VAN GOGH

Vincent Van Gogh & Paul Gauguin, Arles 1888

Van Gogh left Paris for Arles in February 1888, with the idea of starting an artist’s colony in the south of France. By May that year he had rented the Yellow House, a building not far from the town centre, he set about furnishing and decorating the rooms with his paintings. In October Gauguin arrived in Arles, the only painter to respond to Van Gogh’s requests, albeit because Theo Van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, offered Gauguin a financial incentive. Van Gogh now felt that his dream of a “Studio of the South” would now come true. This however was not to be Gauguin had returned to Paris by the end of December.

Initially the two painters got on fine, they went on painting trips together, worked in the studio together and even went to visit the Art Museum in Montpellier. After a couple of weeks differences in character and their approaches to painting began to cause arguments and the atmosphere became tense and often ended in violent quarrels.

Their relationship came to an end just before Christmas when a violent argument on the night of December 23rd led to Van Gogh’s self mutilating breakdown. By Boxing Day Gauguin was back in Paris and Van Gogh was in the local hospital, the two painters never saw each other again.

Although their collaboration was short lived, the nine weeks they spent together produced a body of work that is now considered to be one of the most intense and astonishing creative outpourings in the history of art. Their paintings, which explored and included ideas such as reality, imagination, abstraction, sexuality, use of colour and form and personal expression influenced many practitioners of art throughout the 20th century. They are both now recognised as extremely important in the evolution of modern art.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986) & EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967)

These two great painters of the 20th century, both came to prominence in the inter war years in America. They are often regarded as the two “big names” of this period, even though they are of the same generation, working in the same environment at the same time there is a distinct difference between them.

O’Keeffe’s painting has its roots in the American response to European modernism, she was part of the 291 group based in New York and was greatly influenced by her fellow painters, Dove, Demuth, Sheeler and the photography of Stieglitz and Strand. Her early work leans toward abstraction, mainly landscapes and still life’s. It was through the magnification of shape and colour that she developed the large flower paintings for which she is best known. Running concurrently with this “flower period” are O’Keeffe’s New York paintings where she captured the essence of the city. The subject matter was often the city’s architecture and the way buildings respond to different light conditions, the use of light, shadow and reflection (day and night) produced work with a distinctly atmospheric quality. From the 1930s onwards O’Keeffe spent more time in New Mexico, where she would later make her permanent home. The desert landscape proved a great inspiration to her; she continued to evolve the use of close up, where she intensified the use of colour and shape especially in the paintings of local architecture. Although she travelled extensively in later life New Mexico remained her home and inspiration, she had a long and successful career and continued to paint until her death in 1986.

Edward Hopper on the other hand, stems from the realism of the Ash Can school, European modernism seems to have little influence (whenever questioned, Hopper stated he was an impressionist). He is often regarded as an American scene painter but this label is to limiting to what Hopper achieved in his painting. In both his landscapes and interior scenes Hopper paints pictures of modern life in an honest and personal way. His figures often appear lonely or isolated, many a discussion has taken place about the Freudian aspects of self or the social and personal impact of modern life and the economic depression of the times, he captures private moments in public places, restaurants, hotel rooms, cinemas and offices. His work has an aspect of sadness and strangeness that often leaves the viewer in a voyeuristic position. Hopper’s work continues to be an enigma to us, they have an indefinable quality that draws us to them, and maybe allows us to witness an echo or a reflection of our own lives.

Both these painters had long and successful careers, even through the economic depression and later when Abstract Expressionism became the prevailing style; this is surely a testament to their work and our response to it.

MALCOLM MCLAREN 1946-2010

STANLEY SPENCER

Born in 1891 in the Berkshire village of Cookham, a place that was to be his home and his main inspiration for most of his life. As one of eight children, Spencer came from a remarkable family, which produced a knight of the realm, two professors, a concert violinist, a professional stage magician, the director of the National Building Institute, an Oxford graduate and two professional artists.

After being educated in the local school, set up by his father (basically a shed in the garden next door, where his two sisters were teachers and lessons revolved around biblical studies, music and nature walks) Spencer went to Maidenhead Technical College and then on to Slade School of Art from 1908 to 1912, he commuted every day by train from Cookham. His fellow students at Slade included, Nevinson, Gertler, Bomberg, the Nash brothers and William Roberts. This put Spencer in the middle of a time of great upheavel in British painting, the forces of modernism began to inflict a great influence on many painters work, although its influence on Spencer is debatable, he did exhibit at Fry's 2nd Post-Impressionist show in 1912.

The Great War interrupted his career as a painter, he enlisted in the Royal Medical Corps and worked as a medical orderly at Beaufort Hospital in Bristol and then in 1916 he was stationed with the field ambulance in the Macedonian campaign. The war had a profound effect on Spencer and he began to conceive the idea of working on a memorial, this later came to fruition when in 1927 he was commisioned to decorate the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere in Berkshire. The murals he produced there are based on the every day soldiers experience and show us different aspects of Spencers time in both the Beaufort Hospital and on the front line.

Throughtout the 20s and 30s Spencer developed his own unique style. Much of his work was influenced by his own religious beliefs and many paintings show biblical stories taking place amongst the villagers of his beloved Cookham. Spencer once said that he had two lives, the physical, secular life he called his "down to earth life" and a metaphysical, creative life he called his "up in heaven life" these were combined in his work, thus many of his paintings show us an extended reality of his life by using religous iconography. To think of Spencer as a wholly religous painter would be a narrow concept, for his work often deals with many issuses of the human condition such as love, loss, sex, death and the whole range of human emotions. His work of this period has a deep complexity which often leaves us perplexed and unsure about what Spencer is trying to achieve, he is often labelled an enigma.

In 1940, Spencer was commisioned as a war artist and produced a series of pictures depicting ship building on the Clyde, known as the Glasgow series these paintings are now housed in the Imperial War Museum.

Spencer also produced a whole series of paintings in the 40s and 50s that seem to lack any of the complexity of his previous work, these are mainly landscapes and portraits, although these are wonderful paintings with distinct beauty we must consider the commercial aspect of Spencers life, his second wife, Patricia, would today be called "high maintenance" and Spencer paid her considerable expenses until the day he died.

His first wife Hilda remained the love of his life and he continued writing to her, even after her death. He was a most sociable person with many friends and surpporters. He is often considered an eccentric, Patricia in her diaries called him "mad" as a character he was certainly different and unusual.The small man with twinkling eyes and a mop of shaggy grey hair (often wearing his pyjamas under his suit) became a familiar sight wandering the lanes of Cookham pushing the old pram in which he carried his canvas and easel.

During his lifetime he awarded a CBE and a Knighthood, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and was a member of the Royal Academy. Spencer travelled extensively around England and across Europe on many painting trips, he also visited China in 1954, but it is with Cookham that he will always be associated, his own little piece of heaven in the Berkshire countryside.

THE RED BALLON (LE BALLON ROUGE)

An award winning and critically acclaimed film by Albert Lamorisse. Honours bestowed on this film include, Palm D'Or Cannes 1956, Oscar for best screenplay Academy Awards 1957 and special prize BAFTA 1956. This very visual, virtualy dialogue free film follows the relationship between a young boy and a red ballon that seems to have a mind of it's own. This film explores the poetic, magical and sometimes scary side of childhood experience amidst the backdrop of a romantic cityscape of 1950s Paris. It is a wonderfully observed piece of cinema.

The great filmaker Francois Truffaut describes it as "one of the most beautiful films ever made". This is one of those remarkable films that touches your soul. Watch this film! and spend 35 minutes with your inner child. I guarantee you won't regret it. (you could even let your kids watch it).