More art lessons - the British Greats

BBC4 Programme - British Masters.
I was talking with my fire d today and we were saying how we have not been particularly drawn to many British artists. I do love the Turners and some of the Constables. But generally the others have not stunned me like some of the great French artists or the Dutch interiors etc. However I have found the art stories so interesting whilst watching this little series .... And I have been educated to look deeper and discovered art that I have not bothered to pay attention to. I love Barbara Hepworth now. And the murders by Sickhert - disturbing and unusual. I was touched by Richard Vaughan and intirugued of the progress of Francis Bacon and the emotion displayed in the paintings after his lover died. Anyway I am getting carried away.
Anyway - the effect of war impacts on the British artists. And later the political movements of the Sixties is shown as an influence. And Dr Fox also brings in the influence of personal emotions as an influence in the works of the masters.
In the third part of the three part serial Dr James Fox starts with Lucien Freud who just recently died, 20th July 2011. As James points out, his art was influenced after his escape from Germany and the Jewish persecution.
"Dr Fox was spot-on when he described the impact of the Holocaust and the Bomb on post-war artists; it was a time to reflect seriously on the human condition, and these painters duly obliged."

Lucien Freud's first wife Kitty.
In all of the paintings I have seen (not many I hasten to add) there is something not quite human and yet ver so human indeed. In this painting I see terror in her eyes and am horrified by the way she is holding the ktten and the kitten is just looking at us. That's it I think. The people in his paintings seem frozen and staring and their expression of emotion is very real yet very frozen. I want the terror to be over for Kitty but it never is going to be.

Graham Sutherland was until the war a lanscape painter. But the infuence of war on his works contained prickles. Apparently he could no longer allow himself to paint the beauty of the landscape with the horrors of the destruction on the country. The use of the thorns creates a strong image. In some the thorns look like the sickle from the flag of the USSR. Just a thought.
Then he was commissioned to paint the crucifixtion. He actually tied himself to a cross that he made and erected in his studio. He then sketched his mirrored reflection aparently as the study for his painting. The thorns of course have a place in this painting.




A Constable influence perhaps? This is of course the pre-war earlier work.


The next artist Dr Fox introduces is Francis Bacon. Actually I was interested in how he described his earlier work as merely shocking. He added that anyone can produce shocking tactics to evoke and emotion and that this work was really rather badly painted. Unlike Sutherland his depiction of the crucifixtion was focused on the beings beneath the cross ...


Dr Fox explained a little of Bacon's life, specifically that he was a self taught artists. He was living in the seedy area of Soho, which at the time seems quite a controversial thing for anyone to be doing. Later he met and feel in love with the man who was trying to burgle his apartment. Dr Fox shows the paintings Bacon produced after the horrible death of Dyer - which was seemingly a suicide.


And actually I agree - although I haven't seen this close up and live, just the images  have been able to see, there is a real emotion in them. Personal and not a slightest attempt to try evoke something in others. There is something compelling about them Dr Fox describes in the first one how the shadows seem to be absorbing the body. I feel the loss of someone gradually fading away even though Dyer died suddenly and horrifically.

Clare Shenstone was a young artist who spent time with Francis Bacon as a student. Clare Shenstone

So moving into the real post war tmes. In America the solution was consumerism - spend. spend, spend! And Pop Art was a new era. The Independent Group - now I am not sure if this was actually a group that grouped or just a collective name for artists who were similarly inspired? Anyone know?
Wel, well - here is some information taken from Wikipedia - obviously I cannot couch for it's accuracy and also am not stealing this information intentionally to deceive.
 "The Independent Group (IG) met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London from 1952-55. The IG consisted of painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. They introduced mass culture into debates about high culture, re-evaluated modernism and created the "as found" or "found object" aesthetic. Currently the subject of renewed interest in our post disciplinary age, the IG was the topic of a two-day, international conference at the Tate Britain in March 2007. The Independent Group is regarded as the precursor to the Pop Art movement in Britain and the United States"

Richard Hamilton went about exploring consumerism in his art .....
Just what is it?

Such a lot to take in when looking at this painting. I should like to see it up close. Too much to read and absorb what the message is.



Hommage a Chrysler Corp. It was intersting when Dr Fox pointed out the jaw shape at the bottom of what until that point I had only seen a car although felt the presemce of humanness within the preentation. The lips at the top right suggesting the secuality of the car sales world. But the jaw at the bottom apparently is lnked with the whole thing being a skull. To me this is representative of teh ways in which we consumer are lured in - sex and sexy - and leaves us dead and souless.

Next Davicd Hockney. To me there is a an absolute representation of what is being seen. Apparently he was lured to America, loving the image of the consumerism. In particular he was interested in the swimming pools. IN the little video of him he made reference to the difficulty of water, capturing the opaque. Being able to see through it but of course the images being distorted by the water.

A Bigger Splash
So called because he had painted a couple of small versions of the same thing previously. As Dr Fox says, when looking at this there is a sort of moment absolutely frozen. And to me the scenery is void of any movement as we wait for the person to reappear. He or she never will though. It's funny b ecause it seems almost naive painting to me and yet I am poised and holding my breath as I look at it, completely involved with the action. Interesting as it seems all too simple.

I recently saw an unknown artist clearly heavily influenced by this style.



Of course the 60's was all about youth rebellion. Britain was also going through an economic depression (another one????)
Keith Vaughan was amidts this time. Dr Fox makes a lot of reference to Keith Vaughan being really a dinosaur or Vaughan seeing himself this way. He wrote in his journal apparently and out not comprehendng the art of toffee wrappers and sheets compared with paintings. Another writer of art has contridicted Dr Fox saying that actually he was a successful artist and not a relic in his lifetime at all. Vaughan took his life at the age of 65 yrs. The way in Dr Fox presented the details seemed to imply that his suicide coincided with his depair of where his works could fit in. However, he was already unwell with Cancer it seems. So this controversy makes it interesting to know what else could be misinformation - that's if it is misinformaton?

The ninth assembly Eldorado Banal

Dr Fox explained the carious images of Vaughan that seem to represented here. Far left and in the front is a curled up foetal like figuer, representing Vaughan as a baby. Then there are three adults, one very active and apaprently modelled on the Greek javelin throwers. The next in blue and slightly in front of him. I can't recall his interpretation of thses so would welcome any inut. Then to the front right is an already dead Vaughan and I think it is the one behnd him that is seemingly crucified.

On the reverse of the painting, Vaughan has used a verse from Charles Baudelaire -
Un Voyage à Cythère
Mon coeur, comme un oiseau, voltigeait tout joyeux
Et planait librement à l'entour des cordages;
Le navire roulait sous un ciel sans nuages;
Comme un ange enivré d'un soleil radieux.
Quelle est cette île triste et noire? — C'est Cythère,
Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons
Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garçons.
Regardez, après tout, c'est une pauvre terre.
— Île des doux secrets et des fêtes du coeur!
De l'antique Vénus le superbe fantôme
Au-dessus de tes mers plane comme un arôme
Et charge les esprits d'amour et de langueur.
Belle île aux myrtes verts, pleine de fleurs écloses,
Vénérée à jamais par toute nation,
Où les soupirs des coeurs en adoration
Roulent comme l'encens sur un jardin de roses
Ou le roucoulement éternel d'un ramier!
— Cythère n'était plus qu'un terrain des plus maigres,
Un désert rocailleux troublé par des cris aigres.
J'entrevoyais pourtant un objet singulier!
Ce n'était pas un temple aux ombres bocagères,
Où la jeune prêtresse, amoureuse des fleurs,
Allait, le corps brûlé de secrètes chaleurs,
Entrebâillant sa robe aux brises passagères;
Mais voilà qu'en rasant la côte d'assez près
Pour troubler les oiseaux avec nos voiles blanches,
Nous vîmes que c'était un gibet à trois branches,
Du ciel se détachant en noir, comme un cyprès.
De féroces oiseaux perchés sur leur pâture
Détruisaient avec rage un pendu déjà mûr,
Chacun plantant, comme un outil, son bec impur
Dans tous les coins saignants de cette pourriture;
Les yeux étaient deux trous, et du ventre effondré
Les intestins pesants lui coulaient sur les cuisses,
Et ses bourreaux, gorgés de hideuses délices,
L'avaient à coups de bec absolument châtré.
Sous les pieds, un troupeau de jaloux quadrupèdes,
Le museau relevé, tournoyait et rôdait;
Une plus grande bête au milieu s'agitait
Comme un exécuteur entouré de ses aides.
Habitant de Cythère, enfant d'un ciel si beau,
Silencieusement tu souffrais ces insultes
En expiation de tes infâmes cultes
Et des péchés qui t'ont interdit le tombeau.
Ridicule pendu, tes douleurs sont les miennes!
Je sentis, à l'aspect de tes membres flottants,
Comme un vomissement, remonter vers mes dents
Le long fleuve de fiel des douleurs anciennes;
Devant toi, pauvre diable au souvenir si cher,
J'ai senti tous les becs et toutes les mâchoires
Des corbeaux lancinants et des panthères noires
Qui jadis aimaient tant à triturer ma chair.
— Le ciel était charmant, la mer était unie;
Pour moi tout était noir et sanglant désormais,
Hélas! et j'avais, comme en un suaire épais,
Le coeur enseveli dans cette allégorie.
Dans ton île, ô Vénus! je n'ai trouvé debout
Qu'un gibet symbolique où pendait mon image...
— Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût!
— Charles Baudelaire

A Voyage to Cythera
My heart like a bird was fluttering joyously
And soaring freely around the rigging;
Beneath a cloudless sky the ship was rolling
Like an angel drunken with the radiant sun.
What is this black, gloomy island? — It's Cythera,
They tell us, a country celebrated in song,
The banal Eldorado of old bachelors.
Look at it; after all, it is a wretched land.
— Island of sweet secrets, of the heart's festivals!
The beautiful shade of ancient Venus
Hovers above your seas like a perfume
And fills all minds with love and languidness.
Fair isle of green myrtle filled with full-blown flowers
Ever venerated by all nations,
Where the sighs of hearts in adoration
Roll like incense over a garden of roses
Or like the eternal cooing of wood-pigeons!
— Cythera was now no more than the barrenest land,
A rocky desert disturbed by shrill cries.
But I caught a glimpse of a singular object!
It was not a temple in the shade of a grove
Where the youthful priestess, amorous of flowers,
Was walking, her body hot with hidden passion,
Half-opening her robe to the passing breezes;
But behold! as we passed, hugging the shore
So that we disturbed the saa-birds with our white sails,
We saw it was a gallows with three arms
Outlined in black like a cypress against the sky.
Ferocious birds perched on their feast were savagely
Destroying the ripe corpse of a hanged man;
Each plunged his filthy beak as though it were a tool
Into every corner of that bloody putrescence;
The eyes were two holes and from the gutted belly
The heavy intestines hung down along his thighs
And his torturers, gorged with hideous delights,
Had completely castrated him with their sharp beaks.
Below his feet a pack of jealous quadrupeds
Prowled with upraised muzzles and circled round and round;
One beast, larger than the others, moved in their midst
Like a hangman surrounded by his aides.
Cytherean, child of a sky so beautiful,
You endured those insults in silence
To expiate your infamous adorations
And the sins which denied to you a grave.
Ridiculous hanged man, your sufferings are mine!
I felt at the sight of your dangling limbs
The long, bitter river of my ancient sorrows
Rise up once more like vomit to my teeth;
Before you, poor devil of such dear memory
I felt all the stabbing beaks of the crows
And the jaws of the black panthers who loved so much
In other days to tear my flesh to shreds.
— The sky was charming and the sea was smooth;
For me thenceforth all was black and bloody,
Alas! and I had in that allegory
Wrapped up my heart as in a heavy shroud.
On your isle, O Venus! I found upright only
A symbolic gallows from which hung my image...
O! Lord! give me the strength and the courage
To contemplate my body and soul without loathing!


He was concerned with painting the human form over and over again apparently.

The end

Bliss
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