Nina Murdoch Collecting Colour
Nina Murdoch Collecting Colour
“Time is fluid but contained in these paintings like mercury in a jar, quicksilver held within limits. Although the genesis of all her paintings remains in the external observable world, in the latest temperas scene and action are more like fictions of the mind than external realities.� Andrew Lambirth
31 October–24 November 2018
Nina Murdoch Collecting Colour
Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY +44 (0)20 7629 5161 mfa@marlboroughfineart.com www.marlboroughlondon.com
Nina Murdoch: Collecting Colour An introduction by Andrew Lambirth
Since her last exhibition, in 2014, a crisis occurred in Nina Murdoch’s art, when her paint suppliers ceased to manufacture the glazing medium she had been entirely reliant upon to keep her layers of tempera separate. Without it she was effectively unable to make her paintings. A crisis of this sort can often generate useful change and desperate measures, and while she was waiting for another supply to be sourced, Murdoch experimented with other media. Specifically, she began working in pastels over watercolour on small panels, mixing marble dust with the gesso to provide a key to the surface to hold the pigment. Suddenly her work was dramatically speeded up, and she was able to make a series of studies in which to explore her ideas, each of which would take a day rather than a year (which might be the duration of one of her large tempera panels). The powdery quality of the surface of these pastels was also very different, but there was enough in common in the application of colour and generation of light to establish a continuity of research. The new medium also offered opportunities to simplify the imagery and make it more spontaneous. These smaller studies have effected a remarkable loosening up of approach that is now being felt (with a new source of glazing medium) in the larger panels.
Part of her research for the new work required a trip to Paris to reacquaint herself with Monet, and his great water lily paintings at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Monet concentrated on painting water lilies for the last 30 years of his life, observed in his famous garden at Giverny, eventually making some 250 paintings of the subject. The Orangerie holds eight large water lily murals in two specially-built oval rooms, and these were the focus of Murdoch’s visit. One of the things to be reaffirmed by looking again at Monet was a sense of urgency: in these magnificent late paintings, Monet, beset by age and failing eyesight, felt the urgency of ultimate deadlines. Murdoch finds herself responding to this too. Not in the sense of hurrying at a painting or trying to complete it quickly, but in the word’s secondary meaning: earnest and persistent in demand. Entirely serious about her paintings she wants them to be persistent rather than hasty; but at the same time is also happy to encourage them to unravel slightly, and become looser in handling — more urgent in appeal.
She reacts against the self-denying, puritanical side of the English, which convinces artists that they must get rid of the best bit of a painting because it throws the rest out. Her philosophy is to keep the best bit in and make it more so — in fact, to make her paintings a unified collection of best bits. She is well aware of the ease with which an artist can become comfortable with his or her solutions to problems, and then slip into habits of picture construction. Likewise she recognizes the temptation to tidy up too much. To combat these routines and constrictions, she speaks of letting go of the anchor. Her imagery now seems almost to be floating off the panels, as if in water or a dream, the paint more fluid but the colour more specific. Murdoch builds up the colour in particular areas with glazes; in other areas the gesso ground might be showing through. She gathers together clusters of paint, alternating built-up passages with transparent ones. Likewise, she collects little things from everyday sites — glimpses of things seen. Her gathering of incidents is like the tide going in and out, with flotsam and jetsam being deposited on the beach. Painting for her is like orchestrating presences (the colours), and making up stories in the paint. She makes melodramatic visions of such normal, quotidian things. Time is fluid but contained in these paintings like mercury in a jar, quicksilver held within limits. Although the genesis of all her paintings remains in the external observable world, in the latest temperas scene and action are more like fictions of the mind than external realities. In her progress towards abstraction, Murdoch is perfecting a notation of the world as shifting, luminous, ultimately unreliable. Her art encompasses the sudden shining forth of some aspect of truth or reality gathered from observation, invariably of the commonest events or objects, such as lightfall in the corner of a supermarket car park. Such revelation requires a fresh painterly language, ß Watch Chimes, 2015–18 (detail)
new and startling. Murdoch’s rich melodies aspire to this. She is a maker of coloured signs in the Joycean sense. (‘Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and wrack, the nearing tide, the rusty boot. Snotgreen, blue silver, rust. Coloured signs.’ James Joyce: Ulysses.) Her work partakes of the epiphanic (the Joycean epiphany is defined as a sudden spiritual manifestation), and exists in those states of the creative mind so memorably evoked by Gerard Manley Hopkins as inscape and instress. He thought of inscape as the unique design that constitutes individual identity, an identity not static but dynamic; and instress as the recognition of other individualities in an intense concentration of energy. It seems right to be talking of Murdoch’s paintings in terms of literary modernism, for their context (and content) is essentially poetic and allusive (also elusive), by no means straightforwardly descriptive. She celebrates the observing sensibility operating in the continuum of life, actively engaging the whole sensory apparatus in a slow-burn response which builds in the opposite way to the instant hit pattern of much contemporary culture. Samuel Beckett referred to his own work as ‘a stain upon the silence’, and in parallel to this thought Murdoch’s work might be seen as a stain upon the darkness — a gorgeous stain of rainbow light. I have written in the past of Murdoch’s painting as exemplifying a kind of urban baroque. Now, as it moves further from its referents, it might be more properly categorized as abstract baroque, but the term doesn’t carry the right measure of sheer organic delight that drives her work. Paint is the key energy of her imagery: not line or the creation of space, not even colour or the evocation of a particular place. Paint, and the remarkable way it is applied, is everything. Her methods and procedures are by now familiar: she works flat upon a table, building up as many as six layers of gesso on the wooden panels she favours, and then some 40 layers of tempera in
often tiny increments of colour. She works in intense bursts, not stopping for three or four hours on one painting. She might work on two or three at once, but confine one to one day, another to the next. In terms of imagery, she tends to put everything in to start with, then to conduct a process of elimination, removing whatever is not strictly essential to the picture. She has simplified the subject matter to allow room for the painting: in effect, the paint itself has assumed greater importance in these new pictures. Murdoch prepares herself for the act of painting, usually by sleeping a little to set her unconscious mind free to work on the problem before her. In the same way that a writer might enact a scenario between his leading characters in his head, Murdoch focuses on what she might achieve in the next painting session. She goes into herself in order to bring forth wonders. (Art’s roots in magic may be sensed here.) But the shamanic aspect of the activity should not be over-stressed. For all her thought and guiding, she follows the paint, collaborates with it. The work makes its own demands, and every mark requires an echo or response. This is not to say that it doesn’t have meaning, but the whole thrust of the new work is less to do with specifics and more about the universal. Her main tools and components are time — especially in the making of and looking at the work — colour, and light. There are paintings here one would happily spend hours quietly contemplating. Titles come after the paintings have been completed. Quite often Murdoch will find herself halted and unable to resolve a painting, and she has adopted various strategies to deal with this block. One of her most successful is listening to the same song over and over again. This can help to free an image. The song changes from painting to painting, and in this new body of work she acknowledges and celebrates this
intimate relationship between image and music by adopting the song titles as names for her paintings. This new context provides new echoes and resonances, and such titles as Soft as Chalk or Il Tramonto bestow an extra layer of meaning beyond their personal significance for the artist. Consider In the Upper Room, in which light falls like molten lava from an oculus, or the wedge of gold central to Return, or the pool of mysterious luminescence in Wait. All these are images on the brink of the sublime: a sense of grandeur without the terror; they would be apocalyptic if they weren’t so overwhelmingly otherworldly and serene. The references are multifarious, and we each see here fragments and aspects of our own experience, given back to us through a distinctive new interpretation and with unexpected beauty. Some might find in Il Tramonto the end-of-the-world pyrotechnics of a judgement scene by the English Romantic painter John Martin, so influential on generations of movie-makers, from DW Griffith to Cecil B DeMille and George Lucas. For myself, I think again of Hopkins and that supremely evocative line in his poem Pied Beauty: ‘Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings’. In I was just Thinking, the light event — the action, so to speak — shifts off the right side of the panel, and the walls are beginning to dissolve though joins and edges are still visible. Murdoch is not yet ready to forsake entirely the visual facts observed in the real world. Complete abstraction is not for her. As she says: ‘I want a space to go into — I want to keep it a space.’ But we might be forgiven for thinking that these are spaces of the soul, so transformed are the glimpses of mundane reality that spark off these darkly transcendent objects of meditation. I can think of no one painting quite like this, or offering quite so much solace in a troubled world.
Playlist Best of Both worlds, Scott Walker Watch Chimes, Ennio Morricone In the Upper Room, Phillip Glass Return, Max Richter Wait, M83 I was Just Thinking, Max Richter Within, Daft Punk Path, Max Richter Soft as Chalk, Joanne Newson Open Spaces, Jonny Greenwood The Forest, Rene Aubry Montage Terrace (In Blue), Scott Walker Il tramonto, Ennio Morricone
List of works Within, 2015–18
Best of Both Worlds I, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
122 x 152 cm
80 x 106 cm
Wait, 2015–18
Best of Both Worlds II, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
152 x 122 cm
80 x 95 cm
I Was Just Thinking, 2015–18
Watch Chimes, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
152 x 122 cm
106 x 80 cm
Path, 2015–18
The Forest, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
122 x 168 cm
138 x 98 cm
Return, 2015–18
Open Spaces, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
122 x 183 cm
138 x 98 cm
In the Upper Room, 2015–18
Il Tramonto, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
113 x 183 cm
113 x 183 cm
Soft as Chalk I, 2015–18
Montague Terrace (In Blue), 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
60 x 80 cm
106 x 106 cm
Soft as Chalk II, 2015–18
Within, 2015–18
egg tempera on gesso panel
egg tempera on gesso panel
60 x 80 cm
122 x 152 cm
Wait, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 152 x 122 cm
I Was Just Thinking, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 152 x 122 cm
Path, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 122 x 168 cm
Return, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 122 x 183 cm
In the Upper Room, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 113 x 183 cm
Soft as Chalk I, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 60 x 80 cm
Soft as Chalk II, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 60 x 80 cm
Best of Both Worlds I, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 80 x 106 cm
Best of Both Worlds II, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 80 x 95 cm
Watch Chimes, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 106 x 80 cm
The Forest, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 138 x 98 cm
Open Spaces, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 138 x 98 cm
Il Tramonto, 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 113 x 183 cm
Montague Terrace (In Blue), 2015–18 egg tempera on gesso panel 106 x 106 cm
Studies for paintings
Il Tramonto, 2015–18 egg tempura on gesso panels 30 x 35 cm each
Return, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 11.7 x 20.6 cm
Wait, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 13.1 x 15 cm
Best of Both Worlds III, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 16.2 x18.1 cm
Soft as Chalk, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 13 x 20 cm
Path, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 13 x 20 cm
Bartholomew’s Land l, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 20 x 13 cm
Il Tramonto, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 13 x 20 cm
Bartholomew’s Land ll, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 22 x 30 cm
In the Upper Room, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 22 x 35.6 cm
The Forest, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 20 x 13 cm
Open Spaces 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 20 x 13 cm
Watch Chimes, 2015–18 pastels on gesso panels 20 x 13 cm
Biography 1970 Born 1970, England 1993–96 Royal Academy Schools (Post-graduate Diploma) 1989–93 Slade School of Art (BA Hons) Lives and works in London
One‑man exhibitions
1997 2000 2001–2 2005 2007 2009 2011
ew Paintings, Portland Street Gallery, London N New Paintings, Blue Gallery, London Nina Murdoch Paintings 1995–2001, Blue Gallery, London Art Projects, Art 2005 Business Design Centre, Islington Concrete Fields, Fine Art Society, London In the Dark, Fine Art Society, London Nina Murdoch Shedding Light, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1–26 November Nina Murdoch Enlightenment, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 2–27 April
2014
1994 1998 2001 2003
Selected bibliography
1994 Review of RA Summer Show, The Late Show, BBC 2000 John Russell Taylor, The Times, 4 October Luke Elwes, Galleries, October 2001 Tony Parsons, Nina Murdoch Paintings 1995–2001, catalogue essay 2002 David Gleeson, Modern Painters 2007 Richard Cork, Concrete Fields exhibition catalogue essay 2009 Matthew Collings, Breakthrough: Nina Murdoch’s new paintings, In the Dark exhibition catalogue essay 2011 Andrew Lambirth Nina Murdoch Bringing the Sky Down, Marlborough Fine Art, exhibition catalogue essay Andrew Lambirth Sensation Seeker, John Martin: Apocalypse and Nina Murdoch, The Spectator, 5 November http://artdaily.com/news/51519/Nina-Murdoch-s--Shedding-Light--New-#.UxXKcT9_vkI 2014 Andrew Lambirth Moment of light / Moments of vision, Marlborough Fine Art, exhibition catalogue essay
Selected group exhibitions
ummer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London S Inaugural Exhibition, Hiscox plc, London The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (invited by Robert Hiscox) Amplifying Silence, Magnifying Stillness, Guerlain Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris, curated by Roy Exley 2004 Urban Living Scenes of Contemporary Life, Fleming Collection, London 2005 Christmas Show, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London 2006 The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (invited by Stewart Pearson Wright) 2008 Basel Scope, Basel 2008 Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London 2010 The Scottish Summer Exhibition, Fleming Wyfold Foundation 2010 City Living, Somerset House 2012 Masterpiece, London, 25 June–2 July 2013 Brussels Art Fair, April Art Basel, 10–16 June 2015 British Landscapes, George Shaw, Paul Morrison and Nina Murdoch, Maruani Mercier Gallery, Knokke, 4 April–1 May 2015 A Summer Exhibition, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 14 July–4 September
Public collections
Barclays Capital Gartmore Investment Management Ltd Hiscox plc Mercury Asset Management Unilever Land Securities Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Slade School of Fine Art David Roberts Foundation Quo Vadis
Awards 1983 1st Prize, National Gallery Children’s Competition 1993 1st Prize, Sir William Coldstream Competition, Slade School of Art Landscape Award, David Murray Studentship 1994 British Institution Fund Award 1996 Aeneas Travel Award to Italy 2008 1st Prize, Threadneedle Art Prize
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Cover: In the Upper Room, 2015–18 (detail) | Opposite: Wait, 2015–18 (detail) ISBN 978-1-909707-53-5 | Catalogue no. 781 Photography Todd White & Luke Walker | Photograph of the Artist: Daniel Dovar Catalogue essay copyright Andrew Lambirth | Design: Bright Design London Print: Impress Print Services | Gesso panels by ADL studios | © 2018 Marlborough