Sunday 22 August 2010

Judgment


On my way to the Royal Academy I passed Chanel, Louis Vuitton and other such smart, luxurious shops. My thoughts turned to a past relationship. As well as playing with our desires, the high end pushes and fights for our attention. It is both seductive and disapproving and the Ritz Hotel is tempting to me but also causes anxiety to form in my head. Can I afford to be here? Do I fit in? Do I want to go there? Why do I care what it thinks?

My last boyfriend, James, expressed clearly how he felt in galleries, using words I might use to describe how I've felt in places like this.

“I’ve tried, but I don’t understand it. It doesn’t move me - it just leaves me cold. I feel uncomfortable. Sorry.”

Rather a strong rejection!

“Well I suppose it’s like music, it’s quite abstract, not everyone likes the same things,” I replied.

For James, it was constantly a case of judging whether something was good or not. Quite harshly, all art is put in one box. It's not always a fruitful discussion if we talk about all art instead of individual work and others that do so frustrate me. I do not judge James for preferring music, films or books to delight his senses with.

The summer exhibition is an event that attracts a huge amount of entries from anyone who wants to be considered by the academicians as worthy of a place on the crowded walls of the old establishment. I was preparing myself for a slightly dizzying display and overload of painting, sculpture and print.

I do it quite a lot in galleries that I judge: that one’s good, why did they choose that one? I saw people doing this a lot in the gallery. It was Friday afternoon and there was a Pimm’s stand in the middle of the gallery. Friends were chatting. A group was talking. “Did you see the Tracey Emin prints, did you see how many sold stickers there are on her work?” “Where?” lots of head shakes.

There were big names, established artists like David Hockney, familiar and much loved. I do always enjoy seeing another work by him. I love his freshness, using the computer to make new work. Other work in the summer exhibition is becoming familiar to me from last year, like recognising old faces when you go to parties with the same group a few times. It's easier when there are people you can go and say hello to.

I sent a text to my friend, Marie, hoping that she could join me straight from work. Whereas the last exhibition could have failed to move me as much if I had been talking to someone else, here I felt a little gossip might be fun. My phone had run out of batteries.

The first room was called Raw and this was a theme for the whole show (to show how unafraid and with it the Royal Academy really is). Huge canvases scraped, brushed, glued and covered brashly, and bold loud pieces, including sculptures were there. The work looked confident and made by practiced hands, not raw as a foundation degree show might be. I judged the curators choices well; it was good quality stuff. Well made and expertly done.

The only way to enjoy a large exhibition in the end is to scrutinize the whole room and focus on the most beautiful or capturing image. As the mood from before was one of escape and fantasy, I got lost in Fiona Rae’s painting, ‘I Wish to Fully Grow My Small Dream’, 2010. The room contained works that were based on fictional spaces. The painting was done with oil, acrylic and gouache, which gave different depth to different elements, which were painted in grey, light blue, yellow and pink, with pink hearts spaced on one plane. There were curved, cartoon-like lines and wash- like smears and flicked shapes floating in grey.

My mind floated into the painting for just a second and I left contented that I had felt a little escape. I had not really had the experience of speculating who would win the prizes and honours, but I had discovered a new work and chosen it as a standout. Next week I will be in the fairy-tale city of Prague, to celebrate a birthday.

Saturday 21 August 2010

Something in Common



There is a romance and intimacy to the first exhibition I went to today. I went to a gallery near Green Park Station; the posh-est part of London. After walking down Dover Street to Grafton Street, I tried to find the number of the gallery. There was a big bay window but you could not see in and I had to look around for a while to find the door and make sure I was going to the place I was meaning to go to. There were two teenagers sitting on the steps leading up to the entrance and I had to ask if I could get past to go in. They looked surprised and let me past. They were obviously not anticipating that their spot would be an entrance to a public space like a shop or a restaurant. I scanned the buttons for the doorbells, and a little hesitantly rang the bell before pushing the door gently and finding it was open and I smiled at the lady looking at me from her desk. I’d been here before, although I’d forgotten the name of the place but I had enough of a sense direction to enter the gallery to my right.

Once inside, the space in Spreuth Magers’ Gallery had been transformed. The walls were painted a deep blue and there were small, sparkly fragments sprinkled all over the wall, giving the staged feeling of a princess world in the night sky. The building has high ceilings and there was music playing from a ballet. I did not recognise the music but it was gentle, classical. The artists in the exhibition were both ballet lovers. Their relationship with their beloved subject matter was clearly different but this abstract feeling that each was a lover of the ballet was something they had in common.

I say abstract because, like each relationship it is not easy to express why we feel a certain way. It usually isn’t possible to explain why something is meaningful to you, and impossible to prove there is anything tangible or real about your belief. Therefore, you can express how you feel in different ways. Tracey Emin spoke about her ‘tearful break-up’ with art before she became successful. Something you build up a familiarity with, as can be with any interest, can provoke passion, turbulence, obsession and heart ache. It can also bring comfort, consolation, beauty and fascination. This is commonly seen with football fans.

One of the two artists, Joseph Cornell, had collected memorabilia from the Romantic Ballet. I was touched by the inclusion of hairgrips in his collection. He is an artist who spent most of his life as a carer and worked in isolation. His boxes are little containers of treasure presented with found objects and scraps of materials. They are so delicate and show a desire to escape to another place, looking like window frames or slices of spaces from another dimension.

The other artist, Karen Kilimnik, is a contemporary artist. Her paintings could be nineteenth century painting by artists such as Degas or other impressionists. They have bright colours and broad brush strokes. This gives them an expressive spirit. She is moved by the historic stage. Although the inspiration comes from the past for the work, it is viewed from the present. Romance is something we can still appreciate and be taken with. Like a mist it softens and melts us.

I got a glimpse of another perspective on something I did not even understand or experience and that’s a piece of communication. No one would write exactly the same as me above and I love that I got to share these artists' passion today. Like a tourist in a part of another’s brain, without words: it is a wondrous, alien place. I thought about relationships with other humans, and I thought about people I miss, how every bit of understanding and piece of attention given is precious.

The interior nature of the exhibit and the celestial design of the walls completely transported me and it was a surprise as I opened a door to an ordinary looking back space and deduced that it was only two rooms that were part of the show.

I left the gallery with all my thoughts and made my way to the busy Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.