Culture

Like other species, artists club together in movements not just for purposes of identification but for longevity. Individuals who don’t belong to schools take longer establishing reputations during their lifetimes, and tend to lose them sooner after their deaths. Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939) was one such individual: a contemporary of the Post-Impressionists who painted in dots but was not a Pointillist; revelled in complementary colours but was not a Fauve; and drew a veil of dreams over reality but was not a Symbolist, or only briefly. He was, as his friend the critic Gabriel Mourey described him, ‘a sort of mystic who has no faith’. When asked what school he belonged to, his own reply was: ‘None.

This exhibition examines a loosely knit community of artists and their interaction over a decade at the beginning of the last century. It is centred around the marriage of Ben and Winifred Nicholson (which began to split up in 1931), involves their crucial joint-friendship with Christopher Wood and a fruitful exhibiting relationship with William Staite Murray, topped off by the all-pervading influence of a true original, Alfred Wallis, Cornish fisherman, marine-stores dealer and compulsive painter. The intellectual and artistic meeting of these individuals was a formative impulse in the development of Modernism in England; and it could be said — with some justification — that they brought out the best in each other.

The 300th anniversary of George I coming to the British throne on 1 August 1714 is big news in his home town of Hanover in Lower Saxony. Five shows are being put on in Hanover and the Hanoverian country schloss in nearby Celle, an utterly charming town that largely escaped the attentions of Allied bombers in the war. The same can’t be said for Hanover, an important railway and manufacturing city flattened by our boys.  Still, enough has been restored to make it worth a visit, not least the Herrenhausen Palace, the Hanovers’ austerely classical summer residence, burnt to the ground in 1943 and rebuilt last year by Volkswagen at vast expense.

How important is William Kent (1685–1748)? He’s not exactly a household name and yet this English painter and architect, apprenticed to a Hull coach-painter before he was sent to Italy (as a kind of cultural finishing school) by a group of patrons who recognised his abilities, became the chief architectural impresario and interior decorator to the early Georgian nobility. His Italian studies made him a devoted Palladian, and in partnership with his principal collaborator Lord Burlington he set about transplanting the architectural principles and beliefs of Andrea Palladio to the English countryside. He was probably a better ideas man than artist (the Damien Hirst of his day, perhaps?), but he had access to the finest craftsmen, who could execute his plans to great effect.

One of the paintings in Arturo Di Stefano’s impressive new show at Purdy Hicks Gallery is called ‘Santa Croce’ and it depicts the arcaded cloister of the church in Florence where Giotto painted a series of frescoes. Di Stefano has not chosen to paint the obvious view — its famous black-and-white façade — but focuses instead on the cloister, where he imagines Giotto walking during the making of his frescoes. The painting is thus charged with the human presence of an artist Di Stefano much admires, a hidden presence, though real enough in the frescoed chapels behind the façade of the basilica.

Last week, three exhibitions celebrating the art of Germany; this week, a show commemorating the first world war fought against that great nation. In this centenary year of the beginning of WW1, there will be numerous events marking the start of hostilities. (Will there be as many celebrating the anniversary of their cessation, I wonder?) Although there is some film footage of the war, and detailed photographic documentation of its horrors, the best record we have of the human reality of those five years of conflict resides in the art made about it. When the contagion of battle has passed from the blood, the conscious mind may turn to better things, and culture reassert its high priority.

It’s German Season in London, and revealingly the best of three new shows is the one dealing with the most modern period: the post-second world war era of East and West Germany and the potent art that came out of that split nation. In Room 90 is another immaculately presented British Museum show of prints and drawings, focused this time around Georg Baselitz (born 1938). Of the 90 works on display, more than a third has been donated to the BM by Count Christian Duerckheim, the remainder lent by this assiduous collector. The show begins with Baselitz’s contemporaries and I was surprised to find myself quite liking some things by Gerhard Richter, currently the most overrated artist in the world.

When I visited the Richard Deacon exhibition at Tate Millbank, there were quite a lot of single men of a certain age studying the exhibits with rapt attention — some even making notes. (I realise I’ve just described myself...) This is perhaps because the show is all about the glories of construction, and reminiscent of hobbies on an industrial scale. The exhibits are made of bent wood, looping metal, other materials cut or sewn or carved, exoskeletons of imaginary, or rather invented, things. Much of the early work in this fascinating survey is linear, the structures resolutely open, but the emphasis gradually becomes more volumetric and involved with three-dimensional plasticity. Richard Deacon (born 1949) is an object-maker of intriguing presence and diversity.

Exhibitions are made for two main reasons: education and entertainment. Although I recognise the importance of education I am, by nature, a devotee of pleasure and want people to enjoy what they see in museums — not just feel that they must learn from it. Great exhibitions marry the two impulses effortlessly, and on balance the Vikings show, supported by BP, in the marvellous new Sainsbury Exhibition Gallery at the BM, is a great exhibition, though it does rather fall into two sections, the first somewhat more earnest than the last. But this also has the effect of significant build-up: the first half is like Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone warming the audience before Dame Edna appears after the interval.

In a crowded storeroom at Ikon, Birmingham’s contemporary art gallery, its director Jonathan Watkins is unwrapping the pictures for his latest show. His excitement is infectious. He’s like a big kid on Christmas day. This exhibition marks the start of Ikon’s 50th season, for which he’s devised a special programme — a history of Ikon, which doubles as a compact history of contemporary art. To celebrate Ikon’s half-century, Watkins is mounting shows by five artists, one from each decade, who’ve exhibited here during the past 50 years. First up is the photorealist John Salt — the first artist ever shown at Ikon.

In this round-up of exhibitions in London’s commercial galleries, I feature three shows of little-known but mature contemporary British artists. There is a great deal of interesting and worthwhile art being made out there, but not enough of it comes to public attention. Most museums won’t show it, and there are only a handful of commercial gallerists who are prepared to back quality over proven popularity. In such a world, the quieter talents tend to get overlooked, so it is a particular pleasure to be able to draw your attention to the subtle small paintings of Liam Hanley (born 1933). Hanley paints in oil and draws in pencil on linen laid down on to paper.

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I was properly aware of being the one who wrote The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; clearly not the same man. The artist Castiglione was a tempestuous character, always losing his temper and getting into fights. He tried to throw his sister off a roof and is said to have committed murder; perhaps more importantly for his artistic career, when he was at the height of his popularity in Genoa, he slashed to shreds a painting commissioned for the Doge of Venice, and fled the city in which he was born and trained.

Last year saw the centenary of the London Group, a broad-based exhibiting body set up in a time of stylistic ferment in the art world as an independent alternative to the closed shops of the academies. Formed from the amalgamation of the Allied Artists’ Association and the Camden Town Group, it boasted such notable founder members as Lucien Pissarro and Walter Sickert, while Jacob Epstein is credited with naming it. Inevitably, the London Group has gone through innumerable highs and lows in its 100-year history, yet the mere fact that it still exists is testament to the enduring need for such an independent collective.

It is often said of John Craxton (1922–2009) that he knew how to live well and considered this more important than art. Perhaps there is a certain truth in this, but if he really believed it, did he have any business in being an artist? And an artist he undoubtedly was, by temperament and sensibility, as well as by the rich endowment of natural talent. Of course, letting it be known that you think life more important than art is a very good cover for that most debilitating (and paradoxically productive) of besetting fears: self-doubt. Craxton had it in large measure, and it is probably this quality that accounted both for his originality and for the painter’s block he periodically suffered.

The death of painting has been so often foretold — almost as frequently as its renaissance — that any such prediction today is nothing short of foolhardy. Of course, painting is alive and well and living in London, but you wouldn’t know that from the current exhibition of five artists at Tate Millbank. (By the way, this is a paying display, the regular admission fee being £10. Not surprisingly, it was deserted when I visited. This sort of show, to do its job properly and communicate to the public at large, should be free.) According to the press release, each of the five artists ‘has adopted an approach to painting that both exploits and subverts its conventions’. I wish.

Rediscovering the unduly neglected is one of the chief excitements of those who curate exhibitions and write books. And there’s nothing I enjoy more than saluting the achievement of those who bring back to our attention an artist who – for one reason or another – has slipped off the art world radar. Before this exhibition and, more importantly, the book accompanying it, Alan Sorrell was only a name to me, with a few rather vague visual connotations. Now I can put definite images to the name and begin to build a context for his work. For anyone interested in the broader picture of 20th-century British art, the current Sorrell initiative is of real interest and value.

There hasn’t been a decent Daumier exhibition in this country for more than half a century, so art lovers have had to be content with the handful of pictures in national collections and books of reproductions. This works all right for the lithographs, which were after all made to be reproduced, and it is on his high status as a satirical printmaker that Daumier’s fame principally rests. And yet he is frequently lauded by artists who talk about him as a major draughtsman, sculptor and painter, not just as a political and social cartoonist, however fine. The chance to see a show of all aspects of his work is thus very welcome: how does the Academy acquit itself of the responsibility? The first thing that must be said is that there are rather too many lithographs on display.

The current exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing claims to be a portrait of Vienna in 1900, but in fact offers rather an interesting survey of portraits made there from the 1830s to 1918. The gallery layout has been usefully adapted to display the work thematically rather than chronologically, which is more dynamic but stylistically confusing. The only way to enjoy the show is to wander at will and pick out the paintings that appeal. There are some horrors here (I wouldn’t linger over Broncia Koller), but plenty of good things as well.

Pop Art Design, curated by the Vitra Design Museum and currently at the Barbican, opens with Richard Hamilton’s 1956 ‘Just what makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’. Made as a poster for the Whitechapel show This is Tomorrow, it’s a witty collage of consumer fantasies scissored out of magazines, reminding us that interest in popular culture among British artists operated as a humorous, semi-anthropological collegiate research project. In part, British Pop was a riposte to the lushness of American consumerism from a small island that had won the war but had lost the peace. Pop Art in the United States got under way later and many American Pop artists had had first-hand experience of commercial art.