quipx

‘Clocks’ by Robin Lee

‘Gayle’ by Robin Lee

At his trial Socrates is reported to have said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’; it might be equally true to say that the unexamined face is not worth seeing. A face is the antithesis of the inanimate objects that surround us. The slightest change in one’s features can communicate an emotion or a changing mood. Whilst a smile can be an expression of genuine joy it can just as easily be seen as a malicious smirk or a sarcastic grin.

Every time we glance in a mirror we see ourselves through our own unique prism, seeing only those features which we choose to see. Are those dark circles under the eyes getting worse? Do I look haggard? Is the detox making my skin look better or worse? Our perceptions can change within seconds based on a new, previously unseen flaw or the change of mood expressed through our features. An alternative channel to reflect upon ourselves and, crucially, to see how we are viewed by others is through the time-honoured medium of the portrait. Whereas a standard mirror presents you exactly as you are, a portrait will contain as much of the artist’s personality and style as the subjects.

Some sitters will drop a subtle (or even a not too subtle hint) that they expect a gratifying portrayal of themselves. Often the painter, in the hope of flattering his patron and with an eye on future commissions, will use his skills and expertise to present the most pleasing and attractive representation.

‘Andy’ by Robin Lee

A rarer breed is the subject who wishes to be represented as true to life. The most notable example being Oliver Cromwell, Leader of the Parliamentary Army during the English Civil War and subsequently Lord Protector of the Commonwealth who, according to a contemporary account noted by Horace Walpole, gave his painter, Sir Peter Lely the following instructions:

 “…I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”

This has become known to posterity in the phrase ‘warts and all’, used in a sense wider than just painting, to mean the inclusion of all faults or other unpleasant facts.

In a similar vein (warts aside), the contemporary portrait of the high priestess of feminism, Germaine Greer, by Paula Rego, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery appealed to Greer precisely because of its honesty. She said “A portrait that is kind is condescending. The last thing I would want is for Paula to condescend to me, and it’s the last thing she would think of doing.”

‘Peter’ by Robin Lee

Cromwell’s sentiment is very much evident, from the painter’s perspective, in a new exhibition of paintings titled ‘Clocks’ by Robin Lee currently showing at the Tapestry Gallery in London. Lee’s focus is in capturing an honest representation of his subjects. His intention is not to flatter his sitters but rather to bring out their quirks and character through his style of painting. One can appreciate that it might be difficult to find sitters prepared to be subjected to such scrutiny and many of works on show are of Lee’s trusted friends who were willing to be cast on canvas.

He admits they “were rarely flattered by the results but loved them all the same”. Looking around the exhibition, one can see why the subjects loved them. There is an honesty and integrity which shines through the large canvasses combined with a sense of exuberance through the judicious use of pinks and blues alongside the flesh tones.

Lee has also painted people with disfigurements and who are less often captured in portraits such as Raj, who Lee met in Varanasi in India, and who was born with a cleft palette, a hair lip that had never been treated and the attendant crooked teeth. One of the most arresting works is a representation of Howard, a baker in Leeds who, one morning after a night shift, had his nose bitten off by a dog while walking home across a park. The painting is actually a self-portrait of Lee amended to take account of the injuries suffered by Howard.

‘Raj’ by Robin Lee

‘Howard’ by Robin Lee

All the paintings in the show were completed during October 2012 and none took more than two hours to complete; the immediacy cutting through all extraneous factors and concentrating on communicating the essence of the sitter. Lee has made a time-lapse video demonstrating how he works (see below).

The exhibition runs until the Thursday 14 March 2013 and there are plans for pop-up shows in locations around London.

‘Clocks’ by Robin Lee, Tapestry Gallery, 51-52 Frith Street, Soho, London, W1D 4SH

Politicians Reach For Their Revolvers

“You serve at the pleasure of the Secretary of State who appoints you and disappoints you” quipped Dame Liz Forgan, the outgoing Chair of the Arts Council after she was rather unceremoniously sacked from her role by the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. This was before he was politically reincarnated as the Secretary of State for Health. The unforgivable sin she committed was to defend the value and importance of the arts and resist the financial cuts made to arts and culture budgets. Whilst his own trespasses may have been forgiven, he was not prepared to forgive the trespasses of others, especially not for the sake of the arts.

It was Richard Godwin’s excellent piece in today’s Evening Standard titled “You never see our politicians doing culture” that brought the quote to mind and which refers to an incident when Hunt’s replacement, Maria Miller, was asked which cultural events she had been to recently. She was stumped and eventually cobbled together that she had seen “Three Sisters, a Chekhov play at the New Vic”. As Godwin points out, if “the Culture Secretary feels the need to spell out that Three Sisters is a Chekhov play, gets the name of a famous London theatre wrong and needs a special adviser present at all times, it does not say much for this government’s inner life.”

Yet this is nothing new. Almost twenty five years to the day, the BBC screened an episode of Yes, Prime Minister dealing with the same issues. The Prime Minister in the hugely successful series, Jim Hacker, is worried about being attacked by the arts lobby because of the paltry increase in funding his Government is giving to the arts. He invites various actors, critics and directors to Number 10 and suffers the same humiliation as Miller when asked which was the last play he saw at the theatre?

Hacker: “Erm, uh, let me see, er Hamlet.

Critics (malevolently): “Whose?”

Hacker (solemnly): “Shakespeare’s”

Critics: “No, who was playing Hamlet…(mischievously) Henry Irving?”

One could argue this was satirical comedy and ought to be taken in that vein. However, the very fact that a quarter of a century later we have life imitating art with the Culture Secretary demonstrating how little personal interest she takes in the arts herself stands as a representative indictment of the political classes. Lest we forget that Ms Miller’s full title is the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The media and sport elements are more democratic. One can always rely on a politician to ingratiate themselves with what they consider to be popular cultural taste. Why run the risk of appearing aloof and out of touch by frequenting the theatre, opera or ballet when you can provide a running Twitter commentary on Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing or X-Factor and flaunt your man/woman-of-the-people credentials to all your followers. As the apocryphal quote attributed to the nineteenth century French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin declares “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”  

The folly of this mindset is that Britain really does have talent and much of it is in the arts and cultural sphere. It ought to be celebrated and championed by politicians. The theatre offers politicians a chance to contemplate, reflect and be inspired away from their daily duties.

This week sees the opening of Stephen Simon’s Port at the National Theatre, a play set in Stockport in 1988 which charts a thirteen-year odyssey for two children, Rachael (11) and Billy (6) largely abandoned and growing up in the deprived suburban shadows of Manchester. It has been described as “a celebration of the human spirit as Racheal looks to the future and opts for something better.” When has a politician failed to remind us that they went into politics to make life better?

However, I doubt if many will attend. The attitude is nicely summarised by the theatre critic who chides the hapless Jim Hacker saying: “When you say you believe in the theatre, it’s like believing in God, you mean you believe that it exists.” For a lot of politicians, one gets the feeling they couldn’t be bothered whether it existed or not.

London Art Fair

London- River Thames- Regatta by Sir Peter Blake (2012) at the Paul Stolper Gallery

2012 was a significant year for anniversaries, most notably the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, only the second British monarch, after Queen Victoria, to have celebrated such an honour during their reign. We also celebrated the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, a man whose name has become a byword for Victorian life, its attitudes and its morals. To hear someone or something described as “Dickensian” (nearly always pejoratively) vividly evokes scenes of prison hulks, debtor’s prisons and orphans consigned to workhouses. This year will not be found wanting for cultural anniversaries either. 2013 marks the bicentenary of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, the German composer Richard Wagner and the centenary of the English composer Benjamin Britten.

This week marked a smaller yet recognisable cultural milestone – the 25^th anniversary of the London Art Fair. This fair held in January each year celebrates modern British and contemporary art; its continuing success is demonstrated through the 130 galleries showcasing their work at the fair and encompassing the full spectrum of artistic expression from traditional painting to sculpture, installations, photography and prints.

Few would dispute that the artistic, media and cultural landscape now is very different from 1988. A time when Margaret Thatcher was approaching her dénouement, Germany was divided by the Berlin Wall and little known artist called Damien Hirst, a second year art student at Goldsmiths College, was arranging an independent student exhibition called Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London’s Docklands.  

Twenty five years later and it was Hirst’s name that came up most frequently at the first event I attended at the London Art Fair: a debate organised by The Arts Desk entitled: “Crazy Art Prices” – Do Auction Prices Matter? One of the themes discussed by the panel comprising Mark Hudson and Melanie Gerlis was whether the financial value of a work of art had a bearing on the critical appreciation of that work and if it was possible to completely exclude from one’s mind the prices achieved for works at auction or indeed at a private sale. In an increasingly market-orientated world, could art not simply be regarded as yet another commodity to be bought, sold, traded and leveraged? Gerlis disagreed with this notion. It might fulfil all the criteria applicable to a commodity, but essentially there is something more to art – each work of art is unique. One may profitably sell a number of paintings, all within a particular period, but each one will be individual and have its own inherent value – in essence each work of art could be regarded as forming its own individual market. Works of art have an unerring ability to wrong-foot amateurs and experts alike with respect to their popularity and the prices achieved.

Which bring us to Damien Hirst – the man whose one-man sale of new works at Sotheby’s grossed a record-breaking £111 million; this was in September 2008, days before the global financial crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Has the Hirst effect on modern art poisoned the public’s perception of art? Is the money he has made such an overwhelming factor that one cannot view his work without the thought of it creeping into our judgement? Yes and no. For some people Damien Hirst will always be the paradigm of the contemporary artist as con-man. These are the same people who annually scoff and splutter indignantly their way through the Turner Prize or who sneer at Tracy Emin and the shameless effrontery of her unmade bed. For others, Hirst was simply a product of his time; the rising wealth and changing tastes coincided, with a little help from advertising guru Charles Saatchi, to make him phenomenally rich. His art is still his art. However, as art history demonstrates, it is only after a suitable period of reflection that one can tell if an artist like Hirst will be considered a great artist or whether he will fade away; the prices paid for his works will not be the indicator of longevity.

This sentiment is echoed by Ben Street, art historian, writer and curator in the foreword to the Catlin Guide 2013: New Artists in the UK when he says “Only a mug would try to characterise the art of his or her time. Sensible art historians of the past have waited a good century or so before slapping a name on a period”. The Guide is the result of a search to find 40 promising new artists who have graduated from art school and to give them a platform for their work. There is no application process. The artists are initially selected for the ambition, skill and integrity shown in their work during the most recent series of BA, MA, MFA and PG Dip final exhibitions. One of the selected young artists, Conall McAteer, has already been gathering attention with Crate, a painstaking physical reproduction of a the type of wooden crate most often seen in the previous generation of computer games that would be familiar to anyone who remembers the graphics of Street Fighter and Doom. McAteer explains that “the temporality of Crate is designed to evoke a sense of mortality. In the virtual world the recurrent textures are immaculate and immutable, they never wear out. Left unpreserved, the hardwood veneers will age: the walnut will silver, the cherry pinken, and the oak darken. The image and form will possess a life cycle.”

The joy of London Art Fair is that there is such a diverse range of work that, whatever your particular penchant, you are certain to find something that appeals. My love of books drew me to a series of works at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery stand by Phil Shaw called Londonensi Subterraneis. Shaw spent a year collecting books which featured the names of every Underground station. Each line is then recreated with each of the books as if on a shelf. It is a wonderfully clever and refreshing take on an institution that celebrates its own 150^th anniversary this year. Other highlights include “Spring landscape with a pond and house” by Ivon Hitchens exhibited by Waterhouse and Dodd, a work that has been in the same private collection since it was acquired from the artist in 1975 and is coming to the market for the first time.

A debut appearance from the Brighton-based gallery Ink_d, a set of themed Art Projects spaces and Photo50, an exhibition focusing on British photojournalists and documentary photographers amongst many, many others all serve as a reminder of our vibrant and diverse art scene. Art may be bought and sold for a profit or a loss but its ability to provide aesthetic pleasure, to stir your emotions and to make you reassess how you view the world is the reason it will never be a mere commodity.

 The London Art Fair is on the Business Design Centre, Islington, London, N1 until 20 January 2012.

quipx attended the London Art Fair courtesy of The Macallan Masterclass, one of the sponsors of the event.