ART AND REVOLUTION IN HAITI at the Gallery of Everything
This was the first time I had been to THE GALLERY OF EVERYTHING and the venue was as interesting as the exhibition itself. When you went in side it was made up of small rooms over two floors, and felt very much like a small house. However it also said 'Barber Shop' outside, so presume it had been a barbers previously.
I'm looking forward to visiting there again.
The exhibition I saw was Art + Revolution in Haiti. It was based on Haiti artists from early 19th century, Andre Breton a Parisian writer and artist was in Haiti in 1945 and came across the artists, by initially attending their vodou ceremonies. From there he was invited to visit Le Centre d'Art d'Haiti, a gallery set up by an American, DeWitt Peters with local creatives. This is where Breton came across the work from the local self taught artists, to Breton the work was totally new and fresh and it sounded like he was really 'wowed' by it, he saw it as a form of Black Surrelism.
The work on show is made up of drawings, sculptures, films and collection of books and artefacts by Andre Breton himself. The work is based on spirits, dreams, Vodou ceremonies and just life.
I particularly like the metal cut-outs by Georges Liautaud, a sculptor and metal-worker. I like the simplicity and child like nature of them. There is not much detail but enough to give the subjects charachter. The large sculpture in the window I particularly like, maybe because it just makes me smile. The round torso and the carrot like nose, makes me think of a snowman, the walking stick is an extension of the arm, the arm is an extension of the shoulder which is not connected to the body and the hat is large with a real presence.
There were many paintings all of which seemed to represent the people of Haiti. The images captured their daily life, their dreams and the spirits in their world. There was an element of child like imagery in the lot of the work, this could have been as they didn't have references to other artists work, where images could be far more figurative.
My favourite picture is the below image. To me it looks like a man with a flower, or maybe even a pipe in his mouth. He is wearing a bright yellow hat and he doesn't seem to have any other clothes on. He has two figures either side of him, quite ghostly looking. Apart from the markings for their eyes and mouth they have no other features. Their bodies blend in with the background to the extent that initially you don't even notice that they are there. They could be spirits, or they could be people. If they are people similar to that of the main subject, the artist must of thought that to make them more prominent was not of importance. That the focus was to be on the main subject and the artist just wanted to show that there were other people close by.
I also really like this use of paint, how the whole image is made up of small strokes of paint in a variety of colours.
I also liked the way that the gallery lit the work, it was purely a circle of light on each work. This became more obvious when i took pictures and only the lightened area would light up the work.
Overall the exhibition left me feeling very uplifted and inspired, I think it was because of the child like nature of the pictures and sculptures.
GOOD GRIEF, CHARLIE BROWN! at Somerset House
My mum actually took me to this exhibition and i really wasn't interested in going. However, I am so pleased that I did, as I really felt quite excited afterwards.
It was a Sunday morning and we were the first there, so it felt like we had the exhibition to ourselves for a while which was nice. The first part of the exhibition introduced you to the old Peanuts comic strips and then went into the life of Charles Schulz and his dog Sparky. The biography then went onto say how when Schulz was a young boy and his mum was dying she told him that if they had another dog she would call it Snoopy, this was how Snoopy became Snoopy.
Pens and Nibs
They also had film footage showing how Schulz drew his characters, and had samples of the pens and different size nibs that he used. They said that how the different thickness of pens would be used for different expressions with the mouths and how something as subtle as the thickness of Schulz pen stroke could dictate a totally different expression with a character. Rain was another example of Schulz using lines to symbolise how heavy the rain was.
When I worked on my sculpture project and did my gif for Undo-do-Redo, I used a paper bag as a mask and changed the expression of the face with the eyes and mouth. For me my expressions were quite obvious- basic ones, but in Peanuts, Schulz did manage to create a range of emotions that covered every mood and feeling.
It was also good to see how Peanuts evolved over the years the main difference was between the 1940's-50s and the 1960's. The original Snoopy was more like Schulz's dog Spike and the original characters seemed to have slightly larger heads.
It was also good to read the comic strips, as they were really short, only about 4-6 images and sentences each, yet they said so much and made you laugh
The exhibition went onto a big space upstairs where there was a mix of vintage snoopy memorabilia and modern artist take on Peanuts. I particularly liked Kaws and his take on Snoopy, how he used his mix of colours and the 'X' eyes. How he had the hand and teeth from 'Sponge Bob' as part of the blocks of colours that made up the image. How his way of painting looks so perfect that it could be digital.
Life Question
The last part of the exhibition was where you could take an A5 sheet of blank paper and draw and write your own 'life question', as this is something Charlie Brown did regularly. A lot of people would trace one of the Peanuts characters, but my brother drew his own version with his theory on life.
I learnt from this exhibition that such a lot can be said with so little, and although words were more often than not used in Charle Schulz comic strips, they didn't always need to be.
KLIMT SCHIELE DRAWINGS at The Royal Academy
I went to the RA to see Oceania which I really enjoyed and took lots of photographs of masks. However, it was the Klimt and Schiele drawings that made me feel like i wanted to go home and do painting and draw. Even though some of the work was prep for the final painting, to me they were finished works as they were. They were simple yet complex, hard yet soft, ugly yet beautiful, raw yet polished.
Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were both Austrian Modernists, whose work was figurative yet distorted. Klimt was older than Shiele, but they ended up exhibiting together in 1909 and learning from each other there after.
The work was curated by themes so their work would hang together in a mix and match way.
The Cellist is black crayon and watercolour on packing paper. There is no detail on the cellist's body or clothing, yet the way the colours have been added in blocks, somehow give him form. The outline in black is a great contrast to the more pastel colours that he uses, these pastel colours add a warmth to the image. His face and hands are more detailed with more colour, yet they do not jump off the page leaving the pastel colours behind. They all work as one.
This pencil on paper study is one of my favourites, as the face is drawn in quite a text book manor, and the rest of the drawing is pencil scribbles. Although obviously there is far more to it than that, you can see that it's a women wearing clothing with a lot of pattern. To me she also looks like she is sitting down and behind her is the top of her chair. Even if this isn't what Klimt was drawing, the drawing itself is still a great drawing, in its' unfinished un detailed state.
There were 3 paintings of flowers, all Chrysanthemums, one, red, one white the other yellow all done with pencil, watercolour and white gouache on packing paper. I like it that you can still see the pencil marks and how Schiele was comfortable to leave space between the petals, he didn't feel the need to fill it all in.
This drawing is drawn with black and red chalk on paper, the face is photo real andthe rest of the image shows the lady wearing a black hat and cape. The impressive thing about the cape and hat is that they blend into the back drop and seem to loose their definition yet, they don't loose it at all, as you can see quite clearly they are a cape and hat.
Overall I found the exhibition to be really refreshing, it showed drawings with a great use of colour especially on the naked body and how the unfinished can look finished. I also thought the work to be very contemporary and I was surprised to find out it was over 100 years old.