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| Frank Stella, 'Inflated Star And Wooden Star', Polished & Patinated Aluminium And Teakwood, 2014, (Detail) |
Back in May, I spent a day
catching up with a couple of major exhibitions in London. At the time, I was tied up in my own work,
and with exhibition preparations, and just never found time to write a blog
post about my trip. In fact, I even felt
a little guilty about taking a whole day away from my work at the time. However, the two shows I attended were both
significant retrospectives of work by two painters I rate very highly, namely
Richard Diebenkorn and Marlene Dumas. I knew
I’d regret it if I didn’t make the effort.
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| Royal Academy Of Arts, London, May 2015 |
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| Marlene Dumas, 'Jule - The Woman', Oil On Canvas, 1985 |
It feels too late to revisit
either show in detail here now. Suffice
it to say that, in the event, I didn’t regret sacrificing my time (or money) in
either of them. ‘Marlene Dumas: 'The Image As Burden’, at Tate Modern [1.] was a surprisingly
badly hung, and somewhat uneven show, but was still full of
terrific stuff. It was a reminder that
Dumas is often up there with the best, as regards pushing paint around or
distilling a resonant image. ‘Richard Diebenkorn’, at The Royal Academy [2.] was just a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to catch up for real with the work of an
artist I’ve been consistently drawn to, - ever since I first encountered him in
my Teens.
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| Richard Diebenkorn, 'Berkeley #57', Oil On Canvas, 1953 |
Diebenkorns almost never
appear on this side of the Atlantic.
Indeed, for many years, he was a painter whose work I studied longingly,
without actually having encountered any hanging on a wall. I attended the Whitechapel Gallery’s 1991
retrospective with some trepidation therefore, and was delighted to find that
the paintings were even more satisfying than any reproduction could have
implied. Since then, I had only seen two
or three more during a visit to San Francisco in 2000. Diebenkorn is, above all, a painter’s
painter, and one who demands first-hand engagement, so I was hardly going to
forego this second opportunity to see a representative cross-section of his
oeuvre. It proved a conviction that was
justified all over again. Who knows if
I’ll ever get another chance in this country?
Anyway, instead of spending
too much time discussing exhibitions that have been over for some time, here
are some photographs of a work by another, even bigger name American artist,
namely Frank Stella. It detained me for a few minutes on my way into the R.A.,
making for some striking images in the process.
Stella is an artist whose early, monochrome works have always appealed
to me, not least for their austere geometric minimalism, but whose subsequent
output seemed sometimes to succumb to the twin demons of bombast or empty
decoration. Perhaps it was always going
to be difficult to work out of such sublimely distilled starting point, without
appearing to be just adding stuff for the sake of it [3.].
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| Frank Stella, 'Empress Of India', Metallic Powder & Emulsion On Canvas, 1965 |
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| Frank Stella, 'Inflated Star And Wooden Star', Polished & Patinated Aluminium And Teakwood, 2014 |
Judging by his large
sculpture, ‘Inflated Star And Wooden Star’ dominating the R.A. forecourt when I visited, he seems to have arrived at the point, late in his
career, of producing large, grandiose sculptural statements for public
spaces. I’ll confess to sometimes
feeling pretty underwhelmed by this kind of thing, although one must always
remember not to get distracted by sheer scale and to judge each piece on it’s
individual merits. For every mirrored,
amorphous blob of Anish Kapoor’s somewhat vacuous, international style, there’s
a monumental, rusted Serra that still gives me a physical thrill, or a bonkers
Oldenberg Pop intervention that makes me smile.
My initial impression was
that the Stella might belong in the first category, - even down to its use of
high-visual impact, polished metal surfaces.
Despite my reservations, I was soon relishing, and photographing in
close-up, the wonderful distorted surface reflections on the larger of its two
star forms. Of particular appeal were
the quasi-psychedelic distortions of the R.A.’s Neo-Classical façade, (with all
that implies), and the dramatic contrasts and vivid colour afforded by the
sublime early summer sunshine.
Having grabbed a few choice
shots, I gave ‘IS&WS’ little further thought and moved indoors to immerse
myself in Diebenkorn’s far more limpid world, (one that is reflective in a
completely different way). Looking back
at the images however, I wonder if I was a little too dismissive of Stella’s
efforts. It seems to me that, in two
rather different star forms, he plays with the idea of something having
considerable mass, weight and materiality, but simultaneously made of light and
gas. The heavy timber of his smaller
star, is essentially just a space frame, - a delineation of a polygonal portion
of air, whilst, for all its metallic solidity, its larger partner is purely
about the light it reflects. Each also
demonstrates what are essentially just conventions for describing something
supremely intangible. Any star we depict or make, can only ever be a mental construct.
The more I think about it,
the more this seems like an intelligent, even philosophical, way to
comment on the true nature of stars.
They’re undeniably there, on an astronomical and yet unapproachable
scale. Paradoxically, there’s really no
‘there’ at all, - just a massive concentration of energy we can only interact
with in terms of the impression it exerts at a distance. Cosmic!
[1.]: 'Marlene Dumas: The Image As Burden', Tate Modern, London. 5 February - 10 May, 2015
[2.]: 'Richard Diebenkorn', Royal Academy Of Arts, London. 14 March - 7 June, 2015
[3.]: Is this something that could be said to have also
plagued Jasper Johns’ later output? Is
it better to start out a bit rough and ready and allow increasing refinement to
arrive with the passing years? Is it
ever possible, or even desirable, to plan these things anyway?
