National Gallery -Monochrome, Painting in B&W

And a sign with a  yellow background has impact 

I suppose I'm aware of some pressure to produce some of my photographic prints in Black and White - there's a certain feeling for it to be considered more 'serious'.

We don't

I had not really considered art (save for drawing) as having a Black and White dimension so was intrigued by the subject of this exhibition at The National Gallery.


First thing to say is that I enjoyed seeing a smaller exhibition that had some thought put into contextualising an interesting topic and where the curation was considered and appropriate - it was good for example to see some modern work in the National Gallery.

Live in a Black

  The exhibition was split over a number of rooms ( 8 I think) -the least satisfactory being the final one where we shown a work by Olafur Eliasson  - Room for One Colour - a neat idea but perhaps not totally successful - it was though the one room where photography was permitted.

Here Sodium Light was used to limit the colour Spectrum

Things I did like that were more modern though included Bridget Riley's Horizontal Vibration (1961) and Richter's Grey Mirror (765).

Also great to see Jasper Johns (a big fan of grey) again with his untitled work from 2007.

In Room 6 there was an interesting work called 'Joel' by Chuck Close showing how a photo had been translated by using a grid.


Also a detailed work by Celestin Joseph (Head of a Girl- 1887) showed how one artist had met head on (literally) the challenge that Photography had made to portraiture.

   

and White World

  In Room 5 (Painting and Printmaking) there some lovely works from the 18th Century including A Girl at a Window (1799) by Louis Leopold Boilly and  multiple versions of  'Back from the Market' (La Pourvoyeuse)  by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin  (originally) and a Trick of the Eye reinterpretation by  Etienne Moulinneuf.


In Room 3 the paintings were in Grisaille (that is grey) and was struck by Maternity (1896)  from Eugene Carriere which had strong Photographic influences.

In Room 4  (more Tricks of the eye) there was an impressive Tour de Force from Titian - Portrait of a Lady (1510) where the artist answered the question face on regarding painting versus sculpture and even more convincing was Andrea Mantegna's 'The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele in Rome(1505).

All in all I found the exhibition a good way to spend a couple of hours

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Real Fun with Flags (at the RA)

RA the place to see Jasper

There's a TV 'internet feature' within TV's Big Bang called 'Fun with Flags' - well yesterday I visited London's RA and was tremendously excited to see Iconic paintings from Jasper Johns famed for his 'Flags' (and other things).


It feels odd in some ways but there was real excitement for me in seeing the pictures on show - I'm going to have to make a second visit after doing some research into Johns.

[The first part which was looking at this from Andy Warhol on YouTube]


Johns was from an Art family, was raised mainly by his Grandparents.  The lack of family influence in his artistic development did not seem to limit him in his later work (and perhaps even had the

opposite effect).

Jasper Johns -He's still alive

Johns was perhaps more of an expert in Collage than a straightforward painter.

Well known amongst the Pop artists a friend of Robert Rauschenberg - his work is hugely influential and part of the antidote to the abstractions of artists like Jack the Dripper, Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman  that 'Pop' swept away

Johns experiments are brave and often work - his 'Painting with Two Balls' remains surprising and humorous.

The artist is famed for the way his paintings are both about things and the things they are about (like his flags, numbers and maps)
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Nice intro for the exhibition here.


My personal favourites were work about Seasons which include several of the same items and silhouettes through Summer, Spring  Fall and Winter also intrigued by the more recent 'Nothing at all Richard Dadd (1992)' - Dadd was a British artist who spent much of his life incarcerated having killed his own father.

For me there's a strong presence of George Braque in much of John's work.

More on my RA  visit soon, I saw another exhibition there which featured an artist who was of one of Jasper John's big inspirations -Marcel Duchamp.

Bye Fats

As for  Jasper Johns (above) - I was under the mistaken impression that Fats Domino was no longer with us - well that's the case now he died recently at the age of 89, a private man with a sense of humour and family, lauded by Elvis Presley, a star of the Best Sound-tracked Rock & Roll Film (The Girl Can't Help It) and his cover of the Beatles Domino inspired Rocker  Lady Madonna that rare thing a Beatles cover that exceeds the original  - here it is ..