Ed Mirza - Art Events and Criticism
Critique of Exhibitions and Events in Today's Artworld
July The 16th, 2023
Capturing the Moment - A Journey Through Painting and Photography - Tate Modern
This has a decisive education angle, with an introduction in terms of cubism, which intimates the way in which photography may be seen to have freed painting.
It then focuses on the way that painters began to focus on texture and brush stroke with such painters as Francis Bacon, Cecily Brown, and Paula Rego. In such work, what may also be seen is the way in which the psychological depth of subjects may be explored with paint, with the use of gesture, distortion and expression.
The exhibition then features the work of painters such as William Sasnal and Gerhardt Richter, wherein they explored the concept of photography as a representation of reality as opposed to painting. This tension between photographs and paintings was explored via copying photographs while yet drawing attention subtly to the painterly qualities.
This works by way of introduction to more contemporary artists who explore representation, and identity, such as Crosby, Michael Armitage, and Salman Toor. Michael Armitage dwells on social and personal tensions in his frieze-like history paintings.
Peter Doig - Exhibition at the Courtald
General themes of Peter Doig's work are alienation and displacement
Night brothers…
Night bathers, a sense of alienation. The female gaze, being the strongest point of this painting, invites sympathy, suggests erotic ness. Of course not intuitive sunbathing at night. Nonchalant - ethereal.
Painting on an island focal point brian - purple intuition - hair greek figure - muse - failed transcendences
Music shop - naïveté - captures his expression.
House if Music - Prevailing sense of pigabch connected perhaps with displacement? Sort of adrift - illnesses wonderign - seeking transcendence, the bunting superimposed against gloomy Green.
Vaguely cubist boy, shows his line. Perhaps boy considering his identity in Trinidad?
Green water a bit of a feature.
General theme of dislocation - a bit to narrative and agenda driven for me.
Alice at Boscoes - again a white girl in repose in the Trinidadian setting.
Alpinist - skis like a cross - bearing the burden.