Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art, The Tate Modern

Kazimir Malevich (1879- 1935) needs no formal introduction.  We know him best for playing a key role in the invention of Russian Suprematism, which was a visual sort of language that represents itself in abstract colours and a variety of bizarre geometric shapes.  His most famous work is of course, Black Square, which has also quickly become one of the leitmotifs of the modern art period.  Given the period to which Malevich would live and work in, the age of Tsarist Russian, it is not surprising that he was able to fill his piece with conceptual ideals and thus denote bring meaning to Art.

The exhibition at the Tate brings together an International collection of his work from Europe, Russia and America.  It is surprisingly the first retrospective to be staged on his work alone in thirty years, and the first time such a retrospective takes place in the UK.  It is clear that Malevich deserves this status, despite the somewhat amateur style of his early artistic career that included paintings of Russian landscapes and religious scenes.

This was to be merely a blip in his career, and one that would eventually lead him to abstraction, before returning to figurative painting towards later life.  The beauty of the exhibition can be seen in the way it tells spectators a story.  This story is not simply about revolutionary practice, but it is one that also warns us of the potentials art possesses for total power and control.  The exhibition brings together a vast collection of painting, drawings, theatre and sculpture, and highlights the number of artistic routes Malevich would take during his life, some more naïve, and others fully progressive.

The curation of the Malevich pieces was simply stunning.  It provided a visual aid that enhanced the story of the exhibition.  The exhibition is both chronological and thematic and this works to tell the artists compelling history in three precise stages.  The first is Malevich’s working years prior to Black Square, the second focuses on abstraction, and the final attempts reconciliation between Suprematism and Figuration.  It is as if in his final years, he was trying to search for a balance that linked the two most important phases of his artistic life together.

The second phase that focuses on abstraction is a clear winner, despite slight curatorial criticisms in terms of Black Square.  Whilst displaying Black Square in solitude in a dark room, was a tactical move since it allows it to stand as a spotlight and beacon, the mood is slightly ruined by a video of Victory over the Sun that is playing (blasting) in the same room.  Whilst this opera was an important influence on Black Square, the general feeling appears to be one that promotes silence in order for concentration and reflection.  Given that it is his most important and iconoclastic gesture, you would have thought that more care and thought would go into the final touches of its display.

‘Iconic and ‘Master’ are words that seem to be thrown around quite a lot in terms of Modern Art.  This exhibition however secures Malevich’s iconic status as an artist who was almost singlehandedly able to herald the start of a new culture.  This culture would disrupt the old order through denoting a new way of seeing things, and would thus act as a point of reference and fascination for a generation of artists that still continues to exist today.  It is as powerful as it is emotional, and requires spectators to look deeper to find the inner meaning and messages behind his pieces.  The exhibition is priced at £14.50 (with 50% off for those with an Art Funds pass) and runs till the 26^th October. 

Compounding the Complexity of Time: Smilijan Radić and the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion

Every year since the turn of the millennium, the Serpentine Gallery (based in Kensington Gardens) commissions an international architect to design a pavilion on their lawn. Not only does the pavilion create a rare display of contemporary architecture in practice, but it also entertains an exclusive programme of talks, party’s and film screenings. The temporary structure is without doubt, the most ambitious architectural programme in the world.

This year it was the turn of Chilean architect, Smiljan Radić, who created a structure that appears as some sort of melange between a larger than life cocoon and a ritualistic pagan symbol.  Radić thus goes further than every architect prior to him, even surpassing the challenge set to him by last year’s architect, Sou Fujimoto.  In 2013, Fujimoto, a world acclaimed Japanese architect became the youngest architect to create a pavilion.  In aiming to reinvent relationships with our built environment, he challenged the boundaries between nature and artificial elements by creating a seductive maze, made of 350 square metres of steel bars.  It is remarkable that Radić was to beat that given that he is the least known out of all the designers to have been commissioned. So what exactly did Radić do to beat that? He won us with his weirdness.

A sort of ‘sixty tonnes of pebbles’ kind of weird. “I wanted to make it look like it came from the hands of a giant”, says Radić.  It is the placement of this bulbous white cocoon, within the setting of the traditionally pleasant English gardens of Kensington that do just that.  So how exactly did he do ‘just that’?

In what represents a moth in her pupil stages, Radić covered a mould with fibreglass sheets, forming a 10mm skin and creating a sort of enclosure.  The skin however stands in sharp contrast to the rocky foundations. “In the tradition of the English garden folly, it should be something that surprises the public and draws their attention, providing a spatial experience that you don’t get every day.”  The structure is clearly capable of capturing the attention of passers-by, and boasts a very different feels to it in the evening that it does during the clearness of day.  In the evening, the structure glows a sort of yellowy amber tone, which seems to represent the cocoon shedding its light.  And so we are presented with a concept, a story behind Radić’s piece.  It is that of the purely theoretical and proclaims its origins in the fantasy.

What makes Smiljan Radić’s structure so enticing is it’s construction according to contradiction, juxtaposition and contrast.  This contrast naturally goes a lot deeper than that existing between day and night, life and death and nature and the man made.  It also invites a contrast that we can liken to a sort of post-apocalyptic feel that the fictional world gives us against the traditional and very real garden setting.   There is also the element of contrast between an allusion to a pagan ritual that has been merged in with The Flintstones TV show, against this very modern and minimal cocoon, that takes the meaning of abstract to another level.  In fact, the structure seems to stand totally alone, nestled obnoxiously between the bridge of tradition and that of the abstract.  It is certainly well out of its time frame, and so the question becomes, is itaway or ahead of such a time frame?

Radić’s take on the Serpentine Pavillion is rather like marmite, you either love it or you hate it.  The one thing that is for certain is that it cannot be taken lightly.  It was the enormous energies poured into the project by Radić and the idea behind the structure that should really be rewarded.  Sometimes, and with more vitality, concept has to take priority over aesthetics. It was Radić’s unknown status in the UK, indeed in terms of his structural oeuvre that was, (with the exception of Austria), limited to his own country that deemed this project a success.  He was able to succeed, where the majority of commissioned artists before him failed (obviously with the exception of Fujimoto). If this project doesn’t launch Radićs international career in the world of architecture, then what exactly can?

Paris 1900, La Ville Spectacle @ Le Petit Palais

The exhibition, ‘Paris 1900, The City of Entertainment’ running at the Petit Palais, offers spectators the opportunity to relive the splendour of Paris during the early 20th Century.  This period was heralded by the arrival of the Paris Exposition Universelle and was a time where Paris became synonymous with sophistication and glamour.  The exhibition showcases some 600 items, from painting & photography, to sculpture and fashions.  It is well worth visiting because it allows visitors to imagine life during the Belle Epoque, and entertains us, as it does informs.  For once, I’m going to keep this text pretty short.  I went into the expo knowing nothing- and I think you should to!  All I can say is that I was faintly surprised by a few Rodin sculptures, and a few photographs by one of my favourite photographers, Eugene Atget.

Mapplethorpe-Rodin at the Musée Rodin, Paris

“I see things like they were sculptures. It depends on how that form exists within the space” MAPPLETHORPE-RODIN

It seems perhaps bizarre to create an exhibition that exclusively links the contemporary portrait photography of Robert Mapplethorpe with the 20th century sculpture of Auguste Rodin.  But the pair could not work more harmoniously together.  Taking place at the Musée Rodin, and on behalf of loans from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the exhibition contrasts the work of these two great artists in an enlightening and very natural manner. Intertwined between the incredibly raw emotion contrived by Mapplethorpe’s work, Rodin’s sculpture comes to life, via the contemporary.

Larry (1979)

Self Portrait (1988)

Patti Smith (1979)

The Age of Bronze (1877)

Large Clenched Left Hand (1900)

The Burghers of Calais (1885)

The dialogue created between these two artists in the exhibition is fascinating and almost makes us forget the great difference between them.  Not only where they working in different centuries and had different sexual preferences, Mapplethorpe sought to represent the perfect form in his work, while Rodin attempted to capture a sense of movement in inanimate materials.  Despite the contemporary nature of Mapplethorpe’s work, his work is very much devoid of spontaneity, everything is very much constructed.  On the other hand, with Rodin, we see that illustrating and taking advantage of the accidental, chance and the random were crucial to his artistic practice. 

Both Mapplethorpe  and Rodin enjoyed the female and male nude, a similarity which is illustrated through the curators choice to pertain to themes within the exhibition.  Movement and tension, black and white light and shadow, eroticism and damnation are just some of these themes that reveal the shared connection in form and aesthetic that these two artists so intimately share.

Michael Reed (1987)

Lisa Lyon (1981)

Lisa Marie (1987)

Michael St-Clair (1984)

Jack Walls (1983)

The Head of Sorrow

The strengths of the exhibition lie in the creation of this very powerful dialogue that unites Robert Mapplethorpe and Auguste Rodin.  I was a little sceptical of how the curators would create this dialogue through the interaction of the works. I was concerned that they would directly juxtapose the sculpture and photography in a rather blatant and direct manner.  Luckily, the curators had done a fantastic job, transforming the space into something intimate and very unconstrained.  We were suggested how to interact with the works, but this was simply implied, not stated.  We could thus use our imagination and our knowledge of these artists to guide our journey around the space.  It was an incredible exhibition, and because it is within the Rodin museum, ticket holders are afterwards allowed to explore the gardens and house! 

The exhibition runs until the 21st September, and runs alongside an exclusive exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s work at the Grand Palais.  I’ll be checking this exhibition out ASAP, but in the meantime you can find more information about them both below:

 http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/exhibition/exposition/mapplethorpe-rodin#sthash.3drFz7UQ.dpuf

Vincent Van Gogh and Antonin Artaud: The Man Suicided by Society at Le Musée d’Orsay

Van Gogh is one of those artists that stands alone as a separate entity, opposed to being affiliated with any particular movement to the extent that we see him as simply being part of that group, not as an individual artist. That is not to say that his work had many attributes, influences on and attribution to the Post-impressionist movement. Yes Van Gogh was a Post-impressionist, but his work stood for much more, as did his influence, which still heralds today.

‘The Man Suicided by Society’, appropriately on exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, represents a wide variety of works, including forty paintings, and a selection of graphic works, drawings and letters, along with a few of Artaud’s etchings. The exhibition represents the poet Antonin Artaud’s portrayal of Van Gogh, a subject to which he dedicated to in his 1947 book, prior to the initial exhibition of Van Gogh’s work in Paris. The exhibition at the Orsay thus embodies Artaud’s unique vision of Van Gogh, as one of those artists whose works had the power to make spectators uncomfortable, simply due to its lucidity. Wishing to prevent him from uttering certain “intolerable truths”, those who were disturbed by his painting drove him to suicide. Artaud thus challenges the thesis of alienation in a way that is provoking, exciting but also as disturbing as Van Gogh’s work in his own light.

The exhibition is small and powerful, and forces us to accept a new side to Van Gogh’s work that we never thought we were capable of. There is a sense of exclusivity spectators feel within the premise of this, but the exhibitions curator, Isabelle Cahn, does not sacrifice this for a sense of pretence. If I am being brutally honest, I wasn’t one of Van Gogh’s fans before entering the exhibition.  Aware of the great legacy of his work in the art world was not enough for me to try and comprehend it, nor enjoy. This exhibition however had the capacity to make me speechless. I came out moved and uncomfortable. There was something about the darkness and the mysteriousness of his work, coupled with its depth, and the focus on the subjects eyes that allowed me to tap into the true beauty of his work.

In fact I have never been as incredibly moved by a painting as I was by a painting in this exhibition. ‘Portrait de l’artiste au chevalet’ (1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) is perhaps simply a classic Van Gogh portrait to you, but there was something about it that really resonated within me. I found myself staring at it for a long time, and re visiting it constantly throughout my time at the exhibition. I don’t know what it was about the painting that was so powerful, although I felt it was something to do with the dark gaze of the subjects eyes. In any case, I left the exhibition feeling emotional and inspired. When an artwork has the capacity to move individuals in such a way, it showcases its true nature and position within society. It heralds strength, power, passion and joy. Art cannot simply be just aesthetics.

The exhibition is free for those under twenty six and runs until the 6th July and is well worth seeing.

Here is a little snippet from Antonin Artaud’s ‘The Man Suicided by Society’ book (1947):

One can speak of the good mental health of Van Gogh who, in his whole adult life, cooked only one of his hands and did nothing else except once to cut off his left ear, in a world in which every day one eats vagina cooked in green sauce or penis of newborn child whipped and beaten to a pulp, just as it is when plucked from the sex of its mother.

And this is not an image, but a fact abundantly and daily repeated and cultivated throughout the world. And this, however delirious this statement may seem, is how modern life maintains its old atmosphere of debauchery, anarchy, disorder, delirium, derangement, chronic insanity, bourgeois inertia, psychic anomaly (for it is not man but the world which has become abnormal), deliberate dishonesty and notorious hypocrisy, stingy contempt for everything that shows breeding.

insistence on an entire order based on the fulfillment of a primitive injustice, in short, of organized crime.  Things are going badly because sick consciousness has a vested interest right now in not recovering from its sickness.

Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Pompidou

Rather than spend our Saturday night at the local Club, Alice and I decided to spend it at the boubou checking out the amazing new H-CB portraits exhibition.   We didn’t leave till gone eleven pm, and felt that there was something quite magical about spectatorship in the darkness of the night, with wonderful views of Paris all around, it felt exclusive and inspiring. But BOY was this an incredible exhibition. Curated by Clement Cheroux, the exhibition takes the form of several large rooms, and consumes the top floor of the Pompidou.  It asks you to rethink everything you originally thought about Bresson, and question exactly who this man was and who he represented.

‘Was there not one major event that Henri Cartier-Bresson didn’t photograph’, asked my friend Alice, on leaving the exhibition.  But, she was right to question this.  The calibre of his work and his representations of a wide range of events, from wars, apartheids, sports events and fashion weeks, is simply mind blowing.

If this exhaustive exhibition cannot help but be elegiac – for him, for his and photography’s once elevated way of seeing – it is also life-affirming and constantly surprising. It challenges many assumptions about the master while enriching our understanding of his unequalled journey. It is worth the trip to Paris if only to remind oneself how Henri Cartier-Bresson defined photography as the art of observation, and to observe how his images still hold sway over our collective visual understanding of the past century.

He co-founded Magnum in 1947, and thanks to its continued success and the success of these sort of exhibitions of his work, allows his legacy to live on through the visual and through the mind.

In England, most town halls are used for council meetings or for the odd elderly bake sale. Not in Paris. It’s most famous town hall, L’Hotel de Ville in the Marais, finds itself transformed in a reflection of the city of lights by the famous photographer, Brassaï. Born in Hungary in 1899, Brassaï was one of the most famous contemporary photographers of all time, accumulating a great body of work that illustrated a real fascination with the City of Paris. He was to deal with all walks of life in Paris, from prostitutes to intellectuals, and in doing so would uncover a more mythical darker side of Paris, that he loved as much as he did its more famous affiliation.

In 1924 Brassaï moved to Paris and quite soon find himself being introduced to those like Desnos and Prévert and others responsible for the start of the Annees Folles, based in Montparnasse. In 1929, when he began his photography he had been introduced to the world of the Surrealists. This transformation of the real into the surreal and the focus on the unconscious that was advocated by Surrealism would be crucial for Brassaï’s earlier work. Here he sought to capture a side of Paris that was rarely shown, if not hated. He would wander around Paris by night using some of the night time light to capture photographs of prostitutes and workers and of bridges and graveyards. Although perhaps not recognised at the time, he would present a side to Paris that united the classic architecture of Paris, with the beauty of the fog, silhouettes and lights, while at the same time representing a moment in time, that was often forgotten in favour of beautiful day time scenes.

A few years later, in 1932, Brassaï began to focus on the Circus within his photography, that was inspired by a close relationship with Picasso, who had worked together previously and shared a love of the circus atmosphere. A tireless wanderer of night-time Paris, Brassaï also had an eye for the capital in daylight. For example, he offered an intensely personal view of the Jardin du Luxembourg and the banks of the Seine, which he strolled along in search of young lovers, fishermen, the homeless, or even dogs. He also took a keen interest in the elegant Rue de Rivoli crowd, bystanders in front of shops on the Grands Boulevards, and many others…

This exhibition runs until the 18th March, and boasts free entry. Be prepared to queue for at least an hour and a half. Despite this, the exhibition is well worth visiting, presenting a rather underrepresented and mysterious side of Paris.

Le Surréalisme et l’Objet

Le Centre Pompidou

In the two months since I last posted, I’ve been busy submitting essays and have made the big move to Paris. I am finally all settled into my lovely new apartment close to Pere Lachaise and am ready to explore all the art that this City has to offer. I hope I can take you on a journey from the more mainstream and tourist friendly museums such as the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay and the Palais Tokyo, to the smaller more intimate galleries like La Maison Rouge and the Marian Goodman Gallery.

An exhibition whose arrival I have been anticipating since I first decided I was moving to Paris back last June is Le Surréalisme et l’objet, at the Centre Pompidou. I was pretty thrilled when it was announced that this exhibition was to form a trip as part of our University Schedule. For anyone that knows me, the Surrealist art movement, is without a shadow of a doubt my favourite art movement within the history of Modern Art. From Breton to Dali and to my main man Marcel Duchamp, anything slightly surreal from automatic drawing to Cadavre Equis really gets my creative juices flowing.  

Joan Miro- Tete Humaine (1931)

Hans Bellemer- Poupee (dolls series)

This exhibition did absolutely nothing to disappoint the high hopes I had placed on it. In fact, it pretty much encompassed everything I believe to be crucial to the Surrealist sentiment. Whilst we know that after World War two the Surrealist group had almost totally dismembered, we were perhaps not aware of its legacy on modern object art today. This is what the exhibition makes so apparent. While a strong focus on the work of Breton, Man Ray, Dali, Duchamp, Aragon and Éluard, there is also a focus on the work of more modern day Surrealist artists such as Paul McCarthy and Ed Ruscha. 

Paul McCarthy

Ed Ruscha

What was so crucial to the Surrealists was the desire to liberate oneself from rationality, allowing us to access our unconscious and reach a state of surreality, a higher reality. Reality and the dreamlike and rationality and the unconscious are valued equally so that we can reach our true state. This is why this exhibition was given a non-chronological curation. Favouring a chronological path way could be deemed to be too anti-surrealist and thus hypocritical to the very nature of the exhibition. The curators here have really understood how Breton and the other surrealists favoured the display of their work. This is further alluded to in the rooms dedicated to showing past Surrealist exhibitions, the 1942 First Papers in New York and the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, in Paris. These exhibitions were both curated by Marcel Duchamp and were fundamentally revolutionary given the bizarre off the wall curation and the art works on display. Please see my other blog posts for further analysis of Duchamp’s work for the Surrealists.

Breton- Objets Fonctionemments Symboliques (1931)

Man Ray- Champs Delicieux (1922)

Salvador Dali- Telephone Homard (aphrodisiaque) (1936)

Salvador Dali- Objets Surrealistes

What this exhibition has been criticised for is the lack of extra reading available to spectators. Whilst there are occasional screens projecting information, little is given away in the information cards that accompany the artworks. In fact, we have to wait until we reach the book shop located by the exit to the exhibition if we want to skim through the dictionary of Surrealist objects, the official guide to the exhibition. Stopping myself from buying it was incredibly challenging. However the lack of guide within the exhibition wasn’t a problem for me, as I felt totally in my element within the exhibition space. Even for those with little understanding of Surrealism, I believe the lack of information provided would only work in their favour. This goes back to the fundamental beliefs and aims of those rather mysterious Surrealists who gave little a way. Key to accessing the unconscious was the need to escape the constraint of rational thought and enter into this dream like state. Surely this is what this exhibition aims to do? Force the spectator into an environment where they are free to liberate their own unconscious, that has not been constrained by rational thought (a coherent and information proofed exhibition) ? It thus liberates the viewer allowing them to take on without knowing, the notion of what it is to be a Surrealist.

Joan Miro- Femme et Oiseau (1967)

Max Ernst- Moonman (1944)

The Surrealist exhibition runs at the Pompidou until the 3rd March.  Entry is around thirteen euro and also includes access to the Modern Art Museum located on the second floor.  It is well worth a visit to both, plus you can take really cool photos like this

EY Exhibition: Paul Klee- Making Visible

The Tate excels in bringing to life the Art of Klee

I am pretty sure that one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century art needs no introduction. Placed on the same pedestal as Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, Paul Klee and his breakthrough in the art world through abstraction cannot be underestimated. His legacy is as poignant today as it is in the work of his contemporaries like Joan Miró. and Mark Rothko. Although there is already so much material on Klee, our fascination with this artist seventy years later is still so strong. We crave to know more about him quite simply because there is still so much more to discover.

Here to try and undertake that role is the Tate Modern, London, with their latest EY Exhibition: Paul Klee- Making Visible. In an extensive collection of Klee’s work amalgamating from various collections worldwide, we are encouraged to view his work with fresh eyes. What is so refreshing about this exhibition is its mission, its focus. It prioritises displaying the pieces, that for many are reunited for the first time, in the way Klee originally intended. It is perhaps the first time this been done to such an extent since the days where Klee could exhibit them for himself.

Paul Klee, Comedy, 1921

Paul Klee, A Young Lady’s Adventure, 1922

Like the best type of art exhibition, we follow Klee’s artistic path chronologically. We start with his working during World War 1, where his abstract colour patchworks were first established. These would later form his magic square paintings. We then move on, as if we are on some magical Klee-like adventure, to the time he spend working at Bauhaus, the school of modern design, alongside Kandinsky. It was at the Bauhaus, through the production of his famous abstract canvases, that his reputation would soar to international heights.

Klee’s time at the Bauhaus was to however prove short lived. The political troubles of the thirties, meant that Klee was sacked from his teaching position by the Nazi’s and fled to Switzerland. But the removal of many of his works from museums and their labelling as degenerate, would only spur on his creative genius. It is with no surprise that Klee produced his most astounding work during the last few years of his life in Switzerland. His last pieces that he created in ill health and financial worry mark the end of this exhibition at the Tate.

Through following his work chronologically, we pass through eighteen rooms of exhibition space. But as remarkable as the body of Klee’s work is its breadth. We encounter numerous medias from oil on canvas, etching to painting, as well as a variety of subjects from the underwater life of fishes to portraits. It is clear that we can see a degree of progression in terms of Klee’s self confidence as an artist from his earliest to most recent works. This cannot be disputed. But in terms of his general style of art, no period is more or less merited than any other. From his refined work on colour technique to his work from memory in Egypt, each period is as distinctive as it is mysterious.

Paul Klee, Steps, 1929

Paul Klee, Fire at Full Moon, 1933

For me, the exhibition raises one question in particular. Does Paul Klee have a distinctive style? If so, how do we describe it? His work is so varied and diverse that it is perhaps best to denote it to an ever-changing prolongation of artistic history than it is to denote it to a simple classification. However we decide to do so is ultimately irrelevant. What we are here to appreciate is the beauty and technique of Klee’s work. To appreciate his service to art, that is never more inspirational than it is today. Klee is not simply a painter, he is an artist, and one of the few who radically transformed modern art.

The Paul Klee exhibition is without a shadow of a doubt, the best exhibition I have ever seen at the Tate. While the fifteen pound ticket price may seem a little hefty, don’t let it put you of. The breadth of Klee’s work and its presentation according to the artists intentions work in harmony to shed light on the true legacy of Paul Klee.

I find Marcel Duchamp’s comments on Paul Klee in 1949 to particularly sum up Klee: “The first reaction in front of a Klee painting is the very pleasant discovery, what everyone of us could or could have done, to try drawing like in our childhood. Most of his compositions show at the first glance a plain, naive expression, found in children’s drawings. […] At a second analyse one can discover a technique, which takes as a basis a large maturity in thinking. A deep understanding of dealing with watercolours to paint a personal method in oil, structured in decorative shapes, let Klee stand out in the contemporary art and make him incomparable. On the other side, his experiment was adopted in the last 30 years by many other artists as a basis for newer creations in the most different areas in painting. His extreme productivity never shows evidence of repetition, as is usually the case. He had so much to say, that a Klee never became an other Klee.”

Robert Rauschenberg as ‘the most inventive artist of the 20th century since Picasso’, says Jasper Johns

Rauschenberg & Dante’s Inferno @ A & D Gallery, London

A couple of weeks back, Alice and I came across, by chance, an exhibition based completely on Robert Rauschenberg and Dante’s Inferno. To cut a very long story short, we ended up buying our first piece of art together. The piece we now co-own, is a Rauschenberg limited edition lithograph that is based on response to a poem by Frank O’Hara. I will save you the details of this euphoria till the next post, because this one requires sole focus on Rauschenberg and Dante’s Inferno.

Dante’s Inferno- Canto V

The exhibition, held at A&D Gallery on Chiltern Street, showcased a series of 34 works illustrating each of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. These pieces were brought to limelight, not by Leo Castelli, Rauschenberg’s dealer, but in a bizarre twist of fate, they were made public knowledge by Castelli’s ex-wife’s new husband, Michael Sonnabend. The prints represent the work of Rauschenberg between 1959 and 1960, and originate from the edition of 300 published by Harry Abrahams in 1965.

These works on paper at A&D Gallery become such a revelation, quite simply because they present a completely different side to Rauschenberg’s traditional work. Rauschenberg said: ‘When I started the Dante illustrations, I had been working purely abstractly for so long, it was important for me to see whether I was working abstractly because I couldn’t work any other way, or whether I was doing it out of choice. So I really welcomed, insisted, on the challenge of being restricted by a particular subject, which meant that I would have to be involved in symbolism. I mean the illustration has to be read. It has to relate to something that already is in existence. Well, I spent two and a half years deciding yes, I could do that. But it’s so easy to be undisciplined. And to be disciplined is so against my character, my general nature anyway, that I have to strain a little bit to keep on the right track.’

Dante’s Inferno- Canto XV1

Dante’s Inferno- Canto V11

Dante’s Inferno- Canto V111

It was during this period, that Rauschenberg revolutionised his transfer technique. The process, which ‘created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secret’, involved dissolving printed images with a solvent and then rubbing them onto paper with a stylus. It allowed Rauschenberg to introduce for the first time, autobiographical elements into his work. The work ‘Dis the capital of Hell’ highlighted his home town through the oil derricks used. New York Times columnist, Roberta Smith, wrote of Rauschenberg, ‘these drawings may actually be the artist’s best work. They distill Rauschenberg to his essence and yet show him at his most profound’.

Even the art historian, Leo Steinberg wrote, ‘what he invented above all was…a pictorial surface that let the world in again’. These prints made by Rauschenberg, in response to Dante’s Inferno, brought out a completely different artistic practice in the artist, and in analysing the prints on show, we can begin to understand exactly how or why this happened. If we look beyond the mysterious and mythical aesthetics of the pieces, we begin to notice a number of things. Firstly, there appears to be some sort of logical banality at which the works attempt distance, which becomes more clear in the implication at a sort of sarcasm or hostility present, apparent only aesthetically. The idea that each piece has similar dimensions gives the appearance of harmony within the series, but this is undermined by the deviation within the internal space, present from the different events in each canto. Each text, each work, is addressed by a specific accompanying Rauschenberg text, yet Rauschenberg fails to link them together through their so apparent harmonising subjects. It thus lacks a certain seduction. Is this not the intention? This inconsistency, or failure to address, I believe is totally intentional, it is something that I most admire about Rauschenberg.

Dante’s Inferno- Canto XX1V

Dante’s Inferno- Canto XXX111

What I love most about these works, is Rauschenberg’s decision to create visual keys with the transfer drawings. This means that the images can also be seen in reverse of the original source material and gives the allusion of observation through a looking glass. But it was to go further than this, the reflection of the pieces are also evidence of Rauschenberg’s personal concerns. They highlight his stance towards the contemporary, ahead of his time, and thus the abstract nature of his work. In typical Rauschenberg style, the artist shows no concern for the opinions that consume his time and instead unashamedly critics the modern age.

The way Rauschenberg attempts to articulate Dante’s Inferno cannot be underestimated. In working on these pieces, Rauschenberg was faced with many challenges, none more powerful that the crisis of his artistic identity in the face of his desire to create work that worked according to a set narrative. The pieces in the Dante’s Inferno collection, show a bolder side to Rauschenberg. They present him as an artist who was willing to play by the rules, but never to the extent to which he would compromise his artistic integrity.