Toasters and Nick talks about Picasso

I was listening to a rather fascinating BBC radio programme called  'The Sympathy of Things'  (there's a second part this week) and heard about a project undertaken by Thomas Thwaites to build a Toaster pretty much from scratch

Thomas's TED talk about it is insightful and  amusing (Thomas also had a project 'living as a goat') certainly gives some focus to the fortunate times we find ourselves in.

PICASSO

Nick Pearson knows his Picasso

The previous  Monday Nick Pearson at Orchard Café (OPEN Ealing) set himself the very ambitious target of covering Picasso's works in a single 2 hour lecture.


In fact reflecting on the artist my view is that he was an example of where the Artist is greater than his works - the following day I was at London's National Gallery and marvelling at Van Eyck's  The Arnolfini Portrait - I'm not sure I've seen or heard of anything by Picasso that (for me) rivals this.

The talk made me dig out a book Picasso's Picassos  I got it (I think) as a teenager it's about 50 years old!

A book from my collection

Picasso 1932 - a busy year

Yesterday met with old School friend Kevin G (we were in same class at School, 1Z - nearly 50 years ago) for one of our 'cultural days out'.

Tate was as always busy - Tourists, families and would be intelligentsia (my group) - they refitting the boiler room and it was noisy as contractors worked 'safely' to bring the old work down and prepare for the  next exhibition.

Now dismantling - last time (about 4 months ago) we played on the swings

1932 - A view of mortality 

April 23 beckons 

The plan was to meet at Tate Modern and find out what a busy boy Pablo Picasso was in his 50th year (1932).






So first thing to mention is that I (like many others I think) have a visualisation of Picasso as a bald guy with a striped Breton -esque- T shirt - in 1932 in many pictures he looked a bit like a bourgeois bank manager (and like Antonio Banderas in the Nat Geo film about him) .

 The second thing is that (like many of us) Picasso felt old at 50 but the woman (Marie-Thérèse Walter in her early 20's) who came into his life dispelled this feeling and he was reinvigorated by her presence  - producing loads of paintings, curating a retrospective and sculpture too.

Towards the end of the year Picasso's work reflects on the dearth of his sister seemingly sparked by the illness Marie Therese contracted from swimming in a dirty part of the river Marne.

While the work is somewhat variable the fact that it takes 10 rooms to  contain gives an idea of just how busy Picasso was  - the end of his marriage in this year also (perhaps) leads to the artistic rebirth which last for nearly 40 further years.

The exhibition is worth visiting - we had a break half way through as there's a lot to see (and big crowds too) - I had to keep reminding myself this was (partly as a result I think of a Curatorial exercise) - more a less one year.

It was also useful for us to remind on another how shocking some of this work would have been 85 years ago.

The End of Looking at Paintings at Tate Modern (or the beginning?)

This week was the final session of The Looking at Paintings and we wound it up at Tate Modern

Sickert at Tate Modern -Ennui (1914)

bringing us into the 20th Century.


It was nice to be at Tate Modern it is (by it's nature) less stuffy than The National Gallery but there are (despite what are esteemed course leader Julia said) lots of traditional-ish paintings, we did see a sneaky sculpture but stayed away from the edgy performance stuff.


 It was nice too to keep seeing more connections we breezed past another Sickert and even another Meredith Frampton (which featured the same vase as we saw in 'Trial and Error' last week) This one was titles  -Portrait of a Young Woman.

One of the group takes a look at
'Portrait of a Young Woman (1935)'

Tate Modern is well stocked with Picasso and we saw both influences in his work  of Matisse and the fashionable (at the time) African masks.

Picasso showing his influences

We were able to see Picasso through his cubist journey  and we took a look to at a Lee Krasner painting - Gothic Landscape, it seems close to an abstract but is not quite.

  Krasner was the lover of Jack the Dripper/Jackson Pollock and was  was eclipsed by the larger than life Pollock.

Gothic Landscape 

The standout for me though was the surrealists and the skill (and importance)  of Dali was very clear

Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Dali (1937)

For sure I feel better equipped to look at Paintings (critically) and along with what I've been exposed to on other courses I'm beginning to get some feel for the flow of works in terms of 'isms' and chronology