A visit to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

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The Gallery

This lovely gallery was always, and remains, characterised by a quality of precision, with crisp modernist works on pale grey walls.

I enjoyed visiting the collection and seeing the permanent collection, temporary shows of Joan Eardley, contemporary painting and a Barbara Hepworth retrospective.

Eardley

The exhibition of Eardley related to her time in Catterline is accompanied by cases with photographs and letters.

The work on display are major work. In  these she incorporates some of the rough textural effects seen in American Abstract Expressionism. My feeling is that the variety of surface effects masks an underlying sentimentality- that there is a glossiness given to the scenes which is a projection from Eardley. 

But it`s hard to define exactly what this sentimentality really consists of, unlike in her street urchin paintings where it is in plain sight.  All I can say is that I feel it is there.

Hepworth

Hepworth, Torso , African blackwood, 1932

This is major survey. By 1935 Hepworth`s work as settles into an exposition of the idea of  significant form, and from then on her work consists of repetitions of these ideas on a larger and larger scale. The sculptures continue with consequently decreased intimacy, and take on the characteristics of typical corporate or institutional art- i.e. coldness of temperament, bigness, inoffensiveness, suitabililty as a means to offset or complement architecture without outshining it. 

Sculpture thus becomes the opposite of what it should be- it becomes a meaningless thing, a spacefiller, a thing you pass without realising it`s there.

 Appropriately, the show ends with a screening of Hepworth`s address to the United nations. As earlier work by Hepworth has a curious and emotionally rich quality, especially in such torsos as that in my photo.

This is sad. I fear that the ideas she pursued in her art, these formalist ideas, especially taken to a institutional environment, rapidly lead to a creative cul-de-sac. I remember feeling the same pfff on seeing a giant, insipid Miro in a Chicago plaza.

Carol Rhodes

Carol Rhodes, Industrial Complex, 2006, oil on board

There is a little show of contemporary British painting, an from it the two Carol Rhodes works are the most interesting, tackling as they do contemporary built landscapes. 

 I do, alas, feel that Rhodes` work is better in photo than in the flesh, where they appear rather like academic exercises, the paint handling having a mechanical quality.

I have done a little work on similar themes- I intend to do more. But they are not enjoyable places to visit. They`re inhuman, unkind, and making work in them requires definite fortitude.

Some paintings in the permanent collection

Peploe, Veules les Roses, 1910-11, c. A3

 

Peploe, Boats at Royan, 1910, oil on coard, c. A3

Deleunay, The Cardiff Team, 1922-3

oil and tempera on canvas, c. 100 x 120 cm

There is a joyful quality in these three above that I find very pleasing, and necessary. I love the golden colours. The Peploes are such tempting sweets that I`ve included too.

Margaret Mellis, Relief construction in wood, 1941

William Geissler, The Hill Farm, 1934, 60 x 80 cm

I sense that all my choices are all essays on geometric rightness, though the abstract construction obviously much more so. The ruggedness of technique in The Hill Farm is very satisfying.

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Bushwick Park, Brooklyn, New York

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 Near Cooper Street, Brooklyn, oil on card, 17.5 x 15.2 cm  available

This, above, is  one of the best of the bunch.  The colours are fresh, harmonious and original. The picture was painted fast but isn't slapdash. 

It's pretty much what I worked to make: I recall that when I arrived I had this sense of irritation about how fussy my work had become and how I wanted to remove all its fiddly details and make something assured, elegant and fresh- on the  back of New York's architectural boldness.

I harboured the desire to create pictures with a similar confidence, giving the same satisfactions as such typography as this:

 Rockaway Avenue, Brooklyn, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm  - available

The grand terraces remind me of Glasgow.

 A view from Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn, oil on card, 16.5 x 18 cm  SOLD

Looking down from the roof,  Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn
 oil on card, 17.5 x 15.5 cm - unavailable

Painted from the rooftop (above), this is almost a remaking of a painting from Queens five years ago: this one large and more unruly. I think this sort of pictures chimes a lot stylisically and thematically with Joan Eardley.

A view from Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn

oil on card, 16.5 x 18 cm  AVAILABLE

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New York V: above Queens; evaluation

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Above 43rd St., Queens, the back yards, oil on card, 13 x 12 cm

 There is something of Eardley here.

Above 43rd St., Queens, looking North-West, oil on card, 14 x 13 cm AVAILABLE

Above 43rd St., Queens, N.Y., looking down, oil on card, 12 x 12 cm

These three paintings were executed from the roof of my lodgings.

 If I regret anything about the US trip, it is that I did not paint anything close up, intimately.

 All painters have their distances: Lucien Freud or Chardin work much closer to his subject than, say, Turner does. And different cities condition different distances, so that panoramic views are a more likely response to Rio than perhaps to Camden. But I think if i were to revisit, I would try to get closer to my motifs, at least sometimes.

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The trip was, I think the most successful of my longer painting trips so far. The weather was magnificent, the light perfect and  the city is easy to understand and it is dramatic. The decision to focus on Queens, a rough 4 mile radius from my lodgings was wise, allowing me to explore without getting bored. 

I came to love Queens: it is ordinary but then quite beguiling at the same time, with an incredible mixture of unpretentious people from all over. I didn`t find any architectural marvels there- it is strange to me how few Churches there are- but there is a huge amount of good solid ordinary building, both blocks and townhouses -the sort that is so woefully lacking in Brazil- all laid out on an elegant grid, sloping easily down to the river, punctuated by small parks here and there.

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Many thanks to James for putting me up on my first days in the USA and for helping me, and to Tatiane for bravely and brilliantly assuming the role of  photographers assistant.

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A trip to the mountains, part 1

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 Hills, oil on card, 9.7 x 7 cm

Two horses in a field, oil on card, 10.1 x 7 cm - discarded

A first selection of paintings from my recent trip to the Catarinense mountains, which is an extremely beautiful place, very clean and unspoilt with smallholdings, orchards, little herds of cattle and chickens. The people I stayed with kept bees too.

I much prefer it there to Florianopolis where I live. The people of the mountains are German and East European in origin and are reflective, industrious and orderly. They people are friendly and courteous without indulging in that excess of hugging that characterises less European parts of Brasil and the coast.

The middle painting here shows something of the influence of William Gillies and Joan Eardley: this is partly in the thick textures and the strong colours but also in the compositional structure, where fairly simple profiles play against flat bands of colour.