Monday 1 November 2010

Christian Marclay’s The Clock at the White Cube Gallery



A stopped clock is right twice a day trouble is you just don’t know when – Christian Marclay’s The Clock on show at the White Cube Gallery , uses 24 hours’ worth of shots and clips of stopped, stopping clocks from over 3,000 movies to create a synchronised, real-time working clock to solve that problem.

The Clock was brought to my attention by a tweet from Waldemar Januszczak. I follow @Januszczak as we admire many of the same artists and I like his work with his ZCZ film company and

we share a common passion for the Sistine Chapel and the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti . So although normally I have no time for video art - I’m no fan of art that needs to be plugged in - a recommendation from him sparked my interest. And I was AMAZED.

This is a brilliant, innovative idea : a collage which at once both aesthetic and practical - art for art’s sake yet it’s art with a purpose – it’s a real functioning clock which is a delight to watch.

The staging is the bowels of The White Cube gallery set up like a giant living room with large, comfy sofas and a huge screen with great sound.


I took my seat and immediately checked my watch and blow me if it wasn’t 4:55 on my watch but also on screen!....4:59....than bang!...5pm...I was watching time or was I watching the narrative which cut from one scene to another. Time seemed to pass so quickly, a very strange experience as I tried to follow and anticipate the narrative which made sense one moment only to break down and morph into another story in the next minute – all done effortlessly in time, on time.

I’m not a film buff but even I recognised some scenes from Casablanca and Brief Encounter and even a few actors Dirk Bogart , Clint Eastwood and Alistair Sims. But the majority of The Clock’s shots where unknown to me and not just the German, French, Japanese, Bollywood scenes but also the block busters, such is my ignorance. It was great fun to see something you vaguely know or recognise – an actor, a scene , a building , whatever only to have it morph seamlessly into something you didn’t know or recognise. The ever present time either spoken or shown flawlessly moving the disjointed, fractured story on – wonderful!

Available for £500,000 (including hard drive!) from an edition of six and two artist copies to private collectors and museum The Clock would make a brilliant addition to the reception of any company wishing to keep track of its own time.

You can watch The White Cube's Clock for free now , but hurry this Clock stops on the 11th Nov.....at the 11th hour?

Recommended, you'll be amazed.

Reference...

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Gagosian Gallery's PICASSO: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962)

Bikini, Feb 27 1961

Gagosian Gallery's PICASSO: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962) is a wonderfully and thoughtfully curated exhibition which vividly shows what a prolific, prodigious and catholic genius Picasso was - from his delicate small three dimensional origami like paper and cardboard works presented by the Gallery in conventional glass cases to a painted door presented complete with its hinges and doorstep screwed to the wall, as if waiting to be opened. Gagosian's exhibition shows Picasso's genius for consuming and transforming a huge range of media - pen and ink, tiles and bricks, bronze , wood, cardboard and paper.

The exhibition is well described elsewhere for example here and here.

This review will focus on two works and a curatorial scheme/installation that caught my eye as examples of how good this exhibition really is. Regrettably security was too tight to take any pictures –men in dark suits some with the classic CIA ear piece connecting them to some unseen central control were everywhere I looked – three or four per room.

But my lack of pictures is made up by the excellent Gagsocian web site supporting the exhibition which has a good selection of pictures of exhibited works and an excellent video which thoughtfully walks you through the show.

The Two Pieces

La Taureau (The Bull) Dec 5 1945 to Jan 17 1946

Eleven 29 by 41 cm Lithographs of a lone Bull framed in black and hung in a single horizontal row at (my!) eye level .

Taken as a group the eleven Bull Lithographs are a tour through Art History of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Realism of the mid nineteenth represented by the first lithographs of a fully-formed, massive Bull giving way to late nineteenth century’s Impressionism with the Bull drawn quickly with Impressionism’s fast, light pen strokes capturing the moment as the Bull tail swirls.

There follows Cubism’s faceted planes – early twentieth century - which are used to deconstruct the Bull’s substantial form which Picasso progressively breaks down from planes into lines – from three to two dimensions.

By the final lithograph on this Art Historical journey, Picasso's Bull has lost its mass entirely. The Bull is reduced to a few pen strokes his huge , powerful head has been prĂ©cised to a pinhead, his magnificently rendered horns mere sticks in stark contrast to Realism’s Bull with its massive head and menacing horns. Picasso is in total control of the journey from Realism to the edge of Abstract – Brilliant!

Bikini, Feb 27 1961

Bikini is the first piece that one encounters on entering the exhibition - it made me smile!

It is Picasso at his most playful and mischievous. He takes an essentially innocent object – an unglazed terracotta vase about one meter high –and with a couple of judiciously, incised lines and few splashes of yellow paint he creates the torso of a slim-waisted female putting me in mind of the Venus de Milo .

Bikini is on a small plinth behind glass with mirror on three sides giving a full and explicit view of the entire work in the round. What I found so convincing were the lines creating the back bone and the buttocks. Picasso translates a two dimensional line drawing into three dimensions - maintaining the elegant simplicity of the drawing.

I was also minded of one of my favourite and wittiest works by Picasso – Still Life with Pitcher and Apples, 1919. Here he places a jug on a table with two apples either side of it with a further two apples on plate positioned top of the jug. Innocent enough? On the on hand yes – this is a low, dimly lit; compressed and flattened picture space painted with a muted palette of greys, yellows and greens. On the other hand the painting – like Bikini – can be read as play on the female torso: the apples as breasts the buttocks as the body of the jug. Pitchers and Apples sexual inference is more subtle than that found in Bikini nevertheless they both show Picasso’s wit as well as his genius for helping us to re-examine our world around us


The Installation

There is a dimly lit passage about seven meters long linking one exhibition space to another whose walls are made of glass. Behind the glass walls are spot lit plinths upon which are mounted some works in wood and bronze. It is the bronze works which are this most eye catching through the spot-lighting.

The installation seems to be a homage to the Royal Academy’s controversial 1995 exhibition Africa: The Art of an Continent , with its darkened rooms and spot light objects which some at the time had argued the exhibition had late nineteenth century notions of the ‘dark continent’ . The installation presents Picasso’s work like those of the Royal Academy’s Africa exhibition and the same presentation can be found today in the British Museum’s Africa Galleries. The Gagosian installation clearly makes manifest the influence of Africa on Picasso’s art.

Summary

This is a superb exhibition, its range and depth is stupendous showing Picasso as the genius whose shadow was cast over virtually all art of the twentieth century leaving no media or form untouched by the incredible brilliance of Picasso's eye, hand and mind – Gagosian Gallery's PICASSO: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962) recommended without reservation.