Dublin Contemporary 2011

Terrible Beauty—Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of Non-Compliance

(Until 31st October)

Claudio Parmiggiana, Untitled, 2009

The Earlsfort Terrace site of Dublin Contemporary is home to an exciting treasure trove of contemporary artwork, featuring over 114 Irish and international artists. Its historic, long, labyrinthine corridors and plethora of ex-office rooms form the perfect main location for an exhibition this size, and uniquely each artist has been given their own room. A word of warning though before you set out: do purchase a guidebook - without one you will be utterly overwhelmed by the extent of work on display throughout the building.

Wang Du, Le Berceau (The Cradle), 2007

The overall aim of this exhibition is to showcase art that captures the spirit of the present time, with each artist naturally choosing to interpret this theme in a thoroughly different way. The extensive artwork ranges from, gigantic sculptural installations to photography, interactive exhibits to illustration, digital media to painting and even includes performance installations such as Amanda Coogan's, Spit Spit, Scrub Scrub: this innovative piece features three performers who inhabit a blue room and communicate with their audience via choreographed movements. 

Dublin Contemporary actively encourages audience participation. A particularly interesting, interactive piece is Mark Cullen's, Ark; I could sleep for a thousand years, where the viewer is invited to lie down in one of the several aluminium sleeping bags arranged on a platform, and stare up at the ceiling where a light installation, vaguely reminiscent of the milky way has been placed. Another intriguing piece is Wang Du's, Le Berceau (The Cradle), which consists (rather unsurprisingly) of a giant, rocking cradle, positioned under numerous television screens. The mattresses of the cradle, which the viewer is invited to climb on, have been printed with the images of crumpled newspapers. The link Du draws between media saturation and the infantilization of culture is strikingly obvious. 

Nevan Lahart, Wankruptcy, 2011

The Irish artist, Nevan Lahart, provides the unavoidable recession reference, yet in a refreshingly humorous manner: his clever cardboard installation, Wankruptcy, mimics the use of the Hollywood Hills as an iconic backdrop as he explores the blatant sexual metaphor of bankruptcy, turned into wankruptcy. Lahart uses travelling rubber missiles and an impromptu, erupting geyser of empty beer cans to put across his message.

Alongside humour, there are also moments for serious reflection: a particularly somber and haunting installation is Theresa Margottes's City's Keys, where the Mexican artist recreates the studio of Antonio Hernandez Camacho, a key maker from her native country. In this eerily recreated studio space, Margottes showcases Camacho's trade in the form of numerous, intricately engraved keys, which are hauntingly suspended across the room on a piece of string. The keys are contextualized by means of a written commentary which describes the harrowing experiences of Camacho, running a small business, in a town riddled with dreadful violence.

Theresa Margottes, City's Keys,  2011

Usually when one visits an exhibition, the curator’s placement of the work of different artist's, side by side, is likely to form a bond of association between these artists in our mind. However, at Dublin Contemporary, the specific allocation of individual rooms to each artist leaves more room for interpretation to the viewer. Whilst this lack of direction might be perceived as overwhelming by some, it will be viewed as liberating by others.

The wealth of artwork on display at Earlsfort Terrace, gives a substantial taster of the ethos behind this innovative festival which is taking place in various locations across Dublin, until the end of October. So hurry, if you wish to attend! Dublin Contemporary may feel perplexing and disjointed at times, but its interesting choice to showcase the work of relatively unknown artists (as opposed to all the big names) and the fact that it offers a very different experience of viewing art, are both reasons for which it is worth visiting.

Jim Lambie, I Remember (Square Dance), 2009

Maarten Vanden Eynde, The Earth Seen from the Moon, 2005

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement

The Royal Academy
(Until 11th December 2011)

Ballerinas are renowned for their distinctive posture, incredible poise, intense discipline and above all, their graceful elegance. These are all qualities that Degas masterfully captured in abundance during his long career; as he observed, drew, painted, sculpted and even photographed, towards the end of his career, numerous dancers. This exhibition is particularly interested in the influence that the introduction of photography had during Degas’s lifetime, 1834–1917.

Degas made hundreds of drawings of dancers exercising in the classroom. Sometimes these preparatory drawings would focus solely on a particular aspect of the dancer’s body, such as the calves and pointed feet; whilst on other occasions penciled notes accompany a sketch of a dancer; or a pencil grid is positioned behind the dancer so that proportions can be worked out correctly. The sheer volume of these sketches, suggest that Degas wanted his work to be accurate from both an artistic and scientific perspective. This is a concern that continued throughout his career, particularly as he became interested in the work of the scientist and chronophotographer, Étienne - Jules Marey, and his scientific studies of movement.

Degas innovatively sketched and drew moving subjects, at a time when photography was not yet advanced enough to do the same. Limitations within the photographic medium, during his early career, meant that ballerinas had to freeze in position for the camera. Much of Degas’s work shows a compelling interest between, depictions of the body at rest, and depictions of the body in motion: The Rehearsal provides a good example. In the foreground of this painting, one dancer rests and another has her costume adjusted; whilst in the background, a group of dancers practice together and another dancer can be spotted hurrying down the stairs.

 Degas,The Rehearsal, c.1874. Image © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)
 Sport Glasgow 

In the 1870s, Degas began an intriguing group of panoramic paintings which depict scenes from ballet practice rooms. Although most of the ballerinas in these paintings are stationary, the way in which Degas encourages the viewer to scan the picture from side to side and from the foreground into the background creates a kind of animation. The implied movement of a stationary object was a key concern of Degas’s and it is depicted in his paintings and sculptures through subtle hints: the placement of a dancer’s feet, her leaning torso, or the position of a raised limb.

Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1880-81,
Image © Tate, London, 2010

As would be expected, Little Dancer aged Fourteen - Degas’s only sculpture that was exhibited publicly during his lifetime - forms the highlight of the exhibition. The curators encourage the viewer to consider this famous sculpture from a new perspective through their arrangement of Degas’s preparatory drawings. These show that Degas originally observed and drew his muse, Marie van Goethem, whilst circling her and moving rather like a film camera would nowadays. However, it was Degas’s trio of Bronze Nudes that stole the show for me. These sculptures show three different phases of the same movement and they were originally made in wax before being cast in bronze after Degas’s death. An interesting paradox exists in ballet, whereby a ballerina must always appear graceful, elegant and light; but also be strong, robust and immovable, whilst holding a difficult position, often with raised limbs and for a prolonged period of time. The extensive periods that Degas spent in the company of dancers, observing their every movements, meant that he was fully aware of this paradox, as his sculptures testify. The agile, flexible figure of a ballerina is depicted in a solid medium and in the process, Degas ensures that the dancer retains all the elegance which forms the crux of her identity as a ballerina.

Degas, Dancer: Fourth Position Front on the Left Leg, c.1883-1888

Image © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

As Degas’s prolific sketches of individual ballerinas indicate, he was just as interested in the preparation that comes before a final performance, as he was in the end product. Seemingly inconsequential actions such as a dancer adjusting her dress, or re-positioning her feet, caught his attention. It is Degas’s attention to delicate details and subtle movements, that make his work so impressive. Visiting the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy made me desperate to take up ballet again.

Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters

Dulwich Picture Gallery 29 June - 25 September 2011


"I would have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time". 
(Cy Twombly)


The first exhibition of Twombly's work that I ever visited was at the Tate Modern during the Summer of 2008: subtitled Cycles and Seasons it was both comprehensive and chronological, providing the viewer with a thoroughly substantial account of the artist's life and the prominent themes that dominate his work. My lasting impressions of this exhibition recall an artist renown for his intense engagement with light, alongside a love of poetry and a deep fascination with classical mythology. So abundant are the classical references throughout Twombly's work, I remember at the time wishing this was subject that I had at least been taught to some degree at school. Three years later, a different exhibition and once again there I was recognising that a classical knowledge (which whilst by no means a necessity), would nevertheless still be a very illuminating tool for understanding much of Twombly's work. 


The current exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is a very different exploration of Twombly's work to the one that the Tate held three years ago. This exhibition uses continual juxtaposition as the tool by which to compare and contrast the work of the twentieth-century American artist, Twombly, with that of the seventeenth-century French classicist painter Nicholas Poussin, an artist whom Twombly was greatly inspired by. Both Twombly and Poussin spent large periods of their working lives in Italy and beyond this their work shares in common, the study and revivification of subjects such as; antiquity, ancient history, classical mythology and the imaginary, idealised realm of Arcadia.


Theatricality
The concept of arcadia formed the focal point of this exhibition, however, the room that I found the most intriguing was one titled Anxiety and theatricality.   

The Triumph of David, 1631 -33

Herodiade, 1960

Both The Triumph of David and Herodiade deal with biblical stories of beheading. Poussin's painting depicts a triumphant David returning with the head of the giant Goliath whom he has slain. Tom Lubbock writes of the scene:"The parade comes home, passes through the picture. The young hero carries the enemy's head on a pole. The crowds point and cheer. The stage is all set" (the italic emphasis is mine). Lubbock acknowledges that Poussin's painting is all about performance and spectacle and the same can be said for Twombly's Herodiade:  the stairs to the top left of the canvas suggest the physical idea of a stage set. Lubbock makes an interesting observation about The Triumph of David when he compares the isolated architectural fragment at the bottom left of the canvas with the only other isolated object in the picture, Golaith's head. He argues that:"[this] picture relates the felling of the enemy to the fall of the state, and locks catastrophe into the hour of triumph". The title for Twombly's painting Herodiade is taken from an unfinished poem by the French symbolist writer Stéphane Mallarmé and the viewer is able to make out the words: "I have known the nakedness of my scattered dreams" scribbled onto the canvas. The abstract smearing of red paint across the canvas by Twombly and its obvious association with blood and gore, links the painting with Poussin's depiction of a bloody spectacle, although as one would expect Poussin's representation is far more contained. His concern lies with the aftermath of the event as opposed to its actuality. 

Hero and Leandro, 1985

Colour
Twombly's expressive, energetic and hugely symbolic use of colour, frequently contrasts with large, white spaces on his canvases and it is this element of his work that has always held the greatest appeal for me. Hero and Leandro is a painting that was also displayed as part of the Tate's exhibition and it reflects Twombly's fascination with water that grew particularly during the 1980s as he spent more time in Gaete, an Italian medieval port town on the Tyrrhenian Sea. In this current exhibition, Hero and Leandro is displayed in a room titled Venus and Eros and the painting itself is inspired by a classical legend of doomed love. According to the legend, Leandro drowned whilst swimming across the Hellespont to meet his lover Hero, who then threw herself into the sea. Twombly poignantly evokes this tragic subject matter by using waves of evanescent brushstrokes and dribbles of paint. His vibrant use of reds and pinks represent the fragility of human form, being literally smothered and suffocated by the sea of white paint. 

Quattro Stagioni, 1993-5

The climax of this exhibition comes (somewhat predictably) with Twombly’s famous series of paintings which depict the changing seasons, Quattro Stagionio. However, Twombly's masterpieces wholeheartedly deserve their place at the finale of this exhibition and are interestingly placed in comparison with photographic replications of Poussin's similar series: The Four Seasons. Twombly's paintings loosely follow the traditional character of each season and age, as aptly set forth in Keat's poem The Human Seasons: Spring is lusty, summer sensual, autumn content to be idle, winter sees death approaching. Whilst Primavera (spring) features energetic strokes of red and yellow that create a suitably uplifting sense of vitality and new life, Estate (summer) is much more mellow with its use of whites, creams and yellows which lean towards both the peace and tranquillity associated with a lazy summer afternoon, but also I would argue, with the notion of a stifling and oppressive heat represented by the presence of a white mist across the painting. Autonno (autumn) is like Primavera with its exuberant use of rich colours, except this time there are a whole multitude of new colours such as browns, greens and purples, which (presented as they are alongside the bare branches Twombly has also painted) create a vivid sense that autumn is the season when nature is stripped of its colour. The grapes which feature to the left of the canvas relate specifically to the wine festival of Bassanio and echo Poussin's similar depiction of grapes in his Autumn canvas. Twombly's Inverno (winter) also alludes to Poussin's earlier representation of the seasons, through its depiction of curved, boat-like forms in black paint. According to Nicholas Cullinan and Simon Bolitho, "Inverno is the most sparse of all Twombly's seasons, with words disappearing beneath a mist of translucent white paint, and the gathering darkness relieved only by flares of yellow and green paint." I would argue though that the flares of yellow and green paint hardly serve to "relieve" the gathering darkness and that Twombly's depiction of winter is thoroughly bleak and unforgiving. 


Whilst the artistic style of Nicholas Poussin and Cy Twombly could hardly be more different; the subject matter and inspirations of both artists, were remarkably similar. Lubbock acknowledges that Poussin's paintings of "high" subjects from the Bible; mythology, ancient history and epic poetry "were images for private study, for an intellectual elite, not for church and state. But their patient deliberation can accumulate a massive force." Classical references aside, Twombly's highly abstract work which frequently features undecipherable scrawls, can be hard to understand at times. However, this ingenious positioning of Twombly's work alongside Poussin's, allows the work of the American artist to be understood and viewed in a thoroughly, original and informative context.  

Contextualising Jane Avril: the conflict between public and private identities

Toulouse Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge 

Courtauld Gallery: 16th June - 18th September 2011

“Alone, apart, one dancer watches
/….And, enigmatically smiling,/In the mysterious night,/ She dances for her own delight,
/A shadow smiling/Back to a shadow in the night.”  (Arthur Symons La Mélinite: Moulin Rouge)

Arthur Symons’s sentence: “she dances for her own delight” is a particularly pertinent reference to Jane Avril, a dancer renown for her distinctive style. This is a style, which as this current exhibition explains, Avril developed during her teenage years whilst a patient at the infamous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Nicknamed La Mélinite after a powerful form of explosive, Jane Avril (née Jeanne Beaudon) was already known for her innovative dance performances prior to the immortalization she received at the hands of her close friend, Toulouse Lautrec. Lautrec met Avril in the 1890s when they were both in their twenties and their friendship spawned a creative partnership that as a contemporary audience we are greatly indebted too. The stylized posters that Lautrec painted of Avril in motion have become iconic advertisements of the Moulin Rouge at the heyday of its popularity; as the complete embodiment of Bohemian Paris during the Belle Époque. This exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery seeks to explore the idea that alongside this very famous and much publicised relationship, there existed an important, private counterpoint that deserves recognition.

Jane Avril leaving the Moulin Rouge, 1892

A seminal work of this exhibition is Jane Avril leaving The Moulin Rouge, which depicts a pensive and somber lady, in direct contrast to her vibrant and exotic stage persona. Avril appears introverted, with her composed gaze directed towards the ground and her hands hidden in her pockets.  I would argue that the painting above is asking us to think about the role that the private individual has in relation to the public character that performs on stage. As an audience member, viewer or spectator, it is all to easy to forget the personality that exists behind the character on stage. Whilst we may think that we know Jane Avril, the 'person' we really know, is Jane Avril as she crucially chooses to present herself on stage: the self-taught, unconventional dancer, with her erratic kicking and easily identifiable auburn hair: the semi-fictionalized character that Nicole Kidman plays in Moulin Rouge (2001). However, as this new exhibition demonstrates, Lautrec was just as interested in the lady born Jeanne Beaudon, who inhabits a separate life away from the limelight, as he is, in the fictionalised persona of Jane Avril, the star.

                                                          Jane Avril: Back View, 1892-1893  

My favourite paintings of this exhibition are two almost cursory, oils on cardboard that depict Avril sitting with her back to the viewer. In Jane Avril: Back View, the artist’s subject is tense, her shoulders are raised and a delicate hand outstretched. Lautrec depicts Avril in so distinctive a fashion, that even without the caption we can guess who the subject is. This painting exudes a definite sense of understated elegance, a quality that is also present in Lautrec’s other, very similar painting: Seated woman from behind, 1892 (unfortunately I was unable to find a good image of this painting to display above). The vast expanses of cardboard that Lautrec leaves bare, contribute towards the appealing sense of mystery that pervades Seated woman from behind; whilst the white outline that surrounds the headdress and face, (a technique that Lautrec also employs in other works such as Jane Avril dancing) has a typically, Egon Schiele like, feel to it. The (likely) influence that Lautrec had over Schiele would definitely be a compelling avenue for exploration at another time!

Troupe de Mlle Églantine, 1896

Whilst I had seen most of the main body of this exhibition before; Jane Avril au jardin de paris, 1893, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-5, Troupe de Mlle Églantine, 1896 and so on; nevertheless, re-visiting these works in a different context suggested that there must have existed a tremendous bond of trust between Lautrec and Avril. In order for Lautrec to simultaneously advertise the Moulin Rouge and promote Jane Avril, it was necessary for his posters to draw attention to Avril’s identifiable features so that she might in turn become synonymous with the great music hall, and vice versa. By emphasizing features such as her flamingly auburn hair, extremely thin figure and totally unconventional style of dancing, it would have been easy for Lautrec to stray into the territory of typecasting and possibly even caricature. However, as this exhibition clearly demonstrates, Lautrec continually resisted reducing Avril to a stereotype, by painting her in a variety of solitary, and frequently intimate settings; far removed from the excitement and whirling exuberance of her workplace.

 Lautrec produced work in a pre-Hollywood era, a long time before the cult of the celebrity became a widespread obsession. Yet the presentation of Lautrec's work in this fashion by the Courtauld Gallery; whereby the ‘celebrity’ images of Avril - the poster advertisements for the Moulin Rouge - are placed in direct contrast with depictions of a more private and personal Avril away from the arena of the stage; gives the exhibition in my opinion a thoroughly contemporary relevance. The depiction of Avril's life in this fashion, is not too dissimilar after all, to the format followed by the many celebrity gossip magazines that proliferate modern culture. Such magazines continually strive to present their readership with the so-called ‘normal’ person that co-exists alongside the recognizable public image of the celebrity.