The Tates in London - Tate Britain, Tate Modern

It's been a while since my last post - too much fun!
I want to share some of the great work I saw in Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
Tate Britain is currently organised with a chronological walk through large beautiful galleries from very early ca C15th through to contemporary. Also there is a huge wing devoted to Turner, a gallery with quite a few Constables and a smaller gallery with William Blake and Samuel Palmer.
I was hoping to see more work by Walter Sickert.
However it was great to see one of Patrick Heron's garden series - bright and fresh and large.

This image does nothing to relay the absolute knockout painting by Peter Lanyon. It's a fantastic painting and you really feel his experience of the air currents and energy.

This great work by Peter Blake - so good to see it for real! It is really loaded with imagery and it is wonderful to 'read' it all.

A knock out work by Brigid Riley

This is a huge painting by Gillian Ayers who is still working at 80. I have always loved her work , there is a realy powerful small work by her in Canberra.

Wonderfully large and powerful painting by Auerbach - so exciting to see this one!

Also this painting by Kossof - wow!!

This work is huge - at least 2.5 x 3.5m by Chris Olifi. It really literally glistens with the thousands of sequins. It's fabulous!!!

Finally this absolutely huge work by Peter Doig is terrific from a distance and increasingly fascinating up close. The surface of the work is just staggering. This one is especially beguiling and not sure what he does ot how but it's great to look at!

 This is a detail of the surface of Peter Doig's work.

I think I must be pretty conservative in that I just love to see what people do with paint. The final room was all work by the Chapman Brothers who are huge here. I need to think about their work. Haven't decided whether they are clever and witty or a couple of hipsters! They are very 'clever' which always worries me! The Cool Britainnia crew or Britpack are now all successful and mainstream, no more so than the entrepreneurial Damien Hirst.

In Tate Modern now - couldn't take photos in the Paul Klee and Mira Schendal exhibitions. Mira Schendal is worth looking at - fabulous paintings in early career then really into text, working with rice paper and heaps of change and development. She worked in Brazil after getting out of Germany in 1949.
The sculpture above by Louise Bourgeois is from 1994 and made around time of the bronxe series of hands I saw in the Tuileries garden

 Arshile Gorky - wow

Karel Appel - love this work!

 A wonderful Matisse

 Some great works by Max Ernst

 This huge work by Golub was made during the Vietnam War - terrifically strong.

 This is an early work by our Joan Mitchell!!!!

 The room with the Gerhard Richter pieces is terrific - a smaller room and the proximity of the huge works is even better.

 Detail

 Detail

 Detail

 A late abstract work by Philip Guston - I reckon there are figurative hints here

Lee Krasner

 Wonderful Kossof again

 This image doesn't do any justice to this work by Dubuffet - fabulous surface

 Terrific work by Picasso from probably around 1907

 That painting is just beside this sculpture of Fernande by Picasso - really great to see the 2D and 3D

 Groovy Elsworth Kelly

 The Josef Albers' works are beautiful

 The peacock green one is beside these three - a lovely area of colour

  This is an early wonderful work by Mondrian.

 Not sure who this artist is now - woops, but it fills the space really well

 Of course the room with the Cy Twombleys is a knock out! There are four works as above - the sheer energy and physicality of these painting is like an opera!

 Also in the same room are sculptures by Twombley. Usually hard to capture but I got this one - painted bronze.

Finally another work by Nikki de St Phalle - I want to find out more about this artist.

A Bit of Art - Paul Klee

I really enjoyed two days looking around the Tate Modern.
On Monday I went to the major exhibition on Paul Klee. It was wonderful. Early works were from 1912-13 from work made in Munich when he was with Kandinsky and Marc in Der Blaue Reiter. These works are small, intricate and intense. The show covered his life up until his last work of 1940.
His work is wonderful and intense and what is amazing is the variety and invention of the processes he explored all through his working life. He was also a professional violinist and his wife Lily a pianist. So music and colour were his enduring anchors. His watercolours and gouaches are just luminous. They just skip on the paper. The scale of his work is very intimate and it's wonderful to be able to view them up close. In the first part of 1914 after a painting trip to Tunisia he wrote 'Colour possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. it will possess me always. I know it. That's the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter.'
Klee survived the war of 1914-18. By the time he was drafted there was a German policy not to send artists to the front as so many had been killed. Of Klee's friends, Macke was killed in December 1914 and Marc in 1916. it was amazing to find out about this government policy.
Also incredible is to remember that mutinies within the German Fleet lead to a German revolution in 1918 following the Russian one in 1917. Klee went back to Munich and was active in the Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists. But in 1919 when the Weimar German army put down the revolutionary bodies many supporters were executed. Klee went to Zurich where he met many of the Dada artists.
In 1921 he joined the Bauhaus. It was fantastic to see in many works his exploration of colour opposites and colour theory. There are clear watercolours and very dramatic explorations of yellow/violet in oil - so magnificent on a bed of dark.
The works where he made imagery from careful gradations of transparent colour over opposite colour to create tonal neutrals are just mind boggling. They look so simple and childlike at first and then when you try and work out how they were produced it's just amazing. These works and the soft grid works exploring colour and surface are the ones I admire the most. But all of the work I saw was just beautiful.
There were many examples of his 'transfer-method'. Basically he monoprinted by tracing drawings to get beautifully sensitive black lines onto a new blank paper which he then coloured. The contrast between the broken fragile black ink line and the fresh luminosity of colour is so Klee.
Another process is his sgrafitto technique - this is a beautiful, gentle but persistent type of sgrafitto in which the close tone of the colour minimises the texture to quite a minimal effect. He also used 'spray paint' which I'd say was blown through straws and the wall text suggested this was in response to the increasingly doctrinaire 'modernist-industrial' stance taken by the Bauhaus under the leadership of Hannes Meyer. Klee never ceased to champion the importance of the imagination and using nature as a source for inspiration. He always valued the aspect of exploration, play and process in his work.
In 1930 an exhibition of 65 of his works was organisd at MOMA in New York - the first exhibition of a living European artist to be held at that museum. Alfred Barr the Director of MOMA had written of Klee 'Nothing is more astonishig to the student of Klee than his extraordinary variety. Not even picasso  apporaches him in sheer inventiveness...'
In January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and at the end of that year Klee and his wife emigrated to Switzerland. In 1935 he became very ill with the degenerative disease that finally killed him in 1940. Meanwhile 17 works by Klee were included in the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich organised by the Nazis. Later the Nazis seized over 140 more works by Klee, some sold, some destroyed. In 1938 his work was included in a big show in London  presented as a response to the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich.
Klee kept working and developed other ways of working. Some of the largest works made were among his last pieces for a major exhibition in February in Zurich. He died in June 1940.
I was really fortunate to see this extensive show. No pictures yet I will try and put some up from the internet.

Saturday December 21 London

Today is wet, windy and probably very appropriate for this time of the year. I've been very fortunate with the weather and keeping positive.
Yesterday was sunny - all day. However I chose to go to the movies - a rare treat - and saw The Desolation of Smaug. This second part of the Hobbit trilogy is a rip roaring visual thriller. Amazingly there were about five other people in the cinema with me. (That is 100% on the previous trip to see Philomena with three including me.) So another wait, hanging on the cliff until the third and final part.

 This is one of the pretty streets in Fulham. Most of the houses have Christmas decorations and pots of flowers and it's really pretty.

 Imagine how lovely it is in summer with the shady trees.

 On my way to Fulham Broadway there's a variety of terraces, everything looks great with a blue sky.

One of the local pubs.
Walking around this area is pleasant although only a few images as I feel like an idiot taking photos.

On Thursday evening I went out to Windsor. The trains are great, takes about 30 minutes which is regarded as a slow train - all stops. It's a really pretty town dominated by the Castle which is incredibly huge - the Queen stays there on weekends apparently. In the evening with all the lights on it looks like a theme hotel.

This is the Thames looking to the north eastern side, there are very pricey appartments along the river then green fields

 This is opposite on the Windsor side

 This is a bit of the Windsor shopping centre on the river

 Looking acros to the Eton side which is the north side

 Looking back to Windsor with the castle's tower.

Better view of the castle.

London - one week here.

Since Thursday of last week I have spent time going to the movies, the Tate Britain again, the Victoria and Albert, the Museum of London, the Tate Modern and today, the Whitechapel Gallery.
I have become pretty used to using the Tube, it's well patronised and reliable.

 This area is south of the river near London Bridge. It has a busy High Street and this great food market that is beside many narrow lanes with heaps of pubs and food places. I found it by chance as it is another way of getting to the TATE Modern.

 It's great to find this food mecca after many days walking past the local fish and chip shop.

Even a place to indulge a craving for real sausages.

The area in South Kensington near the V + A is full of upmarket French style shops, yummy pastries and cheese shops.
The area of the Barbicon 2 minutes east of St Pauls that includes the Museum of London is fully late C20th, super ugly, brut concrete modernism. I found out the reason for this homogenous concrete style ca 1980 is because this area was so completely wiped out by Nazi bombing it remained derelict until the City of London planned and then gifted the Barbicon Centre for the Performing Arts to Londoners in the early 1980's. The huge Barbicon Housing Estate is there as well. Still, it makes the blonde brick Albury Performing Arts Centre look positively dainty by comparison.
As I am on the District Line, for the present London is measured in distance from tube stations on the green line.
The underground tube system really is fantastic. Both London and Paris excel in public transport and it makes the public transport systems at home look amateur.
Of course London is not pretty or beautiful like many other places say Paris (history has been kind in preserving the old city) or Sydney (natural assets), but it is alive and working and full of people who, on the whole, are fine, just getting on with it.

Winter brings its own charms of fairy lights everywhere. The early darkness means many people are around at 'night-time' which is really only late afternoon. This is an image of the Museum of Natural History in South Kensington.

 Those wierd incredible pollarded trees again - same place, Pimlico.

It's so bizarre to see these severely curtailed Susan Rotherberg type branches on very mature trees - I have no idea if they are crepe Myrtles or not. But I know that they will be the shadiest most beautiful green trees come spring. Imagine these trees in autumn as well.

When you walk through the atmospheric wharf area around the London Bridge tube station you come out at the Thames. With the tide coming in, this river is full on.

 Ironic that 'the City' which is just one square mile has the most modern architecture on the oldest part of London.

 Didn't realise how any contrasts were in this shot.

Closer view - have to find out about this building.

 More river frontage

I was panning towards St Paul's

 The Globe complex

 The Tate Modern with the huge construction cranes behind - there is a huge development going up on the south side of the gallery. It will be fantastic.

 I went to a great show on Paul Klee - no photos but there weren't any works in this retrospective that were not treasures. Another retrospective was the work or Mira Schendal, a German artist who migrated to Chile in 1949 - two fabulous shows.

 The walking bridge

The lovely birch trees which in 2010 were still very small.

 Well by 4:15pm everything looks gorgeous with the light on. - this is looking westwards

 St Paul's is very grand and gracious

 Very speccy

 Looking further east

 Looking east towards the city which is close to Tower Bridge - really east

The Globe Theatre

 Looking east

 Looking directing across to the north side and London Bridge

 One of the narrow street in this local old wharf area

The reconstruction of the ship sailed by Sir Francis Drake, The Golden Hind.
I haven't scratched the surface in one week.
Today I visited Whitechapel Gallery in East Aldergate established in 1901.
Unfortunately I missed a show by Sarah Lucas and will miss the next show of work by Hannah Hoch. But there was a great installation by French Algerian Kader Attia : Continuum of Repair : The Light of Jacob's Ladder, based on a similar idea of Yayoi Kusama's endless ladder in the NGV but far heavier.
Finally the best was the story of two art graduates who in 1972 took over two derelict shops in East London and negotiated money from the local Council to renovate and stay for a set time on pepper corn rent. This system of getting derelict properties for willing and able artists to fix up and use as home and studio grew over time.  Meanwhile the Acme Gallery in Covent Garden was set up by the same group of artists and operated from 1976-1981. Acme now offers affordable working and living spaces to thousands of artists all over London. It's a terrific example of a good idea and good industry at a time when things like this were happening in many countries.
The days seem to go quickly - something to do with them being so short? This is obviously the perception of someone on holidays...