Now let me think........
Art is supposed to provoke.
But the work that I have seen this year at the Liverpool Biennial doesn't seem to provoke me, it just pokes me.
Not even right between the eyes it just strokes me into submission and yes, I give up. I surrender.
It is spread out around the derelict spaces of Liverpool highlighting the disgraceful record that the City Council has on restoring the heritage places that are now rotting away lacking investment decades after the Toxteth riots.
The very same sites that the dodgy Liverpool Council spivs are now placing to their developer friends.
Yes I know they need regeneration.
There seems to be a pattern.
Put an art installation create a load of huff and then give a developer a grant to take it off the council books.
Now I am not saying there is annything wrong with the city council giving land to those lucky enough to know the right people.....am I.
There is a art installation around the Welsh streets that I admit I haven't been to. This is because I don't want to see it.
I don't want to stop the car in Toxteth to see the disappointing workmanship, or whatever you call the installations that are there.
Its not worth my time. I only have to look down the Arcade of India Buildings to see how bad it is.
I just cant be bothered looking at silly things that instead of making me think, I just think, what's the point.
Now I know we need to incubate talent and allow it to grow but the principle is all wrong.
They all wanna be the new L'Enfant terrible with outrageous ideas, the new kids on the block, but there are hardly any of them with any skill at all.
Most of them cant even paint a straight line or even emulsion a wall.
And here they are let loose on the streets of Liverpool...........Really, What a waste of money.
Tuesday 26 July 2016
Thursday 26 May 2016
Henry Moore-Or Less.
Henry Moore with his
totemic sculptures across the world has been hailed as the greatest
British Sculptor creating over 900 sculptures.
It was said that he
broke down traditions and moved barriers.
Awards from all directions,
honour after honour piled as high as the hills that showed off his
work in landscapes near and far.
It was said that he
followed the 19th Century sculptors.
To this I disagree.
He walked the walk and certainly could talk the talk and his theories
were championed by academics and historians.
The most famous being
Kenneth Clark who was indeed a clever man. He understood the
principles of design architecture and form and function, so it seems
when you listen to his preachings on the subject.
Art is subjective and
who would argue with the scholars who proclaimed that Henry Moore was
leading us to the promised land of sculpture.
But what if they were
wrong?
He certainly, in my
opinion created some rubbish.
If work cant be questioned for every
individual piece then it becomes a 'Henry Moore' or a 'Picasso'.
He was later given the freedom of the city.
Born in 1898 in Castleford in Yorkshire. in
a terrace house he was good at pottery and was encouraged by his art
teacher. Sunday school morals.
He said he was inspired at an early
age by a story he heard about Michaelangelo (sic) who took advice
from a passer by whilst carving in Florence.
I don't recall
Michaelangelo creating sculpture theme parks, but there you go.
He had a strict routine
starting at 8 with breakfast and then instructing his staff at nine.
He would then read the Times. Lunch was important and everyone had a
bottle of Guinness one commentator John Read who recorded six
programmes about his life said it was a joy to watch him carving a
sirloin of beef. “It was one of the small joys in life” he
proclaimed in sycophantic admiration.
He had a team of men
working for him.
In the court of balding
middle aged men he was king. They would hang on his every word.
He taught and loved
making films using the television as his medium. Most people who
lapped up his words could not even paint a wall such was the lack of
practical experience from those that wrote about him.
Most art of primitive
form was at the time placed in ethnological sections in museums and
was thought of as some crude form or function from the ancient past.
Then with advent of modern art the likes of Moore with his
interpretations of ethnic art it suddenly became clever to cross
reference these old cultures and make the new art.
Was he the man who made
sculptures with a hole in or did he really understand the figure?
His out of chaos
drawings to me are poor at best. He was asked to be a war artist and
he took the easy way out. His drawings are bereft of emotion in my
opinion. They lack clarity and scale. He said “There stretched out
in front of me the rows and rows of reclining figures.
Henry Moore
reclining figures.” They are weak sketches at best and a cop out.
He may as well have
just sketched a load of sacks in the dark. What credible artist sketches.....sheep. Where is the skill in that?
John Read says
“It was something of
a paradox......... and his greatest single contribution to the art of
sculpture was the idea of being able to combine ones feeling of
landscape and that of the figure not as two separate things but as
one single image he saw the figure as landscape and the landscape as
a figure.
Romantic ideas and a
romantic tradition of English literature in English paintings
combined now in one single body of work.”
Is this rubbish? Is
this gobbledegook from a sycophant who could be sold anything?
Does it kid me? No.
I think his feeling of
the figure and the landscape being inspired from a rock with a hole
in it being turned into a mother and child in bronze now seems
absurd.
Some people will believe anything. And so they did students
and tutors followed him. With his every twist and turn of the mallet
they bestowed more accolades on him.
More commissions. He
littered a remote valley in Scotland with poor quality work that was
sucked up by the people to whom he could do no wrong.
They lack detail and
skill and emotion. The Emperor is not wearing any clothes.
I would
not walk 10 feet to look at these never mind travel hundreds of
miles.
They are talked about
by educated people in terms of tortured souls. He did a huge
cruciform that looks like a giant leg bone.
In a BBC Moniter
programme made in 1960 it is easy to see how his images beguiled the
masses, well those that could afford a TV in the post war depression
era where his sort of people.
Mrs Moore collected
Aztec work and filled the house with art. He spoke about the
sculptures from the collection with BBC English that made him an
acceptable authority.
He admits that he watched the Moniter programme
about Lawrence Durrel.......and suddenly his books meant more to him.
He became closer to him.
He shows shapes and
bones that inspire the beginnings of his work. There are scores of
Mother and Child sculptures some plaster maquettes others cast in
bronze.
They are not Madonna
and Child though he says there is a distinction. He talks about the
Cezanne that kept him awake for three nights trying to decide whether
to fork out the monumental amount to purchase it.
There is a painting
in his studio. Bathers Composition. “It gives me tremendous joy to
have. Its not perfect it is a sketch but then I don't like absolute
perfection, I believe one should make a struggle to something one
cant do rather than do the thing you can do easily. It had my kind
of figure in it.”
He spoke about dividing
up his sculptures and seperating some of his work and how some have
more variety than others and that they are a mixture between human
form and landscape amalgamating both. He says talking about these
reclining figures of 1928 whilst showing photographs. “It is a kind
of metaphor, err like in poetry, you would say, err, the mountains
skipped like lambs and here the figure is connected with the earth,
with rocks mountains, metaphor.
He was given the Order
of Merit.
His sculpture Atom Piece, in my opinion, implodes so much on itself that it
should be renamed Damp Squib. Yet he still kept up the charade and he
went to quarry Carrera marble from the same place Michaelangelo got
his.
He then ruined a good
bit of rock with a carving that is so beneath any reference to the
great man.
I am sure he would not
have been allowed to carve a toenail of a work by the Michaelangelo.
He would not even be allowed the job of polishing Michelangelo shoes
he was not skilled enough.
He chose the marble and
thought, wrongly, that he was fulfilling his destiny.
Yet the TV programmes
kept on coming. Kenneth Clark was a collector of his work....hugely
discounted for sure, so it was definitely in his interests to mention
his in his epic series Civilization.
He was invited by the
Mayor of Florence to display work. 400,000 people went to the outdoor
exhibition and the faith of the Mayor was vindicated.
No doubt
tourism increased and it became the most talked about exhibition of
the year. What would Vasari have said about his uneasy figures set
against Brunellesci Dome. Florence with Museums full of works by Botticelli.
The Florentine public
took it to their heart.
Oval with points now
looks a childish gimmick and his bronze crucifiction form, a version
of his Scottish mountain weighed heavily along side a King and Queen
1952, another version, or edition.
Square Form With Cut
1970 made from Carrera marble. Michaelangelo would be turning in his
grave.
Retrospectives
continued year after year.
Then he turned to
drawing sheep. I tried reading a book illustrated with his sheep once .....….and I fell asleep.
He talks about understanding the skeleton of a
sheep.
Why did he not draw
from life the human form the biggest test.
You wouldn't want to draw
a fat man with a woolly jumper on, would you?
I think he was a
fashion item in a new age.
But I don't think he has worn well and I
fear to say what is wrong with his work after so many scholars and
writers have poured praise on his creations without searching thier own souls..
Stolen
and sold for scrap
The
value of Moore’s Reclining
Figure was
also low in the eyes of the thieves who stole
a different cast of the same sculpture in
December 2005. When it was filched from the Henry Moore Foundation in
Perry Green, police initially feared that the sculpture had been
stolen to order. Further investigations suggested, however, that it
had been taken by a
team of traveller who
sold the work as scrap metal. The two-tonne Reclining
Figure was
worth £3 million, but melted down it would only have been worth
£1,500.
The real legacy is that
he helped create a new generation of sculptors such as Arthur Dooley
that did not need to understand the anatomical form that had shaped
the world of art for centuries.
He gave an opportunity to a
generation that did not require the talent or meticulous study of the
human form.
Anyone could now, get away with amateurism that claimed it provoked
an emotion.
Well, I hear you say, that is good. But not at the
expense of craftsmanship I reply.
There are some works by
Moore that I like. Sometimes it works. But really.
I WANT LESS NOT MOORE.
Tuesday 26 April 2016
Hillsborough Verdicts-Liverpool Fans Vindicated.....After 27 Years.
With
the verdicts of Unlawful Killing delivered today in Warrington at The Hillsborough Enquiry, this is the beginning, of a full vindication for the
people of Liverpool.
Jury finds that Liverpool fans behaviour did not contribute to disaster.
David Duckenfield is, a walking conscience, that has caused misery to so many people.
Should he go to jail for what his lies?
The
way that the good name of the people of Liverpool has been
sullied is starting to become fully understood and will now become
common currency.
And with the verdict, some of those old stereotypes will be lost.
The
reasons for anger and despair from those tough working class masses with relatives at Hillsborough that fateful day, that just wanted to show their pride for their city by supporting
their team will now become self evident, that they were not to blame.
The
anger that came about and was shown against the establishment will now be
understood and it has now been proved that the tarnished brush with which this
sad affair was painted came from the very top, in cover up, after
despicable cover up.
And
those, some who have been campaigning and fighting for half of their
lives will be applauded for never giving up, to clear the name of the
96 and the bad name of my city.
There
will be those who will never understand the anticipation of a game,
that they had looked forward to all week.
How
someone could need to beg steal or borrow to get to the match. It was
their lives.
A
couple of hours of watching the team play the beautiful game, the
game of football, that game from childhood dreams, and comic book
strips of Roy of the Rovers, of Hero's who would save the day.
Save the pride.
The pride they took away from us on that fateful
day for their team.
We
all knew someone who was there, might have been there or should have been.
I haven't cried so much over anything every anniversary was the same.
Tears.
And
they sullied our name of our dead and they called us animals by
default, and they trod our name into the ground and they insulted the
dead.
And the dead rose through the spirits of the living.
Those
who loved them would never let their names die in vain and they have
kept on
fighting, when there was no money, no hope, no chance.
And
to the top rose new hero's and heroines who would not give in.
By stealth and
cunning and regret they kept on going for the names of their loved
ones and the name of our town.
And the town knew that, and they give
them support and the ranks grew and in dignity they got their day in
court for a form of apology from the lying establishment.
And what of David Duckensfield the
one who we should have been able to trust....the police.
Its
only a game.
No its more serious that that Bill Shankly once said.
Its life and death. This was that.
And
in death they gave us life to take on the establishment of dodgy bent
coppers and political cover ups at the highest level.
There
is a good reason why some people hated Margaret Thatcher and its Tory
cling on's like the misguided Boris Johnson with his past disparaging
remarks.
They conspired against us and they could never understand that we could not let that happen.
The bereaved relatives fought for all of us.
So we supported them.
We should now find that the cover up went right up the ladder.
Today is a good day for Justice and those who died will be vindicated.
YOU WILL NEVER WALK ALONE.
Friday 8 April 2016
Archibald Knox-And The Liberty Style.
Archibald Knox has for
some time been recognised as one of the countries most influential
designers who worked predominantly for the company Liberty & Co.
The famous shop in
Regent Street would become an international focus of art, design, and
good taste. Its founder would shape art history through the wares
that he sold.
Knox helped to create
the Celtic revival.
In Italy Style Liberty
is the term generally used to describe Art Nouveau, such was its
reputation.
Though England would
help shape the worlds art through the thought process best
exemplified by John Ruskin and William Morris on the continent the
inspirational work of Viollet-le-Duc would also help give birth to a
movement that had more freedom.
The restraint that
developed in Britain steered the public away from the designs of
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose Glasgow School of Art was sneered at
as out of date when completed. On the continent he helped inspire a
generation of artists and designers such as Joseph Hoffman as head of
The Wiemer Werkstatte.
In Europe the freedom
to express forged a more liberated version of art Nouveau.
The term Art Nouveau,
French for new art was the name of the shop opened by Samuel Bing
that was a direct influence from the Liberty & Co store.
The Celtic style would
remain popular for a generation and the man who was to do more to
drive it forward would be Archibald Knox.
Knox was born 1864
Cronkbourne (Tromode) Isle of Man. His father was an engineer and he
was expected to follow the family tradition. He felt isolated amidst
the pressure to, like his brothers join the family firm. Robert Knox
was concerned about his sons use of the pencil complaining “Why he
doesn't even know how to hold a hammer”.
At an early age he lost
the top of his index finger and was happy to sketch and draw.
He was surrounded with
Ornament of a Celtic nature, he would be sure to be influenced by
this.
Owen Jones Grammar of
Ornament would be published in 1856 and would hold a section on
Celtic ornament.
Principles of Ornament
would be outlined by Christopher Dresser in 1876 in his volume
Studies in Design.
He attended St Barnabas
Elementary School and then Douglas Grammar School both in Douglas
becoming a pupil teacher 1878-1883.
In 1887 he passed the
examination in 'Design' with a first class result in 'Principles of
Ornament and went on to achieve a Art Masters Certificate in 1889
In 1893 he published an
article in 'The Builder' entitled 'Ancient Crosses in The Isle Of
Man'. He was possibly working in the offices of the architect and
designer M.H. Baillie Scott until 1896.
He left Isle of Man in
1897 to take up a teaching post at Redhill Surrey.
Knox contacted the firm
of Liberty possibly through his association with Baillie Scott who
had been designing fabrics for the company from as early as 1893.
He became design master
at the art School Kingston-upon-Thames in 1899 the same year as the
first Cymric patterns became available in the Liberty store.
In 1900 the same year
as he purchased a cottage at Sulby on the Isle of Man the cheaper
Tudric range was introduced in direct competition to the continental
manufacturers. Knox submitted several of piece meal designs.
He would live close to
Christopher Dresser who designed, indirectly for Liberty.
1903 sees Liberty
taking part in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition with four items by
Knox.
By 1904 he was
submitting huge amounts of designs for Silver, Pewter, carpets,
pottery, jewellery, textiles and possibly furniture to Liberty's.
While still teaching at Kingston-upon-Thames. In 1904 he was
appointed principle at Wimbledon.
In 1909 Liberty &
Co sold several designs to their competitors James Connell.
South Kensington
Examiners complain about Knox's style of teaching which he rejects
and resigns.
One of the pupils pull
out a bunch of designs in a waste-paper basket in Kingston Art School
and save them. These are now in the V&A.
Denise and Winifred
Tuckfield along with six other students leave in disgust at the
acceptance of Knox resignation.
He returned to The Isle
of Man in 1912 but on the 21st august that year left for
Philadelphia from Liverpool on a schooner named Dominion. He failed
to find suitable employment though he taught for a while in
Pennsylvania School of Industrial arts. In a letter to Denise
Tuckfield he states misgivings about the Renaissance architecture
that made up the city. A style of architecture he did not like.
'Renaissance architecture is a scholars work-Gothic is work done by a
man of sentiment and feeling'. He would say.
He had carried a letter
of introduction from Arthur Lazenby Liberty which no doubt helped him
secure work with Bromley and Co designing carpets.
He also carried with
him Liberty catalogues and his work was recognised. Though in the
letter to Ms Tuckfield he states that one firm called it the art of
the drug store.
He moved to New York.
In 1913 he returned to Isle of Man.
He taught at the Aliens
Detention camp there and served as a censor during the war.
In 1917 Arthur Lazenby
Liberty died. Knox designed his memorial stone at The Lee Church in
Buckinghamshire.
1920 sees him teaching
art at Douglas High school and he also travels to Italy to study
frescoes.
He held a one man
exhibition in Ottawa Canada of his paintings.
In 1933 he died
suddenly and was buried at the age of 69 in Braddon Cemetery Isle of
Man.
The Knox designs held
in the V&A have long thought to be the rejected designs.
Knox designs have long
held an attribution based on elements of design known to be by Knox's
own hand.
There is a formula to
the work of Knox he would take a rough sketch and rework it over and
over again and eventually the Celtic interlacing would appear as if
through a fog of smudges and marks. This a very interesting way to
work it almost feels mystical. When the work was coming to life with
smudges and all and parts of the paper rubbed out with grey lines all
over the paper, a transfer was taken by tracing the design using a
sharpened lead pencil.
Where semi precious
stones were to be placed would often be highlighted with watercolour.
The designs would be
annotated with shape size and details such as stones and enamels.
Numbers that were
intended to relate to the grouping of several pieces in sequence
maybe to be used as a unit such as a tray to be combined with a tea
service.
Knox kept a stock book
detailing which designs Liberty & Co actually purchased.
The majority of the
designs held in the V&A collection were intended for the Cymric
range of metalwork.
By 1900 the output was
catching up with design and what had been happening on the continent
with pewter was put into practice.
Lazenby Liberty had
acquired the designs for several competition winners held by The
Studio magazine. There was a rule that the purchase of the design
could not be purchased for more than the prize money won.
At this stage the
numbers are not up to 50 and the Tea Caddy design from the Studio by
Tramp (David Veazey). The design for a tankard by ' Parnassus'
Charlotte E. Elliot, 111 Chatham Street Liverpool has the number 049.
Rivet as much as you
can;
Don't countersink the
rivets;
Give them a firm head
so they may have a firm grip;
complete them that they
cannot hold dirt;
Give them desired form;
they are sin clipped:
Flattened too
obviously.
He would proclaim to
his pupils.
With the pewter range
there was no need for riveting in the moulded production and it seems
that this is intended for silver work.
The discarded drawings
were from 1911-12 when they were binned when he stormed out of his
position at Kingston.
So it is by attribution
that we put many designs as the work of Knox and Liberty was adamant
that the name Liberty & Co would be the only attribution that
would appear on the work.
Though the Cymric and
Tudric pewter wares are widely known to be by Knox.
Most of the Liberty &
Co archives were destroyed by enemy bombing during the war.
That said the Celtic
revival that Archibald Knox helped to bring to the masses leaves him
placed as one of the most influential designers of the Arts and
Crafts period.
The students who walked
out from Kingston now formed the 'Knox Guild of Craft and Design' and
set up premises at 24 Market St Kingston. He supervised and attended
several exhibitions and showed his rarely viewed watercolours.
They exhibited at the
1924 exhibition hall not only work but set up looms and other
equipment.
Denise Wren (nee
Tuckfield) continued with designs at Oxshott Pottery which is still
run today by her daughter Rosemary. Her designs of 1913 show direct
reference to the principles of design laid down by her mentor and do
look familiar in style. She also designed alphabet that look as if it
could have been made at the hand of Archibald Knox.
Liberty sold designs
attributed to Knox that were manufactured at the Watts Pottery,
Compton.
Most of his work was
attributed to Liberty under the usual format.
He seems to have been
an unassuming character who would not have minded preferring to be
part of something much bigger.
He leaves us a legacy
that helped to form the Celtic spirit and the history of its artistic
presence in these isles that now too becomes a part of its recent
history to inspire further generations in the not too distant future.
Thursday 24 March 2016
Christopher 'Kit' Wood-A Life Wasted? Or An Inspiration To Others?
Christopher “Kit”
Wood. Left Liverpool at the age of 19 and proclaimed that he would
become the greatest painter the world had ever seen. He had £14 in
his pocket.
He was sent to boarding
school in Malvern at an early age.
He had been interested
in medicine and architecture at Liverpool University where he met the painter Augustus John who was then teaching there.
He arrived in Paris in
March 1921 at the invitation of the collector Alphonse Kahn.
There he studied at the
Academie Julian where he met many of the worlds soon to be famous
painters.
He was bisexual.
Paris was the modern
city and the capital of art.
Rules had been broken
and the intellectual way of painting had arrived decades earlier.
'Kit' got some bad habits, such as Opium which may have been introduced to
him by his rich Playboy lover, Antonio de Gandarillas
His addiction would greatly hinder him.
“My brain is working
too hard, he said, and I don't know where the end will come, I work
so hard and produce nothing whatsoever to satisfy me”
In Feb 1927 none other
than Picasso recommended that Kit design the set for Serg Dagliev's
Romeo and Juliet at Theatre Du Chatelet.
It was a disaster. As
Dagliev had a blazing row with him and he was sacked.
In
1927 his plans to elope and marry heiress Meraud Guinness were
frustrated by her parents whereupon he required emotional support
from Winifred Nicholson.
Despondent but with
fresh ideas swimming around in his head he headed for Cornwall. His
mother was Cornish.
In the summer of 1928 Kit joined Ben Nicholson
on Sunday 26th August for a sketching trip to St Ives.
He
had high hopes on the English Riviera.
They headed for Porthmeor
beach and painted.
After a successful day spent painting they packed up and set
for home
There in a small cottage with an
open door they both peered in and in a room full of paintings.
They had discovered the work of Alfred Wallis.
The naivety was an inspiration
and Kit stayed on for the autumn, renting a place closed to Wallis.
Nicholson went back to London to spread the word of the
encounter as if the Messiah had arrived.
“If I am here long enough, he said I am going to paint
good things”. Kit said.
He began to paint
scenes inspired by the Cornish Coast with its fresh light.
Had he finally found
the inspiration he desired. Cocteau who said he was an exceptional
painter, now meant nothing to him.
He started painting
inspired by Wallis who he visited every day, but the hallucinogenic
addiction that he had to Opium was preying on him.
He became paranoid and
began to lose his mind painting some sinister scenes in what would be
some of his last works.
Wallis opened up a
spirit in him and his work was beginning to bear fruit.
He felt as if
he belonged to the light of the coast of St Ives.
Wallis became a cult
recording the decline of the fishing industry in his own silly way
that seems to have conjured up dreamlike sequences for aspiring
artists who now flocked there. Wallis painted on anything he could
find and he was free not having had any training.
He was poor and in
1890 after chasing shoals of fish out in the deep sea. He painted from memory
and his perspective is very strange indeed, but it was this charming
naivety that the new modern artists adored.
In 1929 he held a solo
exhibition at Tooths Gallery in Bond Street.
He met Lucy Wertheim
there, she would become a supporter of his.
"I
know that my future as a painter from now on will be bound up with
your own, and I
shall become great through you!"
He would say to her.
In
May 1930 he had a largely unsuccessful exhibition with Nicholson in
Paris. In June and July he made a second trip to Brittany to create
new work.
Later in July Lucy travelled to meet Kit in Paris, to
choose the paintings for a one-man show that would be the opening
exhibition at her new Wertheim Gallery in October.
While
discussing the exhibition over lunch the day after her arrival, Wood
issued her with an ultimatum: "'I want you to promise to
guarantee me twelve hundred pounds a year from the time of my
exhibition, one hundred pounds a month being the least I can live on.
If I can't have this sum I've made up my mind to shoot myself'".
When she complained, he begged her forgiveness, and they went to
review the paintings again.
On 21st
august 1930 Kit met his mother for Lunch in Salisbury and then
through himself under a train. He was 29.
This was reported as
an accident.
Following
his death the show was cancelled; it was eventually staged as a
memorial show at a different gallery in 1931.
He was buried
in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Broad Chalke.
His
gravestone was carved by the sculptor Eric Gill.
CODA
Alfred Wallis.
An ex fisherman he
retired from the sea in 1890 and opened a marine supply store.
When his wife died in
the 1920's he began to paint.
Little did he know that his melancholy
would inspire a generation.
He was naïve alright
and poor he painted on anything he could get his hands on.
He had no idea about
perspective and his subliminal thoughts began to show through and
inspire others. He would say that he painted out of his mind as it
was.
Wallis was sent to a
madhouse as he was chased by ghosts. He died a celebrity amongst the
artists and he was entombed by Bernard Leach who erected his epitaph.
The art community came
to pay its respects.
Friday 26 February 2016
Henry Tonks-The Real War Artist.
Henry Tonks was a war
artist of the highest degree. He did not do landscapes.
He was a Professor. Maybe a little old fashioned.
Henry Tonks said when he taught art at the Slade “I will resign if this talk of
cubism continues”
He had taught many
artists such as Paul Nash at the Slade School of Art but he did not
teach him enough. Paul
Nash's paintings have become an important visual reference for us
when thinking about the conflict, including this powerful,
apocalyptic vision of nature violated by war. Nash
was commissioned by a government scheme, in 1916, which initially
aimed to illustrate publications with drawings to supplement the
limited photographs available. Nash had served briefly in the Ypres
Salient in 1917 before being invalided out. When he returned to
Belgium as an artist, he was shocked by the devastation wrought by
the battle of Passchendaele. All of the commissioned artists’ work
had to be passed by the official censor. While depictions of dead
British soldiers were unacceptable, this devastated landscape managed
to pass unchallenged due to its symbolic, rather than literal,
content. Nash’s startling, new, modernist vision would bring him
huge acclaim in the art world.
However,
Colonel A N Lee, the censor, could not foresee this. He wrote: “I
cannot help thinking that Nash is having a huge joke with the British
public, and lovers of ‘art’ in particular. Is he?”
While Paul Nash was
basking in glory, stylising suffering as official war artist, Henry
Tonks was recording the reality of war on a very intimate scale.
Tonks too old for front
line action volunteered as an orderly.
Dr Harold Gilles had
helped set up a pioneering new hospital specialising in facial
surgery.
When Gilles, who was the head surgeon realised that Tonks
was working there his instincts to record the remodelling or
rebuilding of a face were assisted when he asked Tonks to help him.
He
needed colour and Tonks with his background as a surgeon and then as
a demonstrator of anatomy understood what Gilles needed.
He was in the right
place at the right time to do his bit for the war.
Reconstructive surgery
at that time was largely at its infancy and mostly made up of just
clinching flesh, and pulling it over to close up a wound and
stitching it into a part of the face that would help it to resemble
what was there before.
Some would never
recover from the wounds they had endured.
When we say the scars of
war, he recorded them in all their disfigured glory.
They were humans
who had given themselves in the cause of freedom.
With dignity Tonks made
a portrait in soft pastel of Walter Ashworth of the Bradford Pals who
injured on the first day of the first world war.
In the first few
minutes the Pals were cut to ribbons.
He also made a diagram
of where to stitch and then he painted him again after the
reconstruction that gave him what was described as 'a pleasant
smile'.
Art as modernism in a
modern age. He had to use the skills of Leonardo Da Vinci for a new
age, after all he was qualified.
He said about his
portraits “These are the only works of which I am not ashamed.”
He would help in
rescuing these wretched creatures lives, of abandoned luck and malicious evil.
Artistic compassion was
required.
Imagine the sitter
seeing his image and knowing how he looked.
The sharing of this
ordeal will have been hard.
It is so difficult
today to look at these images, even in reproduction through the
internet or on TV.
But look you must,
because in these images we see why war is wrong and those heroic
stories of heroism in the face of fire fall heavy down to earth when
you witness what Henry saw.
Fire in the face.
No matter how hard I
look I turn away from the reality. I try again and still my mind wont
let me focus, it is too real, I turn away again and again I try to
look.
It seems as if you
don't want to, so as not to defy a lifetime of watching war films
made, rightly to testify to those brave sods who went over the top. But this is reality.
But, we the world
turned its back on the truth and it is only now a hundred years later
that we can palate the truth of Henry Tonks images of soldiers brave,
those without palates, for a lot of them had been blown to
smithereens.
Those poor people who would not only be reminded, after the war, of that indiscriminate trajectory missile
that scarred them.
These faces would
remind every one else of the horrors of war and so they would be
saddled with carrying the guilt of others lives cut short.
They say when you are
staring into the abyss you find yourself, but these poor people look
like lost souls, like ghostly images from the deep. I have spared the reader the full horror.
Or are they just the
depths of our of our own spirit?
They make you realise
that those who were lucky, were sometimes dead. They did not have to
live the horrors for the rest of their life. They were free of the
stigma of half a decade of mass murder on an industrial scale in
those Flanders Fields.
You don't see this sort
of stuff in films such as Where Eagles Dare or Force 10 from Navaronne.
We do not see the blood
of war like the trench reality would have been.
You cant smell the
stench of rotting flesh.
Even though we know
Spielberg can do such a brilliant job of convincing us, of showing
bullets flying through the air and hollowing the sounds war makes, he
would never dare show this. The censors would not let him. But look
we must.
When the Americans
chased Saddam Hussains Iraqi army out of Kuwait and bombed the hell
out of them on the road back to Basra they left many of them as
charred skeletons torn of flesh. The images captured by
brave war correspondents, of this stench of death, were banned from
being shown to the American public.
They might ruin the
breakfasts of a nation and spoil their day.
There is no redemption
for the victors of war, for they write history. And as with the
Vietnamese murder zone a picture can tell a story.
PR can save a
President who should be shot or be on trial for war crimes.
For these works by
Henry Tonks show the side of war that I want to forget, but I must
look at.
I must learn to stare
and so I should challenge Presidents and Prime Ministers and Saudi
Princes in pure white stainless linen with blood on their hands.
Tony Blair should be
made to look at these pictures of the aftermath of war.
Those who survive who
will be forever locked into a dream like sequence of recurring
nightmare night after night, cast into perpetual recollection for
perpetuity, waking up every night screaming need compassion.
So not only is the
suffering of war written on the faces of those Tonks Tommy soldier boys
they were branded with them for life, or what was left of that life.
How could these boys be
taken and destroyed in the flowering of their youth.
And while I am writing
this article I see an image by Francis Bacon.
It looks like one of
Tonks Tommies with a twisted face, yet this is of his lover.
It seems that he is
copying Henry Tonks style?.......but as a way to make himself look
clever, to show his prowess as a painter. He has captured Tonks
images.
It may be that he has
just stumbled across a style.
Bacon grew up during
the blitz it is well recorded. He saw bad times.
But did Bacon ever see
these images of real despair by Henry Tonks?
Bacon was brave enough
to use the twisted and tortured souls of his portraiture and turn it
into modernism.
Why can we look at
Bacon's work with ease?
No matter how we tell
ourselves its haunting we flinch to turn away from images of poor
Tommy boys crying inside, bleeding from within.
Is this because Bacon
was capturing emotion and not recording the tragedy of grief?
Who could except the
compassionate respectful and watchful eye of Henry Tonks?
Who was the better
artist?
For to Tonks I tip my
hat, to a man who cared, not for himself, because the pastels and
watercolours he did was not gallery work, that would hang for all to
see on pristine white walls. But show us our guilt of futile pride
and slaughter.
Tonks work has been hidden from public view for almost
a hundred years. From a public who would be upset, who would not turn
up if they were displayed in a gallery. Maybe they should not be
displayed on public view.
They were much more
important than that.
Friday 5 February 2016
Daum Vase-Piece of the Week
Founded by The Brothers
Auguste and Antonin in the town of Nancy in the French region of Alsace-Lorraine.
They would create glassware of exceptional quality with varying techniques of finest workmanship that would, at times, rival the work of Galle.
They would create glassware of exceptional quality with varying techniques of finest workmanship that would, at times, rival the work of Galle.
The first
Department of Art was created within the small family glassworks
which would interpret the spirit of Art Nouveau.
They moved with the times through the Twenties and Thirties an evolution into a Art Deco style.
They would welcome in a new era in the 1950's and still make glasswares today.
They moved with the times through the Twenties and Thirties an evolution into a Art Deco style.
They would welcome in a new era in the 1950's and still make glasswares today.
100 years ago it was
not just the case of expressing a new artform but aquiring the
techniques to express it in glass. To imbue a feeling or a sincerity,
the Daum Brothers wanted to make work that would outshine its rivals.
Works that would create
an arousal, not only in the style but an understanding of the
complexity of the piece, heightening the sense of achievement of the
craftsman and designers collaboration.
Shape, Decoration,
Colour and Material would be the four elements that would contribute
to the organic processs that would be the hallmark of Art Nouveau.
Spirits of Autumn
Summer and Winter would all be brought into play with hues and glows
that conjure up a feeling inside each work of art.
It is as if they have
been found on the floor of the forest rather than in a glasswork
factory.
Its not as if you can go and get a recipe book. The artistic glassmaker would have to carry out his own experiments and write down the formula.
Lets as example think
how would you obtain the exact colour, in glass for, lets say and
Orchid or a Thistle head of a Cow Parsley.
Or crisping leaves in autumnal differing grades of decay, of red and gold.
Or crisping leaves in autumnal differing grades of decay, of red and gold.
A few companies such as
Appert of St Denis would supply Antonin Daum with some of his early
supplies.
Often glassworkers
would move companies or transfer to a different area and it was
important to train the skilled workers of the future.
In 1925 Paul Daum
refined and transformed the pallete.
Michel Daum would start
working in lead crystal. After the Second World War the company would
largely abandon glass in favour of lead crystal.
Between 1891 and 1914
3,000 different models appeared.
1920 to 1939 saw 2,000.
They won medals and
honours, first prizes galore taking the official exhibitions
extremely seriously in helping stimulate revenue through sales.
Chicago 1893. Nancy and Lyon 1894. Brussels 1895 and 1897. There was
a Legion of Honour for Auguste. In 1900 at the World Fair, like
Galle, Daum were awarded a First Prize and Antonin a Legion
D'Hounour.
Exhibitions at Ecole de
Nancy the Pavillion de Marsan 1903 and Nancy itself in 1905 and
1908. Strasboug 1908 Paris and Brussels 1910. Then Gand 1913 and Lyon
1914. It just went on, and on. After the Great War they would show
their style at the Paris Expostion des Art Decorative Et Industrial
Moderne in 1925 moving into a more geometric and angular vision that
would lend itseld to acid etching pattern.
This petite slimly
bulbous vase is only 20cm high and is a yellowish base or pallette
where the green hues of leaves blowing in the wind have been overlaid
and carved back by wheel cutting. Several different colours of glass
tinted by oxides can be seen to be applied to make up the overall
effect. It is a painting in molton glass.
The base clearly
displays the Daum Nancy mark and proudly proclaims the Cross of
Lorraine as a symbol of defiance.
Alsace Lorraaine was
lost to the Germans in 1870.during The Franco Prussian War.
Napoleon III had won
Nice and Savoy in 1861 from Turin. It had been Italian.
Famous for Quiche
Lorrane Alsation dogs, it was named Elsass Lothringen by the Germans.
Many Road names are today still in German. There is a marker or two
to the Magino line.
Bismark took it in 1871
This was one of the underlying causes of the First World War.
The first world war one
charge was an attempt to take it back which they didn’t do till
1918.Germany took it again in 1940 The Germans re-uniting with the
motherland of the German Reich. The French re occupation happened in
1944.
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