The Engine

THEO VAN DOESBURG AT THE TATE MODERN, LONDON, MARCH 2010 One question this exhibition begs is: who is this exhibition really about? Not just Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) but the works of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, the Surrealists intrude upon van Doesburg's work. Perhaps van Doesburg might modestly be described as a cypher meaning an entire outlook on life, an avante garde moment beyond which is an entire sunrise replete with sea monsters. This is a retrospective of the Dutch de Stijl art group best known for the works of abstract artist Piet Mondrian, van Doesburg's older mentor. Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) was an artist entrepreneur, today practically forgotten. Every art movement is summarised by it's leading artist, but de Stijl possibly more than others. Van Doesburg's own art is often painfully derivative of Mondrian's but his range of influences, activities is vastly more eclectic. Theo van Doesburg comes over as an eccentric figure, inventing pseudon...

HENRY MOORE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, MARCH 2010  The new exhibition at the Tate Britain is a relatively condensed retrospective of the life and work of Henry Moore (1898-1986). The exhibition traces the origins of Moore's art in his interest in the very early history sculpture which he saw at the British Museum while a student in London before WW1. Moore's work was shaped by pre-Columbian art, sculpture especially, but also by the architectural sculpture of the Sumerian and Biblical era. Moore served in the trenches during WW1, narrowly escaped death, was traumatised by the experiences, as was his entire generation. WW1 politicised Moore, pushing him to the Left in politics. Moore supported the Republican side against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, opposed the rise of fascism generally, later helped to found CND, providing it with its quintessential image of a mushroom cloud formed into a human skull.  Moore's Modernism evolved out of an unusual set of interests,...

CHRISTEN KOBKE, DANISH MASTER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, MARCH 2010  This exhibition trumpets Christen Kobke (1810-1848) as the greatest master of the Danish Golden Age, which more or less means Danish history from the defeat at the hands of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) to Denmark's defeat by Prussia in the Second Schleswig War of 1864.  At this time the states of Schleswig and Holstein were lost and incorporated into the new German Reich under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Christen Kobke's life was lived against this backdrop of militarism and militarisation. Denmark was ruined financially by the Napoleonic Wars and Kobke lived during the period of economic reconstruction that followed.  This period was ended by the succeeding wars against Prussia. By 1864 Denmark had virtually ceased to be an independent country, becoming instead a satellite of a Greater Germany.  Christen Kobke's father was master baker in The Citad...

Delaroche and Lady Jane Gray: National Gallery, London, March 2010  Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) is an inherently historical, then dramatic artist, spinning his own history in the guise of English history, as a consequence of sensitive recent events in his homeland, France. First and foremost is his work The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833). The painting evokes immense pathos, then the spectacle of Lady Jane Grey as innocent victim groping for the execution block, an account at variance with official history that states that Lady Jane Grey went to her death with dignity. Delaroche, by the standards of his own day, was a consummate researcher of his own works. This was hardly the norm in Delaroche's time. Delaroche's work is possessed of vivid historical verisimilitude. Hardly a brush stroke is apparent in this painting. There’s a tangible objectivity about Delaroche's work, as if the artist himself had to somehow disappear in favour of his realist technique.  Supp...

Revanche (dir Gotz Spielmann, Austria, 2008) Revanche (Revenge) is a film from Europe looking very like an old Hollywood western. The storyline, for the film is narrative driven, concerns a couple, one a Ukrainian prostitute (Tamara), the other a craggy Austrian ex-con (Alex) who plan to go on the run after leaving Vienna and attempting a heist in a small village, then running over the border to lawless Spain (standing in for Mexico). The whole plans seems quite naïve (for an experienced ex-con) and the heist goes predictably wrong, as the local cop, a man with a true shot and a big conscience gets the girl in the back. The film evolves out of a Vienna which is not like the Vienna of apfelstrudel and Mozart but more the Vienna of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s The Third Man , a dark, sordid dive of a place replete with awful brothels, Russian lapdancers with their horrid, seedy pimps, awesome dumps looking, indeed, like awesome dumps. There’s a neat division between the city and the...

Arshile Gorky at The Tate Modern, February 2010  After the recent retrospective of the work of Mark Rothko there is an attempt to resuscitate yet another lost American Master, Arshile Gorky. Lost because of his tragic early death, but also lost because his influence is now indecipherable as he basically established the conditions for the rise of Abstract Expressionism and then Pop Art. The central focus of the exhibition is Arshile Gorky’s portrait, taken from some extant, discovered photograph, of the young artist with his mother. She was a victim, for the exhibition is very quick to establish Gorky’s victim status, of a historical footnote, the 1915 Armenian genocide of which Adolf Hitler once declared: “who remembers the Armenian genocide?” His mother’s starvation at the hands of the retreating minions of the Ottoman Empire, his subsequent flight to America with his sister to be with their father is the stuff of romance fiction, yet Arshile Gorky nevertheless maintains a tra...

CHRIS OFILI EXHIBITION AT THE TATE BRITAIN Chris Ofili's work replaces actual art with a reliance on gimmicks. The gimmick for the early canvases presented here is a lump of elephant dung set into each painting and further pieces serving as base props for the canvas. This might be stimulating if it were done once or perhaps twice but it is simply done ad nauseum, representing a tremendous heave (for the elephant) and a tremendous sigh of relief for the visitor leaving behind this awesome stool. Ofili might be better served finding a Daliesque moustache or some other actual gimmick, tic or identifiable sign. Try growing a silly tache, dying your hair some weird or wonderful colour etc etc etc. There's nothing weird about Ofili's further work which is largely to do with the female nude, thus confirming the salient fact that Ofili is a man like any other man, not some effete South Ken woofter. (That's fine Chris but do we really need to see that nude over and over...