NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE & GLASGOW. womenslibrary.org.uk/‎

Niki de St Phalle (1930-2002) was a law unto herself. I knew her slightly, introduced by a good friend (now pretty well the world authority n Niki.) Beautiful & charismatic, (she modelled for Vogue), rich, wild, flamboyant, her highly originally, inimitable art ranged from dark menace to exuberant joy. In the mid 1950s her rage produced the famous 'shooting paintings" but soon she turned to fairytale brides & hearts, plus from the 1960s on, her famous loud brash, colourful, exhilarating, huge 'Nanas' Only recently did I learn that they were inspired by a drawing made by her friend, artist Larry Rivers of his wife Clarice whilst heavily pregnant! 

In 2012 these monumental sculptures were exhibited along Park Avenue, and very life affirming they were to all New Yorkers. 

Recently Eric & Jean Cass gifted 14 pieces of her work to Glasgow - a wonderful gesture. Happily Niki had been invited to exhibit a big retrospective in Glasgow in 1993 in the beautiful McLellan Galleries, by no less that Julian Spalding. Best thing he ever did. (The Liverpool Tate got round to giving her a show in 2008, calling it her "first UK exhibition." NOT TRUE! ) Spalding also commissioned Niki to create the fab mirrored Tympanum  (triangular bit over the front) and mirrored entrance for GoMA when it opened in 1996, (2nd best thing Spalding did!) 

The Casses gift is a result of this connection and makes Glasgow a special place to see her fantastic creations of monsters & fantasy creatures.

In later life Niki saw women as both goddesses & warriors. “I dreamt of huge colourful Nanas that could stand outside in the middle of a park or a square – I wanted them to take charge of the world” she said. Despite suffering from severe arthritis - which caused her to move from damp Paris to dry La Jolla, California - she continued to work on her vast projects till her death in 2002. 

Along with these monumental sculptures, Niki also wrote many enchanting, beautifully illustrated letters. These have inspired GLASGOW WOMENS LIBRARY's letters project, to coincide with  International Women’s Day.  GWL invited  women from around the world to write illuminated letters of thanks and recognition to their heroines, & these letters are now on show at GoMA & GWL.  womenslibrary.org.uk/‎

A great idea. I am sure Niki would be thrilled! 

NEW YORK: THE ARMORY SHOW & WHITNEY BIENNIAL plus BEATRIX POTTER in PERTHSHIRE. 

Can u have too much art? A visit to the Tay - the longest river in Scotland and Loch Tay one of the most beautiful - got me thinking. With so much capital committed to art today, & international trends gaining ground among the rich in Russia, the Arab States & China, how can Joe Public keep up, or indeed want to keep up? 

The Armory is New York’s leading fair for contemporary & modern art: 200 leading galleries from 29 countries with 65,000 visitors. This year the fair's focus was China. Plus there's the original establishment ADAA show at Park Avenue Armory (yes, names very confusing) of  72 leading art dealers, plus 10 satellite fairs, Meanwhile the Whitney Biennial, where 103 artists chosen by 3 curators spread over 3 floors. Reports not good: "nebulous, inert & perplexing." & "Handicrafts carry the day."

One curator loves poetry, another looks to Latin American & Asian art while the 3rd, Michelle Grabner, says: "New Materialism and Affect Theory are politically compelling to me. The free market & its influence on art making, distribution, & value construction have to be looked at carefully if one is to truly understand contemporary art." 

With Sotheby's & Christie's sponsoring these events & having at least an auction or 2 a day somewhere in the world, u may wonder at this art saturation, and how art dealers are coping. Answer - not well. 

Also in NYC is GAUGUIN at MoMA: 150 prints & drawings from 1889 to his death in 1903. Called "dark, bizarre & much more challenging than his lush Tahitian paintings" according to the Guardian, it's the first exhibition to take an in-depth look at these experimental radically “primitive” woodcuts etc. www.moma.org

As if this overload is not enough The Whitney Biennial has a spinoff in the form of the Brucennial, a rammed exhibition featuring around 600 female artists, (can 600 be true?) organised by Vito, Schnabel's son. (Women’s representation had been getting better in recent Whitney Biennials, but they account for less than a third this year.)

So - HOW Beatrix Potter?? 

Potter spent her childhood holidays around Dunkeld & wrote the first Peter Rabbit here. She was also an eminent botanical illustrator & naturalist. In Dunkeld she met Charles McIntosh the local postman, who was also an expert on fungi & discovered previously unknown species. He boxed them up & sent them to Beatrix in London where they arrived - very smelly- for her to draw. While in Dunkeld she borrowed books from the Birnam Institute and on the strength of this, they have an extension, cafe & Potter play area, video etc and in June will exhibit the original fungi watercolours, normally helded in Perth Art Gallery.  

                                                 Beatrix as a child & her parents in Perthshire

                                        Birnam Arts   
Back in Manhattan ASIA WEEK is now on, till 22nd March: 47 specialist dealers from all over the world + shows in 19 museums and institutes including the Met which has Contemporary Ink Art & Edo prior paintings. I love traditional Asian art but we all have to learn about  their contemporary work. 

                         Video by Nalini Malini at the Asia Society NY. 

           Indian 1780

                                                                M Wang 2010

 ancient chinese

The Smith Art Gallery & Museum, Stirling & JUNE CAREY

The Smith opened in 1874 as a bequest of a painter,Thomas Stuart Smith. This weekend a new mural by June Carey was inaugurated by Adrian Wiszniewski. Titled A Heavenly Gift, 2 angels carry the key of Stirling (given to Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746) & the Guildry Ring which dates from 1360, both in the museum's collection. They also have Carey's characteristic tattoos of poems and artefacts, with the male angel's chest inscribed "De tout les Reves qui Feurent." 

Dreams play an important role in Carey's work. Her superb book The Art of June Carey - Seeing Through Dreams" (available from the Museum) makes this very apparent. As Smith Museum director Dr Elspeth King, writes, "Carey's work is essentially about love - the love that moves the sun, and other stars, - as Dante described it. Like Dante's Divine Comedy, her work features Heaven, Hell & Purgatory. By far, Heaven is her favourite place, as the vibrant blue backgrounds which frame her serene, angelic figures, testify." 

Dedicated. Determined. Imaginative. Above all intense. I have been writing about Carey & her work for 25 years. She never disappoints. The book covers 40 years of work from a wonderful art school watercolour of a nude & 1981 self-portrait via many paintings, pastels, reliefs and etchings right up to today. Her travels to Greece, Mexico, Cyprus, Malta, Poland, Indonesia, Bali and India all feed her imagery, but as King writes, despite these "world-wide cultures, there is no mistaking the origin & source of it. She is a Scottish artist, living & working in Stirling. A journey thro June's work is a feast, laden & layered with cultural icons, signs, symbols & visual thought transmissions which have the power to move the viewer & alter perspectives."      
Wiszniewski, who gave a classic, totally captivating speech, rightly pointed out 
that Carey is a conceptual artist who makes her work beautiful, while at the 
same time telling age old stories. 

                                     Elspeth King, June Carey & Adrian Wiszniewski 

Carey's etchings are a tour de force of exacting detail and emotional intensity, her 
exotic figures imbued with her distinctive punk aesthetic.  Printmaking is fundamental
to her art. Etching allows for no mistakes, no second thought. Above all Carey works 
from the heart. It has made for a memorable career. Buy the book! £19.99

                                June in her studio with her etching press. 
Years ago I was a Smith Trustee. More recently the wonderful Janey Buchan, ‎former Euro MP, 
who died in 2012, was a very active trustee, & the mural installation was completed with 
help from her Memorial Fund.   
 Janey Buchan‎.  

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