Invisible art

[cih]

opens tomorrow -

The biggest drawing you might not even notice

Lai Chih-Sheng, a wonderful artist from Taipei, arrived in the gallery today to begin creating the largest drawing I’ve ever seen for Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957 – 2012. The drawing fills up our entire Gallery 3 (which is something like 18 metres by 22 metres by 4.5 metres high). Yet he assured us that it will be almost completely invisible. Along with three assistants helping him, Lai Chih-Sheng is meticulously drawing over every existing edge in the gallery – in other words, any place where two walls meet, or the wall and the floor, or the lines in a concrete column, etc. It is painstaking work that requires great patience, and the gallery has a atmosphere of intense concentration right now as they begin this epic invisible project...

Then there's this man who makes invisible pictures by allowing his canvas to capture the 'energy' from the gazes of living creatures:

Edited June 11, 2012 by cih

[BillF]

I'm just not on the same wavelength as most contemporary art, but curiously I found this exhibition quite appealing after reading a review of it today. Then I noticed it was of the last half century and that explained it. People like Yves Klein, though extreme, belong to my era. Perhaps I'll visit it with my London-resident elder daughter. She digs contemporary art, so perhaps this show might be a meeting point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/10/ten-best-invisible-artworks-hayward?INTCMP=SRCH

Here in the north of England things are a good deal more conventional. Liverpool Tate's new show that links Turner, Monet and Cy Twombly will certainly get a visit from me.

Edited June 11, 2012 by BillF

[cih]

one thing's for sure - that horse and that man are not on the same wavelength.

[BillF]

Yes, daughter says she'd like to see it. Says she loved this recent one at Tate Modern:

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/yayoi-kusama

[mjazzg]

regretted missing the Kusama. Booked my ticket to see Twombly (and a couple of other half decent painters, I believe) at Liverpool. The Invisible art intrigues. Hayward on a bit of a run at the moment...Emin, Deller and now this. Top tip - if visiting the Hayward and it's a half decent day do visit the roof garden on top of queen ElizHall - lovely spot for coffee, wine or beer

[cih]

well I'm wangling my way to London next week through work - though I'm more tempted by the Picasso & Modern British Art show at tate Britain really - mouldy fig that I am.

I will have to get to that Liverpool show too. I went to the Miro at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the second time last week - really great. They're showing a documentary on him with Roland Penrose - apparently Miro admired Turner very much (which might seem unlikely - and unlike Dali who detested him)

[BillF]

well I'm wangling my way to London next week through work - though I'm more tempted by the Picasso & Modern British Art show at tate Britain really - mouldy fig that I am.

Well, if that's a mouldy fig, I'm one too! I'd certainly like to see that show. I have a personal interest in it, too, as Joash Woodrow, the late brother of my friend Paul, was a British painter who was hugely influenced by Picasso. Here's Joash's portrait of Paul's wife, Judith, plus his Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joash_Woodrow

[mjazzg]

well I'm wangling my way to London next week through work - though I'm more tempted by the Picasso & Modern British Art show at tate Britain really - mouldy fig that I am.

saw that over the Bank holiday. i thoroughly enjoyed it and thought the curatorial premise worked well. Interesting to see the Brits reflected in the Picasso influence who was a fair few years ahead of most of them if truth be told. I thought Nicholson, Moore and Bacon all traversed the influence of PP in varyingly individual ways.

I'd've loved to see the Miro but couldn't get it into the itinerary of recent trip to Hepworth Wakefied (knockout gallery and collection)

[cih]

crikey - thanks for pointing out Joash Woodrow, I love this stuff -

My link

darn it - the board won't let me post the pic on here

re the Brits and modernism - Paul Nash ticks all my boxes really - not so much of Picasso there I suppose, but that bleak landscapey business he had going on was really something

[mjazzg]

crikey - thanks for pointing out Joash Woodrow, I love this stuff -

My link

darn it - the board won't let me post the pic on here

re the Brits and modernism - Paul Nash ticks all my boxes really - not so much of Picasso there I suppose, but that bleak landscapey business he had going on was really something

Yes, with you on Nash and John Piper too

[BillF]

crikey - thanks for pointing out Joash Woodrow, I love this stuff -

My link

darn it - the board won't let me post the pic on here

re the Brits and modernism - Paul Nash ticks all my boxes really - not so much of Picasso there I suppose, but that bleak landscapey business he had going on was really something

Yes, with you on Nash and John Piper too

Once again, with you on both of those. Paul Nash is about as good as you can get in 20th century British painting IMHO.

[.:.impossible]

Do I understand this?

[cih]

[.:.impossible]

Nice!

[robertoart]

Interesting thread.

The National Gallery here in Melbourne collected lots and lots of post-Picasso British painting during the 20thC. So I got to see a lot of it first hand. From Sickert onwards. Often much of it was in storage (along with the massive amounts of Victorian era British art) so you could often discover works you never knew about, as they were trotted out over time and through the changes of taste and curators. We have a very early Hockney painting of a young married couple purchased from his first exhibition I believe. We also have lots of 'kitchen sink' era paintings too. So it was like a provincial British Modernist gallery in a way. Don't think they could afford the big name 'Americans' at the time. And the old 'mother country' allegiances die hard I suppose. Most of the ambitious Australian painters all nicked off to London during the post-war and swinging sixties era. Sutherland was a big influence on several key Australian painters out here. Russell Drysdale being the main one. I like Bromberg myself, but he might have been a bit earlier than the others I think. Franz Marc was the best Modernist horse painter.

Enjoyed reading about Joash Woodrow too. Sad story. Glad his work is being appreciated. Fancy breaking ties with your friends over 'intellectual differences' I bet they were all a bunch of patronising tossers.

Edited June 13, 2012 by freelancer

[cih]

Nice!

thought you were being rhetorical - thought it was a comment on invisible art! ... like a message written on stone with water

Edited June 13, 2012 by cih

[cih]

Interesting thread.

The National Gallery here in Melbourne collected lots and lots of post-Picasso British painting during the 20thC. So I got to see a lot of it first hand. From Sickert onwards...

I like Sickert a lot - but some of his paintings are so dark, tone-wise, darker than anybody elses I've seen I think. I guess London was dark then... almost invisible art right there

[A Lark Ascending]

My interest in painting is very superficial but I've always enjoyed Nash and Piper.

Sutherland and Spencer appeal too - in fact I intended to go to the gallery at Cookham last week but plans got blown by the weather.

Edited June 13, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[robertoart]

Interesting thread.

The National Gallery here in Melbourne collected lots and lots of post-Picasso British painting during the 20thC. So I got to see a lot of it first hand. From Sickert onwards...

I like Sickert a lot - but some of his paintings are so dark, tone-wise, darker than anybody elses I've seen I think. I guess London was dark then... almost invisible art right there

I know quite a few painters who really like Sickert's works. I do too. Yes they can be very dark alright. Did you know he was once suspected of being Jack The Ripper. I think this was bought up in the media recently.

My interest in painting is very superficial but I've always enjoyed Nash and Piper.

Sutherland and Spencer appeal too - in fact I intended to go to the gallery at Cookham last week but plans got blown by the weather.

I remember reading The Horses Mouth when I was a teenager and later learning it was based on Stanley Spencer. It was a funny book to read as a young person, but very rewarding.

[A Lark Ascending]

I remember reading The Horses Mouth when I was a teenager and later learning it was based on Stanley Spencer. It was a funny book to read as a young person, but very rewarding.

Don't know that one.

I think I first came across Spencer on the cover of a Penguin Modern Classics version of T.F. Powys' 'Mr Weston's Good Wine' (most of my painting education came off book or classical LP sleeves!).

I tend to also get drawn by pictures with historical connections - so the First World War paintings have always struck me (they are brilliant for using in teaching). This one is pretty amazing:

I like his curious figures too:

Definitely more interesting than the pictures I recall illustrating the religious books of my childhood.

[BillF]

Interesting thread.

The National Gallery here in Melbourne collected lots and lots of post-Picasso British painting during the 20thC. So I got to see a lot of it first hand. From Sickert onwards...

I like Sickert a lot - but some of his paintings are so dark, tone-wise, darker than anybody elses I've seen I think. I guess London was dark then... almost invisible art right there

I know quite a few painters who really like Sickert's works. I do too. Yes they can be very dark alright. Did you know he was once suspected of being Jack The Ripper. I think this was bought up in the media recently.

My interest in painting is very superficial but I've always enjoyed Nash and Piper.

Sutherland and Spencer appeal too - in fact I intended to go to the gallery at Cookham last week but plans got blown by the weather.

I remember reading The Horses Mouth when I was a teenager and later learning it was based on Stanley Spencer. It was a funny book to read as a young person, but very rewarding.

The paintings in the film version of The Horse's Mouth were by John Bratby, who incidentally was in the same painting class at Royal College of Art as Joash Woodrow and Frank Auerbach. I can see something similar in the work of all three. Here's a Bratby:

[cih]

I had an uncle who worked as a porter for a gallery in London for a while, I guess in the '50s - he remembered Stanley Spencer coming in wearing his pyjamas under his jacket. Unfortunately this uncle thought modern painting was rubbish, otherwise maybe he might have picked up a couple of bargains

Sickert reminds me of another bunch of British painters I like - Coldstream, Pasmore and those other Euston Road people who's names I can never remember.

This is all very visible art..

The thick impasto styles of people like Bratby, Auerbach, Joash Woodrow would probably cost about a pound per brushstroke at today's material prices No wonder people are producing blank canvases!

[BillF]

I had an uncle who worked as a porter for a gallery in London for a while, I guess in the '50s - he remembered Stanley Spencer coming in wearing his pyjamas under his jacket. Unfortunately this uncle thought modern painting was rubbish, otherwise maybe he might have picked up a couple of bargains

Probably got his pyjamas cheaper at M&S.

[cih]

[sidewinder]

Did you know he was once suspected of being Jack The Ripper. I think this was bought up in the media recently.

An old theory - I remember reading about it in a Yearbook from 1953, along with a couple of other suspects (Duke of Clarence etc.). Total red herrings I suspect.

That US writer Patricia Cornwell was apparently convinced but I believe her rationale was totally taken apart.