www.list.co.uk/art
Festival Visual Art
PICASSO ON PAPER The aquatints, allegories and autobiography of a modernist master 0000
They say that all is fair in love and war — although the word ‘fair' seems a little humdrum when you take in the remarkable collection of works exhibited in one of the Festival’s undeniable big guns. Throughout a selection of around 120 graphic works, spanning 70 years of Picasso‘s professional life, complex passions concerning women, politics, roguish love affairs and ruthless war strategies run deep, but at the same time are beautifully expressed in the simplest of graphic lines. The exhibition brings together everything from etchings, to cartoonish pencil drawings, to fluid aquatints, and of course the flattened out Cubist papier collés, or paper collages, that Picasso and Braque notedly brought to the Modernist table. While some visitors might feel that a Picasso show should be slightly heavier on the Cubist slant, the fact that they get to see such a wide range of Picasso's work throughout his entire career should more than make up for that. Almost every piece is thick with Picasso’s emotional temper — whether it comes forward in the
JOHN STEZAKER A collection of the beautiful, the sublime and the ridiculous 0..
When representations of the human face are fragmented
through photographic techniques or physically but and pasted.
as in the work ol John Stexaker at the Stills gallery, the viewer cannot help but react. This easy appeal to our emotions is exploited by the collagist in work that splices the black and white and sepia faces of beauties from the ‘10s with other heads. eats' laces and anthropornorpnrsea scenes at nature, We are, forced to question how naturai nature' 's. trorn the silly smile on the face of the in-breu pussy cat. to nature tweaked and tinted by an expert hand a ho? day postcard. We are left with the nostalgic quality at the images. a dusty residue that adds only supertieial patina ls t'ris the only point of the work? History. as we know. i5 also Created after the tact. so. like nature — that most elusive yet captiyating or topics for artists and philosophers alike — history is also an invention. But how do these two concepts relate to each. other’.‘ Are they inerer out and pasted throwa vay philosophical enquiries made by Stezaker? Is there ‘dept'i' and shoold there be”? Depth and meaning are also something that the VIBWGT brings to the work, inserted in the gap between elements of a canyas or pieces of the coliag this seems like old ground. rAlexander Kenner I Sill/s. 622 6200. WM 28 Oil. 7 lam—60m, ‘ree.
S 8 But
NATHAN COLEY
A desire for something beyond good and evil .0.
“(it‘xu'i ," Jii‘;i" .I!' :.1{‘ .", ”' i.li:rliii".tiirt-\Til‘i-l. 5' t"~"‘. .i' l lyiirli: .xi' ii'wll w 'H. l"
t'itfkiolrl:)?’:\ [|‘»"....'l""‘ "" ' 1'
(“Mill .ltw‘n'llr i'lt'fl l "xii.
satirical comments he makes in his comic strip style
prints depicting the tyranny of Franco, or in the 0 ' o ' saddened eye in one of his many prints of one of his ' o . z frequently changing lovers or muses. One of the most :0 simple and most beautiful of these portraits is ‘Francoise .‘ 0‘0‘ with a Bow in her Hair’, a1946 lithograph in which a g smattering of uncomplicated inky lines are aching with k a“ T.‘ emotion. .
Throughout, visible themes of literature, allegory, autobiography and history come forward — from the classical allegories of Greek and Roman classicism depicted in his Vollard Suite series of etchings, to the frontispieces he created for books by fellow artists and poets such as Tristan Tzara, and his infamous historical accounts of the Spanish Civil War. However, it is in his lithograph studies of The Bull, a motif seen in his most famous comments on the war, the mural Guernica, that we really see how perfectly Picasso could pare down the lines of a subject to the most unadorned, most unembellished graphic line, but without losing a single ounce of the power behind that subject. (Claire Mitchell) I Dean Git/lei}. (524' 6200. until 23 Set), lOarr‘ 7— i'jri'ii. :’ (I F“! .
By far the most xixiitill; law/ah."- it!" Cole, 's "Aririilaterl (Li xrtnnxiurin' Found black and '.‘/lllii: pli’fingipli‘, ’Jl ornate. (Sr/thin Catlrmlri, ',()'ll‘:'i‘)ll).'l boxes are trained lietorr: lieirir; partially obscure/l lit, £1")ll’j." uriiarr: of either .‘Jhitr; or Marl- ",r.r:i, paint Tulfltrfitflllllll} door} and ‘:.'l!'. lll‘1liiillrl is filflZI/(j‘l on the glass rr trorrt ot the photo, a ii()'.":l'llltl. spectre iiw: representation of the ’,().'lf‘:’)‘.l(;l: i',‘:li Or art: the snatches of paint TNr'lrIn‘: rlefacerrierits. represeritrrv; bile, llltltil (ll8(,ll.‘)‘)‘:(l rim/lain tn' religious
belie"? If This l‘} at). "Se/mien ,urr .' Age of Moral Unrertai'it, 'rra; pron/1r; a (hunter Iirrlur'rmrt. l‘ i‘, Ii 'Wr’ii: iriteritir,rial!, '.l'lli'Yli)":'/,‘.‘:7‘:’,T}17V}.{;“,i coloured lights. .vhicl. 'eri'merrt', .i: increaswir; obsessicr‘ .‘wt'r ape/jaw,- oxer religion Cole; ry;':t,r;r:itr; '51",{:', ’JLJBSII’fllS here .vrtho'it rri'ri'rwr; h ', ’JKJLYiICTlF) (JO/1n our "V’iti‘i. ,et t'ir: Cheek, .rre‘iererice touriri in were pre. out; .‘Jorks seerris ‘aaki'irg. and the sparse layout tn'vigriort lea/0', a deSire for sornethirrr‘ no“;
Posie Lessor
I Doggerfrsner. 5'38 7’ 70. until 7') Sep. Tile—Fri ' ‘
r ant—6pm, tree.
2': ,1 ,g—‘, 5-3:. 2/,“ THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 105