Another Monet show! The curator argues that buildings were important to how Monet constructed his paintings. At first simply emblems of modernity, they were later crucial in his glorious works about “atmospherics”. In these works buildings were used “as a strong, solid form which served as a screen on which light played”. A video on his London paintings (4 min) is here
Myers is the classic overlooked artist. In 1974, produces the first of three self-published photography books. In the 1980’s, gives up photography. In 2012 gets his first solo show. “Myers’s photographs [capture] a past in which parsimonious resources are displayed with defiant dignity … a mark of pride in the narrow, the pinched, the insular.” A background essay on Myers is here.
Some think that the English are “mingy” in the recognition they accord their own artists. Hilton Als, the eminent American critic is not so restrained. “Contemporary British art [including “visionaries” such as Paul] has had a global impact. She builds up on a series of canvases a great originality, an emotional breadth, a vocabulary of loss, of loss even before it happens.”
The writer of this essay seems muddled. He admits the best pieces in this Cambridge show deserve comparison to Moore, Brancusi or Giacometti. However, he is perturbed by the craft / art demarcation being unclear. Some pieces (gasp) even have practical uses! An essay by the curator offers a steadier narrative. More images are here.
The Tate’s 1956 show of American abstraction got a hostile public reception, but Ayres found it inspirational. To be more specific, she loved its energy and use of colour, not the angst associated with its American founders. She said “‘I love obscurity in modern art. I don’t want a story.” The obituarist’s view of her work is similar: “decorative unruliness … large, loud, fierce and bold”.
Image: suehubbard.com