WHEN VIEWING ARTWORK or listening to music, my reaction to, and enjoyment of it is governed by my initial visceral feelings that it evokes. If these feelings are satisfactory, my interest and enjoyment of the art increases, and I might begin to delve more deeply into understanding what the creator is trying to convey with his or her work.
My initial reaction to the oil paintings and ink drawings by Kolkata based artist Debajyoti Roy were very positive. Each of his works on display appealed to me. Many of the images are in black ink on white paper. A couple of larger paintings were more colourful, created with oil colours and inks.
Some of the works in ink reminded me a little of Chinese or Japanese calligraphy. The works are both abstract and at the same time somewhat figurative. Yet, as I studied them, they gave me the feeling that they are abstractions of reality, often of biological phenomena. As Roy explained in the exhibition catalogue:
“When someone engages with a piece of art, it is inevitable to interpret its visual aspects. Still, the essence lies in deeper inquiries that provoke interpretation of the perception and reality.”
I felt that this was certainly the case with what I saw of his creations.
Debajyoti Roy has created a set of images that are intriguing both visually and intellectually. It is a shame that his exhibition at the Jogen Choudhury Centre for Arts in south Kolkata is ending soon (on 11 January 2025). If you happen to be in Kolkata before it ends, it is well worth viewing.
AT FIRST SIGHT, there seems to be little content in the 17 paintings on show at the Tristan Hoare Gallery in London’s Fitzroy Square until the 13th of December 2024. It is not long before you realise that these images that contain larges expanses of colour are quite pleasing and visually intriguing. The artworks, all of which were created in 2024, are by Vipeksha Gupta (born 1989) who lives and works in New Delhi (India). As I looked at her work, I was reminded of the paintings by Mark Rothko in which the viewer is confronted with large areas of colour. In Rothko’s case, the borders between one colour area and its neighbour are deliberately ‘fuzzy’, whereas Vipeksha Gupta defines these transitions more sharply, yet not completely abruptly.
“The subtle abstraction of her work is seen within the repeated marks, geometries and the resistant voids made within the material. The surfaces of these works are generated through the iteration of small units into patterns that the artist then proceeded to render dynamic through gestures of rupture, incision, or slippage. She created folds, hinges or selvages of light, around which darkness could pivot and ripple. Gupta carefully plays with the structure of the paper, creating an interplay between illumination and shadow. This use of light shifts the narrative of her work as these folds generate movement, granting fluidity to the deep and mesmerising colours which she carefully crafts.” Abstraction is art often a creator’s way of distilling the essence of something that could also be represented more obviously as a recognisable physical object or scene. In Gupta’s case, she seems to be experimenting with her media (Fabriano paper [handmade with cotton fibre], paint pigments, graphite, and charcoal) to create subtly interesting visual effects for the eyes of the paintings’ viewers to enjoy. In this, she is successful. What at first viewing appeared to be organised areas of colour can be seen to be more complex and interesting the longer one looks at them. In addition, these paintings are somewhat soothing to look at.
ADEELA SULEMAN IS an artist based in Karachi (Pakistan). She was born in 1970 and educated at the University of Karachi. In an exhibition at London’s Grosvenor Gallery, a collection of her works relating to the life of Tipu Sultan (the ‘Tiger of Mysore’: 1751-1799) is on display until the 25th of October 2024.
For those who are unaware of his fame, Tipu Sultan (son of Hyder Ali) ruled the independent kingdom of Mysore, and defended it against the attacks of the British. However, in the end, he was killed while defending his fortress at Srirangapatna. Before his demise, he was forced to deliver two of his sons to be held by the British as hostages. This happened in 1792. His death 7 years later was due to treachery within his court.
Adeela Suleyman has painted exquisite scenes depicting stages in Tipu’s life. The paintings have been created on vintage ceramic plates (platters). Each plate is surrounded by an elaborately carved timber picture frame. The paintings are rich in detail, and reminded me of Persian or Mughal miniatures. They portray episodes of Tipu’s story colourfully and vividly. Each of the images is a delight to see. What the artist has created is an attractive and respectful memorial to a great man. According to the gallery’s catalogue, the images can be sold separately, but it would be a shame to have this collection dispersed; it would be better to keep it intact.
In addition to the painted plates, there are some sculptural items (relating to Tipu) created by the artist. although they are eye-catching, it is the painted plates that appealed to me much more.
BORN IN PUNE (Maharashtra, India) in 1949, Sudhir Patwardhan qualified as a medical doctor in 1972. He worked as a radiologist in Thane (Bombay) between 1975 and 2005. Then, he moved from medicine to become a full-time artist. Until the 19th of October 2024, there is an exhibition of his paintings at number 3 Cork Street in London’s Mayfair.
The exhibition is called “Cities: built, broken”. As its name suggests, the show is filled with Patwardhan’s paintings, each of which depicts scenes of urban life. His beautifully executed, colourful paintings evoke daily life in Thane and Bombay (Mumbai). As the gallery’s website (www.frieze.com/no9-cork-street/vahdera-art-gallery-sudhir-patwardhan) explained:
“As a man of medicine, Patwardhan displays a profound understanding of the human figure, including its mental distortions and physical vagaries, with early inspiration from Cézanne and Picasso refining his intent. In this recent body of work, Patwardhan’s well-regarded visceral realism explores various dialectics and asymmetries, including class struggles, tensions between the material and spiritual and the emotional theatre of community. The shifting deportment of his figures across a series of charged slice-of-life scenes offers a moving portrait of the bustling annals of cities, where capitalist consumption, gentrification and the erosion of natural spaces are but few of the contested arguments about what constitutes as urban progress. He brings us a visual meditation on the geometric correspondences between various kinds of structures growing out of anarchic infrastructural development – often referred to colloquially in India as jugaad, or a kind of organized chaos.”
I could not have put this better. It describes the subject matter of the paintings beautifully. However, rather than just reading about it, I suggest that you see these wonderful paintings before the exhibition ends.
THE CURVE AT London’s Barbican Centre is as its name suggests, a curved space. When the Centre was built, the Curve was designed as a space to act as a sound barrier or buffer to contain the sounds emanating from the concert hall that it surrounds. Nowadays, it is used as a space for temporary exhibitions. Until the 5th of January 2025, the Curve will contain an exhibition, “It will end in tears”, of paintings Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, who was born in Botswana in 1980.
Ms Sunstrum’s paintings are on grainy wooden panels, and are truly wonderfully executed. The series of paintings are all linked by a narrative – an imagined story of a woman who lands in a colonial country in Africa in the early to mid-20th century, and has an adventure that ends up with a court case. For this exhibition, the Curve has been divided by wooden partitions into a series of rooms, connected to each other by an elevated walkway. Each room is designed to resemble a different stage set. For example. one is a kitchen. and another is a courtroom. The viewer walks along the walkway from room to room, seeing the series of paintings arranged in the order that the story unfolds. The heroine of the story is an imagined woman named Bettina. The artist created Bettina in her own image – each depiction of Bettina is the artist’s self-portrait. The resulting set of pictures along with the wooden partitions makes for an enjoyable and intriguing experience.
The paintings are like ‘stills’ from a movie. Although their style and subject matter is completely different, I was reminded of series of paintings such as those by Vittore Carpaccio (c1460-c1525) in Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (in Venice), which show scenes from a legend with a Christian religious theme.
Ms Sunstrum’s site-specific exhibition at the Curve is what the series of guidebooks issued by the Michelin tyre company would describe as “vaut la détour” (‘worth the detour’).
ONE GREY SEPTEMBER afternoon, we stepped into the Almine Rech gallery in London’s Mayfair a few days before its wonderful exhibition of paintings, “Summer of Dragons”, by Hiba Shahbaz was due to end (on the 28th of September 2024). Each of the works on display depict dragons, and some of them also include human figures, often scantily dressed.
Hiba was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She studied Indo-Persian miniature painting in Lahore’s National College of Art. Then, she studied in the USA at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (New York City), where she was awarded her Master of Fine Arts degree. She now lives and works in the USA.
The skills she gained while training to paint Indo-Persian miniatures can be seen in the much larger paintings, which are on display at Almine Rech. Some of the paintings evoked memories of Chinese or Japanese art. Others depict dragons in the company of naked women. All the paintings, including some wooden boxes decorated with paintings, were completed in 2024. I suspect that had she remained in Pakistan and produced the same images, those containing the nudes might have been severely frowned upon.
We left the gallery, feeling very satisfied with what we had seen. Although the clouds above us had become more threatening, the visual experience of the exhibition brightened our moods.
THE TROUBLE WITH temporary exhibitions is that they come to an end. So, if you miss it, you might never see the same works of art together again. I am very pleased that we just managed to catch a superb exhibition at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey on its final day (1st of September 2024). Called “About Space”, it is a show of paintings by an artist, of whom I had not come across before: Al Held (1928-2005).
Al Held was born in Brooklyn (NYC). His Jewish family was impoverished during the Great Depression and had to survive on welfare payments. Having served in the US forces during WW2, he was eligible (under the terms of the GI Bill) for financial assistance with his education after the war. He studied painting first in New York City, and then in Paris (France). Over the years, he explored different styles of painting, and after exhibiting at major art museums in the USA, his work began to be shown at prestigious galleries outside the USA.
The paintings on display at the White Cube date from the 1960s onwards. Many of them are huge, dwarfing the viewers. A few are smaller. All of them are visually spectacular. Although two-dimensional, they depict complex three-dimensional abstract imaginary constructions. Viewing these amazing compositions is like looking through a huge window at the kind of fantastical geometric abstracted landscapes that might now be produced by digital means. As the title of the exhibition implies, Held’s paintings are literally about space. Painted with precision, these compositions explode with energy.
I am glad that we did not miss the exciting experience of seeing these paintings created by a man, who had shown no interest in art until he left the US Navy in 1947. It was his friend the artist Nicholas Krushenick (1929 – 1999), who inspired him to take up art, and I am very pleased that he did.
MY INTEREST IN the Olympic Games is limited, but that did not stop me from visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where an exhibition is being held to celebrate the 1924 Olympic Games, which were held in Paris. The exhibition, “Paris 1924: Sport, Art, and the Body”, is on until the 3rd of November 2024. Paris was, and still is, an appropriate place to hold the Olympic Games, because the man who revived this ancient Greek festival of sport, Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937), was born in that city. The exhibition is well laid-out. Naturally, it contains many items of interest to enthusiasts of sport and the Olympic Games. Most of these are relevant to the 1924 Paris event, which was held only 10 years after the outbreak of WW1. The exhibits which interested me most were some of the paintings.
The Paris Olympics of 1924 took place during an exciting era of artistic experimentation and development. Most of the paintings in the exhibition provide evidence of that exciting period of twentieth century art. There is a painting of a gymnast by the German artist George Grosz (1893-1959), which was painted in about 1922. Works by the Italian Futurists Gino Severini (1883-1966), Enzo Benedetti (1905-1993), and Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), figure in the exhibition. There is also a painting by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), who was a brother of the famous poet William Butler Yeats. An interesting almost Cubist painting of a tennis player caught my eye. It was created in 1917 by an artist I had not heard of: André Lhote (1885-1962). A modernistic portrayal of a female runner by Willi Baumeister (1889-1955) fitted in well with the theme of the exhibition.
The paintings and sculptures chosen for the show were what made the exhibition enjoyable for me. One painting amongst them was for me the greatest surprise. It is a huge portrait depicting the face of the tennis player Mrs Helen Wills Moody (1905-1998), created in pastels in 1930. She had won two gold medals in the Olympics of 1924. I do not know why, but it was with great surprise that I saw that the artist was the Mexican Diego Riviera (1886-1957). Although the portrait is large, I had always associated Riviera with huge murals, rather than portraits and smaller paintings, of which, I have recently discovered, he created many.
I am pleased that I have seen the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam not because it has increased my interest in the Olympic Games, but because it included some fine paintings, which I had not seen before.
PETWORTH HOUSE IN West Sussex is a huge palace maintained by the National Trust. It contains an unbelievably remarkable collection of old master paintings, including many by Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner, and Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641). The paintings and many sculptures were collected by the 3rd Earl of Egremont, George O’Brien Wyndham (1751–1837), who was a patron of JMW Turner and John Constable, both of whom were regular visitors at Petworth House. When we visited the house in August (2024), we saw the paintings by Turner, but did not notice any by Constable. A full list of the paintings in Petworth is listed at: www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings/Collection/Petworth_House .
While viewing the overwhelmingly splendid artworks at Petworth, a pair of paintings by Van Dyck intrigued me. Painted in 1622, one depicts Sir Robert Shirley (1581-1628), and the other his wife Lady Theresia Shirley (1589-1668). They are fine portraits, but what interested me was the lives of these two people.
The Safavid dynasty ruled Persia from 1501 until 1736. In 1598, Robert Shirley travelled to Safavid Persia with his brother Anthony to train the Shah’s army in the military techniques used by the English army. It is not clear who put the idea of visiting Persia into the minds of the Shirleys. One suggestion is that it was mooted by the Venetians. The modernisation of the military supervised by the Shirley brothers improved the fighting ability of the Persian army to such an extent that they were able to score a great victory in a war between the Safavids and their Ottoman neighbours in 1612. After Anthony left Persia (in about 1600), Robert stayed behind with 14 other Englishmen. In 1607, he married Sampsonia, whose portrait by Van Dyck hangs in Petworth. She was a Christian lady born into the Circassian nobility of Safavid Persia. After being baptised, she added the name Teresia to her own name, and became known as Lady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley.
The Safavid Shah Abbas (ruled 1587-1629) sent Robert to England in 1608 to encourage King James I to join a confederacy against the Ottoman Empire. While in Europe, Robert visited other rulers for the same reason. Between 1609 and 1613, he lived in Spain. His wife travelled from Persia to join him there. Between 1613 and 1615, Robert was back in Persia. Then, he returned to Europe, and resided in Spain.
It was in Rome in 1622 that Van Dyck painted the portraits of Sir Robert and Lady Teresia now hanging in Petworth. They were dressed in lavish Persian clothes. It has been suggested that these ‘exotic’ outfits attracted Van Dyck, but by 1622 this couple were already sufficiently celebrated to be worthy of the artist’s attention regardless of how they were attired.
Shirley’s final visit to Persia was in 1627, when he accompanied Sir Dodmore Cotton – England’s first ambassador to Persia. However, soon after arriving there, he died in Qazvin (now in northwest Iran). His wife took his remains to Rome in 1658. She retired to a convent in that city, and lived there until her death.
I have discussed only two of the multitude of paintings at Petworth. Most of the others we saw there were not only by great masters, but also worthy of study. Although the design of the rooms in Petworth is not as spectacular as in many other stately homes, the collection within it deserves a leisurely visit. And as there is so much to see in the way of artworks, the visitor should plan to spend several hours there. We were there for three hours and that was hardly long enough.
MANY PEOPLE MEDITATE profoundly in front of paintings by the American artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970). I am not one of those people. I can recognise his work and appreciate its originality, but he is not amongst my favourite 20th century artists.
When visiting the branch of the Tate Gallery in Cornwall’s St Ives at the beginning of July 2024, I viewed a small exhibition of painted panels created by Rothko. In 1958, he was commissioned to paint them for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York City. In the summer of 1959, he took a break from painting this series of pictures, and visited England. The painter Peter Lanyon invited Rothko to his home in St Ives in Cornwall. During his stay, he met other artists based in the West Country including Alan Davie, Paul Feiler, Patrick Heron, and Terry Frost. Rothko’s visit to St Ives was a factor that helped change his mind about displaying the paintings he was creating for the Four Seasons restaurant. It has been recorded that he said that the restaurant was:
“… a place where the richest bastards of New York will come to feed and show off.” (theartnewspaper.com, 4th of April 2024).
In 1969, Rothko donated nine of the paintings, originally destined for the restaurant, to the Tate Gallery. Seven others can be viewed at the Kawamura Museum of Modern Art in Japan, and another thirteen are housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The rest are owned by his children.
Usually, the paintings currently being displayed at the Tate in St Ives are to be found in a dedicated room in London’s Tate Modern. Currently, the room where they are usually stored in Tate Modern is being used to host an exhibition by another artist (Joan Mitchell). The Seagram murals will remain in St Ives until January 2025.
We visit St Ives regularly. Its branch of the Tate is one of several artistic attractions we visit in the town. Although it contains some great artworks, I am not fond of its architecture. I am glad we visited again because had we not done so, I would not have known about Rothko’s holiday in St Ives, and the influence it had on his decision not to display his paintings in a fancy restaurant in New York City.
yamey 