A fascinating glimpse inside the studios where great art was born
Exhibition A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920 – 2020 Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 ★★★★☆
The photographer Stephen Shore was only 17 years old when, in 1965, he started hanging around and taking pictures at Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory. “For a while, I went to the Factory every day,” he later recalled. “I’d photograph different people as they came through.” With its walls painted silver and lined with tin foil, the artist’s studio in midtown Manhattan was the place to see and be seen.
Camera in hand, Shore documented the amphetamine-fuelled parties that were regularly held at The Factory, frequented by the likes of “It Girl” Edie Sedgwick and the Velvet Underground – Warhol himself usually working away in the background. “My guess is that it helped him in his work to have people around,” suggests Shore.
A selection of Shore’s images is on display alongside a recreation of a corner of The Factory in A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920–2020 at the Whitechapel Gallery. A wide-spanning survey, it explores the many functions that the studio has served for a range of modern and contemporary artists.
The original idea for the exhibition, proposed by art historians Dawn Ades and Giles Waterfield, had been to focus on photographic portraits of artists in their studios. After Waterfield’s unexpected death in 2016, the Whitechapel continued the project but expanded its remit. Selected by a four-strong curatorial panel, more than 100 artists have been included, from major figures such as Picasso and Pollock to lesser-known names.
The artworks on view freely traverse time, place and medium. The earliest drawing in the show, by Egon Schiele, depicts the artist’s makeshift workspace in an office at the Mühling POW camp in 1916. Displayed nearby and painted just last year, there is an acrylic sketch by Tracey Emin of her rather better-appointed villa in the south of France – a joyful hive of creative activity.
It may sound like a lot, but the real wonder is how the curators managed to narrow their roster of artists down to only 100. The studio is an unusual theme for an exhibition, but these spaces are at the centre of most artists’ lives: where they go to work every day. It is no surprise that so many works reflect this reality.
Making use of the Whitechapel’s two-storey main exhibition space, A Century of the Artist’s Studio is broadly divided into two sections. In the first, we are presented with the notion of the studio as a public space – a site, like Warhol’s Factory, where spectators are welcomed and even encouraged. This is contrasted with the vision of the studio as a private realm, a hidden world where works are alchemically brought to life before emerging into view.
Within these groupings there are more specific subcategories. A series of brightly-coloured arpilleras (appliquéd and embroidered textiles) from the 1970s, created illegally by women who gathered in the shanty towns of Chile during Pinochet’s repressive regime, offer an example of the studio as a space of collective activity.
In a section whimsically entitled “Eating the Studio”, the contents of the studio are “cannibalised” to create sculptural assemblages such as Hassan Sharif ’s cluttered wooden workbench, “Hassan’s Atelier” (2016).
In certain cases, the link to the idea of the studio is not always readily apparent. One such exhibit is Alina Szapocznikow’s enchantingly strange “photosculptures”, in which wads of chewing gum are twisted into sculptural forms. But, on the whole, the comparisons and connections made here illuminate rather than stifle. We are invited to think about the environments in which artworks have been formed: their most immediate, and sometimes overlooked, contexts.
In addition to The Factory “corner”, there are a number of other partial reconstructions of well-known artist studios, including those of Francis Bacon and Matisse, and Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, in his house in Hanover. It’s a shame there are no full-scale recreations, but then, space is at a premium.
And while many of the studios in the show have long been disassembled or demolished, others are now enshrined in custom-built galleries or as dedicated house-museums such as the Bloomsbury Group’s country retreat, Charleston, in East Sussex.
This thoughtful exhibition may well serve as a useful spur for future visits to such sites.
The earliest drawing depicts Egon Schiele’s makeshift workspace in a POW camp in 1916
From Thur-june 5. Tickets: 020 7522 7888; whitechapelgallery.org