Artistic harmony Andrew Lambirth Georges de la Tour: Master of
Candlelight; The Shadow Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until 9 September If you are planning a holiday visit to Shakespeare country and fancy a change of mood and visual pace from the usual round of sightseeing and theatre-going, Compton Verney is a splendid alternative destination. Besides the remarkable permanent collections of paintings, Chinese bronzes and English folk art, there is a programme of changing exhibitions which make something of a virtue out of contrasting the historic with the contemporary. Thus an older master will be shown side by side with a modern (a previous grouping was the sculptor Messerschmidt with Van Gogh and Francis Bacon) in order to strike new resonances from each by this unexpected juxtaposition. Currently, the pairing is the French classical painter Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) with a mixed show of international artists, mostly working in film and photography, here dealing with the subject of the shadow. This combination works surprisingly well.
John Berger, in a fascinating essay on Georges de la Tour in his book About Looking (1980), concludes thus: 'The formal aesthetic perfection to which La Tour aspired was his special solution to a religious and social problem about, precisely, the meaning of other men: a problem which, in its own terms, he found insoluble.' Berger sees La Tour's work as attempting to come to terms with the loss of total religious faith consequent on the birth of scientific enquiry at the end of the Middle Ages, and, in effect, his attempt to imitate God by creating an artistic harmony of his own. But as Berger points out, 'Before the world he was helpless except as a maker of pictures. The abstract formality of La Tour was consolation for a moral defeat.' He couldn't answer his own questions, so he retreated from direct engagement with his subjects. Perhaps this is why his paintings of people are so static, as if they depict still life or statues, not human beings. They are seen at one remove, not depicted from experience.
Equally distanced are the figures in the etchings of his contemporary Callot which intersperse the paintings in this exhibition. Although the subject of these prints is 'The Miseries and Misfortunes of War' (c.1633), and they are based firmly enough on the realities of the Thirty Years War, Callot suffers badly when we make the inevitable comparison with Goya's 'Disasters of War' etchings. Callot's figures are spiky marionettes, more like posed courtiers than soldiers in their ragged elegance. There is none of the uncompromising immediacy or toughness of Goya. Similarly, although La Tour may have avoided all traces of Baroque rhetoric, his clarity and calmness at times verge on the hollow and inexpressive.
This is a small display, containing only four paintings by La Tour and one by his son Etienne but, extraordinarily enough, it is the first monographic show of the artist in this country. (The last La Tour exhibition I saw was in 1997 at the Grand Pal ais in Paris, where the curators delighted in offering the visitor many versions of the same subjects for comparison. It was not very elucidating.) This show concentrates on figures seen by candlelight done in the artist's late period, and painted with an unusual palette — as curator Christopher Wright notes — of vermilion in conjunction with lilac and bottle green. La Tour was very successful in his lifetime but after his death went through an almost total eclipse of reputation for more than 200 years. Wright blames this in part on the art critics, who ignored his work. He was rediscovered in the 20th century, but even then was rather dismissed by the likes of Kenneth Clark and Anthony Blunt as 'provincial'. Perhaps the pendulum has now swung too far the other way. Apart from 'St Jerome Reading', from the Royal Collection, which is a powerful human statement, I find the paintings rather wooden, more about light effects than life.
It's perhaps the lighting, theatrical and even filmic, which makes La Tour's paintings look a bit modern. Certainly it is this which offers the thematic link with The Shadow, an exhibition devised and organised in Italy by the Italian academic Lea Vergine, and previously shown in Siena and Nuoro. If normally you have very little interest in visiting an exhibition of video and installation art, but are lured to the building in which one is mounted by an exhibition of work you really do like, then you might just be tempted to take a look and test out your cherished preconceptions. The Shadow is well worth a visit, even for those most hardened in their animosity to contemporary art. And this is partly because the subject is so richly suggestive and partly because the work has been selected with sensitivity and flair.
In the first room is an emotive piece by the French artist Christian Boltanksi, consisting simply of little copper figures, skeletons really, their shadows flickering in candlelight. It's gentle and evocative, not menacing in any way despite the aura of magic or ancient ritual. In the second room is a video by Fiona Tan which focuses on the pavement shadows, or reflections, of people walking or cycling along a road. The upside-down-ness of it is beguiling rather than especially disorientating. Laurie Anderson's amusing DVD projection on a tiny statuette is rendered mesmeric by that alluring voice of hers (forever famous from her hit record '0 Superman'), as she recounts in inimitable deadpan a visit to the shrink. In room 4, the American video artist Gary Hill makes a challenging play with words and images.
In room 6, the Albanian Ann i Sala goes in for what looks suspiciously like crab-baiting in North Carolina. And a rotating brass lantern in room 9, `Misbah' by Mona Hatoum, plays on the dual notion of light that not only comforts but also brings frequently uncomfortable illumination. These are just a few of the attractions to a show which seeks to explain (or at least relate) some of the psychological and symbolic meanings attached to the shadow.
Taken together with La Tour's paintings, there is much material here for philosophical and metaphysical speculation, as well as good old entertainment value.
Previous page
