BRAZIL FOCUS: Eliseu Visconti: A Modernidade Antecipada

Olivia Nairn takes a tour of the famous São Paulo gallery and uncovers an excellent exhibition of Eliseu Visconti's greatest works

São Paulo’s Pinacoteca art gallery, to the north of the city centre in the bairro know as Luz, holds a real treasure of an art collection. Housed in a beautiful 19th century building, the gallery relishes its claim to be the oldest museum in the modern metropolis with great pride. The permanent collection mixes 19th century Brazilian and international art with contemporary work, and the result is superb.

Currently showing is an extensive exhibition of the Italian-born Brazilian artist Eliseu Visconti (born Salerno 1866, died Rio de Janeiro 1944)’s works from the 1880s through to the 1920s. A very famous artist in Brazil, Visconti’s oeuvre spans a variety of styles, from impressionism, through to art nouveau and abstraction, and also demonstrates influence from several cities, including Rio de Janeiro and Paris. The retrospective view begins with examples of Visconti’s early naturalist style paintings, showing portraits, such as the delightful Menino (1910) and O Beijo (1910), and natural landscapes in oil-rich colours. Visconti was a highly sought after artist of his day, and was widely exhibited, including in the newly established Academia de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro (now known as the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes).

Visconti’s French years bring beautifully crafted and highly impressionistic works, such as Maternidade (1908, seen below) and several images of contemporary Parisian life in public spaces such as the Jardim de Luxembourg. Returning to Brazil, Visconti continued to impress, and this time with stunning scenes of the city of Rio and Guanabara Bay. Both Ipanema and Copacabana beaches make frequent appearances, and are beautiful to contemplate as empty stretches of unblemished beachfront. Visconti’s talents even extended to drawing a frieze for a flyer for a show at the Teatro Municipal, and propaganda images for the Palácio Tiradentes, both famous Rio landmarks.

A particular favourite was Dante e Virgilio ascendendo ao Paraíso (1908), a large oil painting with clear depiction of the main protagonists, but also featuring very abstracted figures at the base of the image, residents of purgatory struggling to ascend to the heights of everlasting love in Paradise. With over 250 works on display, viewers definitely will not be struggling to find something appealing to any  taste.

Eliseu Visconti: A Modernidade Antecipada is on at the Pinacoteca gallery until 26^th February 2012. http://www.pinacoteca.org.br/pinacoteca/default.aspx?c=exposicoes&idexp=596&mn=100

Secret 7" Competition

Creatures of Culture is delighted to announce our participation in Secret 7”, a unique project in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. We are hosting from this website a competition to design the artwork for the sleeve of artist Ben Howard’s track ‘Black Flies’. 

If your artwork is selected, it will go on display in the Idea Generation Gallery in London in April 2012.

Please see more information, including the endorsement from Ben, here:

Exhibition of the Month

JANUARY: John Martin: Apocalypse at Tate Britain

Roland O'Leary is impressed by the fantastical, mythical and biblical landscapes of John Martin

I will confess that I knew nothing about John Martin (1789-1854) or his work before stepping into the Tate Britain's Apocalypse exhibition. However, one of the themes of the exhibition, to my mind, is that his works are imprinted on the popular consciousness, even if his reputation is perhaps more obscure than other artists hailing from the same era.

This theme is spelled out clearly by the accompanying information, which traces Martin's influence to all sorts of popular culture – from the images seen in films like Ben Hur, Independence Day and Lord of the Rings to the writing of cult sci-fi writer H.P. Lovecraft to heavy metal band 'Angel Witch'. I felt that there was some resonance to these (rather bold) claims – Martin's early oil painting The Bard (1817, seen below) depicts a landscape right out of Tolkien, while many of Martin's works show vast, dark cityscapes beneath brooding skies that could have inspired Lovecraft's cyclopean cities in At the Mountains of Madness or The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. On the other hand, a parallel with Star Wars didn't quite ring true for me, and I felt that the attempt to force the modernity and relevance of these works on the visitor did an injustice to their artistry – these paintings are spectacular visions of heaven and hell, worlds of myth and imagination. I found them vastly impressive and accessible without needing modern parallels to be drawn for me by the curator.

Martin came from a working background, and he used his talent for art to make a living. As such, the exhibition stresses his commercialism and his struggle to gain acceptance from the high-brow art critics of his day. He gained immense success in the early Regency period when 'sublime' paintings were in fashion, exhibiting huge oil paintings, for prominent patrons including the Governor of the Bank of England. One room is dedicated to these 'blockbuster paintings', like Belshazzar's Feast (1826, seen below), a particular favourite of mine. I think that one of the visual successes of these paintings comes from the contrasts of scale – human figures are depicted in intricate detail, but they look tiny against enormous landscapes and chaotic skies: these are paintings rich in action.

An interesting portion of the exhibition shows Martin's development of mezzotints, where Martin applied a tonal printmaking method to produce striking results. Martin replicated his oil paintings in mezzotint as well as creating unique works of art using this technique, which then allowed him to distribute them commercially – indeed, he embarked on ventures including illustrating editions of the Bible and John Milton's Paradise Lost. He also engaged in trying to redesign London's infrastructure, illustrating elaborate sewerage and transport systems, but he never won the contracts and risked his artistic reputation in this field. His mad brother Jonathan Martin trying to burn down York Minster was also a blemish on the family name! John Martin suffered a decline in the 1830s and 1840s when his sublime style was viewed with vulgarity, and his artistic prowess far outweighed his business-sense.

The highlight of the exhibition for me was the triptych of The Last Judgement (one part seen below) , masterpieces of 1853 which resurrected Martin's career. A clever light and audio show illustrated how these paintings would have been exhibited around the country in panoramas or dioramas, which were immensely popular at the time. The show is brilliantly executed, right down to the murmurs of the excited crowds, but the paintings themselves speak a thousand words of drama - here, a velvet sunset floats above the green fields of paradise, there, the pit of hell revolves red while mountains and men tumble from a lightning-split sky. The silhouettes of strange cityscapes are traced on pastel foothills. Nymphs struggle, satyrs dance, sinners fall, warriors strive, angels scour – all the beings of the universe parade before epic landscapes of darkness and light.

These works are mythic in scale and subject, and whether they have seeped into the popular consciousness from Martin's exposure in shows and Bible prints, or whether they illustrate deeper themes of the psyche, they certainly resonated with me.

Apocalypse is showing at Tate Britain, Millbank, until 15th January.

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/johnmartin/default.shtm

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011

Olivia Nairn returns to the National Portrait Gallery for this year's portrait photographer prize

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is a particular favourite exhibition of mine. Recalling the delights of 2010's photographic efforts, I was excited to see what this year had to offer. Amateur, student and professional photographers are invited once again to submit their work- be it a commissioned piece for a magazine or a personal family portrait, and as expected, the results are hugely varied, although the skill and passion of the photographers remains outstanding.

You may have seen the portrait below of Keira Knightley, staring out at you on various tube posters: this shot was taken by Michael Birt during her run in the play The Children’s Hour.

First prize went to Jooney Woodward, whose portrait of Harriet and Gentleman Jack pairs together the flame-red hair of 13-year-old Harriet, seen at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, and the long coat of the guinea pig, Gentleman Jack, divided by the austerity of Harriet’s white coat.

For me, and many others, the most haunting portrait was that of a young girl, whose nose had been cut off by the Taliban after she fled her abusive husband. The image was made all the more shocking as it should have been a beautiful young face looking into the camera; instead, a face, marred forever by a single violent and extreme action of a misogynist ruling group, stares hauntingly out at the viewer.

My absolute favourite however, was Yann Gross’ Tatiana and Belene. By placing unusual animals in everyday landscapes, Gross’ placing of a llama in a field more applicable to a sheep or goat makes for a highly amusing image, not to mention the expressions on both the llama’s and local model’s faces!

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 12th February 2012.
http://www.npg.org.uk/photoprize1/site09/index.php

Modern Art Oxford: Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción: The Optimistic Failure of a Simultaneous Promise and Kerry Tribe: Dead Star Light

Olivia Nairn enjoys two exhibitions as part of Modern Art Oxford's autumn programme

Modern Art Oxford’s popular gallery space is a testament to the way in which contemporary art can complement a town steeped in tradition. In an interesting pairing, the respective exhibitions of Kerry Tribe and Abraham Cruzvillegas offer opposing takes on truth, reality and fiction.

An American national, Tribe favours film and sound as her medium of choice to relay a curious juxtaposition of documented fact with artistic installation. In The Last Soviet, Tribe’s cinematic composition alternates between real images from Soviet archives, and a video made inside a scale model of the Mir space station. The Last Soviet is based on the true events of 1991, when astronaut Sergei Krikalev was left onboard the space station for 311 days whilst the Soviet Union collapsed on earth below. The passing of time in the recording is documented in months, but importantly these do not follow in order, reflecting how time is an earth-bound concept which has no role in space. The archival footage is occasionally interrupted with incongruous imagery from the ballet Swan Lake: somewhat shockingly, this was a real technique used by the government as a way of censoring information available to the television-viewing population. The piece rolls almost as a documentary, but the patchwork effect of different films and languages creates a feeling of illusion, calling into question the way in which facts can be manipulated into fiction, and reality construed as falsehood. Thus, the Russian public’s censored experience of political turmoil is made almost equal with that of a destitute spaceman with no human contact.

This futile quest for truth, and to see through the mask of illusion, rises again in Milton Torres Sees a Ghost. The first impact of this complex installation, comprising an audio tape reel wound around the gallery walls and two listening stations, is visual disorientation, and the sound only comes after tracing the physical path laid out by the film. The voice speaking out is that of an American fighter pilot, Milton Torres, recounting his sighting of a UFO in 1957 over British air space. As the recording passes through each listening station, it is continually erased and recorded, defying the very nature of a formal, recorded statement. It is not even a true account: Tribe has edited parts of the story, and in changing the original testimony, she presents a fusion of past, present, truth and fiction, ironically presented as authentic, documented recording.

Loud whirring leads us to Tribe’s final piece, named Parnassius mnemosyne after the eponymous butterfly and Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. Tribe projects a microscope image of a butterfly’s wing on a screen, with a movement made to look convincing by the use of a 16mm film, twisted to make a möbius strip and hung from the ceiling, passing continually through a projector. The butterfly wing is made to flap therefore for all eternity, never changing or revealing any more or less of the creature it belongs to.

And what of Cruzvillegas? In one sense, Cruzvillegas’ stark revelation of self is the antithesis of Tribe’s factual conniving. The Mexican artist displays in his ‘self-building’ (‘autoconstrucción’) a desire to express his surroundings, and the core elements that compose personal identity and location. Cruzvillegas draws on the rich history in Oxford for The Optimistic Failure, taking inspiration from the Amazonian shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum for a most interesting sculpture. His own take on these ancient war trophies features several small mud balls, shaped as spooky primitive heads and suspended from a timber mobile which dominates a huge space. His obsession with raw and used materials is also evident in Blind Self Portrait as a Post-Thatcherite Deaf Lemon Head, a curious title for a wall of white-painted recyclable rubbish, including newspapers, tickets and postcards, arranged neatly in a grid form.

Most entertaining of all perhaps is Cruzvillegas’ The Simultaneous Promise, displayed in the gallery’s outside yard. A tricycle overburdened with speakers, wing mirrors, horns and amplifiers, stands playing a mix of songs from Cruzvillegas’ own upbringing and contemporary Oxford groups. Here Cruzvillegas’ past and present locations successfully merge, reflecting different cultures and times in an appropriately vibrant and musical way. These happier sounds echo far longer than the mechanical and monotonous hum of Tribe’s apparatus, yet oddly enough, if heard together, one can imagine a blend of music rather than a discordant harmony. 

http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/

RCA Secret 2011

Olivia Nairn returns to the Secret postcard exhibition

The guessing game is on once again at the Royal College of Art. Its annual Secret exhibition, now in its nineteenth year, displays almost 3000 postcard-sized works to the public, with no explanation or credits: thus, the artist remains unknown until the final buyer turns over the work to reveal a signature. 

So now is your chance to acquire a Tracy Emin work for £45, with the only catch being that you have to identify it from the several hundred potentials- not a easy task! Other artists contributing to the 2011 sale include Grayson Perry, designer James Dyson (also a former student at the RCA), Manolo Blanik and Nick Park (of Wallace and Gromit fame). Mixed in with these famous names is the work of RCA students, and the choice is incredible: I felt I could easily take home any of the postcards to display at home. From 3D creations and pencil sketches, to photographs, paintings and collages, the interpretation of a single white postcard varies fantastically.

Some images of my favourite designs (artists unknown, of course) appear below.

See the postcards at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, until Friday 25th November (6pm), and the sale opens on Saturday 26th November at 8am.

http://dams.rca.ac.uk/res/sites/RCA_Secret/index.html

One Man Two Guvnors

One Man Two Guvnors is a much celebrated show – after a successful season at the National the play has been moved to the Adelphi for an extended season – and I could sense the anticipation amongst the audience as we filed into our seats.

The play unfolds into a Fawlty Towers-esque farce as the dim witted but impulsive Francis (James Corden, sporting a suffocatingly tight, tweed suit) finds himself in the disconcerting position of having two masters, both of whom have a rather shady past. Along with confused identities and the obligatory cross-dressing, there is plenty of audience interaction; indeed, to the extent that Corden scolds the audience for offering him a sandwich at his request as it meddled with the plot! It is a fantastic show, full of hilarity and a perfect treat for all in the lead up to Christmas.

Machine Gun Preacher

Ellie Ross reviews a shocking new film based on a former bad boy's real life story

A child is held at gunpoint and forced to choose between clubbing his own mother to death and saving his brother and himself from being shot by his captors.

Harrowing, violent and, at times, hard to watch, Machine Gun Preacher delivers some powerful punches.

It is based on the true story of former bike gang member, drug addict and armed robber Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) who gets out of prison to find his wife (Michelle Monaghan) a born-again Christian. After a close encounter with a stabbed alcoholic and a sudden hurricane, Sam also finds Jesus. He kicks the drugs and makes the life-changing decision to go to war-torn East Africa to help repair homes destroyed by civil conflict. But he gets more than he bargained for when he witnesses the atrocities committed against children who are kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to become soldiers or sex slaves. Sam makes it his mission to become their rescuer and builds an orphanage in the heart of the Sudanese war-zone.

Butler is superb as the gruff lock-and-load crusader whose traumatising experiences edge him towards insanity every time he returns home to Pennsylvania. The growing gulf with his wife is easy to spot, but the focus is entirely on Butler, leaving Monaghan on the side-lines. Though compelling, the film falls short because of this lack of balance – we are ceaselessly shown the results of horrific acts of torture and slaughter but we never uncover what Childers’ enemies are fighting for.


http://www.machinegunpreacher.org/movie/