Pallant House Gallery Magazine No.29 (Full Version) by Pallant House Gallery

r.B. kitaj obsessions Analyst for Our Time Andrew Lambirth introduces a major retrospective of R.B. Kitaj Barbara Hepworth's Hospital Drawings Nathaniel Hepburn on a little-known aspect of the renowned sculptor Paul Nash Gift Clare Neilson's friendship with the leading British artist

ÂŁ2 Number 29 February â&#x20AC;&#x201C; July 2013 www.pallant.org.uk

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Contents Features

R.B. Kitaj, The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, 1960, Tate, London 2012 Front Cover R.B. Kitaj, Juan de la Cruz (detail), 1967, Oil on canvas, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo Images ÂŠ The Estate of R.B. Kitaj

You can find full details of our latest events programme in the What's On guide.

20 Poet of the Human Condition Andrew Lambirth 26 Memories of Kitaj MJ Long 28 Hepworth's Healing Hands Nathaniel Hepburn 32 The Fishermen of Hastings Stade Laetitia Yhap and Katy Norris 36 The Clare Neilson Gift Jeremy Greenwood 40 Ways of Seeing Simon Martin 42 A Decade of Partners in Art Marc Steene 48 Portrait of the Artist Michael Kirkman

Previous copies of the Gallery magazine, as well as all the latest news, exhibitions and events, can be viewed online at www.pallant.org.uk

Friends

You can also follow us at .com/pallantgallery .com/pallantgallery

Regulars

51 52 53

Chairman's Letter 'A Thing to be Treasured' Friends' Events

9 13 17 47 57 63

Director's Letter Exhibitions Diary News Collections News What's On: Events Pallant Photos

Collection in Focus: Solo

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Contributors

With thanks

Editorial Editor Emma Robertson, e.robertson@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Editorial Assistant Kate Davey Gallery Editorial Simon Martin, Katy Norris, Marc Steene Guest Editorial Jeremy Greenwood, Nicola Hancock, Nathaniel Hepburn, Andrew Lambirth, Ciarán Lennon, MJ Long, Laetitia Yhap Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Annie Flitcroft Design, Editing and Production David Wynn

R.B. KITAJ: OBSESSIONS In co-operation with the Jewish Museum Berlin

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Gallery Information Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ, UK +44 (0)1243 774557; info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk Opening Times Monday Tuesday–Saturday Thursday Sunday/Bank Holidays

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Willard Conservation Limited, The Priory and Poling Charitable Trusts, The Garfield Weston Foundation, and other Trusts, Foundations and anonymous benefactors. Pallant House Gallery makes every effort to seek permission of copyright owners for images reproduced in this publication. If however, a work has not been correctly identified or credited and you are the copyright holder, or know of the copyright holder, please contact the editor.

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Director's Letter

I am delighted to introduce Pallant House Gallery's new season of programmes, and myself, as its new Director. I was drawn to the Gallery for the same reasons as readers of this magazine: intelligent exhibitions and programmes which elucidate in a thoughtful and enjoyable way British modern and contemporary art, and a Permanent Collection that tells the story of British modernism like no other gallery can—one that has grown through the generosity of collectors who see the value in adding their prized works of art to our holdings for all to enjoy. Even before I assumed my new role, I was given the great news that Pallant House Gallery was to be the recipient of Paul Nash works on paper and illustrated books from the collection of the artist's friend and patron, Clare Neilson. This generous gift, from Jeremy Greenwood and Alan Swerdlow through the Art Fund, will be marked by an exhibition in the De'Longhi Print Room in April (p.36). Another gift, landscapes of Dorset and Cornwall by American artist John Hubbard, recently acquired through a gift by the Monument Trust, will be on display in the Garden Gallery (p.40.). The headline exhibition of the season is a major retrospective of R. B. Kitaj (1932–2007), one of the most significant painters working in England during the post-war period (p.20). The exhibition is drawn from the R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions retrospective, currently in Berlin, and features international loans, as well as a number of works from the Gallery's own extensive Collection.

A complementary exhibition will be shown concurrently at the Jewish Museum London - enabling various facets of Kitaj's identity to be explored in depth for the first time in the UK. Aptly, both organisations share links to the artist – Kitaj's London studio was designed by the architect MJ Long, whose practice Long & Kentish also designed the extension to Pallant House Gallery and refurbishment of the Jewish Museum London. MJ Long reflects on her friendship with the late artist in the magazine (p.26) Barbara Hepworth is one of Britain's best-loved sculptors, but less well-known is that she was also a consummate draughtsperson. Our spring show in Rooms 4 and 5 reveals the remarkable series of drawings and paintings made by the artist during the late 1940s, illustrating surgeons at work in operating theatres within Post-War Britain (p.28). Elsewhere, the De'Longhi Print Room programme opens with an exhibition of Laetitia Yhap's drawings and paintings documenting the fishing community of Hastings Stade. Created by Yhap over a 20-year period, the series builds a remarkable picture of the daily lives of the fishermen and the companionships and familial relationships that existed between them. (p.32). I look forward to leading the Gallery and continuing the good work that the staff has produced, its benefactors have made possible and its audiences have enjoyed. With our combined efforts, Pallant House Gallery will thrive as a place where we celebrate the achievements of artists of our age and where visitors are engaged and enlightened by works of art. Gregory Perry 9

De'Longhi supports exclusive charity gig

De'Longhi was delighted to continue to invest in the arts and local community with the sponsorship of an exclusive charity event at Pallant House Gallery. Legendary Jam frontman Paul Weller performed on Saturday 22 September 2012 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Sir Peter Blake – who designed Weller's 'Stanley Road' album cover. The guest of honour was Sir Peter Blake himself, whose renowned musical connections were also celebrated at the Gallery in 2012 with the major exhibition, Peter Blake and Pop Music. Best known for designing the iconic album cover for The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 'Godfather of Pop Art' has been has been closely linked with pop music since the 1950s. His celebrated cover for Paul Weller's hit 1995 album Stanley Road features a picture of the Modfather as a child holding up a photograph of himself as an adult, bordered by images of some of Weller's favourite things and a selection of Blake's most celebrated and copied Pop Art icons: the heart, target and star. The performance was followed by a successful auction, with lots including an exclusive limited edition screenprint of Blake's renowned portrait 'The Beatles 1962' – the original being housed in the Gallery's own Permanent Collection. Guests included Sir Peter's daughter Rose Blake, herself an illustrator; Chrissy Blake; Vanessa Branson; Nigel Wainwright and Mark Swift of De'Longhi who have sponsored the Gallery for the last four years. 10

All proceeds raised from the evening went towards the Gallery's Endowment Fund which was established in 2002 to generate an annual income and sustain the long-term future of the Gallery. Monies raised were also match-funded up to £1m through the Catalyst Endowment Grant and guests received a copy of Paul Weller's album signed by the musician and Peter Blake as a unique memento of the evening. De'Longhi will continue to contribute to the work of Pallant House Gallery in 2013 and maintain its sponsorship of the Print Room, set to feature a variety of exhibitions over the next twelve months including key pieces ahead of the much anticipated Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction in September. Visitors can also look forward to opportunities to sample delicious De'Longhi coffee at some of our upcoming events. With an authentic Italian heritage, De'Longhi is the UK market leader in coffee, comfort and selected kitchen equipment and is committed to the highest level of quality, innovation and design to turn daily routines into more pleasurable experiences. For more information about De'Longhi, its products, offers and coffee events visit www.seriousaboutcoffee.co.uk

Photographs courtesy of Jason Buckner www.jasonbucknerphotography.co.uk

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Avril Wilson: Somewhere 15 March — 28 April 2013 Somewhere explores a relationship with borderlands where subconscious, emotional or perhaps universal connections emerge from the space that is created when an image is subjected to a process. The presence of dense black soot deposited on Avril Wilson’s images usurps the primacy of the image and alters its meaning. The soot is produced by a flame that can be used to draw with but which can also, through chance, destroy the work. What remains are the pieces that survived the flame. Otter Gallery University of Chichester College Lane Chichester PO19 6PE

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Exhibitions Diary Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings 16 February – 2 June 2013 In the late 1940s Barbara Hepworth (1903 –1975) embarked on a series of studies of the operating theatre at the invitation of her friend, the surgeon Norman Capener. The remarkable drawings demonstrate Hepworth's consummate skill as a draftsperson and the affinity she felt between her work as a sculptor and the surgeon's craft. In contrast to the pure abstract work for which Hepworth is celebrated, the drawings also reveal her aptitude for narrative realism. Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings is a Mascalls Gallery exhibition curated by Nathaniel Hepburn. Main Galleries 4 and 5 Laetitia Yhap: Fishermen of Hastings Stade 5 February – 7 April 2013 A student of Camberwell and Slade during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Laetitia Yhap (b.1941) studied life drawing under Euan Uglow and Frank Auerbach. Wishing to forge her own path she turned against drawing the figure for several years, before finally immersing herself in documenting the fishing community of Hastings Stade. This exhibition features a selection of drawings and paintings from the series created by Yhap over a 20-year period. De'Longhi Print Room Paul Nash: The Clare Neilson Gift 9 April – 30 June 2013 The artist Paul Nash (1889–1946) was one of the leading British artists of the early-twentieth century, celebrated for his lyrical depictions of the British landscape, Surrealist imagery and his work as a war artist. This is the first public showing of the collection of his work amassed by his great friend Clare Neilson which has recently been gifted to Pallant House Gallery through The Art Fund, including important early wood engravings and etchings, photographs, collage, correspondence and illustrated books. De'Longhi Print Room

R.B, Kitaj, Priest, Deckchair and Distraught Woman, 1961, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Wilson Gift through The Art Fund (2006) © R B Kitaj Estate

R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions - analyst for our time 23 February – 16 June 2013 R. B. Kitaj (1932–2007) was one of the most significant painters of the post-war period. Together with his friends Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud, he pioneered a new, figurative art which defied the trend in abstraction and conceptualism. This spring Pallant House Gallery and the Jewish Museum London will concurrently present the only UK showing of highlights from the major Berlin retrospective R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions. Subtitled Analyst for our Time the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery will feature over 70 major paintings, sketches and prints including key international loans, presenting an overview of all periods of Kitaj's extensive oeuvre from the 1960s to his death in 2007. Main Galleries 12–17 Bouke de Vries: Bow Selector Until July 2013 A ceramic installation by contemporary artist Bouke de Vries commissioned to mark the 300th anniversary of Pallant House. Bow Selector has been constructed from the Gallery's Geoffrey Freeman Collection of Bow porcelain and makes reference to the celebrated porcelain displays of Daniel Marot. Main Galleries: Stairwell 13

Exhibitions Diary John Hubbard: Landscapes 5 February – 7 April 2013 A display of the American artist John Hubbard's landscapes of Dorset and Cornwall, recently acquired through a gift by the Monument Trust and the artist. Garden Gallery James Lake: Gold Run Remix 9 April – June 2013 An original installation by Outside In artist James Lake inspired by the Paralympic Games and created with the assistance of acclaimed artist Richard Wilson. Garden Gallery Exchange 23 April – 19 May 2013 A series of site-specific interventions throughout the galleries by BA Fine Art students at Northbrook College. Throughout the galleries

Friends of Chartres: Chapter 3 – A Sense of Place 30 April – 24 May 2013 Works by children (aged 8–12) inspired by urban and cityscapes in Pallant House Gallery's Collection. St Anthony's School 28 May – 6 July 2013 A collaboration between St Anthony's School and Pallant House Gallery documenting students' responses to Gino Severini's 'Danseuse No. 5 (Dancer No. 5)', which is a highlight of the Gallery's Collection.

Coming soon Eduardo Paolozzi: Collaging Culture 6 July – 13 October 2013 Sir Eduardo Paolozzi RA (1924–2005) was one of the most inventive and prolific of the British artists to come to prominence after the Second World War. In summer 2013 Pallant House Gallery will present the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist since his death and the first major retrospective in England for over twenty years. The exhibition will feature over 80 works, in a variety of media including drawings, collages, sculptures and prints and will provide an overview of Paolozzi's extensive oeuvre. Main Galleries 12–17

Studio exhibitions A decade of Partners in Art 12 February – 10 March 2013 An anniversary exhibition celebrating a decade of Pallant House Gallery's innovative award winning scheme and all those involved with it. Art in the Community 12 March – 7 April 2013 An exhibition by local disabled artists supported by Capital, Artscape and the Judith Adams Centre. Partnership of the Month: Tess Springall and John Bishop 9 April – 5 May 2013 An exhibition celebrating the creative partnership of Tess Springall and John Bishop; members of Pallant House Gallery's Partners in Art scheme. 14

Eduardo Paolozzi, James Joyce and Dancer: Monument to Trieste, 1960-2, Collage on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Wilson Loan © The Trustees of the Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation

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Adam Pynacker, Landscape with Sportsman and Game (detail). By Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

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news

Gregory J Perry appointed as new Director We are delighted to welcome Gregory J Perry as Director of Pallant House Gallery. Gregory Perry has held the post of Director of Operations and Administration at the National Gallery since October 2009 where he was also a member of the Executive Committee. Before this senior position in London, Gregory played a leading role in the development and direction of other international cultural institutions including Executive Director of the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania and Director of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey. Read his inaugeral Director's Letter on page 9. Catalyst for Success We are delighted to report that the Gallery's Catalyst Endowment Appeal has already raised just under £100, 000. Thanks to the recently awarded matchfunding grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, our Catalyst Endowment Fund now stands at a total of just under £200, 000, the interest from which will be used to support the Gallery's core programming. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported this Appeal to date and if anyone would like information on how to contribute, please contact Elaine Bentley, Head of Development (01243 770844 e.bentley@pallant.org.uk). Accessing the National Portrait Gallery Outside In and Partners in Art, two of Pallant House Gallery's flagship community projects, will be used as case studies at a symposium at the National Portrait Gallery on Monday 25 March 2013. The symposium will explore approaches and best practice of museums and galleries in developing accessible, creative arts programmes to engage audiences with additional support needs. The seminar will be an active skillssharing session for anyone working to engage and reach new audiences and increase access to the cultural and charitable sector. It will include a practical activity session led by artists trained through the Outside In: Step Up programme.

Matthew Sergison-Main, Fukushima Conjuration © the artist

Outside In on Tour Following its successful showing last season, we are pleased to announce that a selection of works from Outside In: National, the Gallery's ground-breaking triennial open-entry exhibition of work by artists from the margins, will embark on a national tour this year. The touring show features 20 selected pieces including the six 2012 award winners: 'Musicians' by Michelle Roberts, 'The ones that I've been saving to make a feather bed' by Kate Bradbury, 'Fukushima Conjuration' by Matthew Sergison-Main, 'Woman' by Nigel Kingsbury, 'Cosmic Hat' by Phil Baird and 'Mermaid' by Manuel Lanca Bonifacio. The tour will start in March 2013 at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket, and end in January 2014 at The Public in West Bromwich. Reader offer: Free entry to the Jewish Museum Pallant House Gallery magazine readers are being offered the chance to visit The Art of Identity, the Jewish Museum's portion of the R.B.Kitaj: Obsessions exhibition for free. Focussing on how Kitaj explored and expressed his Jewishness, the exhibition will feature around 20 works, including paintings such as ‘If Not, Not’; Cecil Court, London W2 (The Refugees)’ and The Wedding’. To claim your discount please show a copy of the magazine at reception. The offer is valid for the magazine holder only and is not transferable. For more information visit jewishmuseum.org.uk. 17

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Poet of the Human Condition Ahead of a major retrospective of the work of R.B. Kitaj, Art Historian Andrew Lambirth introduces one of the most significant and complex painters of the post-war period

The last major Kitaj exhibition was at the Tate in 1994, and it has become infamous among the artist's friends and supporters because of the critical savaging it received. Clearly, Kitaj had touched a number of the critics on the raw – perhaps through the written Commentaries attached to some of his paintings; it may have seemed as if they were being told how to respond. There was a feeling that Kitaj was being 'too clever by half', a cardinal sin among the English, and that he should be 'taken down a peg or two'. A number of the reviews were negative and some were unpleasantly personal. Tragically, two weeks after the exhibition closed, Kitaj's wife, Sandra Fisher, died suddenly of an aneurism. Later he always insisted that Sandra had died 'under fire' in what became known as his 'Tate War'. The English are deeply suspicious of people who excel at more than one discipline, and painter-writers have always been kept at arm's length. (Think of Sickert, Wyndham Lewis, or Michael Ayrton.) A large part of Kitaj's days was occupied with writing. He wrote very well, with a wide range of reference, often humorous, sometimes poetic, always with American directness and vigour. He took care over his letters and postcards, his essays and short stories and manifestos, and had made substantial progress with an autobiography. He read constantly and stated: 'Books and book learning are for me what trees are for a landscape painter'. He lived in England for the best part of 40 years, from 1958 to 1997, with a few short residencies abroad and a fair bit of travel. Then in July 1997, after what

he felt was the massive rejection of his Tate show, he returned to America and settled for his remaining decade in Los Angeles. He died there by his own hand, having continued to explore to the last what he called his 'Old Age' style, a looser, more spontaneous anything-goes late manner, with lots of visible white canvas. Kitaj was always an outsider: rejected in England for being an arrogant American and in America for spending so many years in England. He was a man who generated controversies, but became – at least to some extent – their victim. If the critics have been unreasonably harsh, artists have always been more supportive. The painter Arturo Di Stefano identifies the modus operandi of Kitaj's life and work as: 'dispersal, elusiveness of imagery, reproduction of one pictorial form into another with the slippage and amplification of meaning that entails in pursuit of authenticity, of the self, of the work, which I think he found in the end because it was always there in the beginning. He was a born painter.' When an artist dies, the work is set free to roam the infinite and finally to find its own level. In his lifetime, Kitaj was inevitably the guardian of the gate, the temperamental artist who wanted to control our responses. At the same time, he embraced an extraordinary generosity of spirit and perception, reflected in the range of his subject matter, from history painting to erotica, from sport to portraiture. Now that he's dead, that richness has been liberated from his care, to beguile us anew. It's time for the critics to look again, with (if possible) fewer preconceptions and prejudices.

R.B. Kitaj, Juan de la Cruz, 1967, Oil on canvas, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo © R.B. Kitaj Estate

R.B. Kitaj, Pacific Coast Highway (Across the Pacific), 1973, Oil on canvas, Diptych, Private Collection ÂŠ R.B. Kitaj Estate

Born Ronald Brooks on 29 October 1932 in Cleveland Ohio, he was the son of a Hungarian father and an American-born Russian-Jewish mother. His father left and his mother married Dr Walter Kitaj, a Viennese Jew. At the age of 16, young Ron made his bid for freedom, hitch-hiking to New York and signing on as a merchant seaman. These were his travelling years, when he discovered (among other things) prostitutes in the ports of Havana and Mexico, and visited North Africa as well as Europe and South America. He also undertook some art training at Cooper Union in New York and the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, where he met his first wife, Elsi Roessler, an American girl from Cleveland. At this time, as at other key points in his life, he concentrated on life drawing. In 1956 he was drafted into the US Army and served in Germany and France. From an early age he knew he wanted to be an artist (he attended art classes at Cleveland Museum, aged six), so he applied for a place at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford on an exserviceman's grant. His early work, which owes much to collage and the strip cartoon, was heavily influenced by poets,

especially by TS Eliot's great poem, 'The Waste Land'. Kitaj wrote: 'Some few early modernist poets had arranged words to resemble pictures or designs and I began to think I could do the reverse for art: to lay down pictures as if they were poems to look at.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; This is the sort of effect he achieved in 'Erasmus Variations' (1958) and 'The Red Banquet' (1960). The vivid graphic energy in these paintings would remain a characteristic throughout his career, but the handling of paint and use of colour would develop in different directions. Remarkably these are student works, though Kitaj had seen much more of life and art than the average student. In 1959 he went as a postgraduate to the Royal College of Art, where his evident maturity set him apart. He was already certain of his direction, whereas others, such as Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield and David Hockney, were just finding their feet. Hockney became a close friend after Kitaj bought his drawings and encouraged him to follow his own interests and paint about his homosexuality. Kitaj tends to be lumped with the Pop Artists, though in fact his work is quite different from theirs and he occupies rather a similar position to them as Manet did

As regards popular culture, the only things to touch his art were movies and baseball.

to the Impressionists. (As regards popular culture, the only things to touch his art were movies and baseball.) Kitaj had his first professional exhibition with the Marlborough Gallery in 1963, soon after graduating, and it caused quite a stir. An older contemporary such as Prunella Clough could recognize the beauty of his paint surfaces, but it was his subject matter and approach that were so individual and radical. His work offered not just visual but also intellectual excitement and could be read on many levels. His imagery was neo-surrealist and literary, but also intuitive and he was determined to 'Make It New' (in Ezra Pound's phrase). Complexity was of the essence. In the 1960s Kitaj began to make screenprints with Chris Prater of Kelpra Studios, an extended series of remarkable works which he later rejected as peripheral to his central development. This now seems unjust, and critics and historians are looking anew at this work and its place within Kitaj's oeuvre. This was a troubled period in the artist's life; tragically his wife Elsi committed suicide and the emotional fallout from that event had lengthy ramifications. Coincidentally, he had stopped drawing from life between 1961 and 1970, but

after that he returned to it with all the proselytizing zeal of the newly-converted. In the 1970s he met the artist Sandra Fisher who was to become his second wife and he also discovered the joys of drawing in pastel, creating some marvellously dense and tactile images. In 1976 he curated The Human Clay, an Arts Council exhibition in passionate defence of observation in contemporary painting and drawing. If Kitaj devoted the late 1970s to drawing, he also painted some of his most interesting portraits at this time, including 'The Orientalist' and 'The Sensualist'. Maggi Hambling recalls: 'Kitaj's vertical paintings of the 70s opened my eyes with a bang. Their sheer scale, exotic colour, formal invention and rich imagination challenged the surrounding English orthodoxy of Coldstream and earth-bound tones. Likewise his drawings made naked flesh erotic as opposed to correctly measured. Kitaj split figurative painting wide open.' In 1975 he began to immerse himself more in Jewish subjects; he said he wanted to do for Jews what Morandi did for jars. The great painting 'If Not, Not' (1975-6), a study of alienation and decay, depicts the

Kitaj said he wanted to do for Jews what Morandi did for jars

MJ Long, R.B. Kitaj with his work 'The Killer-Critic Assissinated by his Widower, Even', 1997, courtesy of MJ Long Opposite Page R.B. Kitaj, The Neo-Cubist, 1976–1987, Oil on canvas, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, © R.B. Kitaj Estate

gatehouse at Auschwitz and the devastated landscape in front of it. The imagery involves an extended meditation on Eliot's 'Waste Land', with references to Giorgione's Tempesta and Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', Brueghel, Matisse and Jacopo Bassano. A later painting, 'Self-Portrait as a Woman' (1984) refers specifically to the public humiliation of gentile women in Nazi Germany who had taken Jewish lovers. Setting aside its overtly Jewish theme, Hambling was impressed by its mixture of rawness and sophistication. And as always with Kitaj's best work the drawing and colour carry this evocative image far into one's imagination. Modernist fragmentation gave way to a new wholeness, and Kitaj's work became increasingly autobiographical. For a brief moment the paint became thicker and more impasted (possibly the influence of his friends Auerbach and Kossoff), before thinning down again around 1990 to a style Kitaj called 'DrawingPainting', which owed something to his study of Degas, Matisse, Lautrec and late Cézanne. As Kitaj's obsession with Jewishness deepened, so his work became more involved with Jewish themes and subjects. But in the end, these are still paintings and drawings, and you don't have to be Jewish to respond to their brilliant formal 24

values: the compositional wit, the crisp drawing, the startling colour juxtapositions, the sheer luminosity of paint. Or indeed to respond to their value as human (as opposed to specifically Jewish) documents. Kitaj demands a high degree of visual literacy in his viewers, as well as the ability to think independently. This is rare in contemporary art, which is more usually concerned with the instant hit. His edgy integrity as an artist means that some will always find him obscure and pretentious. He considered the accusation of obscurity ridiculous, given that Modernism had made obscurity a virtue for a century or more. And yet when he tried to explain his private meanings (in the Commentaries) he was lambasted for being too clever. It seems he couldn't win. He regretted making his work complex and perhaps inaccessible, but couldn't help it. If you look closely, you'll find that the best of his work is not only marvellously strange but substantially rewarding, in that it reflects endlessly on the human condition. R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions is at Pallant House Gallery (23 February to 16 June 2013) and at the Jewish Museum London (21 February to 16 June 2013). A programme of events accompanies the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery (p.57). www.kitaj-obsessions.com

memories of kitaj Kitaj's London studio was designed by MJ Long, architect of the extension to Pallant House Gallery. Here she talks about her friendship with the late painter

I first met Kitaj when he was invited by the Art Society of the Cambridge School of Architecture to give a talk some time in the mid-1960s. He put his head down and read from an incredibly dense script for an hour, never looking up or breaking his stride. It was the most intense talk I have ever been to. The prose was so densely packed with ideas and allusions that, although it was a fascinating talk, it was almost impossible not to lose one idea while trying to chew over the previous one. That certainly was one aspect of Kitaj's character - his intense seriousness. He wouldn't do anything if he wasn't going to do it thoroughly. But anyone who has watched Jake Auerbach's wonderful Omnibus film on Kitaj has seen how he habitually broke into the most delightful self-amused and sunny smile, instantly diffusing the tension and welcoming his friends in. This is the way I remember him. I never felt wholly relaxed with him, but always privileged to be around him and rewarded by that grin. Kitaj was a man of habit and pattern. His early morning walks, ending at Tootsie's for breakfast, often with Philip Roth, started the working day. In the evening, he liked to have friends to his house for dinner and it was a popular place with our children who adored him. But my principal memory is of Kitaj working; sitting at his easel with piles of books on the floor around him â&#x20AC;&#x201C; his source of both intellectual and visual stimulation in those books. Many of them were found during MJ Long and R.B. Kitaj, 1974, courtesy of MJ Long

his long hours in secondhand bookshops. He and my husband were great bibliophiles and spent weekends finding obscure secondhand bookshops and buying books. It was a family friendship. He actually had a great sense of humour. But when he concentrated on something, he concentrated like nobody I've ever known. He bought a big house in Chelsea and asked if we would do it up for him. I was very conscious that it was not a place to be clever, because he was going to be working there every day. His environment was going to be a visual environment; he did his work with his eyes. When we finished the studio, he decided he would like to do a portrait of the family. Sitting for him was a bit unnerving. His scrutiny was intense, and I felt a bit like an insect under a microscope. But at the end, the grin restored some measure of humanity. The grin did fail him after the Tate debacle and Sandra's death. We spent Christmas with him that year, and I have never seen anyone so unhappy. His move to California after that was inevitable, and the fact that his sons were in the same town and saw each other most days was a huge pleasure to him during the last part of his life. MJ Long and Marco Livingstone will discuss their friendship with Kitaj on Thurs 28 March, 6pm (p.57). Kitaj: In the Picture, a film by Jake Auerbach, is on Thurs 11 April, 6pm (p.58). For more information visit www.pallant.org.uk 27

Hepworth's healing hands

In the late 1940s Barbara Hepworth embarked on a series of studies of the operating theatre. Nathaniel Hepburn, Curator of the Mascalls Gallery touring exhibition of Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings, currently in Rooms 4 and 5, introduces this little-known aspect of one of Britain's best-loved sculptors.

Barbara Hepworth, Prevision, 1948, The British Council Collection ÂŠ Bowness, Hepworth Estate. Image Courtesy of the British Council Collection

Barbara Hepworth is an artist of great popularity and most Gallery visitors would have a fairly good idea what a Hepworth sculpture looks like, but away from her work, she is a woman who is difficult to pin down. Some art historians may argue that this information is irrelevant: 'art is something greater than the personal nitty-gritty and gossip of daily life'. But I find it increasingly absurd to pretend that art is created in a vacuum and not to examine the social conditions under which a work is made. Our understanding of a work is only increased by knowing the influence of friendships and love affairs, the stimulation of books and concerts, as well as the obvious inspiration of exhibitions visited and art works experienced. Although I greatly admire Hepworth's sculptures, I long to get closer to a knowledge of Hepworth the woman; the living and breathing person behind the polished perfection of her marble or bronze abstracts. It is maybe surprising that we find a glimpse into Hepworth's personality from a series of drawings quite unlike the abstract sculptures for which she is best known. The hospital drawings which Barbara Hepworth created between 1947 and 1949 show surgeons at work grouped around a largely invisible patient. For one of England's first abstract artists, these works are not just figurative but intensely drawn, detailed and descriptive. For a radical modernist, these works appear ancient like early Renaissance frescoes. In 1939 Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson moved to St Ives with their four-year-old triplets, 29

Barbara Hepworth at work on an operating theatre drawing Quartet I (Anthroplasty) Chy-an-Kerris, Carbis Bay, January 1948, Photograph courtesy of Bowness

Simon, Rachel and Sarah, to escape the bombs which were falling over London. In 1944 Sarah was hospitalised with osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone, which would now be treated with antibiotics but at the time required lengthy surgery. She was first taken to St Michael's Hospital in Hayle near St Ives which was run by Catholic nuns from the Order of the Daughters of the Cross. Progress was slow but fortuitously Sarah was visited by a surgeon from a hospital in Exeter who offered to treat Sarah. This was the start of a friendship with the orthopaedic surgeon Norman Capener which extended beyond Sarah's treatment to the end of Barbara Hepworth's life. He was an educated man with a passion for music and a knowledge of contemporary art. He was an amateur painter and was taught sculpture by Hepworth when he visited St Ives to recover from a period of jaundice. It was during this visit, three years after Sarah's recovery, that the subject of witnessing a surgical operation first surfaced. Capener was not just the inspiration, and often main character, in this body of Hepworth's works but an intellectual collaborator. At the time of producing these drawings, Capener was conducting his own research into what he termed 'the philosophy of the hand'. He shared his books with Hepworth and together they planned a book of anatomy although it didn't get further than a few pages of ideas. Capener continued to sculpt 30

and became one of the first members of the Penwith Society of Artists, he also designed a number of surgical implements using his knowledge of Hepworth's sculpting tools. Hepworth records that she responded to the idea of witnessing an operation with a degree of horror and insisted that the only operations she would watch would be reconstructive as she could not contemplate watching any 'element of catastrophe'. One of Hepworth's unfinished drawing survives showing a tonsillectomy where she felt that the horror of the operation prevented the drawing from evolving into a work of art but remaining purely pictorial. It was this universality that interested Hepworth and the most successful works in the series become studies of figures in space which are like abstract sculptures, although in some of the drawings she becomes a bit too interested in the tools or individuals undertaking the operations. Hepworth recorded in a letter to the critic and poet Herbert Read that on one of her first visits: 'I happened to look up into the great lamp above and in the dark hemisphere projecting in the centre was reflected the whole scene - wonderfully distorted in perspective and unrecognisable in a realistic sense and yet giving the whole unity and purpose in a completely poetic way - the periphery of heads with arms and hands radiating far away in great depth to the centre which was the wound - so that when I looked

Barbara Hepworth, Prelude II, 1948, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge ÂŠ Bowness, Hepworth Estate. Image courtesy of Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert

back at the group in front of me one felt all the more keenly the terrific sculptural idea in all the figures in the cubic space of the theatre and I felt inside each of them.' To accompany this exhibition, I have written a book on the hospital drawing series where the entire series of over 70 drawings is reproduced. For the first time we can see that this initially homogenous series is varied and complex. We also see that the word 'drawing' is a woefully inaccurate way of describing these works. Although some drawings are chalk or ink on paper, many have more in common with carving and painting. The base layer of these works is a gesso-style material made with a mixture of chalk and commercial enamel paints. It was a technique used by Picasso and brought to England by Christopher Wood who in turn passed it to Ben Nicholson who used a similar base for his paintings and white reliefs. For the hospital drawings and her own abstract drawings, Hepworth built up layers of the gesso which was then rubbed or scraped down. Onto this she added a thin coloured oil wash which was scratched with a razor blade to reveal areas of the white ground. Hepworth equated the creation of these drawing with her carving technique and described the feeling of a pencil incising a line through gesso as having 'a particular kind of bite rather like on slate'.

One of my personal favourites is a work called 'Prelude II' from the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. A woman sits at the foot of a bed with her head bowed and her hands joined palm to palm in a gesture of prayer. Areas of darkness at the edge of the image create an intimacy where all the characters are brought together in a pool of light from a great lamp above. The other figures also clasp their hands except for one, the prominent standing man who has one hand as if in an act of blessing. It seems to me impossible to read this and many other hospital drawings, without this religious analysis. Hepworth adds into many of the hospital drawings a female figure with her hair tied back in a bun. Capener recorded that in one of the paintings Hepworth includes her self-portrait and I am fairly convinced that other female figures are also Hepworth. Within this self-identification, the story of Hepworth's daughter's near-fatal illness, the lifelong inspiration of her friendship with Capener and the historic references and the religious iconography of the hospital drawings, we start slowly to unravel some of the secrets of Barbara Hepworth as a woman. Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings is in Room 4 and 5 from 16 February to 2 June 2013. Nathaniel Hepburn will give a talk about the series on Thursday 21 March at 6pm. The catalogue is available to buy from the Gallery Bookshop (p.61). www.pallant.org.uk 31

The End of the Line Laetitia Yhap spent 20 years capturing the fishing community of Hasting Stade. As the series goes on show in the De'Longhi Print Room, she talks to Curator Katy Norris.

Katy Norris What was your path into becoming an artist? Laetitia Yhap I wasn't part of an 'art world' and I didn't have any friends who were artists. I might have gone to the National Gallery either with the school or possibly my mother, but I didn't have that sort of privileged background. It was a very solitary and dislocated upbringing. I think that is why I eventually turned to making images. From a young age I was looking for something else, something magical, and when I took up art I discovered another world I suppose. KN Do you think your mixed Chinese and Viennese parentage has informed your work either directly or indirectly? LY I've always been very conscious of a conflicted personality from my mixed heritage and in many ways I'm still conflicted to this day. Anyone thinking of Chinese painting usually thinks of the landscape. It's definitely there in the work, particularly in the watercolours which I started after leaving the Slade. I felt very at home with that for a long while â&#x20AC;&#x201C; paper, pigment, water â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without human beings as a focus. I had to go against my nature in many ways to do those fishermen drawings, part of me just couldn't see a place for the figure in the scheme of things. KN What was your experience of being an art student at Camberwell in London during the late 1950s and early 1960s? LY In those days as a student you had to be prepared to submit to your teacher's methods. But at the same

time, I didn't necessarily see that (Euan) Uglow's or Frank Auerbach's methods would work for me, although I respected some of their attitudes. They demanded a profound engagement with paper and pencil in front of the model, and I remember some of Frank's followers would attack the paper so violently in the course of the drawing that they would pierce it. I had a strong drive in me to acquire knowledge and was eager to learn, but instinctively I knew I had to row my own boat. In any case things were changing and by the time I entered the Slade in people were saying that 'painting was dead'. If one did painting at all it was abstract, or there was video art, sit-ins and installation. I couldn't ignore what was happening either so I made my own eccentric art, most of which I destroyed. KN When you left the Slade did you feel that you needed to make a statement about what kind of artist you were going to be? LY There is huge pressure nowadays for young artists to produce an exhibition straight away, but I just wasn't in that state of mind. I'd spent two years at the Slade doing a post-grad and also prior to that a year in Italy travelling with a stopover at the British School in Rome where I learnt and saw a great deal. It was a lot to digest and I felt I was in a state of recovery from it all. By this time I was living with Jeffrey Camp in East Anglia. I was his subject matter, his muse and at the same time trying to sort out my thoughts. Jeffrey had the studio and I had a space in the bedroom on the enlarged window sill. Each

Laetitia Yhap, The Propellor (detail), 1983-4, Oil on board, Courtesy of Piers Feetham Gallery ÂŠ Laetitia Yhap

day consisted of whatever happened in front of that window. At first I began creating a single idea on a piece of paper, about postcard size. It was minimal means and minimal intervention. The view was literally the sea, that's all I had and it occupied me for five years. Artists make do and I suppose I was making do and waiting for the right subject matter. KN What was is that eventually attracted you to the fishermen on Hastings beach? LY Jeffrey and I moved together to Hastings after the death of his parents. I was certain I still wanted to be by the sea but I had no knowledge of the area or of the fishing industry. What is surprising to me even now is that it took so long to make the discovery of the beach. I had been living in Hastings for ten years before I started on the fishermen drawings. KN Were you looking for a new direction? LY Yes, I was in a state of conflict when I was painting the watercolours. Technically I had done a lot with the medium, but I had brought the cycle to a conclusion and I thought there was more that I could be saying. I wanted to find my way back to the figure so I did portraits of myself and I drew Coldstream in his office. I also did drawing of Euan Uglow, Norman Rosenthal and Helen Lessore of the Beaux Arts Gallery, but I soon discovered it was a blind alley; I didn't see myself as a portrait artist. I began looking at people in activity such as labourers and even surfers and yachters along the coast. But I couldn't engage, it just didn't work. The discovery of the fishermen was like a religious moment, a certainty that I was onto something. I didn't have a method or a plan, other than to get down there and start drawing. KN Was the choice of medium significant? LY It is the particular identity of an individual which has always interested me and drawing is a very direct and succinct method of recording those particularities. I wasn't just looking for a human being in general but the person, that's why I drew Coldstream in his office. The same thing struck me whilst I was down on the beach, this wasn't just a fisherman but a real person with a real life. It's an obvious thing to say but there are so many artists who have done perfectly good, generalised descriptions of the human figure in a real situation, such as Josef Herman or Henry Moore. I wanted to go further. My drawing process was closer to documentary film making. I was very aware of video and photography but I made a conscious decision not to pursue that. In those days cameras were huge and it would have got in the way. I didn't want anything to get between me and the subject. 34

KN How did the fishermen respond? Did they accept you? LY I was there every minute that I could be, even on the most deadly days of the year. The fishermen realised that I wasn't there for pleasure, but actually on duty just as they were. They looked at my drawings, which they often said were barely comprehensible, and began asking when I was going to finish. That was the mystery for them that I was satisfied in sitting there doing something that didn't seem to add up to anything. As things developed they had me doing odd jobs, I remember they thought I'd be particularly useful painting the RX registration numbers on boats. Eventually they invited me to go out to sea, which I did a few of times. It was a very unlikely situation, women are thought to be unlucky on boats, but looking back I didn't really identify myself as being different because I was female. KN One of the drawings in the exhibition, 'The Skeleton', documents the discovery of human remains. Is this a conscious comment on the risks involved in fishing at sea? LY It is actually a record of a real event. I remember that the message came back that a body had been found at sea. An undertaker and mortician turned up with this enormous coffin. When the boat came in they hauled the nets out slowly until they got to the part with body. There had been storm and they hadn't been able to bring the nets in for several days so it just went on and on. The only one who was willing to remove the body was Podge. It was an amazing thing to witness, he just got down on his hands and knees; it was so delicate and also quite mechanical. I remember thinking, is this something I really want to witness, but I just stood it out like everybody else. I went home and started drawing, as a way of exorcising what I had seen. Eventually the idea for a painting evolved, although I didn't start by thinking that this was how it would end. We later found out that it was a woman and she'd been in the sea quite a while. KN Why did it take you so long to move from the drawings to creating the paintings? LY There was a huge conflict of interest because all the time I was in the studio I was aware that I could be missing something important on the beach. Also the problem of how I might actually take it further presented a real dichotomy. All those drawings represent incredible moments and were a true record of what I had experienced. I didn't want to kill that dead. The important step was the first monochrome, â&#x20AC;Ś which began as a drawing using oil pastels. I eventually turned

Laetitia Yhap, The Skeleton, 1983-4, Pencil and white contĂŠ crayon on paper ÂŠ Laetitia Yhap

it into a painting by melting the pastels with turps so that I could manipulate and spread the pigment. I tricked myself I suppose, by inventing a method that gradually eased from drawing to painting. I also loved that you could evoke a hot, sunny day with black and white and a few shades in between. Even when I moved to colour I knew that I had to stay true to the natural light. The light is beautiful down there, the sea creates an incredible reflective surface and the air is very pure. I avoided mixing pigment too much so that the colours remained fresh, like I'd seen in the frescoes in Italy. KN Did you feel that you were taking risks in undertaking the project? LY Yes I had no certainty that the series would have a universal interest. Feminist writers asked why I didn't depict any women in my paintings and I had to defend that. But it is obvious that there are female and male aspects to all of us. In the fishermen drawings there are vulnerabilities, companionships and the familial relationships between the men which you might not expect. I was also intrigued by how it all worked. There are ancient rights to fish and land on the beach, even today you can't buy a place on the stade; it is not for sale. It was endlessly fascinating and, as you can tell, still alive for me now. KN 'An Ending' is your final painting of the series but it also marked the end of an era for Hastings fishing industry. Was this a deliberate ambiguity?

LY On one level 'An Ending' represents the modernisation of the fishing industry. The introduction of tractors to the Stade meant there were a lot less people involved and the whole dynamic of the beach changed. At the same time there was the growing awareness that I was actually allergic to the oil paints and solvents I had used for so long. By that time I could barely stand up when I was working. You'll notice that the surface is very gestural because I was using my hands much of the time. I came to my own realisation that the cycle had reached its conclusion. I had been on a journey but I couldn't prolong it artificially. It had been such a physical affair - the making of the paintings had been so tied up with the activity of the fishermen that I couldn't carry on in another medium without endangering the integrity of their experience or mine. But I didn't view the fishermen as a dying community and I still don't. Things have changed and they are in a minority, but there is something extraordinary still thriving there. It is wonderful they will continue to fish down there on their terms no matter what. Laetitia Yhap: Fishermen of Hastings Stade is in the De'Longhi Print Room from 5 February â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7 April 2013. Laetitia Yhap will talk in conversation with Graham Whitham on Thurs 7 March, 6pm (p.57). For more information visit www.pallant.org.uk 35

'my dear Clare' Clare Neilson was a lifelong friend and collector of Paul Nash. To mark the first public display of her collection – recently gifted to the Gallery – Neilson’s godson Jeremy Greenwood introduces her remarkable story

Born in 1894, Clare Neilson (née Higgins) was brought up in Hampstead in a comfortable middle-class home, her father a stockbroker. In 1915 she married Ensor Stanbury Pearse and the couple emigrated to South Africa. The marriage was not a success and Clare came back to London soon after the war to join Charles Neilson whose marriage had also failed. Like her father, Charles was a wealthy stockbroker and he was to remain devoted to Clare for nearly 50 years. Initially they lived in France where their then unmarried state was probably more acceptable than in England. Charles had served in the Armoured Cars Division during the war and by 1921 had bought a Rolls-Royce and took Clare to show her the Somme battlefields on which he fought: a photograph taken that year shows Clare at the wheel of the car against a flattened landscape in which a few trees are struggling back to life. They always had interesting and exotic cars, the Royce was followed by an Austro Daimler, an Alfa Romeo, a Sunbeam, an Invicta and a Lagonda among many others. In 1922 the Neilsons (now married) took a flat in Duke Street, Grosvenor Square in London which remained their base until 1940. Clare was an enthusiastic calligrapher and spoke of attending a number of the lectures on formal writing given by Edward Johnston (probably those at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in 1933) and developed a distinctive hand herself. Clare's 'faultless typing' was acknowledged by Christopher St. John (Christabel Marshall) in her biography of Ethyl Smyth (1959) Paul Nash, Still Life (No. 2), 1927, Wood Engraving © TATE London 2013

and she was an accomplished transcriber into Braille working during the Second World War on a series of French texts for a blind student preparing for his exams. She became an enthusiastic and knowledgeable collector of books culminating in the brief ownership of one of the few copies of William Morris's Kelmscott Chaucer printed on vellum (brief because Charles said he couldn't afford the insurance on it!). At the end of the 1920s Clare and Charles started looking for a place in the country. The actress Ellen Terry had bought Smallhythe Place near Tenterden in Kent in 1900 and lived there until her death in 1928. Her daughter, Edy Craig (a distinguished theatre director and stage designer), took over Smallhythe Place and converted the adjoining barn into the Barn Theatre. I don't know what drew the Neilsons to Smallhythe, but around 1930 they took Yew Tree Cottage, possibly rented from Edy. She and Christopher St. John (playwright and author) were both pioneers of the women's suffrage movement and had lived together since 1899. They were joined in a ménage à trois by Clare Atwood (an artist) in 1917. The friendship of this trio seems to have inspired Clare intellectually and she had soon made friends with actors (Quintin Todd, Ernest Thesiger and later Sir Barry Jackson, the director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre) and artists Edward Burra and Paul Nash who lived in Rye a few miles south of Smallhythe. The Neilsons had a wide circle of friends but there was always a high proportion of gay men and women among them. 37

Paul Nash by Clare Neilson

The first letter Clare received from Paul Nash was dated 6 August 1934 (already by then 'My dear Clare'), in which he wrote 'I can never thank you enough for Stukeley', probably William Stukeley's book on Avebury (1743), the first of many antiquarian books Clare found for Paul. They remained the closest of friends until Paul's death in 1946, though I think it is most unlikely that they were ever lovers. It is from this time that Clare started buying twentieth-century paintings and drawings, but though she only owned one or two each by other artists (Ivon Hitchens, Augustus John, John Nash, Keith Vaughan, John Bratby, Anne Redpath, Edward Middleditch among them), she had at least 20 works by Paul and several wood engravings, nearly half of them gifts from him. Though Clare and Paul visited Edward Burra in Rye, she didn't buy any paintings from him, alas. My mother, Liz, an impecunious young shop girl, attended the Chelsea Arts Club Balls held each New Year's Eve at the Albert Hall during the 1930s. Liz was rather scornful of the Neilsons, the rich couple who always had a box at the Ball, but when she eventually met them, probably on New Year's Eve 1934, it was the beginning of a close and lasting friendship. The Neilsons had unsuccessfully hoped for a child and Liz 38

had had a troubled relationship with her mother, so the Neilsons took Liz under their wing and then, in 1939, me as their godchild. In 1937 the Neilsons moved to Madams near Gloucester after a major renovation. It wasn't large but welcoming and comfortable with walls lined with books and Clare's collection of paintings. Paul first visited Madams in June 1938 and wrote to Margaret, his wife, 'This is an enchanting place. A perfect situation, the little house perched up overlooking the hills & the valleys. You approach down a winding drive through a hazel wood but it opens into a clearing with a sweet garden & orchard with the rather mountainous looking Malverns massed on the horizon.' The winding drive must have seen strangely familiar to Paul as it is strongly reminiscent of the lane alongside Black Park close to his parent's house in Iver Heath, which he had known since the age of 12. During this first visit to Madams Paul directed the construction of a rock garden: Clare wrote, 'It was his way of setting a plant in a particular manner so that the stones or shells or whatever object he chose to put for company gave meaning and created something complete in itself. He was modest about his great gift in gardens always praising his brother John as cleverer than himself in this respect. But great as his knowledge of plants undoubtedly is, John's garden had not that amazing individuality and otherness that Paul's always possessed.' Abandoned mine workings and a standing stone at Staunton in the Forest of Dean provided subjects for Paul, but it was also on this visit in 1938 that Charles Neilson showed him the two fallen elms, the Monsters, on a farm close to Madams which inspired a number of paintings. The garden at Madams and views from it caught Paul's interest several years later. He wrote to Clare in July 1941, 'Take note, the name Madams has started on its unknown flight'. The wartime visits to Madams, two in 1941, one in 1943 and a final one in 1944, provided luxurious hospitality and an escape into the countryside from Oxford which Paul found numbingly suburban; he was not accompanied by Margaret on these visits. They were inspirational and productive periods for him, but towards the end of 1944 both Clare and Charles had serious illnesses which prevented further invitations. There are several letters from Paul in 1945 begging for the possibility of another visit. In early 1945, Margaret broke her wrist and, as neither of them was at all well, she and Paul spent a couple of months at an inn at Cleeve Hill above

Paul Nash, Tyger Tyger, c. 1938, Collage, © TATE London 2013

Cheltenham. The Librarian at Cheltenham had invited Paul to hold a small exhibition of his work but it could only be achieved if Clare was prepared to lend the majority of her collection. Clare agreed, and together with a number of loans from others, an exhibition of 54 paintings, together with a couple of wood engravings, textile designs and book illustrations opened at Cheltenham Art Gallery at the beginning of June 1945 for five weeks – a remarkable achievement in such a short time in wartime conditions. John Greenwood, an architect, and Liz Black were married in 1938 and I was born in London in July 1939. On the outbreak of the Second World War, a couple of months later, my father joined the army and my mother and I settled near Newent in Gloucestershire in a cottage found by Clare three or four miles from Madams. Liz regularly bicycled over with me to see Clare during the war and I have the faintest memory of meeting Paul on a couple of occasions there. We went to Cheltenham for the opening of the exhibition where I remember Paul rather more clearly (I was by then nearly six). On our regular visits to Madams I became accustomed to seeing 20th-century paintings in a domestic interior and it was quite a shock when I later had to adjust to seeing art in public spaces.

I was very fond of Clare and Charles and saw them regularly at Madams or at their flat in London. Charles died in 1968 and Madams and the majority of the books and paintings were sold soon after when Clare moved permanently into the London flat. Clare's enthusiasm for books and paintings was infectious and I had started collecting in a modest way myself, an activity which increased when I met Alan Swerdlow in 1974. Clare died in January 1982 bequeathing me an oil painting and a number of watercolours by Paul, together with a collection of books, catalogues and correspondence relating to him. The oil painting, Skylight Landscape, and a large watercolour, Frozen Lake, are on long-term loan to the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, but I hope to bequeath the remaining seven watercolours to Pallant House Gallery. Meanwhile the Clare Neilson Collection, augmented by the books and woodengravings that Alan and I have collected, are being given to the Gallery now. Paul Nash: The Clare Neilson Gift is in the De'Longhi Print Room from 9 April – 30 June 2013. James Russell, author of 'Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream' will give a talk on Thursday 18 April at 6pm (see p.57). 39

ways of seeing Simon Martin introduces three new paintings, recently donated by the Monument Trust and the artist, ahead of a display in the Garden Gallery

John Hubbard's studio is remarkably self-contained. A converted barn in the grounds of a former farm in West Dorset, it is surrounded by carefully tended gardens and a rolling landscape that leads down towards the sea. The American artist has chosen the most quintessentially English setting to make his home for the last few decades. But from inside the studio the only view of the surrounding nature is of tree branches and the sky glimpsed through a high window, introducing a clear North-West light into the hermetic space below. When I visited the studio on a January afternoon I was intrigued to notice, attached to a shelf, an image of the iconic and youthful self-portrait by the nineteenth-century Romantic artist Samuel Palmer. It is always fascinating when one notices images of other artists' work on a studio wall, for these gallery postcards and photographs pulled out of magazines provide an insight into that artist's way of seeing. It is not just a picture that the artist has happened to look at, but one they have chosen to keep as a reference point alongside them whilst they create their own work. Pinned to the shelf below the Palmer image, alongside tubes of paint, jars of linseed oil, and notebooks, there is an image of a Chinese ink painting of a landscape with clouds, rocks and tree-forms. In the centre of the studio there are easels supporting what appear on first glance to be abstract canvases. Knowing that Hubbard studied at the Art Students League in New York between 1956 and 1958 and at Provincetown with the legendary teacher Hans John Hubbard, Cornish Landscape, 1965, ÂŠ John Hubbard 2012

Hofmann, it is tempting to immediately place him in the context of Abstract Expressionism. But under closer consideration it becomes clear that Hubbard is an artist who sits between the Romantic tradition in British painting, epitomised by the particularity of Palmer, and the contemplative sweeping brush marks of Chinese painting. There is no one area of focus in his paintings and drawings, but instead an all-encompassing sense of light and space, of atmosphere, suggesting the interface between land, sea and air. The absence of directional perspective akin to oriental composition provides a reminder that prior to his art training Hubbard had read English at Harvard University, where his interest in Chinese and Japanese art first developed, and served in counter-intelligence for the United States army in Japan, where it was consolidated. Just as the Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey visited St Ives in the 1950s, when Hubbard first arrived in England in 1958 he went straight to the Cornish artists' colony, where he met the painter Peter Lanyon. But despite a strong awareness of the artists that have gone before, Hubbard has charted his own path and maintained an independence of vision. Here is an artist who clearly looks long and hard at the landscape, but reinterprets a sense of place in his own distinctive style. John Hubbard: Landscapes is in the Garden Gallery from 5 February to 7 April 2013. A solo exhibition of his work is at the George Washington University, USA from 16 May-28 June 2013. 41

A Decade of Partners in Art

Partners in Art is an innovative project which pairs individuals with support needs to volunteers with an interest in art. To mark its ten year anniversary Marc Steene, Deputy Director, explores the journey so far. From its inception Partners in Art has sought to bypass the current thinking in community engagement in the cultural sector by focusing on people's creative aspirations and not their disability or health need to enable them to have long-term meaningful relationships with the Gallery. The idea for the project arose around fifteen years ago when I was working for the Grace Eyre Foundation in Hove. My colleague, Liz Hall, and I were co-organisers of a ground-breaking touring exhibition of learning-disabled artists from the Avondale Centre titled 'Shedding the Light', which sought to address some of the inherent prejudices we had witnessed in the art world. Its aim was to allow the work of the artists attending the charity to be seen without prejudgement. To achieve this we promoted the artists' work to galleries in high quality packs, without any reference to them being learning-disabled. Our strategy was extremely successful and several galleries signed up. It was a first step at trying to establish normalised relationships between learning-disabled artists and the wider art community - something I passionately knew I wanted to build on. One of the challenges we faced was how to bridge the gap between the artists in day centres and those Tess Springall, Paranoia, 2012, Ink on paper ÂŠ Tess Springall

in the wider community; it was the realisation of this need that led to the idea of an artists' buddy scheme. We initially paired up artists from the charity with those at a local studio in Brighton until a change in my employment drew things temporarily to a close. My arrival at the Gallery coincided with the development of the new wing and my need to start work on an Audience Development programme, Building Bridges, which provided me with the opportunity to attempt to realise the art partnership scheme. One of my first steps was to recruit Sandra Peaty, the current Community Programme Coordinator to help develop Partners in Art. She was then working at Speak Out, a project providing advocacy for adults with learning disabilities in Brighton and Hove. Sandra has been pivotal in the development and delivery of the project and her experience at Speak Out was key to its early success and development. Now in its tenth year Partners in Art has enabled hundreds of people to live creative lives and benefit from the many evident rewards to health and wellbeing that the scheme offers. There are countless accounts of people involved in the scheme and their families and carers that provide powerful evidence of what the scheme is doing. From a small beginning the scheme has grown to become a vital part of the Gallery's offer to the local community and a key tool for enabling its vision of a more inclusive art world. Nicola Hancock discusses the scheme from her perspective as a volunteer participant overleaf. 43

Participant's view: Nicola Hancock, Volunteer

I have been a volunteer for nearly five years now. A friend first told me about it and my ears immediately pricked up. It was something that really resonated with me. I then saw an exhibition of work by one of the partnerships in the studio and I thought: 'I've got to do that'. I am an artist myself but I knew I had more to share. By inviting somebody else into my working life, I knew I would also gain from their input. It's not like a mentoring or teaching scheme â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it's very much an equal relationship. From the start it was important to set and maintain it as a place where we both contribute and it became 'ours', 'us' and 'we'. I've always done things by example. If I can do it, you can do it. I never set myself at a level above someone else. What I do love is being a sounding board for someone else or an echo chamber and inviting them to listen to their own ideas and hopefully magnify them. One of the things that makes the scheme work is the freedom it gives. My partner (Vivienne) has her own life and difficulties, but because it is set up with art as the intention it means we're safe within that framework. We don't have to worry about each other's problems. We're literally there to meet in a creative realm; that's the gift of it to me. Being a part of Partners in Art has given me more confidence. I also do one-to-one work with a woman with Alzheimers now and I wouldn't have taken that on if I hadn't been involved with Partners in Art. It's expanded my possibilities. 44

Vivienne Van Dyck and Nicola Hancock, Zebarella ÂŠ Vivienne Van Dyck and Nicola Hancock

Partners in Art is unique for every partnership. The equality of it is very important to me; it's very much give and receive. You also have to be very adaptable. Some days I'll go to Vivienne's house, and occasionally now she comes to my studio, but that depends on her energy and her willingness. I can't have expectations or make assumptions. If you're prepared to do that, it will give you more, I think. It was amazing to have an exhibition of our Partners in Art work at Pallant House Gallery. Vivienne had never done anything like that before. I don't think she knew how amazing it would be to see our work (and it is very much 'ours', we create together) hanging on the wall. She was bowled over. The private view was incredible. Everybody who came, especially her daughter, was so proud. I was proud of her too, that she had pulled this out of herself. She has had a hard life and to have risen to that challenge is incredible. I can only utterly admire her, and us, for what we've brought about in each other's lives. A Decade of Partners in Art is in the Studio from 12 February to 10 March 2013. For more information about Partners in Art go to www.pallant.org.uk or contact partnersinart@pallant.org.uk

DAVID HOCKNEY �� PHOTOGRAPH BY JORGE LEWINSKI © THE LEWINSKI ARCHIVE AT CHATSWORTH

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collections news

Sean Scully, Pink Dark Triptych, 2011, Oil on linen, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Presented by an Anonymous Donor through Timothy Taylor Gallery ÂŠthe artist

Pallant House Gallery has a remarkable collection of modern art, the significance of which is increasingly being recognised by international institutions and collectors. One of the most important recent additions has come about partly due to this developing international profile: a major painting by the Irishborn American artist Sean Scully entitled 'Dark Pink Triptych' (2011), the acquisition of which has been funded by an anonymous American donor through the Tim Taylor Gallery and the artist. Scully's work can be seen in collections such as MOMA, the Met, and the Guggenheim in New York, the Smithsonian in Washington and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, but now you can now see his work hanging in a new display of paintings in Room 10, and, in September 2013, as part of an exhibition of his Triptychs. As a museum we are generous lenders, recognising that as long as the works are in good condition and the borrower can meet various high standards of care, lending our artworks is an important way to develop international partnerships, support major exhibitions and consolidate artists' reputations. Over the past year many artworks from the collection have acted like international ambassadors for the Gallery, seen by hundred of thousands of exhibition visitors. This winter, several paintings by RB Kitaj featured in the major retrospective at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, now presented in Chichester and the Jewish Museum London before it continues to the Hamburg Kunsthalle in the summer. And, hot on the heels of Pallant House Gallery's summer show Peter Blake

and Pop Music which toured to The Lowry in Salford, a major international exhibition at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark (which will tour to the Barbican) investigates the fascinating relationship between Pop Art and design. Three iconic works from the collection will represent the British pop artists alongside their international contemporaries: Peter Blake's 'La Vern Baker' (1961-62), Richard Hamilton's 'Hers is a Lush Situation' (1958) and Jann Haworth's 'Cowboy'. The graphic qualities of Patrick Caulfield's work has meant that he was often viewed as a 'pop artist' but he resisted this label, instead seeing his paintings in relation to a tradition stretching back to the Cubists and before. His celebrated early painting 'Portrait of Juan Gris' (1963) has been exhibited at the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid over the winter, and this summer will be a highlight of the major Caulfield retrospective at Tate Britain, together with 'Reserved Table' (1999), a witty reinterpretation of a Dutch still life with a lobster. Meanwhile in Rome, 'Curved Barn' (1922) by the British artist Ivon Hitchens, features in the exhibition Picasso, Braque, Leger and the International Language of Cubism at the Complesso del Vittoriano. Such loans are important in ensuring that British Modernism is seen on an international platform as part of a wider artistic dialogue. Further afield, the first major exhibition of Lucian Freud in Brazil, at the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, and Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, will feature the artist's 'Self Portrait with Hyacinth in Pot' (1947), another highlight from the Wilson Collection at Pallant House Gallery. Simon Martin 47

Portrait of the Artist

Michael Kirkman is a printmaker, painter and illustrator, whose work ranges from book cover illustrations to large-scale figurative pieces. He talks to us ahead of a display of prints at Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery Can you describe your style? I am interested in representing figures within real and imagined spaces. Creating scenes within familiar environments allows the viewer to adopt a key role in interpreting the image.

Michael Kirkman, Big Cat, 2012, Colour lino cut, ÂŠ the artist

What media do you work in? I started as a printmaker and during my time at Edinburgh College of Art focused largely on linocut. Later, at the Royal College of Art, I developed my drawing and painting voice, and enjoyed the way that each informed the other. I have since worked with the Curwen Studio on a series of lithographs.

What are you most proud of in your career to date? I've had many exciting projects, including a commission for the National Theatre in London, and commission to produce a commemorative Jubilee print for the Palace of Westminster. But it's quite early on in my career - at the moment, I'm just honoured to be able to make a living from what I love to do.

What got you started? I've always loved drawing and have been attracted to the notion of making my living through art. However, it wasn't until I met my close friend and fellow artist Mark Hearld, who was my tutor during art foundation, that I saw a way of making it work as a career.

What can visitors to the restaurant exhibition expect to see? The show will consist entirely of relief prints, some of which I have produced exclusively for the show.

Who or what most inspires you? People watching. Crowded spaces are always of interest to me. Driving through a city as a passenger, you glimpse fragments of passing lives, which suggest their own narratives. Strangers often provide interesting starting points for work. What are your artistic influences? Current influences include; the London school (as defined by Kitaj) Jim Dine, Mimmo Paladino, Vuillard, Keith Vaughan, Balthus, James Cowie, Gauguin, Paul Nash. 48

Where else can we see your work? My work is currently available at Emma Mason British Prints in Eastbourne and Hornsey's Gallery in Ripon. This year, I'll be showing new drawings inspired by a recent trip to Japan at the Rendezvous Gallery in Aberdeen in February, and new prints inspired by Edinburgh at the Scottish Gallery in July. Michael Kirkman's work will be on show in Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery this spring. For more information go to www.michaelkirkman.com. To book a table at Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery telephone 01243 770827.

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Give to Pallant House Gallery and pay less tax Gifts given via your Will to Pallant House Gallery, like gifts to other charities, are free of inheritance tax. New rules now in force reduce the rate of inheritance tax on the rest of the estate where gifts to charity are more than 10% of the taxable estate. If you inherit from a friend or relative, you can vary your inheritance within two years. Suppose a relative has left 5% of their estate to charity. If, by a suitable variation, you make a gift to Pallant House that raises that 5% above the 10% threshold, the government pays for the whole of your gift. You actually inherit more after tax! 7R ÂżQG RXW PRUH DERXW VDYLQJ LQKHULWDQFH WD[ LQ \RXU :LOO YDU\LQJ DQ LQKHULWDQFH LQ D WD[ HIÂżFLHQW ZD\ RU DQ\ RWKHU DVSHFW RI \RXU personal affairs, please get in touch with us. Thomas Eggar is proud to support Pallant House Gallery

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Chairman of the Friends' Letter

Barbara Hepworth, Tibia Graft, 1949 The Wakefield Permanent Art Collection © Bowness, Hepworth Estate

Dear Friends, Patrons and Gallery Club Members A very Happy New Year to you all. This is an exciting year at Pallant House Gallery with the arrival of our new Director. Gregory Perry took up his appointment in early February and we are very pleased to welcome him. I hope many of you will meet him before too long. As David Macmillan, Chairman of the Trustees of the Gallery has said, he has extensive and broad-ranging experience on both sides of the Atlantic and will be a marvellous benefit to the Gallery and its fantastic team. I am very pleased to announce that Annie Flitcroft, who has been a member of the Friends' Events Working Group since 2009, has taken over as its Chairman. Annie together with the Working Group has arranged an interesting programme of events for the spring and a particularly exciting day in London about which you can read in her article on p 52. As our number of Friends has grown to over 4,000 our programme of events has grown as well. In addition to talks and visits, we now have a very successful Art Book Club, several Art Lunches each year and of course the Saturday morning recitals by outstanding young musicians. I do encourage you to read the announcements of these on the events pages.

In connection with the exhibition of Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings there will be one of our increasingly popular Art Lunches on Thursday 14 March which is featured on page 53. The 30 for 30 Appeal which closed at the end of 2012 raised just over £11,000 and I want to thank everybody who contributed so generously to this. Due to the Catalyst match funding the Appeal will have raised over £22,000 for the Gallery. I also want to thank those of you who have responded generously to the membership renewal letter asking for support for selected exhibitions. It is extremely encouraging to know that there is interest amongst some of you in supporting these, as they help to maintain the profile of the Gallery, these exhibitions attract national press coverage and almost always increase our visitor numbers. In these very hard times I hope that you are aware of how much your generous support is appreciated and I thank you all. I hope the New Year's exciting programme will encourage new Friends to join us and I very much look forward to seeing you in the Gallery during 2013. Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox Chairman of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery Pallant House Gallery Friends

'A thing to be treasured'

David Nash, King and Queen II, Bronze, 1997, ÂŠ The Artist

As the new Chair of the Friends' Working Group I want to begin by expressing how privileged I feel; the opportunity to contribute in this way to Pallant House Gallery is an honour. Having such a wonderful Gallery here on our doorstep is a thing to be treasured, preserved and above all utilised. Holding the foremost collection of Modern British Art in the South, the Gallery fiercely maintains its individualism and strong direction while also extending into the community, providing something for everyone, young and old alike. Pallant House Gallery and the Jewish Museum in London are concurrently presenting the only UK showing of the major retrospective of R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions. To correspond with this and the Barbara Hepworth drawings being shown in galleries 4 and 5 the Friends Working Group are delighted to have arranged a coach trip to London to see both the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Jewish Museum which will allow the friends to experience the full weight and importance of this Kitaj: Obsessions exhibition across both venues. Our organised coach trips are created to make it easy to relax and enjoy visits to out-of-the-way or difficult locations and galleries in comfort and without the stress of trains, or the inner London charge and parking difficulties. The coach, where possible, will take you to the door and we try to ensure that all our 52

Pallant House Gallery Friends

events offer something unique and exclusive available only to our Friends. Whether it is a curator-led tour, a private view, behind the scenes access or simply something tailored specifically for our Friends. We try to ensure that our events enhance the experience of being a Gallery Friend and correspond with exhibitions being held at Pallant House Gallery at the time. Of course having said this, there are always exceptions to the rule. The trip to Kew to see the David Nash sculptures, created using only the trees from the park that have succumbed to age or disease, is one such event that we felt we just could not pass up. I do hope you feel that the working group volunteers manage to get something for everyone into the Friends' events calendar for the year ahead, and I urge you to participate in them and get the most from your Friend's membership. A final point I want to make, is to express how eagerly I encourage your comments - if there is something you would like to see in our events diary or if there is an area where you feel we could improve I welcome your input and involvement. Please feel free to contact me about anything to do with the Friends' events at friendsevents@pallant.org.uk Annie Flitcroft, Chairman of the Friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Working Group For more information about the Friends' events programme go to p.53 or visit www.pallant.org.uk

what's on Friends' events Pallant Prom: Yulia Deakin Sat 23 February, 12–1pm The return of the performances by talented young artists at the start of their careers as concert pianists. Today Russian-born pianist Yulia Deakin performs works by Tchaikovsky and Chopin. £5 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses would be appreciated Friends' Private View Sun 24 February, 10am–11am Enjoy exclusive access to the spring season of exhibitions ahead of the public opening at 11am. Free. Coffee and biscuits Friends' tour: Barbara Hepworth Hospital Drawings Wed 27 February, 11am An opportunity to find out more about the exhibition with Gallery guide Martina Gingell. £5 (£2.50 Student Friends) includes coffee and biscuits. Friends' Tour of R.B. Kitaj Wed 6 March, 3pm Join Simon Martin, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, for a special Friends' tour of the major retrospective exhibition. £5 (£2.50 Student Friends) includes tea and biscuits

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Art Lunch: Barbara Hepworth Thurs 14 March, 10.30am – 2.15pm A celebration of the life and work of Barbara Hepworth, one of the most important figures in the development of British modern art in the twentieth century. After coffee and biscuits in the Garden Gallery, an illustrated talk will focus on Hepworth's career including how her sculptures developed from early quasi-naturalistic forms to her entirely abstract mature works. After a private lunch by Field and Fork there will be a tour and discussion of the Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings exhibition featuring her important series of drawings from the 1950s. £60 (Friends £54) Art Book Club: The Potter’s Hand by AN Wilson Sun 7 March, 2.30–4pm A strong story motivated by the contribution to art, technology and the wealth of the nation made in the 18th century by the opportunistic Wedgwoods. £5 includes tea and cake Pallant Prom: Pedro Gomes Sat 23 March, 12–1pm Portugese Pedro Gomes, from the Royal College of Music, presents a programme of Bach and Liszt. £5 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses would be appreciated

Art Book Club: Girl in White by Sue Hubbard Sun 21 April, 2.30–4pm An extraordinary story of the German expressionist painter Paula Modershohn-Becker, told from the fictionalised perspective of her daughter, Mathilde, and her struggle between being a painter, wife and mother. A pioneer of modern art in Europe, she was denounced as degenerate by the Nazis after her death. £5 includes tea and cake Pallant Prom: Bruno Ferrari Sat 27 April, 12–1pm Mexican pianist Bruno Ferrari won the First Prize at the Brest International Piano Competition in 2011, and last year also performed to great acclaim at St John's, Smith Square in London. £5 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses would be appreciated Art Book Club: A Crisis of Brilliance by David Boyd Haycock Sun 19 May, 2.30–4pm To coincide with Mark Gertler's Exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, David Haycock's book tells the drama of five young British Artists from the Slade School and the Great War. £5 includes tea and cake Art Book Club: Next to Nature, Art by Penelope Lively Sun 23 June, 2.30–4pm A group of artists, including a painter, a sculptor and a potter, attempt to run a summer workshop, and some wise things are said about the difference between acting the role of the artists and genuinely working hard to produce good art. £5 includes tea and cake Pallant House Gallery Friends

Visits Gallery Club early morning visit Manet: Portraying Life at The Royal Academy, London Fri 22 February, 8.15am A unique opportunity to visit one of the blockbuster shows of 2013 and avoid the crowds in this special VIP slot before the Academy opens to the public. Francois Durrance, one of the Gallery's senior guides, will lead a private tour of the first ever retrospective devoted to the portraiture of Manet, featuring over 50 works portraying his family, friends and the literary, political and artistic figures of his time. There will be coffee, tea and pastries in the restaurant at 9.30am after our guided tour. £35 to include admission, guided tour and refreshments. Does not include transport. We will meet at the RA at 8.15am. Patrons and Gallery Club members only. David Nash at Kew: A Natural Gallery and Kew Palace Tues 9 April, 8.30am – 6.30pm approx. Come and see David Nash at Kew, a unique collaboration with the celebrated British artist, featuring sculptures, installations, drawings and film displayed throughout the gardens, glasshouses and exhibition spaces. After a tour of the exhibition and lunch at the Orangery Restaurant there will be a chance to explore Kew Palace, the beautiful royal residence of King George II and III, and the Kew Gardens spring highlights. £55 (includes transport, driver's tip, entry to Kew and Kew Palace and the guided tours). The cost does not include lunch. Please note that comfortable footwear is recommended.

Pallant House Gallery Friends

The Hunterian Museum and The Jewish Museum, London Weds 22 May, 8.30am – 6pm approx. An exclusive Friends' trip to correspond with the Barbara Hepworth Hospital Drawings and R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions exhibitions. The Hunterian Museum houses the collection of John Hunter, the 18th-century surgeon and anatomist, and comprises almost everything to do with the history and development of surgery. The Jewish Museum is a landmark Museum that celebrates Jewish life and cultural diversity. Subtitled 'The Art of Identity', the exhibition at the Jewish Museum which forms part of the R.B.Kitaj: Obsessions exhibition, features over 30 works in which Kitaj explored his Jewish identity including iconic paintings such as The Wedding; If Not, Not, Cecil Court, London W2 (The Refugees) and The Jewish Rider. £50 which includes transport, driver's tip, admission and guided tours. Lunch is not included.

Friends' Away trip Edinburgh Mon 9 September – Sat 14 September 2013 This year's Friends' Away trip is a five night stay at The Roxburghe, a four-star hotel in Charlotte Square, the finest Georgian square in Edinburgh's New Town. Activities will include visits to key sites such as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Dean Gallery, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, currently listed for the Art Fund Prize. We will also visit independents such as the Scottish and Ingleby Galleries, as well as two gardens with remarkable collections of artworks: Jupiter Artland and Little Sparta, Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden in the Pentland Hills. Numbers are limited to 30 so contact the Friends' Office without delay to book your place. Reservations can be secured only on payment of a deposit of £200. £890 per person (double room), £1,070 per person (single room). Includes return BA flights from Gatwick, coach travel in Scotland, bed and breakfast, and dinner on Monday and Friday evenings at the hotel. Also includes a reception on the first night and gratuities. Transport from Chichester to Gatwick, tickets to attractions, and lunches and dinner (Tuesday – Thursday) are not included.

CEDRIC MORRIS & CHRISTOPHER WOOD

MASCALLS GALLERY Maidstone Road Paddock Wood Kent TN12 6LT

A Forgotten Friendship

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Open: Tue - Thur 10 - 5 Fri - Sat 11 - 4

16 January - 13 April 2013

Future exhibition: Barbara Hepworth - The Hospital Drawings 14 June - 24 August 2013

patrons of the gallery We are immensely grateful to our Gallery Club members, the following Patrons of Pallant House Gallery, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous, for their generous support: Mr and Mrs John Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter Vanessa Branson Patrick K F Donlea Frank and Lorna Dunphy Lewis Golden Paul and Kay Goswell Mr and Mrs Scott Greenhalgh Mr and Mrs Alan Hill James and Clare Kirkman

Lefevre Fine Art Ltd JosĂŠ and Michael Manser ra Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O'Rourke Denise Patterson Catherine and Franck Petitgas Charles Rolls and Jans Ondaatje Rolls Mr and Mrs David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Jane and Anthony Weldon Tim and Judith Wise John Young

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what's on Gallery events

Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557

Talks Laetitia Yhap in conversation with Graham Whitham Thurs 7 March, 6pm For twenty years Laetitia Yhap immersed herself in the fishing community of Hasting Stade, creating a remarkable series of drawings and paintings. As witness to the gradual modernisation of the fishing industry, she gained unique insight into the fishermen's lives and built lifelong friendships with many of her subjects. Yhap discusses this extraordinary period in her career with Dr Graham Whitham, Lecturer at the University of Kent. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Marco Livingstone and MJ Long on Kitaj Thurs 28 March, 6pm Architect MJ Long and Art Historian Marco Livingstone both played significant roles in Kitaj's life. Livingstone authored the first monograph of his work, drawing on a series of letters and interviews between the artist and author. Kitaj's London studio was designed by MJ Long, whose practice Long & Kentish also designed the extension to Pallant House Gallery. Here they discuss their friendship with the late painter. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

In Our Time: RB Kitaj and European history Thurs 25 April, 6pm RB Kitaj's work bristles with references to European history and politics, particular of the 20th century. The Spanish Civil War, Socialism, Anarchism, Modernism, Jewish history, as well as the writings of Walter Benjamin and Kafka all provided material for his complex compositions. Francis Marshall, Senior Curator of Art at the Museum of London, explores these themes through a discussion of some of his best known works. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Barbara Hepworth's Hospital Drawings Thurs 21 March, 6pm In the late 1940s Barbara Hepworth embarked on a series of studies of the operating theatre at the invitation of her friend, the surgeon Norman Capener. Nathaniel Hepburn, Curator of the Mascalls Gallery touring exhibition of Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings, currently in Room 4, introduces this little-known aspect of one of Britain's best-loved sculptors. The talk will be followed by a booksigning of his new publication. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Paul Nash in Pictures Thurs 18 April, 6pm James Russell, author of 'Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream', brings a fresh eye to the artist's legacy, going behind the scenes to explore Nash's life, the places and people he knew, and the times in which he lived. The event is followed by a book-signing. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Paul Bowness on Barbara Hepworth Thurs 2 May, 6pm Paul Bowness, Hepworth's grandson and a professor of experimental rheumatology at Oxford University, has said that his grandmother's Hospital Drawings 'strikingly captures the intensity of concentration of hands and eyes, and the harmony of all members of the operating team.' In this talk, Bowness, a practising doctor himself will discuss the surprising beauty that can be found in an operating theatre. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Screenings

R. B. Kitaj in the Aura of the Masters Thurs 9 May, 6pm Kitaj's knowledge of the history of art was formidable. In his later years he idolised Cézanne and as a younger man he hero-worshipped Degas, but he was not content simply to pay homage to his forbears. Colin Wiggins, Special Projects Curator at the National Gallery and curator of Kitaj's last London exhibition at the National Gallery in 2001, will discuss how Kitaj's work deals with events of his own century. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Kitaj as a Printmaker Thurs 16 May, 6pm Kitaj's bright, bold early prints are a full of kaleidoscopic imagery and display to great effect the artist's major obsessions: poetry, literature and film. His later prints explore his growing fascination with the human form and sex in particular while towards the end of his life they begin to reflect his passionate readdressing of his Jewish faith. Jennifer Ramkalawon (Curator of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum) discusses this lesserknown aspect of his work. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) 58

Dr Chris Stephens on Barbara Hepworth Thurs 23 May, 6pm Barbara Hepworth is one of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century. To coincide with the exhibition of her Hospital Drawings, Hepworth expert and Head of Displays at Tate Britain, Dr Chris Stephens will explore her extensive oeuvre from her naturalistic carvings of the 1920s and increasingly abstract sculptures of the 1930s to the ambitious post-war works in wood, stone and bronze and the strikingly diverse creations of her final years. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Andrew Causey on Paul Nash Thurs 27 June, 6pm Paul Nash created an individual pathway through English art in the first half of the 20th century, shaping a body of work that recognised the importance of the modern movement and stimulated him to evolve his own English landscape-based Surrealism. Causey, the leading authority on Nash, and author of numerous publications will discuss his work. Talk and wine: £12 (Friends £10.50) Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Kitaj: In the Picture Thurs 11 April, 6pm Though a very private man, R. B. Kitaj allowed himself to be filmed for the first time to coincide with the largest exhibition of his work at the Tate in 1994. Directed by Jake Auerbach, the son of his long-time friend and fellow School of London painter Frank Auerbach, this film provides a rare opportunity to experience the childhood, works and development of Kitaj, who became one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Directed by Jake Auerbach, 1994, Running time 50 minutes. £5 (Friends £4, Students £4.50) Film: Kitaj in the Aura of Cézanne and Other Masters Thurs 13 June, 6pm Made at the time of Kitaj's exhibition at the National Gallery in 2001, 'Kitaj in the Aura of Cézanne and other Masters' contains an interview with the artist filmed in his home and studio in Los Angeles. In the film, Kitaj talks candidly about his life and work, as well as his Jewish identity. £5 (Friends £4, Students £4.50)

Tours R.B. Kitaj: Obsessions Thurs 14 March, 6pm An opportunity to find out more about the exhibition with Head of Collections and Exhibitions Simon Martin. £3 Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings Wed 5 June, 11am An opportunity to find out more about the exhibition with Gallery guide Liz Walker. £3

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Autumn season private view and Paul Weller charity concert Spotted yourself on our photo pages? Photographs from all our previews are available to view and buy online at www.photoboxgallery.com/pallant The password is 'pallant'. Outside In photographs by Jason Hedges (www.jasonhedges.co.uk) Paul Weller photographs by Jason Buckner (www.jasonbucknerphotography.co.uk)

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Solo, 2011 By Ciarán Lennon

Ciaran Lennon, Solo, 2011, Ground aluminium block and acrylic, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, gift of Dr. David and Teresa Sinclair © Ciaran Lennon

A feeling of unseen presence lies at the heart of Ciarán Lennon's abstract paintings and drawings. Here he introduces 'Solo' which has recently been gifted to the Gallery's Collection. When I was 15 I left home and joined the Royal Green Jackets Regiment, training as a Rifleman Recruit at their training camp on Badger Farm Road , Winchester. Two weeks before marching out my father found me and I was honourably discharged by Col. Shouldice, who asked me to return when I was of age. In April 2011 my friend and I went back to find the camp. At first I didn't recognize the place because the road had been widened, but I immediately knew that sweep of the entrance, the camber of the narrow road leading up to the sentry post, and what remained of the guard house where I had once spent two weeks for being AWOL. We walked up to the parade ground and saw that the buildings had all been knocked down, leaving just the rusting, skeletal girder frames, the concrete floors and the steps. As I walked around remembering the flint and chalk ground, and the trees along the perimeter of the camp, gradually a strange feeling crept over me. I felt a distance growing between my friend and I - and a dreamlike feeling that I was back again in my fifteenyear-old self, at a remove from the present. My friend stepped back and allowed me some time alone to absorb what was happening for me. Afterwards, I felt that I had regained an abandoned part of myself. I felt better, more integrated , grounded and oddly quiet. 64

A few days later I was back in my studio in Dublin, and while I was sanding an aluminium block, intending to apply paint to it, my arm refused to reach for the paint and continued to grind into the aluminium. I realized that it was making its own pigment. I added water medium for a binder, and there it was the industrialized metal returning with me back to the core. This story indicates to some extent how I process my experiences into paintings. I have chosen it because it relates most clearly to 'Solo', the ground aluminium painting which is now in the Pallant House Gallery Collection. Having been schooled in classic representational techniques, in 1972 I decided to make my work relate to the medium of painting, because painting has a given condition (the vertical picture plane) unlike sculpture which has no 'givens'. Therefore painting became the centre for me, around which I could express my struggle and discomfort with identity, but also to find great richness and freshness of visual experiences. I could see the possibility of creating a deeper experience of the body than of ourselves. The spacial illusions that I employ are those of normal everyday seeing, and the sensual ever-changing perceptions of sizes and dimensions. Ciarán Lennon was born in Dublin in 1947. He lives and works in Dublin. For more information and to see more examples of his work visit www.ciaranlennon.com

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