I'll see you in my dreams

I know what I like....

The Victoria Memorial, by Thomas Brock

Like it, or not.  Call it what you will.  Art is all around us.  And there is more of it every day.  Whether you perceive it in the natural world:

Knot in their thousands over The Wash (but is it art?)

Or someone sticks it in front of you.  Time Horizon at Houghton Hall is an interrogation of its site through a form of acupuncture.  By sticking foreign objects into a living body - the earth - it seeks to revitalise it, inviting them to think about what lies below, beneath the apparent surface of things; (Artist's Statement.)

One of a hundred Antony Gormleys in Time Horizon
at Houghton Hall, Norfolk.

[I can do that, too, Mr Gormley, even without taking my clothes off:]

Self portrait in Time is Horizontal,
 at Holm Beach, Norfolk

Around 46 years ago, Wafa, a young Palestinian woman, gave me a birthday present.  It was Edmund Burke Feldman's book, Varieties of Visual Experience.  In his Introduction to the Functions of Art, he asks, How can we explain their (the visual arts') survival, and indeed their prominence, for so long under such varying circumstances and among so many diverse peoples?

Meeting myself coming back

Feldman suggests that art is practised and prized because it satisfies vital personal and social needs.....

Woman and Child, 2024, by Martin Skalicky

He goes on to say that art continues to satisfy, (1) our individual needs for personal expression,

Graffiti and a view of Brno

(2) our social needs for display, celebration, and communication,

{and this picture reminds me of an Australian I met in Rome nearly fifty years ago, who  claimed the unforgiving chat-up line, Hello Sheila, I've got a whip at home....} 

Portrait of Mrs Marie Ruzickova, early 1920s,
by Linka Prochazkova

and (3) our physical needs for utilitarian objects and structures.

Žlutý kopec Water Tanks, Brno

It takes all sorts.  I couldn't live in an art gallery:

Nor could I live in a palace like the Albertina in Vienna:

I would soon get into trouble for misbehaving, or not quite understanding the protocol, like Martin:

Martin, into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself, 1989
by Martin Kippenberger

But I could survive with a Monet in my bathroom - Amanda loved these pictures:

The Water Lily Pond, c 1917 - 1919, Claude Monet 

Though I couldn't be doing with these. What is with the déshabillé?

L'émotion by Ferdinand Hodler

No. I know what I like (I may not know much about.... you know....)  And I like this hare. I love the way that Dürer got it to sit still for long enough to get the whiskers right:

Young Hare, 1502, by Albrecht Dürer

When all is said, undone, (sic) art has its place in our confused and confusing world.  The more it is repressed, the more cuts a government makes to its welfare, the more there will be. And, as the population explodes, so does the variety of and need for art.  And just as there are many different types of us (even Gormley used 23 different castings of his own body for his 100 cast-iron body forms at Houghton) - just as there are many variants of being, there are variants of the visual (and other) arts.  To suit  every taste, (and some distastes as well?  Ed.) 

We model the natural world to bring it closer, to remind us of its wonder:

Reflections and a Charcoal drawing by Roberto Longo

We celebrate the human form:

Or, maybe, we walk on by, reading a book:

Me, I like to find art in my surroundings.  Though is that art?  (Does it matter? Ed). Up a church tower in Tabor.....

Don't take the seats, Leave them where they are

And I love the colours of autumn leaves, scattered here on a stairway in Karlštejn castle in Czechia.

Or, as here, caught in mid fall:

And I love the patterns of shells and pebbles in the sand at low tide on a Norfolk beach:

Just as I also love the creative dreams of artists, who, against the rules of reality, rectangularise the world and flatten it into two dimensions while suggesting more, painting the mystery of white against the canvas, as in this wonderfully eery picture in the Albertina:

Landscape with Lanterns, 1958, by Paul Delvaux

Yes, whatever happens, I will see you in my dreams:

Whatever may cause those dreams.....  There is art in nature.....

At least so I hope.  Let us pray......

Praying Hands, by Albrecht Dürer

Now sit back and enjoy:

https://youtu.be/hNRHHRjep3E?feature=shared

Liverpool

Tate Liverpool




“So you have reservations, but you came anyway?”  The acerbic scouse wit catches me unawares in the lofty bastion of the Tate Liverpool.  I had reserved tickets for the Turner, Monet, Twombly exhibition and find myself speared by the ancient concierge, not, I muse, what one would expect in Tate Britain…...

The set up is an eye-opener.  This is not the first time I have visited Liverpool, but the city, perhaps in relation to its stint as European Capital of Culture in 2008 (as well as the celebration of its own 800^th birthday a year before), has transformed itself and the Albert Dock area has become the most visited attraction in the UK outside London.   The area comprises part of Liverpool's UNESCO designated World Heritage Maritime Mercantile City and the docks and warehouses also make up the largest body of Grade 1 listed buildings anywhere in Britain.  Some four million visitors each year now come to see the Beatles’ Story, the Merseyside Maritime Museum and, like us, the Tate Liverpool. 

 

On another day we might be tempted to find out about these “Beatles” and take the Magical Mystery Tour bus, or to explore the International Slavery Museum, or even just to sit and restore ourselves in one of the many bars or restaurants around the waterside, but we are here specifically to look at the later paintings of three artists: Joseph Turner (1775 – 1851), Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) and Cy Twombly (1928 – 2011). The concept of the exhibition is that of a conversation between the artists, as if they were able to discuss their perceptions and approaches. And it is a revelation. There are seven themes, where examples of each man’s work are grouped, “not in competition, but as a means to explore the ways in which artists share interests, values and preoccupations,” (from the Exhibition guide).

 

I am particularly struck, especially on the fourth floor of the museum, overlooking the Mersey, of their various ways of depicting water, and the atmosphere and light that is associated with or reflected by rivers and the sea.  Paintings such as Turner’s “The Thames above Waterloo Bridge” and Monet’s “Morning on the Seine, Giverny,” have light as the subject, and, although I am less familiar with Twombly, I can see the connection between these pictures and his “Orpheus” even though I am not sure I would be able to find a place for it in my home.

There are fittingly several pictures with boats in them too.  Looking from the canvasses to the waters outside there are images that reflect the artists’ subjects – OK there’s a tenuous link between the Yellow Duckmarine and Turner’s “Peace – Burial at Sea” but with a touch of imagination we can go there.

The titles of the sections of this exhibition guide the viewer, and the final part is entitled “A Floating World,” with Turner studying water lilies and Twombly possibly admiring peonies in his “Untitled 2007.”  “Transience and regret” being central themes here, but “it is also a hymn to sunlight…..” (from the guide). 

 

We issue out into the sunlight, seeing things anew.  It’s a bright world, where light and shade and reflections are confused after the structured environment of the exhibition.  Apparently, just before his death, Turner is said to have uttered the words, “The sun is God.”   Food for thought, perhaps, but quite exhausting.  Overstimulated, we need to take a pause, and so retire to The Globe, before heading home......  I think I have come to terms with my reservations.

Sarah and Amanda, inside the Globe,
the pub with the famous sloping floor.....
 

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/turner-monet-twombly-later-paintings

http://www.albertdock.com/