A visit to Aberdeen Art Gallery

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Aberdeen Art Gallery

The Gallery has been reconstructed and rearranged.

 

The new arrangement benefits cafe users, increases disabled access, allows access to a roof terrace, reduces focus on painting in favour of mixed galleries, increases the role of the galleries as educational (as opposed to aesthetic) showcases, and now displays artwork thematically, when previously the galleries had focussed on a linear historical display of painting, with rooms aside for the French schools. There is a new ceramics display and James McBey`s works are given greater prominence.

The new arrangement also gives more ready access to the Aberdeen City War Memorial.

Regarding the art, I think I preferred the previous hanging. The focus on education is all very well, but often feel infantalising. I think perhaps they looked at the Kelvingrove and copied them, hoping thus to attract school groups. The previous hanging made nice use of balconies around the central court, and I found it to be more coherent. But the new ceramics display is very good and it the view from the roof is beautiful.

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My tastes are rather split between art which has a distinctly interior quality (such as Jackowski) and that which entails visiting, perhaps confronting, the great outside ( the other two). Though one might argue -happily I think- that the two mental states are in no sense polarised but meet and feed off each other.

The first and last are "new" artists for me. 

Walker was born in 1930 in Kirkaldy and Jackowski in Penley, Wales, 1947, but for some reason this is the first time I`ve encountered their work.

I especially enjoyed these-

The boy who broke the spell, Andrzej Jackowski, 152 x 162 cm, 1996

Mount St Hilarion, Cyprus, David Bomberg, 72.5 x 92.5 cm, 1948

Sand seaweed and shore pool, Frances M. Walker, c. 80  x 60 cm, probably 1981

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A drive to Urussanga and Anitapolis

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 Woodland and fields, between Urussanga and Orleans

 oil on card, 16.5 x 14.5 cm- available

 Homestead, late afternoon, between Urussanga and Orleans

 oil on card, 18 x 16.5 cm   SOLD

This, above, works well.

 Woodland, São Ludgero, oil on card, 15 x 18.3 cm

 Little house, near Anitapolis, oil on card. 15 x 18 cm  AVAILABLE

I`m trying for a style that is bolder and less ridden with equivocation. I feel that my mountain pictures are particularly prone to this fussiness. I think I am trying too hard. That may be because I am in awe of the subject, and therefore unable to respond with creative freedom. I need to find another approach. 

A fine painter of mountains is Bomberg: I must try to get a catalogue of his work.

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I took the wrong road from Anitapolis north, going to Alfredo Wagner by the most tortuous and at times muddy track. The views were fantastic, but I nearly damaged my car, and it took forever. Thank God it wasn't raining. I should have taken the paved road to Rancho Queimado. By the time I realised my error I`d already driven already for 15 minutes and  didn't imagine that the way ahead would become so difficult.

I'd intended to stay another night in the mountains but I came back, exhausted by that drive. There is little to do in the mountain towns at night. You just sit somewhere and read and eat hotdogs because there aren't any proper restaurants and wonder what the hell you are doing there. But I like that emptiness sometimes.

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Santo Amaro de Imperatriz from above

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Santo Amaro de  Imperatriz from above, oil on card, 11.2 / 13.5 cm - available

Another Saturday visit  to this beautifully located little town, which I love to paint.

I wish I could easily go and see some of Kokoschka's or Bomberg's paintings. Seeing things online is only really good as a reference and both were fellow itinerants, painting places from above.