Cathy's Art Diary

Fabulous online talk organised by the Samuel Courtauld Society looking at Stanley Spencer’s two wives Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece. If you follow this blog you’ll know that Spencer is one my favourite artists and I have always been fascinated by his story as well as his art. He married Hilda in 1925 and was devoted to her continuing to write to her after their divorce and even after she had died. However in 1929 he met Patricia Preece in a tea shop in Cookham and became infatuated with her and they married in 1937. This was all despite the fact she was living with her girlfriend, Dorothy Hepworth and continued to do so. The speakers, Amanda Bradley, who has curated the exhibition at the Stanley Spencer Gallery that this talk Is based on, and the author Carolyn Leder, told this story well and it was particularly interesting to hear anecdotes from Leder of people she had interviewed who were part of the tale such as Elsie, Stanley and Hilda’s maid and Daphne Charlton, Spencer’s...

Interesting online talk from the National Gallery looking at the meaning of music in art. Two speakers, Caroline Smith and Belle Smith, picked nine pictures from the galleries collection to illustrate the different allegories of music, starting with Matteo de Giovanni’s altarpiece of 1474 of the Virgin being taken to heaven my music making angels and ending with Manet’s “Corner of a Café Concert” from just over 400 years later. En route they took in Dutch Golden Age genre pictures and a still life, an Italian Renaissance court picture, a Hogarth and two Vermeers. I learnt a lot about the symbolism including a pipe with glowing embers meaning the transience of life, a well-used music book being a sign of idle pleasure and music as a sign of personal and political harmony. They set up a nice contrast to end between the first and last pictures from hierarchy of angels in the first to lack of hierarchy in the last, from formal organised music to the more throw away and from everyone...

Fun online discussion from the National Gallery examining whether Giorgione’s Il Tramonto (The Sunset) should be considered a fake or a true image by the artist. The discussion was around whether so much had been added or repaired that this had now become an image which had not been imagined and devised by Giorgione. Two of the educators from the gallery, Marc Woodhead and Carolo Carsato, took opposing views to make for an interesting half an hour   with one speaking from the heart and the other analysing the science and evidence. They had great slides of the damage and how it was repaired in the 1930s when many of the stranger elements of the picture such as St George and a rather add dragon were added to hide missing areas of paint.   They talked about how the composition might have looked and at how the picture links stylistically to other by the artists. In the end   they both agreed that 88% of a Giorgione is still quite a lot and worth having!

Interesting exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at how masculinity has been considered in photography and art film since the 1960s. The show was divided into six sections;   the archetype;   power and patriarchy; fatherhood and family; Queer masculinity; Black masculinity and women on men revising the male gaze. It built an artistic and sociological view of the subject and opened up many ideas to continue thinking about. There were some stunning pictures and I’d highlight Rineke Dijkstra’s pictures of matador straight from the ring partly because I’d seen more work by her a few days earlier, Michael Subotzky startlingly heartless images of prisoners in South Africa and Peter Hujar’s pictures of gay men hanging out at the St Christopher Street pier, one of which is shown here. The photographer that stood out for me though was Hans Eijleboon with two series of pictures partially using versions of himself in the images. In one set he posed convincingly in the fa...

Fascinating online discussion organised by the Royal Society of Arts focusing on the current debate about the removal of statues of controversial figures. The discussion brought together the cultural and historic commentators Mary Beard and David Olusoga who had debated this topic on Twitter taking slightly opposing views. They discussed the recent removal of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol agreeing that it had been a pivotal moment with one of them (sorry bad notes!) saying “the removal of a statue is the creation of a new history”. In reality their views were quite similar and both called for more nuance in the debate which was not possible via the sound bites of social media. I liked Olusoga’s call to judge people by what they did not what they thought as often what they thought was a reflection of the times they lived in. I was also interested in Beard’s example of attempts to ignore difficult bits of history and culture in students she had had who wouldn’t study Ovid Met...

Beautiful exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery of stunning portrait photographs by Rineke Dijkstra.  I loved the clarity of these photographs with their sharp focus and insight. I felt I wanted to know more about the people and their stories. The first room were standard family pictures of which my favourite was the one shown here which I hoped was of a former dancer and her daughter, an aspiring one. I loved the two sets of pictures of sisters in each case including lovely clear pictures of them taken once a year over a period of 7 or 8 years. You see the girls mature and change to be recognisable but quite different by the end. There was also an excellent video installation where Dijkstra had filmed groups of people looking at and discussing Rembrandt’s Night Watch. They describe the picture and muse on aspects of it, without seeing the painting you build a picture of it in your mind.   Closes 25 July 2020 Review Guardian

Cute sculpture trail in Leicester Square featuring film icons. I’m not sure I’d have described all of these as icons, Mr Bean anyone? However most were including Mary Poppins and Gene Kelly mid lamppost swing in Singing in the Rain. I missed a couple such as Batman on the Odeon Cinema, that will teach me to look up, and Wonder Woman as she was emerging from a wall in road into the Square than I’d used. However my favourite was this very sweet Paddington sitting on a bench. Closing 30 July 2020.

First post lockdown trip to the National Gallery including a look at the refurbished Room 32. Goodness it was good to be back! One of the last things I’d done in London pre-lockdown was to rush round the gallery and take a look at the Titian exhibition. It was therefore important to me, exactly four calendar months later, for the gallery to be the first central London thing I returned to. OK it does feel different but in some ways it felt better. There is lots of space and it Is all really well organised. There are arrows on the floor to guide you round three different routes round the gallery but no-one shouts if you go the wrong was around a room or zig zag across to make sure you don’t miss anything. You are asked to wear a mask and I did for most of it, some people didn’t but because there was lots of room you didn’t feel intimidated by that. Going round in a prescribed way makes you look at everything rather than flitting to your favourites and you see work in a new way. Toilets w...

Useful online discussion as part of London Art Week Digital about the definitions and use of terms around attribution of old master pictures. Megan Locke from Art Tactic from Art Tactic excellently quizzed the participants, David Pollock from Sotherby’s, Molly Dorkin of Simon Dickinson Gallery and solo dealer Will Elliott of Elliott Fine Art. Pollock took us through the various attribution definitions from artist and studio through “Circle of” and “Manner of”. All the speakers agreed that this was commonly used vocabulary as so many dealers had some through the auction house training. They also pointed out that these were increasingly being used like legal terms and were defined in good Old Master sale catalogues. The panelists then discussed the effect of attribution on valuations with Elliott pointing out that this was partly due to the age of a painting. Earlier works are harder to attribute and attaching an artist’s name is less important however as Dorkin said “You don’t g...

Excellent lecture as part of London Art Week Digital examining the role of artists in establishing the canon of archetypal antique statues. Given by Adriani Aymanino the talk looked at what statues were available to artists at various periods and, taking The Laocoon as an example, he looked at the different reasons artists drew these works from records of expression, thought anatomical study to compositional studies. He spent some time discussing the concept of ideal proportions and beauty that these statues were thought to demonstrate and the role this played in an artists training within the academies and why this fell out of fashion in the late 20th century.

Fascinating online version of the annual London Art Week in response to the Covid crisis. Although there is of course information on the galleries taking part I loved the approach to arrange the works for sale into artistic periods and movements, so it was more like going around a curated gallery. There were also rooms where each participant submitted a piece, one on women as artists and muses and a bargain basement of works under £30,000. There were also some excellent talks but I will blog those I manage to 'attend' separately.  The work ranged from a Egyptian piece dated about 2600 BC to works by Damian Hurst and Grayson Perry. However, having just done a short course on Flemish art it was two anonymous paintings from the region which stood out for me, a Memling like portrait of a man holding a prayer book from about 1480 and a delightful family portrait of four children and a dog from 1627. I hope that even if things are back to normal by next years London Art Week t...