RA Magazine Winter 2016

Royal Academy of Arts Magazine Number 133 WINTER 2016 america after the fall revolution: russian art 1917–1932

Royal Academy of Arts Magazine No. 133 / wiNter 2016 / £4.95

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George Fullard Sculpture and Survival 7th November - 16th December Exhibition and launch of a specially commissioned monograph

by Michael Bird Near and Far

GALLERY PANGOLIN CHALFORD - GLOS - GL6 8NT 01453 889765 gallery@pangolin-editions.com www.gallery-pangolin.com

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ALL THE CAGES HAVE OPEN DOORS 2 NOVEMBER - 23 DECEMBER An exhibition of sculpture and works on paper spanning all four decades of Christopher’s oeuvre including new sculptures and a series of drawings inspired by the West Coast of Ireland.

CHRISTMAS SHOW SCULPTORS’ PRINTS & JEWELLERY 1 - 23 DECEMBER The perfect opportunity to find that extra special gift this Christmas. This exhibition will show selected works at Kings Place with further works available to view online. Including both established Royal Academicians and emerging artists, prices begin at £200.

PANGOLIN LONDON Sculpture Gallery, Kings Place, N1 9AG T: 020 7520 1480 www.pangolinlondon.com

IMAGES: Ann Christopher RA, The Edge of Memory, 2013, Bronze; Peter Randall-Page RA, Walnut Earrings, 2014, Sterling silver

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PANGOLIN

ANN CHRISTOPHER RA

LONDON

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Richard Cartwright All the Dreams We Had

8 February – 4 March 2017

John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4 JG

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T +44 (0)20 7499 1314 info@jmlondon.com

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Richard Cartwright, The Balcony, 2016, pastel, 119 x 127 cms, 47 x 50 ins

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The World According To

PAUL PETER PIECH (born Brooklyn, NY, 1920- died Cardiff 1996)

An exhibition of over 60 linocut prints

22 Nov - 17 Dec 2016 Piech’s graphic work reflects his interest in highlighting social inequality and the abuse of political power. As a patriotic American living in the UK he was as critical of Nixon as he was appreciative of JFK (the work opposite was produced at the time of the Watergate scandal). He also produced a prodigious number of prints on religious, literary, musical and visual art themes. His prints, often unique impressions, consist of combinations of powerful graphic work and hand cut lettering that convey an expressionist verve and sense of urgency. Despite many of the prints being over 40 years old the themes are eerily prescient. Although in some respects an outsider to the art establishment, the V&A in London hold a significant collection of his work and published a monograph on the artist in 2013. Our exhibition is a rare chance to acquire his remarkable imagery.

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Dreams of Immortality: Blood and Gold 18 November – 17 December 2016 Deborah Bell Return of the Gods: The Ancient Ones bronze edition of 6 tallest 280 cm

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British and Irish Art London Auctions Winter 2016

Scottish Art 22 November Lord & Lady Attenborough: A Life in Art The Celebrated Private Collection of Picasso Ceramics 22 November Modern & Post-War British Art 22 & 23 November A Painter’s Paradise: Julian Trevelyan & Mary Fedden at Durham Wharf 23 November Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art 15 December

TO BOOK YOUR COMPLIMENTARY AND CONFIDENTIAL VALUATION PLEASE CONTACT VICTORIAN, IRISH & SCOTTISH ART +44 (0)20 7293 5718 BRITT.ROBERTS@SOTHEBYS.COM MODERN BRITISH ART +44 (0)20 7293 6424 RACHEL.DAVIS@SOTHEBYS.COM

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Alexander Bogomazov 1880-1930 Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter, Yaroslava, 1928 Oil on board, 59 x 59 cm

34 Ravenscourt Road, London W6 OUG tel +44 (0)20 8748 7320 james@jamesbutterwick.com

W W W. J A M E S B U T T E R W I C K . C O M

Royal Academy of Arts Magazine / No. 133 / Winter 2016

Contents 36

In the studio ‘An architectural project may take six to ten years and it is exposed to unforeseen forces, most of which can lead to new ideas’ farshid moussavi ra

Features

44 Back in the USSR

Martin Sixsmith presents the historical backdrop to the Academy’s monumental show of Soviet art

54 AbEx now

Two artists from different generations, Basil Beattie RA and Aimée Parrott, discuss the significance of Abstract Expressionism

58 Master and student

Debra N. Mancoff charts the influence of the leading Depression Era painter, Thomas Hart Benton, on Jackson Pollock

63 Painting like a dream

p h oto gr a p h b en ja m i n m cm a h o n . S tat e Russ i a n M us eu m / P h oto © 2016 , S tat e Russ i a n M us eu m , S t. P e t ers b u r g .

M u. Z EE , O os t en d e / P h oto M uZ ee © w w w. lu k as w eb . b e – A r t i n F l a n d ers v z w. P h oto gr a p h y: H u go M a er t ens/© DAC S 2016

Timothy Hyman RA reflects on James Ensor as a visionary figurative artist

44

Back in the USSR ‘The watchwords were novelty and invention, with pre-revolutionary forms raucously jettisoned from the steamship of modernity’ martin sixsmith

Regulars 10 Editorial 12 Contributors & Competition 09 15 RA 250 20 Preview UK

including artists’ self-portraits at the Queen’s Gallery; Piers Gough RA on London’s new Design Museum; rising star Rachel Maclean; and Simon Wilson on Robert Rauschenberg

31 Preview International

Claudia Pritchard on how Florence has coped 50 years on from the disaster of the floods

34 Preview Books

Bob and Roberta Smith RA selects the best children’s books for a merry Christmas

36 Academy Artists

63

Painting like a dream ‘Ensor railed against the ‘art of cold calculation… dry and repellant’ timothy hyman ra

Inside Farshid Moussavi RA’s studio; Eva Rothschild RA’s new sculpture; Anne Desmet RA’s sketches of Italy; Anthony Green RA’s Academy display; artists in print on show

66 Short Story

‘The Longer View’ by Deborah Levy

68 Debate

Ian Ritchie RA and Hugh Pearman debate: are utopian ideas good for architecture?; Paul Nash’s changing viewpoint; Abstract Expressionism’s earliest commentators

74 Academy News

Forty years of the Friends; RA Schools interim show; John Partridge RA tribute

81 Listings 92 Readers’ Offers 98 What’s On at the RA

Events and lectures at the Academy

106 RA Exhibition Diary

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Introducing this issue

Editorial

Art history must not become a thing of the past On 19 October, a letter written by artists from the Royal Academy of Arts was published in The Times: We are profoundly disappointed at the decision by the examining board AQA to drop A-level art history from 2018.

As with the English baccalaureate’s narrow focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the expense of the creative arts and most humanities, this short-sighted decision denies the value of art and its appreciation both to the economic and cultural life of the nation, and to the individual.

Far from being a ‘soft’ subject, art history teaches rigorous analytical skills and requires students to engage not only with art but with history, literature, politics, languages and the sciences...

EDITORIAL Publisher Nick Tite Editor Sam Phillips Assistant Editor Anna Coatman Design and Art Direction Design by S-T Sub-Editor Gill Crabbe What’s On Editor Zoe Smith Editorial Intern Alice Primrose Editorial Advisers May Calil,

Richard Cork, Anne Desmet RA, Tom Holland, Fiona Maddocks, Mali Morris RA, Eric Parry RA, Greg Sanderson, Charles Saumarez Smith and Giles Waterfield Digital content Harriet Baker, Louise Cohen and Amy Macpherson To comment on RA Magazine

reply.ramagazine@royalacademy.org.uk Follow us online

Twitter @RA_Mag @royalacademy Facebook /royalacademy royalacademy.org.uk EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

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Charlotte Burgess 020 7300 5675 charlotte.burgess@royalacademy.org.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS

RA Magazine is published quarterly in March, May, September and November and mailed to Friends of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of their Friends membership

To become a Friend

£107 Standard Friends (£97 Direct Debit) £150 Joint Friends (£140 Direct Debit) £50 Young Friends (aged between 16 & 25; £45 direct debit) Friends enquiries 020 7300 5664 friend.enquiries@royalacademy.org.uk royalacademy.org.uk/friends To subscribe to RA Magazine

£20 for one year in UK (£30 outside UK) Magazine subscriptions: 0800 634 6341 (UK only) 0044 20 7300 5841 (outside UK) mailorder@royalacademy.org.uk Colour reproduction by Wings. Printed by Wyndeham Group. Published 14 November 2016. © 2016 Royal Academy of Arts ISSN 0956-9332 The opinions in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the RA. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication

S tat e Russ i a n M us eu m / P h oto © 2016 , S tat e Russ i a n M us eu m , S t. P e t ers b u r g

Head of a Peasant, 1928–29, by Kazimir Malevich

The RA’s coming exhibition could not better prove this point.

Opening in the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’ shows how closely art was entwined with politics, economics, social policy and technology during one of the most significant periods in modern history. Painters, sculptors, architects, filmmakers and designers were the crack troops of the revolution, encouraging a new order from both the streets and the studio.

‘It was 1917, with its promise of brave new worlds and liberation from the past, that set all the arts aflame,’ writes Martin Sixsmith in an article in this issue that explores the sheer breadth of artistic innovation that emerged, and the crackdown that followed from the mid-1920s, when experimentation was ‘deemed un-Soviet’ (page 44).

‘To further the cause of the revolution culture must be comprehensible by the masses; anything more complicated, innovative or original was by definition useless and potentially dangerous.’ Under Stalin, artists were forced to embrace Socialist Realism or face the horrors of the gulag.

This history is crystallised in the painting on our cover, Head of a Peasant (1928–29, above) by Kazimir Malevich. The geometry reminds us of Malevich’s earlier Suprematist works, which were entirely abstract paintings characterised by simple, colourful shapes. Forced to abandon abstraction, he has here returned to figurative painting, representing a suitable subject encouraged by the Soviet state – the heroism of the Russian peasantry. The peasant’s face fills the frame in the manner of a religious Russian icon. But the image is ambiguous, painted at a time when peasants who opposed collectivisation were either deported or killed. Does the absence of a mouth suggest the peasant is silenced?

The art of post-revolutionary Russia charts a journey of individual expression, collective aspiration and subsequent subjugation by the state. If we want to understand such stories, in all their complexity, then we need art history.

— sam phillips, editor

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ANTHONY FROST Luminous Tracks 17 November - 17 December 2016

Beaux Arts London_with bleed.indd 1

Beaux Arts London 48 Maddox Street London W1S 1AY

info@beauxartslondon.uk www.beauxartslondon.uk

Tel +44 (0)2074931155 Mon-Sat, 11am - 6pm

05/10/2016 09:42

Who’s who in this issue

Contributors WILL ALSOP RA is an architect and artist. His practice aLL Design’s projects include the Neuron Pod for Queen Mary University, London.

piers gough ra is an architect. His practice CZWG has designed the New Arts Complex, Southampton, which is due to open this winter.

MARTIN BAILEY is the editor of Anthony Green:

ALISON HISSEY is a writer and Project Editor

Painting Life (RA Publications) and author of Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln), both published this winter.

at RA Publications.

CHRISTOPHER BAKER is Director of the

Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

TIMOTHY HYMAN RA is a painter, writer and

academic. His past books include Bonnard and Sienese Painting (both Thames & Hudson).

leonie bos is an illustrator. Her work has

BENEDICT JOHNSON is a photographer whose clients include the Courtauld and the Serpentine.

been featured in magazines including Monocle, Wallpaper and the Wall Street Journal.

DEBORAH LEVY has written six novels,

BASIL BEATTIE RA is a painter. His work is

included in national public collections such as Tate and the Arts Council Collection.

RICHARD DAVEY is the author of the monograph Anthony Whishaw (RA Publications).

RICHARD dawson is a portrait photographer whose clients include GQ and ShortList.

including the Man Booker-nominated Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton). Her short story collection, Black Vodka, was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award.

FIONA MADDOCKS is a journalist, broadcaster and Classical Music Critic for the Observer. Her new book, Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through (Faber & Faber), is just published.

include Habitat and Random House.

DEBRA N. MANCOFF is author of 50 American Artists You Should Know (Prestel). She is Scholar in Residence at Newberry Library, Chicago.

EDITH DEVANEY is co-curator of the Royal Academy’s show ‘Abstract Expressionism’.

BENJAMIN MCMAHON is a photographer who has worked for Vogue, Art Review and FT Weekend.

Bobby Evans is an illustrator whose clients

NAME THE ARTIST COMPETITION 09

Architect will alsop ra describes one of his favourite buildings (below).

Name who designed it and you could win two RA exhibition catalogues A church is often a place that creates a sense of awe, passion and peace, irrespective of an individual’s religious conviction. My chosen church is on the outskirts of a capital city.

It tends not to celebrate its existence to the tourist, but is well known by local people.

It was not designed by an architect, but by an artist who was primarily a sculptor.

Its bold and simple construction comes from a very direct way of working, which was maintained right through to realisation.

This directness, I believe, came from the artist’s discipline working in three dimensions. It is what it was intended to be, although its completion was carried out by another, but with huge respect for that

original aim – unlike the recent completion of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, where few of Gaudi’s drawings existed, meaning its execution is a very beautiful and wellintentioned interpretation.

AIMEE PARROTT is a painter. Her exhibition at Breese Little, London, is on view until 26 Nov. HUGH PEARMAN is an architecture critic and Editor of the RIBA Journal.

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD is an arts journalist, and classical music and opera editor of Culture Whisper.

IAN RITCHIE RA is an architect. His memoirs and selected writings are collected in Being: an Architect (RA Publications).

PETER SCHMItT is a former Surveyor to the Fabric at the Royal Academy of Arts.

MARTIN SIXSMITH is a former Moscow correspondent for BBC TV who has written extensively about Russian history and culture.

His new book, Ayesha’s Gift: A Daughter’s Search for the Truth about her Father, is published by Simon & Schuster in 2017.

CATHERINE SLESSOR is an architectural critic and former Editor of the Architectural Review.

BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH RA is an artist.

He is a patron of The Big Draw and the National Society of Educators in Art and Design.

SIMON WILSON is an art historian.

Internally, the experience is on a par with Van der Laan’s Abbey at Mamelis, near Vaals, in the Netherlands, where one can sit for hours absorbed in the ambience of changing light. My chosen example has similarities and is just as beautiful.

To enter

Send the name of the artist to reply.ramagazine@ royalacademy.org.uk or: RA Magazine, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD,

by Friday 2 Dec 2016. Please include your contact details. Three correct entries chosen at random receive the books that accompany the RA shows ‘Abstract Expressionism’ and ‘Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans’. For full terms and conditions, visit http://roy.ac/catcomp

COMPETITION 08

For Competition 08, published in the last issue of RA Magazine, Terry Setch RA chose the painting Portrait of a Girl (1898) by Antonio Mancini.

Congratulations to the three winning entrants who have each received their prizes.

12 ra magazine | winter 2016

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RA AD SEPTEMBER 2016.qxp_Layout 1 18/10/2016 09:59 Page 1

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY www.chrisbeetles.com

ANTHONY GREEN RA Retrospective Exhibition 31 January – 4 March 2017 Chris Beetles Gallery is delighted to announce a retropective show of Anthony Green RA, to accompany the Royal Academy exhibition and launch of his official biography. Our exhibition catalogue is available to purchase on request.

THE ILLUSTRATORS

Anthony Green (born 1939) Passion IV

Paul Mak (1891-1967) Protecting the Princess

The British Art of Illustration 1900 – 2016 19 November – 7 January 2017

Our annual exhibition, the biggest event worldwide for cartoon and illustration collectors, features over 800 works from across three centuries. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, focussing on the period 1900-2016, which is available from the gallery at £15 (+ £5 p&p UK).

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 • gallery@chrisbeetles.com • www.chrisbeetles.com

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PJ CROOK 7 th –23 rd decemBER 2016 pa n t e r & h a l l 11–12 PALL MALL • LONDON • SW1Y5lu +44 (0)20 7399 9999• enquiries@panterandhall.com The exhibition can be viewed online at www.panterandhall.com

The Royal Academy’s major redevelopment project

RA 250

P u b l is h ed by I l lus t r at ed N e ws/ F r o m: T h e I l lus t r at ed Lo n d o n N e ws , M ay 1870/©R oya l Aca d em y o f A r ts , Lo n d o n . dav i d ch i pp er f i el d a r ch i t ects . © f r a n cis wa r e

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Building work begins on the lecture theatre In 2018, the RA’s 250th anniversary, the Academy is reinstating a grand lecture theatre in Burlington Gardens, creating a hub for artistic debate 1. The original template

No 6 Burlington Gardens, which is now part of the Royal Academy, was designed by James Pennethorne and built for the University of London between 1867 and 1870. The original building featured a grand lecture theatre for the university’s students, which in later years was decommissioned and converted into two rooms on separate floors.

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3

2. The new design

David Chipperfield RA’s redevelopment plan for the Academy site includes the restoration of this space to its former glory, enabling an ambitious programme of lectures, debates, screenings and concerts. The room will be double-height once again, with semi-circular seating hosting more than 260 people. The original clerestory windows will fill the space with daylight.

3. Work in progress

Construction work on the new lecture theatre is now underway. Demolition began in March 2016 and both the floors, plus the basement, have now been removed. The ground-floor and first-floor slabs have been poured and the first mechanical and engineering installation is taking place.

To see how the work is progressing in an online image gallery, visit http://roy.ac/250

winter 2016 | ra magazine 15

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THE MYTHIC METHOD Classicism in British Art 1920–1950 Exhibition Supporters The John S Cohen Foundation The Idlewild Trust The Henry Moore Foundation Toovey's Antique & Fine Art Auctioneers The Mythic Method Supporters’ Circle

Gallery Sponsor

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22 Oct 2016 – 19 Feb 2017 Chichester, West Sussex pallant.org.uk

PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY

Ernest Proctor, The Days End, 1927, Leicester Arts and Museum Service

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Dame Laura Knight Bernard Dunstan RA

Fred Cuming RA

Visit us at Stand 3 The Mayfair Antiques & Fine Art Fair The London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square Duke Street W1K 6JP 5-8th January 2017

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PETER BROWN A Bath Painter’s Travels 3 December 2016 – 19 February 2017 VICTORIA ART GALLERY

By Pulteney Bridge Bath BA2 4AT 01225 477233 www.victoriagal.org.uk Daily 10.30-5.00 128-page catalogue £15 + £3 p&p All works for sale

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cLARE PAcKER

The Art of Edward Ardizzone 02-19 November 2016 Lunar Landscape I collage 28 x 28 cm

REcEnT cOLLAGES 9 February - 4 March 2017 PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY

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21st Annual Winter Exhibition 23 November - 31 January 2017

Illustrationcupboard Gallery +44 (0)207 976 1727 22 Bury St, St James’s, London, SW1Y 6AL www.illustrationcupboard.com

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CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION

22 November 2016 to 7 January 2017 FOUR MAN SHOW Oils and Watercolours Lisa Graa Jensen RI Pamela Kay

NEAC RWS RBA MA RCA Geoffrey Wynne RI John Yardley RI

LLEWELLYN ALEXANDER

124-126 The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 8LN (Opposite The Old Vic Theatre) t: 020 7620 1322/1324

John Yardley RI “In Greenwich Village” Watercolour 13.5 x 19.25 ins

For more pictures and prices see

e: gallery@LlewellynAlexander.com

340 x 490 mm

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Open: 10am to 7.30pm Tuesday to Saturday

Judy Buxton ‘Cascade’ 6 - 22 December 2016 A Major Exhibition of New Paintings Catalogue available upon request

Thackeray Gallery Est. 1968

18 Thackeray Gallery • Kensington Square London W8 5ET • T: 020 7937 5883

‘Frenchmans Creek II’ oil on canvas - 180 x 170cm

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17/10/2016 16:39

What’s new this winter in London, the UK and abroad

Preview

Lives of the artists Artists have assumed many identities in paint, as a new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery demonstrates. christopher baker selects four self-portraits from the Royal Collection’s who’s who of great artists

20 ra magazine | winter 2016

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The Courtier 1. Portrait of the Artist, 1623,

by Peter Paul Rubens

A dashing portrait of a gentleman this certainly is, but there is no hint that the sitter is a painter.

In the place of a professional man with palette and brushes we are presented with a courtier, superbly depicted with great verve and assurance – and that indeed is the point.

The work was commissioned by Lord Danvers and presented to Charles I when he was Prince of Wales, and it was intended as a display of virtuosity, conveying the impression intrinsically that Rubens could command unparalleled facility as a painter. This was especially important as he had earlier supplied the court with a depiction of a lion hunt, chiefly by members of his studio, which had been rejected as being scarcely ‘touched by his own hand’. The effort expended on the self-portrait proved well worth it. Royal commissions that followed for the Flemish master included the spectacular ceiling of the Banqueting Hall, and Rubens praised the King as ‘the greatest amateur of paintings among the princes of the world’.

R OYA L CO L L ECT I O N T RUS T/© H ER M A J ES T Y Q U EEN EL IZ A B E T H I I 2016

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The Autobiographer

The Allegory

The Animal

2. Self-Portrait in a Flat Cap, 1642,

by Rembrandt van Rijn

3. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), 1638-39, by Artemisia Gentileschi

4. The Connoisseurs: Portrait of the Artist with Two Dogs, c.1865, by Edwin Landseer RA

Rembrandt was a remarkably candid artist whose many studies of his own face in oil, ink and etching comprise a life-long visual autobiography.

Instruction, introspection and self-promotion often elide in these humane works, which form the most extensive series of self-portraits of the 17th century.

Here he presents himself with a degree of assurance and a touch of theatrical presentation.

At the age of 36 in 1642, when this study was painted, the artist was working on The Night Watch, the grandest of his group portraits; it was a moment of worldly achievement before the bankruptcy and trials in his personal life that were to come. His clothes, twinkling earring and gold chains are rather fanciful props; the light draws attention to his face and inquisitive, benign eyes, and he appears fundamentally as a man worth knowing. The painting was purchased for the Royal Collection in 1814, and when first catalogued five years later it was described as painted in the artist’s ‘best manner’.

Gentileschi chose here to not merely depict herself in the act of painting, but as an embodiment of the art itself. The composition was inspired by key sources for such emblematic imagery, including the work of the iconographer Cesare Ripa, who described Painting as ‘a beautiful woman, with full black hair’. But this is no dry exercise in symbolism: the lace and lush green, rippling silk of her dress, the golden chain around her neck and loaded palette in her hand enliven the image brilliantly.

The intense concentration on the artist’s face would presumably have been required to achieve such effects.

Gentileschi’s decision proved an elegant advertisement of her skills and ingeniously distinguished her from her male contemporaries, as none of them could of course inhabit such a female personification. Her ability to create a dramatically lit and arresting composition against a dark Caravaggesque background resulted in one of the finest self-portraits of the 1630s.

The acidic views of critics can easily dent an artist’s confidence; here however, their opinions are lampooned in a witty and warm manner

by Landseer, the greatest and most empathetic British animal painter of the 19th century.

This delightful image is related to a contemporary photograph of the artist at work, prints of which were sold to the public, much to his annoyance. For Landseer dogs were never merely domestic pets, but noble creatures who could convey qualities such as devotion or heroism. These romantic ideals were combined in his work with the brilliant rendering of anatomical and textural detail. The collie is probably Lassie, who was Landseer’s companion in his studio, and the other dog may be a retriever called Myrtle. Between them, the painter himself, with his severe stare and impressive sideburns, exudes something of a canine persona.

Portrait of the Artist The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 0303 123 7300, royalcollection.org.uk, until 17 April 2017

winter 2016 | ra magazine 21

Danny Markey Buildings at Night in Gyotoku 1992 Oil on canvas 71 × 112 cm

DANNY MARKEY NOCTURNES An exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints

15 November – 3 December

ARNOLD VAN PRAAG AT 90

An exhibition of paintings

From 6 December 20 Cork Street London W1S 3HL T +44 (0)20 7734 1732

redfern-gallery.com Arnold van Praag Asleep in the Train 1981 Oil on board 41 × 33 cm

Preview UK

Inside the new Design Museum Architect piers gough ra gets a sneak preview of the museum’s new home, a reworking of the former Commonwealth Institute in London’s Holland Park

The restored exterior of London’s new Design Museum left A CGI visualisation of the interior view from the top floor of the museum

V IS UA L IS AT I O N: A L E X M O R R IS . P H OTO GR A P H: LU K E H AY ES

above

The hyperbolic paraboloid has great architectural appeal. It’s a curved ‘saddle’ shape that can be geometrically constructed entirely from straight lines, which obviates a lot of the cost of constructing curves. Hence in the 1950s and ’60s the plethora of those swoopy, pointy cornered roofs, usually in turquoise copper, over everything from car showrooms to churches.

The Commonwealth Institute in London’s Holland Park, designed by Robert Matthew in 1960, was just such a structure, a ‘tent in the park’ that sported a thin split hyperbolic paraboloid roof supported by a solid central concrete one underneath (above right). The non-hierarchical square-plan building, now listed Grade II*, housed multi-level displays of objects from the Commonwealth’s far-flung dominions around a central circular mezzanine like a suspended circus ring.

It has been the fate or duty of the arts institutions of this heritage country to eschew new buildings in favour of historic ones in need of TLC. Hence Tate Modern at Bankside Power Station, the Courtauld at Somerset House, the Whitechapel’s extension into an adjacent library, the Saatchi Gallery in former military barracks and the Royal Academy’s own Burlington Gardens expansion project are all redevelopments of historic buildings.

The Design Museum has done its bit, first colonising the old boilerhouse of the V&A, then moving trendily east by converting a modernist warehouse on the river at Butlers Wharf, and now moving trendily back west again by taking over the shell of the Commonwealth Institute.

The museum’s founder Terence Conran, who has brilliantly and generously steered it through all these manifestations, is himself a dab hand at revivifying gorgeous old buildings such as Michelin House on the Fulham Road.

Bringing the Design Museum to the Commonwealth Institute is a particularly felicitous fit, reusing an exhibition building for, well, exhibitions! With this in mind English Heritage has allowed interesting interior features to be repositioned, enabling a total gut and reconstruction inside the shell. Despite the swoopy roof, the exterior was rather austere with its all-round blanked-out curtain walling. The conversion makes full use of the glazing to provide light and give great views into Holland Park.

The famously minimalist architect John Pawson has restructured and transformed the interior of the building into a series of magnificent spaces for all aspects of a modern museum experience: looking, reading, listening, learning, eating, shopping or just fannying around taking selfies. Nearly half of the ground floor is one big seductive gallery, a double-colonnaded space like a modern version of the Venice Arsenale. The super-high new basement provides another gallery and a large raked-seating lecture hall – a great addition to the Design Museum’s ability to expand audiences and stage events.

The top floor (above) houses the permanent collection, but the bold designer Morag Myerscough banishes any whiff of stolid worthiness by arranging it as a super instruction kit on how to design good stuff. Suitably sandwiched on the first floor are a library,

learning centre and admin offices, with the aforementioned lovely views over the park.

All these spaces are accessed and visually held together by the spectacular centrepiece entrance space. This is a public square within the square building with no hint of monastic minimalism, rather a grand warmly oak-lined ziggurat of an atrium. Boulevard-wide internal terraces sweep around each floor and mezzanine, leading to all the functions. The now ubiquitous wide flight of sitting steps, watered by an adjacent café, attractively starts the journey upwards.

This extravagantly scaled, beautifully detailed space is topped off by Myerscough’s searing super graphics at the top floor, displayed on one of those rotating advertising billboards.

It’s like Conran’s cigar box got a Las Vegas lid.

The scale of the new building allows a matching scale of ambition for the Director Deyan Sudjic to run continuous and overlapping programmes of big exhibitions on design and architecture. It is with the latter that he will challenge the Royal Institute of British Architects, the RA and the V&A. It should demonstrate again the size of the untapped appetite for architectural as well as design exhibitions and discourse. Kensington High Street pretty much lost its mojo with the demise of Barkers, Pontings, Derry & Toms and then the Biba department stores. This hyperbolic Design Museum should go a long way to restoring its public paraboloid.

London’s Design Museum reopens on High Street Kensington on 24 Nov; www.designmuseum.org

winter 2016 | ra magazine 23

Preview UK

The real Rachel Maclean anna coatman meets the shape-shifting Scottish video artist, whose virtual worlds question the images and identities created in social media In a warehouse building in the East End of Glasgow, I’m watching two men transform huge lumps of polystyrene into yellow Emoji monsters.

Beside them, children’s dolls lie in a heap, waiting to be decapitated and turned into hybrid ‘data rats’, pests with a penchant for chewing through internet cables.

These strange creatures have been dreamed up by Rachel Maclean, the 29-year-old video artist I am here to meet. With just weeks to go before the opening of her solo show at Manchester’s HOME gallery, all hands are on deck. The men in her studio who are busy sculpting the polystyrene are artist friends of Maclean’s; the sculptures are inspired by, and will be installed alongside, her new series of large-format fabric prints, ‘We Want Data!’

(2016), and latest video It’s What’s Inside That Counts (2016).

Hyper-saturated and headache-inducing, Maclean’s films are set in digitally rendered, rainbow-coloured dystopias, combining looping narratives and musical interludes. Her aesthetic draws on Cosplay (fantasy role play often involving dressing up as a virtual character), music videos, social media sites and ‘happiness’ marketing, painting an unflattering picture of contemporary consumerist culture.

These works have also made Maclean a rising star in the art world. Her upcoming solo show is just the latest in a series of high-profile screenings, awards and exhibitions that have introduced her weird and wonderful art to ever wider audiences. She won the Margaret Tait Award at the 2013 Glasgow Film Festival; her film Feed Me was featured in ‘British Art Show 8’

24 ra magazine | winter 2016

in 2015; she was one of this year’s Frieze Film artists; and she has been chosen to represent Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

For the HOME exhibition, having such a large gallery to herself will allow Maclean to present her art in a more multi-dimensional, immersive way than ever before. ‘I’ve always wanted to show sculptures with my videos,’ she explains, ‘because I always make a lot stuff, like props and costumes.’

As we inspect a rail of tiny, pink, scratchy polyester dresses that are in the process of being ripped and grubbed up (‘these are actually made for real babies’, Maclean says, appalled), Maclean’s dad walks in, wearing paint-spattered overalls. A recently retired art teacher, he has volunteered to help with the exhibition prep.

He’s not the only family member Maclean has enlisted. Her ‘wee team’ also includes her brother Colm (himself an artist), who is upstairs, in a room with a velvet curtain for a door, intently working on a Mac. This is where Maclean’s films are laboriously crafted.

In every video work she makes, Maclean plays all of the roles. Dressing up in outlandish costumes, she is filmed performing against a green screen. Then, as she explains, showing me an unfinished scene from It’s What’s Inside That Counts, the green is taken out of the footage and replaced with various maximalist ‘backgrounds’ – be it a rainy post-apocalyptic city or a bleachedout desert – using the Photoshop and After Effects programmes.

‘Is it strange to see yourself like this?’ I ask, as we look at an image from the ‘We Want Data!’ series (above). The image features Rachel

Rachel Maclean, photographed in 2015

modelled up as a kind of cyber-angel with big blue plastic breasts, wired up to a ‘happiness’ generating device, and taking a selfie. ‘I don’t really think about it at all,’ Maclean insists.

‘The characters are quite purposefully not self-portraits. They aren’t an exploration of me, or anything personal to me; more a splitting of a number of different ideas of identity and stereotype.’

This interest in identity – particularly in relation to gender – is key to Maclean’s work, and the way that she uses her body as a medium through which to explore this brings to mind the art of feminist artists such as Cindy Sherman and Lynne Hershman Leeson. ‘Most of the main characters in my films are women, and I’m interested in exploring female identity. At moments all of my characters fit into very clearly defined gender roles, but at others they seem to slip outside of them. I want it to feel like they are simultaneously working within stereotypes, and slightly undermining and complicating them.’

The way that people use social media to construct identity is also a major theme in Maclean’s art – particularly in the work she has produced for the HOME show. ‘I’m interested in cultures of narcissism and the selfie. You can create your own self through the images you upload, so you create this hyper-real version of yourself online.’

So, does Maclean use social media herself?

‘I keep liking the idea of it, but then I realise I’m not very good at it,’ she admits. ‘Some people use Twitter and Instagram in really interesting ways, almost like making them into art projects. But it always makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable really. Why should I expect or want people to be interested in what I’m eating for tea?’

Rachel Maclean: Wot u :-) about? HOME, Manchester, 0161 228 7621, homemcr.org, until 8 Jan 2017

© R ACH EL M ACL E A N /CO U R T ESY O F H O M E , M A N CH ES T ER /CO M M IS S I O N ED BY A R T PACE & H O M E . P H OTO GR A P H: CR A I G GI B S O N

Detail from the print series ‘We Want Data!’, 2016, by Rachel Maclean

DAVINA JACKSON A

S C U L P T O R

I N

P A I N T

10 – 26 NOVEMBER 2016

49 ALBEMARLE STREET LONDON W1S 4JR TEL +44 (0)20 7499 1616 | INFO@ALBEMARLEGALLERY.COM | ALBEMARLEGALLERY.COM

Top: Richmond, morning light, July 2016. Signed. Oil on canvas: 8 × 24 in / 20.3 × 61 cm. Price: £7,000 bottom left: Drying saris, Manmandir Ghat, Varanasi, 2014. Signed. Oil on canvas: 20 × 24 in / 50.8 × 61 cm. Price: £16,500 bottom right: San Marco, evening light, 2015. Signed. Oil on canvas: 20 × 24 in / 50.8 × 61 cm. Price: £16,500

KEN

HOWARD

AROUND THE WORLD IN 50 PAINTINGS

Exhibition opens Wednesday 11th January 2017 and will include 50 recent paintings A fully illustrated catalogue will be available RICHARD GREEN IS THE SOLE WORLDWIDE AGENT FOR KEN HOWARD

160928b Winter RA .indd 1

www.richardgreen.com

Email: paintings@richardgreen.com

147 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON W1S 2TS TELEPHONE: +44 (0)20 7493 3939

28/09/2016 16:52

Preview UK

Getting the goat

Monogram, 1955–59, by Robert Rauschenberg

It is by very happy coincidence that the RA’s great Abstract Expressionism show (page 54) precedes and overlaps Tate Modern’s retrospective of the American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008). RA Friends are thus armed with essential context for an artist who, though considered a giant of recent art, has not had a major exhibition in this country since Tate’s previous retrospective in 1980–81, and may therefore be unfamiliar to many.

As we now know, Abstract Expressionism ranged from Pollock’s drips to the colour fields of Rothko. What all the artists involved had in common, however, was the belief that their art acted out on canvas their inner world of emotion and spirituality, and also that the result, to be truly of its time, had necessarily to be abstract.

Arriving on the New York art scene in 1949 just as Abstract Expressionism reached its peak, the young Robert Rauschenberg was having none of that high falutin’ stuff. He believed that art must directly engage with the nitty gritty of the real and indeed urban world. Yet he very shrewdly realised that modern art was at where it was at, and he must build on that. There could be no return to anything like traditional realist painting.

What he did was to develop a new kind of art in which, in his own famous phrase, he operated in ‘the gap between art and life’. The most celebrated results of this were the ‘combine’ paintings of the mid-1950s. These were a mixture of painting with collage and assemblage using all kinds of found materials, ranging from torn pages from newspapers and magazines to junk gathered in the street – the debris of the city, as it has been called. This notably included discarded stuffed animals. Crucially, some of these elements projected or hung from the canvas to invade

28 ra magazine | winter 2016

the real space of the gallery and the spectator, occupying that ‘gap’. Some of the combines were completely freestanding.

Of course, these works picked up on a tradition of collage and assemblage going back to Picasso’s Cubist collages and constructions, as well as the work of the Dadaists and Surrealists who followed. But Rauschenberg carried it much further, completely reinventing it for a new historical moment. The combines are weird, astonishing, arresting visual objects.

And they are also powerfully enigmatic. They are made up of real things that the artist had reasons for choosing, yet the critical and curatorial consensus has always been to treat them effectively as more purely visual than they perhaps are.

Quite clearly these works have an iconography. A particularly intriguing case is the most arresting and astonishing of all the combines, Monogram (above). What we know of its creation reveals that it was very elaborately pondered. It took the artist from 1955 to 1959 to complete and went through several major changes, Rauschenberg making exquisitely meticulous drawings to plot these. And yes, he could draw!

Rauschenberg said two things about Monogram. Of the title, that he chose it because the merging of the goat and the tyre was like the merging of letters of the alphabet to form a monogram. And then that ‘they lived happily ever after’. The penetration of the tyre by the heavily horned goat suggests powerful symbolism of the consummation of that marriage, becoming a rich image of the basic act of the creation of new life.

With its simultaneous stark contrast and seamless blending of the industrial and the

natural, the piece might also be read as an image of the fraught relationship between the man-made and nature, its base an evocation of the urban dereliction of 1950s Manhattan. This potential ecological message – ahead of its time – is given support by Rauschenberg’s laconic comment on his use of stuffed animals: ‘Too bad they are dead.

I can do something about that.’

The goat in Monogram is now probably the most celebrated in art history. But it does have a predecessor in the English Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt’s Scapegoat of 1854–56, of which he made two versions, a first small one in Manchester Art Gallery, and a final large one, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight. Both are among the most mesmerisingly strange paintings ever made and the final version was greeted with total bafflement when first shown at the RA. As Hunt made clear, it refers to the description in the Bible’s Book of Leviticus of the ritual, part of the Day of Atonement, of symbolically loading a goat with the sins of the tribes of Israel, then sending it out to die in the desert.

The 1950s was notoriously a decade of the most intense homophobia both in the US and in Britain, when gay men were actively persecuted, and indeed made scapegoats for currents of change that aroused the fear and anxiety of those in authority. Did Rauschenberg, a gay man, know Hunt’s picture? Or, brought up as he was in a fundamentalist Christian household, just the Bible story? Could he have intended his goat, with its oppressively heavy man-made burden, to carry some of the same symbolism?

Robert Rauschenberg Tate Modern, London, 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk, 1 Dec–2 April 2017

M O D ER N A M US EE T, S TO CK H O L M . P U R CH AS E 1965 W I T H CO N T R I B U T I O N F R O M M O D ER N A M US EE TS VÄ N N ER / T H E F R I EN DS O F M O D ER N A M US EE T

simon wilson deciphers the enigmatic work of American artist Robert Rauschenberg, ahead of a Tate retrospective

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Six degrees of separation

3. ROBERT ADAM

The 18th-century architect Robert Adam also made many paintings and drawings, producing evocative landscapes in watercolour and adding coloured washes to his studies in pen. Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, which holds the most comprehensive collection of drawings from Adam’s office, displays highlights related to his prestigious work in the capital (30 Nov–11 March 2017), which included interior decoration for Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace; drawing for a clock bracket, c.1761–63, below).

sam phillips takes us from Victor Pasmore’s transformations to paintsmeared performers in six winter shows 1. VICTOR PASMORE RA

Victor Pasmore (seen with a suspended relief c.1963, below) turned towards abstraction after the Second World War, his figurative landscapes and still-lifes superseded first by swirls of colour, then by rectilinear shapes influenced by Russian Constructivism. Nottingham’s Djanogly Gallery (26 Nov–19 Feb 2017) and Pallant House, Chichester (11 March–11 June 2017), explore this radical shift in the British artist’s career.

P H OTO GR A P H BY J O H N PAS M O R E . © Z A H A H A D I D A R CH I T EC TS . CO U R T ESY S I R J O H N S OA N E’ S M US EU M .

CO U R T ESY CH R IS T CH U R CH P I C T U R E G A L L ERY. © A DAGP, PA R IS A N D DAC S , LO N D O N 2016 . CO U R T ESY P ER ES P R O J EC TS , B ER L I N .

2. ZAHA HADID RA

The geometry of Russian Constructivism also had a huge impact on Zaha Hadid RA. One of the late architect’s heroes was Kazimir Malevich (see pages 46 and 47); her buildings explored his ideas about ‘how space itself might be distorted to increase dynamism and complexity’, she explained in a 2014 article in RA Magazine.

London’s Serpentine Galleries present Hadid’s paintings and drawings (Metropolis, 1988, above), whose bold, fractured forms recall the Russian’s angular aesthetic (8 Dec–12 Feb 2017).

6. DONNA HUANCA

‘With regard to Klein, I don’t relate to a man wearing a tuxedo pointing a wand, directing the naked female body,’ says the Chicago-born performance artist Donna Huanca. In her show at London’s Zabludowicz Collection, her models covered in paint, latex and cosmetics (below) are in her words ‘symbols of power’ (until 18 Dec).

4. DRAWING IN RED

Drawing also takes centre stage at Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford, which displays a small but splendid show of works in red chalk, also known as sanguine (until 16 Jan 2017; Two Hands and a Bust of a Young Man, c.1525,

by Il Sodoma, below). From the 15th century onwards, the medium was embraced by Europe’s most important artists, including Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, who adopted sanguine in his Last Supper sketches for its suppleness, solubility and warm colour.

5. YVES KLEIN

From the possibilities of red to the power of blue, in an Yves Klein survey at Tate Liverpool (until 5 March 2017). The French artist and agent provocateur famously invented his own colour, International Klein Blue (Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 79), 1959, above), and, infamously, used naked female models as paintbrushes to produce his ‘Anthropometry’ series. The exhibition features major works by Klein rarely seen on these shores, such as his ‘Fire Paintings’, made with the assistance of Bunsen burners and flame-throwers.

winter 2016 | ra magazine 27

Contact us: +44 (0)20 8742 3355 martinrandall.com

Houston, Texas.

Deep in the art of Texas.

The cities of the Lone Star State are bold visions showcasing some of the world’s finest public and private art collections – the theme of just one of our small-group tours of the US covering a vast canvas of art, architecture and landscape. You can also enjoy in-depth visits to the great East Coast galleries or track down El Greco in Ohio; marvel at the mesas of Monument Valley or stay in New Orleans at Jazz Fest – we even devote one itinerary solely to Frank Lloyd Wright. Tours are all-inclusive and conducted by leading academics, with privileged access at key sites.

East Coast Galleries | Frank Lloyd Wright | Galleries of the American Midwest Art in Texas | New Orleans to Natchitoches | Cliff Dwellings & Canyons

‘This exceeded my expectations.

There was so much variety in every sense. The whole trip was intellectually stimulating.’

‘Superb. A really varied programme of art and architecture and many other gems.’

Recent participants on MRT US tours ATOL 3622 | ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085

DAVID TRESS

Pale Sun in Midwinter, 2016 mixed media/paper 53 x 68 cms 20 7⁄ 8 x 26 3⁄ 4 ins

David Tress is an artist of unusual expressive vigour, best known for his landscape paintings in mixed media on paper. He also works in acrylics and has made many fully-realised drawings in graphite and charcoal. Widely regarded as one of our most inventive Modern Romantic painters, Tress has won an enviable reputation for quality and integrity.

Catalogue £15 inc p&p

Exhibition 16th November – 2nd December 2016

2 8 Cor k St re e t , London W1S 3N G Te l: +4 4 (0)2 0 7437 55 45 info @ me ssum s .com w w w. me ssum s .com

Messum's RA Mag. 28.9.16.indd 1

05/10/2016 11:48

Preview International

After the flood It is 50 years since Florence was hit by the floods that destroyed not only lives but invaluable art treasures. claudia pritchard reports

P H OTO: DAV I D L EES/ T H E L I F E P I CT U R E CO L L ECT I O N /GE T T Y I M AGES

The flooded Accademia Gallery in Florence, in 1966, with Michelangelo’s David at the far end

In the early hours of 4 November 1966, the River Arno rose over its banks and stormed into Florence, the city whose prosperity it had helped create centuries before.

The waters that had once rinsed the finely dyed fabrics that the world desired had, within hours, sometimes minutes, penetrated medieval buildings, and saturated the artworks and manuscripts they housed. The water level reached more than six metres in the eastern Santa Croce district, where the church and national library were early victims. And almost as quickly as the floods arrived, they receded, leaving the historic heart of the city with its innumerable monuments thickly spread with a sickening impasto of mud, splintered wood, sewage and debris. At Santa Croce, the 13th-century Crucifix by Cimabue was all but destroyed. Of the millions of documents destroyed or damaged, more than one million were in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, within a few steps of the river.

Today, many landmarks show the high watermark of 1966 and lovers of art and architecture who are old enough to remember the floods still grieve at the memory of water coursing through the streets. Those streets were remarkably empty, though, on that day in November: mass tourism was yet to come, and Florentines were waking up to a long weekend. That Friday was a public holiday, marking victory over AustriaHungary in November 1918. Where on any other weekday office and shop assistants would have been making their way to work, and where today streams of tourists follow the trail of the great sights, on that Friday empty vehicles bobbed and tumbled in the torrents, and householders watched terrified from apartments above street level.

All told, 100 people died in Florence or further upstream, and 10,000 were made homeless.

Franco Zeffirelli was among those who recorded the scenes, and his short film narrated

by Richard Burton helped to raise $20 million

towards the seemingly impossible task of restoration. Such generosity was among the many good things to come out of the devastation, and it manifested, in the first instance, in the selflessness of those who rushed from all over the world to the city’s aid.

Among these were the so-called angeli del fango, the mud angels – many of them young students and artists, who in shorts and wellingtons, waded in. Professionals poured in too: conservators and specialists in the rescue and restoration of paper, parchment, fresco, panel paintings and paintings on canvas, sculpture in wood and bronze, firearms and musical instruments. The world of conservation opened up, its once secret techniques urgently shared.

Behind the hands-on volunteers was an army of fundraisers, among them the US Continued on page 32

winter 2016 | ra magazine 31

Preview International ON SHOW IN FLORENCE THIS WINTER

an artist who bridged Gothic and Renaissance art. Exquisite work by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello and Masaccio is shown alongside dal Ponte’s paintings, such as St Michael the Archangel and St Bartholomew (1400–37, left).

1. AI WEIWEI: LIBERO Palazzo Strozzi, until 22 Jan 2017

In the wake of the RA’s show of Ai Weiwei last year, the Chinese artist’s multi-disciplinary works now weave their way through Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi – and across its façade, in the form of Reframe (2016, below), 22 orange life rafts that draw attention to the plight of refugees’ trying to cross the Mediterranean.

3. DISCOVERIES AND MASSACRES: ARDENGO SOFFICI AND IMPRESSIONISM IN FLORENCE Uffizi, until 8 Jan 2017

The first exhibition on the Florentine painter Giovanni di Marco (1385–1437), known as Giovanni dal Ponte, after his workshop in Piazza di Santo Stefano al Ponte, and, aptly,

1 Reframe, 2016, by Ai Weiwei Hon RA

Continued from page 31 Committee to Rescue Italian Art, an umbrella organisation fronted by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which focused on the restoration of frescoes. Individuals and indeed whole cities chipped in: Picasso donated a painting, which raised $100,000 for restoration; the city of Edinburgh lent a fleet of buses to fill the gap in Florence’s stricken public transport system.

And the Italian artists of the day, beyond their immediate efforts, hatched a remarkable plan that did not focus solely on the restoration of works from the past. Having witnessed centuries of fine art imperilled, they were determined to lay the foundations of the heritage of the future, with a collection of contemporary art that would encourage the art of the future.

The project got off to a vigorous start. Just three months after the flood, an exhibition opened in the Palazzo Vecchio to celebrate current art and as a curtain-raiser for a proposed museum of contemporary art for Florence, the Museo Internazionale di Arte Contemporanea. Exhibitors included Jean Arp, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Marino Marini and Robert Motherwell, and some of the works formed the basis of the city’s new

32 ra magazine | winter 2016

2 St Michael the Archangel and St Bartholomew, 1400–37,

by Giovanni dal Ponte

3 Portrait of Maurice Barrès with View of Toledo, 1913,

by Ignacio Zuloaga

collection of modern art. The main protagonist was the art critic Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, minister of arts and theatre immediately after the Second World War, whose eloquent and passionate call to the world – dubbed his appello – launched a campaign for a new modern art collection in a city wedded to the Renaissance.

The call was answered with enthusiasm, and the collection grew quickly and impressively, until there were thousands of works, among them substantial gifts by private collectors and by living artists, including the sculptor Mirko Basaldella and the painter Corrado Cagli.

A major gift of works came in 1973 from the engineer and collector Alberto della Ragione; his acquisitions included still-lifes by Giorgio Morandi, portraits by Giacomo Manzù and a sculpture by Marino Marini, as well as works

by Mario Sironi, Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà and Renato Guttuso.

But while occasional shows were held, the collection was for decades without a permanent, publicly accessible home, until the opening in 2014 of the magnificent Museo Novecento.

The venue is across the piazza from the church of Santa Maria Novella, where the flood had coated the base of the north nave wall housing

Masaccio’s Trinity with mud, and water had with tragic irony reached Uccello’s fresco cycle Noah and the Flood. The museum houses art from 1900 onwards, but its long-awaited home is the former Ospedale di San Paolo, later known as the Spedale delle Leopoldine. This palatial institution dates from 1208 and was augmented over the centuries by Michelozzo. In 1495 Andrea della Robbia created a lunette of Saint Dominic embracing Saint Francis, who is said to have established an order there upon his return from Egypt around 1213. The historic building is in complete contrast to the 20th-century collection that has grown out of the determination to rescue Florence 50 years ago.

An exhibition at Museo Novecento this winter, ‘Beyond the Borders/After the Flood’, retells the story of the floods and of Ragghianti’s international appello. But as before, the emphasis is on the future, and alongside the exhibition, the gallery is launching a new appello – a second call to artists and collectors and heirs worldwide to dig deep and donate works that will take the museum, and Florence, into a new era.

Beyond the Borders/After the Flood: The Artists’ Engagement Museo Novecento, Florence, museonovecento.fi, until 8 Jan 2017

CO U R T ESY A I W EI W EI S T U D I O/ P H OTO BY A L ES S A N D R O M O GGI . D I GI O N E , M US ÉE D ES B E AUX-A R TS . PA R IS , M US ÉE D ’ O RS AY

Another debut show, this time for artist and writer Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964), who helped organise the first Impressionism show in Florence in 1910, introducing to the public Renoir, Degas and others. Besides Soffici’s own work, highlights include Picasso, De Chirico and Zuloaga (Portrait of Maurice Barrès with View of Toledo, 1913, below).

2. GIOVANNI DAL PONTE Accademia, 22 Nov–12 March 2017

Contact us: +44 (0)20 8742 3355 martinrandall.com

Image: the Mozart family, copper engraving 1856 after a 1779 painting.

Musical chairs at the highest tables.

The UK’s leading provider of site-specific music festivals announces an expanded programme for 2017.

Our signature is not just ravishing musicianship but the ability to match works with the places where they were first heard and our latest portfolio of festivals includes Mozart’s earliest stage work, Apollo et Hyacinthus, performed in the Salzburg hall where it was first heard. Others include Handel in Florence, Bach in Germany and Vivaldi in Venice.

As well as access to all the concerts, the festival package includes accommodation, meals, lectures and much else. Audience numbers vary from 100 to 250, but with MRT staff on hand throughout you will never feel merely part of a crowd.

‘The nearest that I shall ever be to hearing choirs of heavenly angels.’

A Festival of Music in Florence 13–18 March 2017 Toledo: A Festival of Spanish Music 20–25 May 2017 The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus 6–13 July 2017 The Danube Festival 20–27 August 2017 The Johann Sebastian Bach Journey 4–10 September 2017 Vivaldi in Venice 6–11 November 2017 ATOL 3622 | ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085

Preview Books 3 4 1 2

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Christmas for kids Start them early with artist bob and roberta smith ra’s pick of the best children’s art books My Dad was the parent who bought me art books for Christmas. He was a painter and he ran Chelsea School of Art in the 1960s and ’70s. His idea of a great Christmas present for a 10-yearold interested in art would be E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion. I still have it. Inside the front cover it reads ‘Happy Xmas 1973. One day, if you are a bright boy you might understand this… from Father Xmas.’

Kids art books have become a big theme with publishers. Some of them feel a bit devised for the market, but all of the books below have something genuine to offer and each caters for slightly different needs, from art appreciation to guides to art making, colour theory and logic puzzles. My favourites are the ones you could give to a baby, but which an adult could equally get lost in.

3. Seeing Things: A Kid’s Guide to Looking at Photographs

1. Squares & Other Shapes: with Josef Albers

4. Magritte’s Apple

Designed by Meagan Bennett Phaidon, £6.95, hbk Josef Albers was one of the great artist teachers.

He was a central figure in the Bauhaus – probably the most important school of art ever. Albers’ ideas about colour were complicated but his paintings were simple. This terrific book gets straight to the point. The most appealing aspect of what Albers had to say is all here: art is about pleasure and looking and what colour and rhythm does. Buy this for a child but also give it to your friend who says, ‘I don’t get modern art’.

Klaas Verplancke Thames & Hudson, £14.95, hbk The Surrealist René Magritte is a lot of fun. The man who painted a pipe and then said it was not a pipe but a ‘painting of a pipe’ is sympathetically brought to life through this investigation into his obsession with apples. The publisher recommends this book for children of five years plus. The best children’s books also get adults thinking and, as an introduction to philosophy and the nature of language, this one certainly does.

2. See the Stripes

Patricia Geis Princeton Architectural Press, £8.99, pbk This practical book aims to get kids making selfportraits in the style of modern masters. The back pages are there for you to cut out and use in collages. It is a modern version of a Victorian scrapbook where kids would cut out and create new scenes using pre-drawn printed elements.

I’m getting out my scissors and glue as I write this.

Andy Mansfield Templar, £9.99, hbk Hours of fun can be had trying to find the hidden coloured stripes in this ingenious pop-up book, ideal for lovers of the Rubik’s Cube. Proof, if it was needed, that art is about logic. Give your kids a unique entry into the understanding of Systems art. One day they could become code breakers.

34 ra magazine | winter 2016

Joel Meyerowitz Aperture Foundation, £15.95, hbk Joel Meyerowitz introduces us to some of the great street photographers of America – Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, and Garry Winogrand – as well as the Europeans Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget. What are the photographers trying to do and how does photography affect us? This clever and beautiful book has a strong humanistic undercurrent. Through the lens of the camera we understand that the past can communicate with us, that fleeting moments are poetic and meaningful, and that perhaps sometimes, when we think that life is a bit aimless, it’s also beautiful.

5. Draw Like an Artist

6. Bob the Artist

Marion Deuchars Laurence King, £10.95, hbk Bob is some kind of crow who has skinny legs.

If I were advising Bob I would say, ‘Don’t worry about your skinny legs. Your friends, an owl and a cat, are being mean!’ I like the image where Bob is inspired by Matisse cut-outs. But painting your beak as a diversionary tactic because you’ve got skinny legs is not wise. Bob, get some new friends.

7. SPLAT! The Most Exciting Artists of all Time

Mary Richards Thames & Hudson, £12.95, hbk Great tabloid newspaper-takes on the stories behind art. In this book artists are full of plots and plans to change the world and create small revolutions in how we understand what we see and experience. This would be a great gift to give to a family member before heading out to a gallery or a trip to Paris or Italy. The book is bang up to date, including modern-day artists such as Cornelia Parker RA and Pipilotti Rist.

8. Arnold’s Extraordinary Art Museum

Catherine Ingram and Jim Stoten Laurence King, £12.95, hbk Catherine Ingram and illustrator Jim Stoten take us on a fantastical journey into an esoteric museum run by Arnold, who is a bit of a controlling geek, armed with a chalk to draw a line over which one must not step. Oddly, we meet a cartoon Rachel Whiteread, who tells us she likes ‘forgotten spaces’, which she casts in plaster. Arnold’s museum houses key works in conceptual art that deal with bodily functions: Manzoni’s Merda d’artista; Duchamp’s famous fountain; and Yves Klein’s blue drinks, which made gallery goers’ wee turn blue. This book might give your kids nightmares about going to art shows but your angry pre-teenager will love it.

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36 ra magazine | winter 2016

In the studio: Farshid Moussavi RA

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The grandeur of a Pimlico townhouse belies the architect’s cool minimalist studio within, writes fiona maddocks. Portrait by benjamin mcmahon Occupying the corner of a grand square in Pimlico, the white stucco building where architect Farshid Moussavi RA has her practice evokes a London long past: magnificent staircase, high ceilings, cornices, mouldings and fireplaces.

All is white and minimal, staff sitting quietly at computer screens, but the interior structure is rare in being unchanged, each room airy and spacious.

Perfect for a commercial developer to turn into luxury apartments and make a fortune.

That first impression proves accurate. ‘This was where Thomas Cubitt and his company worked – and this meeting room where we’re sitting was once his office,’ Moussavi explains. Cubitt (1788– 1855), one of London’s great master builders, left his imprint on Belgravia, including Eaton Square, Buckingham Palace and more. ‘We arrived here five years ago. I knew it had been Cubitt’s office, and I live in a flat next door – ideal, as I usually work late! We enjoy working here’ – she has a team of around 20 people – ‘and for a building in this area not to have been converted is amazing.’

The room we are in is dominated by a table made of two plywood doors propped on Moussavi-designed steel trestles. Images of current or recent projects are propped against walls, including a panel of nine photographs in shades of yellow (pictured far left) showing the inside of a double-decker staircase at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Ohio, that doubles as a sound-art gallery. The museum is a stunning, six-sided building clad in mirrored black stainless-steel, which opened in 2012.

Petite, stylish and energetic, Moussavi has a rapid smile, clear hazel-green eyes and formidable charm. Dressed in a black quilted shift and chunky wedge platforms, Moussavi is a match for any fashionista. She was born in Iran in 1965 and came to Britain at the age of 14. Her arrival was dramatic. ‘I was here with my parents on a summer holiday. Our visit coincided with the Iranian revolution, which forced the Shah into exile. There was a lot of turmoil in the country and it was unclear whether schools and universities would remain open.

My parents decided to get me into a school in Sussex, and left me while they went back. It was quite a big adjustment, but now I see it was so

brave and unselfish of them. I have a 15-yearold daughter. I can’t imagine doing anything similar myself.’

A make or break moment for the young Farshid? ‘Well yes, it was of course, but children are incredibly resilient. I already had a brother at school in England, so that helped. I spoke some English, but it certainly wasn’t good enough to understand maths or chemistry or physics. I had a lot of work to catch up on. My parents, both academics, came two years later.’

Moussavi triumphed at school, went to university in Dundee and University College London, then Harvard to study architecture, where she has been a professor since 2006. She worked for Renzo Piano in Italy, then for Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, and after several years in a joint practice (she was co-founder of Foreign Office Architects) she set up her own, Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), in 2011. Big completed projects include: a passenger cruise terminal in Japan; a John Lewis department store in Leicester; Ravensbourne College in Greenwich Peninsula; and, also in London, the Victoria Beckham flagship store.

‘Our buildings are more about assemblage than about trying to achieve an organic whole that unifies a building through a single “language”. I think this makes buildings monotonous. An assemblage leads to buildings as multiplicities, rich in diverse experiences.

Today, an architectural project may take six to ten years and it is exposed to unforeseen forces, most of which can lead to new ideas, complexity and unseen levels of refinement. Sometimes the process feels like sailing into choppy waters – but it’s a pretty amazing business.’

Unforeseen forces also mean Moussavi and her team will soon have to move. After a long planning battle, the building is being sold for development. She refuses to dwell on the anguish they all feel at the prospect. FMA’s new premises will be within one of her own projects, her tallest building so far, offices in Fenchurch Street. ‘Yes, it will be hard moving.

But how could I possibly complain about going to work in one of my own buildings?’ As a worldclass architect, she has a point.

winter 2016 | ra magazine 37

20 OCTOBER 2016 – 22 JANUARY 2017 courtauld.ac.uk/rodin Exhibition generously supported by: Friends of The Courtauld International Music and Art Foundation Anonymous in memory of Melvin R. Seiden The Daniel Katz Gallery, London Stuart and Bianca Roden Organised in collaboration with

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Academy Artists

How I made it TITLE Ruins, 2016 MEDIUM Jesmonite, resin, steel and paint ARTIST Eva Rothschild RA Can you describe this work?

The sculpture looks like a stack of polystyrene blocks that have been graffitied and scratched.

But these blocks are actually casts of the polystyrene cubes we use in the studio as supports while making other works. Why cast the thing when you could just have the thing?

Well, there’s something in knowing that the object isn’t what the eye is telling you it is; it destabilises your thinking about materiality, and that destabilisation is fundamental to the making of sculpture.

CO U R T ESY T H E A R T IS T, S T UA R T S H AV E / M O D ER N A R T, LO N D O N A N D T H E M O D ER N I NS T I T U T E , GL AS GOW/ P H OTO CR ED I T R O B ER T GLOWACK I . © A N N E D ES M E T/© 2016 R OYA L ACA D EM Y O F A R TS , LO N D O N / P H OTO GR A P H Y: P RU D EN CE CU M I N GS AS S O CI AT ES LT D, LO N D O N

What are the techniques and materials used?

The blocks were cast in fibreglass and Jesmonite, using silicon and rubber moulds. The paint was applied directly into the inside of the mould so that it transferred onto the piece in the casting process, which meant I had less control of the outcome. The original polystyrene blocks probably have a similar lifespan to many monuments from ancient civilisation, and certainly last longer than the materials that make up the work.

What is the work about?

Material transformation really interests me.

There’s an ecological anxiety around materials that we see as impermanent – we use them as if they were disposable but in fact they are not.

The work is partly about the idea of civilisation in decline, that some things are still standing and seem permanent, but that’s not guaranteed.

I made the work this year, and though it’s not polemical, it’s certainly influenced by recent political events. There’s a loss of confidence in

structures that we thought we could rely on, a sense of order that’s crumbling.

What was the starting point for this work?

I am interested in the column and ideas in classical architecture of permanence and power.

I was also thinking about the poem by Shelley, Ozymandias: the traveller seeing the remains of the colossal statue of the Egyptian pharaoh in the sand, and thinking at the time it was made, it seemed it would be there forever.

There’s pathos in the idea of permanence.

Were there any major challenges?

The material I used is heavy, messy and expensive. The ceiling in my studio is not high enough to accommodate the sculpture when its fully assembled – and that’s the case for many of the works I make. So I have to make decisions while installing the work. For the exhibition in Walsall I hadn’t decided the order for the blocks, for example. I could only try out a stack of three in my studio. You have to trust that it will come together – which is nerve-wracking – but it makes the work very alive and in the moment.

How do you feel about the work now?

I’m getting used to it. For me there could be ten more versions. I think that’s what I like about the modular format: the boundaries aren’t fixed.

I constantly refer to Brancusi and his Endless Column: a single symmetrical abstract shape stuck to another, repeated to produce a tower that could, in theory, extend to infinity.

There’s a possibility for growth or destruction: an unstable reality.

Interview by Alice Primrose ‘Ruins’ is on view in Eva Rothschild: Alternative to Power The New Art Gallery, Walsall, 01922 65440, thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk, until 15 Jan 2017

Impressions of Italy

A watercolour sketch of Urbino in 1994, from Anne Desmet RA’s book An Italian Journey

An Italian Journey (RA Publications, £9.95) gathers together sketchbook pages filled with pen, wash and watercolour landscapes from Anne Desmet RA’s travels in the bel paese. A limited edition of the book with a signed wood engraving by Desmet is also available (£350): visit http://roy.ac/sanseverino to watch a video of the artist producing the work. A major accompanying show of engravings and collages is at London’s Royal Overseas League (until 2 Dec). winter 2016 | ra magazine 39

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Esther Mahlangu (b. 1935), detail of BMW Art Car 12, 1991. © Esther Mahlangu.

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Academy Artists

Mother of invention Anthony Green RA’s huge painting is shown with ephemera revealing his family history, writes MARTIN BAILEY Anthony Green RA’s forthcoming display at the Academy focuses around a single work, The Fur Coat: ‘Hazana’ (2014, right). As with nearly all of his pictures, it deals with his family story – this time his mother’s second marriage.

Green, who was 14 at the time of the wedding, describes the three-metre-high work as ‘an adolescent’s memory’.

His mother Madeleine Dupont is depicted life size in what is almost a sculptural painting, executed on board with irregular edges. The face was painted in 1963, as part of a larger picture that had dealt with the loss of their stillborn daughter of Anthony and his wife Mary. Green later destroyed the 1963 painting, but cut out the face of his mother. The mink coat, scarf and handbag in the work are real objects rather than painted images – items that belonged to Madeleine and were saved after her death 12 years ago. Her legs are painted on a slightly raised board, giving a three-dimensional effect.

The scene takes place in the sitting room of the north London house where Madeleine lived with Stanley Joscelyne, her new husband.

Madeleine had started taking Spanish lessons, and they named their new home Hazana, which means ‘achievement’. Madeleine is being admired

by Stanley’s poodle, Peter. ‘My mother loved Stanley and grew to love his dog,’ Green recalls.

The action in the upper section of the work takes place in the bedroom, where Stanley displays his prowess for the young Anthony by standing on his head. His mother lies on the bed,

with an even more intimate view reflected in a mirror hanging free of the painting’s main panel.

Items relating to The Fur Coat: ‘Hazana’, such as working drawings and ephemera, are also on display. Among these is a poignant letter from the young Anthony to his mother, saying ‘so glad you have seen a solicitor’ about divorcing his father.

Anthony Green RA: The Life and Death of Miss Dupont Tennant Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, 18 Jan– 30 April 2017. Anthony Green: Painting Life edited by Martin Bailey, is published Jan 2017 (£30, RA Publications).

The artist is in conversation with Timothy Hyman RA on 11 Feb 2017; see Events and Lectures page 102.

Anthony Green RA Chris Beetles Gallery, London, 020 7839 7551, chrisbeetles.com, 31 Jan–4 March 2017

© A N T H O N Y GR EEN R A . © VA N ES S A JACKS O N R A

Artists in print

Woodcut and linocut techniques, from laser cutting to traditional Japanese woodblock, are celebrated in the RA Keeper’s House selling show ‘Surface Cutting’ (until 20 Feb 2017), including Dwelling I and II

by Vanessa Jackson RA (2016, left).

Works are also available online and can be purchased with the help of Own Art, an Arts Council England initiative offering interest-free loans.

WINTER 2016 | RA MAGAZINE 41

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31/10/2016 15:20

MODERN BRITISH AND IRISH ART

Wednesday 23 November 2016 New Bond Street, London Entries now invited for sales in 2017

WALTER RICHARD SICKERT A.R.A. (1860-1942) Wellington House Academy: Nude signed ‘Sickert’ (lower left) oil on canvas 46 x 35.6 cm. (18 1/8 x 14 in.)

Painted circa 1913 £60,000-80,000

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As 2017 marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, the RA mounts a momentous show on this pivotal period in art.

Martin Sixsmith charts the course of post-revolutionary Russian art, from euphoric creativity to eventual repression

Back in the USSR In his 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak describes his hero’s and, by extension, his own response to the revolutionary fervour of 1917.

‘Just think what extraordinary things are happening all around us!’ Yuri said. ‘Such things happen only once in an eternity… Freedom has dropped on us out of the sky!’

Pasternak is talking about more than just politics.

Yuri Zhivago is a poet, and his artist’s sensibility (in Russian his name is a play on zhivoy, or ‘alive’) resonates with the visceral changes tearing through his native land. Pasternak’s imagery

44 ra magazine | winter 2016

is febrile, hopeful, anticipating a new beginning and a new life. You can feel the excitement in the Russian air: Everything was fermenting, growing, rising with the magic yeast of life. The joy of living, like a gentle wind, swept in a broad surge indiscriminately through fields and towns, through walls and fences, through wood and flesh. Not to be overwhelmed by this tidal wave, Yuri went out in the square to listen to the speeches…

What Pasternak is describing, very powerfully, is the birth of love. Zhivago’s outpouring of passion

for the revolution coincides with the blossoming of his relationship with Lara. The two merge into the joy that only love can bring.

Pasternak’s reaction wasn’t a one-off. A generation of artists, writers and musicians would greet the perception of bewildering, miraculous freedom bestowed by the revolution with the exhilaration of a nascent love affair. From 1917 up to 1932 – the rough span of the RA’s survey of Russian art – they would experience the whole gamut of emotions that love engenders.

The initial, youthful passion that overwhelms caution and sense would lift them to heights of creation. They were inspired, rewarded, fulfilled.

RED PLANET

Konstantin Yuon’s New Planet, 1921, reflects the euphoric energy of the revolution’s early years, when the victory of 1917 led to hopes that Bolshevism would conquer the world and spawned literary fantasies about Communist colonies on Mars

S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/ P H OTO © S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/© DAC S 2016

above

Then came love’s trials, the niggling suspicions, the dawn of mistrust. When doubts surfaced about the purity of their love object, they forced themselves to suppress them. When the faults of the regime became manifest, they looked away.

In the end, the revolution turned against them. Some she consumed in the killing machine of the gulag; others fled, or renounced their art.

More than one, some of the best, succumbed to the despair of rejection. Spurned lovers, they found life was no longer worth living and they ended it.

Artistic innovation had smouldered before the revolution. Artists such as Lyubov Popova,

Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Rodchenko and David Burliuk had produced striking avant-garde works earlier than 1917, as had Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Marc Chagall. Distracted by having to fight a world war and by domestic unrest, the Tsarist regime had let art slip the leash. The conflict had reduced Russia’s contacts with the West and native talent had taken new directions. Several significant works by Malevich in the exhibition, including Red Square – a red parallelogram, stark and challenging on a white ground – and Dynamic Suprematism Supremus, with its vortex of geometric shapes,

winter 2016 | ra magazine 45

date from the years before the revolution (below and right).

But it was 1917, with its promise of brave new worlds and liberation from the past, that set all the arts aflame. The poets Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely and Sergei Yesenin produced their most important work. Authors such as Mikhail Zoshchenko and Mikhail Bulgakov pushed at the bounds of satire and fantasy. The Futurist poets, chief among them Vladimir Mayakovsky, embraced the revolution while proclaiming the renewal of art. The Poputchiki or Fellow Travellers – writers nominally sympathetic to Bolshevism but nervous about commitment – clashed with the self-described Proletarian writers who brashly claimed the right to speak for the Party.

Musical experimentalism broke through the barriers of harmony, overflowed into jazz and created orchestras without conductors. The watchwords were novelty and invention, with pre-revolutionary forms raucously jettisoned from the steamship of modernity.

In the visual arts, Malevich and his followers took painting to new regions in search of abstract geometric purity. The principles of Dynamic Suprematism, proclaimed in his 1926 manifesto The Non-Objective World, ring with the provocative self-confidence of culture in those years. ‘By Suprematism I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in art… The visual phenomena of the objective world are meaningless;

the significant thing is feeling. The appropriate means of representation gives the fullest possible expression to feeling and ignores the familiar appearance of objects. Objective representation… has nothing to do with art. Objectivity is meaningless.’

Malevich’s canvases had moved from early realism via a flirtation with Cubism to the ultimate abstraction of shape and colour. His Red Square (1915, below) is also titled Visual Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions; her ‘meaningless’ visual phenomenon had been distilled into ‘pure feeling’. Like Kandinsky, who had returned to Russia from Germany in 1914, Malevich’s paintings in the decade following the revolution are alive with the rhythmic manipulation of form and space, packed with dynamic shapes that fly precipitously towards the viewer, full of the energy of the age of flight.

The Constructivists Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Popova (Space-Force Construction, 1921, pages 48 and 49) and Rodchenko (Pioneer with Trumpet, 1930, page 52) strove to square the circle between the concrete forms of architecture and photography and the values of art for art’s sake.

Their structural designs were sharp and angular, a sort of three-dimensional Suprematism. They produced street art celebrating the revolution and denouncing its foes. In 1919 they covered buildings in Vitebsk in vibrant propaganda, with El Lissitzky’s emblematic Beat the Whites with the

MALEVICH QUITS ABSTRACTION

Kazimir Malevich’s Red Square, 1915, was a milestone in his quest to attain ‘pure feeling’ in his art, distilling the ‘meaningless’ reality of objective phenomena to their inmost essence. Dynamic Suprematism Supremus, c.1915, added rhythmic movement to geometrical abstraction. But the Bolsheviks’ determination to subjugate art to the demands of the state curbed Malevich’s innovation. Woman with Rake, 1930–32, and Portrait of Nikolai Punin, 1933, suggest an enforced return to realism

46 ra magazine | winter 2016

S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M / P H OTO © 2016 , S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G . TAT E: P U R CH AS ED W I T H AS S IS TA N CE F R O M T H E F R I EN DS O F T H E TAT E G A L L ERY 1978/ P H OTO © TAT E , LO N D O N 2016

from left to right

S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/ P H OTO © S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY. S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G / P H OTO © 2016 , S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G

Red Wedge reducing the complexity of Russia’s civil war to a red triangle piercing a white circle, in a geometric confrontation of good and evil that even the least educated could comprehend. ‘The streets shall be our brushes,’ said Mayakovsky, ‘and the squares our palettes.’

Art was spilling into every form of expression. The Bolsheviks were quick to identify the potential of film in influencing the masses, and directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and cinéma-vérité pioneer Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929, page 50) became skilled exponents of politically charged cinema.

The newsreel series, Kinodelia (Film Weekly) and Kinopravda (Film Truth), run by Vertov, used Constructivist-inspired intertitles designed

by Rodchenko, who also produced their advertising posters.

The Bolsheviks at first were tolerant, preoccupied with more pressing matters. But by the mid-1920s, the regime was looking disapprovingly at the radicalism and the abstraction, beginning to shape the doctrine that would subjugate all art to the aims of socialism.

On 23 April 1932, the Central Committee announced the formation of the Artists’ Union of the USSR, tasked with imposing Socialist Realism as the only acceptable form of artistic expression. From now on, it decreed, art must depict man’s struggle for socialist progress towards a better life. The creative artist must serve the proletariat by being realistic, optimistic and heroic.

The experimentalism that had flourished since the revolution was now deemed un-Soviet.

To further the cause of the revolution culture

must be comprehensible by the masses; anything more complicated, innovative or original was by definition useless and potentially dangerous.

Abstract art didn’t fit the bill. The era of freedom for the avant-garde was over.

With consummately bad timing, a 1932 jubilee retrospective of trends in postrevolutionary art took the celebration of diversity as its keynote. When ‘Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years 1917–1932’ opened at the State Russian Museum in Leningrad, it filled 100 rooms with nearly 2,000 works, ranging from heroic statues and paintings of Lenin and Stalin to the striking paintings of Pavel Filonov, teeming with figures. A whole room was devoted to Malevich’s geometrical canvases and his plaster blocks known as ‘architectons’.

winter 2016 | ra magazine 47

CHAGALL GOES HIS OWN WAY

By the time the exhibition was due to move to Moscow in 1933, diversity was a dirty word and many of the contributors were on the Kremlin’s blacklist. Malevich, who had already been interrogated by the NKVD secret police, was far less visible in the show. (‘From the first days of the revolution,’ he told his interrogator, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, ‘I have been working for the benefit of Soviet art…’ and ‘Art must provide the newest forms… to reflect the social problems of proletarian society.’) Neither was there much of Filonov’s work on view, and official disapproval would blight the rest of his life.

Even his attempts to make acceptable paintings,

48 ra magazine | winter 2016

including a portrait of Stalin, were rejected.

He died from starvation during the siege of Leningrad in 1941. ***** A great joy of the RA’s exhibition is that it reconstitutes large sections of the original ‘Artists of the Russian Federation’ show, including the Malevich and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin rooms almost in their entirety. It presents the abstract and the avant-garde alongside art that overtly champions the regime. If we had tended lazily to assume that the former outstrips the latter in both brilliance of conception and quality of

execution, this exhibition might make us think again. Socialist Realism spawned much hackery, but also much to admire.

The most visible face of official art was on the streets, where statues of the revolution’s forerunners and leaders proliferated, ever bigger, ever more heroic. Lenin was portrayed in the throes of revolutionary fervour, his arm extended in a dramatic appeal for commitment to the cause or striding purposefully forward towards the radiant Communist future. In paintings, he is also seen in more intimate settings, working at his desk; hearing petitions from peasants who have appealed to his infallible wisdom; constantly alert,

S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G / P H OTO © 2016 , S TAT E RUSSIAN MUSEUM , ST. PE TERSBURG/© DACS 2016. STATE TRET YAKOV G A L L ERY/ P H OTO © S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY

above Promenade, 1917–18,

by Marc Chagall, was painted when the artist was serving as Commissar for the Arts in Vitebsk.

By 1923 he was disillusioned with the poverty and violence of the Bolsheviks’ brave new world and emigrated definitively to Paris

PURE GEOMETRY

The Constructivists applied Suprematist ideals of geometric purity to architecture and design.

Lyubov Popova’s painting Space-Force Construction, 1921, heralded three prolific years in textile, typography and stage design before the artist’s death from scarlet fever aged 35 left

S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/ P H OTO © S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY

always on guard to protect the Soviet people.

Alongside the accomplished realism of artists such as Isaak Brodsky, others brought a quirkier vision. Petrov-Vodkin, who trained as an icon painter, depicts Lenin in his coffin with a glow of preternatural divinity about him (below).

As the Lenin myth grew, so did the intimations of saintliness. Lenin was a holy martyr, presiding Christ-like over the destiny of the nation. A party that had destroyed religion in a deeply Christian country needed something to replace it and holy Lenin, dedicated, ascetic and self-denying, was the answer. Russian peasants maintain a shrine in one corner of their home known as the krasny ugol – the beautiful corner – with a holy icon and a candle.

The state was driving out the icons of Christ, replacing them with icons of Lenin.

Portraying Stalin was a tougher ask. Scarred by smallpox, with a withered arm and short of stature, he was not naturally heroic. But just as they turned a blind eye to the faults of the regime, there was no shortage of painters ready to gloss over the imperfections of the leader. Statues made him as tall as the powerfully built Tsar Alexander III and photographs were retouched to disguise his pockmarks. There were artists who persisted

in loving the revolution, and some forms of love can make you blind.

It can’t have been easy to look away in the months after 1917. The structures of the state had collapsed under the pressure of world conflict, revolution and civil war. Law and order had broken down, millions were homeless and people were starving in the streets. In the name of War Communism – harsh, enslaving and repressive – Russia was subjected to militarised dictatorship.

Challenges to Bolshevik rule, including a failed attempt to assassinate Lenin in August 1918, resulted in the launch of the Red Terror against political opponents and class enemies.

The writer Yevgeny Zamyatin described Petrograd as ‘a city of icebergs, mammoths and wasteland… where cavemen, swathed in hides and blankets, retreat from cave to cave’. People bartered their possessions and family heirlooms for firewood. Dogs and cats disappeared from the streets to be made into ‘civil war sausage’.

Even the proletariat was fed up with the Bolsheviks. ‘Down with Lenin and horsemeat,’ said the graffiti. ‘Give us the Tsar and pork!’

Mayakovsky and other leading cultural figures produced billboards and slogans promoting state food stores. My favourite is his witty Nigde kromye kak v Mosselpromye – ‘You’d have to be dumb not to shop at Mosselprom’. But food coupons on display in the exhibition tell another story. Hunger was everywhere. Members of the former middle class, denounced as ‘bourgeois parasites’ and ‘non-persons’ were placed on starvation rations and forced to do cruel, often deadly labour. City streets were filled with war orphans and child thieves. Begging, black-marketeering, crime and prostitution were rife. Bolshevik power was teetering on the brink.

A REVOLUTIONARY ICON right By Lenin’s Coffin, 1924,

by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, who trained as an icon painter, gives the dead Bolshevik leader an aura of radiant sainthood.

A whole room was dedicated to the painter in an important Leningrad exhibition in 1932

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a retreat from socialism, but the NEP, which ran from 1921 to 1929, was effective. Its tolerance of limited personal gain encouraged people to work harder and the peasants to produce more food.

And it threw up a new class of speculators similar to today’s oligarchs.

The NEP years saw a rise in the urban population; cities were straining at the seams.

The state squeezed workers into smaller and smaller spaces, evicting members of the former bourgeoisie to make way for them. To maximise space, a system of communal living was introduced with multiple families billeted in one apartment, sharing kitchens, bathrooms and even bedrooms. The kommunalka concept was in line with the Bolshevik rejection of bourgeois values such as private property and the nuclear family. But in practice it was a nightmare. Feuds broke out between residents, property was stolen and murders committed.

With police informers everywhere, people felt spied on in their own homes. Mistrust was rife; tensions rose.

CUT TO THE ACTION

Dziga Vertov’s documentary on Soviet life, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929, experiments with double exposure, fast motion, split screens and jump cuts above

DOWN ON THE FARM

The ambiguous expression in the peasant’s eyes in Pavel Filonov’s Collective Farm Worker, 1931, seems to capture the pain of Stalin’s ruthless collectivisation of agriculture opposite top

REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s flaming red horse in Fantasy, 1925, first appeared in a 1912 painting of his that created much controversy. By 1925 it has gained an élan that invites identification with the spirit of the revolution

opposite

P H OTO GR A P H: B F I

In March 1921, the Bolsheviks were holding their Tenth Party Congress in Petrograd, when 30,000 sailors in the Kronstadt fortress, 50 kilometres away in the Gulf of Finland, rose up in revolt against the regime. The Party was in panic.

Trotsky set out with 45,000 troops to march across the ice. Thousands died, but the Kronstadt rebellion was put down and its leaders executed.

It was a warning that Lenin could not ignore.

He admitted the Bolsheviks were ‘barely hanging on’. The people were sick of War Communism, weary of hunger and economic meltdown, no longer willing to suffer in the name of some future utopia. Six million people had died in famines across the country. A 70,000-strong peasant army was preparing to challenge Bolshevik power. Military force and mass terror were no longer enough to keep the lid on.

The New Economic Policy (the NEP) was Lenin’s crisis response to this existential challenge. It would loosen the control of the state and reintroduce some elements of private enterprise. Hardline Bolsheviks denounced it as

S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M / P H OTO © 2016 , S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G . S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G / P H OTO © 2016 , S TAT E RUS S I A N M US EU M , S T. P E T ERS B U R G

The grim reality made El Lissitzky’s plans for the perfect apartment look desperately utopian. As a 1927 model reconstructed for the RA exhibition demonstrates, his design is clean, spare and beautiful. It reflects the Constructivists’ insistence that functional houses could also be pure art. But with the economy falling apart and the new leader Stalin consolidating his power through militaryindustrial projects, such ideals were never going to be taken seriously.

When Stalin launched the first Five Year Plan for industrialisation he said it was a matter of national survival. ‘We are a hundred years behind the capitalist West,’ he told Soviet industrialists in 1931. ‘We must catch up with them in just ten years… or they will crush us!’ A continuous working week was introduced, wages cut and harsh penalties introduced for slackers. Millions of labour camp prisoners, and members of the Komsomol (the Young Communist organisation), were used as unpaid labour, their efforts captured in the innovative photography of Arkady Shaikhet (page 106) and others. Women were nominally accorded equal status with men and were expected to work to the same norms. Alexander Deineka’s paintings of all-female production lines foreshadowed the changed social role that women would play throughout the 70 years of the USSR. The Five Year Plans set punitive timetables, but at first the Soviet people rose to the challenge.

Output more than doubled and gigantic new industrial centres were built from scratch. The River Dnepr was harnessed by a hydroelectric dam that fuelled plants employing half a million people, an achievement celebrated in Isaak Brodsky’s Shock-worker from Dneprostroi (1932), with its towering backlit cranes rising from the earth under the command of the herculean figure of the New Soviet Man. The lightning-fast construction of the blast furnaces of Magnitogorsk in the Urals inspired Time, Forward!, a novel and a feature film about the world record for pouring concrete.

The drive to modernise Soviet industry made machines and technology obligatory subjects for the nation’s culture. The jagged, pounding rhythms of Alexander Mosolov’s overture The Iron Foundry (1926) caught the urgency of the times; Fyodor Gladkov’s Cement (1925) and Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel was Tempered (1936) became instant bestsellers.

Soviet propaganda was creating its own national mythology with the workers themselves as gods.

A new breed of superheroes known as shockworkers would spearhead the charge, and the bard of the revolution, Vladimir Mayakovsky, was on hand to deify them. His poem March of the Shock Brigades (1930) is agitprop at its best, marvellously inventive with a powerful, intoxicating message.

Onwards, shock brigades!

From workshops to factories!…

Puff out our collective chest, And deep into the Russian darkness Hammer in the lights Like nails …

Onwards, with no rest days; Onwards, with a giant’s steps.

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The Five Year Plan Complete in four!

Now socialism will rise, Genuine, real, alive.

The successes didn’t last. I remember going with my parents in 1970 to the great Exhibition of the People’s Economic Achievements in Moscow. It seemed then to be the posthumous vindication of Stalin’s vision. Proud guides showed us around extravagant pavilions showcasing the achievements of Soviet industry and technology. But the whole thing was a sham.

As we later discovered, the Soviet economy had been hamstrung by a central command system that replaced enterprise and initiative with duplication, inefficiency and waste. ‘We pretend to work,’ ran a popular joke, ‘and they pretend to pay us.’ The gleaming boasts of success were a façade built on lies and pretence.

A key pledge that helped sweep the Bolsheviks to power was that the land would be given to the peasants. It was a promise they had no intention of keeping. The collectivisation of Soviet agriculture in the years from 1928 to 1940 caused human misery on an unprecedented scale.

It unleashed the worst excesses of Communist social engineering and millions died because of it.

Stalin announced that forcing the peasants into large-scale collective farms, sharing labour and equipment would ‘solve our [food] problems… and remould the peasants’ mentality into the ways of socialism’. But for the peasants the land was a sacred inheritance bestowed by

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WE CAN BE HEROES left Girl with Putting Stone, 1933, by Alexander Samokhvalov is typical of the artist’s female figures depicted as intrepid amazons. It was made a year after the Central Committee declared that art must serve the revolution by being realistic, optimistic and heroic

S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/ P H OTO © S TAT E T R E T YA KOV G A L L ERY/© DAC S 2016 . A L E X L ACH M A N N CO L L EC T I O N LO N D O N /© DAC S 2016

God, not the Bolsheviks. They hid or destroyed their crops, and killed their livestock sooner than have it requisitioned. Pavel Filonov’s Collective Farm Worker (1931, page 51) expresses the sorrow and bewilderment that collectivisation caused.

Disastrous harvests followed, yields plummeted and a two million-tonne shortfall in grain supplies caused waves of famine. The state sent troops to seize peasants’ crops and execute those who resisted. ‘We must smash the kulaks [peasants who oppose collectivisation],’ Stalin declared. ‘We must eliminate them as a class…

We must strike so hard they will never rise again!’

The rhetoric was unhinged because the regime’s very survival was under threat. Soviet culture was told to glorify the shock-troops who were smashing the kulaks and to cover up the misery that existed on the ground. Paintings, poetry, songs and movies overflowed with burgeoning wheat fields and happy peasants on their new collectivised tractors. Malevich, too, complied with the Kremlin’s instruction to return

The louder Yesenin expressed his doubts, the more his work met with official disfavour. In 1925 he wrote a poem in his own blood and hanged himself in a Leningrad hotel.

Even more shocking was the death of the regime’s own lyricist, Mayakovsky. His poetry is a vigorous, inventive call to arms, a fervent appeal to rise up against the old world and hurry on the advent of the new. But the leaders of the revolution were cultural conservatives. Lenin dismissed Mayakovsky’s work as ‘nonsense, stupidity, double stupidity and pretentiousness’.

By the late 1920s, Mayakovsky was out of love with the revolution, writing plays attacking the philistinism of Soviet society. In April 1930, he shot himself in his Moscow apartment. His suicide note is a poem lamenting the unrequited love that had overwhelmed him:

PROPAGANDA MACHINE

Pioneer with Trumpet, 1930, by Alexander Rodchenko combines the political content demanded by the regime (the Pioneers were the Communist youth organisation) with the Constructivist credo that photography and architecture can achieve artistic purity of form. left

INDUSTRIAL CHIC

Andrey Golubev’s fabric design Red Spinner, 1930, with its images of cotton mill workers, is an example of the kind of industrial imagery that was brought into mass production, as new art forms spilled into all areas of Soviet life below

It’s past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.

The Milky Way streams silver through the night.

I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you.

And, as they say, the incident is closed.

Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.

Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts…

More writers, poets and artists died in the gulag. They were charged with ludicrous offences such as spying for foreign powers, but in reality their ‘crimes’ were artistic. The work of the great theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold was experimental and avant-garde. He was opposed to the restrictive dogma of Socialist Realism and made a speech saying so. Tortured by the NKVD, Meyerhold wrote wrenching pleas for clemency from his cell in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.

T H E B U R I L I N I VA N OVO M US EU M O F LO CA L H IS TO RY/ P H OTO © W I T H AS S IS TA N CE F R O M T H E S TAT E M US EU M A N D E X H I B I T I O N CEN T ER / R OS IZO

They are torturing me. They make me lie face down and beat my spine and feet. Then they beat my feet from above… I howl and weep from the pain. I twist and squeal like a dog. Oh most certainly, death is easier than this. I begin to incriminate myself in the hope I will go quickly to the scaffold. to agriculture as a subject, although his faceless figures of peasants hint at the loss of individuality (Woman with Rake, 1930–32, page 47).

Even the Bolsheviks, with their genius for manipulating the truth, could not pretend that all was rosy. They promised instead that present sacrifices would be rewarded by future happiness in an ideal socialist world. It followed that the task of Socialist Realism was to show the workers what they were working for. Deineka’s sports paintings are resolutely heroic, while Alexander Samokhvalov’s amazons (Girl with Putting Stone, 1933, opposite) have much in common with those of 1930s Germany. Socialist Realism helped to create the ethos of hope in those years, when first Lenin then Stalin spoke of the utopia that was on the horizon (prompting jokers to point out that the horizon is an imaginary line that recedes into the distance as you approach it).

Not everyone was convinced. Pasternak’s fictional poet Yuri Zhivago falls out of love with the revolution as completely as he fell in love

with it, revolted by Bolshevism’s destructive disregard for human values. Real poets and artists became disillusioned, too. Kandinsky and Chagall, both of whom had played public roles in the Bolsheviks’ cultural institutions after 1917, emigrated definitively in the early 1920s.

Under political pressure, Malevich adopted a new enigmatic realism that seemed to contradict many of the fundamental values he had striven for (Portrait of Nikolai Punin, 1933, page 47).

In Sergei Yesenin’s poems, you can hear the writer trying to love the new order (‘I want to be a poet/And a citizen/In the mighty Soviet state’), but unable to sing the words dictated to him: I am not your tame canary!

I am a poet!

Not one of your petty hacks.

I may be drunk at times, But in my eyes Shines the glorious light of revelation.

Meyerhold went to his execution in February 1940, reportedly shouting ‘Long live Stalin’, believing, like many others, that the Father of the Nation could not possibly be aware of the crimes being committed in his name. But Stalin, and Lenin before him, were certainly aware. Art, poetry, music and love meant nothing to the Bolshevik zealots. As the critic Viktor Shklovsky wrote in the 1930s, ‘Art must move organically, like the heart in the human breast; but they want to regulate it like a train.’

‘I’m no good at art,’ Lenin famously said.

‘Art for me is a just an appendage, and when its use as propaganda – which we need at the moment – is over, we’ll cut it out as useless: snip, snip!’

Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk, 11 Feb–17 April 2017. Supported by LetterOne. Supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

See Events and Lectures page 102

winter 2016 | ra magazine 53

AbEx now How do painters from different generations see Abstract Expressionism today?

Basil Beattie RA and Aimée Parrott, both RA Schools alumni, met in the Academy’s show to discuss the movement’s enduring influence. Photograph by Anna Huix

Basil Beattie I remember the last exhibition

of Abstract Expressionism, in 1959, at the Tate. I came away with the feeling that Abstract Expressionism was actually what I would call ‘realism’. There was such variety within the blanket title of ‘Abstract Expressionism’ – such different modes of working, such different languages – yet there was a vividness and intensity of experience witnessing those canvases.

That’s what I mean by realism: the work reached a height of real experience. And the large scale of the paintings really confirmed that connection.

Aimée Parrott Was it the first time you saw this type of painting?

BB I was a student at the time, at the Royal Academy Schools. I already knew about De Kooning and Conrad Marca-Relli, and I had great respect for Rothko – I had seen some reproductions of these artists’ works, but not many. The Tate show was very influential for students like me, as well as more established professional artists, notably the great abstract painters from St Ives.

AP Was abstract painting accepted at the RA Schools?

BB No, no – not at all. The painter John Hoyland, who was studying at the same time as me, had his work rejected from the final year student show because it was abstract. Everyone at that time still associated the Academy with that Royal Academy dinner [in 1949], when the President Alfred Munnings stood up and mocked contemporary art.

AP Yes, I think the Schools’ reputation for being conservative lasted a long time after that, maybe up until the early 2000s. Among current students I think there is a certain amount of cynicism directed towards Abstract Expressionism, perhaps because it is linked to rather outdated ideas about the artist as a lone, male genius. The reception of the movement has been complicated by the fact that many of the artists have become part of the canon and as a result their paintings sell at very high prices, which sort of distracts from the work itself.

I think the art market has become too powerful.

BB It has. It’s frightening.

AP Jerry Saltz famously wrote an article a couple of years ago criticising ‘Zombie

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Formalism’, the high volume of sloppy, gestural abstract painting made by young artists that was flooding the art market. I don’t think the problem lies with the artist, rather with the aggressiveness of the art market driving trends and always chasing the ‘next big thing’ in a way that is unsustainable and doesn’t allow the space or the time for young artists to develop. I think, particularly with painting, you really need that time.

BB The appeal of painting is that new technology isn’t involved. It’s still done directly by hand.

AP I think it’s the directness of painting that appeals now, actually. It allows the mind to be led by the body, rather than the other way round, so you can discover things through a process. A lot of the artists who I looked at while I studied – Charline von Heyl, Amy Sillman, for example – talk about painting as an open process, where the finished piece is a result of ideas that are worked gradually out on the canvas.

BB Not spontaneous?

AP Still spontaneous, but revelling in a slowness. I think contemporary abstraction possibly doesn’t have the high ideals of Abstract Expressionism, as painters today seem a bit more down-to-earth, more material-led, and more interested in the connection between the body and the canvas.

The material presence of a painting, its fragility and yet density – its sense of layered time which benefits from a long slow look in order to unfold – is in contrast to the slipperiness of the sanitised, disembodied image on a screen hastily scrolled through. I think this makes painting seem out of step, makes it stick out and sets up a very interesting tension between two very different modes of looking and experiencing.

When I paint it’s about physically working through something, about letting things fall out of my control in order to be surprised and to learn. There seems a need among many painters to grapple with the physical, to think about a painting as not just an image but an object.

BB I would say that’s always been the case, and certainly for the Abstract Expressionists.

I always remember reading a transcript of a discussion between the critic Harold Rosenberg

and the painters Philip Guston, Ad Reinhardt, Jack Tworkov and Robert Motherwell. Rosenberg asked the question, ‘What’s it like when you go into the studio?’ Guston said he was reminded of what John Cage had said: the studio is full of other people, and as you begin to paint, the people begin to leave, one by one. And if you’re really lucky, you leave. He emphasised the big, intense involvement, so you’re not thinking of what to do and then doing it; you’re doing it.

Your hand becomes the brain.

AP I always find that if I haven’t been in the studio for a while, the first things I come up with are dreadful, over-conceptualised ideas, with the mentality that ‘this is the sort of painting I want to make’. I have to make my way through these bad ideas, until I get my eye and hand in, and stop being so self-conscious.

BB Yes, that sounds very familiar. Abstract Expressionism has been followed by a lot of very successful art that’s to do with high planning. I’ve always been very aware that any process I’ve adopted has to have the possibility of change, of trial and error.

AP I find that very appealing in an artwork.

A work is given energy when it retains physical traces of trains of thought, evidence of awkward moments and changes in direction, and a sense that the artist was grappling with something.

That is more appealing to me than a work whose development is linear, where concept is followed by execution.

BB When I was a young artist, I didn’t want to make abstract paintings that could be called ‘abstractions from nature’. There was a lot of early modern art that was made by seeing something and then abstracting it. I remember Life magazine’s full-colour reproductions of Rothko, and then on the opposite page, a sunset; then a Franz Kline, beautifully reproduced, and turn the page, a bridge scene at twilight. And the blurb underneath indicated that if you knew where to look in nature, you would see where the stimulations for these works came from. For Rothko that really wasn’t true. Rothko was trying to paint something that had no visibility at all.

AP It was more to do with emotion.

BB Yes, he was giving emotion visibility – an aspect of being human that couldn’t be

S O LO M O N R . GU GGEN H EI M M US EU M , N E W YO R K /GI F T, EL A I N E A N D WA R N ER DA N N H EIS S ER A N D T H E DA N H EIS S ER FO U N DAT I O N , 1978/© 1998 K AT E R OT H KO P R IZEL & CH R IS TO P H ER R OT H KO A RS , N Y A N D DAC S , LO N D O N / P H OTO GR A P H: A N N A H U I X

below Basil Beattie RA and Aimée Parrott at the ‘Abstract Expressionism’ exhibition at the Royal Academy, with Untitled (Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red), 1949, by Mark Rothko

winter 2016 | ra magazine 55

Faint, 2016,

by Aimée Parrott

this page

opposite page

Never Before, 2001,

by Basil Beattie RA

identified through the eyes, except when you looked at his paintings.

AP The motivation these artists had for making paintings had very little to do with language and a lot to do with feeling. Therefore any attempt to explain them away is bound to fall short.

BB There was a lot of resistance to Abstract Expressionism when I was a student, but soon art schools became filled with it, filled with Pollockesque paintings. That was wonderful in a way, but it soon became a cliché, like everything. Cliché happens very quickly. I suppose the problem for many people was that there was no way of finding any kind of control or choice in the mode. It just became a matter of splashing paint about.

The frightful thing was when you had it programmed into fine art foundation courses.

There were lessons where students were asked to express certain feelings on canvas, which was rubbish of course. You can’t do that. You can’t simply say ‘express this, express that’.

AP That’s interesting in relation to a book I’ve been looking at a lot recently, Annie Besant’s Thought Forms [1901], which is a catalogue of illustrations that attempt to visualise and categorise emotion and sensation. I find them really comical in their over simplification. I quite like how they fall short, and find their failure to bridge the gap interesting. For me it’s a reminder that each of us is an individual, stuck within our

56 ra magazine | winter 2016

own reality, constantly dealing with failures to communicate but also driven by the inherent need to communicate, to express something.

BB That goes back to the origins of modern art.

AP Absolutely. I recently saw the Hilma Af Klimt show at the Serpentine, and then the Georgiana Houghton watercolours at the Courtauld. Both these artists talked about channelling spirits in order to make their abstract paintings. Houghton was around in the 1860s and ’70s, making abstract watercolours way before anybody else. There was no platform for her and Af Klimt, partly because they were women, but also because no-one was making abstract work. It seems that by claiming they were channeling spirits they were able to deny some of the responsibility for making such unconventional works.

BB They were trying to visualise things that weren’t visible.

AP Yes, and then you look at the historical context – the scientific discoveries being made then, such as electricity. It must have felt like the opening up of a parallel universe. There must have been a feeling of endless possibility, that invisible forces could be made almost tangible, that you could potentially leap between the spiritual and physical realms with ease.

BB That is what Rothko came to represent for me. I couldn’t see him simply as a colourist

or formalist. His work wasn’t to do with a relationship to a sunset. I have no doubt that Rothko liked sunsets and sunrises, but the imagery came from somewhere else.

AP My first interest in Abstract Expressionism came from Helen Frankenthaler, though she is seen as part of the second generation. She talked about her painting in relation to landscape.

BB You can see her connection to the landscape. But they weren’t abstractions from landscape.

AP That’s right. They are about her experience of landscape, how it makes her feel.

Like the work of Peter Lanyon, whose paintings relate to his sensations of gliding.

BB Those paintings relate to the exhilaration of Lanyon’s experience – flying, glimpsing the ground, going through cloud and mist, and suddenly being confronted by something else.

AP It is hard to put works like that into words.

And that can be a real problem when it comes to the way art is talked about, especially in the media – so often there is a drive towards headline-grabbing sound bites and easily digestible narrative. Things become a cliché because they are allowed to be condensed into something and to become uncomplicated.

The Abstract Expressionists never really saw themselves as a group – they never wrote a manifesto – and one of the good things about

© A I M EE PA R R OT T/CO U R T ESY B R EES E L I T T L E , LO N D O N

‘ The material presence of a painting, its fragility and yet density, is in contrast to the sanitised image on a screen’

© B AS I L B E AT T I E R A /CO U R T ESY R OYA L ACA D EM Y O F A R TS , LO N D O N

this Royal Academy show is that it embraces a variety of approaches to abstraction.

BB Yes, what is tremendous in this show is the wide range of individuals – the room on Arshile Gorky, for example, who is a fantastic artist. It’s great that a lot of the artists have got their own rooms. You’ve got a whole experience of seeing not just one or two, but a whole group of paintings.

AP The diversity of work makes that quite important. In the Rothko room, the lights are lower and as a result the paintings loom out at you in quite an overbearing way. I liked the theatricality of the Rothko room. The spell would be broken if other artists had been added.

BB It’s one of those shows that I feel I need to see several times. It’s a great show. It makes me breathe deep, which is something I remember from when I first saw these works in 1959. That’s why I’m very interested in your view Aimée, how you see it now, because it is part of history whether we like it or not. But it wasn’t part of history when I first saw it.

Now we learn that it was the CIA that was behind the European exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism, including the Tate show. So why were we seeing that work? When Guston turned back towards figuration in the 1970s, he lost a lot of friends. But De Kooning understood. De Kooning came out of Guston’s exhibition and said, ‘That’s freedom’. And when I think about

what the CIA was promoting to the rest of the world, I have that in mind.

AP It’s easy to be sceptical about a reproduction. But when faced with the physicality and the massive scale of certain works in the show, I felt overwhelmed. I was especially moved by the four-panel piece by Joan Mitchell [Salut Tom, 1979], right at the end of the exhibition – this massive, positive, explosion of energy as the artist hits her stride in middle age. There is such self-confidence in this painting.

It would have been great to see more from her and also Janet Sobel, whose work I hadn’t come across before and which was quite a revelation.

I was also interested looking at the Pollocks.

I would say he was my least favourite before I arrived, because I’ve found the density of his surfaces overwhelming in reproduction. They look chaotic. But when you see the full things in front of you, you realise they are carefully put together, with very intentional marks and a real sense of rhythm.

BB The way that Pollock painted, it wasn’t about composition, but about being in the painting. He was absolutely physically in the painting. They are remarkable in that sense.

I wonder whether he ever got on stepladders to look down at them.

AP I wondered that as well. I work mostly on the floor, understanding the overall work is a challenge, especially when working on a large

scale. When the piece is pulled up onto the wall, it reveals all of the things that couldn’t possibly have been conceived or planned for. These unforeseen developments inform what I do next.

BB Then you take it down again, put it back on the floor and alter it.

AP Or chuck it in the bin. There is an aspect of failure that this kind of work necessitates. But failure is inherent to being human. The continual engagement of a practice, for me, comes from responding to mistakes – trying to react pragmatically, making contingency plans for when things go wrong, erasing things and pulling things back from the brink.

BB Abstract Expressionism does reflect being human. And when confronted by these great works, I think they continue to fascinate and move us with their intensity and vision, in spite of their familiarity.

Abstract Expressionism Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk, until 2 Jan 2017. Lead sponsor BNP Paribas. Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. In celebration of the show, Basil Beattie RA has produced a limitededition screenprint, ‘Broken Promises’, available from RA Art Sales, 020 7300 5933, http://roy.ac/artsales.

Aimée Parrott Breese Little, London, 07919 416290, breeselittle.com, until 26 Nov To discover more about ‘Abstract Expressionism’, visit http://roy.ac/abex

winter 2016 | ra magazine 57

Thomas Hart Benton’s paintings idealised rural life during the Great Depression. As the RA stages a broad survey of 1930s American art, Debra N. Mancoff spotlights Benton’s work, as well as his mentorship of an emerging young artist – Jackson Pollock

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CO L L ECT I O N O F M US EU M O F F I N E A R TS , H O US TO N /GI F T O F F R A N K J . H E V R D E JS/ P H OTO: B R I D GEM A N I M AGES/© B EN TO N T ES TA M EN TA RY T RUS TS/ U M B B A N K T RUS T EE / VAG A , N Y/ DAC S , LO N D O N 2016

Master and student

T H E A R T I NS T I T U T E O F CH I CAGO, M A J O R ACQ U IS I T I O NS CEN T EN N I A L F U N D; ES TAT E O F F LO R EN E M AY S CH O EN B O R N; T H R O U GH P R I O R ACQ U IS I T I O NS O F M R . A N D M RS . CA R T ER H . H A R R IS O N , M A R GU ER I TA S . R I T M A N , M R . A N D M RS . B RU CE B O R L A N D, A N D M A RY L . A N D L EI GH B . B LO CK , 1998 . 522/© T H E P O L LO CK- K R AS N ER F O U N DAT I O N A RS , N Y A N D DAC S , LO N D O N 2016

In 1973, upon hearing that the National Gallery of Australia had purchased Jackson Pollock’s magisterial painting Blue Poles (1952), the artist Thomas Hart Benton remarked to a friend: ‘I taught Jack that.’

Four decades earlier Pollock had studied with Benton at the Art Students League of New York.

But the commonly held narrative of modern art decrees that Pollock the pupil had in fact rebelled against Benton the master, the explosive formal energy of Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism supplanting the naturalistic imagery of Benton’s brand of Regionalism, the Depression Era art movement that rooted American values in small town and rural life.

Although tinged with a sour irony, Benton’s claim of credit was, in fact, more than a brash boast. Throughout their years as teacher and student, and well beyond, the two men shared a close and significant alliance – as much an exchange as a competition – as both strove toward a singular goal: to portray the American experience in an art that was as dynamic as the volatile years between the wars. Following on from the RA’s exhibition of Abstract

Expressionism, there is a chance to compare an early Pollock (Untitled, c.1938–41, below) to paintings by Benton including Haystack (1938, opposite) in the RA’s survey, ‘America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s’. While Benton is well known in the US as a key player in this period, his work may be less familiar to visitors to the RA show. The exhibition reveals the diversity of styles that emerged during the Depression Era, through works by painters such as Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alice Neel and Philip Guston.

Born in 1889, Benton came from a political family with deep roots in the Midwest. His father served four terms in the United States Congress, and from 1897 to 1905, the family spent as much time in Washington D.C. as they did in their hometown, Neosho, Missouri. Benton studied at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and after a brief stint in military school, he continued his education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1909, he travelled to Paris where he took classes at the Académie Julian and responded with equal enthusiasm to the work of such avant-garde innovators as Robert Delaunay

and Pablo Picasso as to that of such Old Masters as Rubens and Tintoretto.

Upon his return to the States in 1912, settling in New York City, he remained open to influence, claiming that he was ‘rocked by every boat that came along’. Although dedicated to figurative representation, Benton absorbed the lessons of Synchromism, an American abstract mode that heightened the energy of form through the brilliance of colour. During the First World War, Benton served in the US Navy, and at the war’s end, he defined the direction of his career with a multiple-panel mural cycle American Historical Epic (1919–28), an heroic account of the nation’s westward expansion.

Benton’s work came under the stylistic umbrella of American Scene Painting. Through the 1920s this loosely defined term encompassed both urban and rural subject matter, and, in part, in its naturalistic form and national content, marked a rejection of the European Modernist innovations as introduced to the American art world at the New York Armory Show in 1913. By the decade’s end, painters of small town and rural subjects were burnishing their interpretations

opposite page

Haystack, 1938, by Thomas Hart Benton this page

Untitled, c.1938–41, by Jackson Pollock, who studied under Benton at the Art Students League of New York

winter 2016 | ra magazine 59

left Cotton Pickers, 1945,

by Thomas Hart Benton

with nostalgia, and their presentation of stalwart, hardworking Americans, while idealised, came to be seen as more authentic portraits of the American life and character than those representing big cities.

The economic crises that brought on the Great Depression of the 1930s had partial origins in the agricultural hardships faced after the end of the First World War, when a surplus of production led to falling prices, and small farmers faced unexpected and unprecedented debt. The stock market crash of 1929, followed by severe dust storms, droughts and wind erosion that ravaged the prairies and Midwest farmland through the 1930s, made it seem as if the defining features of the American experience – abundance and opportunity – were slipping away. Images of life in rural areas and small towns, representing enduring values of hard work, thrift and resilience, came to be known as Regionalism, referring to the vast agricultural belt of the Midwest. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, Benton gained acclaim as a Regionalist, painting a mythic America, an agrarian alternative to the harsh reality of straitened times.

It was a pair of important New York commissions that positioned Benton as a leader in this movement. America Today (1930–31), painted for the boardroom of the progressive New School for Social Research, depicted contemporary labour and leisure, and The Arts of Life in America (1932), painted for a reading room above what was then the home of the Whitney Museum, celebrated musical and craft traditions. Both ensembles sorted subjects by regional divisions, including the South, the Midwest, the West and New York, which represented the city. And both ensembles presented Benton’s distinctive treatment of the figure: muscular yet lithe, and twisting with rhythmic vigour in a pulsating composition, all painted in vibrant hues.

These features comprised Benton’s signature style, whether he worked on an epic or an intimate scale, as seen in Haystacks (page 58), with its rolling landscape, vivid autumnal palette, and the

60 ra magazine | winter 2016

lean and powerful figures absorbed in their work.

As a popular and influential teacher at the Art Students League in New York, Benton disdained a set curriculum. He taught by example, later explaining, ‘I taught what I was trying to learn.’

The League’s freewheeling atmosphere appealed to Pollock, who joined Benton’s studio in 1930.

Born in Wyoming, Pollock had experienced an unsettled childhood, with his family on the move as his father searched for work in California.

After repeated expulsions from schools in Los Angeles, Pollock followed an older brother to New York. Benton took him under his wing, finding him work, having him model, and welcoming him into his home.

Pollock’s earliest paintings echoed his teacher’s style and subject. But Benton moved from New York to Missouri in 1935, leaving Pollock adrift.

He ended his formal training and found fresh inspiration in the complexity and expressive power of Mexican muralists, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, both of whom had recently resided in New York. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), shown in New York in 1939, also made an indelible impression, as seen in Pollock’s Untitled (page 59). But while the disembodied limbs, the horse’s head and the fear-frozen face mirror Picasso’s imagery, the tumultuous composition, throbbing with rhythmic energy and glaring colour, reveal the deep impression of Benton’s example.

Looking back on Benton’s tutelage, Pollock claimed that, ‘He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into non-objective painting.’ But the real course of his development was more subtle and complex. Pollock boldly severed his imagery from conventional narrative content, but he initially seemed more reluctant to abandon solid, identifiable forms.

Mural (1943), commissioned by gallerist Peggy Guggenheim for the foyer of her Manhattan townhouse, marked the breakthrough in Pollock’s aesthetic and practice. The grand scale of the work – 8ft by 20ft – daunted him at first, and he alleged that he painted the dynamic

tangle of slashing lines in the hectic efforts of a single evening, a claim that has come under scrutiny. No matter the myth-making, the work unleashed Pollock’s unexpected power in nonrepresentational expression. Within a few years, he moved his canvas off the easel to attack the surface from all sides, dripping paint from a stiff brush with such gestural fluidity that the physical act of his painting became integral to the painting itself.

Benton held fast to the belief that the true spirit of American art was rooted in Regionalism.

He hardened his convictions, fiercely confronting accusations of being anti-modern in publications and lectures, and, in works such as Cotton Pickers (1945, above), he continued to portray his elemental vision of a hardworking nation in his strong, sinuous figures, set against a rolling landscape painted in brilliant tones.

On the surface it would appear that Pollock the pupil had strayed far from his master’s example, but, as a fellow former student observed, ‘there was a rhythm and flow between them from the beginning to the end… a physical, gestural rhythm.’ Whether representational or abstract in imagery, whether narrative or formal in content, the unique bond linking the work of Benton and Pollock plays out in the vigorous lines and vibrant colours that power their strikingly individual modes of painting. More than commanding oppositional poles in the saga of mid-20thcentury American art, their working aesthetic – epic in scale and unbounded in energy – coursed as a multi-stranded yet intertwined throughline in the quest to create an American artistic identity in a rapidly changing world.

America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s The Sackler Wing, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk, 25 Feb–4 June 2017. Exhibition organised by the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with the RA and Établissement public du musée d’Orsay et du musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

2009-2017 Season supported by JTI. To watch curator Adrian Locke introduce the exhibition, visit http://roy.ac/afterfallvid

P R I O R B EQ U ES T O F A L E X A N D ER S T E WA R T; CEN T EN N I A L M A J O R ACQ U IS I T I O NS I N CO M E A N D W ES L E Y M . D I XO N J R . F U N DS; R O GER A N D J . P E T ER M CCO R M I CK EN D OW M EN TS; P R I O R ACQ U IS I T I O N GEO R GE F. H A R D I N G /© B EN TO N T ES TA M EN TA RY T RUS TS/ U M B B A N K T RUS T EE / VAG A , N Y/ DAC S , LO N D O N 2016 O F T H E GEO R GE F. H A R D I N G

‘ Benton held fast to the belief that the true spirit of American art was rooted in Regionalism’

Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Maggi Hambling, Gerald Laing, Dame Laura Knight, Dame Barbara Hepworth, Edward Seago and Sir Stanley Spencer are just some of the many artists and estates that prefer the personal ACS approach to managing and administering their Artist’s Resale Right.

The only numbers we look at are the ones that we ensure you receive for the works of art that you create.

We wouldn’t want it any other way – and neither would our artists.

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Self portrait (Adelaide Road), Sir Stanley Spencer Private Collection / Bridgeman Images © Artist’s Estate

Painting by numbers?

We prefer to support artists by name

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Vol. 4: 1,496 colour illus. £250.00 Published in association with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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The Academy’s show of James Ensor reveals an artist who was ahead of his time. In this extract from his new book on modern figurative painting, Timothy Hyman RA explores the influence of this visionary Belgian painter

M U. ZEE , O OS T EN D E / P H OTO M UZ EE © W W W. LU K AS W EB . B E – A R T I N F L A N D ERS V Z W. P H OTO GR A P H: H U GO M A ER T ENS/© DAC S 2016

Painting like a dream

Self-portrait with Flowered Hat, 1883, by James Ensor

Some of the 20th century’s most vivid imagery has been the work of visionaries or outsiders – exceptionals – who cannot easily be inserted into any account of painting’s ‘progress’, yet who together stake out new territory for artists. Each embodies a challenge to exclusionary orthodoxies, whether academic or formalist; each affirms a role for the solitary image-maker, creating ambitious projects and narratives independent of the artworld mainstream.

Modernism, defined by Mexican writer Octavio Paz as ‘the revolt of the suppressed realities’, often took a psychological turn. The honouring of Dream and The Unconscious – a recognition that we may be most fully ourselves when not in our waking mind – transformed 20th-century painting. ‘Of the dream,’ wrote Jung in 1911, ‘it may truly be said, the stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.’ The impact of Surrealism, assisted by the growth of art publishing and colour reproduction, helped lift out of obscurity several forgotten ‘fantastic’ artists, singularities such as Hercules Seghers or Richard Dadd.

In that spirit, the American painter Leon Golub often insisted that ‘true Modernism began not in Paris, but in Ostend in the 1880s’ – the decade in which James Ensor (1860–1949), completed all of his most significant works.

Tribulations of Saint Anthony (1887, page 64) hangs majestically at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where each new generation of painters, from De Kooning and Guston to Paula Rego and Dana Schutz, has drawn inspiration from Ensor’s reconciliation of modernist painting with a complex, literary imagery.

Many artists before Ensor had depicted the legend of Saint Anthony – the earliest Desert Father, who separates himself from mankind and seeks solitude, only to be tormented by the world he carries with him. As in Hieronymus Bosch’s great Lisbon triptych of 1515, Anthony is depicted by Ensor hunched over his holy book, peering uneasily behind him as the void fills with self-generated monsters. Ensor, working alone through long, silent days in his fifth-floor attic high above the family’s carnival shop, conjures a more visceral language for his own tribulations; a disquieting imagery neither nocturnal nor fiery, but high-keyed, focused around the central swamp or waterfall of white. He transfers the beautiful nacreous palette of his seascapes and still-lifes to his inner wilderness – broken pinks beside rose reds, though always set against that ridged and seamed, impastoed whiteness.

Lead-white becomes a substance independent of any descriptive function, into which Ensor zigzags the end of his brush, as a kind of seismic doodling; and out of this matrix there emerge wonderful miasmas of hallucinatory imagery. The longer we look, the more we discover: insects and polyps morphing into demons; the animal-headed creature bearing a lyre, merging with the redhaired woman at the café table; a hot-air balloon with a face, and in its basket, a flayed figure.

Enemas, projectile vomit, a ship-of-fools, bottoms that become faces, witches on broomsticks – the familiar imagery of the Flemish Carnival is here recast to suggest the unbounded and anarchic freedom of the individual imagination.

winter 2016 | ra magazine 63

Talking with a Psychoanalyst: Night Sky, 1973–79, by Ken Kiff RA

The symbol-construction that a dream is, presses towards the future… So with the symbolconstruction that a painting is: using the present and the past, it presses towards the future.

Tribulations of St Anthony, 1887, by James Ensor

It was also in 1887 that an enormous canvas by the 25-year-old Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86), took the Belgian art world by storm, converting many to Divisionist procedures. Ensor railed against this ‘art of cold calculation… dry and repellent’. He especially resented the claim of Divisionism to be the true painting idiom, equivalent to the libertarian/ anarchist tenets Ensor himself espoused. The following year he embarked upon his own, over 14-foot refutation, The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, a disorderly carnival realised with an utterly unpredictable wildness of mark.

64 ra magazine | winter 2016

shadowy analyst become polarised, the room fills behind him with grotesque presences, pouring in through the half-open door – huge-nosed, multitesticled, bestial or bowler-hatted. On the floor, perhaps suggesting the potential violence of this transaction, are a saw, a hammer and a pitchfork.

When, in his mid-20s, Kiff had first begun to paint fantasy pictures, he’d experienced a sense of helplessness: the images that appeared were often extremely frightening. He had needed help. He began seeing a psychotherapist, whose orientation was broadly Jungian. (It wasn’t merely an intellectual adventure; as Kiff later insisted, ‘I wasn’t right in the head’.) Those sessions put him on easier terms with his imagination and taught him to avoid closure on any one interpretation. He wrote of receiving ‘moral support’ from his analyst; but also, especially relevant to this image, that the analyst ‘provided a polarity’. And in thinking about the prevalence of the self in art over the past century, he saw it as an assertion of the individual – against negativity, against the collective and the corporate, but also, more generally, against the not-self. ‘It’s like a discovery… It’s an unknown… It isn’t self-aggrandisement… An image of oneself in the painting never merely represents one’s self.’ For Kiff, each painting was the outcome of a complex exchange, between an underlying ‘abstract’ stratum of colour and potentiality, and the ‘figurative’ image that eventually emerged from it. ‘The hill was yellow now. But if it stayed yellow, it might not stay a hill; and if it stayed a hill, it might not stay yellow.’

That process of image-forming is evident in all the ‘modernist symbolists’ Ensor, Kubin, Tagore, Yeats, Kiff – each in their different way participates in that shift of language which separates their figuration from any copying of reality. As Kiff wrote in 1979:

Ensor’s paintings and etchings of the 1880s became widely known only in the 20th century.

In 1906 the young Paul Klee (1879–1940) became fascinated by the autonomy of Ensor’s line, sending him two etchings of his own: and in 1911, Emil Nolde visited Ensor in Ostend. By mid-century his art had become an essential component within the modernist canon, while remaining outside any ‘movement’.

Almost a century after Ensor’s Tribulations, Ken Kiff (1935–2001) in London made his own assertion of the inward imagination. In Talking with a Psychoanalyst: Night Sky (1973–79, top), the mild-faced patient is Kiff himself. As he and the

The world has to be remade, its forms – figures, objects, spaces – dragged out of an inward Void, constructed anew in an unpredictable exploration.

This extract from The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Hyman (hbk, £32, Thames & Hudson), which was published in October.

Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans The Sackler Wing, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8000, royalacademy.org.uk, until 29 Jan 2017.

Organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in association with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

2009–2017 Season Supported by JTI To watch a video about James Ensor’s life in Ostend, visit http://roy.ac/ensorworld

© ES TAT E O F K EN K I F F. P U R CH AS E . ACC . N .: 1642.1940.© 2016/ D I GI TA L I M AGE , T H E M US EU M O F M O D ER N A R T, N E W YO R K /S CA L A , F LO R EN CE

‘ Ensor’s art became an essential component within the modernist canon, while remaining outside any movement’

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New fiction in response to great art

Short Story

66 ra magazine | winter 2016

The Longer View

T H E J U L ES B ACH E CO L L ECT I O N , 1949/ACC . N .: 49.7.41 © 2016/ I M AGE CO P Y R I GH T T H E M E T R O P O L I TA N M US EU M O F A R T/A R T R ES O U R CE /S CA L A , F LO R EN CE

by deborah levy. Inspired by Goya’s portrait of Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1787-88, opposite), this short story is the latest in a series of art-influenced fiction written especially for RA Magazine

The optometrist has lustrous eyes. They glitter in the dark while he conducts a sight test on my own eyes. It seems to me that his eyes are slightly damp. Lachrymose. Meaning close to tears or given to weeping. He asks me to read out loud the alphabet on the fifth line of a test chart while he places various lenses over my left eye. Look at the G, he commands, and when I can’t find the G, he makes a joke – ‘G for Gone’. When the test is concluded, he tells me I will need a new prescription. He explains how there are always new discoveries in the world of optometry, and he likes to give his attention, as he is doing now, to accuracy and detail. He insists that when I come to collect my new spectacles, he would like to personally fit them and make any necessary adjustments.

Three days after my sight test, my mother died. She had been unwell for some time. Every day life is just the same as it was before her death, yet it is totally different. It is as if time itself has slowed down as I lift a cup of coffee to my lips.

The atoms in the air seem to drift like invisible snow on my sofa. At the same time, it is early spring and daffodils are pushing through the grass in London parks.

When I return to collect my spectacles, I discover that my own eyes are now lachrymose. Although my mother’s death was not unexpected, I realise the finality of death is always unexpected. In fact, looking back (with my short-sighted eyes), I can see that I expected her to die but to still be alive. This is not rational, but it seems to be the deal I had made to come to terms with the idea that her death was expected.

The optometrist is polite and genial. He asks me to sit opposite him while he removes

the new spectacles from their suede case. His fingertips are very light and soft. I look into his damp eyes with my damp eyes as he slips the handles of the spectacles over my ears. While he makes adjustments, he tells me that in the 18th century, some spectacle frames were made from whalebone, which was easy to carve. I float in and out of his conversation, and what comes to mind as he speaks, is the sudden, startling memory of a painting by the Spanish artist, Goya.

At first glance it is a decorous portrait of a young aristocrat, a four-year-old boy dressed in a red suit, his small feet trapped in white satin shoes. A cage full of singing birds keeps him company, as does his pet magpie. Two predatory cats sit near his feet, calm but alert, as they wait to pounce on the magpie. Lurking in the shadows is the nearly invisible third cat, its eyes glittering in the dark. At least nine eyes stare out of the canvas, yet like an optometrist, Goya was interested in what was happening behind the eye. He painted this spectral portrait about the fragility of life with an assortment of brushes, but he mostly painted it with his mind.

And Goya’s mind was going to blow apart. The melancholy that will torment him a decade later has already opened its many eyes. I did not need my new spectacles to see this painting, because it was imprinted in my mind’s eye. It was in conversation with my recent loss, which like the third invisible cat, had been lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce.

As the lachrymose optometrist wraps my spectacles in a square of black silk, I wonder if we both secretly know that even when we expect loss, we do not wish to be offered various lenses to see it clearly.

winter 2016 | ra magazine 67

Critical issues in art and architecture

Debate

I L LUS T R AT I O N BY L EO N I E B OS

The Question Are utopian ideas good for architecture?

68 ra magazine | winter 2016

Yes… We need utopian visions to wake us up from the slumber of the status quo, argues architect ian ritchie ra ‘Utopia’ derives from the Greek ou (no) and topos (place), meaning ‘no place’. Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) depicted a perfect society on an imaginary island. His was a literary vision, as were Plato’s Republic (4th century BCE) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

In a world devastated by war, the Russian Revolution of 1917 set out to create a real utopia. As the RA’s show of Soviet art reveals, architecture, art and design, integrated as part of everyday life, were to beget human progress.

Technology would be extended to its limits and the earth, under mankind’s dominion, be subservient to human needs. Avant-garde architects and artists across Europe joined the modernist effort. A torrent of new ideas, theories and institutions resulted, including two lasting phenomena: Suprematism and Constructivism.

Subsequent disillusionment with utopian thinking after the war was linked to parallels between utopian thinking and revolutionary ideology, and because utopian architects may have had little trouble imagining a desirable goal, but few had any idea how to get there or the unintended consequences.

No… Architects are idealists, but they can also be control freaks, writes critic hugh pearman ‘Behold Celesteville! The elephants have just finished building it and are now resting or bathing. Babar, with Arthur and Zephir, is sailing round it in his boat, admiring his new Capital.

Each elephant has a house of his own… All the windows look out over the big lake. The Palace of Work is next to the Palace of Pleasure, which is very convenient.’

Behold also the mighty king-elephant Babar himself, seemingly so clever and concerned for the good of his people. But he is in fact an absolute monarch, requested to become king by a council of elephants who neglected to put a time limit on his tenure. His home at the top of the town looks out over the regimented rows of houses, just as the mill-owners’ mansions in Industrial-Revolution Britain looked out past their own palaces of work to the terraces

‘The problem with utopia is the obsession with symmetry and perfection and its suppression of any individual impulse’

Architecture is often quoted as a reflection of our society (Mies van der Rohe: ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space’).

In fact, we are the first animal on the planet capable of imagining and realising new environments that in turn shape us and evolve as we evolve. Architecture can thus be defined as a neuro-design learning loop.

We now live in built spaces resulting from the realisation of another kind of utopia: the capitalist vision of individualism, consumerism, materialism and an insatiable appetite for the ‘new and different’, fuelled by advertising, that drives an unsustainable world economy. It is a utopia that has woven a seductive web of habit, inertia and automatism around the world’s cultures, which commerce exploits – and this particular loop is destructive.

Sometimes there are paradigm shifts that move society forward. The developments of current technology give us the means to create a global society, which is why, in socio-political and economic terms, utopian thinking in architecture has never been more important, whether it be poetically polemical or philosophically believable and implementable. A utopian vision is about escaping the status quo – waking up.

I believe in the value of utopian thinking, and as an architect I am driven by an ambition to synthesise poetic and philosophical thinking to realise my dreams and visions of a better future. To have shared in the invention of structural glazing in the early 1980s – which

‘Current technology gives us the means to create a global society, which is why utopian thinking in architecture has never been more important ’

they had so kindly provided for their workers.

It’s all about surveillance and control, of course.

It’s more than a little creepy, this utopia malarkey.

Opinions are divided on the intentions of Babar’s French author, Jean de Brunhoff, back in the 1930s. As Babar brings his newly learned metropolitan ways back to Africa, wearing his dandy green suit and establishing his elite settlement, they look a lot like French neocolonialism. But was De Brunhoff championing colonialism (neo or actual) in these otherwise charming children’s stories, or satirising it?

The same question, of course, is constantly asked of Thomas More’s original Utopia as he delineated it 500 years ago. His model is a compact country with 54 cities. Note the isolationist tendency: its builders have dug a 14-mile wide channel to separate it from the mainland, so making it into an island as hard to escape as to invade. Even on the island, movement is restricted and passes must be shown at all times. It is a slave society with an elected monarch-for-life. Punishments meted out for sexual misconduct there would be familiar to those living in today’s Saudi Arabia. There are, of course, also sumptuary laws, governing the way people must dress.

Everyone must do certain kinds of work, especially manual labour. To keep the population absolutely stable, it is forcibly moved around the cities or sent off to mainland colonies.

It is all very prophetic of Mao’s catastrophic Cultural Revolution.

The problem with the concept of utopia is obvious: the obsession with symmetry and perfection, and its inevitable suppression of any individual impulse by the will of rulers always prone to over-simplification and tyranny. To achieve such an idealised society is to force people into ways of living and behaving that brooks no denial, admits of no alternative. Architecturally, exactly the same applies. Architects are idealists: they want to make the world better and they have the skills and imagination to do so. But some architects can also be control freaks who like everything to be in its proper designated space, preferably geometrically arranged on a grid plan.

It’s the same mindset, which is why historically every tyrant has a squad of helpful architects in tow. And of course, some great buildings can result.

But there is always a Resistance, as fictionally celebrated in films ranging from Logan’s Run to The Lego Movie. Utopias are doomed to crumble because their straitjacket – political and physical – is too rigid, too brittle. Too perfect, resistant to further development. There is nothing wrong with dreaming of a better and fairer society, and making efforts to implement it. We should never give up on that. But don’t over-think or overcontrol either the system or the place. Everything will not be awesome. Eventually, the people will rise against you.

gave credence to Mies van der Rohe’s utopian transparent skyscraper – is an example.

My measures of a utopian vision are: does it have value, can it be built and will it change lives for the better? But it is the questions we ask about a city’s relationships, networks and flows – including the flow of money – and the true costs of buildings that govern architectural and urban projects and design strategies.

Architecture can begin to describe spaces that link private and public domains in ways that are not solely dictated by divisive economic perceptions and consumerism. Architects can engage with technology and the biological and neurosciences to create buildings on the basis of scientific knowledge – not ego, ideology or fashion – to enhance the well-being of their users.

But there is no point in creating these piecemeal without knowing what you want your city to become. What engages are the ideas: optimism, hope, a new process and a set of principles to guide an exploration of architecture – a committed plea for a lived reality using social understanding, innovation and technology that can lead to better futures for societies worldwide.

Are utopian ideas good for architecture?

Visit http://roy.ac/debateutopia to vote.

Last issue we asked: Is originality in art overrated?

36 per cent in our poll said ‘Yes’, 64 per cent ‘No’

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Debate

Shedding new light Can an artist change their perspective on life through the creative act? Paul Nash’s paintings from the Western Front suggest they can, argues richard davey mounds beneath them. Above this desolate scene dawn breaks in a shell-burst of white light.

When considered in the light of what we know from Nash’s own letters or from our knowledge of history, this image of sunrise on the Western Front, with its apparently optimistic title, seems full of irony. But if we look at the work without this knowledge we encounter a scene where shafts of sunlight emerge from above blood red clouds to bathe the shattered trees and landscape in a symbolic light that is very different to the darker, more sombre design of the original drawing.

In his letter to Margaret, Nash described sunrises as blasphemous, their innate suggestion of hope anathema in a war-torn world. So why did he include it in this painting? Although it had been present in the original sketch, there was no

‘The sunrise is, for me, a reminder that a work of art, and the creative act, may not always directly illustrate an artist’s biography’

I M P ER I A L WA R M US EU M /© I W M ( A r t. I W M A R T 1146)

We Are Making a New World, 1918, by Paul Nash

‘Sunset and sunrise are blasphemous,’ Paul Nash wrote to his wife, Margaret, in late 1917 while serving as a war artist on the frontline near Ypres: ‘they are mockeries to man, only the black rain out of the bruised and swollen clouds all through the bitter black of night is fit atmosphere in such a land. The rain drives on, the stinking mud becomes more evilly yellow, the shell holes fill up with green-white water, the roads and tracks are covered in inches of slime, the black dying trees ooze and sweat and the shells never cease.’

Spring of that year had been a relatively quiet time in Ypres, and in an earlier letter Nash had described how nature had reclaimed the battle-scarred landscape: ‘Today it was a vivid green; the most broken trees even had sprouted somewhere and in the midst, from the depth of the wood’s bruised heart poured out the throbbing song of a nightingale.’ But the Third Battle of Ypres, begun in July and waged amid unseasonably wet weather, transformed the landscape again into a desolate sea of mud, shattered trees and decomposing bodies.

The impact on Nash’s art of seeing this newly devastated landscape and the human casualties of battle was immediate and obvious.

The numerous drawings he made there were his attempt to capture the full horror of the war he was witnessing. His use of dark paper, and the

Vorticist angularity and rhythms he had learnt through his fellow war artist C.W. Nevinson, suggested that hope had now disappeared, along with the sunrise, sunset, vivid green spring grass and the song of the nightingale.

In their place was what the novelist Arnold Bennett described as a ‘dignified rage… a restrained passion of resentment at the spectacle of what men suffer’. In his introduction to Nash’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London in May 1918, Bennett wrote of the artist’s ‘fierce determination to transmit to the beholder the full true horror of war’. In a letter to Margaret, Nash described himself as the ‘messenger’ of a ‘bitter truth’, revealing the land as one ‘huge grave’ that is ‘unspeakable, godless, hopeless’.

For many visitors to the Leicester Galleries exhibition the epitome of Nash’s rage was to be found in We are Making a New World (1918, above), a painting developed from his drawing Sunrise, Inverness Copse (1918). He has turned the land into an unstable sea of mud, pockmarked by artillery craters and oozing with the fetid, greenyellow slime of decomposition. Marching across this scene are the shattered trunks and limbs of trees, no longer the silent witnesses to life of his pre-war paintings but mute sentinels to death and destruction, their cruciform figures embodying the sacrifice of the invisible forms buried in the

reason for Nash to use it in the final version if he wanted to convey the true hopeless horror of war that his letters describe.

This sunrise is, for me, a reminder that a work of art, and the creative act, may not always directly illustrate an artist’s biography and reflect their state of mind. They can also be a place of encounter and surprise for the artist, a place where their established and stated attitudes are challenged, and where they themselves may be forced to reflect, reconsider and see anew.

Did Nash, wrestling with colour, line and form in that space of creative uncertainty and encounter that transformed his drawing into We are Making a New World, rediscover the possibility of the sunrise? Did the pyramid form of the clouds in the drawing remind him of his earlier painting The Pyramids in the Sea (1912), in which he saw the pyramid symbolising the ascent from the earthly to the spiritual, and the movement from chaos to form? Did the creative act, like the green grass and new growth of that spring, help his horrified heart remember the sound of the nightingale?

And as he made a new world on the canvas, did it help him to see in the battle-scarred soil of Ypres the hope of that new world?

Paul Nash Tate Britain, London, 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk, until 5 March 2017

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Meeting the critics As co-curator of ‘Abstract Expressionism’, edith devaney visited two of the movement’s key commentators, Dore Ashton and Irving Sandler The emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s is, in relative terms, recent history.

Although its first-generation artists are no longer alive, two of the movement’s most important champions are still with us: the art critics Dore Ashton and Irving Sandler. In December 2015, I met both on a visit to New York in preparation for the Academy’s exhibition of Abstract Expressionism. They were full of curiosity as to how the show’s British curators – David Anfam and I – would examine this most American of movements from a 21st-century perspective.

Ashton said that she and Sandler were ‘probably the last eyewitnesses’.

The most notable art critics of the period were Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg.

Their fierce disagreements on interpretation, played out in print with much vigour over many years, did much to focus attention on the new art emerging from, in the main, New York. Sandler and Ashton, in different ways, became part of the artists’ milieu: befriending and supporting them, documenting and interpreting their development and social interactions.

But Ashton and Sandler were no social gadflies or art groupies. They were, and are, intellectuals of the first order who recognised at close hand that they were witnessing something remarkable in the history of modern art. They embraced the opportunity with a genuine passion,

providing us with a number of publications that, to this day, inform and enrich our understanding of this remarkable period of art history. Indeed the first publication to chart the history of Abstract Expressionism was Sandler’s The Triumph of American Painting (1970), which documented its transformative role in modern art. Ashton’s The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, published two years later, captured the cultural coalescence in the city from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The razor-sharp observations of Ashton’s writing suggested to me that she would be a formidable personality. The slight woman who met me at the door of her house on 10th Street, dressed in black and with dark hair cut into a bob, certainly did not appear stern in any way. Now 88 years old, she informed me that she had lived in the same house for well over half a century. The painters Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had been neighbours and she had regularly entertained them and other artist friends, including Mark Rothko and David Smith, in the kitchen where we sat and talked.

Sandler’s hospitality extended to meeting me at the lift of his modern apartment block so that he could escort me to the door of his flat, a large modern space filled with immediately recognisable art. When he discussed what he confessed were ‘his first loves in art’, his energy gathered and his 90 years appeared to diminish.

As we explored which artists the Academy’s exhibition should focus on, Sandler referred to those he considered the ‘three pioneers’– Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning.

‘De Kooning was in a sense the European, with Pollock and Still the Americans – they took a very strong American, anti-European stand, and Bill never did’. Sandler suggested that De Kooning considered himself to be moving European art in a new direction, ‘but never renouncing it’. Ashton agreed with Sandler that De Kooning held a special position within the final analysis of the movement. ‘Of all of them,’ she said, ‘he was the painters’ painter and in my opinion anything he did was fascinating.’

Both critics found it difficult to separate the personalities of the artists entirely from their regard for the work. As Sandler put it, ‘everyone has an artist they can’t stand’. For him it was Motherwell, and although he maintained a good relationship with the artist, recognising and recording Motherwell’s historical importance, nevertheless he did not warm to the work. He detected an insecurity in Motherwell, who confessed himself less of a ‘natural painter’ than Philip Guston or De Kooning, but who, according to Sandler, positioned himself as an intellectual.

Motherwell, in contrast, was a close friend of Ashton, and shared her interest in and knowledge of literature and philosophy. For Ashton, Barnett Newman was the artist she struggled with: ‘I didn’t get along well with Barney Newman, who thought he was God’s gift to everybody.’

Consequently she did not write about his work, nor for that matter did she write about the work of Still, who she did not consider to be ‘so important’. It is of note that both Newman and Motherwell regarded themselves as spokesmen for the wider group of artists, which may have put them into opposition with critics.

Ashton noted that the ‘group’ that we all refer to now were ‘a whole bunch of raving individuals’.

‘We didn’t think it was a movement,’ she said.

‘I don’t remember any of those guys ever talking about something called Abstract Expressionism’.

Women artists did have a place within the society of the artists, according to Ashton: ‘If the woman was good… they were respectful.’ Kline was a favourite of both Ashton and Sandler – ‘a beautiful man in every way’, Sandler recalled, and the person Pollock called for when he showed up drunk at the Cedar Tavern on Mondays, the day he came to the city to see his therapist.

Sandler was keen to stress the intelligence of the artists, and how they were able to articulate their ideas to great effect. ‘They all possessed a great knowledge of culture, including Pollock, and those who knew him, like [the sculptor] Tony Smith, confirmed this… Motherwell, Rothko, Newman – these were brilliant people.’

The same can be said of Ashton and Sandler. To meet them, and to receive their encouragement and guidance on a subject that they have lived and breathed so brilliantly for the past 60 years, was, as a curator, a remarkable opportunity to touch history.

B o bby E va ns

Debate

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Let art be your legacy For nearly 250 years, the Royal Academy has given art lovers a sense of wonder; artists the chance to create. Together we’ve been absorbed in past masterpieces and inspired by future marvels. With a gift in your will, you could help the Royal Academy to make, debate and exhibit art in the years to come.

Protect the future of the Royal Academy with a gift in your will To find out more, please contact our Legacy Manager on on 020 7300 5677 or email legacies@royalacademy.org.uk

The Royal Academy Trust is a registered charity with Charity Number 1067270. Image Š Benedict Johnson

The latest developments in and around the RA

Academy News 1

2. Lynne Nesbit, Friend for 40 years

Photographed in the Annenberg Courtyard ‘There was a bit about me that really enjoyed sailing through the doors past the queues,’ says Lynne, recalling what it felt like to be one of the first ever Friends. ‘And then sinking into those leather sofas in the Friends Room and just feeling part of something very gracious and uplifting.

But there was a sense of commitment as well – I wasn’t just popping in.’ Lynne has been a Friend for the 40 years that the scheme has been running, and, although she regrets the demise of the Friends Room sofas, she has been to ‘almost every exhibition’. These include many that, as a great lover of the Impressionists, she might never have chosen to see if she hadn’t been able to ‘waltz in’ – the Anish Kapoor show and most recently ‘Abstract Expressionism’.

But while in some ways the RA has been her ‘London club’, it’s much more than that. ‘The Academy elevates one’s consciousness, because you’re taken out of your mundane world into something that is higher. And that is something that everybody needs.’ She feels so strongly that she has left a gift to the RA in her will. ‘It’s so important to make sure that this great institution carries on, because it’s an academy. Being a Friend, I know I’m also supporting living artists.’

Forty years of Friends As the Friends scheme reaches a milestone, alison hissey asks members what they value most.

Portraits by benedict johnson

It was a pivotal moment in the history of the Academy when, in 1977, former RA President Hugh Casson inaugurated the pioneering Friends scheme. For many, it transformed the Academy into a personal haven in the heart of London. The support of Friends has been crucial in allowing the RA to develop its programme of exhibitions and education, as well as modernise its historic buildings. This year, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

1. Rebecca Hunter, Friend for 1 year

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Photographed in the Keeper’s House Rebecca’s first impression of the RA, from a visit with her aunt a few years ago, is still fresh in her mind. ‘I was blown away by the architecture: you walk into the courtyard, and you realise it’s not just an incredible place to enjoy artwork but it’s also an incredible building as well.’ She had always meant to return, and so after graduating and moving to London for work she signed up as a Friend in May. ‘I’d probably describe myself as a culture vulture. So I love anything where I can learn and develop and experience different things.’

For someone who is fairly new to London, the RA and in particular the Keeper’s House have been welcome hideaways from the hustle and bustle. ‘I love the garden – when you’re in Soho you can escape the tourists and go for a drink. I always bring my family here when they come up from Cheshire because it feels really secret.’ The highlights of her first few months as a Friend have included the David Hockney RA show, a chocolate and wine tasting evening, and enjoying art with a glass of champagne in hand at the Summer Exhibition Friends Preview evening.

‘It’s not often you get to do that in a gallery.’

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3. Dee Oteng, Friend for 7 years

4

5

4. Fionagh Green, Friend for 10 years

5. Jason Leech, Friend for 12 years

Photographed in the Academicians’ Room For Fionagh Green, an early experience of learning to paint was formative in a journey to becoming an art lover and eventually a Friend of the RA: ‘I had lessons from the watercolourist Michael Chaplin, but I think I told him I was his worst ever pupil and he didn’t argue! I think in a way that made me appreciate good art.’

Now, as a long-time Friend of the RA, Green finds the Academy an oasis: ‘I used to come up to London for work and would visit the RA. There was the beauty of the building and the art was challenging, and the tea was good too.’

For Fionagh, as well as the memories of good times, such as dancing to the Kaiser Chiefs at the Summer Exhibition Preview Party, her time as a Friend is about the feeling of being lost in the moment in front of a picture. It is also the intimacy of an artist-run institution that appeals.

She remembers sitting on the floor listening to a talk by Yinka Shonibare RA and being struck by his enthusiasm and the experience of meeting him in person. ‘The RA’s really good at opening your eyes to different things. I always thought that I was more a Pre-Raphaelite than a Hans Hofmann, but I’m not so sure now.’

Photographed in the Main Galleries Jason Leech’s affection for the Royal Academy was sparked during sixth-form visits while studying his General Studies course. But he’d been coming since he was 13. ‘And at some point I decided that the RA was no longer a passing acquaintance, because I was spending so much time here.’

‘It is a friendship in every single sense, and we’ve been together for more than ten years,’ he says. ‘The RA actually tells a story and brings the audience into the exhibition, explaining why it has chosen to show what you’ve chosen to see.’ One of the most important functions of the Academy, he thinks, is how its educational work reaches out to people no matter their origins, echoing his own ideals. For Jason, however, the most distinctive part of the RA’s programme, and something he never misses, is the Summer Exhibition. ‘It’s contemporary, of the present, and created by the institution itself. I think that is unique, and enchanting.’

Photographed on the Grand Staircase One of Dee’s memorable moments at the RA was when she went to the Summer Exhibition. ‘I was looking at a painting and the person behind me shouted “It’s mine!” And it was the artist, who was crying because he was so overwhelmed that his piece had been selected. He was an engineer by profession who had been made redundant and his wife was supporting him while he lived his dream of being an artist. I felt so happy for him.

If mine was selected I’d probably cry as well.’

Although Dee has a degree in art history and philosophy, the RA for her is about such experiences, as well as getting up close with the artwork itself. Being a Friend allows her to see exhibitions with fewer people around, to experience the works in a more intimate way. She also visits shows at least once by herself to absorb them without anyone asking her questions. After that, she’ll often take her friend Becky, an art teacher. ‘We have the same kind of pace around a show. I learn from her, she learns from me.’

She rates ‘Sensation’ as her favourite show, but still looks back on 2009, when she first became a Friend, as a golden year. ‘I saw the Summer Exhibition, then Anish Kapoor, then Van Gogh.

I visited every single show about four times.’

3

Friends 40th Anniversary Reception Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8090, 24 Jan, 7–10pm, http://roy.ac/friends40th.

See Events and Lectures page 102

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Be surrounded by art in Give an art experience to a 2017 loved one this

Christmas royalacademy.org.uk/ giftmembership

Be a part of the future of the RA Clyfford Still’s ‘PH-950’, 1950, in the Abstract Expressionism exhibition, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Works on loan from the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver © City and County of Denver / DACS 2016 Photo: © David Parry

Academy News

In Memoriam: John Partridge RA

f r o m t h e co l l ect i o n o f j o h n pa r t r i d ge r a / T h e H is to r i c En gl a n d A r ch i v e . P h oto gr a p h: Ja m es O. Dav i es/ T h e H is to r i c En gl a n d A r ch i v e

peter schmitt, the RA’s former Surveyor to the Fabric, reflects on the life and work of his former colleague

Xxxxxxx

John Partridge RA, photographed in 2008

I first met John Partridge RA (b.1924) when I arrived in London in 1972. With an alien’s card and a fistful of coins, I spent the day ringing around for work. I was steered towards the office of Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis (HKPA), where I was interviewed by John, and Bill Howell, in a Japanese temple-style office of pine spars and rails under a slatted timber ceiling. We talked about Louis Kahn and architecture. Bill was a natural communicator. John had a gentle wit and bucket-loads of kindness. I instantly wanted to be part of HKPA. I worked there until the day the practice was dissolved, in 1993.

Concrete was John’s material of choice, in vogue during the 1960s and ’70s, but in his case handled with sensitivity. ‘The skin in concrete is quite thin,’ he explained in an interview with Elain Harwood of Historic England in 2007.

‘You get thickness by projecting windows out to give reveals that grade light into the building.’

John was referring to the Hilda Besse building at St Antony’s College, Oxford (1966–71, above right) – the project that gave him greatest pride and was deemed by many to be his best.

Every element was the logical outcome of structural thinking, right down to the furniture.

The pre-cast concrete cladding shed rainwater without staining – ‘elevational plumbing’, he dubbed it. The ‘diagrid’ of diagonal rooflights

The Hilda Besse building at St Antony’s College, Oxford, designed by Partridge at his firm HKPA

over the college dining room would later find expression in Foster and Partners’ Great Court at the British Museum. The entrance sequence harked back to Bernini’s Scala Regia at St Peter’s in Rome, such was John’s ability to think and design in the round.

In 1950 John joined the London County Council’s architects’ department, where he met his future partners: Bill Howell, John Killick and Stanley Amis. Together they designed Alton West, a cluster of tower blocks in concrete, embracing 2,000 flats, on the edge of Richmond Park. It was a homage to Le Corbusier set in a Capability Brown landscape, remoulded with John’s picturesque eye, and is regarded as a masterpiece of the era.

These ‘troublemakers’, as John dubbed the quartet, then took a leap of faith: they founded Howell, Killick & Partridge in 1959, with Amis joining in 1961, hoping to win the competition to create the new Churchill College, Cambridge.

They came second (due to cost), but were the critics’ favourite, and never looked back.

For 21 years after Bill’s death in a car accident in 1974, John shouldered responsibility for HKPA. The pundits gloss over this huge and lucrative body of work, which included the Fleet Maintenance Base and the Submarine Refit Complex at Devonport Naval Base, prisons

and law courts, with the occasional competition thrown in: Leeds Playhouse and Glasgow Concert Hall, neither of which they won, but John never lost his zest for a good competition.

Three courthouses, at Warrington, Basildon and Haywards Heath, came into HKPA around the same time in the mid- to late-1980s. For these John turned to brick. They were a masterclass in discrete circulation, whereby the public, judge, jury and persons in custody can only meet up in the courtroom. This had been key to John’s flawless planning of the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain, Trinidad, a competition he won outright. It filled a city block, with 16 courtrooms encircling a vast Court Hall at its heart.

After the heartache of winding down HKPA, John spent his remaining years in great demand: on committees, judging competitions, examining and consulting, and at the RA (he had become an Academician in 1988), which he really loved.

‘However, the thing he valued most in his career,’ says his son Richard, ‘was his professional status as an architect.’ He was still able to call himself an architect until the day he died, aged 91.

John’s best buildings are a joy to encounter and his attention to detail stands the test of time. Those who knew him will miss his three-dimensional mindset, his engaging sense of humour, technical skill, creative flair and sure, twinkling eye.

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Exhibitions in London and the rest of the UK

Listings London Public Barbican CENTRE

Silk Street EC2, 020 7638 4141, barbican.org.uk

The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined until 5 Feb 2017. Bedwyr Williams: The Gulch until 8 Jan 2017.

dulwich picture gallery

© N AT I O N A L P O R T R A I T G A L L ERY, LO N D O N . © T h e A rtis t/Co u rtesy A L B EM A R L E G allery. © THE LONDON TR ANS P ORT MUS EUM . © THE ARTIST. COURTESY BE AUX ARTS LONDON

Gallery Road SE21, 020 8693 5254, dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

Adriaen van de Velde, Dutch Master of Landscape until 15 Jan 2017. Am I Rembrandt? 8 Nov-5 March 2017.

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) 8 Feb-

4 June 2017. estorick collection of modern italian art

Canonbury Square N1, 020 7704 9522, estorickcollection.com Closed for refurbishment until January 2017.

london transport museum

Covent Garden Piazza WC2, 020 7379 6344, ltmuseum.co.uk Designology The exhibition explores how design is encountered in our everyday journeys and how this has evolved over the last century, as well as looking at how our travel experiences might develop in the future. From the visual to the virtual and from Victorian engineering genius to modernist masterpieces, designology will uncover the fascinating designs and processes behind London’s moving metropolis.

THE National Gallery

Trafalgar Square WC2, 020 7747 2885, nationalgallery.org.uk Beyond Caravaggio Darkness, light and drama. Explore the influence of one of art’s most infamous and revolutionary figures, until 15 Jan 2017. Australia’s Impressionists Discover Australia’s Impressionist movement in the first UK exhibition to focus on the subject, 7 Dec26 March 2017. Maíno’s Adorations: Heaven on Earth Experience two outstanding masterpieces by Spanish painter Maíno, on display in the UK for the first time, until 29 Jan 2017.

National Portrait gallery

St Martin’s Place WC2, 020 7306 0055, npg.org.uk Picasso Portraits The exhibition includes over 75 portraits by the artist in all media, ranging from well-known masterpieces to works never shown in Britain before, until 5 Feb 2017.

Luc Tuymans: Glasses This exhibition

is the first time that the artist has made a thematic selection from his body of work of portraits of people wearing glasses, until 2 April 2017.

Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends

This is the first exhibition of portraits

by Howard Hodgkin. It will explore the artist’s development of a personal visual language of portraiture, which challenges traditional forms of representation, 23 March-18 June.

Tate britain

Millbank SW1, 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk Turner Prize 2016 The Turner Prize returns to Tate Britain. The four shortlisted artists are Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde, until 2 Jan 2017.

Paul Nash The largest exhibition for a generation of the work of landscape artist Paul Nash, until 5 March 2017. David Hockney This major retrospective will offer an unprecedented overview of the artist’s career to date, 9 Feb-29 May 2017.

London Commercial ABBott and holder

30 Museum Street WC1, 020 7637 3981, abbottandholder.co.uk

Henry Silk (1883-1947): East London Still Lives Opens 17 Nov.

Alan cristea

43 Pall Mall SW1, 020 7439 1866, alancristea.com Vicken Parsons: Iris 24 Nov-7 Jan 2017.

New Editions 12 Jan-4 Feb 2017.

Jim Dine 9 Feb-11 March 2017.

ALBEMARLE GALLERY

49 Albemarle Street, 020 7499 1616, albemarlegallery.com

Davina Jackson: A Sculptor in Paint

10-26 Nov. bankside gallery

48 Hopton Street SE1, 020 7928 7521, banksidegallery.com The Masters: Etching

Curated by Norman Ackroyd RA RE, 9-20 Nov. The Mini Picture Show RWS & RE Christmas Exhibition

Tate modern

9 Dec-22 Jan 2017. Society of Wood

Bankside SE1, 020 7887 8888, tate.org.uk

Engravers 79th Annual Exhibition

The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection Presenting an unrivalled

selection of classic modernist images from one of the greatest private collections of photography, 10 Nov-7 May 2017. Robert Rauschenberg The first posthumous retrospective of one of the trail blazers of late twentieth century art, 1 Dec-2 April 2017. Wolfgang Tillmans This exhibition brings Tillmans’ extended practice to the fore, focusing on the artist’s work produced in the fourteen years since his show at Tate Britain, 15 Feb-11 June 2017.

V&A

Cromwell Road SW7, 020 7942 2000, vam.ac.uk

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Records and Rebels 1966-1970

A musical odyssey though the seismic 60s, until 26 Feb 2017. Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery See

1-19 Feb 2017.

BEAUX ARTS London

Conversation, 2015, by Davina Jackson at Albemarle Gallery

48 Maddox Street W1, 020 7493 1155, beauxartslondon.co.uk

Anthony Frost: Luminous Tracks

17 Nov-17 Dec. CATTO gallery

100 Heath Street NW3, 020 7435 6660, cattogallerylondon.co.uk Derek Balmer Solo exhibition, 10-28 Nov. circa gallery london

80 Fulham Road SW3, 020 7590 9991, circagallerylondon.com

Deborah Bell - Dreams of Immortality: Blood and Gold

18 Nov-17 Dec. connaught brown

2 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7408 0362, connaughtbrown.co.uk

the luxury medieval embroideries that England was famed for, until 5 Feb 2017.

Raoul Dufy: A Spectacle of Society until 25 Nov. The Salon Art + Design, New York 10-14 Nov. Winter Exhibition

Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear Discover the fascinating

French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern Master periods, 1-23 Dec.

and sometimes controversial story of underwear design, until 12 March 2017.

Virginia Woolf, 1911-12, by Vanessa Bell at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

Brightest London is Best Reached by Underground, 1924, by Horace Taylor, at the London Transport Museum

curwen & New Academy Gallery

34 Windmill Street W1, 020 7323 4700, curwengallery.co.uk

HOW TO BOOK For inclusion in RA Magazine’s paid Listings section for public and commercial galleries in the UK call 020 7300 5657

Auto Chip, 2016, by Anthony Frost RA at Beaux Arts London

or email catherine.cartwright@royalacademy.org.uk. Readers should contact galleries directly for opening times and ticketing queries

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Listings

Selected MA Printmaking graduates from the London schools, 11-28 Jan 2017.

Sculpture Show 12 artists working in a variety of sculpture mediums and Adam Bridgland in the upper gallery, 2-25 Feb 2017. the cynthia corbett gallery

Portrait of Vova Mamontov reading, 1890s, by Alexander Bogomazov at James Butterwick

020 8947 6782, thecynthiacorbettgallery.com Art Miami The Art Miami Pavilion Midtown, Wynwood Arts District 3101 NE 1st Avenue Miami, FL 33137, 29 Nov-4 Dec. London Art Fair Business Design Centre, Islington, 17-22 Jan 2017.

COLLECT The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects, Saatchi Gallery 2-6 Feb 2017.

EAMES FINE ART

58 Bermondsey Street SE1, 020 7407 1025, eamesfineart.com

Ross Loveday: ‘So you think you know me...?’ Etchings, sculptures and paintings, until 4 Dec. Christmas Secret Bid Auction 7 Dec. Sale of

Mulled, 2014, by Katherine Gili at Felix & Spear

Birches and Beinn Bhan, 2016, by David Tress at Messums

unsold lots and showcase of Austin Cole’s work, until 24 Dec. In Search of Samuel Palmer An exhibition of Samuel Palmer’s etchings and contemporary original prints inspired by them, 11-29 Jan 2017.

marlborough fine art

6 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7629 5161, marlboroughlondon.com Catherine Goodman 18 Nov-14 Jan 2017. Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud Etchings 18 Jan-25 Feb 2017. Maggi Hambling 1 March-15 April.

Richard Cartwright: All the Dreams We Had 8 Feb-4 March 2017

LEIGHTON HOUSE MUSEUM

12 Holland Park Road W14, 020 7602 3316, leightonhouse.co.uk

Flaming June: The Making of an Icon Frederic Lord Leighton Leighton’s most

celebrated work returns to the artist’s house alongside other works from his last Royal Academy submission in 1895, until 2 April 2017. the linda blackstone gallery

23 Oaklands Road N20, 07808 612 193, lindablackstone.com Affordable Art Fair Singapore F1 Pit Building, Singapore (Stand A3-09), 1720 Nov. From her website and her studio in North London, Linda Blackstone has an eclectic selection of art to suit all tastes. Viewing by appointment. llewellyn alexander

124–126 The Cut SE1, 020 7620 1322/1324, llewellynalexander.com Christmas Exhibition Oils and watercolours by Lisa Graa Jensen RI, Pamela Kay NEAC RWS RBA, Geoffrey Wynne RI and John Yardley RI, 22 Nov7 Jan 2017.

FELIX & SPEAR

long & ryle gallery

71 St Mary’s Road W5, 020 8566 1574, felixandspear.com Looking for the Physical Sculpture and Drawings by Katherine Gili, 10 Nov-13 Dec. Christmas Exhibition A mixed show of 20th century Modern British art and selective Contemporary works, opens 15 Dec.

4 John Islip Street SW1, 020 7834 1434, longandryle.com

the foundling museum

40 Brunswick Square WC1, 020 7841 3592, foundlingmuseum.org.uk Feeding the 400 until 8 Jan 2017.

Child’s Play: Mark Neville 3 Feb30 April 2017. greenwich printmakers gallery

1a Greenwich Market SE10, 020 8858 1569, greenwich-printmakers.co.uk Prints for Presents 15 Nov-8 Jan 2017.

Kit Boyd 10-29 Jan 2017.

Nikki Braunton 31 Jan-19 Feb 2017.

Angela Brookes 21 Feb-12 March 2017.

JAMES BUTTERWICK Les Tulipes, 1983, by Érik Desmazières at Works on Paper Fair (exhibited by Elizabeth Harvey-Lee)

John martin gallery

38 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7499 1314, jmlondon.com

34 Ravenscourt Road W6, 020 8748 7320, jamesbutterwick.com Alexander Bogomazov 1880-1930

ongoing.

messums

28 Cork Street W1, 020 7437 5545, messums.com David Tress 16 Nov-2 Dec. David Parfitt Recent Works, 19 Dec-13 Jan 2017. Martyn Mackrill Exhibition and book launch. Mackrill’s marine paintings to include the drawings for Maldwin Drummond’s new book The Riddle, 18 Jan-10 Feb 2017. osborne samuel

23a Bruton Street W1, 020 7493 7939, osbornesamuel.com Sean Henry: Time Being This is Sean Henry’s first solo exhibition at the gallery since 2012. The show includes several new works created especially for the exhibition, until 26 Nov. Masterworks from The Swindon Museum Collection of Modern British Art

Including works by Sir Claude Francis Barry, Vanessa Bell, David Bomberg, Roger Hilton, Leon Kossoff and Alfred Wallis, 12 Jan-11 Feb 2017. The Romantic Impulse Including works

by Michael Ayrton, Robert Colquhoun, John Craxton, John Minton, John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Keith Vaughan, 15 Feb-18 March 2017.

An Italian Journey: Anne Desmet RA

pangolin london

at the Royal Over-Seas League (Park Place, St James’s Street, SW1), until 2 Dec. Christmas Exhibition (at the gallery).

Group show of works by selected artists, (private view: 16 Nov, 6-8pm), 17 Nov-16 Dec. London Art Fair Business Design Centre, Islington, 18-22 Jan 2017.

90 York Way N1, 020 7520 1480, pangolinlondon.com

mall galleries: Federation of British artists

The Mall SW1, 020 7930 6844, www.mallgalleries.org.uk

Ann Christopher RA: All the Cages Have Open Doors An exhibition of

sculpture and works on paper spanning all four decades of Christopher’s oeuvre including new sculptures and a series of drawings inspired by the West Coast of Ireland, until 23 Dec. Christmas Show Sculptor’s prints and Jewellery, 1-23 Dec. piers feetham gallery

Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 30 Nov-11 Dec. The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition Over 250

475 Fulham Road SW6, 020 7381 3031, piersfeethamgallery.com

contemporary works, 21 Feb-7 March 2017. The Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibiton 22 March-1 April 2017.

22-26 Nov.

maNYA IGEL fine artS

21 - 22 Peters Court, Porchester Road W2, 020 7229 1669/8429, manyaigelfinearts.com

The Mayfair Antiques & Fine Art Fair

The London Marriott Hotel, W1, 5-8th Jan 2017.

Antony Bream: A Traveller’s Tale

Geraldine Higson: Recent Paintings 29 Nov-3 Dec. The Small Paintings Group Annual London exhibition together with Christmas Ceramics

8 Dec-18 Jan 2017 (closed 25 Dec-3 Jan 2017). Clare Packer: Collages 9 Feb-4 March 2017.

co u r t esy ja m es b u t t er w i ck . T h e a r t is t/co u r t esy f el i x & s p e a r . © T h e a r t is t/co u r t esy m es s u ms . © THE ARTIST ’S ESTATE /COURTESY ELIZ ABETH HARVEY-LEE

Gerald Mynott and Christmas Exhibition in the upper gallery 1-23 Dec. Hot Off The Press 2017

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Sir Claude Francis Barry, 1883-1970 ,Tower Bridge, London – A War-Time Nocturne, 1843, © The Estate of Claude Francis Barry

ORIGINAL PRINTS AND WORKS ON PAPER

BY CONTEMPORARY ROYAL ACADEMICIANS Norman Ackroyd Stephen Chambers Eileen Cooper Michael Craig Martin Anne Desmet Kenneth Draper

Antony Gormley Albert Irvin Christopher Le Brun Chris Orr Cathie Pilkington Emma Stibbon

Masterworks from The Swindon Collection of Modern British Art 12 January - 11 February 2017 Osborne Samuel 23a Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG T: 020 7493 7939 www.osbornesamuel.com

17th February - 18th March 2017 Preview Thursday 16th February

Knapp Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3QQ. t. 07771 931191 e. info@thechapelarts.com

Mon – Fri 10-6, Sat 10-2 www.swindonmuseumandartgallery.org.uk

Maggi Hambling Touch works on paper

G E R AL D MY NOT T 1- 23 Dec em b er w i th Ch r i stm a s E x h i b i t i o n i n th e u p p e r g a l l e r y

Until 29 January 2017 #MaggiHambling

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Image: Victoria Embankment, Early Evening (detail), watercolour

Maggi Hambling (b. 1945), Sebastian in a Hermès scarf.

Charcoal, 2004, 152.4 x 101.6cm. © Maggi Hambling.

Reproduced by permission of the artist.

From the artist’s collection.

Curwen Gallery

34 Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2JR E: www.curwengallery.com W: gallery@curwengallery.com T:0207 323 4700 Open Mon-Fri 10-6 (Thurs 10-8) Sat 11-5

20/09/2016 16:08 05/10/2016 10:21 25/10/2016 16:05

Listings

David Tindle RA: A Retrospective

Garden on the Hill, 7am, 1984, by David Tindle RA at the Redfern Gallery

at Huddersfield City Art Gallery (Princess Alexandra Walk, Huddersfield, 01484 221964). Celebrating over 60 years’ work by this senior Royal Academician in his home town. Delicate egg tempera landscapes of the 1970s and 80s are contrasted with thickly painted textural landscapes of the 1960s. Portraits and still life paintings complete this overview of Tindle’s life and work, 12 Nov-4 Feb 2017.

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

Exhibition Road SW7, 01798 215007, worksonpaperfair.com Works on Paper Fair Watercolours, drawings and prints. Early, Modern, and Contemporary art on paper under one roof, 9-12 Feb 2017.

Southbank printmakers

Seam, 2016, by Antony Gormley RA at Martin’s at the Chapel

Gabriel’s Wharf, 56 Upper Ground SE1, 020 7928 8184, southbankprintmakers.com Art Gallery next to the Thames, run by printmakers. For the festive season showing small works, perfect as gifts.

All work is original and limited edition.

Featured artists include, Oka, Pateman, Paterson, Peacock, Pienkowska, Ribbans, Ronay. 1 Dec-1 Jan 2017.

SYLVESTER FINE ART

64 Belsize Lane NW3, 020 7443 5990, sylvesterfineart.co.uk Michael Rothenstein from 12 Nov. Thackeray gallery Over Pulteney Bridge, the day Grayson Perry came to town, 2016, by Peter Brown at Victoria Art Gallery

18 Thackeray Street W8, 020 7937 5883, thackeraygallery.com Cascade: Judy Buxton A magnificent collection of 20 new oil paintings, inspired by refections, light and nature, 6-22 Dec. Land & Sea III Annual group show of land and seascapes. New works by Gordon Bryce, Matthew Snowden and Lewis Noble, 17 Jan-3 Feb 2017. New Works: Fiona McAlpine Vibrant still lifes and familiar interiors, 14 Feb-3 March 2017.

Waddington custot galleries

11 Cork Street W1, 020 7851 2200, waddingtoncustot.com Manolo Minares until 19 Nov. Fabienne Verdier: Rhythms and Reflections 25 Nov-4 Feb 2017.

The Spanish Chair, 1998, by Mary Fedden RA at Swindon Museum & Art Gallery

Rest of UK artichoke gallery

Church Street, Ticehurst, East Sussex, 01580 200905, artichokegallery.co.uk In The Landscape Bringing together artists who specialise in watching, enjoying the views and all that appears, until 24 Dec. All Shapes and Sizes Indulging our love of the figurative; looking at people in our own particular way, 21 Jan-25 March 2017. artwave west

Morcombelake, Dorset, 01297 489746, artwavewest.com Winter Exhibition A wonderful collection of artists to end another outstanding year: Amy Albright, Paul Denham, Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf, Susan Laughton, Kathryn Stevens and Bill Zima, 11 Nov-23 Dec. bohun gallery

15 Reading Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, 01491 576228, bohungallery.co.uk

Paper Arabesque: The Art of Collage

An exploration of collage with examples by major 20th Century British artists and contemporary work commissioned especially for the exhibition. Artists include: John Piper, Mary Fedden RA, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Victoria Crowe, David Mach RA, Bryan Ingham, Lennox Dunbar, Louis Turpin and others, 3 Dec-28 Jan 2017. the bowes museum

Barnard Castle, County Durham, 01833 690606, thebowesmuseum.org.uk

Shelf Life: The Ornaments are Talking to Me Clarke’s Cabinets of

Time Lost, curated by Mark Clarke. In a series of cheery assemblage sculptures Belfast born artist Mark Clarke ponders the theme of life, love and loss, until 12 Feb 2017. Image and Substance: St Luke Drawing the Virgin and Child Celebrating this outstanding new acquisition, 22 Nov-8 Dec. The Allure of Napoleon Featuring outstanding

artworks held in the Museum’s collection, 14 Jan-19 March 2017.

Brighton museum and art gallery

Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton, 030 0029 0900, brightonmuseums.org.uk Fashion Cities Africa until 8 Jan 2017.

WATERHOUSE & DODD

Experimental Motion: the Art of Film Innovation until 4 June 2017. Photopunk 40 images from the birth of punk

47 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7734 7800, waterhousedodd.com

by Ian Dickson and Kevin Cummins, 22 Nov-5 March 2017.

The World According to Paul Peter Piech An exhibition of over 60 linocut

prints, 22 Nov-22 Dec.

Brook gallery

30 Fore Street, Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 01395 443003, brookgallery.co.uk JP Reynolds Our favourite humorous and evocative cartoons printed with original colour separation, including Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan, and the Bash Street Kids, December. the Brownston gallery

36 Church Street, Modbury, Devon, 01548 831338, thebrownstongallery.co.uk Winter Exhibition: Fire and Ice

Mixed show featuring gallery favourites Anthony Amos, Tony Parsons, Jerry Browning, Michael Hill, Jennifer Wright, John Hurford and Teresa Pemberton, 10 Nov-23 Dec. South West Academy Exhibition Showcasing the work of twelve selected academicians, 17 March-17 April 2017.

Caroline wiseman at the aldeburgh beach lookout and art house

31 Crag Path, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, 01728 452754, carolinewiseman.com, aldeburghbeachlookout.com

Christmas Show in the Art House

Mixed show including Royal Academicians and other artists who have been inspired by the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, Nov-Dec. London Art Fair Business Design Centre, Islington, 18-22 Jan 2017.

Duchamp 100 Years Later Artists respond to the 100th anniversary of Duchamp’s Urinal (Fountain). All artists welcome to participate, Feb 2017.

CHRIST CHURCH PICTURE GALLERY

Christ Church, St Aldates, Oxford, 01865 276172, chch.ox.ac.uk/gallery

Forgotten Faces: Portraits from our Storeroom until 20 Feb 2017.

Drawing in Red until 16 Jan 2017.

CLARE HALL

Herschel Road, Cambridge, 01223 332360 www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/art Breathing the Kite Artists Karen Eng, Will Hill, Nicholas Juett and Ian Rawlinson alongside archive material of the Kite area of Cambridge. Thoughtprovoking blend of art, history, memory and politics, 19 Jan-1 March 2017.

THE FRY ART GALLERY

Castle Street, Saffron Walden, Essex, 01799 513779, fryartgallery.org

Peas, Poets, Paris, Paolozzi: Inside the Government Art Collection

Lecture by Chantrel Condon, Friends Meeting House, Saffron Walden. £8.00, 7:30pm, Fri 18 Nov. Why Goldmark went Pots Lecture by Mark Goldmark, Friends Meeting House, Saffron

© T h e a r t is t/co u r t esy RED F ER N g a l l ery. Co u r t esy Anto n y Go r m l e y r a a nd A l a n Cr is t e a G a l l ery, Lo nd o n . © T h e a r t is t/co u r t esy v i c to r i a a r t g a l l ery. © t h e Es tat e o f M a ry F edd en RA / B r i d gem a n I m ages)/co u r t esy s w i nd o n m us eu m a nd a r t g a l l ery

THE REDFERN GALLERY

20 Cork Street W1, 020 7734 1732/0578, redfern-gallery.com

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ANNE DESMET RA An Italian Journey

5 October - 2 December 2016

Exhibition open daily from 10am - 6pm

LIU DAN

Royal Over-Seas League Park Place, St James’s Street London SW1A 1LR For more information please contact: +44 (0)207 408 0214 x 219 roslarts@rosl.org.uk www.rosl.org.uk www.longandryle.com

New Landscapes and Old Masters

Free Admission 20 Oct 2016–26 Feb 2017 www.ashmolean.org

Image: Teatro Romano, 2002 Anne Desmet

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14/09/2016 17:15

Image: Teatro Romano, 2002

Signals, 1953, etched and printed by Michael Rothenstein

MICHAEL

Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 2016 30 November to 11 December The Mall, London SW1 www.mallgalleries.org.uk Image: Peter Graham ROI Red Still Life (detail)

ROTHENSTEIN Free entry with this voucher

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64 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BJ Wed - Fri: 11am - 6.30pm, Sat: 10am - 6pm, Sun: 10am - 4pm (also by appointment) t: 020 7443 5990 e: info@sylvesterfineart.co.uk www.sylvesterfineart.co.uk

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Listings

The bespoke travel experts to Russia

“Russia travel specialists that reveal a side to Russia’s past that most never see’’ T h e S p e c TaT o R

Walden. £8.00, 7:30pm, Fri 25 Nov. A Chronical of Rural Life Lecture

by Robin Ravilious, Friends Meeting House, Saffron Walden. £8.00, 7:30pm, Fri 20 Jan 2017.

THE GALLERY AT 41

41 East Street, Corfe Castle, Dorset, 01929 480095, galleryat41.com Spirit of the Seasons Paintings capturing the essence of seasonal change by some of Dorset’s finest contemporary artists including Richard Price ROI, David Atkins, Felicity House PS, Judy Tate, Vicky Finding, Edward Vine and Mike Willdridge, until 23 Dec and 7-22 Jan 2017.

GALLERY PANGOLIN

9 Chalford Ind. Estate, Chalford, Gloucs, 01453 889765, gallery-pangolin.com George Fullard: Sculpture and Survival Exhibition and launch of a

www.exeterinternational.com 020 8996 5163

specially commissioned monograph

by Michael Bird, until 16 Dec. HAYLETTS GALLERY

Oakwood House, 2 High Street, Maldon, Essex, 01621 851669, haylettsgallery.com Olwen Jones RE RWS Watercolours of interiors using an abundance of natural light, until 19 Nov. Artist/ Illustrators Paintings, drawings and original prints alongside original illustrations used in the books by some of our most loved illustrators, 26 Nov-24 Dec. Barbara Rae CBE RA An artist who takes inspiration from the mysterious colours of Scotland and Ireland in her latest silkscreen prints, 28 Jan-25 March.

THE HOLBURNE MUSEUM

Great Pulteney Street, Bath, 01225 388569, holburne.org Silver: Light and Shade The exhibition brings together around 70 historic and contemporary masterpieces in silver, until 22 Jan 2017. Djordje Ozbolt: The Grand Detour Telling a new tale, the artist responds directly to the Holburne’s paintings, sculpture and decorative arts, many originally collected by Sir William Holburne during his ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe, 19 Nov-5 March 2017.

MARTINS AT THE CHAPEL

Knapp Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire 07771 931191, info@thechapelarts.com

Original prints and works on paper by contemporary Royal Academicians

Norman Ackroyd RA, Stephen Chambers RA, Eileen Cooper RA, Michael Craig Martin RA, Anne Desmet RA, Kenneth Draper RA, Antony Gormley RA, Albert Irvin RA, Christopher Le Brun RA, Chris Orr RA, Cathie Pilkington RA, Emma Stibbon RA, 17 Feb-18 March 2017.

MOMA MACHYNLLETH

Heol Penrallt, Machynlleth, Powys, 01654 703355, moma.machynlleth.org.uk Juan Gorriti (Basque Country artist), 12 Nov-4 Feb 2017. Terence Lambert: The Works 26 Nov-4 Feb 2017. Gordon Miles: Airport Series 3 Dec-11 March 2017.

NORTH HOUSE GALLERY

The Walls, Manningtree, Essex, 01206 392717, northhousegallery.co.uk Lee Grandjean: Home Truths

Characters of house and home, an installation of sculpture, paintings and drawings, 12 Nov-31 Dec. Norman Ackroyd RA: Distant Islands ‘Skellig Revisited’ and ‘The Barra Isles’ etching collections, plus other new and rare vintage etchings, 7 Jan-26 Feb 2017.

PETWORTH HOUSE Church St, Petworth, 01798 342207, nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth

Turner and the Age of British Watercolour This exhibition offers a rare

opportunity to see a major dimension of British art not normally encountered at Petworth and to consider it alongside the renowned collection of oil paintings and sculpture from the same golden period, 1780-1850, 7 Jan-12 March 2017.

RABLEY DRAWING CENTRE Rabley Barn, Mildenhall, Marlborough, Wilts, 01672 511999, rableydrawingcentre.com Isola; In Sight of Titian’s Garden and the Laguna Veneto. Prudence Ainslie

prints, Sara Lee works on paper and Meryl Setchell Ainslie sculptures, 20 Nov-18 Dec. Artmas Fair; Winter Light.

Selected works by Craigie Aitchison RA, Eileen Cooper RA, Naomi Frears, Tom Hammick, Jane Harris, Katherine Jones, Jeff Powell, Susan Preston, Emma Stibbon RA, Nana Shiomi, Jo Taylorand Sadie Tierney, 9 Nov-18 Dec. London Art Fair Business Design Centre, Islington. Contemporary drawing, 18-22 Jan 2017.

SARAH WISEMAN GALLERY

40-41 South Parade, Oxford, 01865 515123, wisegal.com Winter Exhibition New work by Bee Bartlett, Clare Bonnet, Christopher Farrell, Elaine Jones, Sarah Spackman, Athol Whitmore with contemporary craft, 26 Nov-31 Dec. Peter Kettle: On Meadow and River New work by acclaimed young landscape painter Peter Kettle, exploring the wide expanses and gentle hills of Oxfordshire, 14-28 Jan 2017. Bloom: Charlotte Hardy and Sally Stafford Paintings inspired by nature and plant-life with a refined sense of colour and emphasis on pattern and texture, 4-25 Feb 2017.

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A CLOSER LOOK

SHORT COURSES IN ART HISTORY 2017

t: +44 (0)20 7848 2678 e: short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk web: http://courtauld.ac.uk/learn

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New exhibition 22 Nov 2016 - 19 Feb 2017

UNTOLD STORIES British Art FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

3-7 JULY 2017

FALMOUTH SCHOOL OF ART INTENSIVES ABSTRACT PAINTING | DRAWING | FIGURE PAINTING

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931), It is an Ancient Mariner, 1925. Watercolour. Pivate collection.

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Listings

HENRY SILK (1883-1947) E a s t L o n d o n S t i l l L i v e s - S t a r t s 1 7 th N o v e m b e r

THE SENTINEL GALLERY

Chapel Road, Wivenhoe, Essex, 01206 827490, thesentinelgallery.co.uk

ABBOTT and HOLDER

3 0 M u s e u m S t , L o n d o n W C 1 A 1 L H | w w w. a b b o t t a n d h o l d e r . c o . u k

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The Annual Christmas Kaleidoscope

The final exhibition of 2016 combines familiar artists with new artists from across the UK in an exhibition of high quality, contemporary crafts and affordable art, until 31 Dec.

05/10/2016 10:37

SLADERS YARD

West Bay Road, West Bay, Bridport, Dorset, 01308 459511, sladersyard.co.uk Radiance Explorations of light by Daisy Cook, Luke Elwes, Michael Bennallack Hart, Stephen Jacobson, Alex Lowery and David West, until 26 Feb 2017.

THE STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY

High Street, Cookham, Berkshire, 01628 471885, stanleyspencer.org.uk Celebration Exhibition Celebrating numerous facets of the work of this great artist and the gallery’s newly gained Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, until 26 March 2017.

www.cobra-and-bellamy-jewellery.co.uk

THE SUNBURY EMBROIDERY GALLERY

The Walled Garden, Sunbury-on-Thames,

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18/10/2016 0193211:00 788101, sunburyembroidery.org

Permanent Exhibition The Sunbury Millennium Embroidery celebrates the village at the turn of the Millennium.

shizico yi as i lay in 1000 ways

-a documemory

18-22 november 2016

old truman brewery london E1 6QL gloriashizicoyi.com

Dr David S.Neal: Restoration of the Cosmati Pavement Highly detailed

and intricate paintings by David Neal, until 18 Dec. Feeding Frenzy, Valencia 2003 by Nicola Henley A triptych of hangings on loan from the Diana Springall collection, each with resemblance to a wall of ancient frescoes, 16 Jan-27 Feb 2017.

SWINDON MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

Bath Road, Old Town, Swindon, 01793 46656, swindonmuseumandartgallery.org.uk From Where I’m Standing Celebrating connections and contrasts between modern art and contemporary ceramics.

Works by Graham Sutherland, Basil Beattie RA and Howard Hodgkin, until 28 Jan 2017. Still Life Paintings by British artists including Ivon Hitchens and Stephen McKenna, until 28 Jan 2017.

Modern Times: How the London School Changed British Art Frank

Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and Leon Kossoff, 8 Feb-29 April 2017.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent, 01843 233000, turnercontemporary.org J.M.W. Turner: Adventures in Colour

The fullest survey of J.M.W. Turner’s watercolours of Margate yet to be shown at the gallery, until 8 Jan 2017. John Akomfrah: Vertigo Sea Multi-screen installation Vertigo Sea, until 8 Jan 2017.

Turner Contemporary and the British Museum Commission: Hannah Lees

New work in response to the British Museum’s collection of Roman Samian Ware pottery, until 8 Jan 2017. The Studio Group Commission: Kashif Nadim Chaudry The Three Graces

by Kashif Nadim Chaudry, made in collaboration with Turner Contemporary’s Studio Group, 19 Nov-31 May 2017.

THE VICTORIA ART GALLERY

Bridge Street, Bath, 01225 477233 victoriagal.org.uk

Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002: Centenary Sculpture Exhibition until 27 Nov. Peter Brown: A Bath Painter’s Travels 3 Dec-19 Feb 2017.

WADDESDON MANOR

Nr. Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 01296 653226, waddesdon.org.uk Bruce Munro: Field of Light To celebrate 25 years since its conception, this immersive installation of 9,000 stems crowned with glowing spheres will ‘bloom’ in the gardens at Waddesdon, until 2 Jan (Weds-Sun). Dazzle@Waddesdon From dusk, a sound and light show, created

by Woodroffe Bassett Design, will illuminate the Manor’s facade in rainbow colours, until 2 Jan (Weds-Sun).

YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK

West Bretton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 01924 832631, ysp.co.uk Not Vital The first major UK exhibition and largest museum project to date by the enigmatic Swiss artist Not Vital, until 2 Jan 2017. James Webb: We Listen for the Future Interdisciplinary artist James Webb presents four sound installations in YSP’s 18th-century Chapel and the open air, until 26 Feb 2017. Beyond Boundaries: Art by Email Celebrates the notion that ideas and art can travel even if people cannot, 7-29 Jan 2017.

ZILLAH BELL GALLERY

Kirkgate, Thirsk, North Yorkshire, 01845 522479, zillahbellgallery.co.uk

The Bell Family Farm: Revisited

The local landscape interpreted in oils & assemblages by David Winfield ARCA RBA, until 19 Nov. Some Hebridean Islands A new suite of etchings and supporting material by Norman Ackroyd CBE RA, 3 Dec-1 Jan 2017. Society of Wood Engravers: 79th Annual International Exhibition

Including all prizewinning works, 4-25 March 2017.

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Shelia Goodman PS Watermeadows

2017 the pastel society

Early, Victorian, Modern and Contemporary art on paper

Free entry with this voucher

The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition

Over 250 contemporary works

Hubert Andrew Freeth, RA (1912 - 1986) Fishing Pencil, watercolour and gouache. Signed ÂŁ1,200 - Babbington Fine Art

21 February to 7 March 2017

10am to 5pm (closes 3pm on final day)

www.worksonpaperfair.com

The Mall, London SW1 www.mallgalleries.org.uk

S RA ER E D A RE RE O F G

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your path to a successful career in the art world Find out more at christies.edu

Annual Exhibition 2017 22 March to 1 April, 10am to 5pm Celebrating the Society’s 300th exhibition with over 500 works of contemporary painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing.

Free entry with this voucher

The Mall, London SW1 www.mallgalleries.org.uk Tel: 020 7930 6844

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Christmas at the RA Shop

Explore our unique Christmas gift range including homeware, jewellery and accessories designed and inspired by some of the leading names in contemporary art, as well as limited edition and one-off pieces produced exclusively for the Royal Academy of Arts. The RA Shop is the perfect place for artist-designed gifts this Christmas.

Visit roy.ac/gifts and enter XMASGIFTS16 on checkout to claim 10% off and free delivery with online orders over £50*

Zaha Hadid RA | Collection 2016 Innovative collection of gifts and decorative accessories inspired and informed by the masterpieces of Zaha Hadid RA

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1 Serenity Bowl | 02085067 | £225 | 25 x 25 x 3.8 cm 2 Solis Flare Glass Candle | 02085056 | £65 | 8.8 x 8.8 x 9.2 cm

3 Solis Corona Glass Candle | 02085057 | £65 | 8.8 x 8.8 x 9.2 cm 4 Braid Candle Holder | 02084647 | £99 | H 30cm

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5 Contour Placemats (Black) | 02085061 | £85 | 50 x 35 x 0.4 cm Also available in white | 02085060

Barbara Rae RA | Twilight Collaboration between Barbara Rae RA and Poole Pottery. Handmade and hand decorated in the UK by Poole Pottery

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6 Twilight Large Bottle Vase | 02083700 | £200 | H 28 cm 7 Twilight Large Purse Vase | 02083701 | £200 | H 26 cm 8 Twilight Medium Bottle Vase | 02083699 | £120 | H 23 cm

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9 Shaded Jet Mohair Throw | 02085071 | £150 | 130 x 185 cm

*Terms and conditions: Offer ends 23.59pm on Friday 16 December 2016. Free delivery on UK mainland orders of £50 or more only . Offer is valid from the RA online shop only and is not valid in conjunction with any other offer. Offer not available on Sale, Art Sales, Custom Prints, limited edition books, limited edition merchandise, RA Magazine Subscriptions, RA Friends Membership, gift vouchers, glassware or RA Paint. Order before 5pm on Friday 16 December 2016 to ensure Christmas delivery.

Ian Ritchie RA | Christmas accessories

Claim 10% off * and free delivery with online orders over £50

Charming and wonderfully animated range of Christmas decorations featuring design by renowned architect Ian Ritchie RA 10

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Every purchase supports the RA’s programme of exhibitions, education and debate Your Order Product name

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10 Snowman Crackers (Box of Six) | 02084844 | £38 | 38 x 33 x 7 cm 11 Limited Edition Ceramic Snowboy Bauble | 02085188 | £20 | 10 x 10 cm

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Free Delivery on orders over £50 (UK mainland only)

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Total

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Your Details (cardholder) Name Address

Postcode Deliver to the same address (please tick) 12 Richard Spare Robin Canvas Bag | 02084329 | £14 | 37.5 x 35 x 10 cm 13 Tracey Emin RA Canvas Shopper | 02084352 | £16 | 40 x 35 x 17 cm

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Signature roy.ac/gifts

24 hours, 7 days a week plus 10% discount and free delivery with XMASGIFTS16

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Sign up to receive email updates and exclusive offers from the RA Shop, plus news and stories from across the RA.* *Visit royalacademy.org.uk/privacy to view our full privacy policy.

Readers’ offers are open to all RA Magazine readers when they show a copy of this magazine

Readers’ Offers The Holburne Museum ‘Silver: Light and Shade’ (until 22 Jan 2017), showing masterpieces of historical and contemporary silver. Two tickets for £10.

Visit holburne.org and see advertisement on page 40.

London Art Fair 2017 at the Business Design Centre (18-22 Jan 2017). The fair brings together museum quality Modern British art alongside contemporary work from today’s leading artists. Readers are offered 30% off Day Tickets (£10.50 plus booking fees). Visit londonartfair.co.uk and enter code RA at checkout. Offer ends 23 December. See advertisement on page 6.

Collect is offering two tickets for £28

plus one 50% off voucher for their beautiful catalogue (standard ticket price £18). Visit collect17.org.uk quoting code RA2017 and see advertisement on page 4.

Mall Galleries Free entry to the ‘ROI Annual Exhibition’ (30 Nov-11 Dec) and ‘The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition’ (21 Feb-7 March 2017).

Visit mallgalleries.org.uk and see advertisements on page 89.

Works on Paper Fair at the Royal Geographical Society, showing watercolours, drawings and prints, is offering free entry for RA Magazine readers. Visit worksonpaperfair.com and see advertisement on page 89.

2-for-1 Tickets Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village

‘Untold Stories: Pictures from Private Collections’ (22 Nov-19 Feb 2017).

This exhibition uncovers the personal histories of paintings from the private collections of Watts Gallery Trustees.

See advertisement on page 87.

Dulwich Picture Gallery ‘Adriaen van de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape’ (until 15 Jan 2017). The first ever exhibition of works by the artist including his highly original red chalk drawings of figures and animals as well as large oil landscapes.

See advertisement on page 16.

Pallant House Gallery ‘The Mythic Method: Classicism in British Art 19201950’ (until 19 Feb 2017). The first major exhibition to explore how Modern British artists drew on classical myth and ideals in a ‘return to order’ following WW1.

See advertisement on page 16.

The Hop Pickers, 1945, by John Minton, from The Lightbox Museum, at the London Art Fair

Publications

code RA2016 by 31 January 2017. For more details visit artpursuitsabroad.com and see enclosed insert.

This jewel-like volume of pen, wash and watercolour sketches transports us to the unmistakable landscapes and cityscapes of the Italian peninsula. Anne Desmet ra commits every detail to paper, and the book’s small-scale format emphasises her distinctive flair for capturing the relationship between extreme foreground and distance. This is a unique opportunity to explore the bel paese, from Sicily to the Veneto, through the eyes of a meticulous and precise artist.

RA Publications The RA Shop is

offering a 10% discount on:

specialises in wood engravings, linocuts Desmet Anne Desmet An Italian Journey: Anne and mixed-media collages. She won a scholarship to the British School at Rome in 1989–90,Lost and has returned £8.95 (rrp £9.95); Futures: regularly to Italy ever since. She lives and works in London.

The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain £11.70 (rrp £12.95); Revolution: Russian Art, 1917–1932 ra

On the cover: Urbino

ISBN 123-4-5-678910-12

123456789101112

£36 hardback (rrp £40), £25.20 paperback (rrp £28); Anthony Green: Painting Life £27 (rrp £30). All titles

Anne Desmet's book An Italian Journey

are available from the RA Shop, online at royalacademy.org.uk/shop (enter RAMAGWINTER at checkout to claim your discount) or by calling 0800 634 6341 (Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm). See advertisement on page 93.

PURE offers the finest, softest cashmere. Discover Pure Collection’s passion for contemporary design and luxury fabrics and enjoy 25% off everything, plus free delivery and returns, exclusively for RA Magazine readers. Shop online, by phone or instore. Visit purecollection.com and see enclosed insert.

Richoux, opposite the Royal Academy,

is offering 10% discount on breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea or dinner. See advertisement on page 70.

The Royal Over-Seas League,

For the very best in ceramics, Ceramic Review is the international magazine for contemporary and historical ceramic art. This Christmas they are offering RA Magazine readers £8 off a year's subscription. Visit ceramicreview/ subscribe and use the code RA16. See advertisement on page 93.

Other Offers Art Pursuits Abroad is offering a free

Untitled, 2016, by Zemer Peled, from Cynthia Corbett Gallery, at COLLECT

place on one of their Study Days or Short Courses (January to April 2017) with each booking made for a Study Tour listed in the enclosed leaflet. Please use the offer

located close to the RA, provides accommodation, fine dining and a private garden as well as a discounted joining fee and pro-rata subscription rates.

Currently Anne Desmet RA is exhibiting her exhibition 'An Italian Journey' (until 2 Dec). Visit rosl.org.uk and see advertisement on page 70.

Any reader booking a place on David Mach RA's masterclass in his studio will receive a signed copy of Precious Light. This stunning 307 page book is a collection of David Mach's collage work illustrating the King James Bible. See advertisement on page 65.

© T HE ES TAT E O F JO HN M IN TO N/IM AGE COU RT ESY O F JP B L A ND P H OTOGR A P H Y. © T H E CY N T HI A CO RB E T T G A LLERY/P H OTO COU RT ESY O F CR A F TS COU N CIL

Ticket offers

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New books from the RA Lost Futures:

A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS OFFER £8 off a year’s subscription

The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain Owen Hopkins £12.95

This fascinating book looks in detail at the wide range of buildings constructed in Britain between 1945 and 1979. Many of these buildings, despite the fact that their bold architectural aspirations reflected the forward-looking social ethos of the post-war era, have since been either demolished or altered beyond recognition.

Revolution Russian Art, 1917–1932

John Milner, Natalia Murray et al.

www.ceramicreview.com/subscribe Use code RA16

£40 hardback £28 paperback

Published to coincide with the centenary of the 1917 October revolution, this volume explores the extraordinary flowering of the arts during the first 15 years of the Soviet state up until Stalin’s brutal suppression of the avant-garde in 1932.

Boris Mikailovich Kustodiev Bolshevik, 1920, Oil on canvas, 101 x 140.5 cm State Tretyakov Gallery Photo © State Tretyakov Gallery

Anthony Green: Painting Life Martin Bailey £30

An authoritative retrospective of the work of Anthony Green RA. This richly illustrated book features exquisite reproductions of Green’s inimitable paintings, while Martin Bailey’s text expertly charts the developments in Green’s intertwined personal and artistic lives.

The Flower Arranger: Early Summer, 1982 Oil on board, 68 x 68 inches Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exclusive readers’ offer – 10% off all our new titles Enter RAMAGWINTER at checkout to claim your discount or call 0800 634 6341 (Mon–Fri, 10 am–5 pm) royalacademy.org.uk/shop

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Restaurant & Shopping Guide The RA Magazine’s directory of places to eat and shop around the Academy. This is an advertisement feature.

To advertise please call Charlotte Burgess on 020 7300 5675 or email charlotte.burgess@royalacademy.org.uk 1

Restaurants Shops

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LE CAPRICE

Le Caprice, a favourite amongst the art crowd for decades, is only a stone’s throw from the Royal Academy. With its black and white décor, David Bailey photographs and long dining bar, Le Caprice is a model of urban elegance and a social institution.

At the heart of Le Caprice’s renown is an always fresh and imaginative modern British and European menu, with hints of Asia, sourced from the finest suppliers; a typical list might include grilled squid with chorizo, padrón peppers & datterini tomatoes, Blythburgh pork belly with rosemary roasted roots & apple mash and San Daniele ham. Open until late seven days a week for lunch and dinner with live jazz on Sunday evenings.

Arlington Street SW1, 020 7629 2239 le-caprice.co.uk

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Please note: not drawn to scale

Restaurants 1

avenue

Serving up new American cuisine for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Monday to Sunday, Avenue captures the buzz of the New York dining scene whilst nodding to its St James’s roots with stunning art-focused interiors and a French and American-driven wine list. Newly appointed Head Chef Dominic South has created a bold and distinct menu with his signature Manhattan-style dishes given a Mayfair twist. The bar at Avenue is a destination in its own right for pre-dinner and after-work drinks, serving up craft beers and classic cocktails inspired by the US Prohibition era.

7-9 St. James’s Street SW1, 020 7321 2111 avenue-restaurant.co.uk

2 Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill

Hidden just around the corner from the Royal Academy, Bentley’s is a local resting place for weary art lovers and gourmands for over 98 years. Trading from midday to midnight, Champagne and native oysters, traditional fish and chips, or for those who care not for the mollusc, beautiful lamb or a simple slab of steak. A ‘best of British’ menu, designed by the controversial and twice Michelin-awarded chef Richard Corrigan. We have private dining facilities to seat up to 60 guests and run regular

cookery schools.

11-15 Swallow Street W1, 020 7734 4756 bentleys.org

is open from 11.30am to midnight, seven days a week and serves great French food at remarkably low prices, with two course prix fixe menus starting at £9.75.

20 Sherwood Street W1, 020 7734 4888 brasseriezedel.com

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benihana

Just one minute’s walk from the Royal Academy is Benihana, an exclusive Japanese culinary experience, providing Teppan-Yaki style cooking.

Diners can enjoy the luxury of a personal chef preparing fresh and delicious meals at their table. A variety of seafood and steaks are cooked to perfection; fresh sushi is also available.

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BOULESTIN restaurant

Warm, convivial, relaxed and elegant, Boulestin is inspired by legendary food writer and restaurateur, Xavier Marcel Boulestin, and uses many of its namesake’s original recipes, as well as lighter and more contemporary dishes created by head chef, Elliot Spurdle. Offsetting the Parisian-style dining room, is the beautiful courtyard for when the weather is good. Open Monday to Saturday for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

the chesterfield mayfair

A short walk from the Royal Academy is The Chesterfield Mayfair, home of the ‘Charlie and The Chesterfield’ themed afternoon tea, priced at £36.50 and hosted

by Willy Wonka himself. Perhaps add a glass of Champagne to give the occasion added sparkle.

Berkeley Square, 35 Charles Street W1, 020 7491 2622 chesterfieldmayfair.com

5 St James’s Street, SW1, 020 7930 2030 boulestin.com

37 Sackville Street W1, 020 7494 2525 benihana.co.uk 4

BRASSERIE ZEDEL

A large, bustling, grand and elegant Parisian brasserie with an authentic 1930s interior, Brasserie Zedel is perfectly located for the Royal Academy, just off Piccadilly Circus. Described by renowned French chef Pierre Koffman as, “the only real brasserie in London”, it

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cut at 45 park lane

Created by internationally-acclaimed chef founder Wolfgang Puck, CUT at 45 Park Lane is a modern American steak restaurant, and his debut restaurant in

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Restaurant & Shopping Guide Europe. Enjoy delectable prime beef, succulent pan-roasted lobster, sautéed fresh fish and seasonal salads. Outstanding cuisine is accompanied by an exceptional wine list of over 600 wines, featuring one of the largest selection of American wines in the UK. Breakfasts are another highlight and on Sundays you can relax with brunch as you listen to live jazz.

45 Park Lane, Mayfair W1, 020 7493 4554 dorchestercollection.com

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franco’s

Franco’s, founded in 1946, has acquired a brand new sleek interior. Open all day, Franco’s evolves from a bustling breakfast service, to a charged lunch atmosphere, to romantic evenings. From MondaySaturday, the beautifully-appointed private dining room with curtained and mirrored walls can accommodate between 16 and 55 guests, providing the ideal setting for a range of private events.

77 Berwick Street W1, 020 7437 8568 maharanisoho.com 11

QUAGLINO’S

A legendary hot spot with a glamorous Art Deco-inspired restaurant, two stunning bars and private dining rooms.

The modern European menu designed

by Executive Head Chef, Mickael Weiss, changes seasonally and always uses the highest quality ingredients.

The restaurant offers a host of menu options, along with Q Brunch now available on Saturdays and Sundays, accompanied by bottomless bubbles.

The bars boast an iconic cocktail list and an extensive wine list. From 9pm, the restaurant transforms, showcasing live music from an exciting, varied list of bands and renowned DJs. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner and Sundays for lunch service, with the bars open until 1am Monday-Thursday and 3am on Fridays and Saturdays, with late bar food also available.

16 Bury Street SW1, 020 7930 6767 quaglinos-restaurant.co.uk

perfectly to its glamorous Mayfair location.

Sartoria is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday.

20 Savile Row W1, 020 7534 7000 sartoria-restaurant.co.uk

Its all-day menu means it is possible to eat formally or casually at any time, whether a full three-course meal or a coffee and cake. Whilst booking in advance is advised, tables are always held back for walk-ins on the day.

160 Piccadilly W1, 020 7499 6996 thewolseley.com

Shopping 1

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WILTONS

Offering a selection of traditional menus for memorable parties and a range of exciting wine packages for 10 guests or more, Wiltons’ private dining room is an ideal venue for any occasion. The ‘Jimmy Marks Room’ offers guests an exceptional, discreet environment in which to welcome friends, family or colleagues for a truly memorable meal.

55 Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7629 9955 wiltons.co.uk

Alfies antique market

Alfies (formerly Jordan’s department store) has an Egyptian-style art deco façade, a rooftop café and over 75 antique dealers.

The centre boasts a wide array of specialist vintage and antique shops selling everything from English ceramics, mid-century design and 19th-century furniture, to Art Deco glassware, 18th-century watercolours, and vintage African textiles. Alfies also offers a range of services including an upholstery workshop, fine picture framing, vintage tailoring and watch and jewellery repair.

Don’t miss the Alfies Christmas Shopping Event, Thursday 1 December, 5-9pm.

13-25 Church Street, Marylebone NW8, 020 7723 6066 info@alfiesantiques.com www.alfiesantiques.com

61 Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7499 2211 francoslondon.com

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richoux

A unique traditional restaurant open all day, serving coffee, all day breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, supper and dinner from 8am to 11pm daily.

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MAHARANI SOHO

Open all day and situated in the heart of Soho, this family-run restaurant established 42 years ago offers the best cuisine that the north and south of India has to offer, with its own little twist. All dishes are cooked fresh to order, using free-range meat and locally-sourced vegetables. A special set lunch menu priced at £6.95 runs until 5pm, or you can choose from the mouth watering à la carte menu which offers excellence without pretension. Counted as one of the best Indian restaurants in London, to avoid disappointment it is best to make a reservation. Last orders 11.30pm.

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172 Piccadilly W1, 020 7493 2204 www.richoux.co.uk

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THE WOLSELEY

A café-restaurant in the grand European tradition and located just a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Academy, The Wolseley is open all day from 7am for breakfast, right through until midnight perfect for Friday late-night exhibitions.

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SARTORIA

emmett

Founded in 1992, Emmett London create shirts to the very highest traditional standard; upholding the Jermyn Street tradition whilst imbuing a decidedly European sense of levity and freshness.

Shirts are made using only the very finest cloths available, sourced from Italy and Switzerland and are all offered in limited runs of only 25. Emmett also provide a full tailoring service in shirts, suits, jackets and trousers with everything expertly fitted and made by hand. Emmett shirts are available at Jermyn Street, the Kings Road, Eldon Street and Selfridges.

112 Jermyn Street W1, 020 7925 1299 www.emmettlondon.com

With renowned Italian chef Francesco Mazzei at its helm as chef patron, Sartoria serves an all-day dining menu, inspired

by Francesco’s home region of Calabria and surrounding areas of Italy. Described as a “temple of Italian cuisine” and the only restaurant on Savile Row, Sartoria has recently undergone an extensive refurbishment by acclaimed designer David d’Almada. Boasting a heated terrace, destination bar, cicchetti counter, two private dining rooms and wine cellar, the exquisite and timeless design lends itself

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C U LT U R A L TO U RS F OR DI S C E R N I NG T R AV E L L E RS Kirker Holidays provides a range of carefully crafted escorted holidays, with fascinating itineraries designed for those with an interest in history, art, archaeology, architecture, gardens and music. Groups typically consist of 12-22 like-minded travellers, in the company of an expert Tour Lecturer.

SIENA & SAN GIMIGNANO A FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAY | 8 APRIL 2017

Based at the beautiful 5* Grand Hotel Continental, we will spend five nights in Siena so that we can fully appreciate this artistic treasure trove and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Siena was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in Italy, its great rivalry with nearby Florence driving it on to new artistic heights. Highlights include a private tour of the Chigi Saracini Palace, the Palazzo Pubblico, famous for its enchanting frescoes painted by Lorenzetti and the cathedral and it’s museum. We shall also spend time exploring the vineyards of Chianti and the mediaeval walled hilltop town San Gimignano.

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FREYWILLE boutique

Inspired by Gustav Klimt’s worldfamous Art Nouveau masterpiece “The Kiss”, the FREYWILLE in-house artists designed THE ULTIMATE KISS collection as a pure and powerful tribute to the power of love. Elegant fire enamel jewellery in bold colours and gold layers framed in 18kt solid gold and diamonds available in our boutique.

45 Piccadilly W1, 020 7734 0981 freywille.com

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Price from £1,694 per person for five nights including flights, accommodation with breakfast, one lunch, three dinners, a wine tasting, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer.

Speak to an expert or request a brochure:

020 7593 2284 quote code XRA www.kirkerholidays.com

Alec Tiranti Ltd sculptors’ tools, materials & equipment established 1895 3 Pipers Court, Thatcham, Berks & 27 Warren Street, London W1

01635 587430

Studio equipment & armatures, Stonecarving, Woodcarving,

4

Gieves & hawkes

Gieves & Hawkes has been located at No.1 Savile Row, a short stroll from Burlington House, for over 100 years.

With a tradition of military and fine bespoke handwork, the firm has enjoyed the continuous patronage of royal families both at home and abroad over three centuries. Today, No.1 Savile Row houses the company’s bespoke workshops, private tailoring suites and the flagship ‘ready-to-wear’ store, selling stylish British menswear. Do pay us a visit.

Ceramics equipment & Glazes, Modelling tools

& Materials, Mould-

& Finishing,

Books & Videos

tiranti.co.uk

16-17 Burlington Arcade W1, 020 7629 1416 penhaligons.com

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Files & Abrasives,

Restoration

PENHALIGON’S

Penhaligon’s is a British perfumer, founded in 1870 by William Penhaligon.

Characterised by our longstanding relationship with royalty, as proud holders of two Royal Warrants from HRH the Duke of Edinburgh and HRH the Prince of Wales, as well as our creativity and rich heritage of 146 years. William’s first fragrance, Hammam Bouquet, was inspired by the steamy, rich scents of the Hammam baths on Jermyn Street. We continue William’s legacy of creating fragrances inspired by the unexpected to this day, from a Savile Row workroom to London Dry Gin, the ballet to London’s historic docklands.

No.1 Savile Row W1, 020 7432 6403 gievesandhawkes.com

Mallets & Hammers,

making, Casting,

Mews, London W1K, 020 7629 7034, info@graysantiques.com, www.graysantiques.com

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Grays antiques centre

With over 200 dealers, Grays is home to one of the largest and most diverse collections of fine antiques, jewellery and collectables in the country. Seconds from Bond Street, the centre is a focus of the London antiques trade and is also home to a secret tributary to the Thames – the famous hidden River Tyburn.

58 Davies Street & 1-7 Davies

RICHARD OGDEN

In Medieval times signet rings were used to seal and authenticate letters and documents, using crests taken from family heraldic shields. The impression these rings made when pressed into wax seals would represent the authority of the wearer, a tradition which continued well into the twentieth century. Nowadays signet rings are often presented to celebrate a 21st birthday or a graduation. We keep a copy of Fairbairn’s Book of Crests at our premises and can help you find your own family crest.

28 Burlington Arcade W1, 020 7493 9136 richardogden.com

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Classified Art

Saturday life classes

All media, all levels with professional tutoring. Long & short poses.

Experienced portfolio advice for students. Elianor Jonzen.

Tel: 020 7221 4525

Barbara McMillan RBA

Brecon Beacons

Art Course weekends, weekdays near Hay-on-Wye

Life classes, portrait, landscape, still-life, monoprinting, colour, spacious studio, rural surroundings, professional tuition, excellent food. Tel: 01874 711 212

For sale: beautiful, vibrant flower studies and landscapes in pastel and oil paint by Barbara McMillan RBA.

www.artcourseswales.com C u r we n Print Study C e n t re

01726 833471 barbaramcmillan@hotmail.co.uk barbaramcmillan.co.uk

EXCELLENCE IS A FINE ART

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Courses for artists of all abilities and ages

2015 Printmaking brochure out now NEW www.curwenprintstudy.co.uk 01223 892380 01223 enquires@curwenprintstudy.co.uk curwenprintstudy.co.uk 892380 enquires@curwenprintstudy.co.uk

Imagination...

Learn to paint with it!

Aldeburgh Beach

www.nicolaslattery.com

sianbennettfineartist.co.uk

01986 788853

New works on show 5-8 December Camden Image Gallery London NW1 OSP

SeaSculpt Residential stone carving courses by the sea

(check website for details)

Exciting opportunity to carve stone with renowned sculptor and enjoy wholesome food. julietaylor1@hotmail.com t 07971 489449 / 07900 022372 www.seasculpt.co.uk

Foundries

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Fine Art Bronze Casting Welding – Patina Specialists Ceramic Shell Contact: Jerry 020 7515 8052 jerry@abfineart.com 1 Fawe Street, London E14 6PD www.abfineart.com

Buy and Sell

Property for Sale

We are always pleased to buy good quality second-hand & older books for our shop. Aardvark Books Manor Farm, Brampton Bryan, Shropshire, SY7 0DH Email: aardvaark@btconnect.com www.aardvark-books.com

For Sale: Cornwall house and barn

Courses

Nicola Slattery.indd 1

Detached character house & converted barn in Golant waterside village, nr Fowey. House: 3 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 ensuite. Lounge with log fire, dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, seperate utility & WC. River views from all rooms. Central heating.

Parking. Barn: Artists studio/flat with kitchen & bathroom. Gallery, workshop, open garage. Courtyard space, hillside gardens with summer house and river views. Moorings available.

London mainline station 4 miles. £650,000 no chain. Photos available. barbaramcmillan@hotmail.co.uk

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Holidays

Venice Centre

France: Nice

Stunning view over the roofs of the old town. Quiet sunny 2 room balcony flat. Sleeps 2/3. 30 minute bus to airport. £550 pw. Tel. 020 7720 7519 or 01736 762013

Self-catering apartments in a charming c15th palazzetto, sleeps 2/5. www.valleycastle.com Romantic RivieRa RetReat

Tuscan/Umbrian border

Find Donatello, Piero, Burri near our splendid villa. Pool, gardens, glorious views, ancient towns. Flexible rates. www.lafoce.co.uk; 020 7059 0278

Venice

www.ilvalico.eu

Nice: Cote d’Azur

Beautiful apartment in Art Deco

JuliaWigart_RivieraRetreat_Classified_Sum161.indd 1 15:03 building. 2 bedrooms, sleeps 4. 18/03/2016

Two spacious luxury flats in a scenic, peaceful location. Great local shops & restaurants. Full details/booking on our website www.ourflatsinvenice.co.uk

Fully equipped, a/c, 2 small balconies.

Well positioned for Old Town, transport links, restaurants & beach.

From £550 p/w. t: 07712188585

e: sjajones@yahoo.com

Marrakech

Chic, elegantly restored 18th century riad in Medina. Four double bedrooms, seductive baths, cook and housekeeper. Tel: 07770 431194. www.riadhayati.com

France: Menton

Beautiful Tuscan Villa Sleeps 20. Perfect for holidays, parties, and events

00 39 340 342 4822 2 bedroom house in grounds of www.villacorsano.com 1860s town villa. Pool and beautiful views of sea and old town. Charming courtyard with lemon trees. Easy France: Paris walk to covered market, sea, train Sunny, spacious, balcony Paris flat and bus station. Off-street parking 11th arr. on Bvd Voltaire. Sleeps 2/3. available. Now booking 2017 Easy walking to Bastille, Marais, Villa Corsano_Win16.indd 1 Tel: 07900 916729 pattiebarwick@ Picasso Museum, buses to Louvre etc.19/10/2016 gmail.com www.mentonsejour.com £95 a night - min 3 nights. For more details, email: ristone2@wanadoo.fr

Menton Town Centre

Sleeps 12. Enjoy the eclectic art collection and interior design of this restored 1860s villa and separate guest house town centre, 5 minute walk to shops and beaches. Beautiful garden with views. Lovely pool area with shady places to sit and read. Secluded dining areas. Enjoy versatility of 2 houses on one site.

Ideal for 2 families. Off-street parking for 2 cars. Now booking 2017 Tel: 07900 916729 pattiebarwick@gmail.com www.mentonsejour.com

Miscellaneous Were you at the Summer Exhibition Service for Artists in 2005, 2002, 1999, 1993 or 1992? Do you remember who gave the address and what the biblical reading was? If so, a researcher at the University of Gloucestershire would love to hear from you. Sheona Beaumont is collating this information for a future publication in the area of art and theology. Please contact her at sho@shospace.co.uk or The Vicarage, Folly Lane, Lacock, SN15 2LL.

Sicily Spacious 5-bedroom villa with pool near Taormina. Stunning sea and Etna views.

Photo gallery: www.villaama.net

To advertise in the Restaurant, Shopping and Classified pages please contact

Italy: Triora in Liguria

Charlotte Burgess on 020 7300 5675 or charlotte.burgess@ royalacademy.org.uk

+44 (0)7952 578523.

House in Medieval village. Spectacular views, vine-covered terrace and garden. Mediterranean and San Remo ½ hr away; Good restaurant in 26/07/2016 11:04 village. Available June/July/Aug/Sep. jenniferadams50@hotmail.com

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Events, excursions and other RA experiences

VIRTUAL REALITY EVENTS

Experience art in virtual reality In a series of evening events this January, visitors to the Academy don hi-tech headsets and peer into the future of art, witnessing works in the world of virtual reality.

The works will be created by three RA Schools artists, commissioned by the technology giant HTC. In April the company launched Vive, a high-end consumer headset that has brought virtual reality into hundreds of thousands of homes. Inside the headset, the user can explore complex, colourful, highly immersive digital environments. Two sensors track the user’s every

movement with such precision that the images they see change seamlessly to match, suspending their belief, making it seem that they are inhabiting the environment in front of their eyes.

‘In virtual reality, the artist’s imagination can take shape in ways not previously possible,’ explains Rikard Steiber, HTC’s Senior Vice President of Virtual Reality. ‘If a painter has a vision in their mind, they can capture it in a still single image on canvas. But now they can expand that vision even further in virtual reality, so that others can experience their imagination in a more immersive way.’

The RA Schools artists – alumni Elliot Dodd and Adham Faramawy, and current student Jessy Jetpacks – have been experimenting with software programmes such as Tilt Brush (above), which, with the help of two handsets, allows artists to paint and sculpt forms within virtual space. For the artist wearing the headset, one of the handsets becomes a brush: clicked and

then moved in the air, it makes a mark in three dimensions. The other handset functions like a palette, offering a kaleidoscope of colours and visual effects, including an eraser. In a world first, elements of the RA artists’ works will be 3-D printed, translating their virtual creations back into the real world. ‘The work the artists produce will signpost us to unexpected future creative outcomes and new universes of artistic possibility,’ says Mark Hampson, Head of Fine Art Processes at the RA Schools.

Steiber certainly agrees. ‘We’re just scratching the surface of what the possibilities are. Art in virtual reality doesn’t necessarily need to be static. It can incorporate animation and music, and the piece can react to each user, or even be co-created by them. There are boundless opportunities for artists.’

The Virtually Real evening events, in partnership with HTC, take place in the RAs Fine Rooms on 11, 12, 13 and 14 Jan. To book tickets, visit http://roy.ac/virtually-real

T i lt Brus h by Go o gl e

An artist using Tilt Brush by Google, in a video still that mixes images from the real world with virtual reality

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1. © R oya l Aca d em y o f Ar ts , Lo n d o n; P h oto g r a p h: P ru d en ce Cu m i n g As s o ci at es Lt d 2. Co u r t esy o f t h e P e t r i e M us eu m o f Egy p t i a n Ar ch a eo lo gy, UCL 3 . w w w. m eg-a n d r e ws .co m 4. © TFL f r o m t h e Lo n d o n Tr a ns p o r t Co l l ec t i o n 5 . Co u r t esy o f S a n ds F i l ms 6 . A b i g a i l B u ck i n gh a m © J u l i a S ku p n y, T h e Go l ds m i t hs ’ Cen t r e , 2013

What’s On at the RA

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1. © R oya l Aca d em y o f Ar ts , Lo n d o n; P h oto g r a p h: P ru d en ce Cu m i n g As s o ci at es Lt d 2. Co u r t esy o f t h e P e t r i e M us eu m o f Egy p t i a n Ar ch a eo lo gy, UCL 3 . w w w. m eg-a n d r e ws .co m 4. © TFL f r o m t h e Lo n d o n Tr a ns p o r t Co l l ect i o n 5 . Co u r t esy o f S a n ds F i l ms 6 . A b i g a i l B u ck i n gh a m © J u l i a S ku p n y, T h e Go l ds m i t hs ’ Cen t r e , 2013

T i lt Brus h by Go o gl e

See page 102 for details of how to book events

3

4

5

FRIENDS EXCURSIONS HIGHLIGHTS

Discover objects across London 1. SEE A cast of the Bassae Frieze in the library of the Travellers Club

Once adorning the Temple of Apollo Epicurius, the frieze was rediscovered in 1811 by architect C.R. Cockerell RA. Join a Friends tour of the Travellers Club to see Cockerell’s cast in the Club’s library (17 Feb or 7 Mar; engraving above).

2. EYE THE EGYPTIAN CERAMICS on a visit to UCL’s Petrie and Grant Museums

Contemplate a piece of pre-dynastic Naqada pottery (c.3,000-4,000 BC, above) on a Friends

6

tour of UCL’s Petrie Museum, home to one of the world’s largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology. Handle ancient objects and learn about the collection (30 Jan or 13 Mar).

3. VIEW DESIGNS BY ERIC RAVILIOUS at Meg Andrews Antique Costumes and Textiles

Garden implements, including a wheelbarrow and plants in a barrel, were the inspiration for designs

by Eric Ravilious that appeared on objects from pottery to curtains (above). These designs, as well as works by John Piper and Terence Conran, are on display when Friends visit the home and studio of dealer Meg Andrews (17 Jan or 14 Feb).

4. catch The TUBE POSTERS at the London Transport Museum’s archive

Brightening the commutes of Londoners since the early 1900s, posters such as The Tate by Tube (1987, above) are brought out for Friends on a behind-the-scenes tour (7 Feb or 28 March).

5. BEHOLD THE WINGS OF AN ANGEL at Sands Films

Made with goose feathers, these hand-made wings (above) were painstakingly created for the character of an angel in a new adaptation of the 1920s novel The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek. Get a glimpse of the celestial and enjoy a Friends tour of Sands Films’ costume workshops, movie studios and cinema in Rotherhithe (24 or 31 Jan).

6. gaze at JewEL-ENCRUSTED BOXES at the Goldsmiths’ Centre

This emerald-topped silver pill box (above) by emerging talent Abigail Buckingham can be found at the Goldsmiths’ Centre in the heart of Clerkenwell, which trains the next generation of goldsmiths, silversmiths and jewellers. Join Friends for a tour of the state-of-the-art centre, which won an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects for its design (18 or 25 Jan).

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What’s On at the RA FRIENDS EXCURSION

the story of a scene from the famous film, the collection’s intention to entertain is clear. The presence and positioning of Miller’s painting tells those walking through the doors that, though Penguin-Random House is now the largest English-language general trade book publisher in the world, they ‘don’t take themselves too seriously’, says Prior.

Though some works sit pride of place, such as a small collection from Peter Blake’s ‘Alphabet’ series (right) that hang in the lobby, the majority of works are peppered throughout spaces that are in constant working use. They hang among a mêlée of postcards, printed layouts, potential designs for book covers and potted plants, lining the walls as we walk through the different departments, fusing with the daily working life of the company. And while appealing to the great authors that walk through the doors for meetings (Ali Smith being a particular fan), this accessible array of art has been created by Prior with the employees in mind. ‘We want people here to think about it as part of their lives.’ Zoë Smith Penguin Random House Art Collection Friends Excursion, 21 Feb, 6.30–8pm, £36 RA and Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 Open for submissions by 28 Feb; for more information, visit pindropstudio.com

From ‘An Alphabet Portfolio’, 2007, by Peter Blake

Party like James Ensor at evening events The subject of an RA exhibition, the Belgian painter James Ensor embraced the carnival in life as well as art, dressing up for street parties and other wild celebrations (Ensor wears the busby in this photo with his friends, c.1891, left).

Costume is encouraged for the Academy’s 1898 Bal du Rat Mort, an RA Late event that recreates the glamour and decadence of Ensor’s favourite masked ball (10 Dec, 7–11.45pm, £35). Live music and entertainment also abound in an exclusive Friends Private View of the show (26 Nov, 7–10pm, £25).

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P os t er i m age co u r t esy o f Ar ts A l l i a n ce . © J o h n N as s a r i

Powerhouse publisher Penguin has amassed an outstanding art collection in its London offices, and by making the aesthetic charm of typography the thread linking each artwork it acquires, the company displays its commitment to both writing and the visual arts. This winter Friends of the RA gain rare access to view Penguin’s holdings, in a tour of its offices that takes in highlights from 180 works – mainly limited-edition prints – by British artists, including Royal Academicians Cornelia Parker and Michael Craig-Martin.

The first work was acquired in 1999 and with the help of a small committee, Nigel Frank of Frank Hindley art consultants and Managing Director of Penguin UK, Joanna Prior, have been carefully choosing artworks to add to the collection ever since. Prior, who leads me on a tour through the labyrinth of offices, describes the tone that it is trying to set: ‘Art is part of what we do. We’re a creative business. We are both interested in and honour the work being done, but we have a bit of fun with it as well.’

From Harland Miller’s profane painting This is Where It’s F***ing At (2014), representing a Penguin book cover, that hangs by the main reception desk (the only commissioned piece in the collection) to Fiona Banner’s Car Chases (French Connection) from 1997, a print which tells

© P e t er B l a k e 2016/A l l r i gh ts r es er v ed, DACS . co u r t esy Fa b er & Fa b er . U n k n ow n p h oto gr a p h er /Ja m es Ens o r ( w e a r i n g a b us by ) a m o n g m em b ers o f t h e R o us s e au a n d N a h r at h fa m i l i es , c . 1891/© M us ées r oyaux d es B e aux-Ar ts d e B elgi q u e / P h oto gr a p h y: ACAB , Brus s els .

Art and literature live together at Penguin publishers

FRIENDS EVENTS AND OFFERS

Festivities for Friends this Christmas

Focus on films ‘The most important art’? Film and the Soviet avant-garde After the revolution, Lenin claimed that ‘of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important’. At this event, Professor Ian Christie, advisor on film for the RA’s Russian art show, reflects on the rising status of the medium in the first decade of Soviet power (18 Feb, 11–12pm, £16/£8/£5).

Film | Making | Space How does film unlock the emotive power of architectural design? How is the link between architecture and identity intensified through film? Short screenings and performances spark the discussion as our panel explores how film and architecture interact (13 Feb, 6.30–8.30pm, £12/£6).

P os t er i m age co u r t esy o f Ar ts A l l i a n ce . © J o h n N as s a r i

© P e t er B l a k e 2016/A l l r i gh ts r es er v ed, DACS . co u r t esy Fa b er & Fa b er . U n k n ow n p h oto gr a p h er /Ja m es Ens o r ( w e a r i n g a b us by ) a m o n g m em b ers o f t h e R o us s e au a n d N a h r at h fa m i l i es , c . 1891/© M us ées r oyaux d es B e aux-Ar ts d e B elgi q u e / P h oto gr a p h y: ACAB , Brus s els .

See page 102 for details of how to book events

Friends Film Club: Alison Klayman, ‘The 100 Year Show’ Join Friends of the RA for a screening of Alison Klayman’s film about CubanAmerican artist Carmen Herrera as she approaches her 100th birthday. Only in her nineties has this fascinating artist received the recognition she deserves, with works now exhibited at Tate and MoMA (14 Dec, 7–9pm, £12).

‘REVOLUTION’ DOCUMENTARY Ahead of the RA’s show of Russian art, Foxtrot Films’ documentary Revolution: New Art for a New World (poster above) tells the story on the big screen. The film is released in November across the UK, with screenings planned at cinemas including London’s Curzon Bloomsbury and Curzon Mayfair. To watch a trailer, visit http://revolution.film

FRIENDS CHRISTMAS party

CHRISTmas carols

Savour festive treats and sing along to traditional and contemporary Christmas carols among the works of Abstract Expressionism and Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at this year’s RA Friends Christmas Party. Take part in a handson Christmas decoration or wreath making workshop (17 Dec, 7–10pm, £25/£85).

Returning to St James Piccadilly for another year, this Friends tradition features the choral magnificence of chamber choir Vivamus as well as readings by Royal Academicians and other special guests. Beginning with a drinks reception held at Burlington House, enjoy an evening of carols alongside fellow Friends (13 Dec, 6.30–9pm, £37 including drinks reception/£20).

life drawing

Enjoy a glass of wine while you explore the nuances of drawing light and dark in this life drawing session. Concentrating on the depiction of light, this December session is part of a series of monthly sessions for Friends, providing expertled tuition in a social and welcoming environment (12 Dec, 6–9pm, £50).

FRIENDS late lounge

Unwind at this Yuletide late-night lounge with jazz music from pianist Cat Delphi, winter tapas and mulled wine. Enjoy the Academy’s current exhibitions after hours in a festive setting and complete your Christmas shopping, with complimentary gift-wrapping service available for purchases in the Royal Academy Shop (16 Dec, 7–9.30pm, free).

christmas cards and giftS

Featuring beautiful festive designs by Royal Academicians including Ian Ritchie, Bill Jacklin, Ken Howard and Barbara Rae, our exclusive new range of RA Christmas cards and artistinspired gifts are available to buy from the RA Shop. Take advantage of our exclusive offer of 10 per cent off and free delivery with online orders of £50 or more (visit http://roy.ac/gifts and see advertisement pages 90 and 91). fESTIVE Food and drink

WREATH MAKING WORKSHOp

Join us this Christmas season for lunch or dinner at the Keeper’s House with these exclusive offers for Friends: 2 courses at £21 per person; 3 courses at £27.50 per person; or a feasting menu for group bookings at £48 per person. To book a table please call 020 7300 5881 and or email keepershouse@ peytonandbyrne.co.uk.

Led by expert Jo Woodward, of bespoke floral design company Columbia Creative, this workshop will guide Friends in the creation of Christmas wreaths. Choosing from fresh florals, woody pine cones and foliage, enjoy a glass of sparkling wine and a mince pie as you craft your wintry wreath (5 Dec, 7–9pm, £75).

Friends of the RA membership is the perfect gift for a loved one to experience the Academy’s programme of exhibitions, as well as exclusive previews, priority booking, special events and more. Visit royalacademy.org.uk/giftmembership

GIVE an art experience

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What’s On at the RA

Events highlights

Friends Preview Day * No booking required * Free with an exhibition ticket

November InMotion: ‘Abstract Expressionism’ Exhibition tour for mobility impaired visitors Flemish Supper Club and Wine Pairing Gastronomic delights from Flanders The Art of Glass Tasting with Riedel A masterclass in new and old-world wine In Focus: ‘Intrigue: James Ensor’ Private view of the exhibition for Friends InTouch: ‘Abstract Expressionism’ An audio-described tour of the exhibition Life Drawing: The Figure in Context An expert-led session for Friends of the RA

Access event

9–11am

Free

Friends event

7–9pm

£65

Friends event

7–9pm

£80

Friends event

7–10pm £25

Priority booking opens for Friends at 10am

Access event

9–11am

21 November

Free

17 November

Public booking opens at 10am Friends event

6–9pm £50

BOOK ONLINE

royalacademy.org.uk/events

December

BOOK BY TELEPHONE

Picture the Light: Screening Rebecca Salter RA’s film collaboration Christmas Wreath Making Workshop Foliage and flower-filled wreath masterclass Penshurst Place Home to kings and noblemen for over 650 years In Tune with Abstract Expressionism RCM’s Laefer Quartet performs in the galleries The 1898 Bal du Rat Mort The decadence of Ensor’s masked ball Family Studio: Solstice Spectacular Create costumes at this drop-in workshop Life Drawing: Making Light Visible Express light in this expert-led session Christmas Carols Evening Music and readings in St James Piccadilly ‘The 100 Year Show’: Screening Klayman’s film on artist Carmen Herrera Late Lounge & Christmas Shopping See the RA shows and wrap up your gifts Friends Christmas Party Festive treats, crafts and celebrations Curiosity, Carnivals and Colour Family workshop for children with SEN InMind: Art, Coffee and Conversation Sessions for people living with dementia

Friends event

7–9pm £20

Friends event

7–9pm

020 7300 8090 Open daily 10am–5pm BOOK IN PERSON

£75

At the Academy’s box office

Friends excursion 9am–7.30pm £94

SIGN UP FOR EMAIL UPDATES

Special event

6.30–7.30pm £8/£5

royalacademy.org.uk/ friendsenews

RA Late

7–11.45pm

£35

Family event

11am–3pm

Free *

Friends event

6–9pm

£50

Friends excursion 6.30–9pm

£37/£20

Friends film club 7–9pm

£12

Friends event

7–9.30pm

Free

Friends event

7–10pm

£25/£85

Access event

11am–1pm

Free

Access event

11am–12.30pm

Free

Family event

11am–3pm

Free *

Access event

9–11am

Free

Access event

2.30–5.30pm

Free

InTouch: ‘Abstract Expressionism’, Monday 28 Nov, 9–11am, Free

January Sunday 8

Monday 9

Tuesday 10

Family Studio: The Great Brush Up III Carnival colours in a workshop for families InMotion: ‘Intrigue: James Ensor’ Tour for mobility impaired visitors InStudio: ‘Intrigue: James Ensor’ Ensor-inspired creative workshop

‘The 100 Year Show’: Screening, Wednesday 14 Dec, 7–9pm, £12

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© J o h n N as s a r i

Monday 5

Monday 5

Thursday 8

Friday 9

Saturday 10

Sunday 11

Monday 12

Tuesday 13

Wednesday 14

Friday 16

Saturday 17

Sunday 18

Monday 19

For more details and full listings of forthcoming events, visit royalacademy.org.uk/events

© R oy M at t h e ws . P h oto by Er i k M a d i g a n H eck . b en ed i ct j o h ns o n

Monday 21

Tuesday 22

Wednesday 23

Saturday 26

Monday 28

Monday 28

How to book events

Tuesday 10

Thursday 12

Monday 16

Monday 16

Tuesday 17

Wednesday 18

Monday 23

Tuesday 24

Tuesday 24

Wednesday 25

Wednesday 25

Friday 27

Monday 30

Tuesday 31

Mansion House Art Collection Dutch Golden Age paintings Tour of Wrotham Park, Hertfordshire See paintings by Van Dyck and Sargent InTouch: ‘Intrigue: James Ensor’ Exhibition for visually impaired visitors Life Drawing An expert-led session exclusive to Friends Meg Andrews Antique Costumes Highlights include Charles II embroidery The Goldsmiths’ Centre Tour the RIBA Award-winning studios InMind: Art, Coffee and Conversation Sessions for people living with dementia Sands Films Costumiers for ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Wolf Hall’ Friends 40th Anniversary Reception Drinks reception to celebrate 40 years The Goldsmiths’ Centre Tour the RIBA Award-winning studios Arts, Society and Medicine Lecture Conrad Shawcross RA in conversation Great Fire of London Walking Tour Trace the fire’s destructive path, 350 years on UCL Petrie and Grant Museums Egyptian archaeology and zoology Sands Films Costumiers for ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Wolf Hall’

Friends excursion 11–12.30pm

£29

Friends excursion 12.45–6.30pm

£60

Access event

9–11am

Free

Friends event

6–9pm £50

Friends excursion 11am–1pm

£28

Friends excursion 11am–12.45pm

£28

Access event

Free

11am–12.30pm

Friends excursion 11am–1pm

£28

Friends event

£40

7–10pm

Friends excursion 11am–12.45pm

£28

Talk

Free

6.30–7.30pm

Friends excursion 2–4pm

£28

Friends excursion 10.15am–1.15pm £28 Friends excursion 11am–1pm

Tour of Wrotham Park, Thursday 12 Jan, 12.45–6.30pm, £60

Life Drawing Monday 16 Jan, 6–9pm, £50

£28

February

© J o h n N as s a r i

© R oy M at t h e ws . P h oto by E r i k M a d i g a n H eck . b en ed i ct j o h ns o n

See opposite page for details of how to book events

Thursday 2

Thursday 2

Friday 3

Monday 6

Tuesday 7

Wednesday 8

Thursday 9

Thursday 9

Friday 10

Saturday 11

Sunday 12

UCL Art Museum Includes work by pre-eminent Slade alumni ‘Premiums: Interim Projects’ Exhibition of work by RA Schools students InPractice: Artists Presentations Artists celebrate and share their practice Sound | Making | Space How do we engage with space through sound?

Transport Museum Poster Collection A nostalgic journey through TFL’s past ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’ See the new RA show before the public ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’ See the new RA show before the public UCL Art Museum Includes work by pre-eminent Slade alumni ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’ See the new RA show before the public Anthony Green RA in Conversation In discussion with Timothy Hyman RA New Beginnings, New Possibilities Family workshop for children with SEN

Friends excursion 10.30am–12.15pm £28 Tour

3–3.45pm

Free *

Access event

6–8.30pm

Free *

Architecture event 6.30–8.30pm

£12/£6

Friends excursion 11.30am–1pm

£24

Friends preview

10am–10pm Free

Friends preview

10am–6pm Free

Friends 40th Anniversary Reception, Tuesday 24 Jan, 7–10pm, £40

Friends excursion 10.30am–12.15pm £28 Friends preview

10am–6pm Free

Talk

3–4pm

Free

Access event

11am–1pm

Free

Great Fire of London Walking Tour Friday 27 Jan, 2–4pm, £28

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What’s On at the RA

Friday 17

Friday 17

Saturday 18

Saturday 18

Sunday 19

Monday 20

Monday 20

Monday 20

Tuesday 21

Wednesday 22

Thursday 23

Thursday 23

Friday 24

Saturday 25

Saturday 25

Sunday 26

Tuesday 28

Introduction to ‘Revolution: Russian Art’ Co-curator John Milner introduces the exhibition Film | Making | Space Short screenings, performances and discussion Life Drawing An expert-led session exclusive to Friends InStudio: ‘Revolution: Russian Art’ Creative workshop for disabled adults Meg Andrews Antique Costumes Highlights include Charles II embroidery Gallery Works Half-Term Workshop The first of two creative sessions for families National Archives – Behind the Scenes Exclusive tour of official government archive ‘Anthony Green RA’ The curators introduce the exhibition Tour of The Travellers Club The oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs An Evening of Short Stories with Pin Drop A special guest celebrates Russian short fiction Film and the Soviet Avant-garde The place of film in Soviet art The Labour of the Artist Academic Nina Power leads the discussion Russian Monster Puppet Ballet Collaborative, Soviet-inspired block party InMind: Art, Coffee and Conversation Sessions for people living with dementia Tour of Spencer House London’s finest 18th-century town house Everyday Modernism Explore the contribution of ‘minor modernisms’ Penguin Random House Art Collection See text-based prints by British artists ‘America After the Fall’ See the new RA show before the public ‘America After the Fall’ See the new RA show before the public Canary Wharf Art and Architecture Tour Explore the financial metropolis on foot ‘America After the Fall’ See the new RA show before the public Whitechapel Bell Foundry Tour Explore the place where Big Ben was made Permeating Networks of Resistance Curator Christian Lübbert leads the discussion Russian Monster Puppet Ballet Collaborative, Soviet-inspired block party The Estorick Collection Italian art in Islington

Talk

1–2pm Free

Architecture event 6.30–8.30pm

£12

Friends event

6–9pm £50

Access event

2.30–5.30pm

Free

Friends excursion 11am–1pm

£28

Family event

£15/£5

10.15am–1pm

Friends excursion 2.30–4pm

£24

Curator’s talk

Free **

2.30–3pm

Friends excursion 10.30am–12pm

£30

Talk

6.30–7.30pm

£16/£12/£6

Talk

11am–12pm

£16/£8/£5

Roundtable

3–4.30pm

£8/£5

Family event

11am–3pm

Free *

Access event

11am–12.30pm

Free

Friends excursion 2.30–3.45pm

£26

Architecture event 6.30–8pm

£12/£6

Friends excursion 6.30–8pm

£36

Friends preview

10am–10pm Free

Friends preview

10am–6pm

£24

Friends preview

Free

Friends excursion 10–11.30am

£30

Roundtable

3–4.30pm

£8/£5

Family event

11am–3pm

Free *

Friends excursion 2–3.30pm

Gallery Works Half-Term Workshop, Tuesday 14 Feb, 10.15am–1pm, £15/£5

Free

Friends excursion 2.30–4.15pm 10–6pm

Film | Making | Space Monday 13 Feb, 6.30–8.30pm, £12

An Evening of Short Stories with Pin Drop Friday 17 Feb, 6.30–7.30pm, £16/£12/£6

£27

Permeating Networks of Resistance Saturday 25 Feb, 3–4.30pm, £8/£5

’13 P o i n ts E x pa n d ed ’ by K r ei d er + O ’ L e a ry. R eco r d ed i n B elfas t, 2014-16 . P h oto: R oy M at t h e ws . F r a n ces ca Ol d f i el d. P h oto co u r t esy o f Ch r is t i a n Lü b b er t

Monday 13

Monday 13

Monday 13

Tuesday 14

Tuesday 14

Tuesday 14

Thursday 16

Friday 17

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’13 P o i n ts E x pa n d ed ’ by K r ei d er + O ’ L e a ry. R eco r d ed i n B elfas t, 2014-16 . P h oto: R oy M at t h e ws . F r a n ces ca Ol d f i el d. P h oto co u r t esy o f Ch r is t i a n Lü b b er t

See page 102 for details of how to book events

March Wednesday 1

Thursday 2

Friday 3

Friday 3

Saturday 4

Monday 6

Monday 6

Tuesday 7

Tuesday 7

Thursday 9

Saturday 11

Saturday 11

Monday 13

Monday 13

Monday 13

Monday 13

Monday 13

Monday 20

Monday 20

Monday 20

Tuesday 21

Monday 27

Tuesday 28

Thursday 30

Maria Mileeva: Kazimir Malevich In-Gallery talk 2.30–3pm Free ** A talk in front of the artworks National Archives – Behind the Scenes Tour Friends excursion 2.30–4pm £24 Exclusive tour of official government archive Great Fire of London Walking Tour Friends excursion 2–4pm £28 Trace the fire’s destructive path, 350 years on

Art Under State Control Panel discussion 6.30–7.45pm £16/£12/£6 Bob and Roberta Smith RA & Elena Sudakova In Focus: ‘Revolution: Russian Art’ Friends event 7–10pm £25 Live Russian music at this private view Women in Early Soviet Art 1917-1932 Talk 1–2pm Free Natalia Budanova on femininity and revolution Women in Art: National Gallery Tour Friends excursion 10.30am–12.30pm £35 Notable works by influential women artists Tour of The Travellers Club Friends excursion 10.30am–12pm £30 The oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs InStudio: RA Collections Access event 2.30–5.30pm Free Creative workshop for disabled adults Izaskun Chinchilla Architecture event 6.30–7.45pm £12/£6 Architecture as a gendered practice The Harm of Harmlessness Roundtable 3–4.30pm £8/£5 Artist Paul Maheke leads the discussion Whitechapel Bell Foundry Friends excursion 10–11.30am £30 Explore the place where Big Ben was made InMotion: ‘Revolution: Russian Art’ Access event 9–11am Free Exhibition tour for mobility impaired visitors UCL Petrie and Grant Museums Friends excursion 10.15am–1.15pm £28 Egyptian archaeology and zoology Art in the Service of the Revolution Talk 1–2pm Free Co-curator Dr Natalia Murray discusses Daria Paramonova Architecture event 6.30–7.45pm £12/£6 Architecture in Moscow today Life Drawing Friends event 6.30–9pm £50 An expert-led session exclusive to Friends InTouch: ‘Revolution: Russian Art’ Access event 9–11am Free An audio-described tour of the exhibition Concrete Fetishes Architecture event 6.30–8pm £12/£6 Is the social agenda of Brutalism forgotten?

Women in Art: National Gallery Tour Friends excursion 10.30am–12.30pm £35 Notable works by influential women artists Canary Wharf Art and Architecture Tour Friends excursion 2.30–4.15pm £24 Explore the financial metropolis on foot

A New Civic Architecture event 6.30–8pm £12/£6 The meaning of civic space in Russia and beyond Transport Museum’s Poster Collection Friends excursion 11.30am–1pm £24 A nostalgic journey through TFL’s past Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire Friends excursion 9am–7.15pm £125 See works by Reynolds and Rembrandt

In-Gallery talk, Wednesday 1 Mar, 2.30–3pm, free

Tour of The Travellers Club Tuesday 7 Mar, 10.30am–12pm, £30

Whitechapel Bell Foundry Saturday 11 Mar, 10–11.30am, £30

Canary Wharf Art and Architecture Tour Tuesday 21 Mar, 2.30–4.15pm, £24

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What’s On at the RA The Sackler Wing

Abstract Expressionism

Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932

Intrigue: James Ensor America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s

by Luc Tuymans

Until 2 January 2017

11 February–17 April 2017

Until 29 January 2017

25 February–4 June 2017

This long-awaited exhibition is the first major survey of Abstract Expressionism in the UK since 1959.

In the era of free jazz and the Beat Generation, American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still and Joan Mitchell broke from accepted conventions to unleash a new confidence in painting. Often monumental in scale, their works are at times intense, spontaneous and deeply expressive. At others they are contemplative, presenting fields of colour that border on the sublime.

Lead sponsor BNP Paribas.

Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, this powerful exhibition explores this momentous period through its artworks. The show charts the abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Lyubov Popova, and the emergence of Socialist Realism, and includes pioneering paintings, sculptures, films, photography, ceramics, textiles, graphic design and architecture.

Supported by LetterOne. Supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Catalogue supported by the Polonsky Foundation

The Great Depression was a period of great artistic diversity, as painters from Edward Hopper to Georgia O’Keeffe sought to capture the character of a country undergoing change. One of America’s most famous paintings, Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930, below), is at the centre of a show that reveals the richness of 1930s art.

Organised by the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with the RA and Établissement public du musée d’Orsay et du musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

2009-2017 Season supported by JTI

Friends Preview Days 8 February 2017, 10am–10pm 9 & 10 February 2017, 10am–6pm

The theatrical, the satirical and the macabre come together in the art of James Ensor, one of Belgium’s greatest modern artists. Ensor influenced the development of Expressionism, after a childhood spent in his family’s curiosity shop where his wild imagination was cultivated. This exhibition, curated by his compatriot, artist Luc Tuymans, presents a unique body of work seen through the eyes of one of today’s leading painters.

Organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in association with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

2009-2017 Season supported by JTI. Supported by the Government of Flanders

Mandres, 1961–62,

by Joan Mitchell

Komsomol at the Wheel, 1929,

by Arkady Shaikhet

Personages in Front of the Playbill of ‘La Gamme d’Amour’, 1928–29, by James Ensor

American Gothic, 1930,

by Grant Wood

Around the Academy

Tennant Gallery John Gibson RA: A British Sculptor in Rome

Visitor information

Until 18 December (Tue–Sun)

Weston Rooms, Norman Shaw Staircase & Architecture Space Premiums: Interim Projects

Anthony Green RA: The Life and Death of Miss Dupont 18 January–30 April 2017 (Tue–Sun)

27 January–5 February 2017

Sponsored by Newton Investment Management across the ra Origins: A Project by Ordinary Architecture Until 15 January 2017

Futures Found

18 February–29 May 2017

The Keeper’s House Art Sales Exhibitions Surface Cutting Until 20 February 2017

Academicians in Focus: Olwyn Bowey RA

Until 27 March 2017 royalacademy.org.uk/artsales

plan your visit

Opening times of the Main Galleries & Sackler Wing: Sat–Thur 10am-6pm; Fri 10am– 10pm. For all opening times and opening over Christmas, visit http://roy.ac/visit Friends Preview Days require prior booking: visit royalacademy.org.uk/events contact the RA

020 7300 8090 friends@royalacademy.org.uk

Friends Preview Days 22 February 2017, 10am–10pm 23 & 24 February 2017, 10am–6pm

Friends of the RA

The RA is a charity that receives no revenue funding from Government.

It relies on the generosity of its Friends and supporters to continue its exhibitions, events and education.

Friends benefits

Friends enjoy free entry to all RA exhibitions together with a family guest. Other benefits include Preview Days (above), access to The Keeper’s House, and a 10 per cent discount in the RA Shop, in store and online. Friends must show their membership card, and ID (bank or credit card, or driving licence) may be checked at the gallery entrance.

P r i vat e co l l ect i o n , co u r t esy o f M cCl a i n G a l l ery/© Es tat e o f J oa n M i tch el l . A l e x L ach m a n n co l l ec t i o n Lo n d o n /Co u r t esy o f P r i vat e co l l ect i o n . © M us ées r oyaux d es B e aux-A r ts d e B elgi q u e / P h oto gr a p h: J . Gel e y ns – R o s ca n /© DACS 2016 . F r i en ds o f Am er i ca n A r t Co l l ec t i o n 1930. 934/ T h e A r t I ns t i t u t e o f Ch i cago

Main Galleries

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BUNK A key moment in British art.

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The BUNK portfolio, 1972 45 screenprint & lithograph collages Set number 1 from the edition of 50 The only completely signed set

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Art Tours Worldwide Art | Archaeology | Architecture Cox & Kings is the travel partner for the Royal Academy of Arts and our programme of small-group tours has been specially created with the Friends of the RA in mind, although they are open to everyone.

The 2017-18 collection focuses on the art, architecture and archaeology of many of the world’s most culturally rich destinations. The tours are accompanied by expert lecturers who help to design the itineraries, give talks along the way and, in some cases, open doors that would normally be closed to the general public.

SPRING 2017 HIGHLIGHTS LAOS & CAMBODIA: Temples & Treasures with Denise Heywood 4 February – 10 nights from £3,795 ST PETERSBURG: Pictures & Palaces with Lydia Bauman 19 February – 5 nights from £1,295 MADRID & TOLEDO: From El Greco to Picasso with Dr Richard Stemp 13 March – 4 nights from £1,295 CÔTE D’AZUR: Matisse & Modern Art with Gerald Deslandes 21 March – 3 nights from £1,345 PUGLIA & BASILICATA: Italy’s Undiscovered South with Dr Colin Bailey 3 April – 7 nights from £2,245 IRAN: Persian Palaces & Gardens with Hilary Smith 3 April – 13 nights from £4,495 IMAGE: Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Isfahan, Iran

For reservations, please call 020 3773 1419 For detailed itineraries and prices, please request a copy of the 2017-18 RA Art Tours Worldwide brochure by calling 020 3773 1419 or visit coxandkings.co.uk/ra ATOL 2815 ABTA V2999

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