In Camera: Snowdon and the World of British Art 29 September 2007–27 January 2008
Peter de Francia in Focus Visages des Mortes by Rudolf Schäfer New Stairwell Installation: Nina Saunders Event and Workshop Programme
ÂŁ1.50 Number 13 Sept 2007−Jan 2008 www.pallant.org.uk
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Adrian Heath 1920 – 1992
Paintings from the early Sixties 26 September – 12 October 2007
Jonathan Clark & Co • Modern British Art 18 Park Walk London SW10 t. 020 7351 3555
www.jonathanclarkfineart.com Jonathan Clark represents the Estates of Kenneth Armitage, Brian Fielding, Adrian Heath, Roger Hilton, Ivon Hitchens, John Wells & Bryan Wynter
TERENCE DONOVAN Image Maker and Innovator 19 September – 13 October 2007 The Chris Beetles Gallery presents a major retrospective and the biggest ever selling exhibition of Terence Donovan’s photographs. The show comprises 80 pictures, including both previously unreleased prints and his best-known images of such luminaries as Terence Stamp, Marianne Faithfull, Twiggy, Francis Bacon, Julie Christie, Sophia Loren, Mary Quant, and Diana, Princess of Wales. Both modern and vintage prints will be shown including an intriguing selection of vintage contact prints. A comprehensive fully illustrated catalogue is available from the gallery at £10 post free (UK only). All images are available to view at www.chrisbeetles.com
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IVOR ABRAHAMS RA • SIR TERRY FROST RA • EVE ARNOLD • BREON O’CASEY • JOHN HOYLAND RA SANDRA BLOW RA • ANDRE JACKOWSKI • MAURICE COCKERILL RA • GLEN BAXTER • RICHARD SMITH • GW BOT • EILEEN COOPER RA • ANTHONY BENJAMIN • MATTHEW HILTON • ARTURO DI STEFANO • IAN MCKEEVER RA • CHRISTOPHER LE BRUN RA • GARY HUME RA • KARL WESCHKE
Penzance
www.stonemangraphics.co.uk
01736 351363
Hamish MacDonald BARRA and BEYOND 10 November – 1 December 2007
•
Oil on canvas
155 x 183 cm
Catalogue available on request
Frozen Fields, Morar
13 Lemon Street, �ruro Cornwall TR1 2LS 01872 275757 info@lemonstreetgallery.co.uk �ww.lemonstreetgallery.co.u�
Gallery Pangolin Autumn Exhibition Sculpture & Drawings by Gallery Artists 5th November - 14th December - Catalogue available
Evolution I: Steve Dilworth · Bronze & Silver · Edition of 5
Gallery Pangolin Chalford · Gloucestershire · GL6 8NT · UK · T: 00 44 (0)1453 886527 E: gallery@pangolin-editions.com · www.gallery-pangolin.com
8
Contents Gallery News 16 Awards Update 19 Wendy Ramshaw Gates
Snowdon 40 44 48
In Camera by Robin Muir Snowdon in Conversation with Peter Blake by Robin Muir Snowdon in The Pallant Restaurant
Peter de Francia 49 The Ship of Fools by James Hyman
Rudolf Schäfer 53 Dead Faces
Edgar Holloway 54 From Pencil to Print by Robert Meyrick
Nina Saunders 56 Autumn Flowers by Frances Guy Snowdon, Eduardo Paolozzi in his studio, Chelsea, 1988, Vogue, All photographs by Snowdon © Snowdon/Camera Press Peter de Francia, Ship of Fools (detail), 1972, Oil on canvas, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, © de Francia Edgar Holloway, Orchard Moon, 1990, Etching, from the Portfolio 'Etchings and Engravings', © The Artist
Regulars 10 Editorial 13 Chairman and Director's Letter 22 Current Exhibitions 24 Forthcoming Exhibitions 28 Previews 63 Book Reviews, Gallery Publications and Editions 71 Collection News 74 Luncheon: Paul and Toni Arden 79 Friends News, Visits, Talks, Events & Workshops 89 Listings 95 Pallant Photos 97 Artwork of the Month
9
use Gallery.
Editorial
UBS in the south of England,
mmerson on 01273 715300.
EDITORIAL Editor Harriet Wailling, h.wailling@pallant.org.uk Gallery Editorial Frances Guy, Simon Martin, Stefan van Raay, Edwina Vine, Harriet Wailling, Guest Editorial (with many thanks) Barbara Chisholm, James Hyman, Robin Muir, Robert Meyrick, Simon Powell, Mercia Last Design, Photography & Production David Wynn, d.wynn@pallant.org.uk
Supporter of the Collection 2007
Supporter of the Gallery 2007
ADVERTISING Kim (0)207 3005658 Legal Support from me of UBS AG,Jenner which is+44 authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Š UBS 2006. All rights reserved. Jane Grylls +44 (0)207 3005661 FRIENDS Events +44 (0)1243 770816 Membership +44 (0)1243 770815 Gallery Information Pallant House Gallery 9 North Pallant, Chichester West Sussex, PO19 1TJ Telephone +44 (0)1243 774557 Email info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk www.myspace.com/pallanthousegallery
The Priory and Poling Charitable Trusts, The Garfield Weston Foundation and other Trusts, Foundations and anonymous benefactors.
10
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Christopher Wood 1901–1930 Street in Tréboul 1930 Oil on panel · 21¼ x 25¼ inches · 53.8 x 64.8 cm provenance: Frosca Munster; Colonel Robert Adeane; Hill Samuel & Co Ltd; Private Collection exhibited: London, New Burlington Galleries, Christopher Wood, the complete works, 1938 (118); London, The Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood, 1959 (74); Colchester, The Minories, Durham, DLI Museum and Arts Centre, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Arts Council of Great Britain Touring Exhibition, Christopher Wood, 1979 (50); London, Christie’s, The New Patrons: Twentieth Century Art from Corporate Collections, 1992 (164); St Ives, Tate Gallery, Christopher Wood, 1996 (24), Quimper, Museé des Beaux Arts, Christopher Wood, 1997 (24) literature: Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901–1930, London 1938 p.74 no.412; Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901–1930, London 1959 p.11, illustrated; Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood: An English Painter, London 1995 pp.247-48 illustrated no.44; V. Button, Christopher Wood, London 2003 pp.60–1 illustrated
Including works by Frank Auerbach, Patrick Caulfield, Prunella Clough, John Craxton, Richard Eurich, Barbara Hepworth, Charles Jagger, John Nash, Ben Nicholson, Eric Ravilious and Bridget Riley
19 September to 11 October 2007
THE FINE ART SOCIETY Dealers since 1876 148 New Bond Street · London w1s 2jt Telephone +44 (0)20 7629 5116 Email art@faslondon.com www.faslondon.com
Thriving, but not complacent Letter from the Chairman and Director
Jason Hedges
The Gallery is thriving at the moment, largely perhaps, because of the novelty value, but also because of the excellent temporary exhibitions programme, the extensive education and outreach programme and the ongoing attention generated by public recognition. The latest award, the West Sussex County Council Design and Sustainability Award 2007, is the eight we have received since opening last year, and we are nominated for still others, yet to be awarded (see page 16). We cannot, however, afford to grow complacent. In time, the novelty value will naturally diminish and to attract a constant flow of visitors, we will have to start depending on the programme alone. It is imperative to remember that we cannot sustain the current schedule beyond this financial year (2007–2008) unless we secure greatly increased public funding for future years because of the extended Gallery, the enlarged operation and the ambitious programme.
In the first months of this financial year (April–June 2007) £400,000 has been raised. We are extremely grateful to the Monument Trust, the Ellerman Trust, the Foyle Foundation and many individual donors for this wonderfully encouraging contribution to our aims for the future. Of course the Gulbenkian prize money, which has been placed in the endowment fund, is included in this. If you are a Patron of the Gallery, or a Gallery Club Member or a Friend, please look around and bring new supporters on board. Your help is vital. Together, let’s keep Pallant House Gallery at the heart of the local community and, at the same time, in the national and international spotlight. Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Trustees Stefan van Raay, Director
Due to the great generosity of trusts, foundations and individual donors, the accounts have not shown a deficit in the last 10 years, but we cannot afford to slacken our efforts! 13
7– 20 October 2007
historic domestic interiors new paintings Tim Kent Tim Kent will present a lecture on the exhibition and the history of domestic interiors at 7pm on Friday 12 October
7– 20 October 2007
the animal kingdom sculptures for interiors: domestic, wild life, endangered species David Backhouse, Anita Mandl, Nicola Toms Both exhibitions open on Sunday 7th, Monday 8th, Saturday 13th Monday 15th and Saturday 20th October, from 11am to 5pm or any other time (including Sundays) by appointment only Works may be viewed nearer the opening date on our web site
10–18 November 2007
the christmas exhibition A group exhibition of some twenty artists including: Craigie Aitchison, Andrew Gifford, Sarah Chalmers Pippa Blake, Emma McClure, Bridget Macdonald Elizabeth Butler, Eliza Meath-Baker David Humphreys, Sarah Young Open Saturday 10th, Sunday 11th, Monday 12th, Saturday 17th, Sunday 18th All other days by appointment Works may be viewed nearer the opening date on our web site
Moncrieff~Bray Gallery Woodruffs Farm, Woodruffs Lane, Egdean, Pulborough, W. Sussex RH20 1JX Telephone: 07867 978 414 e: mail@moncrieff-bray.com
www.moncrieff-bray.com
Victorian Artists in Photographs: G F Watts and his World Selections from The Rob Dickins Collection
G F Watts RA, J P Mayall, Photogravure, 28.5 x 39.5 cm, from ‘Artists at Home’, edited by F G Stephens
18 September–31 December 2007 Watts Gallery, Compton A touring exhibition organised by Watts Gallery, Compton
Watts Gallery Down Lane, Compton, Guildford GU3 1DQ 01483 810235 info@wattsgallery.org.uk www.wattsgallery.org.uk Exhibition £4/£3 conc. FREE entry to the main gallery 11am–1pm, Wed and Sat 2pm–6pm, Mon–Sun (closed Thur) (Until 4pm, 1 Oct–31 Mar) Closed 24/25 December Catalogue £12.50 (exhibition price)
Gallery News
Matthew Weekes, House Manager and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, Sussex Heritage Award
David Bailey,Qauntity Surveyor DNL, MJ Long and Rolfe Kentish, Architects, Christopher Bradley-Hole, Landscape Architect RIBA
Awards Update Winner Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries, Museum of the Year 2007 RIBA Award ADAPT Trust Award for Excellence in Access Civic Trust Award Sussex Heritage Award West Sussex County Council Design & Sustainability Award 2007
‘Exuberant approach; within constraints of site; use of space is imaginative; combining Grade 1 Listed Building with modern design of new extension – exceptionally inspired’. Sussex Heritage Trust Awards Judges
Commended Museums and Heritage Award for the Permanent Collections Museums and Heritage Award for Learning Programme (Partners in Art) Shortlisted (winner still to be announced) The Art Newspaper & AXA Art Exhibition Catalogue Award 2007 (winner to be announced 22 November) for ‘Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz’ exhibition catalogue. West Sussex County Council Design & Sustainability Award 2007 (winner to be announced 7 September) Semi-finalist National Lottery Awards 2007
On Tour Eye-Music Exhibition The hugely popular exhibition Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz (which The Times’ Nancy Durrant picked as one of ‘this season’s top twenty exhibitions’ and Nicholas Usherwood from Galleries magazine described as ‘absolutely not to be missed!’), will be travelling to the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Art in Norwich from 2 October until 9 December. For further information visit www.scva.org.uk.
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MESSUM’S 20th Century British Art Exhibition Wednesday 12th September to Saturday 29th September Fully illustrated catalogue with informative text £15 inc p&p
Vanessa Bell 1879-1961 In 1927 Venessa Bell and Duncan Grant took out a ten-year lease and undertook repairs on La Bergère, a cottage situated in vineyards and olive groves adjacent to the seventeenth-century château of Fontcreuse, just north of Cassis in the South of France. The views from the windows of La Bergère were painted on many occasions by both Bell and Grant, and the view from Grant’s studio window was one of his favourite motifs. Grant’s fullest elaboration of the theme, executed in 1928, is now held at the Manchester City Art Galleries. Flowers by the Open Window, Cassis, 1927
p r i v a t e
c o l l e c t i n g
oil on canvas 46 x 39 cms 18 x 15 ins
o n l i n e access our • • • • •
full inventory original research personal gallery pricing structure easy delivery terms
www.messums.com Eardley Knollys (1902-1991) Cork Trees, Gassin oil on canvas 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins
Spencer Frederick Gore NEAC LG (1878-1914) Le Cours Bourbon, Dieppe 1906 oil on canvas 29 x 35 cms 11 x 14 ins
8 CORK STREET, LONDON W1S 3LJ
a flexible and secure way to view, select and buy art
TEL: +44 (0)20 7437 5545
Tony Allen
Peter Rainier
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Supporting the Arts for Over Ten Years DMH Stallard is a law firm with a difference. Nominated in the Best Managed Firm category at the MPF 2007 European Practice Management Awards, we have an inclusive culture and encourage everyone in our firm to contribute towards our success. We are committed to equal opportunities and accepting different ideas is part of our business philosophy. We believe in bringing art into the workplace and a wide variety of contemporary pieces can be found throughout our offices, providing an inspiring and sometimes challenging environment for both staff and visitors. DMH Stallard is proud to support the work of local up and coming artists.
An award winning team We have an informal style at DMH Stallard and are extremely successful. We are delighted to have secured planning permission for the new gates at the front of Pallant House Gallery; another victory for our expert team of Planning Consultants and specialist lawyers who were named “Planning and Environment Team of the Year” in 2006 DMH Stallard was named best local government law firm in the South East by Legal 500, an in-depth survey of the UK’s legal market in 2006. A recent public sector success has been our involvement in the launch of the Museum of Croydon at Croydon’s Clocktower. The new museum has state-of-the-art interactive multimedia facilities for which DMH Stallard, acting on behalf of its long-term client Croydon Council, advised on the software and hardware licensing agreements. We recently advised on the €60 million buy-out of Pall Mall Investment Management Limited (PMIM), the augmentation that was backed by an equity investment from Sachsen LB Europe Plc. PMIM is a high-yield investment management company based in London specialising in European high-yield bond funds and currently has over €700 million under management. This project was lead by Vincent O’Brien who was named “Corporate Lawyer of the Year” in 2007.
For more information about our professional teams and the strength in depth that we can offer clients visit www.dmhstallard.com or telephone 01273 329 833 Brighton Gatwick London
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Gallery Wins Appeal for Wendy Ramshaw's Gates
In February 2006, Chichester District Council refused listed building consent and planning permission for a pair of gates designed by artist Wendy Ramshaw, to front Pallant House. In July this year, after a lengthy court process, the Gallery learnt that the Secretary of State had supported the appeal against that decision. Frances Guy introduces the latest edition to the Gallery. 'Wendy Ramshaw’s design, first proposed as part of her residency at the Gallery in 1999, envisages a decorative screen of lines and intertwining shapes, in part inspired by the drawing by Paul Klee in the Kearley Bequest in the permanent collections. This, in Ramshaw’s words, would hang ‘like a silver drawing suspended between the two pillars’ at the entrance to Pallant House. It will be made from stainless steel, brushed to give a matt finish, and designed in two halves opening onto the street to enable the old doorway to be used on special occasions but, for the most part, held shut to deter visitors from approaching the Gallery via the House. The project includes removing the now redundant handrail in the centre of the stone steps leading to the door and undertaking
repair work to the piers and the existing overthrow incorporating Henry Peckham’s initials. The work will involve consultation with conservation architects and engineers to determine the least intrusive method of fixing the two halves of the screen to ensure that their installation has the potential to be fully reversible. The placing of a contemporary artwork by a leading artist who is now renowned for her large-scale projects as well as her exquisite jewellery is important in establishing the Queen Anne townhouse as part of the Gallery and making a vital link to the modern and contemporary artwork it holds. Already supported by English Heritage, the Secretary of State has concluded that this project would enhance Pallant House and its setting within the wider conservation area by the addition of a nationally significant work of art. It is planned to progress the scheme this year and to install the screen in time for the second anniversary of the Gallery’s reopening in 2008.' With thanks to Tony Allen LMRTPI, Partner at DMH Stallard and Nick Antram, Independent Historic Buildings Consultant.
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An Exhibition of Self-Portraits by the Members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in association with The Bulldog Trust
2nd – 10th October 2007 2 Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD Temple Tel: 020 7836 3715 Web: www.therp.co.uk Open weekdays 10am-6pm, Thursday 10am-8pm, Saturday 10am-4pm, Closed on Sunday. Free entry
‘SELF PORTRAIT’ (DETAIL) BY ANTONY WILLIAMS RP PS
Commissions taken throughout the year, please contact: commissions@mallgalleries.com
Current Exhibitions Main Exhibition
Permanent Collection Modern British Art: The First 100 Years On-going throughout the year Pallant House Gallery has one of the best collections of 20th century British art in the world. The collections on display throughout the year include works by Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and Victor Willing. “This is one of the best modern art galleries in the South of England” William Oliver, The Daily Telegraph “This is a breathtaking place: my second visit – more to come” Gallery visitor
In Camera: Snowdon and the World of British Art 29 September–27 January 2008 In 1965, the seminal book Private View was published, confirming a dramatic shift on the map of international contemporary art. In nearly 400 extraordinary photographs by Snowdon the book documented the contemporary British art scene at that decisive moment and argued that London now rivalled New York and Paris as an artistic capital of the world. This exhibition revisits some of those highly personal and now iconic photographs of British artists, including Lucian Freud, Peter Blake and Eduardo Paolozzi, for the first time in over forty years. The exhibition also includes rare alternative shots not previously published and follows Snowdon’s work in the years since Private View to encompass a new generation of British artists including Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Chis Ofili. The Linley Mavisbank House Jewellery Box 29 September–14 October 2007 An architectual jewellery box by David Linley on display in room 14.
Snowdon, Bridget Riley in her studio, Earls Court, 1963, Private View Peter de Francia, Ship of Fools (detail), 1972, Oil on canvas, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, © de Francia
22
In Focus Exhibition Peter de Francia: The Ship of Fools 13 October–13 January 2008 Peter de Francia is one of the most politically engaged British figurative painters of the post-war period. This exhibition encompasses social commentary and political allegory, drawn predominantly from the Gallery’s holdings.
Current Exhibitions Prints Room Exhibitions
Installation
Visages des Mortes 25 September–11 November 2007 A series of remarkable photographs of the deceased by Rudolf Schäfer (b.1952), only exhibited once before in the UK.
Nina Saunders: Autumn Flowers 29 November 2007–February 2009 Nina Saunders, who works principally with textiles, furniture and found objects, uses William Morris fabric to transform the 18th century stairwell in Pallant House.
Studio Exhibitions Creative Response 2 October–19 October A celebration of World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2007. Earth Air Water 23 October–4 November Works from the open art competition at Chichester Harbour Conservancy, inspired by the harbour. The Hans Feibusch Club Exhibition 5 November–2 December A show of work by the popular Hans Feibusch Club.
Día de los Muertos: Altar for the Dead 1 November–11 November Artist Antonio Rodriguez installs an Altar for the Dead in celebration of the Día de los Muertos festival. Visitors are invited to place their own photographs and other mementos for the duration of the work. Edgar Holloway: Parallel Images in Watercolour to Etching 13 November–20 January 2008 Edgar Holloway, a consummate draughtsman and printmaker, is one of the few surviving artists of the etching revival of the 1930s. This exhibition features drawings from the 1930s to the 1990s that have been developed into prints.
Partnership of the Month 4 December–30 December Zoë Smith and Katie Parfey present artworks created as Partners in Art.
Rudolf Schäfer, from Visages des Mortes, © Rudolf Schäfer (Vu) Hans Feibusch, Narcissus, 1946, Oil on canvas, Presented by the Artist (1997), © By permission of The Werthwhile Foundation
23
Forthcoming Exhibitions
Colin St. John Wilson: Collector and Architect 9 February–8 June 2008 Highlighting Wilson's involvement with the Independent Group in the 1950s, his commissions for the British Library, his passion for collecting work by artists including Andrews, Auerbach, Blake, Coldstream, Hamilton and Kitaj and his involvement in Pallant House Gallery as architect and donor.
Colin Self: Art in the Nuclear Age 21 June–12 October 2008 Colin Self (b.1941) was a leading figure in the 1960s British Pop Art movement and one of the first British artists to explore Cold War politics and the nuclear threat. Described by Richard Hamilton as ‘the best draughtsman in England since William Blake’, this exhibition, the first ever retrospective of his work, includes his powerful prints, paintings, collages and sculptures from 1960 to the present day.
William Coldstream, Portrait of Colin St. John Wilson, 1982–3, Oil on canvas, Wilson Loan, © Andrew Margetson Colin Self, Figure No.2 (Triptych), 1971, Aquatint on paper, Wilson Loan, © The Artist
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TOWARDS A RATIONAL AESTHETIC C O N S T R U C T I V E A R T I N B R I TA I N 1 9 5 0 - 1 9 8 0 22 NOVEMBER - 21 DECEMBER 2007
Mary Martin, Rotation MM1, 1968 Multiple: injected moulded polystyrene 13 x 13 x 10 cm
This exhibition includes: Victor Pasmore, Adrian Heath, Alan Reynolds, William Scott, Malcolm Hughes, Jeffrey Steele, Peter Lowe, Gillian Wise, Anthony Hill and Peter Sedgley.
23a Bruton Street London W1J 6QG Tel: +44 (0)20 7493 7939 Fax: +44 (0)20 7493 7798 Email: info@osbornesamuel.com www.osbornesamuel.com
Exhibiting a talent for understanding.
Make it new is the rule of art. Our rule is: make it individual. At UBS Wealth Management we create unique investment solutions designed to satisfy just one person: you. First we discuss your total financial picture. Then we offer the global expertise and resources of a world-leading wealth manager to make your investment vision reality. It’s personalised service raised to an art form. Supporter of Pallant House Gallery. For information about UBS in the south of England, please contact Ewen Emmerson on 01273 715300. Nile House Nile Street Brighton BN1 1HW www.ubs.com/uk
UBS Wealth Management is a trading name of UBS AG, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Š UBS 2006. All rights reserved.
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To the Naked Eye Simon Martin
Walter Sickert, Jack Ashore, 1923, Etching on paper, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
Sickert once claimed that Camden Town was ‘so watered with [his] tears that something important must sooner or later spring from its soil.’ His paintings of the female nude produced in and around Camden Town between 1905 and 1912 were undoubtedly ‘something important’; indeed they are some of the most significant contributions to twentieth-century British art. This exhibition, marking the Courtauld Institute of Art’s 75th anniversary, brings together a selection of over twenty-five of Sickert’s most important canvasses and related drawings from this period, including ‘Jack Ashore’ (1912) on loan from Pallant House Gallery. In his 1910 essay, ‘The Naked and the Nude’, Sickert claimed that the subject of the nude had become so idealised in contemporary art as to have lost all basis in reality. His uncompromising paintings of nudes in seedy bed-sits and cheap lodging houses were rooted in the grim reality of London’s poorest working classes and, the antithesis of the abstracted ideal of beauty, they shocked Edwardian sensibilities. The exhibition brings together for the first time his group of four canvasses known as the Camden Town Murder paintings, which were inspired by the murder of a young prostitute 28
called Emily Dimmock in 1907. The details of how she was discovered in her bed at her lodging house were followed avidly in the popular press. Sickert’s enigmatic paintings were not straightforward images of the murder, but open to numerous interpretations, questioning the idea of meaning and narrative in art. In some he introduced an unsettling clothed male figure into the composition, exploring the psychological relationship between a clothed man and a nude woman, imbuing them with a sense of apathy, conflict or exhaustion. As the exhibition demonstrates, although Sickert’s choice of subject matter may have been shocking, he reinvented the nude as a subject for modern painting, and his virtuoso technique was to be a profound influence on figurative artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, Somerset House, London 25 October–20 January 2008
Camera-ready Harriet Wailling
Malcolm Morley, Family Portrait, 1968, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 172.7 x 172.7 cm, Copyright the artist
Tim Kent, Petworth, 2007, Oil on linen
The painting and the photograph have been linked together since the advent of the first photographic process in the nineteenth century. J. M. Whistler said that, ‘if the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this’. And finding something beyond and outside what the photograph could capture has arguably preoccupied the painter ever since.
perspective drawings, are key to the structure and composition of his paintings, which are on show until 20 October.
The instances in which the painting and the photograph come together again and directly inflect upon the other, are often remarkable and two exhibitions on two very different scales touch upon these moments this autumn. The first, at Moncrieff-Bray Gallery in Egdean near Pulborough, holds up the work of New York artist Tim Kent, whose series of around fifteen Historic Domestic Interiors derive from photographs taken by the artist. From inside some of the grandest houses and homes in Sussex, Kent gained access to these rarely seen spaces and photographed doorways opening into empty rooms and hallways floodlit with sunlight. The photographs, which evolved with the use of digital photography, computer manipulation and complex
On quite a different scale, the extensive survey of the photo-painting relationship at the Hayward Gallery from October seeks to explore the use and translation of photographic imagery in the last 50 years of painting practice. Starting with the 1960s, when artists such as Warhol, Richter and Richard Artschwager, began making paintings that translated photographic images taken from newspapers, advertisements, historical archives and snapshots, the exhibition will show how photography has influenced not just the content but also the technique of painting. The widespread use of monochrome by painters including Vija Celmins and Tuymans; Richter’s use of a wet brush to ‘blur’ the painting; the meticulous reproduction of a flash-bulb light on the flattened surface of Gertsch’s paintings; and the snapshot-like white borders framing the works of Hamilton and Morley, all deliberately alluded to photography. Camera to Camera: Historic Domestic Interiors, Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, 7–20 October 2007 The Painting of Modern Life, Hayward Gallery, 4 October–30 December 2007
29
A River Runs Through It Simon Martin David Ward, detail from Orinoco/Roche, 2007, New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury.
It is a pleasure to visit the sculpture park at Roche Court during any season of the year, but this autumn offers a particularly interesting programme. In addition to representing the Estate of Barbara Hepworth, the New Art Centre exhibits exciting sculpture by the likes of Anthony Caro, Phyllida Barlow, Philip King, Richard Long, David Nash and Nina Saunders, with a variety of shows in other media in the stunning Gallery and Artist’s House, which were both designed by the architect Stephen Marshall. The current exhibition, 'Orinoco', brings artworks inspired by the tropical Amazonas region of South America into the Gallery, which overlooks Roche Court’s quintessentially English landscape setting. The exhibition features sculpture, sound, and engraving by two British artists, Richard Deacon and David Ward, who made separate journeys on the Orinoco River in the mid 1990s. Richard Deacon, who represented Wales at the 53rd Venice Biennale this year, is exhibiting a monumental new wooden sculpture, bridging the steps in the centre of the Gallery as if traveling down the Orinoco River’s rapids. The sculpture is constructed from twisted strips of oak, plaited together to create a form that is a combination of a wooden basket and a boat. The placement of this complex structure of torsion 30
bends resulted from a conversation between the two artists about their respective trips to the Orinoco, and listening to a sound recording made by David Ward of two men building a bongo, a large dug-out boat. Ward’s new soundwork Orinoco is played in the Gallery in parallel with Deacon’s sculpture. As well as sounds he recorded from the 'Orinoco' it features voices reading the names of rivers around the world, inspired by the ephemeral language of James Joyce, in particular the river names in ‘Finnegan’s Wake’. Ward has spoken of how, ‘the names of scores of rivers flow through the writing like the fronds of river grasses, entwined in the current, difficult to disentangle by eye.’ His related work 'Orinoco Water Falls', mirrored panels on which hundreds of engraved river names run down, is exhibited in the Orangery. The beautiful Artist’s House, a contemporary equivalent of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, where ceramics, sculpture and furnishings are displayed in a domestic context, is concurrently showing his 'Orinoco Watercolours'. Richard Deacon and David Ward: Orinoco New Art Centre, Roche Court, East Winterslow, Salisbury 22 September–25 November 2007
new address commencing September 2007 5 Savile Row, London W1
JAMES HYMAN GALLERY James Hyman Fine Art 6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street St. James’s London SW1Y 6BU T +44 (0)20 7839 3906 F +44 (0)20 7839 3907 info@jameshymangallery.com www.jameshymangallery.com
31
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Prize-winning surprises Simon Martin
Gillian Wearing, Sixty Minute Silence, 1996, colour video projection with sound, 60 minutes, Image courtesy Maureen Paley, London © the artist
Perhaps the most provocative and widely debated of any arts award, the Turner Prize has become something of a British institution since it was launched in 1984. It was inaugurated by the Tate Patrons of New Art to celebrate the talent of younger British artists and focus attention on new developments in contemporary art. The link with JMW Turner might not be immediately apparent to some of the prize’s fiercer critics, nevertheless the prize took its name from the great nineteenth-century artist because he had himself wanted to establish a prize for young artists and was considered controversial in his day. For the first time the Turner Prize is to be held outside London at Tate Liverpool (19 October–13 January 2008) as a curtain-raiser for the Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008. This year’s Turner Prize features the work of four short-listed artists: Zarina Bhimji, Nathan Coley, Mike Nelson and Mark Wallinger. Concurrently, Tate Britain will be reflecting on the past twenty-three years of the prize, presenting a
chronological selection of key works by winning artists set against the broader context of each year’s shortlist. With infamous past exhibits in the Turner Prize including Damian Hirst’s cows in formaldehyde entitled ‘Mother and Child Divided’, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, Chris Ofili’s paintings incorporating elephant dung and Martin Creed’s ‘Lights On and Off’, the show could easily form a mini-history of recent art controversy. Yet with over eighty artists short-listed for the prize to date, and past winners of the prize including now establishment figures such as Howard Hodgkin, Gilbert & George, Anthony Gormley, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, Rachel Whiteread, Gillian Wearing, and Grayson Perry, the exhibition will undoubtedly reflect the wider changes in the British art scene since the mid-1980s and the increasing public profile and acceptance of contemporary art in this country. The Turner Prize: A Retrospective Tate Britain, London 2 October 2007–6 January 2008 33
Modern Art on the Move Harriet Wailling
David Hockney, Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry are just three of the twenty-five major British artists included in the touring exhibition 'Modern Art Now'. 'Modern Art Now', the exhibition curated by writer and gallerist Caroline Wiseman, started in March in Nunnington Hall, North Yorkshire, but has since moved across the country to Buckinghamshire and to North Wales, shown in locations all owned and run by the National Trust. In October, the exhibition will move south and will be on display at Petworth House. The exhibition 'Modern Art Now', which also includes work by Craigie Aitchison, Francis Bacon, Bridget Riley and Peter Blake, was inspired by the book of the same name published by Strawberry Art Press in June 2006. That publication, with an introduction by Mary Rose Beaumont, opened the doors of the rich and famous and revealed those collectors who share their homes with work by these artists. Within its huge picture book pages, we enjoy a work by Tracey Emin on the wall behind a lounging Frank Cohen (the North of England’s foremost collector of contemporary art) and work by Man Ray and William Copley residing in Gilbert and George’s dining room. The book too, incorporates 34
choice quotes from the artists themselves, including Francis Bacon’s dictum that “the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery” and a memorable account from a collector whose family bought a Henry Moore instead of a fridge. The publication, with its glossy pages of photographs of other people’s homes, sits somewhere between 'World of Interiors' and a coffee table art book, yet it intrigues with its large photographs of the artist’s themselves. And because the paintings, sculptures, drawings and original prints by all twenty-five artists in the touring 'Modern Art Now' exhibition are for sale, both the show and the book offer, to some degree at least, a guide to living with original contemporary art in your home. Modern Art Now Petworth House 29 September–31 October 2007 Modern Art Now: Conception to Consumption, priced £20 is available from the Pallant House Gallery Bookshop. A limited number of copies have been signed by Caroline Wiseman. Please call 01243 770813 to reserve your copy.
Etre maĂŽtre de soi
The Self Portraits of Gilbert Garcin French photographer Gilbert Garcin began taking pictures at the age of sixty four. In ten years his highly inventive pictures have brought him international acclaim.
Arden and Anstruther Photogrpahic Gallery, 5 Lombard Street, Petworth. www.ardenandanstruther.com Telephone 01798 344411
A Living Collection UBS Art reflects who we are – as a society, as individuals and, for UBS who are proud sponsors of Pallant House Gallery for 2007, as an institution. As collectors of contemporary art, as sponsors of museums and exhibitions, and as providers of services including art banking to clients around the world, the UBS commitment to art is strong. Art, of course, can remind us of our collective heritage, but it can also hint at our future. UBS believes that art also serves as a constant reminder of the value of creativity, innovation, inspired action and energy. The UBS Art Collection is an important body of works which today consists of over 900 paintings, photographs, drawings and sculptures by some of the world’s major artists from the 1950s onwards. Some of the most important British artists from the twentieth century are also represented in the collections, so that works by figures including Frank Auerbach, Anthony Caro, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and Howard Hodgkin stand alongside international works by, among others, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol. The overall aim of the UBS collection is to build and maintain a seminal body of work that provokes thought while being inspirational, and this anthology incorporates key pieces from our former collections held both in the US and Europe, mirroring the businesses that have become part of UBS over that time. The backbone of the collection stems from the merger of UBS and PaineWebber in 2000. The former CEO of PaineWebber, Donald B. Marron, himself an important private contemporary art collector, put together one of the most significant contemporary art collections in the United States over a period of 30 years. This core collection is further enhanced and complemented by selected pieces, mostly photography, from the existing Swiss and European UBS collections. The introduction of a single UBS brand worldwide in 2003 provided us with the opportunity, with the help from independent experts, to create one of the most outstanding collections of contemporary art in the world. 36
The UBS Art Collection isn’t, however, a static collection; it is a living, emergent amalgamation of works which have been shown on the walls of UBS buildings throughout the world, and are frequently loaned to institutions such as Tate Modern in London or the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a growing collection, we seek to maintain the extremely high standard of artists represented there and works from the collection are constantly reappraised and revalued. Independent curators like Pi Li, lecturer of Curatorial Studies in the Art Administration Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and Joanne Bernstein, a London-based curator who has organised exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, the Serpentine Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Camden Arts Centre, help us to evaluate potential significant additions. As the collection grows, works by contemporary artists, many of them British, add to the diversity of the collected works. Names like Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman and Sam TaylorWood now appear alongside their predecessors, and as the contemporary art scene changes across the world, so the UBS collection will also change and grow. Through the UBS Art Collection, important partnerships have grown up between UBS and museums and art fairs in the US and Europe. These relationships are important so that UBS can bring this significant collection of contemporary art, not only to its employees and shareholders, but also to the wider communities in which UBS works. Of particular note is the partnership that UBS has built with Tate Modern and also with Pallant House Gallery, relationships that involve many novel projects. UBS support, for example, enabled the high-profile rehang of Tate Modern’s Collection displays in May 2006, an exercise which generated wide public interest and increased visitor numbers to the museum, year-on-year, by 30%. Support for the Tate and galleries like Pallant House Gallery confirms the UBS commitment to support curation and international exhibitions of the very highest standard.
Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London '67 (detail), 1967, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, © The Artist
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21st Century Collectors with a 20th Century Passion Bonhams
Pallant House Gallery’s glorious collection owes its unique qualities to the generosity of some exceptional private individuals who chose to invest in art for its own sake, and who drew pleasure from sharing their passion and their collections with a wider audience. Not least amongst these is Sir Colin St John (Sandy) Wilson whose collection is now housed in the highly successful new wing of the gallery. The gallery is blessed with a broad range of pictures and sculpture but has a distinctive 20th century theme and, with the success of Pallant House Gallery’s Ivon Hitchens exhibition and Lord Snowdon’s forthcoming exhibition of photographs of 20th century artists, it will come as no surprise to the Gallery’s visitors and curators that the current art market seems equally infatuated with the 20th century. Matthew Bradbury, Director of Bonhams’ Modern British Pictures Department explains: ‘Currently the 20th century market seems to be pretty confident. There is a lot of interest in post war artists and the market isn’t just being driven by dealers and art galleries. We have a new generation of young collectors, many buyers who are in their early thirties who are willing to acquire work by artists who haven’t necessarily been tested at auction before, and that speaks volumes about the strength of the market. 38
These are second-generation collectors who are now buying mid- to late-20th century work. Pictures and sculpture by established British artists such as L.S. Lowry, John Piper, Dame Elizabeth Frink, Helen Chadwick, Sir Jacob Epstein, Edward Seago and the much loved St Ives School are selling incredibly well, but there are other artists who have also come to the fore, particularly when you compare current auction prices to figures achieved five years ago. Paintings by the Welsh artist Sir Kyffin Williams, Paul Feiler, Mary Fedden, Mary Newcomb and Sir Terry Frost are attracting a tremendous amount of interest’. Bonhams’ 20th Century British Paintings sale in June this year, confirmed the current trend. The sale raised over £3 million and there were some breathtaking individual prices. A still life of poppies by Sussex’s own Ivon Hitchens sold for £156,000, an industrial landscape by L.S. Lowry sold for £602,400, a landscape view of Snowdonia by Sir Kyffin Williams made £40,500 and a powerful watercolour by the Suffolk born artist, Dame Elizabeth Frink, of a man on horse back, sold for £27,600. Though no one can speculate about how the market will change in the future, 20th century work is certainly looking buoyant at the moment.
Michael Andrews, Professor Colin St John Wilson, 1993-4, Oil on canvas, Private Collection Barbara Hepworth, Single Form, Nocturne, 1968, Irish black marble on wood base, Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
But what is drawing this new generation of collectors to 20th century art, and is it an exclusively British love affair? William Richards, Bonhams’ Regional Director for the South East suggests that Bonhams has noticed an increase in interest in 20th century artists across all its departments. He said, 'We’re one of the only major auction houses to hold large regionally focused sales in Wales and the South West, Scotland and East Anglia, and these auctions all attract work by important regional artists and a lot of private buyers and it is the 20th century work which is selling consistently. As much of this work has been completed within the last 60 years it proves, to some extent, that people want to buy a piece that has a particular resonance for them - quite frankly we couldn’t offer any better advice. It is always best to buy work that inspires you, something you can identify with'. More telling perhaps is the rising interest in 20th century Asian, Islamic and Russian Art, where prices have climbed steeply over the last few years. In Sussex and the South East there have been a number of private collections of Asian Art that have recently come to light, and for those people who bought well it has been a good time to capitalise on a rising market.
‘When you look at why people are buying now,’ William continued, ‘you do have to concede that it is in part due to the growing economic wealth of countries like China, India and Pakistan but its also because new collectors from these countries are both ready and able to buy the very best home grown contemporary work, rather than just investing in more traditional markets. Take the post war Indian artist, Jamini Roy, who started his career producing European influenced work. He really only achieved critical success when he developed a style that reflected the bold vibrancy of indigenous rural Bengali artists. Now his work is really sought after. In May this year in London we sold a painting by Roy of Indian Musicians. The picture broke the barrier of its top estimate and sold for nearly £80,000. These new groups of collectors want to celebrate their own cultural inheritance and this has had an important impact on the world market.’ So while rejuvenated interest in 20th century art is not just limited to these shores, it also seems that the notion of resonance for collectors also has a far more wide-reaching influence, and as we have only just tipped into the 21st century, this may be why 20th century art is proving so alluring now.
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In Camera: Snowdon, 'Private View' and 'The Lively World of British Art' Robin Muir
Robin Muir, Curator of 'In Camera', introduces the exhibition, the book Private View (1965), and the man behind the photographs. Fifty years go this autumn, Snowdon, then Tony Armstrong-Jones, held his first exhibition, 'Photocall'. It took place at the gallery attached to Kodak House in central London and was – in the then smallish world of photography – something of a succès de scandale. Writing in Young Meteors, ten years later in 1967, Jonathan Aitken reported that ‘the huge actionpicture enlargements’ showed ‘grain that startled experts’. Snowdon recalled that those most startled by this tour-de-force were Kodak’s sales staff, as he had redesigned not just the gallery but also the main showroom into a maze of giant blow-ups. This led to a slump in film sales and excoriation from Kodak’s executives. Thus for Snowdon did a love-hate affair continue between photography and hang-on-the-wall art, which over the years he has steadfastly refused to resolve, at least in photography’s favour. His first book the defiantly monochromatic London (1958), took graininess to an extreme, trying its hardest neither to be run-of-the-mill nor ‘high art’ either. It delighted him that the photographic establishment in the form of The British Journal of Photography, rather like the Kodak executives, found it ‘a recital of squalors…marked by squalid photography’. Since then, London has become a classic of British reportage, stark and affectionate (and all but unobtainable).
Snowdon at home, London, 2007 Photographed by Paolo Roversi
Ever since he was first asked to speak seriously about his work – which he did with reluctance in his midtwenties to the Daily Express – Snowdon has been unequivocal. ‘He hates arty talk’, Patrick Kinmonth told Vogue readers in 1987, ‘He hates this kind of article. He does not even care for the word “portrait”, since it drags up all the old mess of arguments about painting versus photography…’ This is Tony Armstrong-Jones from 1958: ‘Most photographers of my age started taking photographs because they failed at something else. For me photography is a way of recording things because I can’t draw’. This is the Earl of Snowdon from 1978: ‘A camera is only a means of catching a moment of time. I think the most insulting thing you can say about a photograph is that it looks like a painting’. Kinmonth found the courage to make a bold statement: ‘there is no battle in Snowdon’s pictures of artists. They make up one of the strongest bodies of his work’. Apart from the sittings with painters he had arranged for Snowdon throughout the 1980s (Frank Auerbach, Joseph Beuys and Craigie Aitchison, among others), Kinmonth surely had in mind Private View, a large-format book about the British art scene published in 1965. Snowdon made the photographs for it and since then it has cast a long shadow. To call it large-format is not quite to do it justice. It measured 11 by 13½ inches, weighed over 5lbs and cost 7 guineas. Published by a firm based in Edinburgh, it was typeset in London, printed in Switzerland and shipped for binding to West Germany (and then slip-cased for the American market). It contained nearly 400 photographs, many of them in colour. When it was published, the Queen congratulated her brother-inlaw on his hard work and intimated that she had better invest in a coffee table. Studio International declared it the ‘Debrett of art’ and that if you weren’t in it you were ‘out’. It was a publishing landmark and more than one reviewer’s ‘book of the decade’; another maintaining, with approval, that it was the book ‘our decade deserves’. 41
If not commensurately extravagant, the content was certainly far-reaching and the making of it labourintensive. Co-authored with John Russell, then the art critic of the Sunday Times and Bryan Robertson, director of the Whitechapel Gallery, it was intended to plead London’s case as a global art capital, the equal to New York and Paris. ‘Just what has turned London into one of the world’s three capitals of art? Who did it, and how? And what kind of people are they?’ The answers were contained in page upon page of text and the 400 photographs. The two distinguished writers were contrapuntal: Russell’s elegance a departure point for Robertson’s floridness. The photographs were incisive and instructional in equal measure, though occasionally mischievous as if their creator had remembered that photography should not be taken too seriously or in his own words, ‘rather to make the layman react, to look, to think, to laugh…but not, I hope, to wince’. The authors selected eighty-one painters and sculptors to be photographed, and about the same again of art world luminaries. These ranged from the directors of the great London institutions and the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures to blue-chip dealers, auction house chairmen, benefactors and patrons, critics, theorists and writers. Where the artists were concerned, this was an enormous undertaking for the photographer: most were to be photographed in their own milieu, whether studio, atelier, cavernous warehouse, en plein air or at home and all in whatever light was available. Snowdon travelled to St Ives and the West Country and then the northern Home Counties, but London was the focus. John Russell estimated that the authors had ‘travelled a thousand miles’ within its boundaries and that ‘fixed ideas about London dropped away one by one…Harbour and heath, lodging house and palazzo, country club and Hogarthian sweatshop – all had a part in our experience.’ Not for nothing was the finished book subtitled in the United States, ‘The Lively World of British Art’. To scan Snowdon’s appointments diary and sittings lists is to see laid out, one after the other, the great names of mid-twentieth century British art, surely an undertaking inconceivable today. In October 1963 alone he arranged sittings with Peter Lanyon in Cornwall; Elisabeth Frink, Prunella Clough, Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Patrick George and Peter Blake in or around their London studios, John Piper, L.S. Lowry; Sir Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld, John Pope-Hennessey, Kenneth Clark in Albany, Piccadilly; 42
the art historian Professor Ernst Gombrich and the directors of the picture dealers Agnews and Christie’s the auction house. No-one refused to sit for him or to allow him unfettered access except Ben Nicholson, who had by then relocated to Switzerland. One painter, apparently, insisted on inclusion only if his wife, an indifferent photographer, took the picture. Fortunately, he was dissuaded. Meanwhile Snowdon ‘agile as a dragonfly powered by Boeing’, as John Russell put it, manoeuvred around his subjects with the minimum of disturbance. He observed later that ‘It worked well for me because the artists were usually as engrossed in their work as I was, and their studios were quiet and controlled... When I started photographing artists it was relatively fresh to me. I tried to echo the mood of their work in my photographs. I would happily alter the colour of my transparencies afterwards to match the colour of the paintings to get a tighter link.’ Private View arose out of a series of features on British art commissioned by The Sunday Times Magazine. These ran in 1962 and 1963 under the umbrella title ‘Painting Now’, though it introduced readers to, among others, Eduardo Paolozzi and his proto-Pop sculptures. John Russell profiled many of the painters alternating with the critic David Sylvester too, whose essays were insightful and acerbic (and, to the editor’s delight, occasionally controversial). Snowdon’s photographs accompanied the essays, several subsequently re-used in Private View. Snowdon had joined The Sunday Times Colour Section (as it was known until February 1963) at its launch, not as a photographer per se but as ‘artistic advisor’. This was at the instigation of Mark Boxer, the new magazine’s acting editor. A Cambridge contemporary of Snowdon, he had made the layouts for his friend’s first book London (1958) and, as art editor of Queen magazine, had hired him to photograph Society events in an unconventional, playful way. Snowdon’s consultancy role was quickly forgotten, leaving him to concentrate on photography but not before he had advised the Sunday Times’ Canadian owner, Roy Thomson on the decoration of his office. Hanging paintings by young British artists as well as by established names, the proprietor nonplussed him by pointing to a Sidney Nolan oil and asking sotto voce, ‘am I right to tell visitors it’s an atomic explosion over the Pacific?’ ‘No, Roy’, came the reply, ‘it’s an elephant’.
Frank Auerbach in his studio, Camden Town, 1982, Vogue
Private View was well received, though several commentators remarked – with some justification – that the book resembled a colour supplement sandwiched between two hard covers. Few reviewers, however, found fault with the photographs, one relieved that Snowdon had resisted the temptation to be experimental. It marked, I think, a turning point in Snowdon’s photographic career. His public role as husband to Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, had inevitably threatened to overshadow his photographic achievements, but Private View, born out of a magazine that had attracted in its first few months 100,000 new readers to its parent newspaper, acted as a catalyst for weightier work. Snowdon’s extended photo-essays on what the magazine would call ‘matters of social concern’ were, in his own words, ‘more serious and, if necessary, unprepossessing’. Certainly, they were far removed from the affectionate, slightly satirical photographs that had marked him out in Queen and Vogue from 1956 to 1960.
Snowdon’s success with artists arose too out of an admiration for what they were able to achieve and, perhaps, what he could not. Photographers took photographs, as he reminded anyone who cared to listen, because they could not paint. It is, of course, telling that those who strive so hard to deny themselves acclaim prove by their very example that they merit it the most. Thus an encomium written for him by his Private View collaborator John Russell would have been received, one suspects, with gratitude but perhaps a certain querulousness: ‘Unlike many other photographers, Snowdon does not try to impose his own personality on his sitters. Nor does he ever claim for himself the rank to which [Private View] proves his title: that of an artist among artists…’
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In Conversation Snowdon and Peter Blake Robin Muir
Old friends of forty years, Lord Snowdon and Sir Peter Blake meet for lunch. Robin Muir occasionally interjects. Robin Muir This is the first of Lord Snowdon’s photographs of you, Peter, which was taken for Private View. Do you remember it? Peter Blake Yes I do. It was taken when I lived in Chiswick. Lord Snowdon It was at the beginning of 1963, when I was at the Sunday Times, although I don’t think it was taken for the Sunday Times, it was taken specifically for the book. PB Yes. And it appeared on the cover of Life magazine, when they ran an article about the book. I still have the dressmaker’s dummy. It’s now in the window of Mr Chow, the restaurant, but it’s falling to pieces. It looks very decadent now; the silk’s all falling away, and I still have, of those things, the Lawrence of Arabia head and just the head of Mister Coffee. The small figure on the left, sitting on the table, was made by Jann Haworth who I’d met by then but we weren’t married yet. It was made as a portrait of me, as a gift. RM And where did these things on the table in front of you come from? Were they part of your found collections of Edwardiana? PB Well, they were just things I’d collected. By then the dressmaker’s dummy, which you can see on the left there, had become an art object, but it had been found just as a dummy. I’d added the medals, the epaulettes and the belt. And that tall picture, that came from Reveille magazine which had carried on from the war: it had been a kind of servicemen’s magazine, a kind Snowdon, Peter Blake in his garden, Chiswick, 1963, Private View (detail)
of pin-up magazine, and in one issue they printed an image of Brigitte Bardot on each page so you could cut them out and stick them together to make a life-sized pin-up girl. And so that picture is taken from that, and then the jewels and sequins were added. And the pictures of knives were taken, I think, from a catalogue of the 1851 exhibition and cut out and collaged next to her. LS But do you remember, Peter, why we decided to take them outside? PB I seem to remember it was your suggestion Tony…I suppose by then I would have already done the painting 'Self Portrait with Badges'. And they were probably the same bushes that I’d stood in front of then, so I think it was probably an echo of that. RM Do either of you remember how Private View was received at the time? For you, Lord Snowdon it must have been an exciting moment. It had been such a big undertaking... LS It all started with that article in the Sunday Times that David Sylvester wrote [‘British Painting Now’], which celebrated the old guard, people like William Coldstream and Robert Medley, and the newer ones like Peter and David Hockney and his gold jacket. But it was Bryan Robertson and John Russell who went on to write Private View. PB That’s right. In fact, the first time I was ever taken out to a proper lunch was by John Russell. I suppose it was probably for the article that was in the very first issue of the Sunday Times Colour Section in 1962. He took me to the Clarendon Hotel on Hammersmith Broadway, which looking back wasn’t a very salubrious hotel, but as I remember, we probably had prawn cocktail or something equally sophisticated… 45
Left Roy de Maistre at home, Belgravia, 1964, Private View Right Snowdon and Private View souvenir mug, London, 2007
RM And Lord Snowdon, you got on very well with both John Russell and Bryan Robertson didn’t you? LS Yes I did. They were both wonderful, but it was a nightmare doing a book with them both, because you were about to do a sitting and one of them was always in Paris. Like in Chekhov, everyone’s always trying to get to Moscow….Getting them together was almost impossible. RM One obvious aspect is the mix of semi-forgotten artists like Roy de Maistre and newcomers like you, Peter, and Hockney. LS I only met Roy for an hour but he left me a painting in his will… PB Well, 1963 was very early to be photographing those people. Hockney, Kitaj, Allen Jones and that group had only left the Royal College of Art in 1961 – they were just out of college. RM An image I find particularly striking is the photograph made in Frank Auerbach’s studio. LS Yes it was terribly small, and the paint on the floor must have been at least a foot deep. I went back again much later [in 1982] and it looked exactly the same. Except the paint was deeper. PB The studio was certainly no bigger than 25 ft square. I was taken there once by MJ Long, the architect who designed my studio. The floor had fallen away because there was so much oil from the paint that the joists rotted away and he had to have it restored. MJ took me there while it was empty, and 46
as Tony said, the paint must have been that thick. You climbed a hill of this grey shiny, it was like lino, and I think MJ cut a section through, about a foot high. RM There’s a wonderful letter from Frank Auerbach in your scrapbook, Tony, of the book’s launch which says only, ‘thank you very much for my copy of Private View, I feel that I have been very well treated’ which is probably the longest letter Auerbach has ever written. But these portraits are extraordinary, not just the ones here but also the ones you did later on, of Wolfgang Tillmans and Rachel Whiteread for example. Did you have a special affinity with painters and sculptors, because it appears that you seem to like it more than fashion photography for example? LS Well I hated fashion but I did it for Vogue. I wasn’t very good at it, but I think I made it humorous. I’d started at Cambridge studying architecture, but I think artists had always been around me because of my uncle, Oliver Messel… PB So you would have known Cecil Beaton quite well? LS Yes. And he was an absolute shit! I remember him saying to Princess Margaret just after we were married, ‘Thank you so much ma’am, for ridding me of my fiercest rival…’ and she said, ‘Cecil, what on earth makes you think he’s going to give up now?’ RM And you haven’t given up. You photographed Peter again in 1982. LS That’s right. That one was taken at the back of your studio, Peter. And that part, which looks like sky, wasn’t at all. It was the house next door.
PB And then you took another photo of me when I had made furniture, the red, yellow and blue tables.
LS Well that’s nice to know! But I don’t really want people to be at ease.
LS And then there was the most recent one taken for Apollo, I think.
PB Well, I think it’s a compliment but it is also, in terms of the fact that we’re talking about portraiture, a very relevant fact.
PB Yes, we gathered the leaves together like Hansel and Gretel to put around the chair. That was probably, two years ago? They were lovely pictures. RM So these photographs tell us a bit about the history between you both that spans, I guess, more than forty years? PB Yes. And I often say to people when I’m asked about photography, that Tony, you always take the most care in setting up the situation than any other photographer that I’ve been photographed by. You make sure of things like a turn-up isn’t wrong, or the shirt collar isn’t sticking up, and you actually take an enormous amount of preparation of the subject far more than anybody else.
LS I hate the word ‘portraiture’. I think it’s pretentious. A portrait is, to me, in oils or watercolour. It’s not a photograph. PB But I’m sure the same meaning of the word applies to both a photograph and a painting really. When I think about the portraits I make, I consider myself a kind of journeyman, where I take a photograph and then make a painting from that photograph. LS I can’t ever think of photography in terms of art. After all, my generation only took up photography because they were bad at painting…
The Linley Mavisbank House Jewellery Box 29 September–14 October Mavisbank House near Edinburgh is the inspiration for an Architectural Box by David Linley on display in room 14. The house, possibly the first Palladian style villa built in Scotland, is one of the finest neo-classical examples of its kind but is in now need of restoration. The jewellery box is constructed largely in sycamore, and features inlays of holly, boxwood, anegre and Madrona burr and intricate marquetry inlay. The roof of the box opens to reveal a mirror on the inside lid and a tray with compartments for jewellery storage. POA. Stockist enquiries: LINLEY Belgravia, 60 Pimlico Road, London SW1W 8LP or LINLEY Mayfair, 46 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4JN. Telephone: 02077307300 www.davidlinley.com
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Snowdon in The Pallant Restaurant
Snowdon Rudolph Nureyev's Foot 1982
Snowdon dislikes to be considered a specialist and has photographed over the years fashion, landscapes, flowers, animals and still life scenes, as well as the pictures of people, famous and not, that he is best known for. A selling exhibition in The Pallant Restaurant brings together a few of these as a companion to the portraits of artists upstairs. For many years he has photographed the leading figures in the world of the arts for Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine and the Telegraph magazine, among others. To say, perhaps, that his heart is in the world of ballet, in the world of stage actors and actresses or that clearly he has an empathy with painters and sculptors is not to marginalise his other portraits. For over half a century, Snowdon has been a regular contributor to British Vogue. He is now its longest serving photographer. His first photographs, in 1956, were of Edith Evans in 'The Chalk Garden' and Alec Guinness in 'Hotel Paradiso' and since then he has taken both fashion and beauty shots as well as gardens, interiors and travel pictures. On a few welldocumented occasions he turned interviewer for the magazine too. 48
In the early sixties he joined the staff of the Sunday Times as ‘artistic advisor’ to its newly launched colour supplement. This led quickly to his contributing from around the world dozens of features for almost twenty years. But of all his many assignments for the magazine, it is probably his black and white photographic essays documenting the unfairness and inequality of life that sealed his reputation as one of Britain’s great documentary photographers. Snowdon has also been at one time or another (and often concurrently) a designer, a writer, and a designer of theatre sets, skiwear, clocks, furniture and motorised wheelchairs. He is also an Emmy award-winning filmmaker. With Cedric Price and Frank Newby, he designed the aviary at London Zoo, in 1998 awarded Grade II* listing. He is also a tireless campaigner for equal opportunities for disabled people about whom he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords.
Peter de Francia James Hyman
Peter de Francia Ship of Fools (detail) 1972 Oil on canvas Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © de Francia
In a fascinating essay and interview in the catalogue for Peter de Francia’s (b. 1921) recent exhibition at Tate Britain, Philip Dodd writes of 'the problem' of Peter de Francia’s status as an unfashionable even unclassifiable artist, often identified with a particular historical moment – the heavily politicised years of mid twentieth century Europe. In fact, as Dodd, himself emphasises, there is far more to de Francia’s work, for this is an artist who despite powerful champions such as the late Colin St. John Wilson, remains underappreciated. How, then, is one to account for an artist who has always seemed at the heart of European cultural circles, yet has retained a marginal position? Peter de Francia’s reputation as one of the most important figurative artists working in Britain of the last half century has always rested on a series of paradoxes. This is an artist revered as a draftsman, whose most famous work is nevertheless a monumental painting, The Bombing of Sakiet (1959), recently on display for an extended period at Tate Modern. This is a figure recognised for his contemporary political engagement through such ambitious early subjects as 'The Execution of Beloyannis' (1952) - at Pallant House Gallery represented by one of the pencil studies, 'The
Bombing of Sakiet', and 'African Prison' (1960), whose work is nevertheless dominated by mythological and allegoric subjects often derived from the Greek Classics. This, too, is an artist associated with multifigure narratives, whose most powerful works include single figure portraits. Peter de Francia’s work is often identified with the darker side of life – his subjects include brutality, torture, imprisonment and the abuse of power – but as the works at Pallant House Gallery demonstrate, alongside such works are scenes of great love, tenderness, sensitivity and humour. Furthermore, although de Francia is renowned for public works, he is often at his most moving when most intimate. The artist’s home and studio sheds light on these paradoxes. Every wall is covered with pictures: talismans, palimpsests - a mélange of prints, drawings, newspaper cuttings and magazine photographs that transcend time and place: here a dove of Peace by Picasso, there a portrait head by Léger, architecture by Piranesi, peasants by Rembrandt, Capriccios by Goya and satires by Daumier and Beckman. Pictures, too, by former students, from de Francia’s years as Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Planted in such 49
fertile soil are de Francia’s studios and store rooms with their wealth of framed and unframed drawings and stretched and unstretched paintings. These are exciting places of discovery for both artist and visitor with each visit bringing surprises and new wonder at the artist’s vivid imagination. A few years ago I suggested to Peter that he might do some pictures on the subject of the Gulf War, a commission he politely (and rightly) declined, for really it is a subject that he has already depicted in so many ways. From his massive painting 'The Bombing of Sakiet' to the condemnatory drawings of his series of 'Disparates', here well represented by a fine group of works, de Francia’s work stands as a damning indictment of power and its abuse. Compassionate humanism married to satire gives an edge to his attacks on targets such as politicians, the press, the military, religion and science and to his presentation of masculinity in crisis.
The exhibition, Peter de Francia: The Ship of Fools is on show in rooms 15 and 16 at Pallant House Gallery from 13 October–13 January 2008. Dr. James Hyman is the author of ‘The Battle for Realism. Figurative Art in Britain during the Cold War’ (Yale University Press, 2001). There will be a special Friends tour of the exhibition led by Simon Martin, Assistant Curator on Wednesday 24 October and Wednesday 7 November. See page 81 for details.
In such drawings, and in a large series of drawings, under the general title, 'Fables', de Francia draws on mythology in ways that are remarkably immediate. One may not know the particular myth to which he alludes but as the artist himself has acknowledged: 'The Greek myths offer shorthand for certain human situations. Their relevance does not need to be explicitly stated.' Such scenes may introduce extremes of physical and emotional violence but such characterisations tell only part of the story. What they hide is the artist’s tenderness and love, his wit and playfulness. De Francia’s stark drawings in deep black charcoal on crisp white paper is a world of light as well as dark, content as well as despair. Indeed the paintings and drawings at Pallant House Gallery allow one to chart the range of de Francia’s work, from the study for his most important early painting, 'The Execution of Beloyannis', the Greek communist, through 'Disparates' drawings of power and abuse, to tender drawings of lovers, children and figures in a garden. Ultimately, then, it is appropriate that at Pallant House Gallery one can view a wealth of Peter de Francia’s drawings but that a centre piece is provided by one of his most powerful paintings, the triptych, 'A Diary of Our Time'. For to appreciate de Francia’s achievements is to recognise a realist with an eye for the fantastic, a classicist with the heart of a romantic. 50
Peter de Francia, Disparates (No.1), 1970-74, Charcoal on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, © de Francia
Peter de Francia: The Ship of Fools List of Works Study for the Execution of Beloyannis 1952 Pencil on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund Two Africans c.1962 Pencil on paper Wilson Loan Ballet Africans 1962 Pencil on paper Wilson Loan Tunisian Landscape 1958 Oil on canvas On loan from a private collection
Nude Washing her Feet n.d. Oil on canvas On loan from the Artist Two Nudes n.d. Oil on canvas Wilson Gift through The Art Fund Disparates No.1 1970–74 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund Untitled, from the ‘Disparates’ series 1968 Charcoal on paper
Lovers, from the ‘Untitled’ series 1988 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund The Violation of Innocence 1 1987–88 Oil on canvas On loan from the Artist Untitled, from the ‘Untitled’ series 1988 Charcoal on paper Wilson Loan The Violation of Innocence II 1987–8 Oil on canvas On loan from the Artist
Figures, Tunisia 1959–60 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
Untitled, from the ‘Disparates’ series 1970–74 Charcoal on paper Wilson Loan
Tunisian Beach 1967 Oil on canvas On loan from the Artist
The Ship of Fools c.1972 Oil on canvas Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
A Diary of Our Times 1968 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
The Ship of Fools, from the ‘Disparates’ series 1970-74 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
Portugese Couple 1988 Oil on canvas On loan from the Artist
Untitled, from the ‘Disparates’ series 1970–74 Charcoal on paper Wilson Loan
A Reminder, from the ‘Fables’ series 1996 Charcoal on paper Wilson Loan
A Diary of Our Times (Triptych) 1974 Oil on canvas Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
Figures in a Garden I 1988 Charcoal on paper Wilson Gift through The Art Fund Figures in a Garden II 1988 Charcoal on paper Wilson Loan
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Dead Faces Rudolf Schäfer
Photographing the dead is not new - in the last century, it was quite common – but people do find the idea rather strange. Many people today don’t know what a dead person looks like. In modern society we are separated from the event of death: somebody becomes ill and goes into hospital, and then there’s a phone call or a telegram informing you of the death, and the body is prepared and put in the coffin, and the coffin lid put in the grave and that’s it. There is no direct experience of what death actually looks like, and because people have formed this notion that it must look terrible because the events leading to it were terrible. These photographs may also seem strange merely because of the way I’ve presented them. A full-face portrait, perfectly natural in life, seems unnatural in death. These are ordinary poses. We are constantly bombarded with newspaper and television pictures of catastrophes and wars-violent, extreme pictures-but we defuse one of the implications of these images – our own mortality – with the thought that nothing so extreme will ever happen to us. With these pictures you simply don’t have that option. They were all taken in the Pathological Institute of the Charité – an old university clinic here in Berlin. It was not particularly difficult to get permission: sometimes I obtained the consent of relatives; in other cases that wasn’t necessary. Of the dead themselves I knew only
a few details: when they were born, when they died, what they died of. Nothing more. These people all died of natural causes. People remark that they all look very peaceful. That is the point: there is nothing special about these faces. The peace of this moment, this coming to rest: this is what dead people look like. Even so, some people react with moral outrage: how could I rob these people of their last remaining possession, their dignity? They have a point and I’m not denying that the moral dilemma exists, but you have to reach beyond it to see what is perhaps more important, namely, the questions the pictures raise in our own minds about ourselves. To me the pictures have a terrible beauty; they are beautiful. At the same time, the question they pose cannot be avoided. The one thing I think I learned during this period is that life is too short to waste on unimportant things. These pictures show what will surely become of us all one day, and we should therefore take a little bit more care over our lives. Visages des Mortes is on display in the prints room at Pallant House Gallery from 25 September – 11 November 2007 Interview conducted and translated from German by Piers Spence. Extract taken from ‘Death’, edited by Bill Buford in Granta 27, summer 1989. Rudolf Schäfer, from Visages des Mortes, © Rudolf Schäfer (Vu)
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Edgar Holloway Robert Meyrick When Edgar Holloway began to etch, the once flourishing market for contemporary fine art prints was already in decline. The etching in particular had enjoyed enormous popularity in Britain during the 1920s; it had become a symbol of good taste; an affordable and original work of art. The unprecedented demand for prints led to their increased market value. It was a time when many young artists as well as established painters turned to printmaking, seduced by the popularity of etching and the large sums of money to be made. Edgar Holloway’s finely wrought etchings were readily accepted in a market that praised and rewarded good craftsmanship – etchings and watercolours became his primary source of income. Holloway was producing eighteen to twenty plates a year in the early ‘thirties, compared Graham Sutherland’s four a year at the height of the print boom. He earned his living with picturesque views of popular landmarks, cathedrals, ruins and, when obtainable, commissioned portraits. Edgar Holloway, born in Doncaster in 1914 the son of a miner-turned-picture-framer, was making linocuts by the age of ten and drypoints at thirteen. He left school at fourteen, declining an offer to go to art school full time in favour of travelling the Yorkshire countryside in pursuit of suitable subjects for watercolours and drypoints to sell through his father’s picture-framing shop. The Holloway family moved to London in June 1931 when Edgar was seventeen. His reputation was established when he was given his first solo exhibition at the Twenty One Gallery off Regent Street, to critical acclaim. At the same time his work entered public collections like the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. At eighteen Holloway’s list of sitters for portraits included T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender and Herbert Read. The genre for which Holloway is most widely acclaimed is portraiture, and for his self-portraits especially. No other British artist made so many etched self-portraits, twentyseven between 1931 and 1996 creating what has now become a visual autobiography.
The romantic, plein-air responses to the Yorkshire landscape of Holloway’s early drypoints, and his exact recording of architectural subjects, eventually gave way to a more sophisticated and expressive visual language. Holloway’s marriage in 1943 to Daisy Monica Hawkins, a former model to Eric Gill, was inspiring not only in his developing interest in the work of Gill and particularly his attitude towards fine art and craft, but also in his fascination with Monica as a model during the early years of their marriage. At first Holloway lived with his young family in Yorkshire, then in Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains, and from 1949 on Ditchling Common, accepting an invitation to join the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, he shared a studio with Philip Hargreen, and worked as a letterer, cartographer and designer of book jackets for major British publishers. Holloway did not return to printmaking until he gave up commercial art in 1969. Throughout his career Holloway has remained firmly outside mainstream concerns in contemporary art and his reputation has fluctuated as a consequence. Now Holloway is once more finding his work in demand, rising on the tide of renewed interest in the printmaking of the inter-war years. At ninety three, Holloway is fortunate to have witnessed the prevailing taste turn full cycle and he can once again enjoy the interest shown in his work. Edgar Holloway: Parallel Images in Watercolour to Etching is on show in the Prints Room from 13 November 2007–20 January 2008 Extract taken from the essay ‘Circle of Friends: Edgar Holloway and the Etching Revival of the inter-war years’ by Robert Merrick, in ‘Edgar Holloway and Friends: An Artist’s Collection of Prints from the ‘Thirties’, (Aberystwyth: University of Wales, 1999).
Edgar Holloway, Orchard Moon (detail), 1990, Etching, from the Portfolio 'Etchings and Engravings', © The Artist
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Autumn Flowers: A Preview Frances Guy
This autumn, a new work will be installed in the eighteenth century stairwell in Pallant House. Frances Guy introduces the installation, and visits the studio where the piece is being made. Since 1999 Pallant House Gallery has worked with contemporary British artists to present a series of sitespecific installations that have resulted in some of the most provocative and exciting displays in the Gallery. The Arts Council’s ‘Making Arts Matter’ grant funded three residencies with Wendy Ramshaw and Miranda Watkins (1999), Joy Gregory (2000) and Paul Huxley (2001). In 2002 the Strange Partners project enabled the Gallery to work with Andy Goldsworthy and Langlands & Bell as part of a regional initiative involving Petworth House and the Sussex Downs Conservation Board amongst others. All of these projects involved the artists in creating new work in response to Pallant House and its collections and have been a vital way of enabling the Gallery to develop its holdings of contemporary art. To ensure that the displays in the House always include a contemporary and changing element, the staircase has been dedicated as a site for an ongoing series of installations following Paul Huxley’s wall drawing in 2001. Last year funding from Arts Council England and the Abbey Harris Mural Fund resulted in Susie MacMurray’s extraordinary ‘Shell’ which has elicited almost universal praise from both public and peers and was a contributing factor to MacMurray’s nomination for this year’s Northern Art Prize. Originally intended to be in situ for the first year of the Gallery’s reopening but postponed due to popular demand, it is now time for the 20,000 mussel shells to be removed from the walls of the staircase and for the next artist to make their presence felt.
Nina Saunders was born in Denmark but has lived in London since 1975, studying Fine Art at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design from 1986 to 1991. Since the early 1990s, Saunders has produced works arising out of the subversion of the everyday object, often made from upholstery. Many Friends will remember her work ‘Milk and Honey’ from the exhibitions held at the small private gallery in Chilgrove, just outside Chichester, during our period of closure. Saunders had been commissioned to make an acoustic sculpture for the gallery which took the form of fifteen hanging works, some upholstered in linen and others made from white vinyl, resembling formations bee’s make when they are left to swarm naturally. Saunders is fully aware of the task that lies ahead in following what has become a much-loved addition to the Gallery. She has more than risen to the challenge by submitting a proposal that leaves the walls bare and instead focuses attention on the space enclosed by the stairs by hanging four monumental upholstered ‘pods’ from the ceiling in place of the chandelier. This will be a dramatic change to ‘Shell’: the pods will be a brooding presence that will dominate the Entrance Hall, but on the stairs, the external light from the window will highlight the spiralling patterns of the upholstery and the richness of the fabric, giving each sculpture a life and energy of its own. At a visit to Saunders’ studio in Stoke Newington in July, I saw ‘Autumn Flowers’ in progress and was introduced to the prototype pods, each of which has been given a nickname to distinguish one from the other: Jack (10’6” long by 5’5” circumference), Bob (12’11” by 6’5”), Betty (13’10” by 6’8”) and the gargantuan Rita (15’9” by 6’8”). The sculptures will be made from Jesmonite, a non-toxic alternative to 57
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polyester and fibreglass resin. This will be the first time Saunders has used this environmentally-friendly product which enables her to do her own casting and to have more control over the process, whereas previously her sculptures have had to be cast in a foundry. The pods will be upholstered in a lush biscuit and claret velvet fabric designed by William Morris and called ‘Autumn Flowers’, now part of the Sanderson range who have generously offered their support to the project. To prepare them, each pod is marked with a complex diamond pattern to indicate where the folds in the fabric and the buttons are placed. This is an extremely difficult process that utilises all of the mathematical skills of Saunders’ and her technical assistant Peter Locker, drawn from knowledge gained from previous projects. The surface of the pods is deliberately uneven so that their appearance is of a living thing writhing and struggling to escape, like a giant butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Saunders’ studio assistant Liz Connolly, is methodically pulling the threads fixing the buttons through the fabric and one half of the Jesmonite shell. It’s a slow and laborious process, with over 3,000 buttons involved. The fibres of the velvet fly everywhere and once a section has been completed, the upholstered surface has to be hoovered and wrapped to keep it
clean. Whilst this is taking place, Saunders is starting work on the final piece of the installation, a chair that sits underneath the hanging sculptures upholstered in the same fabric with an extrusion that looks as though part of a pod has dropped or oozed onto it. This will be the legacy of the installation, a work for Pallant House Gallery to keep for its collections whilst it is intended to exhibit the sculptures in Denmark and Sweden. The aim is to install ‘Autumn Flowers’ towards the end of November. Pete, with the help of engineer John Discombe, has designed an ingenious method of hanging the sculptures from the ceiling above the stairwell, involving a steel girder in the cavity that is accessed from the offices above. The pods are incredibly light despite their size, another advantage of using Jesmonite. In contrast to the preparatory stage, the installation will be fairly straightforward – not the five-day epic involved in ‘Shell’. Once in place, the pods will inhabit the space and make it their own and the work of Nina Saunders will take centre-stage. ‘Autumn Flowers’ promises to stimulate our senses and provoke the sense of awe and wonderment we have come to expect from this series of contemporary interventions in Pallant House.
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Outsider In Simon Powell ‘Outside In’ was the first open arts prize for outsider and marginalised artists in Sussex. Simon Powell, Co-director of Creative Futures, looks at some of the winning entries from the groundbreaking project, and reports on the exhibition which brought the outside, in. Hung like the Parisian salons of yesteryear, the Outside In exhibition used every available square inch of wall space in order to give proper due to the scores of Sussex artists operating at the margins of society. The call for entries went far and wide including care homes, hospitals and day centres and the response was impressive. Not everything one saw on the walls was brilliant, but some of the work genuinely was. The best of this collection would sit comfortably alongside any mainstream modern art show with the artists already operating on a level playing field. This is all the more impressive because most of the artists struggle with disadvantages which leave them creatively isolated and apart from contemporary arts culture. However, once supported, the creative impulse is set free to fly, much like the exotic birds in Peter Cutts’ large blue landscape, ‘The Wonderful World of the Flying Creatures’, a wonderfully restive and meditative piece which invites the onlooker to stop still for a few moments and journey into his fantastical dreamscape. The curators of the Outside In exhibition nailed their colours to the mast. They embraced the definition of Outsider Art as art produced by ‘outsiders’ rather than the definition relating to certain repetitive, obsessive or compulsive styles based on the Prinzhorn Collection. The exhibition was all the more invigorating for this. Without this broader term we might not have seen the excellent photography of Andrew Houd. At first glance, his black and white ‘Self-Portrait’ looks like an accomplished interior study of a tidy but cramped living room. But there on the screen of a small portable TV is Andrew with his outstretched arms and T-shirt logo shouting “Free!” The fact that Andrew’s image is imprisoned within the confines of the small portable TV gives the picture an ironic edge.
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John Cull’s ‘Where’s Frida Kahlo?’ is also a very successful piece of work, forming a square grid of head and shoulders snapshots on individual canvasses which are then joined together. His style is tentative, cautious but precise too and the care with which he puts together the ensemble shines out. Mostly turquoise, the artist audaciously renders one of the portrait squares fire engine red which enlivens the whole piece wonderfully. Another artist, Joel Howie, created a wistful and elegant composition of waltzers on a dance floor called ‘Dancers’. The pink and black figures are indistinct and sketchy and sometimes the couples seem to be even merging, altogether creating a delightfully dreamy image. Like Peter Cutts and many other ‘outsiders’ there seems to be an ease in portraying the other-worldly or blurred and strange visions that might visit a sleeper at night. Also noteworthy was Andrew Apicella’s ‘Changing Guards at Buckingham Palace’ sculpted in bold colours and flat surfaces and Pat Morgan’s ‘Lady in Green’ with dazzling fauve-punk colours and simply refusing to be ignored. The exhibition was well worth a visit, partly to support the outsider artists, partly to join the many who are beginning to appreciate the value of artworks being produced at society’s margins, and partly because there were some genuinely great artworks on display. Outside In is a bi-annual open arts prize for outsider and marginalised artists run by Pallant House Gallery and Creative Response. The exhibition ran at Pallant House Gallery from 7 August –2 September 2007. Simon Powell is the Co-Director of Creative Futures, which works to empower marginalised artists and writers across the South East through development of skills, professional presentation, promotion and sales. See http://www.freewebs.com/creativefutures/ for more information or email simonpowell@freeuk.com
Outside In Winning Artists
Top Row Andrew Apicella, Changing Guards at Buckingham Palace Zoe Leonard, Independence Tower Peter Cutts, The Wonderful World of the Flying Creatures Middle Row John Cull, Where's Frida Kahlo? Bottom Row Joel Howie, Dancers Andrew Hood, Self-Portrait
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Books on modern art from Thames & Hudson Enclosure Andy Goldsworthy ISBN 978 0500 093368 £32.00 hb
Howard Hodgkin The Complete Prints Liesbeth Heenk ISBN 978 0500 284391 £29.95 pb
Sean Scully A Retrospective Danilo Eccher and Donald Kuspit ISBN 978 0500 093382 £32.00 hb
Roger Hilton The Figured Language of Thought Andrew Lambirth ISBN 978 0500 093344 £35.00 hb
How to Read a Modern Painting Understanding and Enjoying the Modern Masters Jon Thompson ISBN 978 0500 286432 £19.95 pb
David Nash Introduction by Norbert Lynton ISBN 978 0500 093399 £32.00 hb
www.thamesandhudson.com
Book Reviews Hoglands: The Home of Henry and Irina Moore David Mitchinson (ed.) Lund Humphries ÂŁ35.00 It is always intriguing to see the homes and studios of artists, as if some secret to their creativity lies in their domestic arrangements. This engaging book gives a fascinating insight into Hoglands, the home of Henry and Irina Moore for almost fifty years, which opened to the public for the first time this year. In September 1940 the Moores were staying with friends near the village of Much Hadham. On their return to London they discovered that their Hampstead home had been damaged in the Blitz and so they returned to Hertfordshire, where they found Hoglands up for rent. Tracing the development of the house, Moore's studio, Irina's garden and their art collection, this beautifully illustrated book places the building within the wider context of Moore's life and work. Alongside images of Moore's work, the book records his eclectic collection of artifacts that influenced him: Nayarit terracotta figures from Mexico, Stone Aztec heads, tribal masks, Gothic alabasters, a Japanese Haniwa head, Inuit whalebone figures, pre-Columbian figures and, curiously, Staffordshire china wally dogs, which seem to appear in the homes of many modernists artists. Paintings by Bomberg, Hitchens,William Nicholson, Sickert and Matthew Smith appear alongside French masters such as Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin and Edouard Vuillard. One of the many previously unpublished archive photographs shows the artist in his sitting room studying a group of maquettes for the Madonna and Child for St Matthew's Northampton, which are arranged in front of a medieval Madonna and Child. Apparently, when Walter Hussey visited Hoglands in 1943, to see how work was progressing on the sculpture, Moore took him into the studio and allowed him to chisel a few pieces from the block of Hornton stone.
A detail of the large sitting room in 2007, Photo by Steve Gorton, Š Henry Moore Foundation
The book also charts the meticulous restoration of the house and its contents by the Henry Moore Foundation, revealing the cleaning, cataloguing, restoration and extensive structural work that have gone into giving the house the feeling that Henry and Irina have just left the room. Simon Martin To reserve your copy, please telephone the Bookshop on 01243 770813
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Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings Catherine Lampert Yale University Press £65.00 British artist Euan Uglow (1932–2000) maintained a lower profile than others of his generation, yet his beautiful, intelligent, humane, and often witty landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies are today gaining the recognition they so clearly deserve. Many critics and admirers now consider Uglow one of Britain’s greatest post-war artists. This is the first book devoted to Uglow and his oeuvre. Richard Kendall’s essay explores Uglow’s fundamental attitudes, beliefs, and processes in the years 1950 to 1970, and Catherine Lampert looks at the content and personal nature of the artist’s paintings over a lifetime, emphasizing his growing attention to color and light. The volume reproduces every known oil painting by Uglow—a total of more than 400 works--some 80 of which are here reproduced for the first time. In addition to a chronology, bibliography, and exhibition history for each work, the catalogue entries provide many other details and illuminating notes, including the artist’s own observations. To reserve your copy, please telephone the Bookshop on 01243 770813
Peter Blake Edited by Christoph Grunenberg and Laurence Sillars Tate Publishing £24.99 In 2007, Tate Liverpool will present the first major retrospective of the work of Peter Blake in Britain since 1983. A key figure in the history of British Pop Art, Blake is one of the most influential and original artists working in Britain today. Central to Blake's work since the 1950s has been his fascination with popular culture, ranging from music to Hollywood icons and wrestling stars. Perhaps his most famous engagement with Pop came with his design for the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the original artwork of which, is at Pallant House Gallery. With this and other works he helped create a specifically British pop aesthetic that defined an era. A prolific artist, he has utilised a variety of media including painting, drawing, collage, sculpture and printmaking; this study focuses principally on his two-dimensional works and provides the first thorough survey of his paintings from the 1950s through to the present. It will include major icons of twentieth-century art, such as Self-Portrait with badges (1961), and Have a Nice Day, Mr Hockney (1981-3), but will also feature many lesser-known works including his recent, major work The Marcel Duchamp World Series. This volume will establish beyond doubt Blake's claim as one of the foremost British artists of the twentieth century, explaining why he is frequently cited as a key influence by contemporary artists today.
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Caroline Wiseman Modern Caroline Wiseman Modern and Contemporary and Contemporary
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Pallant Publications In Camera: Snowdon Robin Muir ÂŁ12.95
Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz Frances Guy, Simon Shaw-Miller, Michael Tucker ÂŁ12.95
In 1965 the seminal book Private View was published, confirming a dramatic shift on the map of international contemporary art. Through over 300 extraordinary photographs taken by Snowdon, the book documented the contemporary British art scene at that decisive moment and argued convincingly that London now equalled New York and Paris as an artistic capital of the world.
Searching for a new visual language at the beginning of the twentieth century, many artists were inspired by musical forms and ideas in their early experiments in abstract art. This book explores the results of these investigations from some of the pre-eminent names of Modern art including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, FrantiĹĄek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Eduardo Paolozzi and British artists Alan Davie and John Tunnard.
More than forty years after that book was published, the exhibition In Camera, Snowdon and the World of British Art at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester revisits a selection of these famous images for the first time. In addition, the exhibition also includes some rare alternative images not in the original Private View book, a number of which have never been published before.
For many artists, music, the paradigm of nonfigurative art, became a model for experiments with abstraction; where colours became tones and visual equivalents were found for rhythm and time. Concurrently, composers also pushed the limits of their discipline and found new means of expression beyond traditional and accepted notions of harmony. The boundaries between art forms became increasingly blurred as new types of performance developed and artists explored the possibilities of synaesthetic experience. And the arrival of jazz shocked both disciplines into creating responses to its syncopated beats and vital sensuality.
This book, published to coincide with the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, features a commissioned essay by Robin Muir, the curator of the exhibition, and over 55 illustrated catalogue entries.
This book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at Pallant House Gallery and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. It includes three specially commissioned essays and fully illustrated catalogue entries for all the exhibits from private and public collections in Britain and Europe.
Frances Guy is Head of Curatorial Services at Pallant
SNOWDON
House Gallery, Chichester and an oboist for the Sussex Symphony Orchestra, Brighton. She studied History of Art at The University of Manchester where she also took a Diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies. Previous publications include Women of Worth: Jewish Women in Britain (Manchester: Manchester Jewish Museum, 1992) and Modern British Art at Pallant House Gallery (London: Scala, 2004).
Simon Shaw-Miller is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck College, London and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. His research interests focus principally on relationships between music and art history and theory in the modern period, issues of interdisciplinarity in audio and visual culture and the concept of synaesthesia. Selected publications include Visible Deeds of Music: Music and Art from Wagner to Cage (Yale University Press, 2002) and Eye Hear: Art, Music and the Culture of Synaesthesia (forthcoming). Michael Tucker D. Litt. is Professor of Poetics at the University of Brighton and a reviewer for ‘Jazz Journal International’. Director of the month-long 1999 University
contribution ‘Northbound: ECM and the Idea of North’ in Steve Lake & Paul Griffiths (eds.) Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM (London: Granta Books, 2007.
For many artists, music, the paradigm of non-figurative art, became a model for experiments with abstraction; where colours became tones and visual equivalents were found for rhythm and time. Concurrently, composers also pushed the limits of their discipline and found new means of expression beyond traditional and accepted notions of harmony. The boundaries between art forms became increasingly blurred as new types of performance developed and artists explored the possibilities of synaesthetic experience. And the arrival of jazz shocked both disciplines into creating responses to its syncopated beats and vital sensuality. This book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at Pallant House Gallery and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. It includes three specially commissioned essays and fully illustrated catalogue entries for all the exhibits from private and public collections in Britain and Europe.
He wrote the sleeve note for the 2007 release ‘Stages of a Long Journey’ (ECM 1920) by leading European bassist and composer Eberhard Weber.
ROBIN MUIR
LABOK OQ FK QEB LRQE
Frances Guy, Simon Shaw-Miller, Michael Tucker
of Brighton festival ‘ECM: Selected Signs’, his publications include Jan Garbarek: Deep Song (Hull: Eastnote/ University of Hull Press, 1998, Italian edition 2005) and a
Searching for a new visual language at the beginning of the twentieth century, many artists were inspired by musical forms and ideas in their early experiments in abstract art. This book explores the results of these investigations from some of the pre-eminent names of Modern art including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, FrantiĹĄek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Eduardo Paolozzi and British artists Alan Davie and John Tunnard.
Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz
IN CAMERA
eye-music Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz
Paul Klee
Frances Guy, simon shaw-miller, michael tucker
Abstract Colour Harmony in Squares with Vermilion Accents (Abstracte Farbenharmonie in Vierecken mit Zinnoberroten Akzenten) (detail) 1924 oil on lime primed paper on cardboard framed with pen and ink and gouache 30.8 x 24.4 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Museum Berggruen Š bpk/ Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, SMB/ Jens Ziehe Š DACS 2007
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Pallant Editions Shell Series This autumn Susie MacMurray’s hugely popular work ‘Shell’ will be removed from the walls of the eighteenth century staircase to prepare for the next site specific installation by artist, Nina Saunders. The 20,000 mussel shells will be re-arranged into framed panels of various sizes, creating the final multiple in the Shell series of editions and providing a unique opportunity to own a piece of the original art work. The silver-plated shells which accompanied the installation are presented boxed, signed and numbered in a limited edition of 250. These continue to be available from the Bookshop priced £75. The Gallery has also commissioned two commemorative multiples, each comprising of thirteen silver-plated shells inlaid with velvet, signed by the artist and framed, also available to buy from the Bookshop.
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A beautifully designed book, with an introductory essay by Dr Catherine Harper, which accompanies the installation, also makes a beautiful gift item priced £6. The additional framed multiples will be available from the end of October. For prices and further information on all the multiples in the Shell series, please contact the Bookshop on 01243 770813.
Pallant Editions
Christmas Card
Pallant House Gallery has commissioned multiples and prints by leading contemporary artists, including the iconic Peter Blake, Langlands & Bell and printmaker Paul Catherall. Priced to be within the reach of as many people as possible, many of the pieces are already being sold on for much more than their original price.
A traditional William Morris fabric print inspires this year’s unique Christmas Card designed by artist Nina Saunders, whose site-specific installation will be located in the entrance hall of the house from the end of November. The cards are printed with the following message:
They are all signed, all numbered from limited editions and they will not always be around, so if you are interested, don't hesitate! Paul Catherall - Pallant 4 Colour lino print (38cm x 28cm) Signed and numbered Edition of 250 £65 Peter Blake - Pop Art 4 Enamel badges (36mm x 36mm each) Boxed, signed and numbered Edition of 2000 £25
Come hither lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a'coming when all shall be better than well. From ' The day is coming' William Morris, 1883 Silver Embossed 6” x 6” (152mm x 152mm) £6 per pack of 10 cards and envelopes The cards will be available for sale from mid–October you can pre-order them through the Bookshop on 01243 770813
Langlands & Bell - Frozen Sky Boxed Wristwatch Signed and numbered Edition of 1000 £50 69
Collection News Simon Martin
Neeta Madahar, Sustenance 101, 2003, Iris print on Somerset Velvet paper, Edition No 5/15, © The Artist
Photography has a central place in contemporary art practice - as was evident in the recent ‘Wonderful Fund’ exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in 2006, which featured photographs by Richard Billingham, John Coplans, Candida Höfer, Sarah Lucas, Wolfgang Tillmans and Bettina von Zwehl. However, the acquisition of two photographs by Neeta Madahar and Paul Schütze for the permanent collection represents a relatively new area of collecting for Pallant House Gallery. These photographs have been acquired through the Golder Thompson Gift, which has thus far concentrated on acquiring contemporary Scottish prints for the Gallery. To date, over 80 prints have been acquired through the generosity of Dr Mark Golder and Mr Brian Thompson. Inspired by Walter Hussey’s model of enlightened patronage and collecting, they regularly contribute towards an annual purchase fund to enable Pallant House Gallery to buy contemporary prints. ‘Sustenance 101’ (2003) is one of a series of fifteen photographs by Neeta Madahar (b.1966), who was born of an Indian family that came to Britain in the
1960s. She studied at Winchester School of Art and subsequently at Boston in the USA, where she set up her camera for a period of eighteen months on the balcony of her apartment to record birds feeding in the trees. The resulting series of remarkable photographs moves beyond being a record of ornithological activity to reveal extraordinary qualities in the ordinary. Identifying the migratory aspect of birds with her own life experiences, Madahar has said that birds are ‘so similar to us in the way they feed and socialize, in their patterns of behaviour, that they became perfect symbols... as a natural extension of ourselves.’ Like the decorative Chinoisserie wallpapers featuring birds in trees that often appear in the bedrooms of eighteenth-century houses, her photographs blur boundaries between nature and artifice. The series was linked to her interest in dioramas encountered in natural history museums, a location which is the subject of ‘August Moon II’ (2006) by Paul Schütze (b.1958), an Australian-born artist, composer and sound designer. This photograph is one of a series of atmospheric nocturnal photographs in London museums. Under moonlight the display of animal 71
Paula Rego, 'Crumpled' from the 'Guardian' series of the 'Jane Eyre' portfolio, 2002, Lithograph, © The Artist
skeletons in the Natural History Museum is imbued with a surreal, ghostly quality, quite divorced from the didactic intent of the displays. A print by one of the most celebrated female artists working in Britain completes the trio of works recently acquired with the Golder Thompson Gift. Paula Rego was born in Lisbon in 1935 and studied at the Slade School in London, where she has lived since 1976. Pallant House Gallery has an important collection of paintings and drawings by her husband Victor Willing (1928–1988) and so it is fitting to represent her in the permanent collection. ‘Crumpled’ (2002) is one of a series of 25 lithographs based on Charlotte Brontë’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’. Identifying with the story, Rego has said that ‘the way Jane Eyre was strictly brought up, she could have been a Portugese girl from where I grew up.’ 'Crumpled' features a young Jane suffering a fit in the 'red room' Renowned for her powerful pastel drawings, the prints resulted from an invitation to Rego by Stanley Jones of the Curwen Studio who has said that, ‘pastel and lithographic crayon have a parallel quality, a similar feel, so the stones that we prepared for her were medium fine in order to further connect with this experience of pastel on paper.’ Following the recent ‘Poets in the Landscape’ exhibition, which featured a number of images of poets and shepherds reclining in landscapes, the Gallery has been presented with an ink drawing of a Cretan shepherd by John Craxton entitled ‘Study for Homage to Alones’ (1948). Although other works by the artist, such as ‘Hare on a Table’ have been on longterm loan, this is his first work to enter the permanent 72
collection. Craxton has lived between Crete and London since 1947. Many of his distinctive paintings and drawings have been inspired by the authentically pastoral subject matter of shepherds and fishermen on the Greek islands. The donor of this work has also presented the Gallery with a lidded stoneware pot by the studio potter Chris Lewis, who works at the South Heighton Pottery with Ursula Mommens. Following the recent exhibition of the School Prints in the Prints Room, the entire set of 30 lithographs has been acquired for the Gallery, through the generosity of a number of individual donors. The School Prints were a remarkable series of colour lithographs, editioned in large numbers and sold at a low cost to schools, enabling children to encounter original works of art by modern artists in their own classrooms. The series was produced between 1946 and 1949 and includes prints by British artists including Hans Feibusch, Edwin LaDell, L.S.Lowry, Henry Moore, John Nash, Feliks Topolski, Julian Trevelyan and John Tunnard and European artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Fernand Léger and Georges Braque. Sadly Brenda Rawnsley, the publisher of the School Prints, died in June this year, but the acquisition of this complete set of prints will form a lasting legacy of her remarkable achievement. New Acquisitions will be on show on the Level 2 landing in the new wing.
The Pallant Restaurant Interview Stefan van Raay, Director talks to Paul and Toni Arden
Paul and Toni Arden, from Arden and Anstruther gallery in Petwoth, are currently loaning thirteen photographs by the artist Rudolph Schäfer to the Gallery. Stefan van Raay, Director of Pallant House Gallery, talks to them over lunch in The Pallant Restaurant. On a sunny day during Glorious Goodwood race week, I met with Paul and Toni Arden for lunch in The Pallant Restaurant. We settle for a bottle of Domaine du Tanquet, a medium dry white wine from the Gascogne region, and fresh breads with olive oil and Balsamic vinegar to cleanse the palate. As always, we chat for an age before getting down to business. Paul Arden constantly teases his wife Toni (‘as a cook she was stuck in the ‘60s, but she is improving now’) in the gentle way reserved for couples who understand each other perfectly. His latest book, ‘God Explained in a Taxi Ride’ (Penguin, published November 2007), is dedicated to her ‘who I love to bits’.
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After we have all chosen and ordered our mains, Toni explains, ‘We married in 1962, but he is still able to surprise me. Only last week he stopped the opera Macbeth at Glyndebourne. He stood up and shouted “Stop! Stop! I can’t see!” because two members of the crew were obscuring the view by hanging over the railing of their box. The opera stopped, I was in shock, but Paul went out and was then offered a seat by Gus Christie, who he doesn’t know, in his box’. As Toni roars with laughter, Paul smiles and says only, ‘They behaved beautifully!’ Paul is one of the most celebrated talents in the advertising industry. He adored his father, a commercial artist, and followed him into advertising from the age of 16. Five years later he had a job at the best agency of its time, Ogilvy and Mather, working with the likes of Fay Weldon and Salmon Rushdie. He was the legendary executive creative director of Saatchi and Saatchi, where he led campaigns for British Airways, Toyota (‘the car in front of you is a Toyota’), Silk Cut (the ‘slit purple silk’ campaign), the V&A (‘an ace caff with quite a nice museum attached’) and many others. He has also won two lifetime achievement awards for his commercial films, the last one not so long ago, in Cannes.
‘Because of my work, I have always been passionate about photography’ Paul explains. ‘I worked with Avedon, Salgado, Bruce Weber, Snowdon, Michael Kenna, Lester Bookbinder and I collected work by them and many others. Our gallery in Petworth came about after a cup of coffee. We saw an empty shop in Lombard Street and we decided to take it to house the collection. Initially, we didn’t know what to do with it; I never wanted to be a dealer. We both love it for different reasons. I like to share what I like with other people, and Toni loves being with such diverse people. Toni wasn’t meant to have anything to do with it, but now she is very involved. In fact, she runs it.’ Over a smooth and creamy risotto with sundried tomato, garlic, rosemary and parmesan shavings and fresh green salad for Paul and Toni, and a classic chicken Caesar salad for me, I mention to Paul that, when I bring up his name in the world of advertising and marketing, the reaction is always the same. ‘Oh my God! Difficult …’ people say, but then always follow up with a huge smile and a resounding ‘…but absolutely brilliant!’ Paul laughs and describes what he thinks is his professional reputation, with Toni enthusiastically interjecting. ‘They thought of me as dangerous’ says Paul. ‘I spent too much money and I changed my mind all the time’.
Throughout our lunch, Paul is ever so slightly impatient because he wants to talk about Pallant House Gallery and The Pallant Restaurant, not him and ‘all that boring stuff’, but he does allow me to praise the success of two books (over a million copies of ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be’ and ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite), available at every till of every airport bookshop in the world, and he shows me the cover of the forthcoming one. Then at last, over a shared summer fruit pudding with ice cream which we all agree is delicious, he gets the chance to say what he wanted to say from the beginning: ‘We really are very privileged to have this museum of modern art here in Chichester. We no longer have to go to London to get our fix; it’s the only bit of London in the whole of West Sussex. This whole place has such style and is run by such friendly people. It’s the people who make a place, you know. And somewhere like this, here in the restaurant, with good food and a buzzing atmosphere, it makes you come back again and again.’ Visages de Mortes is on display in the Prints Room at Pallant House Gallery from 25 September– 11 November 2007. The Pallant Restaurant is open Tuesday to Sunday. Please call 01243 770827 to make a reservation. 75
Eye-Music: Orchitecture Barbara Chisholm
Rob Munro
For one day last July, orchestral music filled Pallant House. The event known as ‘Orchitecture’, organised by artist Thor McIntyre-Burnie with the New London Orchestra, was part of a season of performances accompanying the Eye-Music exhibition. Volunteer steward, Barbara Chisholm, listened in. I have never heard Mussorgsky’s 'Pictures at an Exhibition' with such delight and understanding as I did at Pallant House Gallery that Saturday. There was a different instrument in each of the eight rooms of the old house but they could be heard as a whole from the magnificent staircase. By walking through, and listening in the different rooms, for the first time I was able to separate out the different coloured sound threads and understand how they interwove with each other. Not having been to a concert for some time, I had forgotten the direct impact real music has on one’s whole being: so different from the electronically purified sounds heard from disc. Homogenised music is as far removed from playing music as homogenised milk or tinned carrots are from what the cow or the earth produces. I became very emotional at one point 76
that afternoon, losing composure and not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Later, I realised that it was how I had felt at the very first art exhibition I went to. It was Picasso, at the Victoria and Albert museum in 1947. Before that moment, I had only ever seen his work in illustrated magazines (tinned?), so when I was faced with the size, colour and reality of them, I wept, I laughed and had to keep going outside to compose myself. The Pallant House Gallery visitors too, seemed at their most benign; relaxed and smiling, aware of this shared experience. In this sort of environment there is a heightened awareness, so that when someone approaches and talks, there is nearly always a connection which surfaces and they pass on like old friends. Sitting quietly enabled reflection too: one observes. There was a man sitting on the stairs who was holding his sleeping grandchild. There was another babe in arms, transfixed by the noise that came out of a French horn, and then I knew for certain how important all the arts are for holding together a common humanity. For forthcoming events at Pallant House Gallery please turn to pages 82–87.
Island Fine Arts Ltd
Ken Howard,
RA
“Bobby and the red kimono”
Oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches
53 High Street, Bembridge, Isle of Wight PO35 5SE Tel 01983 875133 Office 2, Sadlers Walk, 44 East Street, Chichester PO19 1HQ (by appointment only) Email gallery@islandfinearts.com Web www.islandfinearts.com
'Nose Kiss' & 'Nutcracker Evolved' by Vanessa Pooley
tel: 01603 663775 vanessapooley@onetel.com www.vanessapooley.com
The Southern Ceramic Group Annual Exhibition
19 October 2007 − 4 January 2008 Daily from 10am − 5pm at the Portsmouth Museum, Museum Road, Portsmouth Tel: 01403 258 201 – email:info@southernceramicgroup.co.uk – www.southernceramicgroup.co.uk and www.portsmouthmuseum.co.uk
Chichester Chamber Concerts The Assembly Room, North Street, Chichester Season 2007–2008 Thursday 1 November Carducci Quarter with Ben Rogerson, cello Friday 7 December Prizewinners of BBC Young Musicians’ Competition - Mark Simpson, clarinet with Ian Buckle, piano and David Massey, guitar. Thursday 17 January O Duo - Oliver Cox & Owen Gunnell, percussion duo
Thursday 14 February Timothy Orpen, clarinet, Oliver Coates, cello and John Reid, piano. Thursday 6 March Talich Quartet Thursday 10 April Angell Piano Trio
Tickets £14, £6 (students), 4 concert season ticket £47, 6 concert season ticket £70 Available from Chichester Festival Theatre Box Office from 1st September.
Friends News Adopt a Picture The beautiful Ivon Hitchens screenprint, ‘Untitled’, from ‘For John Constable’ (1976), has recently been hung in the Friends’ Office on the ground floor of the Gallery. An abstract landscape in an array of green tones, the print has been conserved and remounted to its original splendour after many years in store. The restoration was made possible through the ‘Adopt a Picture’ scheme, and was generously paid for by two members of the Friends, Julia Cooper and Beth Funnell. Julia and Beth first saw the print when Simon Martin, Assistant Curator, was choosing works for display in the Friends’ Office, but it was badly in need of restoration. Julia explained, ‘we enquired about the cost of the renovation, and it seemed so modest that Beth and I straight away decided to share the cost between us and bring the print back to how it should have looked’. Speaking of the restored print, Beth said, ‘both Julia and I are delighted that we were able to contribute, in a very real sense, to the future of the Gallery. Seeing this work on the wall will bring us both much pleasure in years to come.’ The Hitchens screenprint joins three other works on paper that now hang in the Friends’ Office: a large watercolour by Derek Hirst entitled ‘For Hokusai II’ (1993), Matthew Smith’s pastel ‘Bowl of Fruit’ (n.d.) and ‘The Lemon’ (1997) by Mary Fedden, a collage with pencil and watercolour. For further information about the ‘Adopt a Picture’ scheme, and how you can get involved, please contact Simon Martin at the Gallery.
Friends Silver Anniversary Tea Party It was entirely fitting that Lewis Croome, the oldest Friend of Pallant House Gallery, should be the one to cut the cake at the Silver Anniversary Tea Party in June. Lewis, who had celebrated his 100th birthday the day before, was one of the eighty Friends who commemorated twenty-five years of the Gallery with tea, cake, champagne and speeches from Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox and Stefan van Raay. Gill Thomas, the 3000th Friend and David Coke, the former Director, also helped to mark this special occasion which was held in the Courtyard Garden on one of the few sunny days this summer. Platform for Art The Gallery would like to thank the Friends for generously purchasing a portable staging system for events in the Lecture Room. The much needed staging platforms have an aluminium frame with a carpeted beech blockboard surface, with two steps leading up from the floor. The system is flexible and the platforms can be assembled to whatever size each individual event requires. The staging system has been made to order, and the Gallery is indebted to the Friends for the very significant amount of money they have given. The new staging will allow for much improved visibility at events and now provides a professional platform for speakers and performers. The staging should be ready for use in the autumn. Italian Visit to Italy Ravenna – Bologna – Modena – Ferrara – Parma. The visit has been inspired by the Director, Stefan van Raay, who will give a pre-visit introductory talk in the Gallery, and is being organised by Renata Baillieu. The visit is for 5 nights in mid-May. The price will be no more than £1700 per person. If you are interested please tick the box on the booking form (page 85) or contact the Friends’ office on 01243 770816, or e-mail friendsevents@pallant.org.uk
Ivon Hitchens, Red Centre, 1972, Oil on canvas, Kearley Bequest, through The Art Fund (1989), © Estate of Artist
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A Gallery and a Garden Patricia Wilkinson
© Smart Gallery, Petersfield
Walled Garden © Cowdray Estate
The various trips that I have taken with the Friends of Pallant House Gallery are always excellent and hugely enjoyable, well organised and with great attention to the smallest detail. The one day visit to the Smart Gallery and the Walled Garden at Cowdray last May was certainly no exception.
Jan Howard, who walked us around her Walled Garden beside the ruins of Cowdray Castle, explained the inspiration behind establishing this tranquil and beautiful space. She is passionate about her subject and together with her Head Gardener told us about the plants they used and the work in progress.
The Smart Gallery in Petersfield was opened by Sally Marien, herself a ceramicist, just one year ago. The exhibition on display in this small, scenic gallery at the foot of the South Downs included contemporary ceramics, sculpture and paintings and was accompanied by a short but informative talk by Sally on each artist. She then gave a fascinating and instructive demonstration on the practical art of creating ceramics on her potter’s wheel.
We were made to feel incredibly welcome at these two beautiful locations which, together with the added bonus of lunch in a pub garden with an uninterrupted view of the Downs and perfect weather, ensured a truly memorable visit. I really do believe that it is the excellent choice of venues and special additional touches that make the Gallery’s visits so outstanding. I would seriously urge any new and, indeed, any existing Friends who have yet to go on a visit, to take the opportunity to go to some of the most interesting museums, galleries and gardens across the country with the Friends of Pallant House Gallery. For more information about forthcoming Friends visits, please see page 81 or call Jillie Moss or Gillian Thompson on 01243 770816.
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Friends Visits, Events and Tours The Art of Lee Miller Victoria & Albert Museum Mon 12 November To complement the Snowdon exhibition the Friends have arranged a visit to see this exhibition of one of the most extraordinary photographers of the 20th century. Before touring the exhibition, there will be a short private introduction given by a museum guide. The exhibition is the first complete retrospective of Miller’s life and work and covers her extraordinary career from Vogue model and war correspondent to her witty Surrealist images and perceptive portraits of her friends in the art and literary circles of the time. 8.30 am–6pm approx; £34. There will be a limited number of tickets available at £20 for those who wish to join this visit in London.
Friends’ Coffee Morning Tues 9 October We are continuing the series of informative coffee mornings with Sarah Deere, the Gallery paper conservator, who will talk to us about her work in this fascinating field. 10.30–12noon; £3 to include coffee Friends’ Christmas Party Mon 3 December Food, music and entertainment in the Garden Gallery. The theme for this year is ‘Festively Flamboyant’! There will be prizes for the most creatively flamboyant appearances. 6.30–10.30pm; £25 to include a two course supper with wine The First Gallery Art Quiz Thurs 24 January Come and make up a table and test your knowledge of art in this light-hearted event. Prizes for the winning table. 6–8pm; £6 (£4 Students) to include the first drink. There will be a cash bar. Young Friends Spooky Halloween Night Wed 31 October A night of spooky entertainment for Young Friends with a prize for the best costume. Refreshments will be provided. 5–7pm; £Free, please book in advance
Lee Miller wearing Sail Cloth Overalls, 1930, George Hoyningen-Huene (1900–1968), V & A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum
Smart Cocktails Tues 20 November Sally Marien has invited the Friends for a preChristmas party at her stunning contemporary gallery, Sallymarienstudio, previously known as the Smart Gallery. While we drink champagne cocktails we will have a private view of her new exhibition and perhaps do some Christmas shopping. 6–9pm approx; £20
Snowdon: Friends Guided Exhibition Tour Fri 19 October & Fri 2 November at 2pm A tour of the exhibition In Camera: Snowdon and the World of British Art by the exhibition’s curator, Robin Muir. £5 to include coffee/tea; £2.50 students Peter de Francia: Friends Guided Exhibition Tour Wed 24 October at 2.30pm & Wed 7 November at 10am A special tour of Peter de Francia: Ship of Fools led by Simon Martin, Assistant Curator. £5 to include coffee/tea; £2.50 students
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Films
Talks
In association with Chichester Cinema at New Park, the Gallery is introducing a series of art films for the winter months, themed to correspond with current exhibitions and artworks in the Gallery.
Poet in Residence: Ros Barber Thurs 25 October Ros Barber, who was poet-in-residence at the Gallery during the Poets in the Landscape exhibition, will spend an evening reading the poems she wrote in response to the collections, in front of the artworks they were inspired by. 6pm, £5 (£3 students) to include a glass of wine; Galleries
Blow-Up (1966) Thurs 11 October Inspired by the short story ‘Las Babas del Diabolo’ by Julio Cortazar and by the work, habits and mannerisms of Swinging London photographer David Bailey, this award winning film, directed by one of the most celebrated film directors of our times Michelangelo Antonioni who died earlier this year, tells the story of a photographer’s involvement with a murder case. Stars David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave. 5.30pm; £8 (£4 Students) to include a glass of wine; Lecture Room; Cert 15 Pollock (2000) Thurs 15 November Ed Harris was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Jackson Pollock in this film that also marks his directorial debut. It covers the fifteen year period from 1941 which saw Pollock’s fortune rise from struggling artist to renowned celebrity, until he killed himself in a drunken haze in 1956. Stars Ed Harris, Lee Krasner. 5.30pm; £8 (£4 Students) to include a glass of wine; Lecture Room; Cert 18
Outside In: A New Look at Outsider Art Thurs 1 November Writer, ceramicist and authority on Outsider Art, Professor Emmanuel Cooper OBE will present a fascinating talk on the work of Outsider and marginalised artists, as part of the hugely successful and ongoing Outside In project at the Gallery. 6pm, £5 (£3 students) to include a glass of wine; Lecture Room
Love is the Devil – Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) Thurs 6 December John Maybury’s film about Bacon focuses on his relationship with his model and muse, George Dyer, illustrating the different worlds they inhabited in Soho and East End London. The affair is portrayed in images often reminiscent of Bacon’s paintings. Derek Jacobi is particularly astonishing as Bacon. Stars Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig and Tilda Swinton. 5.30pm; £8 (£4 Students) to include a glass of wine; Lecture Room; Cert 18 Love is the Devil - Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon
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Adult, Student and Children Workshops Adult/Student
Children
Art Masterclasses A programme of three hour workshops based on the collections and led by artists experienced in traditional art techniques. £9 pp plus a materials/ model charge where applicable. Advance booking and payment required. Please bring your own art materials Tel: 01243 774557
Artwork of the Month £6pp plus a materials charge where applicable. Participants to bring own art materials. Advance booking and payment required. Preceding each Artwork in Focus workshop there is a 20 min drop-in talk at 11am, which is free with admission to the Gallery. Tel: 01243 774557
Saturday Workshops £6 per child 10am–12noon unless otherwise stated. Advance booking and payment required Tel: 01243 774557
Oil Painting Sun 14 October Artist: Jenny King 1–4pm
Edward Burra’s 'Market Day' Wed 31 October Artist: Jaita Patel
Life Drawing Sun 28 October Artist: Jenny Tyson 1–4pm
Lucien Freud’s 'Self-Portrait with Hyacinth in Pot' Wed 28 November Artist: Jenny King
Look in the Mirror Sat 27 October 9–12 year olds Create a 3D paper self portrait Artist: Jane Moran
Portrait Photography (2 Part Masterclass) Sun 11 November, 1-4pm & Sun 25 November, 2-4pm Artists: Anne Katrin Purkiss and Maria Riese £15 Printmaking Sunday 9 December Artist: Helen Brown 1–4pm
George Smith’s 'Winter Landscape' Wed 19 December Artist: Teresa Mason Ben Nicholson’s 'January 4 1953 (Thorpe, Wharfedale in Snow)' Wed 30 January Artist: Teresa Mason
People are Funny Sat 13 October Have a laugh and draw and paint funny people 5–8 year olds Artist: Jaita Patel
Free Holiday Workshops No booking required but places are limited Make a pinhole camera Wed 24 October 5–16 year olds With artist Hayley Gue 10am–12noon and repeated 1–3pm
Print a Portrait Sat 10 November 13–16 year old Create your own unique self-portrait Artist: Dinah Kelly Also at 1pm–3pm Hey Good Looking! Sat 24 November 5–8 year olds Paint a portrait oncanvas Artist: Jane Chitty Dry-point Polaroid Portraits Sat 8 December 9–12 year olds Take a photo and turn it into a print Artist: Helen Brown
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Special Events
Bonhams Valuation Days
Día de los Muertos: Altar for the Dead Thurs 2 November (All Souls Day) A special evening following the installation of an altar for the dead by artist Antonio Rodriguez on All Saints Day (1 November). Visitors are invited to place their own photographs and other mementos for the duration of the Día de los Muertos festival, until Remembrance Day on 11 November. 6pm, £Free, Prints Room and Garden Gallery, Tequila pay bar. Exhibitions £half price
Diamonds: The Story Behind the Sparkle Mon 8 October Patricia Law FGA, Bonhams South East Jewellery specialist takes an in-depth look at what makes diamonds so appealing to us, how they have been used in jewellery over the years, the current state of the market and importantly what to look for when you buy. She will be bringing some examples along to view on the evening. 6pm, £8 to include a glass of wine. Come along to the valuation afternoon from 2–5pm if you would like advice on your jewellery.
Dia de los Muertos: Alter for the Dead Pallant House Gallery 2006 Photograph by David Wynn
Christmas Thursdays Thurs 6, 13 & 20 December Enjoy visiting the Gallery in the evening as it is filled with the chorus of yuletide carols and live music. Pay half price admission to the exhibitions and experience fine dining in The Pallant Restaurant 01243 770827. 6pm, £Free, Garden Gallery. Exhibitions £half price
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Bow and English Porcelain: Reassessing the Freeman Collection Mon 19 November John Sandon, Bonhams International Director of European Ceramics and Glass, is a leading light on English porcelain and well-known from his numerous television appearances. John looks at the implications for Bow and English porcelain, and in particular the Freeman collection at Pallant House Gallery, following important recent discoveries about the Bow factory. 6pm, £8 to include a glass of wine. John will be holding a valuation afternoon from 2–5 pm when he is able to advise you on your porcelain. English Clocks Mon 17 December James Stratton, Bonhams Director of Clocks and Watches, gives a fascinating insight into the development of the English bracket and long case clocks through the centuries as well giving a useful guide on the current market and on the various movements and features which help to identify the quality and age of English clocks. 6pm, £8 to include a glass of wine. James will be holding a valuation afternoon from 2–5pm when he will able to offer advice on your clocks and watches.
Cost
Number of Tickets
Visits, Events, Talks, Tours and Workshops Booking Form Friends Only Visits and Tours The Art of Lee Miller
12 Nov
£34 (£20 if joining in London)
Smart Cocktails
20 Nov
£20
Friends' Coffee Morning
9 Oct
£3
Friends' Christmas Party
3 Dec
£25
The First Gallery Art Quiz
24 Jan
£6, £4 (students)
Young Friends Spooky Halloween Night
31 Oct
Free
Snowdon: Guided Tour
19 Oct, 2pm
£5, £2.50 (students)
2 Nov, 2pm
£5, £2.50 (students)
Peter de Francia: Guided Tour
24 Oct, 2.30pm
£5, £2.50 (students)
7 Nov, 10am
£5, £2.50 (students)
Italian Trip
Mid May
Please tick box if interested
Films and Talks Blow-Up
11 Oct
£8, £4 (students)
Pollock
15 Nov
£8, £4 (students)
Love is the Devil
6 Dec
£8, £4 (students)
Poet in Residence: Ros Barber
25 Oct
£5, £3 (students)
Outside In
1 Nov
£5, £3 (students)
Children's Saturday Workshops People are Funny (5−8 year olds)
13 Oct
£6
Look in the Mirror (9−12 year olds)
27 Oct
£6
Print a Portrait (13−16 year olds)
10 Nov
£6
Hey, Good Looking (5−8 year olds)
24 Nov
£6
Dry-point Polaroid (9−12 year olds)
8 Dec
£6
Artwork of the Month Workshops Edward Burra
31 Oct
£6
Lucien Freud
28 Nov
£6
George Smith
19 Dec
£6
Ben Nicholson
30 Jan
£6
Adult Art Masterclasses Oil Painting
14 Oct
£9
Life Drawing
28 Oct
£9
Portrait Photography (2 part Masterclass)
11 & 25 Nov
£15
Printmaking
9 Dec
£9
Bonhams Valuation Days Diamonds
8 Oct
£8
Bow and English Porcelain
19 Nov
£8
English Clocks
17 Dec
£8
All of the above are fundraising events for the Friends of Pallant House Gallery
Total
£
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Cheque Payments Cheques should be made payable to Pallant House Gallery Services Ltd. Please leave the actual amount open in case we are not able to provide all the tickets you request. For security "Not above £‌.." can be written at the bottom of your cheque and we will advise you of the cheque total.
Free Tours Thursday Evening Tours are a series of introductory tours led by experienced Gallery Guides to bring the collections alive. Tours begin at reception at 6pm and are free with gallery admission. Places are limited. Landscapes and Modernity 13 Sept / 18 Oct / 29 Nov / 10 Jan A tour looking at the changing way landscape has been depicted in art from the 18th century pastorals by the Smith brothers to the urban townscapes of Whistler, Sickert and Gore; from Figurative expressionist landscapes by Bomberg and Auerbach to contemporary landscape art by Andy Goldsworthy are also included. Still Life: The Language of Objects 20 Sept / 25 Oct / 6 Dec /17 Jan This tour explores how artists have used the still life as a means of expression and experimentation. The tour includes historic still life paintings and considers the symbolism and significance of particular objects, memento mori and the way that the still life has been used as a vehicle for artistic innovation in the 20th century. It encompasses Cubists, Surrealists, Abstract and Pop artists. Pop Art and the Swinging Sixties 27 Sept / 8 Nov / 20 Dec / 31 Jan The tour explores Pop Art and the culture of the 'Swinging Sixties' including the work of artists such as Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, R.B. Kitaj and Colin Self. It explores the Pop artists’ interests such as celebrity and popular culture, new art materials and political protest.
Collectors and Collecting 4 Oct / 15 Nov / 27 Dec Pallant House Gallery is a 'collection of collections', and for this reason it reflects 20th century tastes in art. This tour explores the different collections and the personalities behind them: Walter Hussey the church 'patron of art', Charles Kearley, a businessman and builder of modernist architecture, Prof Sir Colin St John Wilson the architect, academic and close friend of many of the artists in his collection. Portraits: Image and Identity 11 Oct / 22 Nov / 3 Jan Pallant House Gallery’s permanent collection includes many portraits from the 16th century to the present day. This tour explores developments in the art of portraiture through aspects of pose, dress, personality, experimentation and self-representation. The Eighteenth Century House: Fine Arts and Furnishing 1 Nov / 13 Dec / 24 Jan Pallant House is a Queen Anne townhouse built at the start of the Georgian era in 1713 for a merchant called Henry Peckham and his wife Elizabeth. This new tour will examine the architecture and panelled interiors of the house, the Georgian furniture, and paintings by artists such as Gawen Hamilton, William Hogarth, George Romney and the Smith Brothers of Chichester. Saturday Highlights Tour Free Highlights Tours are offered by the Gallery every Saturday at 3pm. A BSL interpreter will accompany the last tour in the month. Artwork of the Month Free Drop-in Talks Every month, an artwork from the collections is introduced and discussed in a free twenty minute drop in talk. The talks start at 11am and precede the Artwork of the Month Workshops. To find out which painting, etching, print or sculpture is the Artwork of the Month, please turn to page 83.
Peter Blake, La Verne Baker, 1961–62, Oil on wood and mirror glass, Wilson Loan, © The Artist
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Neil Lawson Baker Requests your company at an exhibition of his work to celebrate a career change after 50 years in Dentistry
Sculptor
Painter
Photographer
depARTure An exhibition of Sculpture, Paintings and Photography 24th, 25th, 26th October The Arts Club, 40 Dover Street, London W1 Champagne 6-8pm. Dinner may be booked.
Listings Arundel
Brighton
ZIMMER STEWART GALLERY 29 Tarrant Street 01903 855867 www.zimmerstewart.co.uk Outsiders 6–27 Oct Mixed media paintings and monoprints by Richard Walker alongside wood fired stoneware ceramics, variations on the bottle form by Paul Dennis. Observations at the Tate 3–24 Nov Paintings by Phil Tyler with slip and scraffito decorated hand built earthenware ceramics by Kitty Shepherd. Christmas and New Year Exhibition 1 Dec–26 Jan 2008 A selection of paintings and ceramics by Derek Davis plus a mix of other work for the Christmas and New Year show.
BRIGHTON MUSEUM & ART GALLERY Royal Pavilion Gardens 01273 292882 www.virtualmuseum.info Indigo: A Blue to Dye For 29 Sept 2007–6 Jan 2008 A major exhibition of art, craft, fashion, and design featuring historical and contemporary indigodyed artefacts from around the world. BOOTH MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 194 Dyke Road 01273 292777 www.booth.virtualmuseum.info Life in Death: The Victorian Art of Taxidermy 16 June 2007–15 June 2008 This exhibition puts the practice of taxidermy, a fashionable high point in Victorian style, into its context, enabling visitors to enjoy its appeal in the light of the Victorians’ way of life.
FABRICA 40 Duke Street 01273 778566 www.fabrica.org.uk Rachel Reupke 29 Sept–11 Nov In one continuous eye movement Rachel Reupke’s new film presents a god’s eye view of the Sussex downs. Shot directly from the chamber of the camera obscura at Foredown Tower in Portslade Village, Sussex. Semiconductor: Brilliant Noise Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun’s finest unseen moments by creating an immersive sound-film assembled from the data vaults of solar astronomy.
Phil Taylor
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Chichester NEIL LAWSON BAKER Graingers Studio, West Ashling 01243 576082 www.neillawsonbaker.com Neil welcomes visitors to his studio by appointment. depARTure 24–26 Oct The Arts Club, Dover Street, London 020 7499 8581 Sculpture, painting and photography. OTTER GALLERY Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester 01243 816098 www.chiuni.ac.uk/ottergallery The Permanent Collection Until 30 Sept An opportunity to see some of the outstanding pictures in the Gallery's collection including works by Graham Sutherland, Peter Lanyon, William Scott , Henry Moore and Ivon Hitchens. Robert Enoch 5 Oct–11 Nov Robert Enoch has used single images in sequences in a search for meaning in their connections, in order that it might help to create and tell a story that reflects a state of mind within the flow of images.
Tony Cragg, Cass Sculpture Foundation
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A Survey of Student Works 15 Nov–Dec 16 A collection of some of the best works by art students over the past 50 years. Curated by Christopher McHugh, this show will illustrate some of the trends in art history and education. SUSSEX BARN GALLERY West Dean College and Gardens 01243 818210 www.westdean.org.uk The recently restored Sussex Barn Gallery features temporary exhibitions of work associated with the college and its founder, Edward James, patron of the Surrealists, as well as local artists.
New Sculpture From 1 Aug 2007 Helaine Blumenfield: ‘Spirit of Life’ in Carrer Marble; Steve Dilworth: ‘Claw’ in Granite; Jon Loxley: ‘Portal’ in Kilkenney marble steel. Enabling the Future 4–8 Oct Cass Sculpture Foundation have been especially invited to hold the Special Exhibition at Art London (Royal Hospital, Chelsea), the UK’s most stylish fair for contemporary and modern art, expecting 16,000 visitors. New Sculpture From 1 Oct Peter Burke: ‘Vessel’; Philip King: ‘Sun & Moon’.
Goodwood
Hove
CASS SCULPTURE FOUNDATION Goodwood, Nr Chichester 01243 538449 www.sculpture.org.uk Tony Cragg Until 4 Nov The largest exhibition of Cragg’s outdoor sculpture in Britain.
HOVE MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 19 New Church Road 01273 290200 www.hove.virtualmuseum.info Indigo: A Blue to Dye For 29 Sept 2007–6 Jan 2008 A major exhibition of art, craft, fashion, and design featuring historical and contemporary indigodyed artefacts from around the world. (Different installations and displays to those in the Brighton Museum).
London CAROLINE WISEMAN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY 26 Lansdowne Gardens, Stockwell 020 7622 2500 www.carolinewiseman.com Modern Art NOW 29 Sept–31 Oct Paintings, original prints and sculpture by 30 important British artists for sale at Petworth House, Petworth. Please ring for opening times and full details. CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James 020 7839 7551 www.chrisbeetles.com Terence Donovan: Image Maker & Innovator 19 Sept–13 Oct Major retrospective and the biggest ever selling exhibition of Terence Donovan’s photographs. The show comprises previously unreleased prints and his best known images of such luminaries as Terence Stamp, Marianne Faithful, Twiggy & Diana, Princess of Wales.
GOLDSMITHS’ FAIR Goldsmiths’ Hall, Foster Lane 020 7606 7010 www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk Goldsmiths’ Fair 25th Silver Anniversary (Week 1) 24–30 Sept; (Week 2) 2–7 Oct 160 leading and up-coming artist jewellers and designer silversmiths from around the UK will present their latest collections and designs in what will be the largest and most inspirational show of its kind. JOANNA BIRD POTTERY 19 Grove Park Terrace 020 8995 9960 www.joannabirdpottery.com Speaking Volumes 22–27 Oct Exhibition of Studio Pottery at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1. Christmas Show 27 Nov–9 Dec Exhibition of Studio Pottery. Works suitable for Christmas presents. Collect at the V&A 25–29 Jan 2008 Exhibition of Studio Pottery from top British and Japanese artists.
JONATHAN CLARK FINE ART 18 Park Walk 020 7351 3555 www.jonathanclarkfineart.com Adrian Heath: Paintings and Works on Paper 26 Sept–12 Oct Art London 2–8 Oct John Wells: Centenary Exhibition Nov–Dec MESSUM’S 8 Cork Street 020 7437 5545 www.messums.com Vanessa Bell, 1879–1916 12–29 Sept A collection of paintings of the view from La Bergère Cottage, near Cassis in the South of France, which Vanessa Bell shared with artist Duncan Grant. OFFER WATERMAN & CO 11 Langton Street, Chelsea 020 7351 0068 Modern British Contemporary Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints.
Terence Donovan, Terence Stamp, Chris Beetles Gallery
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Mary Fedden Exhibition May 2008 Looking for a special gift?
If you own a Fedden which you would consider selling or loaning please contact Emily Jenkinson
Private tailored made tours for up to four people. From £25 per person
8 BENNET STREET • LONDON SW1A 1RP TELEPHONE 020 7493 1888 • FAX 020 7499 4353 EMAIL art@portlandgallery.com www.portlandgallery.com
and.indd 1
To discuss your personalised tour please contact Helen Ward, Events Co-ordinator 01243 770 838, h.ward@pallant.org.uk
smartgallery 9/8/07 11:29:09
Contemporary ceramics, paintings and sculpture
18th September to 13th October 2007 Tuesday to Saturday 2.00 - 6.00pm Ceramics Ruthanne Tudball Jack Doherty Mo Jupp Chris Lewis Paintings Matthew Radford Dumpford Farmhouse Trotton Petersfield Hants GU31 5JN T 07767 268895 E info@smartgallery.org.uk www.smartgallery.org.uk
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PORTLAND GALLERY 8 Bennet Street 020 7493 1888 www.portlandgallery.com Ian Houston 7–29 Sept Views inspired by the route of the Orient Express; from London to Paris, and on to Venice. John Pawle 5–27 Oct An exhibition of still life, interiors and landscape paintings. Nicholas Hely Hutchinson 24 Oct–25 Nov Featuring landscapes of Dorset alongside cityscapes of Paris and London. Rolf Harris 30 Nov–22 Dec An exhibition of new paintings and prints.
Partridge Green SEAWHITE STUDIO Star Trading Estate 01903 743537 www.emilyballseawhite.co.uk Birds and Liquid Line 18–21 Dec An exhibition of 15 students work from 2 courses at the studio. ‘Birds’ painting and drawing and ‘Liquid Line’ exploring drawing.
Petworth ARDEN & ANSTRUTHER 5 Lombard Street 01798 344411 www.ardenandanstruther.com Gilbert Garcin 12 Sept–16 Oct Individual images by French photographer Gilbert Garcin. Rudolf Schafer: Visage de Morts 25 Sept–11 Nov At Pallant House Gallery.
Iceland Scenes by Paolo Albery From 20 October Beautiful images of the snowcovered Icelandic scenery.
Plymouth MICHAEL WOOD FINE ART 17 The Parade, The Barbican 01752 225533 www.michaelwoodfineart.com Sarah Goldbart: Optimum Light 15 Sept–13 Oct Where natural and abstracted forms harmoniously fuse together.
Portsmouth PORTSMOUTH CITY MUSEUM & RECORDS OFFICE Museum Road 01403 258201 www.southernceramicgroup.co.uk Southern Ceramic Group Annual Exhibtion 19 Oct–4 Jan 2008 An exciting exhibition of new work for sale in time for Christmas.
Funtington Music Group University of Chichester Chapel, Bishop Otter Campus
Pallant House Gallery is available to hire for conferences, seminars and evening receptions Please contact Helen Ward 01243 770838 h.ward@pallant.org.uk
Autumn Meetings at 7.30pm 17 October 14 November
For more information, please visit www.funtingtonmusicgroup.org.uk
Southampton JOHN HANSARD GALLERY University of Southampton, Highfield 023 8059 2158 www.hansardgallery.org.uk Live Art on Camera 18 Sept–10 Nov Showcasing the work of photographers who documented seminal art performances from the 1950s to the present in Europe, the United States and Japan. Port City 27 Nov–26 Jan 2008 Featuring artists from Morocco, Switzerland, the UK, the Netherlands and more, this international group exhibition explores the significance of major ports throughout history. Stuart Brisley 12 Feb–5 April 2008 Three eras of mankind, and its follies, told through the sinking of ships. A series of artworks, including film and documentary material, relating the sinking of The Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994 to Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Polar Sea (The Destroyed Hope), 1823-4 and the Titanic, 1912. SOUTHAMPTON CITY ART GALLERY Civic Centre 023 8083 2277 www.southampton.gov.uk/art Marie-Louise von Motesiczky: Centenary Exhibition 27 Sept–9 Dec Organized in collaboration with the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, this is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work. Gary Stevens: Wake up and Hide 27 Sept–23 Dec The latest work by award-winning artist Gary Stevens, reflecting his ongoing fascination with the intersection between performance, visual art and video. Wake up and Hide is an interactive installation that draws on the sound created by the visitors in the gallery to incite the action on screen.
Mount Pleasant Media Workshop 27 Sept–9 Dec The MPMW are a Community Media Arts Project based in Southampton, who are located in Mount Pleasant Junior School. In celebration of MPMW’s 30th year, the group have selected various artworks from the Permanent Collection to help inspire and inform their own artwork in this exciting display. www.mpmw.co.uk
Chalford
Elsewhere Bath
Isle of Wight
ANTHONY HEPWORTH FINE ART 3 Margaret’s Building, Brock Street 01225 447480 www.anthonyhepworth.com Cathy Lewis 6–27 Oct Solo Exhibition of her Sculpture, along with watercolours and drawings by Catalan artist Francisco Gali (1880-1965). An Eclectic Eye III 10 Nov–15 Dec Annual exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Objects from Africa, Tibet, Oceania. China & Meso America, together with a selection of early works on paper by Keith Vaughan from the collection of Peter Adam.
Cathy Lewis
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GALLERY PANGOLIN 9 Chalford Ind. Estate, Chalford, Glos. 01453 886527 www.gallery-pangolin.com Art London 4-8 Oct At the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Sculpture and Drawings by Gallery Artists 5 Nov–14 Dec
ISLAND FINE ARTS LTD 53 High Street, Bembridge 01983 875 133 or Office 2, Sadlers Walk, 44 East Street, Chichester (By appointment only) www.islandfinearts.com
Websites DEBORAH STERN Abstract Sculpture in Bronze www.deborah-stern.com VANESSA POOLEY Bronze sculptures by Vanessa Pooley. Visits to studio in Norwich, Norfolk available by appointment only. www.vanessapooley.com 01603 663775
Painting and Drawing Courses, Exhibitions
September 2007 - July 2008 Tutors Emily Ball, Nick Bodimeade, Gail Elson, Gary Goodman, Georgia Hayes, John Skinner and Katie Sollohub For further information contact Emily Ball www.emilyballatseawhite.co.uk email emily@emilyball.net telephone (01903) 743537
BOOKING FOR COURSES
at Seawhite Studio
NOW
Girl on the phone by John Skinner
Emily Ball
Pallant House Gallery First Annual Dinner
Top Row Paul Lyon-Maris, Paddy Walker, Tania Slowe and Robin Muir; Mr Jolyon Drury and Ms Carole Souter; The Duchess of Richmond and Sir Christopher Ondaatje Middle Row The Very Reverand Nicholas Frayling and Sir Christopher Frayling; Annoushka Ayton; The Earl and Countess of Selborne, Mr and Mrs Michael Smith Bottom Row Lady Ondaatje; Robert Lance Hughes, Francine Stock, and Mr and Mrs David Willetts; Joanna Moorhand
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Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz Private View
Top Row Christine Butler, Head of Art, University of Chichester; Harvey Daniels; Harry Wilson, MJ Long and Sal Wilson; Grace and Neil Lawson Baker Middle Row Keith Baxtor, Actor, Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman, and Christopher Bradley-Hole, Landscape Architect; Sonia Rasbery, West Sussex Museum Council and MLA South East; Simon Shaw-Miller and Michael Tucker Bottom Row William Richards, Bonhams; Mark Rowan-Hull; Helen Beckingham, Frances Guy, Curator and Andrew Churchill, Marketing Manager, Watts Gallery, Guildford; Giles Waterfield, Advisor, Regional Museums Initiative
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Artwork of the Month Mercia Last Lucian Freud, ‘Self-Portrait with Hyacinth in Pot’ 1947/48 Pencil, chalk and crayon on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund
At first glance Freud’s gaze appears to be looking at you; but he’s looking at his own mirror image. There is a directness and simplicity about this pencil and crayon drawing, but it also has a puzzling intensity. One takes in his confident, unerring line and the juxtaposition of his realistically drawn curls with the geometric minimalism of the rest of the portrait. Yet the flat, neutral background, the economy of line and, above all, the inclusion of the pot with its single hyacinth, tease the viewer, begging the question of why the plant is there. From 1939 to 1942 Freud studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing run by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines, who stressed the priority to be given to pupil’s feelings about what was being drawn: ‘Drawing, dictated by feeling could employ emotive distortion.’ The self-portrait in Pallant House Gallery is one of several he did in the late 1940s, many of which have a flower or other natural object occupying the blank space. Many masters of the Northern Renaissance used this device as an emblem for a 98
particular mood or psychological state. The precision has much in common with Renaissance portraits, such as Botticelli’s ‘Portrait of a Young Man’ (National Gallery, London) in which the artist applies golden reddish strokes over the young man’s curled locks, just as Freud applies light yellow highlights to the tight curls of this self-portrait. In 1948 Freud created another self-portrait entitled ‘Narcissus’, an etching in which the artist gazes downward at the reflection of his image in a mirror, a reference to the mythological story of Echo and Narcissus. The artist’s grandfather, the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, had classified the self-absorbed person as ‘narcissistic’. Perhaps the insertion of the hyacinth, another figure from classical mythology, is a reference to the generalised notion of the narcissistic psychology of great artists. Enjoy this little masterpiece. See page 83 and 87 for details of all the Artwork of the Month talks and workshops.
Specialist Dealers & Agents Exhibiting Modern British, Irish & Contemporary Art We advise and help to build collections
Mary Fedden (b 1915) Sunflowers at Solaia, 1962, oil on board, 91.3 x 76 cm
Anthony Hepworth Fine Art Dealers Ltd. 3 Margarets Buildings, Brock Street, Bath BA1 2LP anthony.hepwor@btconnect.com www.anthonyhepworth.com 01225 447480
Please telephone for opening hours
'Pictures from Private Collections' catalogue available