Tag: painting

If we assume that ‘work’ is something we can do whilst our attention is divided in listening to something quite unrelated to it, what really is the value of our work? This blog reflects on the exhibition ‘With These Hands’ at the Laing Gallery Newcastle seen on 15th July 2025.

July 16, 2025

If we assume that ‘work’ is something we can do whilst our attention is divided in listening to something quite unrelated to it, what really is the value of our work? This blog reflects on the exhibition ‘With These Hands’ at the Laing Gallery Newcastle seen on 15th July 2025. Raing at the Laing yesterday … More If we assume that ‘work’ is something we can do whilst our attention is divided in listening to something quite unrelated to it, what really is the value of our work? This blog reflects on the exhibition ‘With These Hands’ at the Laing Gallery Newcastle seen on 15th July 2025.

Retrospecting on Edward Burra: This blog reflects on visiting the wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, London Millbank, on 9th July 2025.

July 14, 2025

Retrospecting on Edward Burra: This blog reflects on visiting the wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, London Millbank, on 9th July 2025. I am building a large Edward Burra library. Though some items are rather shabby reading copies such as the Andrew Causey Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue  and the Jane Stevenson biography of the artist, the content … More Retrospecting on Edward Burra: This blog reflects on visiting the wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, London Millbank, on 9th July 2025.

The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?

June 9, 2025

When I visited the wonderful John Bellany self-portraiture exhibition at City Art Gallery in Edinburgh on Friday 4th June, there was also another exhibition (on Modern Scottish Art) containing one other Bellany painting, that painting known as Obsession. Photography was banned so I rely on internet photographs to mark or note memories not my own. … More The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?

Dis/Placed: meanings in the art metamorphose, and the variant contexts are at base space and time

June 3, 2025

Dis/Placed: meanings in the art of Anselm Keifer metamorphose in association with the variant contexts contingent on the ‘placement’ in space and time This blog post is a sequel to one on Part One of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition in Amsterdam at this link. Just a glance at the new work at the top of … More Dis/Placed: meanings in the art metamorphose, and the variant contexts are at base space and time

Anselm Kiefer sees Van Gogh in Amsterdam, and the confrontation is world-changing.

May 31, 2025

Anselm Kiefer said in a lecture in Tate Britain in 2019 (abridged for the new Van Gogh exhibition in Amsterdam in 2025 as an introduction to the catalogue): ‘Van Gogh’s composition is minimalist. There is no shimmering light dissolving the material world into pointillistic touches of colour. Van Gogh builds the landscape like a bricklayer, … More Anselm Kiefer sees Van Gogh in Amsterdam, and the confrontation is world-changing.

The Van Gogh Museum: Preface to seeing Van Gogh through the eyes of Anselm Kiefer

May 27, 2025

The Van Gogh Museum: Preface to seeing Van Gogh through the eyes of Anselm Kiefer The pictures above were by other tourists than us. This blog is an intrusion into the three-part set of blogs, in effect a fourth added to them but to preface the ones on the joint exhibition of Anselm Kiefer, both … More The Van Gogh Museum: Preface to seeing Van Gogh through the eyes of Anselm Kiefer

Putting Love and Death on the screen in the context of the greatest of the dead Masters. A tentative new beginning with WordPress blogs.

May 21, 2025

I am returning to WordPress blogging after a break, including a short break in Amsterdam, which I will no doubt make many blogs about in the near future. But I, like the wedding guest in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, felt that my taking leave of WordPress was not unlike … More Putting Love and Death on the screen in the context of the greatest of the dead Masters. A tentative new beginning with WordPress blogs.

The quiz of yesterday (after I lost faith in its fun): the answers.

April 20, 2025

In what follows, I scatter the correctly paired works variously in labeled collages: Barbara Hepworth Winter Solstice at ItDibs Hepworth’s idealistic iconography certainly extended to her self-portrait. The use of blank space on paper characterises the treatment of her massive forehead, full of space which her abstract figuration also has, wherein colour tones and shades … More The quiz of yesterday (after I lost faith in its fun): the answers.

Have a go at this exercise! I dare you! It is an exercise on whether we can use terms used in talking about art, in this using the term ‘style’ alone, to recognise a artist’ s work.

April 19, 2025

Me as a more-than-tubby queer angel. The title of this piece is a bit presumptuous. Too few read this blog, and very much fewer respond (though I am grateful for those who do feedback their thoughts either personally or in public) to assume anyone either wants me to set them a little experimental exercise or … More Have a go at this exercise! I dare you! It is an exercise on whether we can use terms used in talking about art, in this using the term ‘style’ alone, to recognise a artist’ s work.

The Art of the Pit Head Bath. Tom McGuinness: metamorphic artist

April 16, 2025

The Art of the Pit Head Bath. Joanna Drew (Arts Council of Great Britain – ACGB), Douglas Gray (art selector & essayist), Norman Siddall (British National Coal Board – NCB), Sir William Rees-Mogg (ACGB) & Dr John Kanefsky (essaysist) (1982: page 81) Coal: British Mining in Art 1680 -1980, London, The Arts Council of Great … More The Art of the Pit Head Bath. Tom McGuinness: metamorphic artist

It ‘s all in the making: reconstructing Munch.

April 7, 2025

As I work through my library, some books that startled me when I bought them have startled me again, for I have forgotten how novel they seemed. Such a one is that catalogue from an exhibition in the Newcastle Polytechnic in 1980 and related to the Newcastle Festival. The book was published in 1984. Organised … More It ‘s all in the making: reconstructing Munch.

Thomas Haller’s resurrection is his ‘lilac renaissance, his violet hour’.

April 3, 2025

Fritz Schein lives entirely in, and on as his means of living, ‘the art world’ of ‘spectacularity’ – a world of apparently random images and appearances that eschews the privacy of inner reflection by being in love with the still surface of mirrors. When the ‘great recluse’ Thomas Haller turns up at a show Schein knows … More Thomas Haller’s resurrection is his ‘lilac renaissance, his violet hour’.