Here are two stunning artists. I loved the Tanning show – not as popular as the Bonnard one. Hence you could see the installations, soft sculptures and paintings so much more easily than Bonnards’s canvases. The show is brilliantly curated with an excellent film showing at its terminus.
Yet for me the comparison involved in seeing the shows together was destructive – not least because both artists are interested in the theme of the open door, the frame (of various objects) as container and the potential to void in the midst of apparent plenty.
In that thematic context, for me Bonnard comes out on top if any comparison needs to be made – which, in truth, I think it need not. In the end too the painting of Bonnard is much more about seeing the object queerly than is Tanning’s heavy overlay of a more overt sexual politics.
The soft sculptures feel too indebted to louise Bourgeois, the exploration of human body parts better in the much neglected work of Alina Szapocznikow (see:
https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/alina-szapocznikow-human-landscapes/ ).
But a fascinating exhibition and the theme of the open door is tremendously thought provoking. But after it go back to any Vuillard or Bonnard interior and see the depth of queer politics perhaps unintentionally there in similar but quieter objects.
Steve_Bamlett_blog 