Art market
Craft becomes art, as reality fails to live up to an artistic vision and Abstraction is rejected at Frieze Masters
APIECE of contemporary art to be offered at Frieze Masters will, at the same time, be one of the older exhibits. Sam Fogg of Clifford Street, the dealer in medieval, Indian and Islamic art, has a fragment from the principal stonework of the great south-transept window at Canterbury Cathedral, which dates from about 1430 (Fig 1). To modern thinking, this transom head, finely carved as it is, was undoubtedly craft rather than art, until it was extracted as part of the 2009–13 restoration programme of the cathedral. At that point, cleaned and carefully mounted, it became a work of art, much like Duchamp’s (or ‘R. Mutt’s’) Fountain, because it was presented as such.
The fragment measures 21¼in by 41in by 12½in and is Caen limestone with some 18th-century Portland stone repairs. From Tim Tatton Brown’s delvings into the documentary evidence, it is known that the architect who rebuilt Canterbury’s nave and transepts in the early Perpendicular style was Henry Yevele (1320–1400), but work continued after his death and the master mason responsible for the south transept window was Thomas Middleton (d. 1438). Presumably, one side of the fragment will have been exposed to wind and rain more than the other.
Artists also cannot always command the elements, although, like film editors, they can later adapt them. In August 1928, Sir John Lavery stayed for a few days at St Patrick’s Purgatory, to paint the pilgrimage site in Lough Derg, Co Donegal. He was allowed to keep his boots on, unlike the pilgrims, but he was disappointed at how unpicturesque and respectable his subjects looked, even barefooted. Furthermore, because the weather was unexpectedly good, they were not ‘plodding through mud and rain’, he complained in a letter, and ‘my picture, I fear, will look like a crowded summer resort, making Purgatory a thing to long for’.
At the beginning of the following January, to complete the painting, he rented a villa at
Cannes, where he no doubt hoped for overcast skies and a mistral blowing, but again: ‘We are basking in sunshine, while I paint from studies made at Lough Derg.’ To offset the incongruity, he related that St Patrick ‘would appear to be somewhat nomadic. It is said he cleared out all the vipers on St Marguerite, an island I can see from my studio window’. Despite it all, he managed to give St Patrick’s Purgatory, now in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, a convincingly grey and dank Irish August look.
He evidently also enjoyed the Riviera sun and painted a number of small studies of the villa’s grounds, including a 14in by 18in Blue Swimming Pool at Cannes (Fig 2), which will be shown at Frieze Masters by Richard Green of Bond Street. It looks a most attractive spot, but I suspect that bathing would still have been a challenge in late March, when his stay ended. The gallery will be showing an impressive group of 20th-century British and Irish artists, including William Roberts, L. S. Lowry, Roderic O’conor, Ivon Hitchens, Cedric Morris, Euan Uglow and William Scott.
Dickinson of Jermyn Street will be concentrating on Art Informel, an umbrella beneath which shelters a raft of contorted 1940s and 1950s European groups and movements— ‘other art’, Matiérisme, Tachisme, Lyrical Abstraction, COBRA, Gutai (in Japan), and later Arte Povera and neo-expressionism. I am unqualified to act as a guide through these, but a common thread seems to be a reaction against the intellectual straightjacket of Abstraction. Emotion, and even elegance, were permissible and it is not surprising that interest in the works of artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Michel Tapié, Antoni Tàpies (no relation), Jean Fautrier, Wols and the others is now reviving as a reaction to Minimalism.
Among those to be shown by Dickinson are Dubuffet (French), Vieira da Silva (Portuguese), Serge Poliakoff (Russian/french)
(Fig 3), Alberto Burri (Italian), Manolo Millares (Canary Islands-spanish) and Tàpies (Catalan-spanish).
The Gagosian Gallery will be taking part both in Frieze Masters, which combines old and new art, and in Frieze, which concentrates on the contemporary. At the latter, it will be presenting ‘HELIOS’, a selection of work by the Los Angeles multi-faceted artist Sterling Ruby, whose paintings come in series created over several years, usually given capitalised titles that sometimes lack vowels. ‘HELIOS’ is part of his ‘WIDW’ series. Mr Ruby is well aware of his artistic ancestry; indeed, he could be seen as a son of Art Informel.
Frieze Masters will be on the northern edge of Regent’s Park and Frieze itself on the southern from October 3 to 6.
Paintings of place
FOR the first time, the British Art Fair (né the 20th Century Art Fair) will share the same dates as Frieze, becoming ‘an integrated part of Frieze week, with partnership initiatives, cross-marketing and joint events’. It will take place in the Saatchi Gallery in the Duke of York’s headquarters, King’s Road and, as last year, there will be special exhibitions, together with the wares of 50 dealers.
Among the special exhibitions are a showcase for the YBAS, co-curated by one of them and, in the Saatchi Gallery, a major retrospective for Alan Davie (1920–2014) and a ‘selective retrospective’ for David Inshaw curated by Andrew Lambirth and The Redfern Gallery. In the 1970s, Mr Inshaw was one of the Brotherhood of Ruralists and his Game of Badminton is one of Tate Britain’s best-loved paintings. He has lived in Wiltshire for 40 years and the Marlborough Downs might be called ‘Inshaw Country’. His 51¼in by 60in Allotments (Fig 5), 1987– 88, with Redfern could almost be by Stanley Spencer.
Richard Eurich (1903–92) was a powerful war artist, but, later, he became associated with the Hampshire coast and he sometimes shares a slightly unsettling eeriness with Mr Inshaw. With Waterhouse & Dodd, the 20in by 30in Wind and Rain (Fig 6), 1980, is not eerie, but one worries for the fate of the ketch.
There’s a strong sense of place, too, in Grayson Perry’s 11½in by 3in ceramic plaque Whore of Essex (Fig 7), 1986, with Piano Nobile. Part of a series, is this related to the unkind traditional slur on Kelvedon? It is quite a contrast to the strict propriety of Lucie Rie’s 9in-high porcelain vase (Fig 4) with Askew Art.