Seven Days in the Art World

I was roaming the Brotherton Library, picking up some books that I needed for my essay and wondering why all the others that I didn’t have to read looked so much more interesting, when I made (yet another) New Year’s Resolution. So as well as doing more interesting and unusual things with my friends, swimming more often, and eating less crisps, I’m going to try and make the most of having access to the university libraries and actually take home and read some of the random books that catch my eye.

I’ve made a good start, with Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. I’d seen this book before in gallery gift shops and thought it looked interesting, so when I spotted it in the library I thought I’d give it a go. Thornton describes it as an ethnological survey into the world of art – which almost put me off having spent the last goodness knows how long working on an essay all about ethnology in museums. Ethnographers traditionally study geopraphically distant, exotic cultures, so I was interested to see how a study of a specific section of western society would work.

Basically, the book is a fascinating insight into the lives of collectors, dealers, curators and artists. Thornton has chosen seven aspects of the Art World and dedicated a chapter to each. It’s like getting the chance to follow these people around, a host of unusual characters from the mega-rich collectors at a Christie’s auction, to the artists nominated for the 2006 Turner Prize, unsure about what the prize will do for their career. Basically, through Thornton’s research, interviews and ‘participant observation’ – getting involved with the art world herself, writing for Artforum and attending auctions, ‘crits’, prizegivings and the Venice Biennale, you as the reader get to enter into the slightly bizarre world of art. Whether you have a strong interest in art or not, it is the people who are really interesting in this book and the insight into the contrasting cultures of those who buy, sell and display art, and that of the artists themselves.

Other Trees, Other Hockeys. (and one really big Hockney painting of loads of massive trees!)

I was back at Cartwright Hall today, for the training to be a volunteer tour guide. Hockey’s Bigger Trees Near Warter arrives next week and in conjunction with this, the gallery are running two short tours, Other Hockneys and Other Trees. And a bunch of volunteers, including myself, are going to be your lovely tour guides!

We all met this afternoon to meet each other and be taken on the tours by Claire, the Learning and Outreach Officer for Bradford Museums and Galleries. First we went upstairs to the Connect galleries, which house a really diverse and really interesting collection of artworks, all with some connection to Bradford and its people. There are five ‘stops’ on the Other Hockneys tour, taking in a selection of his work from throughout his career showing his different ways of working and his mastery of many different mediums. Downstairs, past the main gallery where Bigger Trees Near Warter will be in pride of place, is the temporary exhibition Other Trees, where the second tour takes place. This is a selection of works, (painted, carved, weaved and stitched) from the collections of Bradford Museums and Galleries, some of which haven’t been displayed for years. Unsurprisingly, all of the works in this gallery are of, or inspired by, trees. There are some really lovely things in there, and a little mystery in the shape of two carved columns. These columns were donated anonymously, and no-one knows who made them or where they came from. So come along and have a look – we want to know if any Bradfordians  recognise the columns and can tell us their story! We also want to hear from anyone who knows Hockney himself, or has an interesting tale to tell about the artist or his works, and we’ll weave these into our tours as the weeks go on. Hopefully, you can tell us some things, that then we can tell everybody else!

The Other Trees and Other Hockneys tours are running every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, at half past two and three o clock, from next weekend until the end of November. Bigger Trees Near Warter is in residence at Cartwright from 1^st October to 4^th March, and the Other Trees exhibition is on until 26^th February. Come along and see us – and hopefully I’ll have done all my homework and learned all about Hockey and trees by then!

http://www.bradfordmuseums.org/venues/cartwrighthall/index.php

Castle Howard

On Saturday I went on a trip to Castle Howard, with James, who is a good companion for a day out as he both drives and takes photos (two things I am not very good at). I’d been wanting to go to Castle Howard for a while, because it’s mentioned several times in Bill Bryson’s Home, which I read a couple of months ago and really enjoyed. Bryson talked about the landscaped gardens, the follies in the grounds and of course the architecture of the house itself and the famous dome.  And although I had a nice day out, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

The building is stunning, and the grounds were lovely for a autumnal walk (whilst sneakily eating an apple from the kitchen garden). There was an interesting exhibition about the re-building of a large proportion of the house, including the dome, after a massive fire in 1940. I particularly loved the description of Scarborough schoolgirls, evacuated to Castle Howard during the war, handing books, carpets and paintings out through the windows to save them from the flames. Some of the rooms were never fully restored, at least until first Granada TV and then later BBC films came calling, to film their respective versions of Brideshead Revisited.  The film companies paid to have these interiors fully kitted out in with every period detail – that is every detail that would be visible on camera. The ceilings are exposed, and distinctly modern, while the murals on the walls were painted to suit the tastes of the Catholic (and fictional) Marchmain family, not the Howards.

In contrast to this, the dome, which floats majestically above the main hall of the house, was recreated as to be all but indistinguishable from the original, to the untrained eye. A Canadian artist was commissioned to create an exact copy of Pellegrini’s The Fall of Phaeton which had adorned the underside of the dome – in any other context he would be a forger, but here he is seen as a conservator. The Hall is stunning, but once you become away that it is not ‘real’, not the original eighteenth century building and artworks, it starts to feel a bit strange. Throughout history these huge country houses have been adapted and updated by succeeding generations, but by the 1960s when the dome was rebuilt, this house was not updated in a modern style, but reproduced exactly as it was in its golden age. The stately home was no longer, despite the smattering of framed family snapshots that are around today, a home in the real sense of the world. It was not financially viable, in the post war period, for one family to live here, funding a grand lifestyle off of their land and their name. The home had become a historical monument, and it would have been considered sacrilege to add a 1960s extension instead of restoring the dome.

Today, the house is basically a museum, but one that constantly gives the impression of trying very hard not to be a museum. There is no information on the rooms, their functions, or the people who lived there. The hundreds of artworks are unlabelled, which is frustrating and makes them quite boring, actually, when you don’t know who painted them, who sat for them, which generation Howards collected them and why. Perhaps if I hadn’t been too cheap to buy a guidebook my visit would have been more informative and interesting, but for £13 for an adult ticket I don’t think a few labels on the paintings is too much to ask!

Getting hammered at Cartwright Hall

I was at Cartwright Hall in Bradford today, for a meeting about being a tour guide for the giant Hockney work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which is soon to be installed in pride of place on the ground floor. But it’s not there yet, and while the gallery staff are busy preparing for the paintings arrival (it’s a bit of a diva apparently and demands its own micro climate!) the main exhibition space downstairs is screened off. But, if you go inside and turn right you’ll find an exhibition that is very different, and I think incredibly beautiful.

Marcus Levine’s ‘Hammered’ is a collection of his nail sculptures. This sounds a bit industrial and dull, but in fact they are lovely. The majority of the pieces are pictures, but instead of using a more traditional medium Levine creates his art by hammering nails into a plain white background, creating images of the human body, a rose, ballet shoes and a cat! Others are more abstract, and I was fascinated with how a pattern made using something as proverbially hard as nails could look so ethereal, as though it could be blown away as easily as a dandelion clock. These sculptures beg you to run your fingers across them, which is welcomed by the gallery and the artist. I almost expected the brow and lashes of ‘The Eye of the Artist’ to be soft to stroke,  but of course when you get up close the nails revert to being individual pieces of hard metal, cold to the touch.

The level of detail that Levine creates is stunning, in ‘Petra, Study 2’ the woman’s hair cascades down in distinct waves, and her spine and ribs are delicately highlighted by the nails themselves and the shadows they cast. My personal favourite in the exhibition was ‘Tamas, Study 3’, a gorgeous, strong, male nude depicted using 15,100 separate nails.  The contrast between the smooth curves of the human body and the rigid spikes of the nails used to create the picture is really striking – Levine seems to revel in this contrast, choosing to show soft, delicate subjects such as a rose, and a pair of ballet shoes.

Levine’s sculptures would be works of art if they were simply sketched in pencil or charcoal, but the added dimension and tactility that the use of nails gives them lifts them off the page, both literally and figuratively!

You can see Levine in action at www.youtube.com/user/levineArt , and keep up to date with what’s going on at Cartwright Hall at www.bradfordmuseums.org .