Double Whammy At The Whitney

Two fabulous exhibitions at The Whitney for the price of one (even got my student discount). The Picasso exhibition presented an excellent chronological view of his influence on American artists. In the period before the first world war, when communication between the US and Europe would have been ponderously slow there was room for an almost daily update of who was painting what, who had seen what, and what effect that viewing had. In this age of instant communication the notion of tracking ideas across the world is impossibly complex, but here was a clear and fascinating linear artistic evolution. It was amazing to see such wholesale lifting of Picasso's ideas and styles, as his cubist and classicist periods were reproduced with remarkable verisimilitude.. Even Jackson Pollock was shown to be influenced by Pablo, there were some fabulous Pollocks on display. The only stuff I didn't really like were the Lichtenstein pop art copies from the sixties, and Jasper Johns more recent Picasso-esque daubs which just displayed a lazy lack of ideas rather than inspiration.

I still don't understand why I didn't go and see the Edward Hopper retrospective at the Tate Modern last year. I told myself that I knew the paintings pretty well, and his brushwork was merely proficient, and a close up view wasn't really necessary. What a sap, but then again maybe I knew this show was waiting in NY, especially extended just for me. The Whitney is the repository for the majority of the Hopper estates considerable archive, which allowed them to present a series of his most important works, with the provisional sketches and watercolours that display their evolution. Wim Wenders over the top commentary on the audio guide for Nighthawks was rather comical, but the painting itself is stunning. Remarkable that an image that is so familiar from reproductions is still so potent. Another favourite was New York Movie:

The usherette just looks so lonely and vulnerable and sad she could break your heart. This painting is from 1939, and I didn't realise that he carried on producing quality work into the 1960's. The later work doesn't look dated though, it's as if all of the paintings take place in some timeless, mythical, alienated America. Interesting that Hopper spent quite a while in Paris at the time that Picasso was gaining his reputation, and yet he fails completely to be influenced by the new European strains of modernism and keeps determinedly pursuing his bleak vision of lonely America.

Hit The Rodin Jacques

This was the first event in a culturally cluttered weekend with Guy and Ali who'd come up from Cornwall for a few days. Classical sculpture has always left me cold, the quest for perfection and the flawless application of technique with all individual expression seemingly drained from the work. I'd kind of lazily lumped Rodin in there too, but was utterly gob-smacked at this show. Here technique was used as a jumping off point to satisfy a hungry desire to capture the human form in all it's imperfection, even grotesquery. The famous pieces, The Kiss and The Thinker were maybe a little too well known to really pack a punch but the epic Burghers of Calais was awesome. For the first time sculpture seemed to be able to offer way more than painting with it's puny two dimensions. You could walk around these pieces and every time you stopped there was a brand new masterpiece to take in.

There were a number of pieces where a similar pose was cast and re-cast in an obsessive attempt to get to it's essence. The preparation work was mightily impressive too, though some of the sketches were little more than back-of-fag-packet jottings, which should never have seen the inside of a frame, a series of watercolours with a woman half wearing a pair of pyjamas radiated pure sensuality. Stunning.

Late at Tate: The Turnip Rise

This years 4 contenders:

Mark Titchner - a wierd array of hand carved contraptions, and wall-sized digitally produced slogans. Tate says: "His installations questions both our blind faith in science and our obedience to authority". ADT says: at least he's got a few ideas, and his stuff made me smile, hard to accept the weighty significance ascribed to it though. Needs to lighten up.



Rebecca Warren - A combination of hamfisted light boxes, with stray bits of wood and a crude twist of neon, and large lumps of unformed clay, mainly painted gold. Tate says: "The unfired clay sculptures project a sense of unleashed creativity, appearing to explode out of and merge back into the amorphous properties of the material". ADT says: If that clay is unfired, chuck a bucket of water on it and let somebody else use it. Those light boxes belong in a skip.


Tomma Abbts - Rectangular piantings, all 48 x 38cm, varied colourful geometric designs and patterns. Tate says: "As the internal logic of each composition unfolds forms are defined, buried and rediscovered until the painting becomes congruent with itself". ADT says: cute 4th form doodles in oil.


Phil Collins - A series of filmed interviews with people who had appeared on Turkish reality TV shows, and a life size reality TV production office. Tate says: "Addresses the discrepancy between reality and it's representations". ADT says: a bit too clever clever for my liking, really just an excuse to make rude remarks about the other Phil Collins on the comments cards.



All in all the usual mixture, of mildy interesting stuff and huge piles of stinking cack. Titchner to win, and a special award for the most pretenciously twaddlicious catalogue yet.

After that we saw Grayson Perry discussing a Victorian painting 'The Death of Chatterton' by Henry Wallis. This was part of a series of presentations on London:City of Disappearances. Grayson had made an effort and was dressed in a nice shiny black satin dress, in keeping with the Victorian theme. Thankfully he isn't an academic, but knows what he thinks, and communicates his opinions in a confident, entertaining and amusing way. Probably the highlight of the evening.

Take My Eyes And Through Them See You

ICA membership has a few perks, one of which is that you get invited along to members veiws of new exhibitions before they open. Sadly they all seem to take place at 6.30 on Tuesday evenings, and are thus impossible to attend. This months invite was also on a Tuesday but didn't start 'til late so thought we may as well give it a go.


Described in the blurb as '...a new set of works in response to the history, location and architechtural particularities of the ICA'. This in fact consisted of Cerith Wyn Evans (sounds a bit Welsh to me, isn't it) having removed the false internal wall of the lower gallery, revealing some windows which looked out onto The Mall. That was it. Nothing in the gallery, just a lack of wall....There was a talk by the curator trying to put the 'work' in context, but the feedback from the floor was very much 'Emperors New Clothes', though a few youngsters seemed a little more enthused.

I'd met up with Hywel and Malcolm earlier in the day, as they've brought the boat back up to London for its winter mooring, and really it would have been a far more entertaining evening supping real ale in some canalside pub that witnessing this twaddle.