The London Museum Gallery - Essay Example

Introduction A voyage trip into the national gallery London Museum one notices one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, public collections of a wide spectrum art ever formed. It vividly contents with any serious human entity with awe and wonder to be compelled to appreciate this collections that form a great passion and the powerful creative process of art making. The highly charged atmosphere of these meticulously posed paintings and prints reveal an intense relationship between Lucian Freud and his wife Kitty Garman, the daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein. These early portraits of Kitty from 1947 to 1951 are shown next to his self portrait. The works blend with the design and architecture of The New Art Gallery enhancing the visitor's experience of the works by showing them in new and interesting ways and making connections between old and new art. However, local artistic styles were not lost completely and they make up an essential element of the mature English Romanesque style. In religious painting, this is characterized by the use of abstracted or distorted figures, which are fully coloured and delineated by solid outlines. Frederick Antal (1962) The Entrance The area above the door itself provides the artist with a large semicircular field called the tympanum within which to carve both decorative and narrative subjects, which are supplemented by ornament applied to the door jambs, arches, and capitals. These carvings are often highly imaginative and amusing blending in some religious and secular imagery within one small area. Space and Religion Portrayed Compositions are generally formal and patterned, while physical space is indicated by rectangular background panels. Exaggerated facial expressions and gestures portray religious drama scenes. Numerous illuminated manuscripts made for the new monasteries, seemingly indicate an essential element of the Norman establishment. Azzopardi (2001) Findings The most unique collection includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, video and installations from artists and public and private collections in Britain and abroad. Major works are included by Francis Bacon, Per Barclay, Cecil Beaton, Bruce of LA; this exhibition highlights the artist's preoccupations with urban and natural landscapes and with human perception and interaction. Encompassing large-scale video and sound installation, photography, drawing and film, it gives a first UK staging to a number of newly-completed works. Office Architects, the exhibition includes a wealth of historical and contemporary drawings alongside models, collage, computer modelling and extracts from films. While many of these ideas were intended to enthuse and convince clients about real architectural schemes, some were private fantasies, exploring how the world might have looked today had the tastes of our predecessors been different. The collection of art includes works by Robert Adam, Archigram, Sir Charles Barry, Etienne-Louis Boullee, Sir William Chambers, Foster & Partners, Future Systems, Erno Goldfinger, Eric Mendelsohn, John Nash, Softroom, Paolo Soleri and Tecton. This art includes work painted of a dramatic floor-ceiling projection recreating the artist's ascent up a thirty-five metre deep Antarctic crevasse - together with a recent commission, Sky Drawing (Night, Day), which focuses on the movement of air traffic over Birmingham. Until recently the society has been developing collaboration with Vivid, Birmingham and includes work commissioned by Vivid with the support of the Henry Moore Foundation. Infected by Gina Czarnecki and Iona Kewney is a haunting video installation about the nature of the physical body in the context of future technological possibilities, seen through dance and digitally manipulated imagery. Men in the Wall by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie are a four screen, 3-dimensional stereoscopic installation. Each life-size 3D 'frame' is inhabited by a man whose world is tightly choreographed and scripted. Viewers can experience the men's shared, framed lives in a public quartet of private differences; walking the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Physical and Mental Space Video dance sculpture which explores views of London from the perspective of the dancer's body while the dancer performs choreographed material created especially for these sites. The centrepiece is Goodwin's panoramic video and sound installation, Dilate (2003). Pulsing across a 'wrap around' membrane of eight encircling projection screens, Dilate expands and contracts our perceptual horizons to heighten our awareness of physical and psychological space Artwork by Gavin Turk, Yoshihiro Suda and Rose Finn-Kelcey are shown amongst the Garman Ryan Collections in the London gallery, offering new ways of looking at the themes of still life and work and leisure. The Garman Ryan Collection contains a beautiful Caryatid drawing by Amedeo Modigliani which he gave to Jacob Epstein when they were friends in Paris together in 1912. Their intention was to set up a studio together and they dreamed of creating a Temple of Beauty, a vast temple dedicated to all mankind and held aloft by a series of stone caryatids which Modigliani named 'The Pillars of Tenderness'. This sublime vision can be seen through these sculptures, paintings and drawings produced at the time. Romance The art work produced by the young women unveils the reality behind this horrific form of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, portraying the signs of grooming and the risks faced by young people manipulated into this, sometimes literal, form of imprisonment. 'Sex, Lies & Love' is a pioneering and award winning preventative programme utilising drama and the arts to raise awareness of how many young women are groomed into, and abused through, sexual exploitation. Hew Locke is well known for his architectural constructions such as Cardboard Palace and Hemmed In which draw upon Baroque, Rococo, Hindu, Islamic and colonial architecture, along with fairground art. He also creates vibrantly coloured collage sculptures, many of the Royal Family, made with materials acquired from markets and pound stores. This multimedia exhibition is powerful and thought provoking. Hear the story of 'Krystal', a fifteen year old girl who is groomed into, prostitution by her older 'boyfriend'. The warning signs allow your perceptions to be informed by the truth. Epstein drew constantly from the human figure, both as inspiration for his sculpture and for a love of the expressive medium of drawing. His models are mainly female and from many different cultural backgrounds. Both his second wife Kathleen Garman, mother of three of his children and Meum Lindsall the mother of his first child were to be his models. Fertility, sexuality and personality are all expressed in the fast flowing lines he uses in his drawings of the human form. Peter Quennell (1955) This major graphic genius brings together brand new works by the artist that typically combine his interest in sculpture and science, and which demonstrate the intellectual rigour, technical dexterity and intense sense of drama that we have associated with Conrad's work. These works draw upon quantum mechanics and musical theory, especially the science of harmonics. One of the most fascinating blends in his works consists of five caged machines, each producing a geometric loop of light in space. They are visual, sculptural; transcriptions of the harmonic chord sequences in music which while sounding good to us also contain true mathematical simplicity." Conrad Shawcross (1982) Culture Portrayed Marshall draws upon a wide range of sources such as African-American history, literature, films, music and comic books, as well as Western art history and classical mythology to create what has been described as 'a meditation on black aesthetics'.His principal subject is the black figure, which he injects into the mainstream of Western painting where previously it had been peripheral. His paintings erupt with an explosion of narratives and textures, interweaving aspects of art history and American history. Also one come across Back to Black, Art, and the Racial Imaginary that presents a major survey into the Black Arts Movement in the US, Jamaica and Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Tracing its cultural impact in painting, sculpture, photography and drawing, it also focuses on the fashion, music and film that emerged over two decades. Symbolic paintings of the raised fist, Afro and dreadlock hairstyles, that portray Africa and there culture and Caribbean are vividly inspiring images of the inhabitants of the ghetto, and icons such as Angela Davis, Mohammed Ali and Bob Marley are all infiltrated into this wonderful art. If someone is often inspired by an experience of nature or landscape, then you can't miss a mind boggling deceptively simple three line of traditionally consisted poem of five syllables on the first line, seven syllables on the second line and five again on the third line. Frdric Oge & Peter Wagner, eds., William Hogarth (1997) A haiku is a poem of concision, perception and awareness, pulsing with that delight of the senses that carries a conviction of one's unity with all of existence. Cor van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology. I notice so many children from many different places writing these haiku in response to their favourite artworks in the London Art Collection. The diversity and range of artworks on view in the galleries, combined with the discipline of the creation of a haiku, provides a platform for the children's creative imagination. The poems offer a unique opportunity to see art through another person's eyes, enabling the viewer to have fresh insights into the many varied artworks in the collection. These portents a wide spectrum of graffiti, from tattoos to tapestries, from customised cars to clairvoyant's hand signs, this energetic and engaging collection is a real celebration of the creative life of Britain. Frdric Oge & Peter Wagner, eds., William Hogarth (1997) Comic and Humor Industry and Idleness Crowded with incident and humorous anecdote, Hogarth works sound more like dubbed "comic history" and sympathetically portray the teeming urban life of his age. Research show that the twelve prints 'Industry and Idleness' 1747 collections follow the differing fortunes of two London apprentices in the weaving trade. Hogarth industry must have earned exaggerating wealth and honour unlike the most that a climax of death and horror on the gallows is their ultimate. Hogarth displayed both satirical and morality by his courageous exposition of individuals to public ridicule. Peter Quennell (1955) The settlements, self-built in the main from local natural and recycled materials, are often so in harmony with their environments that at certain times of the year they become almost invisible. Hogarth focuses on the evolution of these permanent and more temporary structures, which have an ad hoc and organic sense of design. Also evident is how these communities work towards being self-sufficient and sustainable, it is the close almost symbiotic relationship between this man-made environment and the natural habitat that the essence of the lifestyle recorded here. M Stetz, MS Lasner (2000) This new body of work stands as a powerful visual testimony to these people who chose to live their lives according to their ideological beliefs within a contemporary society. In it he created a highly dramatic composition which nevertheless retains freshness and immediacy that is lacking in some of his other grand pieces, and he truly managed to fuse the traditions of portraiture and allegorical painting to great effect. Unfortunately, many of his works have physically deteriorated, owing to the use of bitumen in his paint. The most Poignant Observation Most poignant perhaps are the pictures of the graveyard, full of monuments to people who have "fallen asleep", clearly taken in autumn as trees are bereft and leaves lie on the ground, blown into the corners where graves meet other graves. This often reveals relationships and poetic qualities that are to be found in the most inert and mundane of everyday things. The substance and materiality is emphasised through the artist's search and process in making the work which results in a quiet concentration required by the viewer Consequently Redon explores the amazing scientific discoveries of his time, such as the 'monsters', which could be seen under the microscope. His fascination of the unconscious mind, dreams and fantasies was well ahead of Freud's 20th century psychoanalytical analysis and his creations of the unknown world such as ghosts, the supernatural and the afterlife produce unforgettable images of the seemingly unknowable. For sculptor Jacob Epstein this seems to have been the case. By the time of his death in 1959 he had amassed over 1000 items from a wide range of cultures and from many periods. In particular his collection contained over 500 works of art from Africa including many pieces now regarded as masterpieces In particular his collection contained over 500 works of art from Africa including many pieces now regarded as masterpieces Jacob Epstein was not only a challenging artist but also a passionate collector of some of the most famous and widely illustrated works of African and Pacific sculpture ever to reach Europe. After his death the collection was split up and sold to many different private collectors and to some public collections including the British Museum Natural settings where the presence of human beings is absent yet implied; sites, which for him, suggested something powerful and mysterious. Their stillness, together with his manipulation of the scenes and the heightened, almost psychedelic colour, suggest a variety of hidden narratives, histories or events, triggering the imagination of the viewer. Conclusion While many of the landscapes of this period of the eighth century depict nature in its calmer moments, more threatening subjects are represented, in the paintings of Vesuvius executed by Joseph Wright of Derby. Wright was particularly effective at creating unusual lighting effects, both in his landscapes and in his memorable interior scenes, which include the celebrated Experiment with a Bird in an Air Pump (1768, National Gallery, London). The originality of this work lies not in its technique, which is heavily influenced by the 17th-century Dutch Caravaggisti (painters who were drawn to Rome by the desire to emulate Caravaggio), but in its recognition of the technological discoveries of the Industrial Revolution. In general, artists of this period ignored Britain's incipient industrialization, and it is not until the Victorian Era that we encounter a more widespread representation of its achievements. Jenny Uglow, Hogarth (1997) The Romantic imagination, newly awakened by a love of nature, did not concentrate on the rational but rather encouraged dramatic and fantastic thoughts and actions. Such new ideas and contemporary developments on the Continent could be interpreted in many ways; they could represent liberty and solitude but could also lead to violence and decay. In Romanticism, nature was revealed as heartless, untamed, and overwhelming. Nonetheless, foreign avant-garde art is displayed in London in the Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912, this are organized by Roger Fry, a leading member of the Bloomsbury Group. Collyer Bristow (1995) Moreover, Post-Impressionism had a profound influence on the Camden Town Group, founded in 1911 by Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, and Robert Bevan. The most radical development of all is Vorticism, a movement established in 1913 under the influence of Cubism and Italian Futurism. The Vorticist movement is led by the painter Wyndham Lewis, although significant contributions were also made by the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Reference. Peter Quennell (1955) Hogarth's Progress (London, New York) Frederick Antal (1962) Hogarth and His Place in European Art London Jenny Uglow, Hogarth (1997) A Life and a World. Frdric Oge and Peter Wagner, eds., William Hogarth (1997) Theater and the Theater of Life. Collyer Bristow (1995), Contemporary Sculpture London M Stetz, MS Lasner (2000) Victorian Studies. Azzopardi (2001) - Religion and the Arts, Springer Read More

 

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