Responding to history
Mark Glazebrook
Sense And Sensibility: Artists Take On Art History Transition, 110a Lauriston Road, E9, Friday to Sunday, 12 to 6, teL 07941 208566, until 1 June Merlin James Andrew Mummery Gallery, 62 Compton Street, Ed, until 7 June John Hovland Beaux Arts, 22 Cork Street, Wl, until 7 June Jasper Johns: Prints 1987-2001 Gagosian Gallery, 8 Heddon Street, WI, until 7 June
Looking through Time Out, which can he culpably capricious about which exhibitions it lists, I came across a show with an intriguing title. The gallery, which opened last October, is called Transition and is next to the wine merchant Threshers, in a leafy London village near Victoria Park, Hackney, where many artists live.
Transition, which rather sensibly is open at weekends only, is a space which has been given temporarily to Cathy Lomax, the painter. With a light-hearted and witty show curated by Paul Murphy, the photographer and video artist, the gallery makes up in charm and intelligent presentation for what it lacks in size. Naturally, it's a little less sensational than the trend-setting Sensation at the Royal Academy but in its own small way the show is more intelligible than was a subsequent Tate Britain theme exhibition of three years ago called, somewhat meaninglessly, Intelligence.
The portentous title of the impish little show under discussion is Sense And Sensibility: Artists Take On Art History. The work of 30 artists is shown. They have all been invited to make a small work in response to an aspect of art history. Four of the artists, including the curator, show videos. Since these videos are shown in sequence on one small television in the corner of the room they do not frighten the photographs or the paintings, some of which are both legible and good. Pauline Thomas presents 'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog' after the painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Two days before seeing this video I had been in a whole room of Friedrichs in Dresden, near beautiful and romantic Saxon Switzerland which so inspired the German master, and I can therefore report with authority that Pauline Thomas has got it absolutely right — Friedrich's elusive, understated, piercingly simple spirit, that is. Her camera was held still, thereby letting the boulders, the clouds and sea do the work.
On the other hand, Nicky Magliulo's quite funny video 'Under My Thumb: The Stones, My Mum & Russell Hobbs', described optimistically as 'a quiet, fugitive intervention into mid-Sixties art and rock' has the most tenuous of art-historical connections. It begins with the artist's mother on the telephone: she has turned down a date with Mick Jagger, for some reason.
Certain works in this show refer to more than one artist from the past. In a beautifully painted oil on copper self-portrait of a crying lady, Nadia Hebson 'takes on" Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Mernling and an unspecified crying lady at the base of a deposition in the Prado. Nadia Hebson is a painter to watch. 'The Gestation of Venus' by Arabella Lee evokes Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus'. Venus has yet to emerge so we see only the shell at the bottom of an actual wood and glass box. The box calls to mind the magical Joseph Cornell. As the artist explains: 'She eventually rose out of the sea because Cronos's testicles were dropped into it by his son Zeus.'
Other artists 'referenced' as the homemade catalogue puts it include Robert Smithson, Van Gogh, Marcus Harvey, Bernini, Wayne Thiebaud and Jackson Pollock. Styles of art from Lascaux cave painting to 20th-century minimalism are engaged. Oily Beck has contributed 'Mystical Density Fibres', a perfect and modestly priced version of that 'mysterious icon of modern art', the monochrome painting. In Beck's version even the paint (but not the varnish) has been subtracted. Clement Greenberg comes in for a mild roasting from Isha Bohling for negating the word 'beauty' and various aspects of Modernism are politely questioned or poked fun at. Daedalus, alias Paul Lewis, contributes a 'Sense and Sensibility Smorgasbord' which aims, apparently, to constitute a 'complex critique of 20th-century art history'.
Now that so much art history is available, all artists have to take it on in one way or another. Merlin James is showing at the Andrew Mummery Gallery. He admires French painters such as Poussin, Derain and Helion. His unusual paintings, an extraordinary combination of sophistication and naivety, are an acquired taste. His writing on art less so. As a painter/critic he is well worth paying attention to.
John Hoyland's first great inspiration was American Abstract-Expressionism. At Beaux Arts, his large recent works are superbly controlled explosions of vivid colour and paint. He is an action painter whose vitality has increased, if anything, with his mastery of the medium over the last 40 years.
The historical importance of Jasper Johns lies in the nature of his influential revolt against Abstract-Expressionism. There is a Jasper Johns print show at Gagosian Gallery. This is quite simply a must for anyone interested in graphic art.
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