The Engine

CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON Sponsored by Credit Suisse  Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768) was an Italian Rococo era painter whose views of Venice have come down to us as the epitome of view painting (vedute). They seem mathematically precise as to be miraculous, seeming to be the highest point of development of this technically exact genre. Was Canaletto really just a hack, churning out genre pieces for aristocratic clients in foreign countries (the artist was especially popular among English milordi)? Or is his work really an exploration of Venice, a city of poverty, squalor, disease, and his, Canaletto's, own place in society and all the social relations implied by his art?  Canaletto began his career like his rival and slightly younger contemporary Michele Marieschi (1710-1743) as a theatrical scene painter. This explains his willingness to tweak perspective, alter viewpoints or move buildings. He was given instruction in sc...

PAUL GAUGIN: MAKER OF MYTH: AT THE TATE MODERN  This exhibition offers us delights about the life and times of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903). These are structured thematically but not necessarily temporally: self-portraits, still lives, Breton landscapes, reclining nudes in Tahiti. Gaugin was a man essentially alone, undergoing a journey from conventionality to outrageous infamy, the pain of total isolation and death. Gaugin’s paintings exhibit pastel tones of indigo, vermilion, magenta. Relaxed, cheerful, invigorating, joyful. The paintings are about openness to experience: suffering, rejection, the misunderstanding of an ignorant, uncaring world. Gaugin persistently refers to himself as a suffering Christ in his paintings, as in his 1889 painting Christ in the Garden of Olives ; alone, rejected by everyone. Christian themes absorbed him and he seemed to need a moral arbiter of his own actions.  The influence of Christianity and conventional morality was one he sought ...