The Engine

  Artist and Empire at the Tate Britain The Tate’s new exhibition concerns Britain’s past as an Imperialist, colonising world power.   At one point Britain ruled a quarter of the world’s entire land mass encompassing cultures as diverse as those of Newfoundland, Canada, the Indian Punjab, Durban in South Africa and Sydney, Australia. Britain’s relationship with its colonies and subject peoples but also with the rest of the world generally is a subject of constant examination and re-examination as the parameters of Nationalism, Imperialism and Colonialism shift and re-integrate only for the pattern to be altered again.   This is clearly an important point to re-consider Britain’s post-colonial development since the decline of a Socialist opponent is apparent but other, more elusive developments continue to appear. The Tate exhibition is divided into six sections and each section depicts a certain stage in the Imperialist project.   The first room deals with cartography, ma

Frank Auerbach at the Tate Britain Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931 to Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burckhardt.   He was transported to the UK in 1939 under the Kindertransport scheme, a project which saved almost 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi persecution.   His parents died in a concentration camp in 1943.   He began his art education in London firstly at St Martin’s School of Art from 1948-1952 and then the Royal School of Art from 1952-1955.   He studied under David Bomberg from 1947–1953 his most significant early influence.   Bomberg (1890-1957), like Auerbach, was an émigré, his family had arrived from Poland, settling initially in Birmingham.   Bomberg was one of the Whitechapel Boys, a group of Anglo-Jewish writers and artists who met in Whitechapel, at that time a notable Jewish community.   Other members of the group included war poet Isaac Rosenberg and Clara Birnberg.   Bomberg was also a notable war artist whose work was the s

Alexander Calder 1898 – 1976 at the Tate Modern   Alexander Calder was born in New York City in 1898 and by 1919 had earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He studied art and worked as an illustrator, notably for Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. Calder’s work encompassed new use of materials, experimental projects utilising manual and then mechanical means of propulsion such as his early work Goldfish Bowl (1908) and sculptures composed solely of wire bent and shaped with pliers. These are really line drawings in three dimensions, the originality of these innovations can be seen in his early work Hercules with Lion (1908). Calder’s critics defined this work as “drawing in space”.  Then in 1926 he departed for Paris which was at that time the HQ of the international avante garde, a swinging, liberated place where the conservative values and ubiquitous racism found in America was hardly tolerated. In another early work from his Paris years Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere (1932/3)