The Chair’s Spot
Posted on Sep 03, 2024Speaking of exhibitions…
Like us humans, art exhibitions come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the fabulous International Biennales to the most modest of club or solo artist shows. Our society has its own annual exhibition which we are familiar with and very proud of, together with other exhibitions held throughout the year at various venues. As artists we frequently visit other exhibitions, some prestigious, others quite modest, and we each have one or two that will remain in our memory most of all, shows that have left us – well, gobsmacked actually, or perhaps unenlightened, shocked or even angry. For a viewer to be ‘moved’ by an exhibition, be it positive or negative, I think is something of a triumph for the artist.
Before I discuss my choice of most notable exhibitions, let’s look at some of the most famous. Take the Venice Biennale, which the Tate informs us was the first of this kind of exhibition, opening in 1895. But what is a biennale? In the art context the biennale has come to mean a large international exhibition, held every two years. Simply put, a biennial.The Venice Biennale is located in a public park called the Giardini, which houses thirty permanent national pavilions and many temporary structures. The early years were dominated by European art, but the exhibition is now subscribed to by countries in South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The late twentieth century has seen a vast increase in biennials and by 2007 there were some fifty across the world, including the Beijing Biennial, the Liverpool Biennial, the Prague Biennale, and also São Paulo and Sharjah in the Gulf. 2024 sees the 60th Venice Biennale and is open until 24 November. The artist featured in the Great Britain Pavilion is John Akonfrah with his exhibition ‘Listening All Night To The Rain’. Also a filmmaker, Akonfrah’s exhibition deals with themes of post colonialism, ecology and the politics of aesthetics with a renewed focus on the act of listening and the sonic.
View of British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Giardini Della Biennale.
To find out more: https://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/listening-all-night-to-the-rain
The Paris Salon, more often simply referred to as The Salon began in 1667, being the official exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Between 1748-1890 it was arguably the greatest art event in the western world. Initially restricted to French nationals, the Salon was opened to foreign artists sometime in the French Revolution which began in 1789 up to the late 1790s. From the beginning up to the next 200 years or so, exhibiting in the Paris Salon was essential for any artist to achieve success in France. The increasingly conservative and academic juries were not receptive to advancement, and impressionistic painters were usually rejected or poorly placed if accepted. In 1863 the Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of paintings, causing uproar, and as a consequence Napolean lll instituted the Salon des Refusés that contained a selection of works that the Salon had rejected that year. It opened in May 1863, marking the birth of the avant-garde, and the Impressionists, many of them refusing to enter work in the Salon again, held their own independent exhibitions from 1874,
Then of course we have our own Turner Prize. Awarded to British artists, it began in 1984, but between 1991-2006 only artists under the age of 50 were eligible, but this restriction was removed however in 2017. Even committed non-artists have some knowledge of the Turner Prize, whose home is Tate Modern, London, but every other year a venue outside of the Tate hosts the event, a couple being the Baltic, Newcastle, and Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.
It can be safely said that the art found in the Turner Prize is not everyone’s cup of tea, indeed the question ‘but is it art?’ has been asked so many times. Controversy is its key word, I am sure most of us remember the furore about Damian Hurst’s shark in formaldehyde and Tracey Emin’s unmade bed. In 2002 the then Culture Secretary Kim Howell made a scathing criticism on the exhibits as ‘conceptual bull****’. On reading this Prince Charles write to him saying ‘…it’s good to hear your refreshing common sense about the dreaded Turner Prize. It has contaminated the art establishment for so long.’
But whatever views we each hold about this event, it has not stopped some very famous names exhibiting and winning, a few being Anish Kapoor in 1991 for an untitled piece in sandstone and pigment, and in 1993 Rachel Whiteread won with her ‘House’, a concrete cast of the inside of a house on Grove Road, London. Grayson Perry won in 2003 with pots decorated with sexual imagery and collected his prize wearing a flouncy skirt.
Something more conventional did win in 1985, however, Howard Hodgkin’s abstract ‘A Small Thing But My Own’.
And as I write this essay the Edinburgh International Festival is actually in progress. It is an annual arts festival spread over the last three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music, particularly classical music, and performing arts are invited to join the festival. Perhaps even more well-known is its unofficial offshoot, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, or more usually simply stated as The Fringe. It is larger than the official festival, and has become the world’s largest performance arts festival. Unlike most other similar events, The Fringe is ‘open access’ meaning that anyone may participate with any type of performance such as theatre, comedy, danse, circus, cabaret, children’s shows to name but a few.
And there aren’t many artists who do not know about the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition which finishes this year on 18 August. Held every year since 1769 it is the world’s oldest open submission exhibition which means that anyone can enter, but unlike the Fringe, the entries are selected or rejected by a jury.
Entrants, who do not have to be Academicians, come from established and burgeoning artists alike, and prizes worth £50,000 are awarded. The exhibition continues the tradition of showcasing new and recent work in all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film.
Typical hanging of RA Summer Exhibition exhibits
But now to exhibitions that I personally consider to have been breathtaking. There are only two that I have space to discuss from a really large list, and I know that readers will have their own choices.
Antony Gormley
Gormley is an internationally renowned sculptor, and many of us are aware of his ‘Another Place’ installation, brought to Crosby Beach by the Liverpool Biennial in 2005. Here, 100 cast-iron life-size sculptors taken from his own body are found permanently scattered around the beach. And nearer to home, his ‘Iron Man’ sculpture at the top of New Street in Birmingham has now become a local icon.
The exhibition that I am referring to was just titled ‘Antony Gormley’, which coincidentally to the preceding paragraphs was held at the Royal Academy in September to December of 2019. Here I quote from the RA introduction – ‘The human body is at the core of his wide ranging practice. For Gormley the body is a vessel for feeling. It is the both the unique site of our individual journeys, and the one thing we all share’.
The exhibition consisted of existing works and new creations for this event. The was a mixture of quite small elements, and installations that filled the whole space of the room, such as ‘Clearing Vll’ forcing visitors to have to negotiate their way through this cacophony of bent and twisted steel. This of course distorts the body into various shapes and angles as they made their way through.
Antony Gormley ‘Clearing Vll’ 2019
Perhaps what occupied my mind the most was how such weights were supported by the building’s structure, it must have been a nightmare challenge for the structural engineers. The exhibition was too large and complex to cover in any detail, but I recommend readers look at this in detail.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/antony-gormley-revisiting-exhibition
Anselm Kiefer: Field of the Cloth of Gold
When it comes to contemporary art I regard the work of Anselm Kiefer to be at the highest pinnacle of achievement. Born in 1945 in the Black Forest town of Donaueschingen, Germany, Kiefer is most known for his subject matter dealing with German history and myth, particularly as it relates to the horrors of the holocaust. Considered to be part of the neo-expressionist movement, his works are full of symbolism and include paintings, sculptures and installations. He uses materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, to name but a few, and has been known to burn areas of his paintings as well as splashing them with acid, and exposing them to the elements. He has also included parts of aeroplanes and battlefield detritus recovered from battle grounds over the decades following both world wars. Kiefer often credited the poetry of Paul Celon with having a key role in developing his interest in Germany’s past and the cruelty of the Holocaust, frequently dedicating paintings to him.
Between 7 February and 26 June 2021, Kiefer’s exhibition ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’ at the Gagosian Gallery, Le Bourget, Paris, was an exposition of four new monumental paintings. I had made my mind up to go to this exhibition only to discover that it had closed the day I had made this decision.
The title refers to the historic peace summit between King Henry Vlll and King Francis that took place five hundred years ago in a field in what is now Pas-de-Calais, and centred around an alliance between England and France with a goal of outlawing war between Christian nations. The alliance was considered a key event in shaping Europe’s geopolitics – until it dissolved and war broke out the year after. While Kiefer did not begin making these works with this event or title in mind, the connection became apparent and synchronous after their completion. (Source Gagosian)
The gallery walls were not used but temporary walls were specially created to display the paintings to their best advantage.
As artists many of us dream about hosting a spectacular ‘Preview’ to one of our solo exhibitions. Here Kiefer did just that and boy, was it a show. What made it so spectacular is that there is a YouTube video of the exhibition featuring Kiefer reading the poetry of Paul Celan, being interviewed by art critic James Cuno, a debut ballet performance by Hugo Marchand and Hannah O’Neill which was choreographed by Florent Melac to the specially composed music of Steve Reich. The video lasts nearly twenty two minutes and is well-worth watching, not just once, but over and over again.
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2021/anselm-kiefer-field-of-the-cloth-of-gold/
Sadly, and as usual, space denies me from being able to elaborate further on this wonderful exhibition and from featuring other exhibitions that have left me with a feeling of reflection into my personal reaction, how the artist(s) influenced me, what were they driving at? How do I feel about the work? We all have different responses to be awakened, that I think is the function of the exhibition.
By David McGuire 2024
