The landscapes and communities of England, the characters of bohemian Paris and London, the glory of the creative imagination…

There are three very exciting exhibitions coming this summer that will draw us out of the lockdown slumber to thrill us with paint, colour and the exuberance of living. And this common viewer for one is very excited!  

(I’ve included as many links as possible for further exploration, but please let me know if there are any others I can add to build up our Common Viewer Resources!)

At Penlee House in Cornwall, they are celebrating the life and art of Laura Knight from 17^th May to 16^th September in what they’re calling a “major retrospective” that includes a number of paintings from private collections.

The exhibition will bring together over 60 works by the artist, exploring different themes she became fascinated with over her life. Her stunning landscapes in Cornwall, Yorkshire and Worcestershire will be shown alongside her paintings of circus performers and Gypsies.

Laura Knight: A Celebration

There is also an accompanying book “Laura Knight: A Celebration” by art historian and curator Elizabeth Knowles published by Sansom and Company.

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And, as I was looking that up, I’ve also discovered not only that Barbara C Morden’s brilliant biography Laura Knight: A Life is being freshly published in paperback, but that Laura Knight’s autobiography “Oil Paint and Grease Paint” is to be republished in February 2022 – and that is excellent news indeed as it brings Laura Knight’s voice directly to us, as well as numerous anecdotes!

Meanwhile, over at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex (19th May – 30th August), there is to be a celebration of Nina Hamnett – the Queen of Bohemia as she was, quite wonderfully, known!

Hamnett’s paintings give us a glimpse into her life in Paris and London’s avant-garde communities, and into the relationships she forged. Her compelling portraits and skilful compositions such as her Parisian café scenes, reveal Hamnett to be one of the most talented and exciting artists of her time.

see: https://www.charleston.org.uk/nina-hamnett/

Again there is a book Nina Hamnett to coincide with the exhibition written by the brilliant Alicia Foster and published in the Modern Women Artists series from Eiderdown Books.

Sadly there’s no sign that Hamnett’s autobiographies are to be republished, but Rachel Campbell-Johnston certainly offers a flavour of the artist’s life in her Times review article “The Painter who became a Magnet for Scandal” as does Lucy Davies in the Telegraph: “Lucien Freud Perched, Rapt, on her Deathbed“.

Eiderdown Books also include Eileen Agar by Laura Smith in their Modern Women Artists series:

Eileen Agar was an artist who explored painting, photography, collage and sculpture. Her independent and inventive experiments with assemblage and colour linked her work inextricably with two major art movements of European twentieth century culture: Cubism and Surrealism.

which coincides with the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition: Eileen Agar – Angel of Anarchy (19^th May – 29^th August).

‘I have spent my whole life in revolt against convention, trying to bring colour and light and a sense of the mysterious to daily existence. One must have a hunger for new colour, new shapes, and new possibilities of discovery.’

– Eileen Agar quoted on the Whitechapel Gallery website.

As Laura Cumming has written in the Guardian:

[Agar’s] art seems infused with a constant sense of the sea and the shore, but also with a characteristically independent joie de vivre. This survey of over a hundred works is long overdue, but better late than never.

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Laura Smith has also edited a book “Eileen Agar” to accompany the exhibition that should be especially valuable as it brings together the insights of Andrew Lambirth and Marina Warner. I must also mention Michel Remy’s excellent book Eileen Agar: Dreaming Oneself Awake as well as BBC Radio 4 programme on Sounds about Agar by Iwona Blazwick, the director of Whitechapel Gallery, which is definitely worth hearing as an overview/introduction to the artist.

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And of course Art UK | Home is as ever a fabulous website through which to explore all these artists.

Oh, what a summer of gorgeous looking we have ahead of us if we share Eileen Agar’s “hunger for new colour, new shapes, and new possibilities of discovery”.

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Greetings!

As all the galleries across the world are closed, it’s the online ‘exhibitions’ that come to the fore – not that many of us could just pop over to Moscow even in usual times! But this is just a quick note to direct anyone following my little “Art & Artists of Russia” articles that there are some glorious paintings on the Russian Impressionism Museum website: the English version is at Collection – Russian impressionism museum (rusimp.su)

My favourite painting (today!) from the Museum is “Little Church at Abramtsevo” painted by Valentina Diffine-Christi (sometimes Valentina Mikhailovna Diffine-Kristi) in 1953 [website link].

The picture is radiant with sunlight; the brushstrokes so loose and free with paint and colour, that it would be so satisfying to relate its expressiveness to the broader context: 1953 was the year that Stalin died.

Even if that’s not the case, the painting certainly looks back to a previous time. The Abramtsevo estate had been a vibrant and radical artists colony in the 19th century – a community that included perhaps the most famous pre-Revolution artist, Ilya Repin, and artists from the Wanderers movement who excelled in depictions of the Russian landscape such as Konstantin Korovin whose impressionism – inspired by trips to Paris, where he would settle permanently in 1923 – is a direct antecedent of “Little Church”. Here’s his painting “Yalta” from the 1910s (also at the Russian Impressionism Museum [website link]).

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Hoping this might have brightened your day!

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It’s New Year’s Eve, the last day of this “unprecedented” year and very much a time to look forward – with optimism and hope – to 2021. I’ve taken all the projections that there will be ‘some kind of normal’ come Spring/ Easter very much to heart – especially with our art discussion meetings and reading groups in mind; won’t it be wonderful to come together again?!

In the meantime, I have a plan for these pages here on The Common Viewer – to explore, over the next twelve months or so:

The Art and Artists of Russia

Interweaving history, culture and literature, we’ll work in fairly chronological order from the 1850s to the present day and, I promise you, it’s a fascinating story!

As always, I’m keen to draw together as many ‘resources for further research’ as possible as we go along, and one of the most important is the Russian Art & Culture website which includes news from across the arts-world, interviews and articles. They also co-ordinate “Russian Art Week” which is held in London twice a year. The Moscow Times is another brilliant general resource for contemporary Russian art and culture, current exhibitions opening across Russia, as well as film and television – and definitely worth dipping into every now and then to ‘get a flavour’ of the depth and extent of the extraordinarily vibrant Russian art world.

I’ll continue to publish the main story fortnightly (keeping each article fairly short), with ‘extras’ added in at random as we go along. And remember this is very much a ‘group project’, so please do feedback with ideas, questions and any relevant resources you come across that I can then share with everyone.

In January we’ll begin with a broad background and introduction to the project:

9th January: “Peter the Great – the birth of St Petersburg”

23rd January: “Catherine the Great – the Hermitage”

I’m really looking forward to this project and hope you’ll come and join me! For now, though:

Happy New Year!

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