Magnificent
Maps: Power,
Propaganda and Art.
By
Peter Barber and Tom Harper. 176 pp. 120 colour illustrations. The
British Library. Pb. £17.95.
Every
now and again a book is published that is genuinely illuminating, and
this is one such. The large 'display' maps intended for walls to
impress as well as to inform is the subject: of which the most
celebrated example may be the late 16th century Galleria
delle Carte Giographice in the Vatican whose
maps are painted in fresco and “proclaim the papacy's spiritual
supremacy over Italy and the world.” Such maps have their origins
in classical antiquity though any that survive are only in
fragmentary form. In Renaissance times maps came to be seen as
important both politically and culturally, reinforced by the
burgeoning interest in the discoveries of early world voyagers, by
the increasing status enjoyed by mapmakers and not least by the
advent of printing which encouraged the making of splendid
multi-sheet wall maps.
Down the centuries and perhaps inevitably, relatively few display maps have survived and “their significance has generally been overlooked” - in the authors' own generous words. In part this is due to the consuming interest of times-past scholars and collectors in maps of a relatively handy size, often originally bound as atlases, which were invariably studied for their geographical information; wall maps were dismissed as merely decorative and maps in general were also ignored by art historians as works of science.
Whereas as Peter Barber and Tom Harper demonstrate, display maps in particular can be read at several levels: intellectual, philosophical, scientific and more subtly as a form of propaganda suggesting the power and status of the owner as well as his interests. An example might be the Sheldon Tapestries (a medium better suited than fresco to northern climes) commissioned about 1590 by an English Catholic landowner Ralph Sheldon, which not only indicated his wealth (through the cost of their manufacture at the Mortlake Works) but deliberately showed the homes and lands of his family and friends – all as loyal supporters of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth.
One undeniably magnificent example is a plan of Venice dating from 1500. Printed in woodcut on six sheets, it shows an elevated view of the city and was published as “a celebration of the power of the Venetian Republic.” The quality of the design, which took Jacopa de' Barbari three years to prepare from sketches and drawings, and its means of making, ensured the map's purchase by important collectors throughout Europe – including King Henry VIII, who had his own map room in the Privy Gallery at Whitehall Palace. One of his successors, George I commissioned in 1717 a manuscript plan of the Goerde his hunting forest in northern Germany to where he would escape for two months every year from his Royal duties in Britain; and a decade later a plan, also in manuscript, of Hanover itself which shows the famous gardens at Herrenhausen created by his mother the Electress Sophia with the help of the great philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Across the Atlantic, the Declaration of American Independence was signed in 1776 and a peace treaty with the British in 1783. The following year Abel Buell, a New Haven silversmith, published A new and Correct Map of the United States of North America which he proudly stated was “the first ever published, engraved and finished by one man, and an American.” By contrast, a singularly beautiful military map of Boston was engraved in aquatint by Francis Jukes for Henry Pelham detailing lines of fire, harbour depths, batteries and defences; Pelham made the notes for his map while present at the siege of the city by American forces in 1775/6, only publishing it on his return to London after the British retreat, doubtless for future reference as well as commemoration. Also intended as a commemoration, but this time of a successful enterprise was Thomas Holme's Map of the Settled Part of Pennsylvania, published in London in 1687/8 with the names of the landowners superimposed on their individual plots, but even more interesting in that it also includes the names of those who had decided not to emigrate but who nonetheless could display the map proudly as proof of ownership.
Paintings by Dutch 17th century artists of domestic interiors often include maps, one such is by Pieter de Hooch A Woman Drinking with Two Men in the National Gallery (though wrongly credited here) and another, a Self-portrait by Rembrandt that hangs at Kenwood and shows a portion of one of the new double-hemisphere world maps in which Amsterdam cartographic publishers specialised. Large maps are also found on screens and in giant atlases; they were used to resolve boundary disputes as between Turkey and Persia which the British and Russian Ambassadors set out to do in 1869 with their Carte Identique. World maps adorned school rooms and others were issued as overt propaganda in one case probably by the French Vichy government: Confiance illustrating allied set-backs in 1940/1 showing Churchill's demonic face surrounded by the cut and bleeding tentacles of an octopus. The British knew better: Tea Revives the World proclaims MacDonald Gill's 1940 poster – a pictorial world map issued as “a rallying cry in the time of war, spoken through a history of Britain's adopted national beverage.”
Unsurprisingly, contemporary artists have been inspired by the opportunities offered by large maps: Grayson Perry bases his own Map of Nowhere on a 13th century Mappa Mundi explaining that he “wanted to make a map of the beliefs, headlines, clichés and monsters that populate my social landscape.” Stephen Walker also produced in the same year 2008 an essentially personal view: The Island an incredibly detailed map of London that needs a magnifying glass to appreciate its range of information, including say the authors, “the locations of pubs with good views, the ethnic make-up of areas, notable residents, speed limits and ice-cream vendors,” adding, “one cannot imagine such a map being officially commissioned.”
Peter Barber is Head of Map Collections, and Tom Harper Curator of Antiquarian Mapping, at the British Library. There can be no better recommendation for the interest and authority shown throughout the pages of their book.
Hiroshi Suzuki. By Timothy Schroder. 80 pp. 56 colour illustrations. Scala Publishers in association with Adrian Sassoon. Pb. £14.95.
At the recent Masterpiece London art and antiques fair one of Hiroshi Suzuki's large silver vases was on prominent display on his dealer's stand: prominent amidst much other splendid contemporary work because of its uniquely flowing, harmonious and textured form. Born in Japan in 1961, the son of a goldsmith and grandson of a potter and calligrapher, Suzuki enjoyed a solitary childhood playing with the materials, especially clay, in the workshop at home. Naturally bound for art school, he did a four-year three-dimensional design course at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo followed by a five year contract there working as a technical assistant, which gave him an income as well as the opportunity to explore his own ideas. He then decided to travel to England to learn the language, to visit the museums and to study the European traditions. “Never content to do nothing” as Timothy Schroder states, “he decided to enrol at the Camberwell College of Arts for three years” from 1994, followed by a further two at the Royal College of Art, also in London.
For Suzuki his time as a student in England was literally liberating. Timothy Schroder explains that instead of insisting on a rigid syllabus, the tutors here encourage students “to find their own way and their own strengths.” Wisely adding that this freedom “can result in creative ideas that are not always supported by a proper grounding in practical skills.” At the Royal College, Suzuki fell under the influence first of Michael Rowe, a sculptor in metalwork, who first stirred in him the possibilities of working in silver; and then of the Danish silversmith Allan Scharf who “rejoices in the ductility of silver” and whose work inspired him to turn his sculptural inclinations into the forming his ideas in silver - made possible in his case by his thorough knowledge of the technical problems and opportunities presented by the material.
Following the completion of his studies at the Royal College in 1999, public and practical recognition for Hiroshi Suzuki's work was quick to come when the the Victoria and Albert Museum purchased of one of his large vases for its permanent collection. Since then states Timothy Schroder “his work has been shown and promoted in numerous exhibitions in this country, in Europe and the United States, as well as in his native Japan.” Unsurprisingly too, “it is much in demand from private collectors.” This elegant publication illustrated with stunning photographs was issued to coincide with a one-man retrospective exhibition held this spring within the august portals of London's Goldsmith's Hall; the Worshipful Company (itself an important patron of contemporary silver and jewellery) having already acquired four of Suzuki's vases along the years for its permanent collection.
The author Timothy Schroder, himself a distinguished member of the Goldsmiths' Company, describes watching Suzuki at work as “mesmeric. Hammering is the beginning and end of his work,” but, it much more than “a mechanical process... it is an extension of his mind.” For the artist it is a deliberately meditative procedure. Whether working in silver (and more recently in gold) Hiroshi Suzuki is confident enough in his own ideas and abilities to eschew any form of preliminary design. “I take the material directly,” he says, “and just start making and designing through the making – it's really risky but to me it's a more enjoyable process.” The beautiful results stand for themselves.
Being a Pilgrim. Art and Ritual on the Medieval Routes to Santiago. By Kathleen Ashley and Marilyn Deegan. 264 pp. Illustrated in colour throughout. Hb. £30.00. Lund Humphries.
A myriad of Romanesque churches, chapels and secular buildings in central and southern France and northern Spain attest to the cult of Saint James and the antiquity of the routes followed by pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago in Compostela. This year 2010 is a Holy Year because the Saint's Feast Day, 25th July, falls a Sunday and many thousands more pilgrims than customary will be visiting his great medieval cathedral in north western Spain.
The fact of pilgrimage to places redolent of the supernatural is of ancient, doubtless pre-historic origins and has grown in parallel with the rise of the major world religions. For Christians, the story of Saint James the Apostle derives from the legendary histories that told how Christ's apostles travelled the ancient world to preach the good news of the gospel, James himself going to Spain. On his return to Jerusalem he was martyred by Herod Agrippa in AD 44, as related in the Acts of the Apostles. According to legend, James's followers placed his decapitated body in a rudderless boat that, led by divine providence, voyaged through the Mediterranean and up the Atlantic coast, to find land at Flavia (Padrón) from where the saint's body was taken by oxcart for burial at Compostela.
By the tenth century a small local cult had developed following the discovery of the Saint's body whose shrine, by the twelfth, had become of such significance that it “was firmly established as the third most important Christian pilgrimage destination” (after presumably Jerusalem and Rome). By then too, the saint's sculptural or frescoed representations had become popularly codified by his wearing a hat and cloak, slung about with a purse, holding a staff and displaying a scallop shell: nowadays his invariable symbol and in reality still to be found along the shores of Galicia.
For Kathleen Ashley and Marilyn Deegen “pilgrimage is a liminal experience” one offering “time to reflect upon deep and universal values” a metaphor for human existence “understood to be a wayfaring state.” Nonetheless all routes to Santiago, whether by sea to the Spanish coast or by land, often from Paris (the abbey Church of Saint-Denis) or Toulouse and thus eventually anyhow across the mountains of the Pyrenees, were physically demanding and often dangerous, from hostile villagers perhaps. Pilgrims might be faced by heavy rain, by beating hot sun, by swampy or desolate landscape, by perilous gorges, so it is no wonder that numbers of purpose-built hospices, some very grand such as that in León (now a parador) others much more modest, were provided for their rest and comfort by monks, wealthy individuals or confraternities.
Along their journeys too, pilgrims could turn aside to visit other shrines such as that of Sainte Foy at Conques, or travel to that of the Black Virgin at Rocamadour, or en route to venerate the statue of the crucified Christ at Burgos, all found in wondrously made churches and cathedrals – still to be visited and admired today. Invariably along the centuries legend was compounded with legend and pilgrims found solace in places associated with the Emperor Charlemagne and Roland, famously slain fighting with rearguard of his uncle's army. Music and song were essential pilgrimage companions all culminating in the joyful celebrations and rituals (still) enjoyed by pilgrims on their arrival at Compostela.
With more than 250 evocative colour illustrations, most specially taken, all accompanied by informative captions (a task in itself) and an enthusiastic and informative text, this is a book to be treasured, consulted, and quietly dwelt upon.
Philip de László Portraits. By Caroline Corbeau-Parsons. 32 pp. 16 colour illustrations and 2 black & white. National Portrait Gallery. Pb. £6.99.
This handsome little publication and the associated display at the National Portrait Gallery in London (until 5 September 2010) confirms indeed its Director's words that Philip de László was “a portrait artist of peculiar brilliance.” His astonishing skills, virtuoso technique and sympathy for his sitters are everywhere obvious. A portrait of his wife Lucy shown in half profile, her face seen fully in a mirror, is as amazing technically, as it is lovingly and tenderly painted and expressed.
In 1925, the Countess of Strathmore commissioned a portrait of her daughter Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 25 years old and the newly married Duchess of York, which when later displayed in London attracted crowds five-deep to admire the result. In the summer of the year the picture was painted, de László and his wife were received at Court by the Duke's parents King George V and Queen Mary. Such Royal recognition, such public success, belied on the one hand the artist's humble background and on the other a false accusation that in 1917 had led to his arrest as an enemy alien, his being jailed, forbidden to paint, consequent nervous collapse, and finally internment under house arrest (during which time he painted the portrait of his wife mentioned above) until his exoneration two years later.
De László was born in Budapest in 1869 the son of a tailor. His talent, determination and amazing energy led to successive apprenticeships there including at the Royal Opera House and with a society photographer and thence to studies at academies in Paris and Munich, where he fell in love with Lucy Guinness from a family of bankers who forbad the match. On his return to Budapest, the artist found his own fame and fortune with major portraits of European royalty and statesmen; he sought out Lucy who had remained unmarried, her hand was granted him and they were wed in Dublin in 1900. The couple moved from Budapest to Vienna and finally settled in London in 1907 where a successful exhibition at the Fine Art Society led to an invitation to paint King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. He kept a studio in Paris the better to meet his French as well as North and South American sitters. The following year he travelled to the United States for the first time where he painted President Theodore Roosevelt amongst others and in 1912 was ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph. Within five days of his release from detention in 1919, de László's sittings book was once again full as it continued to be until his death in 1937.
Seventy years on, so much has changed and not only socially, as to obscure the usually helpful distance of perspective. Nonetheless, something of De László's likely and enduring importance is suggested in a letter from one of his patrons, Wilfrid Ashley who in writing to thank the artist for the portrait of his wife commented: “the portraits by Van Dyck, Romney, Opie, Raeburn, Reynolds, Lely, Hoppner and Lawrence in this house will welcome so distinguished an addition to their company.”
Johan
Zoffany. Artist and Adventurer. By
Penelope Treadwell. 469 pp. Illustrated in colour throughout. Hb.
£50.00. Paul Holberton Publishing.
At
last, it seems, Zoffany has found his Boswell – in a manner of
speaking, for Penelope Treadwell's biography is not a contemporary
record, but written instead two centuries after the artist's
lifetime: 1733 - 1832. Nonetheless her work is not so much
comprehensive as exhaustive, filled with anecdotes, analysis,
suppositions and multifarious adventures, all allied to extensive
quotations from his own letters, and from others of his friends,
patrons, acquaintances and enemies. Penelope Treadwell seems to have
seen every picture, travelled to every location, delved into every
archive, followed every clue.
Which being said, in the traditions of modern biographical practice, Penelope Treadwell is nothing if not critical of Zoffany's faults: his love of money, his predisposition for extravagant living, his scandalous treatment of his wives, his bouts of disagreeableness, his restless temperament. Yet for all this, he was loved by his family and enjoyed a wide circle of friends: musicians and artists, bankers and actors among them. Zoffany's obviously attractive sense of humour sometimes spilled over into his portraits, whether delightfully, wantonly or mischievously, and the fact that it does must say a lot for his relationships with his patrons, without whose affection and support, his sometimes sublimely attractive compositions would never have found enduring life on canvas.
Zoffany was born into a family of craftsmen; his father was employed by Prince Alexander Ferdinand von Thurn und Taxis eventually rising to be court architect at the Prince's great palace in Regensburg. This background must have helped Zoffany feel at ease in the grandest of circumstances and must surely have contributed to his future social and professional successes. His childhood and youthful talents were quickly recognized and supported through workshop apprenticeships. Then in 1750, Zoffany's determination to achieve success is indicated by his decision to travel to Rome, characteristically sending his baggage on by coach from Augsburg and himself walking from there across Europe to Italy, the better to experience the landscapes and peoples in between. In Rome he worked in Adolph Raphael Meng's studio making many friends among the city's cosmopolitan population and travelling to Venice and Naples imbibing important artistic influences all the while. On returning to Germany he achieved a position as court painter for the Prince Archbishop at Ehrenbreitstein and married, unwisely perhaps and certainly in the event unhappily. Eventually with the arrival at the court of a better-known rival, Zoffany decided to travel to England in search of fame and fortune. Here, he fell in with the great actor David Garrick who commissioned several major paintings, took him into his family and introduced him to his friends which was to lead to the ultimate prize: an important series of commissions from the King and Queen.
As an artist, Zoffany raised the art of portrait painting to a new and different level through his perfection of the 'conversation piece.' This kind of painting, as the name suggests, is a unified composition made up of a series of individual portraits of several, sometimes many, persons connected by family, friendship or mutual interest. Miraculously, almost, Zoffany creates harmonious, attractive and informal scenes that pay due regard to individual personalities, at the same time suggesting palpable affections and on occasion more or less hidden tensions. His Royal patrons were so pleased with his work that on the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts he was appointed a member by the King himself.
Running short of money, Zoffany persuaded the Queen to underwrite a major commission in Florence – which was to lead to one of his greatest masterpieces: the Tribuna of the Uffizi which remains in the Royal collection but which led to his loss of any further Royal support because his injudicious choice of some whose portraits he included did not find favour. Nonetheless, during his lengthy stay in Florence, he had received important and lucrative commissions from the Imperial Court in Vienna. Displaced in England also by the rise of younger rivals, Zoffany embarked on a new enterprise, a plan to join Sir Thomas Banks and Captain Cook on their second voyage to the South Seas, but this proved abortive because the ship was overloaded by the quantity of necessaries thought vital by scientist and artist, Zoffany losing all the money he had invested in the enterprise. Nonetheless he eventually succeeded in travelling to India when he began a second materially and artistically successful career. On his return to England, Zoffany completed some stunning works inspired by the cruelties of the French Revolution. But he had has his day, other artists had once again supplanted him, but he was able to live out his last years still painting and finally achieving some kind of contentment within the bosom of his wife and family.
If you can imagine a major volume of art history written with all the verve of a novel and the picturesque relish of a diary then you can have some idea of Penelope Treadwell's achievement.
Medieval and Renaissance Art. People and Possessions. By Glyn Davies and Kirstin Kennedy. 320 pp. With 350 illustrations in colour. Hb. £40.00. V&A Publishing.
“Making sense of the past can be difficult,” remarks Kirsten Kennedy, one of the authors of this magnificent book. Her colleague Glyn Davies asks: “What do we mean by 'Europe'?” suggesting that “The term can be more slippery than it seems.” Both these comments reveal the freshness of their approach which by taking the objects, their makers and owners, as starting points, seasoning with the salt and pepper of literary and archival sources, “presents” in the words of their Chief Curator Peta Markham “a novel and informed exploration of art and culture” north and south of the Alps, “from the fall of the Roman Empire to what is arguably the establishment of modern Europe.”
Suddenly therefore much becomes clear, with the distinction between 'medieval' and 'renaissance' seen to be essentially artificial, as we introduced to the complexities of the strength of the continuity of ideas and practices, interrupted from time to time across the period by change and innovation. Another factor that becomes increasingly apparent is the extraordinary cultural diversity of Europe at the time which, nonetheless and despite its geographical extent, was united by two ideas those of “the universal Roman Empire” and “the notion of Christendom.” These can be difficult concepts to grasp in our secular and historically antediluvian age.
But reading becomes exciting as we learn about personal backgrounds, technical innovations, political and artistic rivalries and religious devotion. Consider, for example, a large hanging from the early 16th century on which the nuns who made it have embroidered their names “as an offering to God” and as an example to encourage their successors; or an earlier painting of The Virgin and Child by Carlo Crivelli who has included his name on the front as a trompe l'oeil carving in part as a “plea for his own salvation” but as a reminder too “of the superiority of paint over stone to render a representation of reality.”
From the previous century Chinese porcelain began to be desired and collected by rich and fashionable persons, none more so than the Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici who about 1575 set out to discover the formula through a special workshop built at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Neither he nor his potters were successful but they did manage to create a soft-paste porcelain with blue and white decoration on a white ground, examples of which are as immensely rare as they would have been considered the height of the luxury at the time.
These days we pay great regard to “signatures” which had varying purposes in the past: they might have been added at the behest of a competitive-minded patron anxious to be seen to be associated with a notable artist or maker; as a guarantee of authenticity; as a requirement for professional identification; as a way of trumpeting expertise; or simply to acknowledge and confirm the “author” whether an individual patron or perhaps the head of a workshop.
Bearing in mind that the authors of this book are working on a kind of palimpsest that is not only geographically very wide, with the Mediterranean at its heart, but one that historically ranges from the proclamation of Constantine as the first Christian Emperor, to the collapse of Byzantium and the rise of Protestant nationalism, it is important to take account of “the role of the arts as a reflection of God's creation.” Furthermore, with the primary purpose of an object of art being then to express a “social message” about its owner, the inherent value of the material used was secondary to what the object demonstrated about the learning and technical skills of its maker, qualities requiring equivalent admiration on the part of a similarly cultured viewer.
Perforce, as the majority of the very fine illustrations prove, most of what remains to us was the province of the wealthy in materials to match, but among the many “telling fragments of past life” a little wooden trencher, or bowl, made for use by the “less important members” attending courtly meals has somehow survived, as has the information that the lowly could expect to receive little or no meat. Things could be different in England where the national love for silver not only “baffled” the Venetian ambassador whose wealthy compatriots proclaimed their status through the luxury of their garments, but led a German visitor in 1584 to remark that “he must be a poor peasant indeed who does not possess silver-gilt salt cellars, silver cups and spoons.”
This fabulous book's sub-title “people and possessions” immediately confirms its contents as fresh and original; its authors were closely involved with the making of the new and universally acclaimed Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, which it is published to complement. The Museum's Director Mark Jones confirms the purpose of it all in the choice of illustration for his Foreword: a piece of 15th century English stained glass, a little roundel with the ancient Gospel theme of “Giving drink to the thirsty.”
Titian,
Tintoretto, Veronese. Rivals
in Renaissance Venice. By
Frederick Ilchman. 304 pp. With 160 colour and 10 duotone
illustrations. Hb. £40.00. Lund Humphries.
Even
for the casual tourist to Venice, by turns captivated and bewildered
by the interplay of streets, canals and buildings, the city's unique
public array of paintings in churches, palaces, or corporate
institutions, marvel the eye. This very beautiful book reveals
another and so far little considered aspect of Venetian life in the
first half of the 16th century, the rivalry between three great
artists: Titian and his younger contemporaries, Tintoretto and
Veronese. That there was such rivalry seems, on reflection, to have
been inevitable but the fact and its consequences have no so far been
studied before – which provides this volume with more than a
frisson of excitement for the non-specialist, non-scholarly reader.
At that time Venice was at the height of its international economic power, a “crossroads of materials, culture and human populations” encompassing an urban, competitive energy that coursed through its peoples affecting themselves and everything about them – including a rapidly growing interest in art and artists. In line with the Venetian concept of governance, there was no monarchical or aristocratic court to set the pace or mark good taste, instead there was an interconnected combination of “hierarchies” of individuals that acted as patrons: nobles, followed by merchants, bureaucrats and the like, with a “lower tier” comprising small shopkeepers and artisans. A second source of patronage was corporate, whether by lay confraternities or by those charged with the decoration of government buildings. Somehow and in a uniquely Venetian way these various committees were able to exercise patronage on a scale and of a quality whose results still astound.
One of the purposes of this book is to set forth how Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese responded to each other and to the challenges of this hectic Venetian milieu, responding in ways that reflected not only their respective personalities but their individual business acumens. Somehow, collectively, these three created what we now recognize as the Venetian style: loose technique, rich colouring and often sensual subject matter. Moreover, as Frederick Ilchman points out, they created a contemporary art works that in their time were seen as “experimental, bold, even shocking.” It is only through time's perspective that we think of them today as the “ultimate old masters.”
Not the least of the values of the essays by Mr Ilchman and his colleagues are their sudden illuminations. How, for instance, each of the artists made often sublime use of the opportunities presented by working in the new medium of oil on canvas supports, rather than with egg tempera on wood panel; for larger commissions they also eschewed fresco as too fragile for the damp Venetian climate. In our aggressively secular age, we need to be reminded too that Christian belief “permeated virtually every sphere of Venetian Renaissance existence.” Furthermore, it was the demands and social circumstances of Venice that gave rise to portraiture “as an independent subject.”
It was this overall competitive climate in Venice that drove patrons to want to be seen to be associated with celebrated artists, famous also for their individual skills. Later, as patronage gave way to collecting and the associated business of art dealing, buyers felt driven to acquire “names” before quality, so encouraging the production of more and more copies, only some of which were authorised workshop replicas. The consequences of all this continuing to confuse and seduce collectors and scholars today.
Nonetheless, “since their creation, the paintings of Titian, Tinteretto and Veronese, have been widely praised, coveted and collected.” None more so than Titian, famous not only for his “representation of female beauty” but for his unique empathy with his human subjects, whether sacred or profane. This handsome volume forms the catalogue of an exhibition jointly organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Its many very fine illustrations including a number of seductive details teasingly and rather mysteriously without captions.
Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs. By John Falconer and Louise Hide. 176 pp. Illustrated throughout. Pb. £15.95. The British Library.
It is such a relief to be presented with this very attractive book which is in itself a compendium of very fine photographs, yet neither claims to be a definitive history nor a collection of art masterpieces. In fact this book in a sense is both of these for, as well as including very useful historical and technical information, it begins with a selection from the archives of William Fox Talbot and concludes with another from the Kodak archive – from that is one of the inventors of photography in the late 1830s down to the company that popularised the medium all of fifty years later.
If it's masterpieces you are looking for, then they are here aplenty. One example might be the brooding figure of a country labourer, scythe on shoulder, walking home from work, photographed by Peter Henry Emmerson about 1886. Another, a picturesquely composed view of the corner of an Indian hill lake, Naini Tal, photographed by Samuel Bourne about 1867. And a third, a twilight scene showing horse cabs waiting in Trafalgar Square taken by an unknown photographer about 1907.
The authors make no imperious claims about the British Library's collection which forms the basis of this book and the exhibition there that it accompanies (until 7 March 2010). Instead they are at pains to point out that the collection was acquired more as a by-product of the British Museum's collecting policies rather than with a deliberate aim to collect the medium. Moreover many of the photographs were (and are) illustrations for important books acquired for their documentary or scientific value which remain significant: none of which diminishes their present-day fascination for ourselves.
Here are portraits of celebrities such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw and Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India with his wife, with others of different humanitarian or anthropological interest. In addition there are scenes from many corners of the globe including Europe as well as the Middle and Far East. Photographic records of works of art include those made for the Louvre in Paris and the Royal Armoury in Madrid, there are others of great construction projects such as the London underground railway and the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and of the aftermath of war in the United States and France. Images of urban buildings and streets, sometimes including their inhabitants, are invariably touching and all long gone, all anyhow filtered through the unreality of a photographer's lens. Nonetheless it is heartening as well as salutary to learn that the photographs taken by Charles Le Morvan for a great Atlas of the Moon published in Paris between 1896 and 1910 “remained the definitive work for more than half a century.”
Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize 2009. Introduction by Stuart Maconie and interviews by Richard McClure. 72 pp. Illustrated in colour throughout. Pb. £12.99. National Portrait Gallery.
When last year I saw the exhibition of work for the first Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London, I was startled and enthralled by the range and integrity of the portraits on view: collectively an unusually refreshing display. I clearly remember too offering my private respects to the judges for their work, which must have been mighty, and to the sponsors for supporting such a quietly important project. Important because this was an international competition open to both professional and amateur photographers, aiming also to “cultivate new talent. The selected results were neither technically flashy nor painfully self-indulgent and, moreover, without a portrait of a celebrity anywhere in sight.
This year's exhibition is equally fine. The judges were faced with more than 6,300 submissions from 2,452 photographers, numbers that speak for themselves, as do the remarks of the Gallery's Director Sandy Nairne: “Judges do not always agree... Little is gained by compromise, but there are many ways to reach a consensus – to produce the strongest set of images and select the most talented winners.” These wise and fruitful observations must explain why the exhibition (in London until 14 February after which it tours) of a selection of 60 portraits is both so attractive and so telling. Tim Eyles, from the sponsors, sums it all up by noting that “The 2009 exhibition celebrates the resilience shown by so many people, even when they are at their most fragile.”
This slim volume is in effect a beautifully produced “souvenir” of the 2009 Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize. As well as reproducing the prize-winning and all other images selected for exhibition, it offers comments by the judges, a delightful introduction by Stuart Maconie and fascinating interviews with the prize-winners by Richard McClure. If nothing else the whole proves that the art of photographic portraiture across the world not only thrives but blossoms.
For the record: Paul Floyd Blake was the winner of the First Prize; Vanessa Winship, the Second; Michal Chelbin, the Third; Mirjana Vrbaski, the Fourth. Ali Lomas was the winner of the Godfrey Argent Award for an exhibitor aged between 18 and 25; she also received the inaugural ELLE commission to shoot a story for the magazine.
The Darker Side of Light.
Arts of Privacy, 1850 – 1900. By
Peter Parshall with
contributions by S. Hollis Clayson, Christiane Hertel and Nicholas
Penny. 192 pp. With 90 illustrations in colour. Hb. £35.00. National
Gallery of Art, Washington in association with Lund Humphries.
This
book is a treasure. Ostensibly it is concerned with a period of art
universally associated with impressionism and post-impressionism,
subjects however it eschews, but far more importantly its authors
dwell on the rarely considered, more private, pleasures associated
with the study and enjoyment of prints: etchings and lithographs -
and small sculptures and medals: particularly in bronze. Furthermore,
all of these share through the very means of their making, the
likelihood of there being similar, replicated examples so bringing to
their owners, remarks Peter Parshall, a peculiar sense of community
“rooted in the mutual possession of an object.” Which is not to
deny collectors the contrarily mutual desire to hunt for and possess
rare or unique examples.
In the 19th century, “The habit of intimate collecting was pronounced among the European bourgeoisie, which cultivated an appreciation for this shadowed world and the quiet of a time and place set aside for it.” That is one point, quite another, continues Mr Parshall, is “the post-romantic world” of Darwin, Marx and Freud “in which the human condition came to be defined in material terms.” In other words, the idea of an overarching and optimistic spiritual life gave way to more mundane elements represented by psychology, society and politics, and with these rampant human uncertainty in the face of the darkness of death - without hope of resurrection.
This provoking analysis aside, Peter Parshall also discusses the origins and progress of the “etching revival” in Europe and the United States during the latter part of the 19th century which was led by artists, critics and publishers, as much to encourage the purchase of original works of art as to “elevate public taste.” One consequence, unforeseen perhaps, was the debate, that continues to this day, about what in fact constitutes an original print: in itself seen as offering “a means of direct communication with the artist.”
As the inclination to collect prints spread through the middle classes so, as night follows day, did writers and manual-makers publish advice and peremptory counsel on what constituted good taste in the domestic arena: how and where pictures should be hung, arranged and generally appreciated. Reflecting the time, there was a gender-distinction in that “men were seen to collect objects, whereas women surrounded themselves with them.”
Peter Parshall's three colleagues have specialised interests. S. Hollis Clayson discusses the consequences of the discovery of the interior as a domestic ideal “the paradoxical modern anchor of both personal well-being and discontent,” illustrating her essay with prints by Whistler, Degas and Tissot. Christiane Hertel investigates the complex ideas of privacy through the medium of disturbing prints by Max Klinger and Käthe Kollwitz. Finally, Nicholas Penny dwells at on the private erotic possibilities presented by bronze statuettes derived from religious subjects; then on carved and cast secular relics, and the re-emergence of low relief sculptures; his illustrations include works by Alfred Gilbert, Rodin and Dalou.
This
'onlie begetter' of this handsomely produced volume of many and
various reflections is Peter Parshall, Curator of Old Master Prints
at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a specialist in the
Renaissance when, as he says, the interest in the collecting and
organization of prints (and medals) first became apparent and indeed
possible. It is a rare scholar who praises the help and expertise of
“better-versed colleagues” having first admitted that for himself
“the requirement for remedial learning has been unremitting.” On
the evidence of this book also, Peter Parshall himself represents
someone who understands “that curiosity [is] properly motivated not
by an object but by what can be learned from it.”
The
associated exhibition, The
Darker Side of Light,
opened
first at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles;
presently it is at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1
October 2009 – 18 January 2010; thereafter at the Smart Museum,
University of Chicago, 11 February – 10 June 2010.
Chinese Ceramics.
By Stacey Pierson. 200
pp. With 200 illustrations in colour. Hb. £30.00. V&A
Publishing.
The
customary use of the word “china” for domestic ceramics reflects
a careless use of the word as a portmanteau description as well as
unconscious recognition of China as the origin and inspiration for
much of the design and decoration of manufactured wares still in
daily use - or individually admired.
Which being admitted, Stacey Pierson's book represents a revolution in its historical approach. Customarily, Chinese ceramics have been studied in ways devised by scholars and connoisseurs in thrall to the attractions of individual wares, developing increasingly sophisticated notions that have seamlessly led to the designation of some objects as 'works of art' these days individually worth rather more than a millionaire king's ransom. Whereas, as Ms Pierson explains, these same objects “were made by many people on an assembly line” their transformation into 'works of art' displacing “their true origins as designed products.” Many and diverse were the factories in China, generally near a town and certainly within easy reach of the necessary basic materials, producing recognizable types of ware which when seen to be successful were copied elsewhere. This is one of a number of problems associated either with miss-identifications, or “fakes” deliberate or otherwise, sometimes centuries old. The most famous centre for making ceramics especially porcelain were the factories at Jingdezhen in south-east China, where multitudes of workers were employed and which has “recently celebrated its thousand-year anniversary.” Its national importance was recognized in the 1980s by its government designation as “one of China's historical and cultural cities.”
Given therefore “the industrial nature of ceramic production in China” Stacey Pierson has decided on a different and much more compelling historical strategy offering the opportunity for agreeable “understanding and appreciation of Chinese ceramics.” Her first chapter is concerned with production, from the basic potter's wheel to the modular techniques used to make the famous 'Terracotta army,' on to glazed stonewares, and the discovery and decoration of porcelain. Aesthetics is a tricky subject, instead Ms Pierson has chosen to deal with 'design and style' using an historical (and anthropological) approach that takes account of the many archaeological discoveries that have revealed the diversity and complexity of many early wares unknown to, or not valued by, past connoisseurs, Chinese or otherwise. Then and perhaps closer to home, Stacey Pierson considers the uses of many types of ceramics used in daily living – eating, drinking and cooking; as gifts; for interior decoration; for ceremonial use; and in death as burial objects.
The range and extent of China's export trade in ceramics is apparent in the number of shipwrecks containing thousands and thousands of items designed and destined for Japan, Malaysia, the Near East and Europe. Furthermore these same shipwrecks confirm the antiquity of this seaborne trade as well as the widespread admiration for blue and white wares in particular: which is the subject of a self-contained section. There are others of these useful synopses include one on the vessels used by the Chinese for consuming wine and for drinking tea and another devoted to personal and state rituals associated with various belief systems: Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Which brings the reader to one of the attractions of Stacey Pierson's elegantly designed book: the continuation of its theme into the wares made in the Post-Imperial years of the early 20th century and on into the aftermath of the Communist revolution with its 'propaganda' pieces. In recent years new freedoms have been expressed through varieties of studio wares and by artist decorators, some at work outside China. How these latter are to be regarded in terms of their 'Chineseness' is not so much the point perhaps, as the fact that they represent another form of extra-territorial Chinese influence on the making of ceramics. Another form of export, in fact? Don't miss a witty visual irony: the first illustration in the book shows a magnificent Neolithic earthenware jar with painted decoration dating from 2600 - 2300 BC; and the last a pot of similar shape and size by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: Neolithic Culture Pot with Coca Cola Logo, 1997 – 2007.
Stacey Pierson's new book is published to coincide with the opening of the new and finely redesigned Ceramics Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as has European Ceramics. By Robin Hildyard. (144 pp. With 207 illustrations in colour. Pb. £19.99. V&A Publishing.) First published in 1999, its author has recently retired as a Senior Curator in the Ceramics and Glass Department at the V&A which he joined in 1968. It is a joy to read, to look at and to possess: there can be no better or wiser introduction to the subject.
Ancient American Art In Detail. By Colin McEwan. 144 pp. With 150 illustrations in colour. Hb. £14.99. The British Museum Press.
“One of the threads running through this book,” writes Colin McEwan, “is the relationship between an invisible world – the timeless and ever-present spirit realm – and the visible world, where the creative forces that drive the universe find material expression in space and time.” In the midst of the secular materialism that drives so many today these are unfashionable sentiments, but without an understanding of them appreciation of ancient American art is well nigh impossible. Furthermore, while we owe the existence of much that survives to the interest of past collectors, and their classification first to those who saw these objects as examples of 'primitive art' and then to art historians trained in Western ideas of aesthetic worth, it is only in recent times that attempts have been made to properly view, value and understand “the works of indigenous traditions.”
Such sensitive awareness is manifest throughout Colin McEwan's book, captions and introductory texts alike, offering insights that add immeasurably to the pleasure of studying the many fine illustrations – all of objects in the British Museum's collection. Including a marvellous Aztec turquoise-decorated double-headed serpent, works in gold, stone sculptures, painted ceramics, carvings in wood, rare textiles and painted deerskins among them. Some especially notable examples might include an Iroquois pipe that channelled “spirit energies made visible in the curling wreaths of tobacco smoke;” a fiercely male Taino wood sculpture that stands “in a rigid frontal pose of hallucinogenic possession;” and an Inca cotton khipu whose intricate series of knotted and coloured cords encompassed the essential records and accounts needed by imperial bureaucrats.
The very name 'America' derives of course from the first European contacts in the 16th century and takes no account either of the prehistoric origins of its many native peoples, or of the colossal dimensions of a continent that stretches from the Arctic to the near Antarctic and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. For these reasons alone one must be in awe of Mr McEwan's purpose let alone admire the success with which he has accomplished it.
www.artnewsletter.com
August/September
2010