Virtual Gallery - Room 7: Visiting Exhibition

Earlier this year I visited an exhibition in the gothic surroundings of New College, University of Edinburgh's Divinity Faculty. The exhibition, Shadows of the Divine, showcased the art collection of the Methodist Church augmented with pieces from various prominent Scottish Artists and an original 1611 edition of the King James Authorised Version of the Bible.

The exhibition wasn't quite what I expected - the collection surprised me in that the pieces were modern and contemporary unlike the religious art to be found in the National and Provincial galleries. Whilst I don't have a faith, my upbringing has given me an understanding and appreciation of the Bible and it's stories/message. The contemporary nature of the works cast these in a fresh light.

Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, I can't publish any images here but you can follow the links below to selected works:

The son of man is come - Ralph Beyer (1921-2008)

Noli me tangere (Touch me not) - Roy de Maistre (1894-1968)

Pieta - Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993)

Crucified tree form - the agony - Theyre Lee-Elliott (1903-1988)

Untitled - Pentecost - John Brokenshire (1958-)

You can browse more of the collection here and if the exhibition visits somewhere near you, it's well worth a gander - dates are here.

Andrew

Virtual Gallery - Mezzanine 2

Displayed on this second Mezzanine level of my Virtual Gallery are three paintings of the featuring Westminster Bridge.

This first is by Monet and features the Thames with the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge in the background.

The Thames below Westminster (1871)

The second is by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 - 1893):

Reflection on the Thames, Westminster (1880)

And finally, a picture of the earlier bridge by William Marlow (1740 - 1813):

Westminster Bridge

Visitors to the Gallery can see one of Monet's pictures of the Palace of Westminster in Room 4 and may be interested in William Wordsworth's Upon Westminster Bridge.

Andrew

Virtual Gallery - Room 6

For the next room in my eclectic online gallery, I've curated some pieces from the Banksy exhibition held in Bristol in 2009. Over the course of a few months hundreds of thousands of people queued to see the world-famous "graffiti" artist's takeover of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. 

These pictures represent a flavour of the show, although after queuing for two hours my actual time in the gallery before it closed was limited. As well as the main exhibition, there were a number of guerrilla pieces round the rest of the building - a fake poo on a plate in the ceramics exhibition, a "collector's" plate with cats on amongst the historic porcelain, a dildo inserted into a row of stalagmites in the geology section.

The exhibition's Information Desk

What does a Bishop wear under his Cassock?

Not on Canvas Any More...

 

Improved Spot Painting - Damien Hirst and "Local Artist"

No caption required!

For previous posts featuring Banksy, just follow this link and this one too. There's also more on the exhibition on the BBC website.

Andrew

Virtual Gallery - Room 5

It's been a while since I posted an entry in my virtual gallery. Today I've elected to feature a series of works painted from 1644 to 1648 by the French artist, Nicolas Poussin. It is a cycle of paintings based on the "Seven Sacraments" of Catholic Theology.

Although I'm not a religious person, some pieces of religious art can still resonate with me. In this case, though, it is not just the art which I really like but also the setting. The paintings are part of the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland and are displayed in an octagonal room which has the entrance in one wall and each of the seven paintings on the the others. The rich purple of the walls combine with the low light levels to give the paintings a somewhat serene setting. In some ways it's a bit like being in a dimly lit church.

I have decided to acquire these paintings for my virtual gallery but only if I can have the room they currently hang in as well!

The Sacrament of Baptism

The Sacrament of Confirmation

 

The Sacrament of Marriage

The Sacrament of Penance

 

The Sacrament of Ordination

 

The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist

The Sacrament of Extreme Unction

You can find out more about these pictures, and Poussin, here.

Andrew

From the Vaults: October 2009

Looking back on old posts is always interesting. There are some which you remember well and are particularly proud off, others that you've forgotten and enjoy reading again and, of course, some which make you wonder what you were thinking!

Following my recent "Mystery Blogs" entry, I've decided that I shall revisit some old posts on a monthly basis, but this time I'm going to at least do them the justice of giving them a chance to tempt you in...

Virtual Gallery, Room 2 

This featured the work of Rachel Whiteread, including this piece:

5 on the 5th - October

Ahead of the next 5 on the 5th, here's a look what I did on the 5th October last year! Including purchasing new shoes...

and finally, a more serious post, this time on the appearance of Nick Griffen on Question Time. I've posted the first couple of paragraphs:

Give them enough rope...

"On Thursday, the BNP leader will, controversially, appear on question time. Should he be allowed? Well, on balance, probably yes. The BNP somehow manages to stay the right side of the various laws which govern the line between freedom of speech of inciting racial hatred. In addition, they now have over a hundred councilors and two MEPs so they clearly speak for a section of the populous, however objectionable they may be.

"While their views may be, at the very least, distasteful they cannot now be ignored. To do so would risk them continuing to spread their bile at low level, letting it fester and spread like a cancer. It has reached a point where they need to be faced head on. They need to be given some (limited) exposure, a spade to dig themselves a hole and enough rope with which to hang themselves."

Hope you enjoy this selection from last year... you can find more of last October's posts here. Comments, as ever, are welcome below!

Andrew

Virtual Gallery - Room 4

The latest artist to get a room in my virtual gallery is Monet. The great impressionist painter, Monet's work is best seen in real life - I never feel prints do full justice to the pictures and the techniques employed. Still, in the absence of the real thing, prints will suffice.

There were many pictures I could have chosen for this gallery but have gone for some of my favourites. Enjoy!




From top to bottom:

• Impression - Sunrise (1872)
• The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) (1903-1904)
• The Studio Boat (1874)
• Haystacks: Snow Effect (1891)
• Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899)
  

For more on Monet, see here. Click here for an interactive tour of The Orangerie and perhaps the most famous of Monet's Water Lily paintings.


Andrew

To see the previous rooms in my virtual gallery, click here.

Virtual Gallery - Mezzanine

Yesterday I heard two art related items on Radio 4. The first concerned Frances Bacon and whether his Masochism had an impact on his artistic output. The suggestion was that Bacon's best work was when he was with his lover George Dyer, who was described as a Sadist.

The second was a review of a play exploring the creation of Mark Rothko's paintings for the Seagram Building, a commission he subsequently pulled out of. he subsequently donated 9 of the works to the Tate Gallery, where they arrived on the day he committed suicide.

It struck me that works from these two artists could work well in the same space, and so I've hung the following paintings in a Mezzanine space in the gallery.

From top to bottom:

Study for Portrait, Frances Bacon, 1957
Black on Maroon, Mark Rothko, 1958
Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne, Frances Bacon, 1966
Light Red over Black, Mark Rothko, 1957

The Bacon item can be found here - just scroll down the running order to 0845 while the Rothko piece is the first item on this programme. I suspect these links may only work in the UK, and for a week after broadcast.

Andrew

Click here for other rooms in my Virtual Gallery.

Virtual Gallery - Room 3

The third room in my online gallery features the work of an artist that I first came across around 5 years and 1 week ago, when I went to Amsterdam for my 30th birthday. At the time, his work was the subject of a retrospective at the Rembrandthuis museum.

His name is Erik Desmazieres and he creates large scale etchings. Some are figurative works, but many are warped town and cityscape's. Unfortunately the scale and detail of the prints is lost slightly, but I hope this gives you a flavour of his work. Below the pictures I've put links to webpages featuring a number of his works - as it happens, one of these is an old page and makes reference to the exhibition I saw 5 years ago!


From top to bottom, with apologies for missing accents:

L'Atelier de Rene Taze III (1981)
La Magasin de Robert Capia (2008)
Herengracht (2004)
La Librairie Paul Jammes (2000)
Galerie Vero-Dodat (1989)

You can see more of his work here and also here.


Andrew

For previously featured artists, click here.

Virtual Gallery, Room 2

This room features works by the Sculptor, Rachel Whiteread.

Whiteread is best known for various large scale works, such as the Tate Modern turbine hall installation "Embankment" and "House" - pictured below. Her works seek to show the world in a different light - often through taking the cast of a space rather than an object and then exhibiting that out of context.

Pictured are, from top to bottom:

• Untitled (Novels)
• Untitled (Pair) - which are made from casts taken from Mortuary slabs,
• Untitled (Domestic) - which is the cast of a stairwell
• Untitled Monument
• House - the cast of an entire house

More information on the artist can be found here and here.

Visit Room 1 of my Virtual Gallery

Virtual Gallery, Room 1

This is the first in a series of occasional entries featuring works by some of my favourite artists. They are exhibited with minimal comment. Where possible I've linked to the Galleries in which they hang in real life.

This room is dedicated to Salvador Dali, the great surrealist.

Christ of St. John of the Cross is more figurative than most Dali paintings, but is, ironically, my favourite Dali and one of my favourite paintings by anyone!

It hangs in the excellent Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow.

Metamorphosis of Narcissus was one of the first Dali paintings I fell in love with. It is part of the Tate Collection.

This is not so much a painting as a collage. Oieseau (Bird) is composed with sand and gravel forming much of the surface. It is, perhaps, slightly gruesome, but I find it intriguing. It is on permanent display in the Dean Gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland.

Another painting in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland is Exploding Raphaelesque Head.

The final piece I've chosen is Face of Mae West which can be used as an Apartment. A video of the installation can be seen here. It is in the collection of the Fundacia Gala-Salvador Dali at the Teatre-Museu Dali.

I could have chosen many more examples, but these give a flavour of the variety of Dali's work - it wasn't all melting clocks!