Art: What Martin Roth's obits shockingly left out

When I heard that Martin Roth died, I read all the obituaries I could find.  It was as if I felt that by reading accounts of his life his early death would be less shocking. He would have loved them. From the Guardian to the Independent and Telegraph and across the Atlantic, too, in the New York Times all was praise for his short reign as Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Nice, I guess, but for me disturbing. Not a single obituary mentioned the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum. You know, the art and objects. It was as they do not exist. Why then would there be any discussion of Martin Roth’s role in preserving, studying, displaying and/or expanding them. The conclusion was as terrible as it was obvious: Art and objects of art don’t much matter.  A look at what they tell us does matter will follow but first:

As what is in the V&A; the reason for its creation and existence, was not thought worth a mention, there was no point in mentioning Martin Roth's relationship with those employed to maintain, study and increase it. As one does not wish to speak ill of the dead, that may have been just as well; many curators were not Martin Roth fans.  

Maybe the fact that I liked Martin Roth (see previous post) and respected what he achieved in Dresden led me to feel that the anger of V&A’s curators was off target. I reckoned that it ought to have been aimed at the Trustees. Martin did what they hired him to do; he was expected to replicate his success in Dresden. Evidently, when the Trustees were kids they all cut class on the morning their teachers explained about how you can't compare apples and pears.

At Dresden's State Art Collections, Martin Roth was an Admiral overseeing a fleet of 12 (now 15) ships. His job was not to run the State's Armory, Green Vaults;  Old Master, Modern Art, Porcelain or Folk Art collections. Each of these museums has its own Captain responsible for its contents and a staff that reports to him or her. Martin was responsible for strategy, conquests, publicity, raising money. . He revelled in it. Also, he was very good at it.  During his 10 years there he became a figure on the international culture stage; Dresden was reborn as a great culture capital. The splendor of its collections was a revelation and joy.  

When Martin came to London he worried that people might have trouble accepting him as the first German to head an important British museum.  He did not appear to have any doubts about his job description. He arrived an Admiral and that is what he remained. The result was that the V&A became a ship without a Captain; some would say it was minus an anchor, too. I had no idea until I read the obituaries that for a lot of people in the art world this did not seem to matter. Evidently, there were more important things. Consider, for a representative example, this snippet from a laudatory obit in the FT:

  “Roth’s outward-looking approach was reflected in bold plans for new outposts for the South Kensington-based museum. V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first museum of design, is due to open in 2018, and V&A East is planned for the QueenElizabeth Olympic Park in east London.”  And there was more to praise, much more:

  

 In the Guardian, the current Chairman of the V&A Trustees, Nicolas Coleridge, is quoted saying that Martin Roth raised “the international profile of the museum. Initiatives under his leadership included a presence at the Venice Biennale, the expansion of the museum to China, Dundee and east London, the founding of the V&A research unit, and the opening of restored galleries devoted to European arts and crafts of 1600-1815.”  Hurrah. Hurrah?

Yes, while Martin Roth was Director, the number of visitors rose to 3.8 million. There was such high demand to see exhibitions devoted to David Bowie and AlexanderMcQueen that the museum had to extend its opening hours--even through the night. Also no. The number of curators shrank. Acquisition budgets ditto. More cuts were promised. Talk became more bitter; the voices of staff were not heard; their concerns ignored.

Okay bitching is one of the perks of being on staff. But sometimes it is more than a ventilating system. The New York Times obituary described Martin Roth as “a path breaking curator in Britain.” Where was the editor that day? He was not a curator of any kind in Britain--nor at Dresden’s State Art Collections for that matter. The Big Picture was his department. 

In London, at lunch with Martin one day, I mentioned that V&A curators were discontented; that they felt they could not get their views across. He simply had no idea what I was talking about; what they wanted from him. They knew where he was. It was up to them to make themselves heard. I didn’t think he was being arrogant. He just didn’t get it. 

In the absence of a focus on their contents, museums become brands. The V&A, a magnificent museum is marketed; opens branches, sells franchises. Its success is measured by counting the number of feet through the door; the amount of media coverage, celebrities coming to its parties and awards of course. A successful museum director is someone who grows the brand. What's so dreadful is that this is not happening in small pockets here and there; that it is what's called trending. What so awful is that is now normal to think more about the packaging and selling of museums than what is in them.

I don't like it. I wish it would stop.

Remembering Martin Roth--and Dresden

It was only last Autumn that Martin Roth, then a vigorous 61- year old, left London after five years as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and returned to Germany. There cancer, reportedly diagnosed soon after he arrived, felled him fast. He died on August 6.  When I heard the announcement on the BBC news I was shocked and also sad. I’d known and liked Martin for 15 years. 

I last saw Martin Roth last Autumn at a V&A party. Once it was decided that he would no longer be its Director he decided to leave before the very end of his contract..He and his wife were about to head for Berlin.

  “What are you going to do next?” I asked.

   “One thing for sure, I will spend more time in British Columbia,” he said.

     Although he loved it there this seemed improbable.  Martin was too ambitious; his need to scoot around the world to museums and conferences; to hang out with the rich, famous and//or beautiful was much too great for him to relax swaying in a hammock tied to the rough bark of a couple of sky- skimming trees. 

   

Tall and dark when we first met and later a distinguished gray, Martin Roth would have been handsome if there weren’t something sheepish about him. It was as if he were playing the lead in the story of his life without fully connecting with the character.. The plot involved driving fast cars, wearing beautifully cut suits, enjoying fancy company and maybe above all being seen to be a figure on the international culture scene. He relished it yet seemed a little embarrassed by the hot shot, glamorous character he played. . This sheepishness undercut the slickness and vanity. It made him approachable; likable.  Soon I came to admired him, too--not for his performance at the V&A (about which more in the next post), but for his brilliant achievements during the decade before.

Detail from the large jewelled tableau "Throne of the Great Moghul Aureng Zeb " in the Green Vault 

In 2001 Martin Roth became Director General of the Dresden State Art Collections. He was to oversee the reconstruction, restoration and re-display of its 12 museums (there are now 15).  Together they house the greatest surviving Western Princely treasure in the world. There is magnificent armour for men and horses, Old Master and Modern masterworks, important sculpture, the best early Meissen and Chinese porcelain,  an abundance of splendid jewels and objets d’art. There is folk art, too, and much else.  Also there are the palaces in which all this was housed. (Above a small part of the opulent and fabulous "Throne of the Great Mogul" with its bejewelled camels and elephants, diplomats and slaves all passing before Aureng-Zeb seated on a throne at the back of the tableau. It was created in the 18th century by Johann Melchior Dinglinger for Saxony's Elector August the Strong. "Over the top" would have had no meaning for him.  In fact, at first glance it seemed just the right description for this ostentatious piece. After a very few minutes it became a dream come true, a dream I didn't know I;'d had. It made the the far more famous works by Faberge seem derivative. Very well done of course but less imaginative; less brilliant; not thrilling..

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Martin Roth was also charged with making the world aware of Dresden’s splendor. I write for publications with a global reach. That is why I was invited to Dresden in 2002 and the reopening of the first of its exceptional museums: The Porcelain Gallery. From the start he and I had the usual mutually beneficial (exploitative) relationship of museum director and arts journalist. It was richer than that only because Dresden is..

About all I knew before I went was that the  RAF firebombing of the city near the end of the war destroyed it, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. It became an empty shell. End of story. The firebombing was a tragedy but it was not the end of Dresden.               

Dresden soon after the firebombing

During the war its princely treasures had been removed and hidden in the hills to the east of the city. Almost all of it survived. Quite a few of its Renaissance and Baroque buildings were flattened but many more survived like a congregation of ghoulish, blackened, stone stalagmites. 

   Dresden was cut off from most of us from the start of the Second World War through the decades of the Communist German Democratic Republic. It might as well have been flattened; its treasures destroyed. The government of a reunited Germany was determined to bring it back to life.

I accepted the invitation to go to Dresden because I am keen about old jewels. I'd been told by people who themselves had not yet managed to see it, that there in its  Green Vault was the best collection to see them in abundance. First of course,t I visited the Porcelain Gallery, which after all was the official reason for the trip.  Quickly and to my surprise I fell in love with early Meissen porcelain especially the magical menagerie of animals from a rhino to a turkey.  I visited the store rooms, too,  and the temporary installations.  Finally I managed to get into the Green Vault which was not on the itinerary. From August the Strong's suites of matching jewels (all diamonds or emeralds, coral or carnelian to Dinglinger's tableau.  Until then if I imagined Paradise it was Arcadian. Ever since it has become populated with wonders made by men. I left Dresden  awed,  excited and inspired.  I went back more than half a dozen times.

There were not so many other foreign journalists as besotted by the State Art Collections as I was. Naturally Martin Roth noticed. And naturally I grasped that it is handy to be friendly with the man who had keys to all that glorious stuff. But there was something else too: Dresden meant a lot to us both if in very different ways and we both knew it.  It was there that Martin became a player; an art star. .It was there that I was given an aesthetic jolt that expanded my consciousness which for all the hype LSD never did.    

I am glad that Martin Roth and I had Dresden to share; sorry not to have him to share it with any more. Sorry, too, if that word can express it, that his adventure in life ended so soon.

Who knew?: Alberto Giacometti at Tate Modern

"The Dog" 1951

 "I haven't been yet,"I mumbled if someone mentioned "Alberto Giacometti" at Tate Modern. I was lying. I had no intention of going. I suffer from blockbuster fatigue; the thought of going to one of these huge, crowd drawing extravaganzas makes me sleepy.  A show with some 250 drawings, paintings, sculptures and objects; selections from a half century of work by Giacometti did not lure me. And I like Giacometti once he stopped being a Surrealist. The artist who died in 1966 at the age of 65 was famous in his lifetime. He is more famous now.  Add to this the multimillions for which his sculptures sell, and Tate Modern could expect many thousands of feet through its doors. My feet, however, were not going to the party.  Or so I thought.

  One sunny day last week when the weather was perfect for a cycle ride and I had no particular plans, I got on my bike and headed for Tate Modern. I have no idea why. I am pretty sure, however, that if it had been raining, I still would not have seen the exhibition. That would have been a big loss. 

  Sine my teens, I've been drawn to Giacometti's all-profile busts and skinny and all stretched out as if he'd been working with pizza dough. I have seen plenty of his work since. And yet this show was a revelation. 

  The organizers managed to raise the needed money to have many of his fragile plaster sculptures conserved and therefore fit to travel. The eight "Women of Venice," have not been on view since their initial display at the Venice Biennale in 1956, Many other plaster pieces have never been on public view, ever. 

  Room 5 in the exhibition is the first in which all the works are plaster. Most were done during or just after the WWII,  I looked around me. It was as if I were meeting Giacometti for the first time--more than that, I felt that for the first I "got him," or anyway was beginning to. 

White. The tall smooth walls are white. The 18 plaster statues in Room 5 are white or painted in very pale pinky/gold/ beige. In some, Giacometti went on to draw with paint on the surfaces. Usually, smooth they are not.  Along one wall stands a single statue: "Woman on a Chariot" a female nude. Its base of wood is supported by four small wooden wheels. The other three walls are lined with illuminated built-in vitrines--the sort of display not uncommon when presenting jewels. That makes sense; everything on view behind the flat, glass panes is small or smaller--at least one full length figure is the height of the nail on my little finger.  All this is both accurate and misleading. Measurements of this kind are of uniquely limited value when talking about the perception and impact of Giacometti's sculpture. Whatever the tape measure says, these works are monumental. 

The painted plaster "Head of a Man" (above and below) measures "55 x 13 x 16 cm (21 x 5.14  x 6.2") including the base has more impact than "Standing Woman," for instance.. The giant bronze, in a gallery further along, at 272 cm high (just under 9 feet) would be eye to eye with any giraffe that wandered into the Tate. Impressive yes. Even memorable. Many dealers would not hesitate to call her iconic. For all that she doesn't lure the viewer into a journey enticed by where they have been, what they know and the desire to learn more. 

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Head of a Man 1948-50

Head of Diego c.1949

"Head of  Diego" 1946  measures 11.8 x 6 x 8.3

(topping out at 4.6 inches).  Like "Head of a Man" or more so it seems like a map of the world or--what the hell--even the cosmos.  Maybe to calm down a little, it is better to say that each of these busts and full figure plaster statues, whatever the ruler has to say about them, seems to tell us so much--more than it is possible to take in on one meeting--about living and who knows maybe about the artist himself.

About the latter Giacometti would not agree. He acknowledged only one self-portrait. That bronze made in 1951 has so much appeal the Tate has reproduced the image on carrier bags, mugs and tee shirts in a choice of background colours available in its shops .

Half-a-dozen years after he created it, Alberto Giacometti told Jean Genet "One day I saw myself like that."  That is "The Dog." The emaciated creature, lopes along, nose to the ground exhausted and charismatic. (See opening image.)

The show closes on September 10. I will keep going back wanting to see more of what he sniffed out.

  

The Empress's New Clothes: Rei Kawakubo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Art of the In-between,” is a toast to the brilliance, originality and  influence on fashion of Comme des Garcons, the label founded by Rei Kawakubo in 1973 designed by her ever since. Born in Japan in 1942 where she continues to work, Kawakubo’s vaunted importance is spot lit in the press releases issued by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Make no mistake; this is a big deal. Indeed it is only the second time its Costume Institute has given a fashion designer a one- person show. (The first was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.)  This time the exhibition is not being displayed in its dedicated and capacious, if largely subterranean, galleries. No indeedee. It is upstairs on the second floor in one of the museum’s special art-exhibition spaces--an elevation in more than the number of steps to climb.

The catalogue is big, chic and gorgeous (of course). It manages to be both flashy and minimalist.  There is a long Q and A “conversation” between Kawakubo and the Institute’s curator/director Andrew Bolton. He asks rihanna the Qs and she, who seldom gives interviews or even speaks where reporters can listen in,  well it would be wrong to call her words a response.  Bolton unfolds before her a plushy red carpet but instead of gliding along it or doing pirouettes, she stalks her own thoughts and expresses them with Intelligence, an independent mind and a certainty that is bracing.   She makes plain they had disagreements, many. He wanted a retrospective; she not. This was a battle she won. The future is her baby or her prey. Try to drag her back to past inventions or even pin her down to the so- called here and now and she turns into a donkey; one that chooses silence over braying. She did not want to be curated; no interpretation, please. That battle she lost.

I never bought or wore anything by Comme des Garcons but I was attracted to what Kawakubo had to say. I was curious, hopeful too, about the show as I headed uptown to see it.

Unlike most museum exhibitions—in fact all that I can recall—the shop isn’t at the end but fills much off the broad corridor out front. I am no shopaphobe but the merchandise could wait. I went straight into the cinematically futuristic, somewhat arctic landscape beyond.

White, amorphously shaped pods –some double- deckers—w-hich looked like they were carved out of non-reflective ice, were like so many avant-garde open-air igloos with mannequins inside. They were arranged in clusters along winding paths. I quickly lost track of where I’d been and where I thought I was going next. This not a criticism. With no time line why not get lost and discover?

I saw many things made of fabric that were fanciful, amusing, bizarre, pretty in parts. The thing is,  with very few exceptions what I did not see was clothes. .

In its early days, Comme des Garcons aficionados in Japan were called Ravens…women who adopted as if a uniform, its loose, long, black, monk/nunish garments; their feet encased by clunky, flat black sardine- can shaped shoes. Then there were tops with with purpose made holes in them; garments with ragged edges. Seams were not longer necessarily on the inside. Kawakubo took Comme to Paris where for a couple of decades the label shocked; it made news and money. Fashion writers talk about how she liberated women;  no more dressing to seduce men. They are still writing this stuff. It is as dated as she fears those earlier pieces would look.

The sleeves on the objects shown at the Met,(if they have any) seldom would allow a person to raise her arm. What, take into account the need for the use of hands? These objects do not liberate the body; they incarcerate it. How has she managed to operate a successful international fashion business selling stuff like this?  Well fashion journalists seem enthralled. But so do shoppers as I found out when I went out front..
  

There is a barrier the size of the Berlin Wall between most of what is in the show and what is for sale. (And it is in no danger of being pulled down. Tee shirts—not unlike French sailor stripped numbers although here in colors besides dark blue--are priced at about $150.00. There are navy cardigans, small zipped pouches in gold leather totally plain but for the stamped words Comme des Garconons. This is Kawakubo’s line called Play and the playful part comes from the logo—a pair of cats eyes joined to form a heart. It appears also on the white Converse trainers selling for $125.

 What with all the hype and all the photographs of Rihanna at the Met Gala to benefit the Costume Institute—decked out in leggy, Comme- couture entry in Rio’s Carnival, the credit card machines were overheating..

This exhibition makes no case for the influence of Rei Kawakubo or of her being a fashion artist.  There is little to compare with the many works of enormous beauty and thrilling invention on view in ManusxMachina—lasat year’s Costume Institute’s big May show. (About which I wrote for the Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/06/high-tech-fashion-design). . Gareth Pugh and Iris van Herpen were two of the stars in a sky ablaze with them. “Art of the In-Between” is not a great art show nor is it a fashion exhibition.  On the plus side:    Shop sales should go some way to making up the huge deficit that materialized during the tenure of the Met’s outgoing Director Tom Campbell

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The Triumph of Death--also Art

The Triumph of Death; c. 1445  Palazzo Abatellis

A bit of a lead up; context let's say:

In Sicily on this my first trip, I expected to find sweetly sour lemons, bleaching hot sun, undaunted blue skies; Greek temples, Roman and Byzantine mosaics, freshly caught fish and superior arancini that big cone of rice stuffed with ragu. Also expected were miles of mountainous unpopulated countryside. I did find all this but on the hoof the island did not look or feel as it had in my years of longing to see it. The neglected palaces of Palermo I'd imagined would have the poetic beauty of Venice, minus the canals, don't. 

    In April it was often cold. In Palermo it rained in torrents for 48 hours straight. And, like most dreams, mine came without a soundtrack. That was a good thing. 

    There were memorable silent moments for which I remain grateful: My first sight of a Greek temple for example. High above the sea on a breezy bluff in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples I lost my heart (connected to the loss of Greek temple virginity no doubt) to the Temple of Juno.

  I sat on a big, rectangular block of pale stone which was cut more than 2000 years ago and thought of nothing much, I thought also of walking up from the valley to this temple soon after it was built. The sea was the same sea, after all. The stone, ditto.  And then I all I felt was tense followed by a desire to flee.

  Waves of school groups carrying on not because they were at the site of ancient temples but naturally enough because they were  out of the classroom for the day began shouted as their teachers tried to tell them about the early conquest of the island.. They were quickly joined by tourists travelling in packs led by guides whose spiels could be hard even by the nearly deaf.  At such popular sites, even so-called independent travellers took up a lot of visual space as they worked at getting images of themselves --or in some cases their offspring--that satisfied their vanity.  Remember the spontaneity of kids?  It is now as outdated as the dial telephone and the sound of the bell that rang on manual typewriters at the end of every line.

   "Did you love Sicily?" I am asked. Obviously and as almost always the answer is yes and know. But among the big yeses were such surprises architectural (Noto for example), gastronomical (fish with a sauce of sweated fennel and raisins), topographical (Ragusa Ibla built up the side of gorge like a 17th century Canyon de Chelly) and then the subject for this long preamble--a huge fresco as beautiful as it is terrible--at least for those of us insufficiently philosophical about impending death. 

A great work of art; a masterpiece; an unforgettable creation any and all describe The Triumph of Death (at the top).  It was made (creator unknown) in the middle of the 15th century for the wall of a former palace by then a hospital. It stayed there for centuries. Then, towards the end of WWII it was removed and now hangs in the Regional Art Gallery, Palermo;the Palazzo Abatellis. In the century before this fresco was painted, the Black Plague had killed as many as 200 million people. Death had been everywhere and that include works of art. A century later, this huge work was made (it measures a little over 19 by 24), It is both lyrical and cruel. As one scholar has written; the imagery is too cruel to have been created by an Italian. Guesses include a painter from Aragon or Provence.  

Death dominates; charging ahead on a skeletal horse. Some say the poor folk at the lower left are pleading for mercy; others that they plead to be delivered them from their misery. Either way they are ignored. The rich and otherwise privileged on the right (so unwittingly contemporary in its political positioning), are enjoying their courtly privileges oblivious to what is heading their way. But standing in front of the fresco there is hiding. The rider is coming for you, too.

On the day of my visit six musicians lined up in a row sat in front of the fresco. They played their stringed instruments nicely.. It was pleasant to hear them. In this case sound was no interference but neither was it a benefit. In silence or wrapped in musical notes death triumphs and the artist of this work unfailing makes his point.. 

If it were in Florence, or Rome, or Milan, "The Triumph of Death," would be on the "must see" list of every travelling art lover. It would have been seen by more art historians and be in every book about the history of Italian art or late Gothic art or just plain great art. Maybe I had once come across a reproduction of it somewhere. I had no such memory.  But in a books or on a screen this work just does not produce the overpowering, exhilarating and chilling impact. To see the Triumph of Death is reason enough to go to Palermo. If you do: Pay better attention that we did to the warning that the city is a haven not only for art lovers but for pick pockets, also.        

Dream big; execute small

This year there were 270 international dealers showing and selling at TEFAF  the big and beautiful art and antiques fair that takes place in Maastricht, the Netherlands every year in March.  You could find  Old Master, modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture,, objects of art, jewellery high fashion and antique , silver, drawings, furniture. Most everything is f high quality and expensive to even more so. There are always pieces to covet. But my favorite was a home rather than something I wanted to take to my own. Outside the stand of Dutch dealer John Endlich stood the most charming and surprising object at the fair--a doll's house furnished in the style of a house inhabited by a rich family in the 17th century--the Dutch Golden Age. And it was not only in the style of...The silver furnishings, at least, were original to that period. There was a taste for various kinds of miniatures at the time--mini versions of the Chinese porcelain or Dutch pottery that was in vogue. But the 200 pieces are exceedingly rare survivors representing perhaps two thirds of all that is left..

Imagine that you are collector. You begin slowly but then the bug bites. For 20 years, with the help of your dealer--Mr Endlich in this case--you accumulate a spectacular collection. Eventual you manage to corral some 200 of them--mirrors, garden ornaments, chandeliers, tea kettles, andirons tables, chairs,tables,  musical instruments, chests--oh and a bed- warmer, too. Let's not overlook the wine cooler and garden fountain--the only two of their kind to remain.

You might think such a collection, this collection, would be too adorable or fiddly. What makes it art is the quality of the craftsmanship, the imagination of the makers and a touch of surrealism.  Individually a piece would have been made to scale; a perfectly scaled down version of the original biggie. But the scale used is not uniform. All are miniatures; all doll house ready for that reason, but the table top virginal, for instance, is tiny compared to the dice next to it. The same hand would not have successfully managed both.

It must have been difficult but also fun to hunt down these little treasures. But then came the question of what to do with them? Would the next generation want them? How to guarantee that they would be kept together? If sold one by one, the odds of pieces disappearing would go way up.

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With the help of his dealer, Mr X found an ingenious solution. A doll house would be made and,furnished with his collection as well such additions as fireplaces and beds of the period., No doubt the three wonderful 17th century doll houses now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (do not miss if them when you visit) were sources of inspiration. These were never meant as children's playthings.. Indeed  at the time, it cost as much to commission and furnish one of them as it would have been to buy a grand house on one of Amsterdam's canals.

Problem solved. Set in their new magnificent home, the silver miniatures along with the house they furnished would be sold together. It would all be kept together..

And so it happened at TEFAF this year that in front of Herr Endlich's stand stood a proper Dutch 17th century cabinet on a stand in which nine rooms had been fashioned==from laundry to garden with a view of the neighborhood as it would have been in Holland during the 1600s. The price tag was 175,000 euros.

This story ends fittingly. This dream house is going on a journey across the ocean. It was quickly bought by a collector who is giving it on long term loan to the Boston's Museum of Fine Arts..

It takes all kinds of fishes: Michael Andrews at Gagosian

Resurfacing           Michael Andrews (1928—1995

School 1, 1977 152.5x213

In 1980 Mike Andrews was given a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. According to the catalogue entry for the work above, the painter, then in his early fifties, had become interested in what people and fish have in common or anyway what the behaviour of the later might tell him/us about ourselves. It is a big, very attractive with wow power on a wall. But decorative is what it is which is to say it is not a work of art. It delights and disappears. Yet Andrews’ created some powerful, enduring works. And some of them, at least, are part of the big show now getting rave reviews at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill Gallery. 

From schools of fish to the School of London, (Alas, I just can’t avoid this one.)  Fishes have nothing to say on the subject. As for the latter, among artists, none agree to belong to it now or ever before. It stuck because it was a  useful for marketing to promote a number of young to youngish figurative painters working in London in the midtwentieth century. Figurative art was not what was happening then and from Abstract Expressionism to Pop, London was not where art was happening; that location was New York.  But living artists working in London at the time and Andrews was among them. His 1962 painting, “The Colony Room 1,” below, includes John Deakin and Bruce Bernard (now famous photographers of that scene) as well as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Thee works have become ever more sought after by collectors and museums with price tags that reflect it.





Following along behind are Frank Auerbach and LeonKossoff.  But Andrews who was successful enough early on to be able to stop teaching, support his family and paint later drifted out of sight. Then around 2007 (it would be interesting to know why) his auction prices suddenly shot up.  Now Gagosian (who is not the dealer representing his estate) is mounting “Earth Air Water,” this ambitious show (closing 25 March).  All 62 paintings are loans—either from private collections or from institutions.  Maybe a few lenders will part with their works for the right price, but overall this exhibition appears to be an image/reputation building event and-- who would object--if it is also a labour of love..

There are pictures to love but for me the show has one major drawback: It focuses an the later works of Michael Andrews and it is the earlier ones that are his best. Why? I could say because that is when he painted in oils and his subject was people. And it is a fact that later  "ideas" and blown- on acrylic took dominate. And the earlier ones, as in the Colony Room, have a warmer temperature.  These paintings matter somehow while the later ones... Well clearly the selectors don’t agree.   

One wall of the gallery is hung with photographs of Andrews, his sitters and friends. The rest of the vast, two storey space is hunt with paintings in oil, acrylic and watercolour-- some of them big enough to fill the wall of a generously proportioned house—but there is nothing homey about this Mayfair space. It is sleek and warehouse huge with high ceilings and window- walls of floor to ceiling glass.  The finishes are as luxurious as its scale. Chic and cool pretty much covers it.  And so is too much of the work  Andrews produced in the second half of his career. 

When I looked at his “Liner” of 1971-1972, a night view of a cruise ship (alas not available for reproduction) my mind’s eye almost immediately replaced it with more poetic and powerful images of a liner at night in Fellini’s “Amarcord” which opened about the same time this work was painted. (An image from the film below.)  I saw the movie years ago and yet it is Fellini’s ship that remains vivid and strong while Andrews’ Liner which was hanging right in front of me vanished as I stood there. And that I think is the heart of the matter.

The series of big bold red and orange Ayres Rock paintings are striking alright. And his fishes are lovely. But blink and they have no more to say; to give; to inspire than a tourist board poster or high class restaurant mural.  They are big, ambitious, attractive yet somehow slight.

The catalogue for this exhibition was written by Richard Calvocoressi, who is Director and Senior Curator of Gagosian London. He knew Mike Andrews and helped organize exhibitions of the artist’s work when he was alive. He talks about Andrews interest in Zen Buddhism. The images of hot air balloons in flight on view in this show are said to represent that efforts to transcend the ego. There is more of these kind of "explaining."  Maybe this helps viewers to see more in the pictures than they would have done otherwise. For me it is hot air not the ego inside those balloons.

I am sorry to say that  once I’ve posted these words, many of these paintings now out of sight will also be out of mind.  Sorry because I like the early pictures so much and because I am interested in many of the books that Andrews read and that influenced him. But I do not want to see the illustrations of the ideas he found so gripping if that is what most of these pictures are. Still "ideas" are all that most gallerists talk about when trying to sell works of contemporary art so it seems very likely that the later works of Mike Andrews will find a large, enthusiastic new audience..