Category: Art Exhibition Reviews

Driving back through the darkening countryside, the hillsides and hedges are deepening shades of willow and viridian. The sky to the west is overcast in varying and subtle shades of violet which clear and allow a penetration of light onto the motorway. Yet I find myself recalling a dream of a thousand roses. A few minutes before I had been looking at the bright and bountiful pictures of Siobhan Purdy, housed in an outbuilding of the complex of buildings at Krowji, which as is well known by locals, Redruth Grammar School. The bright interior contrasts with the dilapidated exterior of this marooned classroom exposed on three sides to the cold December winds just mounting in strength as the light fell.This is room W35 and her delightful pictures including “One Thousand Roses” may be seen at http://www.siobhanpurdy.co.uk/.

Throughout the early December Sunday afternoon the corridors and stairways resonated with melodies, airs, wassails and the sublime singing of Thomas Merrit’s Cornish carols by the Riverside Singers. This choir called visitors, artists and children from the studios to hear again the inspiring words:-

“He comes the broken heart to bind,
The bleeding soul to cure;
And with the treasures of His grace
To enrich the humble poor.”

The choir energetically led by their Musical Director and composer, Claire Ingleheart, who describes herself as a musical magpie, can be heard at http://www.ingleheartsingers.co.uk/mp3/music.htm

Part of the pleasure of a visit to an Open Studios event at the OldGrammar Schoolis a visit to the Melting Pot café where the sandwiches are stylish and the soup outstanding. The atmosphere is great, this could be out of a novel by Hermann Hesse and the proscenium arch of the gilded theatre provides a grand background to enjoy the accordion. Father Christmas and his wife in striped scarlet and emerald green make their entrance to the masque.

More of the excitement about visiting Krowji derives from the opportunity of viewing such a wide variety of work. The large and dramatic portraits by Chris Anthem repay close consideration. His colourful paintings are executed with oil graphite on dress pattern demand such attention. These are serious and intriguing and questioning works that derive their psychological depth from Anthem’s experience and concerns in Addis Ababa, and elsewhere, together with his interest, along with Jean Baudrillard, in the relationship between the” carnivalesque and cannibalistic”. This is indicated on his website at http://chrisanthem.co.uk/

Wandering along the main corridor, I came across a wall of illustrations by Anna Cattermole. These were delicate, attractive sketches mostly of boat construction with annotated information. Her work may be seen at http://www.annacattermole.com where I also discovered her series, Fish Tales based on her work at Newlyn.Of the series on display she writes there,” These drawings are a visual diary documenting the building of Freja, a 42ft wooden pilot cutter, by Luke Powell of Working Sail. “In relation to her own observational drawings she quotes Rodin in support of her style of reportage;” It is the artist who is truthful, while the photograph is mendacious; for, in reality, time never stops cold.”

      

I have just discovered from a friend the lovely paintings of Marie Laurencin and think they deserve wider acclaim. Ceramicist, painter and printmaker, she also became  the mistress of Apollinaire. They have a soft and appealing, lyrical and delicate quality that can be seen in the pastel above which is called “Le Chant”. Many of her drawings are in the keeping of The Art Institute of Chicago like this one below right, executed in graphite and coloured pencils.

According to one easily accessible website on her,”Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sevres. She then returned to Paris and continued her art education at the Academie Humbert, where she changed her focus to oil painting. During the early years of the 20th century, Laurencin was an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde and a member of the circle of Pablo Picasso. She became romantically involved with Picasso’s friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and has often been identified as his muse. In addition, Laurencin had important connections to the salon of the American expatriate and famed lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney. During the First World War, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waetjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Dusseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she lived for the rest of her life and where she achieved great success as an artist.”

Her portraits have a hieratic quality; an adjective which derives from the Greek ἱερατεία (hierateia meaning “priesthood”). By hieratic in relation to art one means very stylised, formal or restrained. The term is used particularly of figurative art with” piquantly tipped heads and mask-like faces”-as Peter Schjeldahl referred to the work of Amedeo Mondigliani.

This is a wonderful clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CDT5whWuGM

Here is a poem from Appolonaire to Marie

Vous y dansiez petite fille
Y danserez-vous mère-grand
C’est la maclotte qui sautille
Toute les cloches sonneront
Quand donc reviendrez-vous Marie

Les masques sont silencieux
Et la musique est si lointaine
Qu’elle semble venir des cieux
Oui je veux vous aimer mais vous aimer à peine
Et mon mal est délicieux

Les brebis s’en vont dans la neige
Flocons de laine et ceux d’argent
Des soldats passent et que n’ai-je
Un cœur à moi ce coeur changeant
Changeant et puis encor que sais-je

Sais-je où s’en iront tes cheveux
Crépus comme mer qui moutonne
Sais-je où s’en iront tes cheveux
Et tes mains feuilles de l’automne
Que jonchent aussi nos aveux

Je passais au bord de la Seine
Un livre ancien sous le bras
Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine
Il s’écoule et ne tarit pas
Quand donc finira la semaine

(La maclotte est une danse ardennaise )