Cathy's Art Diary

Mixed exhibition   at Unit featuring contemporary artists working in abstracts. The commentary described this as a group show which “guides viewers through an immersive experience that connects form and space”. I’m not sure I got that although for a while I did think the building noise coming from a room next door might have been part of it. I’m afraid I didn’t relate to the paintings in the show. I liked their bold colours but found them a bit impenetrable. I much preferred the textile work which seemed to lend itself to abstract ideas. My favourite was Allison Reimus’s patchwork quilt like pieces which had a geometric abstract effect. I also liked Betty Leung’s more sculptural work -and how she used specifically printed fabric for them. Closed 3 February 2024  

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Modern comparing 20th century abstract artists Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian. This show guided you through how these artists reached their abstract ideas based on similar ideas and influences and yet they never met. I thought it was an interesting idea to bring together two artists who didn’t know each other as so many shows are about relationships. The show explained simply and well how their art developed and for the first time I understood Mondrian’s grid pictures. It was an excellent idea to have a section at the centre called The Ether which went into more depth on some of the ideas without getting in the way of the narrative and the paintings. I liked that you could enter this from two directions either quite near the start of your visit or near the end. I did it near the start but popped back in later for more explanation of Theosophy which I hadn’t really understood. I was more drawn to Mondrian’s work which seemed to be driven more by l...

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern looking at photographers who have prioritised shape, form and expression over recognisable subject matter and their role in the wider history of abstract art.   I liked the fact that photographs were hung with abstract paintings of the same period so you could see the dialogue between photography and painting. However I admit I’m not a great fan of abstracts and as usual liked pictures where real things became abstract in the way they were shown rather than the pure abstracts.   The show did take you thought the different type of abstract art well and I came out feeling I understood its development better. It also looked at the development of photography and how that influenced this work.   I liked Judith Karasz’s close-ups of fabric and the Russian pictures of architecture and objects taken at strange angles. It was interesting to see Vortecist photographs and Brancusi’s pictures   of his own work.   Clos...

Intriguing exhibition at Flowers on Kingsland Road looking at abstraction in contemporary photography. The show took its inspiration from a series of cloud studies from the 1920s by Alfred Stieglitz who incidentally came up in other exhibition a few days later as he was Georgia O’Keefe’s husband. As some of you may have realised I’m not that fond of abstract art but this show had some really interesting images. I loved Wang Ningde’s “Form of Light/Colour Filter for a Utopian Sky no 1” which was made of small pieces of coloured film set into a board at a right angle to it. The light filtered through it casting colour onto the white board behind. More art using film than photography! I also liked Michael Benson’s ”US Cloud Sheet” where a real image becomes abstract by the way it is photographed. Other interesting work included Letha Wilson’s pictures printed onto pleated paper to give the impression of a Venetian blind and Chris McCaw’s work made by lines burnt throug...

Useful exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery looking at 100 years of geometric abstraction starting with Malevich’s Black Square. I say useful because I am trying to understand and appreciate abstract art and this was an excellent guide through a specific type of abstraction. As with most of art I sort of get the early stuff but it loses me in about 1960! Having done the Malevich show at Tate Modern last year it is interesting to see where his ideas went next and I have also noticed since that show how many contemporary shows seem to be quoiting the Black Square. The leaflet contained the best description I’ve seen of geometric abstraction “art made up of pure line, form and colour set against non-illusionistic space”. It was worth going just for that definition. I loved the fact that in the early rooms there were so many catalogues on display but I would have liked to know a little bit more about the shows particularly the ones on those which weren’t written in Engli...

Colourful exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Kazimir Malevich, a Russian abstract artists whose work spanned the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin. I will admit my favourite rooms were the more figurative ones at the start and end. I loved the early self-portrait in wonderful bright colours and his move into what he called Cubo-Futurism, with block like figures against geometrically presented backgrounds. At the end of his life he returned to those styles but it was hard to tell if this was through choice or because of Stalin’s banning of abstract art. In the middle section I loved the recreation of an exhibition Malevich held in Petrograd called “The last exhibition of futurist painting 0.10”. It included 9 of the 12 pictures whose whereabouts are still known and hung them in the same slightly haphazard way. Malevich’s iconic picture is “Black Square” an a version of it was included in the same place it hung in the origi...

A surprisingly good exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at abstract art in South America in the early 20th century. If you read me a lot (I’ll be amazed if anyone does!) you’ll know I’m not keen on abstract art so I came to this because I go to everything and you can always learn, but found I really liked it! I think it was because it was all logical and geometric so the pieces often had a calm simplicity. It made me start to understand how abstract art is partly about show colour and space work together. I would recommend the tape tour as the commentaries on the pictures were quite short and learned a lot more from listening to the tape. The leaflet was very extensive but actually too dense to read as you went round. The two artists who came out of it best for me where both women. I liked the work of Lygia Clark from Brazil starting with a lovely painting of multi-coloured squares and rectangles which my eye seemed to see as a green picture. She also did sculptures ma...

A scholarly exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery examining the relationship between Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson during the 1930's. when they were leading forces of abstract art in Europe . The works of both artists were hung next to each other so that you could compare and contrast easily. I had not really understood Mondrian before but seeing the works up close showed me that there is much more artistry in them that a reproduced image can ever show. I was fascinated by the letters and other ephemera which were shown with the pictures and the detail of the artists’ lives this showed. I find the theory of abstract art rather serious and philosophical but this was an exhibition which will make me take more interest in abstract work as objects and individual pictures.