RACHEL WHITEREAD at the TATE BRITAIN and IMPRESSIONISTS IN LONDON
RACHEL
WHITEREAD at the TATE BRITAIN
Objects shaped like
mattresses, hot water bottles, doors seeming to be doors of perception,
windows, stacks or piles. The piles
could be bollards or person traps like those found in school playgrounds,
children squeezed somehow in between. Rachel
Whiteread (born 1963) was the first female winner of the Turner Prize (1993)
and this is a major retrospective of her work.
Some of Whiteread’s smalls resemble objects from a Lush shop,
translucent, multi-coloured toilet rolls lacking a sense of irony,
perhaps. Some of the materials used are
intriguing such as rubber, wax, plastic, polyurethane and many of the objects
demand to be touched even if this tactile sense is denied to us, seeming to be
like missing spots on leopards. A dimension
is subtly absent but arbitrary bleeps emitted by sensors seek to make up for it,
their source is unknown but their presence is palpable. Whiteread’s work imitates the everyday,
unlike the work of Eva Hesse (1936-1970) or Katja Strunz (1970 - ), the macabre
is committedly absent. Whitereads scales
her work towards the grandiose rather than the miniature, some of the works are
architectural rather than sculpture, seemingly constructed from a 3-D printer
pre-programmed to emphasize the synthetic form complete with joins, folds,
scratches, embellishments but lacking paint which seems to be a conspicuous
absence. Whiteread moulds the space
beneath chairs, beyond sofas, interstitial spaces that write upon the
everyday. All of Whiteread’s objects
speak of a grey functionality but these are not everyday objects. The art criterion is somehow lost in the
show’s interstices as if this pile of junk like Hurst’s butterflies or medical
instrument cabinets would benefit from a blow torch or, better still, a flame
thrower. The absence of text or commentary,
however, positively allows the objects to speak for themselves.
IMPRESSIONISTS
IN LONDON: FRENCH ARTISTS IN EXILE 1870-1904 at the TATE BRITAIN
In 1870 the French
Emperor Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, initiated the Franco-Prussian war
with disastrous results. Within weeks
100,000 had been killed on both sides and France had fallen. Paris was overtaken by a radical,
Left-leaning, self-governing body known as The Commune. Revolutionaries like Karl Marx, ensconced as
he was in London, advised the communards against their actions, fearing a
bloodbath but saw in it an early example of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Neither the Prussians nor the French
government could tolerate The Commune. It
was crushed in 1871 when the French regular army stormed Paris which was
defended by the National Guard, a politicised militia consisting of partially
trained volunteers. Estimates differ,
but between 10,000 and 20,000 died when Paris fell to General McMahon. Some images from the last days of The Commune
and La semaine saglante (The Bloody
Week) which began on 21 May 1871, are introduced at the very beginning of the
exhibition. Edouard Manet’s (1832-1883)
work The Barricade (1871) considers
the arbitrary, summary slaughter of The Commune but also looks back to Manet’s
unfinished masterpiece Execution of
Emperor Maximillian (1867-69) which had reflected on a previous French
foreign policy blunder, the installation by the Emperor Louis Napoleon of a
member of the Habsburg royal family as Emperor of Mexico. This ended in disaster when Mexican
nationalists overthrew Maximillian and his reign was cut short when he was
summarily executed in 1867. Edouard
Manet was a vital precursor of Impressionism who began to consider alternate
subject matter and perspectives as in works like The Luncheon on the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1863). Manet
initiated the Impressionist project to break deadening and irrelevant academic
conventions.
To avoid conscription
many French artists crossed the channel to escape the horrors of Civil War but
also to exploit commercial possibilities which they felt existed in
Britain. In 1873 French Emperor and
dictator Napoleon III followed them accompanied by his wife, the Empress
Eugenie, and their son. They fled to
Chislehurst in Kent. This exhibition
outlines the work of those artists who were close to the Emperor and to the
Second Empire; those opponents of the regime who were refugees or asylum
seekers; and other artists such as Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro
(1830-1903) and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) who seemed to be politically
uncommitted, intent on personal survival and interested in pursuing the
aesthetic known as Impressionism, which they were pioneering at this time. The title of the exhibition is thus
misleading because many of the artists presented were not Impressionists. The brand is joined to this exhibition in order
to imply connections and relationships that are only palpable with the benefit
of hindsight.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
(1827-1875) was the leading French sculptor of the day, influencing the
sculptor Rodin, who revered him. Closely
associated with the Emperor and the Second Empire, Carpeaux fled the carnage
perhaps because he realised his close connection to the Emperor might endanger
him. His delicate yet conservative
subject matter and final depiction of the Emperor who died in exile in 1873
make him a leading artist of the regime in exile. The deposed Empress Eugenie asked Carpeaux to
complete the bust of the Emperor which had been left unfinished rather than the
then fashionable death mask and his study The
Emperor Napoleon in his coffin (1873).
The Emperor was buried at Chislehurst.
In his illuminating essay 18th
Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Karl Marx begins with his customary tweak of
Hegel, insisting that, in the spirit of Hegel, history repeats itself, but,
Marx adds, “once as tragedy and twice as farce”. The revolutionary upheaval initiated by Louis
Napoleon’s uncle Napoleon I had run its course and ended in embarrassment and
ridicule for France. It was time for the
next thing, the rise of Germany as the pre-eminent nation state in Europe. Louis
Napoleon was merely “a sphinx without a riddle” as Marx curtly remarked.
Marx’s political
commentary can be related to the culture of the Second Empire that clung to the
Emperor Louis Napoleon, even in exile.
The edifice of this culture was about to collapse when the Impressionist
movement was galvanised by the bitter experience of exile in London.
Important contemporary
figures such as Tissot, Legres and Dalou, albeit now names known only to
experts and collectors provide a portrait of the emigre fraternity in
London. James Tissot (1836-1902) was a
high society portraitist whose work foregrounds accuracy, opulence, colour and
detailed reproductions of costumes and uniforms through the medium of oil. His work is deeply conservative and at odds
with the exhibitions purported impressionist origins. Alphonse Legros (1827-1875) was catalyst of
the French émigré community, he also aided the sculptor Jules Dalou
(1838-1902), a former Communard whose sculptures became popular with Victorian
society and were even bought by Queen Victoria amongst other aristocratic
patrons. Dalou was also instrumental in
introducing Rodin to British society. As
well as artists, the exhibition details important French collectors, patrons and
gallery owners, who also lived in London, facilitating the artist’s activities,
the show also provides exceptional details of their influence and importance.
A group of artists more
directly connected with the Impressionists, such as Monet, Pissarro and Sisley,
completes this group of emigres and refugees.
These artists were solely interested in dodging the draft and exploiting
the commercial possibilities that London offered. Monet completed only eight paintings during
his time in London, none of them exceptional, yet returned 30 years later to
re-interpret his original works with particular emphasis on subjects such as
the Houses of Parliament and Charing Cross Bridge. His orchestration of light and shadow offer
iconic depictions of these scenes as the sun rises and sets in works such as Houses of Parliament, London. Sun breaking
through the fog, 1904. These are the
highlights of this exhibition. The show
also depicts the influence of James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) whose works
like Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea
1871 show London steeped in fog.
Indeed Oscar Wilde asserted that Whistler invented our view of Victorian
London immersed in fog and clouds of smoke.
Sisley and Pissarro provided an outsiders instructive look at
traditional English sports like cricket, which Pissarro took up, and boating. Alfred Sisley’s parents were English, he had
deeper roots there reflected in the location of his landscapes which are
farther down the Thames. Pissarro
settled in West Norwood, outside the city, in one of the new suburbs which was
being incorporated into the city at that time and depicts these locales in works
like Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace. London 1871 and Lordship Lane Station. Dulwich 1871. (both oil on canvas).
The exhibition concludes
with Andre Derrain’s (1880-1954) revision of the London paintings of Monet,
completed soon after Monet’s later London work. Derrain employs a colourful,
glowing palette derived from the artist’s work in the south of France and his association
with Matisse with whom he co-founded Fauvism.
This exhibition lacks the kind of context that a reading of Marx, for
instance, might have provided and the insincere attempt to yolk together such
disparate talents into an Impressionist show is clearly unconvincing even
though much of the material assembled is worthwhile and speaks for itself.
Paul Murphy, Tate
Britain, London, January 2018
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