THE MODERN INSTITUTE Glasgow   www.themoderninstitute.com

BILL JACKLIN, Marlborough Gallery New York,  www.marlboroughgallery.com,

The Modern Institute Glasgow

Founded by Will Bradley, Toby Webster and Charles Esche in 1998, The Modern Institute - such a brilliant name - has gone from strength to strength & is now a gallery of international standing. Housed in a former bath house in the centre of Glasgow, the contemporary space could be in New York or Germany. Last year it took on a second useful space nearby, a sure sign it is doing well.      Toby Webster

Hard to find, (I was lucky. My taxi driver knew exactly where Airds Lane was, moreover informed me that the next lane up was Goosedubs!)- but when u get there, a great open space currently showing American artist, Kim Fisher's Dirty Kitchen exh of 17 panels - some oil on dyed black linen, others aluminium. Inspired by fragments of magazines or newspapers which have weathered California's oppressive heat, she collages and airbrushes her abstracts. Here LA's Rexall drugstores replace the UK's ubiquitous Boots chemists.  

Toby Paterson, Glasgow born & trained, now like Fisher, aged 40, is an integral part of their stable of 38 artists, which includes 7 Turner Prize nominees. 

Paterson's focus is urban space, especially marginalised or derelict locations, and the effects of post-war Modernism in architecture. In Soft Boundary he uses galvanised steel fencing to divide the space, while paintings of blocks of buildings, seen from various viewpoints, provide interpretations of some notorious city landmarks.

          BBC 

Paterson also undertakes major public commissions like BBC Scotalnd's ebullient Poised Array, which tames the geometric austerity of David Chipperfield's post-post-Modernist  BBC HQ with multi-coloured abstractions.  

The Institute will be in NY soon for THE INDEPENDENT Art Fair. Co-founded by gallerists Elizabeth Dee & Darren Flook  in 2010, it takes place in the Chelsea building formerly occupied by the Dia Art Foundation.  Its fifth edition, running March 6-9, with a lineup of 56 exhibitors — up from 40 last year, is concurrent with Armory week. 

Meanwhile BILL JACKLIN, a Brit who relocated from London to NYC in 1985, has his 23rd show with Marborough. Jacklin is also interested in urban spaces, like Washington Square, Grabd Central, Central Park, the Wollman Ice Rink & Coney Island - which is after all as he says, the edge of the city. 

 Unlike Paterson, Jacklin's focus is people and their movement, the shadows they make against ice, concrete, grass or sand. But like Paterson, the fleeting moment, a glimpse, the primacy of observation & experience, is central.  www.bjacklin.com

Jacklin, now RA,  is also a great printmaker & while these 20 oils of NY are captured in seductive palette, prints allow for a greater dance of light & dark, black & white, fast track silhouettes and time ever-changing. He should make some prints at GPS!

ABSTRACTION, GLASGOW PRINT STUDIO, Scotland UK www.gpsart.co.uk

More abstracts at Glasgow Print Studio where 3 share the big beautiful upstairs gallery space. Toby Paterson is on the GPS exh committee & voted for young  Aimée Henderson, recent Dundee graduate, currently at the Slade. Her too tiny paintings, pinned up in a row, play with shape and colour. I loved Hetty Haxworth's looping joyful images, while the line drawing/mark making in pastel & pencil on Rosalind Lawless's big block prints, (surely influenced by Paterson) play a very important part. And thank god the show is NOT called Three Women Artists - as in the 1980! Ever heard of a show called 3 Men Artists? I think not! hetty haxworth 

 

Phillip Reeves, founder member GPS

Christie's & Sotheby's    www.sothebys.com

Christie's & Sotheby's are gobbling up the art world. Christies posted record sales of $7.1 BILLION or 4.5 BILLION pounds for 2013 with Asia 44% up & internet buying huge. They also now have galleries to sell work just like any commercial art dealers: Sothebys by "the development of the S|2 brand, the global gallery arm of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department" I quote. 

BUT the big prices are achieved by a mere handful - maybe 20 artists at most - Picasso, Koons, Warhol etc. U can count them on yr fingers. Most artists - dead or alive - still struggle. 

Sothebys have just introduced videos from their 4 new heads of Contemporary & Impressionism. They are short & surprisingly good. Helena Newman co-head world wide, speaks about her defining moment, the recent sale of Giacometti's Walking Man, a world record of any art sold at auction - $104.3 or £69 million. 

Which brings me to a personal story. 

In 1962 my husband, a co-director of New Yorks' famous Staempfli Gallery,  drove artist Louise Nevelson & legendary dealer Martha Jackson to the preview of the Carnegie International in Pittsburg. Gordon Washburn - a terrific guy I am told - was director.  (Washburn organized four Internationals, which were distinguished from larger competitors  like the Venice Biennale and São Paolo Biennial, as the only international survey curated by a single person, “one man’s view of contemporary art” in a few hundred works.

Dinner was at the Heinz house, (as in Heinz baked beans).

On show at the International  was Giacometti's 6 ft tall 'Walking Man'. New York collector & museum benefactor, Louise Smith was there. She asked my husband what he would like to buy.  "I said without any hesitation, if I could afford it, the Walking Man. It was on loan from the Pierre Matisse Gallery & was priced at $26,000. I had visited Giacometti in Paris in the 1950s." Louise Smith agreed she liked it too, & said - "I'll buy it! I'll ask for a reserve on it, till I can discuss its purchase with Mr Matisse." Subsequently it entered her collection. She died at 91 in 1995, a staunch supporter of MoMA from 1957 on. 
From $26,000 to $104.3 million is a memorable jump! 

Clare Henry
clrhenry@aol.com

NICOLA HICKS, Flowers Gallery, NEW YORK & YALE CENTER for BRITISH ART.

I first met Nicola in 1985 when I was a selector for a London Serpentine Gallery exhibition. She was just graduating from the Royal College & quickly making a name. Her work stood out due to 3 things: her superb draughtsmanship; her animal subject matter; her use of straw. In 1987 we both went to India along with Anish Kapoor, as part of a big British Council/ Henry Moore Memorial event. 

One gets to know people much better on a trip like this to somewhere strange, hot and exotic. Hicks was a delight, & after a symposium in which we all took part along with Indian artists, Indian critics, Indian filmmakers etc, she went off to lead a 2 week workshop at the Delhi Art Institute. Using straw and plaster was perfect for India! She was of course a great success with the students. 

 2013

Almost 30 years on Hicks, now MBE, still uses straw for her large, fierce sculptures, (now often cast in bronze) & still draws her dynamic donkeys, horses, stags & cats in charcoal on large sheets of brown paper. Living on a farm helped her rigorous study of anatomy which translates into animated empathy. No sentiment here however. Her creations often have a mysterious menace. In new works at Flowers Gallery, www.flowersgallery.com, Bears,  Bankers & Hypocrites, she creates her own take on social moral critique. 

Banker II 2009; Banker I 2009

This NYC show coincides with Hicks' exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art. Here seven recent sculptures are installed amid a selection of 18th & 19th C paintings, chosen for their expressive emotion demonstrating human empathy for the life-force of different creatures. 

Why animals?  "Animals are the stuff of life" she says! britishart.yale.edu

  

The Yale Center is home to one of the world’s most important collections of British animal paintings and portraiture, and Hicks’s intervention offers a unique opportunity to reflect upon the contemporary resonances of these traditions.

GLASGOW DIVERSITY: Glasgow Group at the Lillie Art Gallery & LIVING PROOF at Glasgow Print Studio

"When the Glasgow Group first met in 1957 Scottish art was in a bad way."  So says Alasdair Gray of New Lanark fame. He was there so he should know, & he is present again in the Glasgow Group's latest exhibition at The Lillie Gallery, Milngavie, 55 years later. Ten members plus 3 founders make for a diverse array. .

                                                                   Jim Spence's Picador.

The Glasgow Group, which in 1958 had an average age of 22, went on to become a cutting edge affair with founders James Spence & Anda Paterson (also exhibiting large scale pictures at the Lillie) instrumental in keeping things both alive & lively, & international, alongside John Bellany, George Wyllie, Sandy Moffat, Richard Demarco et al. All a true cooperative with members volunteering time & effort. 

Shona Dougall, the current chair, shows a colourful Cliff Face; Claire Paterson's oil nudes are especially ambitious; Gregor Smith's atmospheric watercolours of Mull & Lewis, just lovely. Anda's diptych Pilgrims, is a wonderful example of her powerful drawings of time-worn people, their swollen feet, wrinkles & arthritic hands a testament to hard work and endurance.  
Sunday. I have just found, in among my archive papers for GSA, a piece dated August 1990 for the Herald: "I was very touched and honoured to be asked to launch the Glasgow Group's inauguration of the city's brand new Tramway www.tramway.org, exhibition space in June 1989. Since then Tramway has seen many exciting shows, both international and Scottish, but with the exception of the Compass 21st B-day, none as important in terms of local involvement. In European City of Culture Year it's worth remembering that, without the longterm spadework put in by local organisations such as the GG, Glasgow 1990 would never have happened. It was entirely in character that the GG should take on the awesome challenge of inaugurating such a large. difficult space as Tramway on an almost non-existent budget. Lack of basics: no proper lighting; no moveable screens, no wall cladding, much less rails to hang pictures. So far more than 400 guest artists, from David Donaldson & Sir Robin Phlipson to Peter Howson, Tracy Mackenna www.mackenna-and-janssen.net & Louise Scullion www.dalzielscullion.com (plus Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Norway & Wales) have participated."
www.glasgowgroup.org Till February 20th. Tues-Sat 10-5pm.  Prices £75 to £7000. The Lillie, a purpose built gallery, dates from 1962.

Shona Dougall & CliffFace. 

Alasdair Grey's Nude

When Glasgow Print Studio was founded in 1972 Scottish printmakers had nowhere to print (except Edinburgh), so again young artists, (average age 28) got busy & made it happen in a basement & ground floor of an old electrician's shop at 43 St Vincent Crescent. Over the last 42 years GPS has received big Lottery & Arts Council etc funding, & now has a world class gallery & workshop on 3 floors of Glasgow's art hub at 103 Trongate.

The current good & also diverse GPS exhibition, Living Proof, alludes to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, but also the printmaking term artist's proof. Really it's a way of gathering images of creatures, a current fascination of many GPS artists like Elizabeth Blackadder or Helen Fay. 

Watson's Goats in Tree                                       Cook's Survival of the Fittest. 
Ashley Cook & Fiona Watson both did tackle the subject of evolution to great effect, but most prints - like John Byrne's Boy+ Lion or Ray Richardson's dogs are familiar images. I especially liked Marion MacPhee's Whales and Murray Robertson's detailed sea creatures. Ironically Gray is in BOTH shows, at the Lillie with an outrageous nude, On a Very Striped Coverlet" and at GPS  with  his Scots Hippo! Terrific!

As Watson says, "The medium of print has historically been important in the dissemination of natural history information (and misinformation)!"  Till Feb 2nd. http://www.gpsart.co.uk 

RAQUIB SHAW at PACE, NYC and TEMPLETON DESIGN STUDO 1843-2005, Glasgow UK 

Happy 2014 to u all. I will start the year as I mean to go on - looking at exhibitions and art events on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Calcutta born, St Martins London educated, Shaw's detailed erotic dreamscapes are painted with 3D delicacy, rather like cloisonné on canvas. Inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, his hybrids of man and beast fight & fly in settings of Piranesi-esque classical ruins. 

Shaw's cherubs have a deeply evil smirk as they fire their arrows at St Sebastian amid a field of gorgeous blood-red poppies. Fanged fish, prowling big cats, male lizards make up giant-size paintings, one 60ft long. Scary stuff - but memorable.

This seductive story telling of violent, yet opulent fantasies embellished with enamel, glitter and crystal has been shown at Tate Britain, MoMA, the Met, Prague & Sydney.  In NY it occupies all 3 Pace galleries in Chelsea.      http://pacegallery.co 

Shaw begins by outlining with gold stained glass paint. Then, using porcupine quills for their precise point, he applies colourful enamel. Oil paints are used for modelling the images. Surface then embellished with inlaid semi-precious stones, glitter etc. Vulgar but irresistible.

At GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART,  there's another great show which, like Shaw, closes Jan 11th, so run see it. Templetons carpets are world famous with commissions from the White House, Titanic, Queens Coronation, Holyroodhouse and Scottish Parliament. Founded in Glasgow in 1843, it had a terrific in-house design department with commissioned outsiders including Voysey, Walter Crane, Frank Brangwyn, Mary Quant.

The show was researched by GSA textile staff member Helena Britt who has already interviewed over 30 folk with Templeton-Stoddard memories of working there. T-S was renowned for its design quality & the show, (a minute selection from the vast archive) is full of gorgeous floral, geometric, animal & oriental prints, folios, with1920s-30s especially well represented. 

We forget that 100 years ago - no internet, little photography, no xerox, travel by sea. So directors abroad brought home actual books, paintings, screens, design objects from all over the world to inspire their staff. Vibrant hand coloured pochoirs by guys like Benedictus, Delaunay, Seguy, Sorokine, are my favourites. GORGEOUS! 

John Byrne's play, The Slab Boys, from the 1970s, immortalised the people who ground pigments, sketched at the draughting table, worked the looms.(In an average year the 50 staff - majority MEN till mid 1980s - sharpened away 475 pencils, wore out 97 erasers, applied 700 lbs of paint to 10,000 sq inches of paper, using 960 brushes. Designs were transferred by hand onto gridded drafting paper with each square representing a different tuft of wool. 

Templetons was established in 1843 by a Paisley shawl producer and weaver. Stoddart joined on in 1871, and carpet design and manufacture became an important industry for the West of Scotland. Employees often had a job for life staying for over 50 years. Designers attended classes at GSA. When Stoddard finally closed in 2005, their Design Studio archive was up for grabs. Happily a combination of GSA, GU & Glasgow Life have saved the day.

Founded in 1845, Glasgow Art School has a long & golden reputation. New director Tom Inns comes from a design background. Welcome to him. And a new £50m building will house textiles and design depts when open later this year.  

        Film at vimeo.com/80325935

CHELSEA NY:  BRANCUSI 1913-2013 at KASMIN plus African art. PLENSA at LELONG.

Wonderful to report on several BEAUTIFUL shows in Chelsea NY right now. Not often this happens. More about the weird ones later!

Paul, (son of Kasmin who first showed Hockney in London,) has an elegant new space, perfect for Bruncusi's 5 world masterpieces. Most famous is Madame Pogany, a polished bronze serpentine of feminine allure, while the ovoid Head epitomises his saying, "Simplicity is complexity resolved." 

Brancusi exhibited in the iconic 1913 Armory show, (see my piece Oct 27) which resulted in his first ever solo show - in NY in 1914. Amazingly 90% of Brancusi's work was sold in the US. In 1955 Brancusi himself said, "Without the Americans I would not have been able to produce all this or even to have existed." 

This Romanian artist, who lived in Paris, preferring to photograph all his work himself, (Man Ray taught him how,) and the show contains 6 of his own B&W pix.

In the early 1950s my husband went to visit Brancusi in his studio in Paris, to see these pure, minimal sculptures which, the artist maintained, were not abstract, but captured the very essence of the thing portrayed. Later he sold several Brancusi pieces including an Endless Column and a white marble head, to museums. 

As Paul says, ...he is the most modern of modern sculptors, and his influence reverberates today. Dan Flavin even dedicated works to Brancusi.  

www.paulkasmingallery.com

Round the corner, after a delicious lunch at Hotel Americano, we saw Kasmin's other exhibition, poles apart but equally fascinating - a wonderful display of Arman's hoard of African Art. 

Arman, the artist, was a voracious collector, at one point having over 400 pieces of African art from Congo, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Gabon & Tanzania.  He also collected other things - from expensive Japanese armour to cheap hardware knobs and nails - using objects large and small to create his own distinctive assemblages.  

Arman revered these tribal artifacts which hold such magic for their creators - far far from 'primitive', more significant than much of today's art. Some were collected for their formal beauty, others for their potent alchemy. Some are elaborate & patterned, others frightening in their intensity, while one wooden elongated Face Mask from the Fang tribe of south Cameroun could surely have inspired Brancusi! 

Face Mask, FANG Tribe, Gabon

JAUME PLENSA at Galerie LELONG, NY Chelsea. 

Spanish. Age 58. International artist who re-imagines the human figure in inventive ways. Here he uses the world's various alphabets - literally - to create his suspended stainless steel people who embody universality rather than differences. We all know dialogue is important, and see what happens in Syria or Egypt when it fails. Here words literally provide the structure. In a dark space the sculptures  shimmer, lit as in a theatre setting. I was less impressed by his white cast paper heads.

Plensa is big on public sculpture & here his giant heads look superb - in a NY park, on a beach or in a Parisian square. Next year Chicago. www.galerielelong.com

                     

MICHIO IHARA      

MICHIO IHARA's most famous & well seen work is in the great entrance hall of the Rockefeller Center, NY. This spacious 35ft high space has, since 1978, been enhanced by his ten elegant, huge, luminous panels of small shimmering gold & copper-plated steel fragments which cascade from ceiling to floor. Like leaves fluttering on a tree or vibrating in the breeze, each unique individual panel is up-lit by a warm glow. 

 Rockefeller Center,NY

Called the 'Vivaldi of metal', Ihara was born in Paris, educated in Japan & lives in Massachusetts. His large sculptures are sited all over the world: Tokyo, New Zealand, Australia, Boston, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, & across North America. But I got to know his work in my husband's apartment, where maquettes & models for large commissions were displayed. Now they have a home at the Mitchener Museum. I miss them! Especially I loved a beautiful piece from 1970 which hung on the wall above my computer! The giant version was for a Tokyo steel company.  

Another 1984 kinetic sculpture, (for the Tokushima Press building in Shikoku,) perched high up while a 1991 spinning cube work for Tokyo City Hall sat on our cocktail table. Variations of the City Hall model were later given as awards by the Fulbright Organization in Japan

 Tokyo City Hall. 

Now 85, Ihara was a minimalist well before minimalism. His Japanese ethic of clean, simple, delicate design coupled with a gift for collaboration with architects and engineers, has made him a star. And he's not done yet. A big retrospective this summer left several big outdoor pieces beside Concord's Art Association & his modernist work, "Wind" sits near Boston City Hall on State St. Lovely.       http://www.michioihara.com