Self, National Portrait Gallery

I visited the National Portrait Gallery for the first time back in September, strangely it was somewhere I’d never ventured into before, but it’s a treasure trove of fantastic art.

I was there to catch the BP Portrait Award 2011 before it closed. As an amateur art lover, I wanted to see that portraiture was alive and well. And I was pleased to see it was. But I’m not going to dwell on that, the link gives some detail.

What really impressed me was the permanent exhibition and the historical context of the portraits of famous or infamous people. The sitter was invariably more significant, more well known, than the artist, but sometimes, both artist and sitter were giants.

I jotted down some notes, just some work which caught my eye.

- The sentimental simple portrait by Patrick Branwell Bronte (he was 17 when he painted it to be fair) of his three sisters Anne, Emily and Charlotte. It’s a bit rough around the edges, looked like it had been folded with worn off paint along the seams and flaked paint. I just imagined he painted this over a winter, when they were all holed up, getting on with their creative pursuits.

- William Morris by George Frederic Watts. Although Morris was full of cold sitting for this portrait and his wife Jane was probably off gallivanting with Rosetti, he still exudes an aura of primal  power. Like a green man, or a bear, there is something of the forest about him. William Morris was a genius, I think this portrait captures that.

- There was a painting of the polar explorer Shackleton. His steely gaze and set jaw shows he’s a fucking hard bastard. (I know, I know, these blogs always start off serious, then I degenerate, Ok, I’m reeling it in). Painted in 1921 by Eves, a year before Shackleton died, the then veteran explorer was renowned for showing incredible leadership of the otherwise failed “Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition” 1914-1917. What could have been a disaster ended up a magnificent triumph of survival. Not one of the men under his charge died.

- Emmeline Pankhurst by Georgina Agnes Brackenbury. 1927. There is a real warmth in this portrait. And perhaps a mischievous smugness. The old suffragette reflecting on her life’s hardships in being instrumental to bringing the right to vote to women. This is another portrait painted a year before the sitters death.

- Charles Darwin by John Collier, 1883. A third portrait taken from the year before the sitters (or standers in this case) death! It wasn’t deliberate, it was only when researching the works I hastily scribbled in my notebook, that this co-incidence came to light. Perhaps there is some resonance in accumulated wisdom which shines out of these portraits, the subject having achieved great feats in their lives. They’ve nothing more to prove, their confidence bringing the best out of the artist. I don’t know. But this portrait of Darwin is just magnificent. He shook the foundations of established science with his meticulously researched life’s work on evolution. It needed to be, otherwise the doubters would have torn him apart if it didn’t stand up to scrutiny. They tried, they lampooned him as an ape, but ultimately his theories and studies were accepted. As my wife just said, this portrait looks classical, this could be Socrates. His eyes just bore into you. What a geezer.

- And there were a number of portraits of Winston Churchill, the one I’d have love to have seen is the one painted by Graham Sutherland in 1954, commissioned by both the House of Commons and House of Lords, which Churchill hated… saying it made him look half witted. Churchill’s devoted wife Clementine had it destroyed it in 1956. Feel a bit sorry for Sutherland, he did create a number of preparatory pieces of work which did survive, including the one below, which I think carries both clout and a haunted air of a man who made massive decisions in his lifetime.

Sutherland (and I speculate, because I don’t know) was perhaps a leftfield choice, but his portraiture was not in question, an accomplished realist as well as an abstract artist, he painted what I think is an honest portrait of Churchill, capturing both the dignity and heroism of the service to his country, but also the vulnerability of a frail eighty year old man. Pictures of it do thankfully exist. Sutherland was mighty pissed off at it’s destruction, describing it “an act of vandalism”. Here is a pic :

 

But the portrait which shook me is a modern one. It’s called “Self” by a contemporary artist called Marc Quinn. It’s made of the artists blood poured into a cast of his face/head and frozen at minus 15 degrees in some sort of cryogenic sci-fi platform that you can walk round and examine. I wouldn’t describe it as grisly. But it’s powerful. That art has the ability to create a reaction is important. I’m a bit squeamish about blood, so I immediately pondered on the process of how the artist extracted the blood and over what period. It contains 9 pints! The answer = 5 months.

Quinn creates one every five years to show the effects of maturity and ageing. The first “Self” was made in 1991 (when the artist was 29) and bought by the collector Charles Saatchi. Rumours abounded that his wife Nigella Lawson turned the fridge off and the head melted into a pool of blood. But this was disproven when it was subsequently sold.

The “Self” in the National Portrait Gallery is the fourth in the series. The National Portrait Gallery’s description captures the concept of it much more succinctly than I could.

A self-portrait of the artist Marc Quinn cast in several pints of his frozen blood. Described by Quinn as a ‘frozen moment on lifesupport’, the work is carefully maintained in a refrigeration unit, reminding the viewer of the fragility of existence. The artist makes a new version of Self every five years, each of which documents Quinn’s own physical transformation and deterioration.

So… the National Portrait Gallery, you’ll love it!

(pic credits, the National Portrait Gallery website, the Arts Council website)

The Cult of Beauty, Victoria and Albert Museum

I should have written about this brilliant exhibition whilst it was fresh in the memory (I visited around a month ago), so my recollections will be slightly dulled.
I have to say, this period of British (art) history (1860-1900) fascinates me. As it’s the V&A, the exhibition covers more than art, looking at fashion, design, textiles, furniture making, sculpture, literature… So, the Aesthetic movement covered a far broader spectrum than my keen interest in the Pre-Raphaelite artists and I’m pleased to say I learnt quite a lot of new stuff.
This covers a period of time when the artistic elite all knew each other, literary giants rubbed shoulders with artists, musicians, actors and royalty. Would our current celebrities ripple through time like this bunch? Probably not! I doubt the V&A will host a “big brother/WAG/footballer” extravaganza in 150 years.
Scratch below the surface of supposed respectable Victorian society and layers and layers of decadence and self indulgence unfurled themselves. London however, was probably not a nice place to live back then. The Thames stank of human sewage, thousands of girls worked the streets, poverty and disease were rife, people doffed their caps and said “evenin’ mister, spare a farthing?”. And the “cure all” prescribed for most ailments was “Laudanum”, an opiate which got you soporifically smacked out your nut and by all accounts was very addictive too.
On entering the exhibition, a very small, understated portrait of Lizzie Siddal, painted by her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Red hair, back then, as now, was not seen as conventionally beautiful, but Rosetti captured it and her melancholy poise, wonderfully in this portrait. She is stunning (“stunner” was a word the Pre-Raphaelites allegedly invented for the young lassies that caught their eye).

She was one of the super models of her day, most famous for being the model used by Millais for his Ophelia (a painting not included in this collection, but can be seen at the National Gallery). This painting is just achingly beautiful in my opinion. In a recent Millais touring exhibition, this painting was used as the publicity poster, apart from in Japan, where it was thought too dangerous, in case young girls would kill themselves at seeing such a tragic scene.

Detail

Following several affairs, including one with the wife of one of his loyal friends, the designer William Morris, Rossetti eventually married his long time, long suffering love. Her health was poor, from Laudanum abuse and at her death, the genuinely distraught Rossetti did write several poems for his dead wife and arranged for them to be buried with her. Upon realising he might make money from these poems, he had his wife exhumed… to retrieve them!
Which brings us onto Exhibit 2, Dante’s sister, Christina Rossetti. She wrote a long poem called “Goblin Market”, the first edition is exhibited here. Even reading it today, it conjures up quite vivid images of violence, sexual ambiguity and drug abuse. I’m surprised she got it published back then! Interestingly one of her main characters is called Lizzie, perhaps a nod in the direction of her future sister in law Siddal.
The story concerns two sisters and another girl as well as some abusive goblins trying to sell their addictive “fruits” to them. I wont go into much detail, suffice to say it’s quite disturbing at times, especially the violence. The sexual metaphors also range from the subtle to downright racy. When combined with the violence, it’s pretty hard hitting.
Unlike her brother, Christina never married or seemed to lead a life beyond writing, devotion to the church and charity. But her work… whoa! Extract from Goblin Market -
She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men
And the cover art of the book (by her brother Dante of course) is quite suggestive too.

And if we are talking of controversial poetry, then let us not forget Algernon Charles Swinburne (mentioned in my blog about Suffolk), the wild child poet, who is also represented in the exhibition. His poetry collection “Poems and Ballads” was attacked for its pagan sentiments, sado-masochistic themes and overtly sexual nature (including some in homage to Sappho of Lesbos). He was an atheist and a republican. Bit of a geezer really. Although, he may not have indulged in vice as much as his poetry built him up to. As Oscar Wilde said of him : “A braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestialiser.”
I’m missing out great chunks of the exhibition of course, but next on my list of interesting items is William Morris’ only known painting. It is of his wife Jane Burden (Morris).

Morris was a designer by trade of course. His wallpaper designs are of course incredible (in the detail of the painting you can see some design elements too, on the dress, in the furnishings), so he didn’t feel up to trying his hand at art, but encouraged by Dante Rossetti he created this beautiful painting. Rossetti then had an affair with his wife after inviting her to model for him. Interestingly her wikipedia entry says their relationship was purely platonic. I wasn’t there of course, but I would like to say BOLLOCKS! They were at it. Fo’sure.
The next work of art is by Burne-Jones, another of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. I have no anecdote to add for this one, other than the scale is huge and the detail incredible. It’s a lovely painting. Out of the big three original Pre-Raphaelites, Millais, Rosetti and Burne-Jones I would say the latter had the most consistently beautiful output. It is a painting of Merlin being beguiled.

Next on the list, James Abbott McNeill Whistler. I wasn’t really aware of his work previously, so I was really pleased to see such depth of quality and style. He was a forerunner of the concept of the “installation”. He took great care to hang his own exhibitions, to make the most of space and environment. Artists prior to that just left it to the gallery to sort out, so he was ahead of his time.
Three very different works exhibited (amongst others) -
Symphony in White No 1: The White Girl

Some amazing detailed etchings of the Thames, incredible. Here’s one example.

And another work from the Thames, which gives it an eerie foggy look.
 
Whistler is cool, I’ve decided.
The shame was that John Ruskin, the eminent art critic, poet and social thinker, took offence to his work. In much more erudite terms he basically said Whistler was shit. How dare he try to copy Turner and include filthy cockney’s in his work was the nub of it. So Whistler sued him for libel. Now John Ruskin was a long time friend of Rossetti and was also Siddal’s patron. His wife had also left him… for Millais. They were all shagging each other, apart from Ruskin who had shagged no one. It seemed he was a lovely man, but unable to consummate his marriage. But enough about shagging, Whistler took him to court… and won. A farthing! (1/4 of a penny in modern terms). It was a symbolic victory as having to pay half the court costs bankrupted Whistler. He had to start again.
I mentioned Oscar Wilde earlier, something I’d never heard of before (but I’m going to buy a modern reprint with original art if at all possible) is his collection of children’s stories “The Happy Prince”, illustrated by Walter Crane. I’ve never tried to read Wilde before, I’m only 40 after all :)

So I think I’ll start with this collection of stories, the first edition is tantalising open on the first page in the exhibition, made me want to punch through the glass and flick on to the next page!
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.
He was very much admired indeed. ‘He is as beautiful as a weathercock,’ remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; ‘only not quite so useful,’ he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.
‘Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?’ asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. ‘The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.’
‘I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy,’ muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.
‘He looks just like an angel,’ said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks, and their clean white pinafores.
‘How do you know?’ said the Mathematical Master, ‘you have never seen one.’
‘Ah! but we have, in our dreams,’ answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.
The Cult of Beauty is on at the V&A until 17th July. Check it!