Graphic genius: Escher at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

House of Stairs

Now don’t get me wrong: regenerating 10 derelict houses is A Good Thing – but come on, is it really art?

That is the question triggered by the announcement a few weeks ago that this year’s Turner Prize has been awarded to Assemble, an architecture and design collective, for its work on derelict properties in Toxteth, Liverpool.

Of course, if you can label a ‘supernatural study centre, which screens interviews with people who claim to have had paranormal activities as ‘art’, then perhaps it is.

If you can use ‘art’ to describe an avant-garde, a cappella 24-minute opera (rather than ‘music’ or ‘opera’), then that regeneration might well qualify as art.

Yet it is indicative of the mess that art is in these days – not least in the UK – and of the just how far up it’s own fundament that the art establishment is, that it still treats with disdain anything that might be a bit ‘graphic’ – and that’s not ‘graphic’ in the sexual sense.

All of which brings us to what is one of the best exhibitions to be seen on these shores this year, having first been seen at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and now at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Ascending and Descending

The Amazing World of MC Escher is the first major UK retrospective – even more incredible when you consider that there us only example of his work on display in a UK gallery (Day and Night at the Hunterian in Glasgow).

Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands in 1898. A sickly child, he failed his final exams – except for maths – and went to study architecture at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem, before he was talent-spotted by the head of the graphic art section and hauled across to that discipline.

If his name isn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue, millions are familiar with his work – particularly the illusory pieces that feature, for instance, impossible staircases.

Adored by mathematicians and hippies alike, he remains suspect for the art establishment – doubtless not least because he was a graphic artist.

And in an era when UK art schools no longer even bother to teach drawing, his dazzling skills as a draughtsman could be viewed as unfashionable for those who might prefer to pretend to enjoy turgid filmed rants or photographs of ancient vases being vandalised.

The works are even more extraordinary when you realise that many of them are prints – and as someone who has done a teensy weensy bit of printing this year, the level of complexity and detail proved almost mind blowing.

Reptiles

The most famous works are here: the illusions of impossible buildings include Ascending and Descending, a lithograph from 1960, which was one of the first of Escher’s works that I became aware of – if memory serves me correctly, via a feature on Blue Peter.

These works also include House of Stairs, a 1951 lithograph, with its rather delightful little ‘curl-ups’ trundling up and down and around.

And there are also pieces that demonstrate Escher’s fascinating with representing flat and three-dimensional objects, as with the little Reptiles (1943) that crawl out of the paper and become ‘real’ before crawling back into the paper, while Drawing Hands (1948) is another dazzling example of that same fascination.

You can quite easily get lost in 1938’s iconic Day and Night, which incorporates Escher’s famous tessellations – a technique inspired by studying Islamic geometric patterns during a trip to Alhambra in Granada.

Day and Night

The tessellation-based lithograph, Encounter, from 1944 has something about it that evokes Dante – a point that may (or may not) be related to its being produced during WWII.

And of the tessellations, Metamorphosis II, a woodcut from 1939, takes us on an extraordinary graphic journey of transformation – here, taking up one wall of the exhibition rooms.

The statistics are incredible. This print measures 19.2 by 389.5 cm and was printed from 20 blocks on 3 combined sheets.

A similar, but much larger version – Metamorphosis III – of this adorned the post office on the Kerkplein in the Hague, made in 1967-8 as a commission. It was moved to a new home at Schipol Airport in 2008.

Still Life and Street

But as with all the works on display in Dulwich, here you have a supperb opportunity to get really close up to them to be able to revel in the detail.

Eye, with its reflected human skull, is one of his eight mezzotints and has wonderful Manet-like blacks – evidence (were it required) of Escher’s mastery of more than one print-making technique.

But there are plenty of less-familiar works here too.

For me, one of his earliest works, the woodcut Bonifacio (1928) created after visiting Corsica, is just astonishing – not least for the extraordinary variety of marks that he used.

Still Life and Street, a woodcut from 1937, is one of those deceptive pieces that it takes a moment to realise are impossible.

Bonifacio

For all the surreal nature of much of Escher’s work, he was not attached to Surrealism and doesn’t seem to have known or communicated with any of the Surrealists artists.

For all that his work appealed to the likes of hippies and the Flower Power generation, he refused a commission for Rolling Stones cover after Mick Jagger made the mistake of writing to him by his first name.

A quiet man, he was far more interested in corresponding with mathematicians, Harold Coxeter and Roger Penrose.

But that’s not to say that his works are po-faced. They’re often playful and full of irony. And they remain technically astonishing.

A relatively small exhibition by the standards of the vast blockbusters found in central London galleries in recent years, it nonetheless takes plenty of time to view – simply because you need the time to concentrate and digest.

But if the art establishment continues to turn up its nose, then that should not stop us relishing just what a fabulous artist Escher was and just what a magnificent legacy he leaves – and as an example of just what graphic art can mean.

The Amazing World of MC Escher is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 17 January. Find out more at dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.

Discovering art in the internet age

Short and Stout by Susan Harrell

After musing over the merits of this year’s Turner Prize nominees – and trying to remain open-minded and positive – I was left not with any sense of elation or revelation, but certainly with a need to go back and look at some rather more ‘traditional’ work.

If the big galleries seem to obsess about the latest trend in conceptual art, then the screen on your desk or your smartphone can provide a door to a world where painting and drawing and printing are alive and well – and most certainly not just ‘stuck in the past’.

Technologies may change, new materials may be developed, but that doesn’t have to mean that the only way to approach art in today’s world is a dumbing-down of traditional art skills: rather, it can provide the chance to explore new ways of creating visual images.

Moscow Taxi by Mattias Adolfsson

And so, remembering August’s exercise, which came about as a direct response to an online conversation where someone was voicing the doubt that any real art existed any more, here is another set of brief introductions to artists and their work that I have encountered in cyberspace.

They deliberately range across style, subject and medium – and also place: one of the great advantages of the internet is that it allows us to find things from the other side of the world that we should not otherwise be likely to know about.

But then again, art is a universal.

Southwold by Annie Cowdrey

Annie Cowdrey’s work is varied, from pen and ink to oil to watercolour to lino cuts; while her subjects range from landscape to portraiture.

Based in the south west of France (lucky, lucky her), she maintains a particular interest in the processes of art.

It’s well worth reading any notes she makes on works: for instance, her comments on how working on a portrait is not just about the subject but about the artist themselves, is a fascinating idea.

Three Trees by Annie Cowdrey

It’s so easy to view the artist simply as a conduit when it comes to portrayals of other people, but inevitably part of the painter comes through in the subject.

Her works in white ink on black paper – particularly those featuring trees – have a ghostly and almost mythical quality. They’re so simple, one might think, but they are also so effective that they stay long in the mind.

Personally, they instantly conjure childhood journeys from Tebay to Newbiggin on dark nights, when the car lights lit up the skeletal trees ahead.

Roy's lillies

You can follow Annie in Twitter at @anniethepainter. And find out more at anniethepainter.com.

@fabartstuff is different to anything in the realm of art that I’ve written about previously.

This is a three-way, Twitter collaboration between Dr Theresa Porrett, who works in the NHS supporting nurse specialists, and describes herself as a “would-be photo journalist”, health policy analyst, writer and commentator Roy Lilley, and digital professional Fran Maher.

Their feed offers a range of art-related tweets, including retweets of works by various artists, but it also includes Lilley’s own iPad pictures, which are frankly amazing.

His results are put into particularly sharp perspective by my own rather clumsy digital efforts – ‘how on earth do you even find a stylus that works properly on an iPad?’ I find myself asking, every time a new work pops up on my Twitter feed.

St Paul's by Roy Lilley

And that is no minor question. But even such a technology-related matter doesn’t alter the basic point that, the tech aside, he’s simply a damned good artist.

Although he also paints traditional watercolours too, Lilley’s portraits and landscapes done on the tablet have a distinctive and highly effective style, and are a prefect illustration of what I mean by new technologies not meaning a waning of skills.

@fabartstuff is new, but what it also shows is just how much talent for and love of art there is out there, across all walks of life – and also how the internet can offer us a portal both to discover and share a wide range of art.

Washed Clean by Susan Harrell

Meanwhile, taking a leap across The Pond, Susan Harrell is a self-trained oil painter from North Carolina, who creates photorealistic works on canvas, wood and aluminium.

I’ve loved photorealism since my teens, and these works simply make me awed at the effect.

Her work ranges across subjects, but it’s in her still life paintings where the approach really works – not least in her sometimes quirky compositions and unusual takes on otherwise traditional subjects.

In the 2013 oil on panel, Washed Clean, for instance, she takes a very conventional bunch of red grapes, but gives it a distinctly modern twist by painting it from a bird’s eye view, in a metal colander, gaining wonderful light, textures and reflections in the process.

Three's Company by Susan Harrell

Short and Stout is a beautifully-realised picture of an old-fashioned, stove-top kettle – but standing outside, so that the sky and landscape are reflected in the curved metal.

Three’s Company takes a trio of apples, but this is no cliché. Instead, she paints two of them in a damp plastic bag that is clinging, in places, to the fruits.

Follow Susan at ‪@susanharrellart and find out more about her work at www.susanharrell.com. 

David Stamp hails from Plymouth and is now based on the other side of the Tamar in Cornwall.

Self taught, he works in acrylic, watercolour and mixed media.

We Have Green Light by David Stamp

We Have the Green Light – a mixed-media, semi-abstract work – is indicative of the light that he conveys in his flower paintings.

And here seems the perfect moment to mention another little point: David’s subjects matters of choice include flowers – surely a ‘feminine’ subject, while Susan Harrell’s photorealism is a style that is most often associated with male artists.

The reality is that art is a world where we can find such stereotypical and limiting ideas being happily ignored, as artists find and develop the styles that suit them – not on the basis of preconceived gender roles.

Market Jew Street, Penzanze by David Stamp

But back to David’s work. The mixed-media, semi-abstract approach is not just to be found in the flower paintings.

Market Jew Street, Penzance (the name comes from the Cornish, Marghas Yow, which means Thursday Market), includes aspects of collage and, as David himself challenges viewers: “spot the tin mine chimney in the centre”.

How much more Cornish can you get?

To find out more, David’s own website is at ‪davidstamp.co.uk‪, while he tweets at @stamper485‪.

The sheer breadth of art that you can find online is illustrated by ‪@GardenGallery2, which‪ is the Twitter feed for Frances, a Derbyshire-based artist who creates felted art, most of which is inspired by the wildlife in that county.

Felted Hare by Garden Gallery

This is art that is craft-based – which would have been looked down on snootily in the past.

The works produced have lovely colour, while the felting provides textural interests that Frances matches extremely well to her subjects.

Frances doesn’t appear to have any obvious outlet for selling her works, so – and I’m guessing here – for her, this seems to be mainly a hobby.

It’s another way of seeing that the desire to create goes far beyond the walls of galleries and beyond those who studied at art school.

The internet offers the chance to explore a hugely democratic world of art.

‪Check out (and ‘like’!) her Facebook page for more examples of her work.

Raygun by Mattias Adolfsson

Mattias Adolfsson is a freelance illustrator from Sweden, producing some highly imaginative – and fun – ink drawings and, with these, some exquisite books.

Raygun, for instance, brings to mind steampunk, but then gives it a delightful, fantastical spin by turning a sci-fi hand weapon into a dragon.

Similarly, Unorthodox Friendship takes the idea of a boy meeting a dinosaur and turns that on its head by making both of them robots.

These works have real charm and humour, while his blog is a wonderful insight into an artist’s sketchbooks: Moscow Taxi is gloriously, bonkersly detailed – something that’s far from unique in Mattias’s work.

Unorthodox Friendship by Mattias Adopfsson

Ilustration is a particular art form, but what you find when looking at works like these is that it also provokes another way of examining that old question about what constitutes art, particularly when it comes to highly graphic work.

When I was in my teens and my teachers were busy mapping out a career path for me as a graphic artist, I couldn’t see that as having any link with ‘fine art’. Or put another way, with what I considered to be ‘real’ art.

Knight by Roy Lilley

Nowadays, I look at works like this and conclude that they’re all art, and that one thing that conceptual art achieves, oddly enough, is to help to eliminate some of the old definitions that created a sort of artistic caste system.

And after all, who paints history or mythological or religious scenes any more?

So whether it’s Mattias’s illustrations or Garden Gallery’s felted hares or Roy Lilley’s digital creations, it’s all art: simples.

You’ll find Mattias’s blog at mattiasa.blogspot.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter at ‪@MattiasInk‪.

Turner Prize nominees offer no delights

Okay, m'kay?

A few weeks ago, with my new(ish) Tate membership card clutched firmly in hand, I was enjoying a wander around the Tate Britain, when I spotted the door for the galleries where this year’s four Turner Prize nominees are exhibiting.

Now in the past that would have had me scuttling away, but the past is a different country, and armed with the knowledge that I could enter without having to pay any extra, I decided to grasp the opportunity.

Pushing beyond the heavy door, I tried to shove my equally weighty reservations firmly to the back of my head and maintain as open a mind as possible.

First up was artist and composer James Richards, who uses ‘found images’ in his own black and white films. His entry here, Rosebud, includes, for instance, mutilated photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Man Ray that he found in a public library in Japan.

The methodical efforts of an anonymous individual or individuals to scratch out any signs of genitalia is an interesting reminder of how censorship is not just something done by the state.

Moving on, Tris Vonna-Michell’s audio-visual installation, Finding Chopin Dans l’Essex, is about the artist trying to make sense of his own background as a German, born and raised in Southend.

Meanwhile, in the exhibition’s one step away from lengthy video installations, Ciara Phillips has pasted an entire room with her splattery screen prints, together with frames that spell out a gigantic ‘OK’, to create Things Shared.

And it all finishes with Duncan Campbell’s 55-minute film If For Others, which casts an eye over how art is used and commoditised.

Umm.

Of the three lengthy films, Vonna-Michell’s is primarily a biographical/autobiographical documentary: there’s nothing remotely wrong with this – but is it ‘art’, other than an example of the art of documentary?

Richards’s piece, as mentioned, raises questions about censorship – but again, is it ‘art’ or a form of art film?

Phillips’s screen prints warmed the cockles of my old-fashioned heart – although that was rather more because I recognised them as being something that I could understand as ‘art’, but beyond that, they didn’t really have much else going for them.

The professional critics are hailing Campbell’s piece as the obvious winner among this quartet, but after being harangued by a female voice for several minutes on the subject of ‘parasitical art dealers’ and how It’s All The Fault Of The ‘Neo-Liberal Elite’, I chose to exit stage left, marking the first instance where I have found myself being irritated by someone actually objecting to neo-liberalism.

Censored Mapplethorpe

Campbell’s work may well be a very good polemical film essay – and there is nothing remotely wrong with that – but if that is what is for ‘art’ these days, then why isn’t the BBC’s fabulous three-part TV essay on concrete brutalism by Jonathon Meades in contention?

What is it that sees these video exhibits classed as ‘art’ and that not?

All of these video entries have a place – they all had more to offer than I expected – but is that place really in a gallery? And what, ultimately, do we mean by ‘art’?

The art establishment is, by and large, completely out of synch with the majority of the population.

Art has become divided into two worlds – and rarely do the twain meet.

In one, art has become about the concept – see above. You no longer need to able to even use any of what most people would consider the main skills associated with art: drawing, painting, sculpting, ceramics etc.

Throw some images together on film – the rougher-looking the better – and suggest that they convey some deeper, philosophical meaning.

Alternatively, do something similar with objects arranged in an apparently haphazard fashion.

Just to point out – I am not opposed to installation art per se: Anish Kapor’s Marsyas convinced me that there could be plenty of merit in such an approach.

But away from this sort of approach, most people want something less solipsistic – they do not want to look at a piece that takes hours to explain before you have a chance of ‘getting’ it (that’s why Marsyas worked: it didn’t need you to be told anything).

This is not to assert that people in general are unsophisticated when it comes to imagery or that they afraid of the ‘modern’ in general – the Matisse cut outs at the Tate Modern earlier this year was a blockbuster not just in name, but in terms of crowds too.

Art can – should? – “wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life”, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be infantile or unchallenging, as Picasso, who said that, illustrated.

And in a work such as Guernica, he also showed that he could use art for aims other than lifting the spirits.

But a large part of the key to Guernica’s power and success – just as with, say, Goya’s The Third of May 1808, is because they do not require lengthy examination before one can come to a basic understanding of them.

However, in an era when Tracey Emin can be named professor of drawing at the Royal Academy, as happened in 2011 – and that be hailed in some quarters – then we have come to a pretty pass.

As I’ve argued before, the likes of Emin, Damien Hirst and Ai Weiwei create an art that brings to mind the Emperor’s New Clothes, with gushing sycophants falling over themselves in order to show just how hip and avant garde they are.

In the case of Phillips, I feel that her Turner Prize nomination may be rather a sop to ‘traditional’ art, although some have suggested it’s because she runs an artists’ collective in Glasgow that operates in the community (perfectly laudable). It’s like the reserve of that Emperor’s New Clothes coin.

There may well be a place for the video exhibits that are currently on show in the Tate Britain’s Turner Prize nominees exhibition, as I hope I’ve illustrated in a fairly open-minded manner. But in a gallery, displayed as ‘art’, is not that place.