The culture vulture strikes again

Once upon a time, there was a blog on MySpace. Actually, it's still there, but I hardly have the time to post on it any more. On this blog was a lot of stuff about arts events, and we seemed to get about 50 readers per post.

Anyway, since I've not even posted here for ages, I thought I'd try an arts post here to see what happens (if anything)...

It's OK to like...

It's OK to like the Pre-Raphaelites at the moment, what with a recent rebroadcast of a documentary about them on BBC4, and the dramatisation of "Desperate Romantics", a book about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood showing on BBC2. This bodes well for me, as I have long been an admirer of what might be called the wider brotherhood.

In this spirit, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where the original three painters of the PRB were students, and against which they rebelled so strongly before the Academy caught up with them; is hosting its first ever exhibition of the work of John William Waterhouse. Waterhouse was not one of the PRB, but was influenced very strongly by their style, especially in the depiction of scenes from Romantic poetry and Classical mythology (as well as the Odyssey and Iliad etc.). He's either the one who takes the Pre-Raphaelite depictions of women as femmes fatales or temptresses to their logical conclusion, or he's a pretender depending on your point of view.

The RA gathered some 40 Waterhouse paintings from around the world, together with rarely seen sketchbooks. Some of the great classics were in view, from "Hylas and the Nymphs" (normally in Manchester City Art Gallery) and "The Lady of Shalott" (the one in the boat, not the one in Leeds City Art Gallery!) to works now resident overseas (such as one of my favourites, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", which is based in Germany).

Waterhouse's painting style rests between Dante Gabriel Rossetti's passionate, seemingly hurried brush strokes and Millais' obsessive photorealism, with an obvious concentration of detail on features he was obsessed with, in particular hair, costume, and shiny metallic things - his paintings seem to draw the eye in certain directions, so to speak. A strange thread running through the paintings present (though possibly heightened by the notable absence of paintings such as "Miranda: The Tempest" is the almost total lack of sky, with scenes either framed entirely below the horizon, or in dense woodland. For example, "The Lady of Shalott" (in the boat) has only a small patch of sky visible, and evokes the sense of a coming storm, whilst the patches of sky visible in many of the Classical mythology paintings seem naïvely painted. "Miranda" (not the one in the tempest) has by far the best sky, while in other paintings (such as "The Magic Circle"), the sky is darker and overcast. These dark or absent skies add to the feeling of darkness or a closing in of space in the paintings, which is apt as many contain themes with a dark edge (apologies for the rant, but one of my former lecturers is a meteorologist obsessed with painted depictions of the sky!)

The titles of Waterhouse's paintings are a little confusing, possibly because several different scenes have been painted from some stories (for example The Lady of Shalott, Miranda from The Tempest and Circe from The Odyssey). Sometimes two paintings are popularly known by the same title because of this. That's not the only thing I find annoying about Waterhouse, but I will come back to "The Mermaid" later...

The subject matter, given its dark or non existent skies, is either Pre-Raphaelite in nature, or political and disjointed, such as the paintings of Roman Emperor Honorius, which show him tending to his pigeons rather than the needs of the empire. He was arguably far less political than any of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but certainly as fascinated by powerful female figures of legend and poetry, from Keats' "Lamia" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" to the Lady of Shalott, Circe and Medea. Many of these (including the sirens and mermaids) were figures of mystery and even fear, drawing men to their doom, and have been described as indicative of a misogynist streak - although this ignores the attraction many men have to 'dangerous' women, and whether the power and sensuality of many of the women shown can be interpreted as showing Waterhouse as having a sexually submissive nature is probably open to question. I would argue that he certainly fetishises the powerful woman, and doesn't necessarily depict them as totally evil - in "Jason and Medea", the sorceress famed for killing her children is shown preparing a potion (presumably medicine) while Jason looks at her in eager anticipation while Medea concentrates on getting the quantities right.

The nature of light within the paintings is also interesting. In view of the positions of these powerful women, the luminosity of their skin and brightness of their clothes often appears to be the main light source under a dark or non-existent sky, and metallic objects always seem to shine brightly. Waterhouse was obviously keen on the metallic sheens he was able to achieve, and was also very keen on costume, sometimes shown in the detailing of draping fabric, and other times in the patterning and cut of dresses. How much this was down to finding costumes for the models and how much was his own imagination (or even costume design) I don't know.

The notebooks were also interesting, although, as so often with notebooks in an exhibition, only one spread of each was visible. They gave clues as to his construction of scenes and also his drawing technique - the frontispiece of his book of Tennyson's poems, adorned with outline sketches of women's heads was something I spent ages looking at, trying to draw inspiration for my next session at Dr. Sketchy.

There is also the annoying. As much as I love most of Waterhouse's work, there are niggling things. Firstly, the Mediterranean phase. Waterhouse spent a lot of time in Italy, and produced some very nice paintings, but he does seem to romanticise Italy as a lazy place, where women lie amongst cushions and pigeons and revel in doing nothing. The women depicted don't seem to serve any purpose other than to be beautiful, whereas the characters from plays, poems and myths are doing things, or having things done to them (such as "Mariamne", being condemned to death). Secondly, is the painting which got Waterhouse his Royal Academy membership, "A mermaid" (which, curiously, on my print, is titled as "Resonance"). Where the Renaissance painters such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy (da Vinci even dissecting cadavers), and applied their knowledge of the human body to produce anatomically correct and possible poses, Waterhouse seems to have ignored all of this in his mermaid. Whilst the upper body is well painted (obviously from a live model, and one who appears several times in his work), the lower body, aside from the amazing detail of the scales, cannot possibly work (if I rabbit on here, it's because I also do a little mermology on the side). Her tail is far too long, more like an eel than any fish which might be supposed to be the tail of a mermaid, and the tail is far too small for her to actually be able to swim (mermaids, like fish and dolphins, steer with their tails, which need to be big and strong enough to do the job). The tail also has a ridiculously sharp kink, which would again be impossible given the necessary bone structure. All of this could have been avoided by using the Renaissance technique of trying to build the body up from its bone structure. Nevertheless, there is something about the image, as annoying (and annoyingly well painted) as it is, that I keep a print of this painting by my desk.

Waterhouse is often seen as a pretender to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, or an overly commercial artist with little to say, but I would disagree on both counts. The depiction of strong, powerful women, either devious or doomed, shows perhaps an awareness of the power women have over men and the terrible ways they have sometimes been treated, and maybe in that sense was of its time, between the restraint in 'polite society' of the Victorian era and the rise of the Suffragettes. Alternatively, Medea, Circe and Lamia (for example) are misogynist stereotypes of the beautiful, powerful woman as evil.

J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite is at The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London until 13 September 2009. Entry £9 (£8 concession, £7 student, £4 unwaged with proof)

Gatecrasher

Before arriving at the Waterhouse exhibition, and after arriving at the Royal Academy on a heritage Routemaster bus (having changed off a heritage liveried Green Line bus from Bracknell), I managed to gatecrash the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Cleverly, pieces were identified only by number, and only people with tickets had a catalogue to tell them what was what. I didn't see an awful lot as I worked out where I was and was worried I might get carted out, but there were a couple of highlights in what I saw:

In the Architecture Room, there were a couple of nice house designs, and a few for pavilions. Only one for Shanghai was recognisably tied to a place, but there was a nice piece of Urban Design in the form of a street reconstruction with a covering over the street and quite cool lighting. I'm not sure it would be residential with that level of street lighting though...

In the paintings, one of a nude woman, shown only in monochrome outline (possibly pastel) but with tattoos in full colour was interesting. There were also some huge pop art style flowers which I really liked, as well as some cartoon style art, influenced (as ever) by Japanese Manga and Disney (Piglet from Winnie the Pooh made an appearance on one of the canvases for some inexplicable reason).

The Summer Exhibition shows new work by reasonably established artists, although you probably need to pay for a ticket to find out what's what.

Summer Exhibition 2009 is at The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London until 16 August 2009. Entry £7 (£6 concession, £5 student), or gatecrash and wander through pretending you've worked everything out.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Design Art is the strange offspring of conceptual art, sculpture and furniture design, producing pieces which are usually of practical purpose but with their form derived from artistic reinterpretation of an idea.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has brought together a number of works relating to storytelling, in particular themes from fairy tales in "Telling Tales". While often dealing with old or traditional tales (including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Adam & Eve), the production processes are often quite modern (using techniques such as laser cutting and etching, for example). More modern fears are also dealt with, from nuclear war to psychotherapy, with mushroom cloud cushions and a sensory deprivation tank shaped like a skull.

On the fairy tale side were items such as the Robber Baron's lair, filled with golden furniture, a free standing bathtub shaped like a boat ("Bathboat" by Wieki Somers), and the "Fig Leaf Wardrobe" by Tord Boontje, where clothes are hung on the branches of a fig tree, and the whole wardrobe is surrounded in a dense matting of fig branches and leaves (this is a piece of furniture, so the whole ensemble is largely made of wood).

"Hide Away Type 02" by Dunne and Raby is a playful, convertible piece of furniture; a table that turns into a playhouse, and another wonderful piece is the "Storm Chair" by Stephen Richards, made of seemingly randomly placed sticks.

Telling Tales is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London until 18 October 2009. Admission is free

You may also be interested in Adelphi Story Nights in Leeds, on the first Tuesday of the month from 8pm, at The Adelphi, Hunslet Road (bottom of Leeds Bridge), Leeds. Entry £4 (£3 concessions)

Future Fashion Now

The Royal College of Art, a short walk away from the Victoria & Albert Museum, exhibits selections of its students' work at the V&A's costume gallery. This year, a varied mix of designers and designs was in evidence, with designs including a shirt printed with the pattern used to make it, reflective ponchos and some interesting dress designs, and the use of digital photography for producing patterns for knitting machines.

Timothy Lee uses neoprene as a structural element, bonded to other fabrics to force and create shape. His jacket displays an über glamorous style with its high, turned up collar, held in place with neoprene. Another designer, whose name now escapes me, uses patent leather in a similar way, producing seemingly impossible angles on shoulders and bustlines, made of triangles of patent leather stuck to each other, although the effect does make the dresses look quite plasticky.

David Hopwood produced an evening dress made only of 12 layers of tulle, which of course become quite opaque (and thick!) when all layered on each other, but increasingly transparent as each layer falls away from the next. The design, with each layer cut smaller than the one below it, allows the dress' form to fade out along the draping back and train.

Iacopo Calamandrei is a name to watch - exhibiting a beautiful black evening gown with a deceptively simple cut, embellished only with a red band at the end of the sleeve, as well as a heavily structured dress with puffed up shoulders and side panels.

Future Fashion Now: New Design from the Royal College of Art is on until 31 January 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London. Admission is free

That's more than enough rabbiting on from me...