Week 41: Tyntesfield/British Museum Prints and Drawings

Hello all

Bit late with the blog this week due to the bank holiday and my birthday – yay! I went home for the weekend to see the parents and went to see the amazing Tyntesfield which is somewhere south-ish of Bristol, I don’t know where really! Anyway this property and its estate were unusually bought by the National Trust in 2001 rather than bequeathed with a dowry, which is usually the only way they will take anything. I’m not 100% certain of the situation but basically rather than letting it fall into the hands of private owners (Kylie was interested apparently!!) Bristol Council raised and gave a lot of money so the NT could buy it under the understanding that the house must be open during the restoration so visitors could go straight away rather than waiting 6 years and also see what it takes to restore and catalogue an amazing old house like this. When I went a few years ago they only had a few of the rooms open and some of the front was covered in scaffolding (apparently the biggest free standing scaffold structure in Europe) but that’s all done now and loads more of the house is open looking amazing and they have a fancy visitor centre with a rather excellent second hand book shop. (I bought The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie by Muriel Spark and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos for a pound each in case you’re interested!!!).

Anyway, Tyntesfield is an incredible Victorian Gothic masterpiece of a house. As befits its glorious optimism and pretention it was built by the Gibbs family who were self made millionaires, apparently at one point the richest non titled family in England. Even more appropriately their money was mostly made through shit, literally shit – or guano which was popular form of fertiliser made out of bird poo. Hahahaha. Anyway one mans shit is another mans fortune and these guys were seriously loaded – according to the NT website the £70,000 cost of building Tyntesfield - which started in 1863 - represented less than one year's average profits for their firm. It seems money was no object and they could indulge themselves in any architectural whim and decorative fancy they liked including an aviary in the garden built to look like a wendy house which was later converted into an actual play house for the children/grandchildren of the family. The building was designed originally by the architect John Norton with turrets, gables, pointy windows – the whole shebang. The inside is as elaborate, if not more so, than the outside with every surface covered in the most beautiful wallpaper, carvings over every section of wood and ceiling and my particular delight a huge number of tiles, everywhere, my favourite!! These include beautiful tiled gazebos in the garden as well as an amazing tiled roof – every element was patterned and rich, it kind of reminds me of St Chappell in terms of a jewel box of colour, pattern and texture. Its all just SO ARTS AND CRAFTS – it’s amazing!! I lusted after the beautiful Morris-style soft furnishings. Totally gorgeous.

The family, or part of it at some point anyway, were very religious and subscribed to the Oxford movement i.e. high Anglicanism. They had the architect Arthur William Blomfield design a separate chapel in the 1870s which is linked to the house by a stained glass passage. The local church apparently disapproved and consequently the chapel was never consecrated which is a great shame as my god that would be a good wedding venue. I guess they may still be able to hire it out for non religious ceremonies and you could use one of the beautiful rooms in the estate for the reception or something – god it would be AMAZING. The interior is beautiful with the usual gorgeous tiles and amazing sparkly mosaics etc. It looks so spooky hanging above the house on the hill, this place will surely soon be appearing in multiple BBC costume dramas – it would make an excellent Northanger Abbey amongst other things. What’s really great about Tyntesfield though is not just that they have gone out of their way to acquire and restore the place, it’s also the way they do it. Amongst the ornately carved side boards., marble fireplaces and multicoloured floor tiles we have the old school 1980s TV belonging to the last old gent of the Gibbs family who lived here all alone until his death in 2001 when the place went on the market. When you walk through the restored kitchens you see a pile of phone books from 2000/2001 which haven’t been moved since he lived there, occupying a few rooms of the house only. It’s somehow sad and also quite spooky – Miss Haversham-esque almost.

Earlier in the weekend I went to the British Museum in an attempt to look round the permanent collection, or some of it anyway. The BM has been doing some genuinely excellent exhibitions over the last couple of years which I have enjoyed mightily but it occurred to me recently I never, ever go to the main galleries to look at the stolen hoards of various nations we have invaded/colonised/massacred. I have been to look at the Elgin Marbles occasionally obviously and I went to look at some of the Islamic stuff a couple of years back and also I had to write about some ancient pot or other during my degree but I can not remember ever going to see the mummies for example, which seems crazy. Anyway off I toddled to be inspired by History only to flee to the peace and calm of the prints and drawings room after about half an hour because the rest of it became OVERUN with crowds of annoying tourists. Also to be honest once I have seen one big bit of marble I get horribly bored, I don’t like classicism that much and I have become so indoctrinated by exhibitions that I can’t cope with not having some definite narrative or theme. I need to learn about a particular subject THOROUGLY god damn it – how will I know what to Wikipedia when I get home otherwise?? There was just too much stuff it’s overwhelming. Although one day I will have an illicit romantic meeting in the mummy room god damn it one day I will.

Anyhoo we practically ran to the prints and drawings room and cowered there until it was time to go home but luckily they have had some great little shows on their recently and its always a joy. This time it was something to do with Australia. I’m not quite sure what this whole BM-Australia obsession is about at the mo but they do seem to be all antipodean-ed up, and why not I say. This show was therefore a bit of an overview of some of the prints to come out of Australia since the beginning of the 20th century, or something. There was some nice stuff in there in particular the work of Rick Amor, John Brack, Edwin Fabian and Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack. The exhibition talked a lot, especially at the beginning, about the gaining notoriety of aborigine artists and print makers but to be honest I thought that was a bit of PC PR wank as there were hardly any of them in the show from what I can tell. What I did find incredibly interesting was the background it gave to artists such as Fabian and Mack which gives an insight into a rather shameful chapter in 20th century British history. Both had fled Nazi Germany, where Mack had been a student at the Bauhaus, to England and were then, with the outbreak of war, put on the now infamous Dunera along with hundreds of other ‘enemy aliens’ and shipped off to Australia where they were kept in no doubt pretty unpleasant internment camps, I would assume until the war was over. I didn’t know that this happened or anything about the ‘Dunera boys’, many of whom were granted Australian citizenship and stayed. Some of their images of the camps are truly haunting.

I could go into a lot more detail about the show but frankly I cant be bothered as although enjoyable it wasn’t ALL THAT. So off I go for another week – bye!!

Week 40: Sir John Gilbert/The Guildhall

Hello world

Just a quick one today – and the last time I send an email telling people I have done a blog post I promise!! From now on I will just do them and if you want to check (which I doubt you will) just check on a Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

This week I was going to ditch the cultural pursuit and go directly to the heath but weather turned a bit iffy so did a quick search of my Timeout app and came upon an exhibition called Sir John Gilbert: Art and Imagination in the Victorian Age. ‘MY GOD!!’ Thought I, ‘this is clearly the show for me’ and it was closing next weekend so hot footed it down there (well after sitting on my bed for a further hour looking out the window) and had a quick look before heading back to the heath.

I love the Guildhall, they do so many wicked Victorian shows which would never get put on anywhere else and they are so cheap. I think the entrance fees have changed recently though – before I think you paid £2 or somet to get into the whole thing but now the main collection (and amazing 80s roman amphitheatre) is free but the exhibition is £5 full price – although it’s free to art fund members apparently!! £5 is still a good deal and seeing as it’s always empty in there am very glad to support them, where would all the random Victorian stuff go without them?? I really feel they are one of the last bastions of 19th century appreciation left in London these days and unlike Tate don’t stick to the fashionable stuff only.

Saying that I have to admit the exhibition this time was only so-so, although I don’t think that’s particularly their fault. Sir John was wildly popular during the Victorian era. He was very, very much a man of his age and consequently fell quickly out of fashion, even within his own lifetime. This show is the first major retrospective of his work and although I think very much worth having, there is none the less a sneaking suspicion prevalent throughout the exhibition that there is, perhaps, a reason why he fell so quickly out of fashion; I don’t think he was actually very good!!

Perhaps the finest examples of his work are in the first room you enter and are done in watercolours. Sir John became president of the Royal Society of Watercolours and helped raise their profile considerably during this era. He also worked in oils and was a Royal academician but I think it’s his watercolours where he is definitely at his most comfortable. These large watercolours are almost exclusively of literary subject matters, something he found great popularity for during the Victorian era. In fact his recreations were so popular that he was given the nickname the Scott of Painting; alluding to the huge popularity of historical novels at this time. I was rather intrigued by this as I have found myself with a insatiable thirst for historical literature myself recently – mainly because it provides excellent stimulus for a good old Wikipedia session. The Victorians would have been MAD for Wikipedia wouldn’t they!? He was particularly fond of Shakespearian subject matter and did something like 400 paintings of various Shakespearian scenes throughout his career as well as many, many other types of novels. These images, which were definitely better executed that the majority of the other pieces in the show gave an insight, I think, into why he was so popular. It wasn’t simply his love of the narrative painting, something the Victorians seemed to be orgasmic about, but it’s also his whole aesthetic. His paintings were designed for the walls of the wealthy, not for the academy. His paintings mirror exactly the tastes of the Victorian bourgeois – every single inch of his paintings are covered in intense decoration – pattern, colours, swirls etc. It’s exactly like the interior of the average wealthy Victorian; every section of wall tightly packed with some form of decoration, image or artefact. They are almost afraid of a blank space in which to be allowed to think!
Whereas the majority of his oil painting is unquestionably bad and a not insignificant amount of his watercolours likewise, I was genuinely impressed and fascinated by his engraving work. Again, Gilbert was very much a man of his age and therefore was at the forefront of the illustrating revolution bought on by the serge in popular novels and more importantly the development of the illustrated press, both hugely significant developments during the 19th century. For one thing this explains the tremendous popularity of his literary subject matters, print versions of which he often produced on request for new publications. It was his work for newspapers however that would be most prolific; working for both Punch and The London Illustrated News he produced over 30, 000 woodblock images for the later alone. They had an amazing example of his work on show depicting the Plantagenet ball hosted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with amazing descriptions of what everyone was wearing – ermine for the queen apparently. It was amazing because this was like a 19th century version of Grazia and Gilbert was the paparazzi, in a Kim Kardashian relationship with the paparazzi kind of way obviously. They also had a really interesting panel about the relationship between the artists and engraver and the process they went through for news illustrations. Gilbert was so successful in this medium, they suggested, partly because he worked so quickly – often been given only an hour or so to produce images for, or directly worked onto the wood black. An odd job to have really.

The Guildhall, for some reason, had decided to make this a sort of Works of Art as Physical Object exhibition and throughout the show they had labels about ‘the studio’ describing his technique. Fine thinks I. But then for some reason they decided to dedicate half of the ‘grand space’ to this – creating a little room made of information panels all about canvas stretching, pigments, frame making etc (he often made and gilded his own frames specifically for certain works). To be honest I found the majority of this deathly dull and oddly a bit out of place. If it had been some master then maybe it’s important to know his process etc – but really does anyone care that much about Gilbert to do a full on investigation into his process? Well I don’t anyway.

Sir John did do a few quite good military paintings, a subject that he relished apparently. Other than that there was one he did about Rembrandt which was quite good (hahaha did anyone see this AMAZING Radio Four programme about Anthony Blunt/The Courtauld with Brian Sewell? ‘GETTING TO GRIPS WITH REMBRANDT?? In my day we did not GET TO GRIPS with Rembrandt, we took Rembrandt VERY SERIOUSLY’. Amazing – see here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0134z00)

Really though, I think there is a reason this guy may have been forgotten!!! Apologies byt the way cant seem to get many clear images of his stuff.

Week 39: Women War Artists/Imperial War Museum

Hello!! How crap has this summer been?? Totally disappointed and pissed off about it. When I contemplate another winter stretching before us for 9 months or so I literally want to kill myself!! So happy Tuesday to you all.

This week I ventured back to the Imperial War Museum, because it was near to where I had crashed the night before and I was seriously broke this weekend and it’s free, plus I was with boys. We had a quick walk round World War 1, popped into World War 2 , had a brief stop over in the Cold War before pointedly avoiding the Holocaust rooms in favour of some nice pretty pictures in the gallery. Actually I really should spend more time in the main parts of the IWM (as we call it in the biz, yes really I do have occasion to type that in a work capacity sometimes) as it’s basically a 3D visualisation of my day to day Wiki-wanking. It got me all morbid in an enjoyable blood-lust kind of a way.

When I went to the IMW last year
(see here for blog: http://elizakessler.blogspot.com/2010/02/week-6-imperial-war-museumhall-of.html) I think they just had the usual stuff in the main gallery along with the amazing work for the Hall of Remembrance. This time they had rearranged it somewhat and half the space had been given over to a special (although still free yippee) exhibition called Women War Artists. Hurrah hooray.

Now, to be honest I don’t remember an awful lot written about this exhibition, mainly because I think I didn’t read it – which is unusual for me but there you go. So, even more than usual this blog is going to be a bit of a ‘visual essay’ burgess style. Quickly though it seems that Anna Airy was pretty much the first women artist to be employed as an official war artist by the British War Propaganda Bureau during the First World War, she joined the likes of Paul Nash and John Nah, Wyndham Lewis. It was during the Second World War, when the War Artists Advisory Committee was set up by Kenneth Clark through the Ministry of Information that women war artists became more of the norm. However, many of the artists featured in this exhibition were not official war artists at the time and it wasn’t until after the war when a concerted effort was made to gather images of the conflict that these artists were properly appraised.
Anna Airy was the main female war artists in the First World War (it seems, I don’t know this for a FACT ok!!). However, it seems that she was not expected/allowed to travel to the war zone proper (again don’t know this for a fact ok guys) but was instead charged with depicting the industry of war in various locations across the UK including Hackney and Glasgow. Apparently her commission was incredibly specific with fines occurring should she go even a day over the appointed deadline. One of my favorite images in the exhibition was this one by her called A Shell Forge at a National projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London 1918. I love how she manages to catch the intense orange heat of the metal, things

The exhibition opened with the rather fabulous painting Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring by the 2nd World War artist Laura Knight, or Dame Laura Knight RA if you like. This was accompanied by a fabulous war time news reel showing Laura and Ruby visiting the picture in that years summer exhibition with lots of comments such as ‘wat a lovely gal wat-ho wat-ho’ etc etc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTtzGS0gmg
I also found this great interview with Ruby Loftus of Newport about her experience of sitting for the painting and filming the newsreel: http://www.wartimenewport.virtuallyhere.co.uk/pages.php?page_id=56
Fab painting I think you’ll agree.

They also had the famous image of the Nuremberg trials by the same artist, a commission she specifically requested and where the horrors of the war, something she obviously witnessed first hand when travelling to Bavaria to document the proceedings break through her usual strictly realist style:


Although most of the female artists seem to have been denied access to the battlefield, at least until long after the danger, and action had ended, one woman artists was present soon after the liberation of Belsen concentration camp. Doris Zinkeisen worked as a nurse throughout the war but it wasn’t until after 1945 that she was taken on by the War Artists Advisory Committee to produce official work. She spent 3 days at the camp almost immediately after it’s liberation and obviously, that’s not something you’re going to get over quickly. The work she produced is truly chilling, the title Human Laundry says it all:

As most of the woman artists in this exhibition, official or unofficial, were denied experience of the front the work they produced obviously dwells more on the every day life of the people at home rather than documenting conflicts and violence first hand. Ethel Léontine Gabain for example made many images of women during the Second World War at work and on the street. She was particularly interested in the revolutionary new treatments being developed to nurse the injured, a useful propaganda subject displaying the might of British technology and innovation as seen in A Bunyan-Stannard Irrigation Envelope for the Treatment of Burns, Applied by Sister Roberts in Middlesex Hospital:

Evelyn Dunbar was apparently (i.e. according to Wikipedia – so who knows how true this is…) the only salaried woman artist of the painters and sculptors employed during World War II by the War Artists Advisory Committee. I’m a bit confused about who was and wasn’t actually employed by this committee so we are just going to skim over this. Anyway her work was FABULOUS, and again stuck mostly to themes of domestic life during the war years:

This theme of the domestic is carried through many of the works in this exhibition. The work of Flora Lion who was commissioned to depict factory work in the First World War concentrates on the interaction of the women when off duty, in the canteen or elsewhere. Unfortunately, maybe for this reason, the work was not bought by the collection after they commissioned it but was eventually donated years later. The women do indeed look rather independent and forceful, no doubt a terrifying prospect to the establishment at the time.

The exhibition also included work by later woman artists including Linda Kitson who documented the Falklands conflict and was onboard the various non-military ships which were used to transport troops to the area. (Women at this time were not allowed on proper battle ships). Her incredibly quick fire sketches, obviously done on the spot whilst observing the action, give an amazing sense of the energy of life onboard as well as the more off-duty exploits of the soldiers:

My memory has gone and lunch hour is approaching so I will leave you poor bored people with that for now but while I’ here and have your attention (although I almost certainly don’t by now) please check out this amazing BBC/Public Catalogue Foundation resource now available online. ALL the oils paintings in EVERY public collection in the whole of the UK will be on there by the end of next year which is over 200,000. At the moment there are about 62,000 only but it’s really well worth a look at and is lots of fun and you can contribute by tagging images which will eventually be used as a way of searching and categorising the paintings on there. I have put it on the page for Evelyn Dunbar but please do take a look:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/search/painted_by/evelyn-mary-dunbar

That’s all folks and fingers crossed for the weather improving. There is too much cricket going on that’s the problem, the gods are mistaking it for a rain dance.

Week 38: Summer Exhibition and Hungarian Photography/Royal Academy

Hello all and welcome back once again to my crappy blog. This week, thanks to my friends highly useful press pass, I visited 2 shows at the Royal Academy, one of which I didnt even know was on – oops. The first was the Summer Exhibition. Now, everyone knows the Summer Exhibition is a load of crap and in fairness I haven’t actually paid to go and see it, well ever now I come to think of it, but I have still been to it more than I have probably been to the Turner prize in the last decade or so which isn’t great. This years show wasn’t as awful as some I have seen in the past, there were only about 5 dog paintings for example and actually I think most of those were (wildly popular) prints and drawings, which are somehow less repulsive than the oil versions I have seen there in the past. I did get quite annoyed by the general pretentious falsity behind it though – each room supposedly being ‘curated’ by a different artist/Royal Academician around some theme, when for the most part a theme clearly wasn’t there. I mean seriously these guys get to pick a few pictures to hang in various ways in one wall from a massive pile of crap in some warehouse somewhere. Don’t try and claim anything else, this is not a normal show. One of the boards claimed that a particular room was dominated physically and thematically by a particular large painting, but then went on to admit that there were other paintings in the room which didn’t really fit with that theme, and then some that did. Well bloody great thanks for that RA! There was also one room where we were informed only sensitive, thoughtful and intelligent people would appreciate the hang and if you didn’t like it then that meant you weren’t intelligent sensitive or thoughtful, which clearly means I am not intelligent sensitive or thoughtful. Oh no, you’ve made me feel really bad about myself now RA. The word twat springs to mind when encountering curators like that.

However, there were some nice pics in there when all is said and done. There was a cool one by Cornelia Parker (something to do with flattened teapots, I don’t know):

A couple by David Mach which I quite liked, also my friend works as an assistant for him so she probably made them:

These 2 called work and play by Chris Orr which were quite fun:

Loved this one by Simon Leahy made of newspaper called Library (hell of a lot of collage knocking round this year it seems to me which is definitely a good thing, love a bit of collage!):

Keith Typson’s Deep Impact was clearly a winner and got me very excited about the John Martin show coming up – nothing like a bit of apocalyptic fun for all the family:

I don’t usually bother to look at architecture exhibitions, well we all know my feelings about jumped up builders, but I actually really enjoyed at looking at all the little models for unbuildable buildings. I love guessing how much money they spent on specifically designed artfully distressed metal information plaques etc. I was looking at photos on the wall and really liked one of Shi Ling Bridge made from a ‘shell lace’ design by Tonkin Liu and Ed Clark, or someone, and then I turned around and realised they had a big model of it in the middle of the room:

After looking round all this stuff we went upstairs to see Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century which is a really rather good exhibition showcasing the work of photographers such as Brassai, Robert Capa and Martin Munkácsi. Now, I am painfully ignorant when it comes to photography, I am in all honesty a bit of a bloody snob about it – I genuinely believe if you put any crappy holiday snap in a shiny light box all blown up on a white walled gallery it’s going to look good. I’m not saying I don’t think there are some incredibly talented photographers out there practicing, I just think it’s really easy to fake it as well! Anyway, these guys were undoubtedly the real deal and I guess it is kind of amazing that all these incredibly talented and influential photographers all came from the same part of the world, and how unfortunate for them it should be Hungary in the first half of the 20th century!

In the early years of the century Hungarian artists such as Rudolf Balogh worked within the Magyar style which aimed to represent the quintessentially agrarian, timeless picture of Hungarian society. They produced solid, eternal looking images, the noble peasant sort of stuff. In fairness some of it was beautiful.



The exhibition did, if I remember rightly, spend a bit of time at the beginning discussing why it was that here was such an outpouring of exceptional talent from this small country at this point, but it didn’t go much beyond discussing advancements in hand held cameras and the rise in popularity of photo magazines and the desire for photo journalism in the press. The thing is though wasn’t that the case everywhere? I don’t really get why it was Hungary who lead the way so much at this point, maybe it was just coincidence?

Anyway, along came the First World War of course which resulted in Hungary losing something like two thirds of its territory leading to huge poverty, overcrowding and then of course the rise of fascism. From then on most of the photographers fled, first to Germany and Paris, and then in some cases onto London and America. The work of Laszlo Moholy- Nagy particularly stood out for me at this point. The photographer was clearly experimenting with the new, smaller cameras and exciting view points and perspectives, very the shock of the new:



I also really enjoyed the work of Angelo who seemed to be doing similar things:


Brassai of course buggered off to Paris where he sucked up to the Parisians so much he could never leave and produced many posters for 16 year old girls bedrooms:


André Kertész went to New York and apparently felt very lonely when he was there, ho hum.

Munkácsi also went over to the states and somehow got roped into fashion photography and was so influential he is hailed as reinventing the medium. His experience with sporting photography transformed the medium with his ability to capture movement and form to create a totally new look. He started off for Harpers Bazaar:


Despite all of this the real star of the show was undoubtedly Robert Capa, the things this guy must have seen?!? His 'Death of a Loyalist Militiaman' and the ones showing the Normandy landings define our understanding of war:

I could do about 8 pages on this stuff but I don’t have the time sorry – stay classy xxx