A summer at the Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Art in London offers the possibility to see two exhibitions this summer: Sargent and the Sea and the Summer Exhibition.



John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is an American expatriate painter, popular for his portraits. However this exhibition do not focus on this part of his life. Indeed, the aim of the exhibition is to “demonstrate the role that the sea played in Sargent’s early development. As it name implies, focuses on its works about seascape and marine, reminds me a lot of impressionists and Barbizon school, notably Eugène Boudin. Mainly because they painted the same subject: sea, coast and beaches and boats sceneries involving mainly fishermen and fisherwomen rather than bourgeois on vacation and the effect of climatic conditions on the seascape. Sea storms seem to have inspired him which is unsurprising given that Sargent’s inspirations have also included John Mallory Turner. His travels during his youth, in Europe, seem to follow a fashionable path amongst the painters of the time. He went in Brittany and Normandy, which were popularised thanks to the development of the railways, to Capri and Naples under the shadow of the Vesuvio and close to the buried Pompeii and through various ports and harbours like Venice in between. In addition, he also painted during his transatlantic travel which is more unusual. As I said earlier, if his style was reminiscent of previous and contemporary prestigious painters, the way he depicted the sea was something of a novel as he tried to avoid representing the limit between the sky and the ocean.

On a side note (slightly off-topic and probably ludicrous I reckon), paintings of naked kids brought to me the question: Does painting young naked kid would seem paedophile nowadays? I do not know if Sargent painted them directly on the beach or from memory, most likely in his studio, but I wonder how an artist painting that kind of subjects now would be criticised and worse, if he would be pursued for paedophilia. Yet, in this case it is art. I am not saying that paintings displaying that kind of explicit content should be banned but I find this discrepancy ironic. On a different subject, there was also an other exhibition at the Royal Academy and as I could get in for free, I did not mind checking it out.

The Summer Exhibition 2010 is quite a fun exhibition where unknown and more famous artists show their works of the year and where people can buy them. It is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition, now in its 242nd edition. A leaflet with the price is provided. There are works for the taste of everybody on various medium: painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film. It is a rather large exhibition as it occupies a little less than a dozen of rooms which are defined by a common topic. Some artists are members of the Royal Academy and some are not. Although, most of them seem to be English by their name and their number, according to the Guardian, seems to reach 11,000 which seems a lot to me. 1,100 would be closer to the reality I suppose (here is a list of the exhibitor last year, I could not find it for this year.)




Overall , the Summer Exhibition is a good opportunity to see new things and to develop a taste in art that one would not be naturally drawn to. Some of them are really weird like this video of a woman licking some hair (i couldn’t figure if it was an animal or the head of someone..) for 3 minutes, and I think that the price was around £800. But that is what makes this display fun and entertaining.

-C

Renaissance Drawing at the British Museum: from Fra Angelico to Leonardo

I recently went to the British Museum to see the exhibition about drawing during the Renaissance in Italy. As I have never been that interested in the subject I nevertheless, was interested in the historical background and was looking for some answers. Fortunately this exhibition was answering my questions while featuring works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Verrocchio and Titian. In order to gather all these artists in one place, the British Museum pooled into its own collection and into the Florence based Uffizi collection. The Renaissance was a period, starting in Italy in the 15th century and then in Europe, which saw an intense revival of the classical art and learning from the Greek and Roman civilisations. Hugo Chapman, the curator of the exhibition, notices that “marble figures like Bacchus encouraged artists to recognise the sensuality and beauty of the human body. The sculpted Bacchus presents an idealised vision of the perfect male body.” Indeed, amongst these drawings we can see that the artists, such as Leonardo or Raphael, started to draw different subjects of the day-to-day life and that their portraits were focusing on the body and the face of their subjects.

The exhibition begins by focusing its attention on the innovation that developed the profession of artists: the paper. In fact, it points that the Chinese invention of papermaking had been brought to Europe via the Islamic world. The invention of the printing press in Germany in the 1450s gave a huge impetus for papermaking, above all in Italy which was the most literate and urbanised region of Europe. Renaissance paper was handmade from cloth fibres (not wood pulp as today) obtained from old clothes, sails and ropes. To complete the explanation, a video shows how paper was made and visitors are invited to touch different types of papers to feel the differences. This is obviously a detail, but it is a good way to put into its historical context this artistic breakthrough.

The exposition then proceeds to show the evolution of artists’ techniques through the ages and how important were the various Italian city-states. Starting with pioneers religious men such as Fra Angelico or Lorenzo Monaco, the spectators' attentions are then focused on the main cities. Florence, with mainly the Medici and the Tornabuoni amongst others, has been one of the first city were the Renaissance artists could evolve from religious subjects and thus became a pole for them. The powerful Italian families wanted to use their talents to express their wealth and leave behind them a glorious picture. The Vatican was also another major player as it attracted artists such as Raphael or Michelangelo from Florence. There, the most successful of them would receive the most important commission and be able to impose their own style and thus fulfil their ambition as being the best artist. Leonardo Da Vinci’s career, apart from being one the quintessential Renaissance man, shows the important cities and families at this time as he worked for no less than Florence’s Medici, Milan’s Sforza, the Doge of Venice and the Vatican and then Francois 1er of France. However, his career does not reflect the way Renaissance was present in all the Italian peninsula as many lesser cities also employed lesser artists.

 Although I have never been a huge fan of this period artistically speaking, I can still appreciate the precision of these drawings and this exhibition allow the visitors to observe the artists’ talent with their pencil and sometimes even compare these with the finite paints, notably Lorenzo Monaco’s tryptich. The historical side, was an interesting side of the exhibition, showed that artists had a huge ambition and how through this war between them the style of the Renaissance evolved progressively from a religious theme to everything that the artists wanted to show.

-C

Strange visitors

While walking the streets of London, one can notice curious elephant statues sitting in various positions and sporting different colours. I thought at first that it was an exhibition of some special kind and I really like the concept. It reminded me of the statues of Anthony Gormley in New York put up for the Event Horizon, previously talked about here. I, personally, cannot remember seeing a lot of these exhibitions showcased. I could recall La Terre vue du Ciel, a photography exhibition in Paris inspired by the eponymous book, about Yann Arthus-Bertrand's pictures taken from an helicopter all around the world.

However, these exhibitions do not match the sheer size of this one.  Indeed, 250 pachyderms, painted in unique colors and schemes by the same number of artists and designers, are scattered over various inner borough of London, sometimes sitting lonely, sometimes sitting in group.  It is not either an exhibition per se as these sculptures are being auctioned and the street is their showcase. The charity Elephant Family, created in 2002, is responsible for such an original initiative. It aims to protect as its name indicate elephants and more precisely the Asian variant, pointing that in 100 years its population decreased by 90% from 250000 to 25000 beasts. To do so, the foundation has been create a natural reserve for them and other “services” susceptible to help them in their task.

This public auction is not their first time as they did it already in 2007 in Rotterdam, 2008 in Antwerp, in 2009 in Amsterdam, this year in London and Emmen Bergen and next year Copenhagen. Given the amount of parades that happen in Netherland and around, but it appears that the main organisation is based in there. Nevertheless, wherever this charity is from is not really the important point. London's auction ends on the 4th of July. Prices start at around £5000 which is to me not that expensive, although right now working in an auction house does not really help to keep a decent vision of the world as it is an environment where prices are crazy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this concept as it makes people enjoy the city in which they are if they want to see these elephants. I liked the fact to randomly see these sculptures in the street and the discrepancy between their own nature as exotic animal painted in various schemes and colour and the urban environment; I found the concept really good. I also like the fact that it is a charity rather than a regular exhibition probably because as a charity it is always heart-warming to see such an innovative idea in the hand of a non-for-profit organisation. It seems to be a win-win situation for the charity as it does not need to rent some space in a museum to exhibit the statues and for the city it is a good PR campaign. I hope that in the future more of these will be possible, however not to the extent of becoming hype so that it does not lose its charm and here is the fine line not to cross.

-C