Lunch Time Visits
The National Gallery and Mayfair
February 2017
It’s been too long since my last blog post and to be honest, I don’t have a lot to say for myself. Christmas merriment pulled me away from my computer and if the residual tendrils of festivities found their way into January well… who can blame me? Often, and certainly this year, the month manages to slip past before I know it as I resolutely remain snuggled in cosy sweaters with cups of tea and a thick pile of books.
For me, then, February can be like a second chance at New Year. When January comes to close, I find myself suddenly awake again, itching in my bones to explore and and learn and experience new things. As part of that urge, I always find myself driven to make routines, doing a bit to cement and capture my little sparks of February creativity and motivation.
This year, one of those routines has been one of my old favourites— the lunchtime gallery visit. Whenever I make it out for one of these lunchtime wanderings, it always fills me with such inspiration and delight, carrying me through the day or the week and reminding me how lucky I am to work in Mayfair and be surrounded by such riches.
My lunchtime visits this February really started with the sudden realisation that all of the exhibitions I had put off seeing in December were suddenly coming to a close. If I was going to see them at all, I needed to find all the time I could— now or never.
The first exhibition on my ‘omg it’s the last week already??’ list was “Monochrome: Painting in Black and White” at the National Gallery. Like the true stereotype of an arty type, I’ve had a long love affair with black and white (especially black), and when I heard that it was going to be the subject of a whole exhibition, I was so excited. It’s also so rare these days to see a themed exhibition like this, taking one idea and exploring it through different time periods and movements. Including medieval manuscripts, Titian and Ingres as well as Picasso, Giacometti and Malevich, there’s something for everyone and something for everyone to discover.
Through the five main rooms of the exhibition, the curators explore the uses and effects of the monochrome. From religious art to studies to photography and prints to modern minimalism, monochrome is employed for a variety of uses and in numerous contexts, showing how versatile and effective it can be. While there was certainly farther to go and the wall texts were often disappointingly bland, I was so glad that I managed to squeeze in a visit before it closed. Even with the missed opportunities, it opened doors and made me question things I had always taken from granted.
This was only accentuated by the last piece in the exhibition— Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Room for One Colour.’ Yellow light fills the empty room, everything golden and hyper real. After all the black and white that precedes it, it’s disorienting, a shock. After thoroughly defining the premise throughout the earlier rooms, this last piece is something new. It broadens and repositions. Looking around though, you realise that indeed, everything in the room appears black and white in contrast to the bright colour that surrounds it. In that one room, there is both overwhelming colour and a definitive lack. I left the galleries blinking, looking at everything around me with different eyes.
While I was in the National Gallery, I couldn’t resist quickly heading down to the free Degas exhibition. It’s only three small rooms with some 20 large pastels, but it was absolutely stunning. Degas, like a lot of great artists, can be easy to take for granted. Seeing his masterpieces in reproduction constantly, it’s easy to forget how beautiful and textured and layered they are in the flesh. This small exhibition was enough to remind me and more. Standing in front of ‘Combing the Hair,’ it felt electric. I left with chills— something I hadn’t realised Degas could still inspire in me. Luckily this exhibition is on until the Spring. I’m sure I’ll be back.
The last last-minute squeeze in for me was “Monika Soshowska: Structural Exercises” at Hauser and Wirth. While I wasn’t at all familiar with her practice, I could tell from the photos on their website alone that she was going to be an artist for me. Playing with architectural and structural elements — concrete, beams, pipes, rods— she brings things that are normally hidden, out of sight or overlooked to the surface. In some ways, it’s an exercise in attention and awareness but even more than that, it’s a political act. It’s a statement about the urban environment, how it was shaped by utopian aspirations and defines modern life. How it has been used by forces of oppression. How it has become as much about ruin as it was about renewal. With its intellectual links to artists like Isa Genzken and the Situationists, it ticked all of my boxes.
The last two exhibitions I want to talk about are, miraculously, still open. Both have the virtue of being not five minutes from my office and both artists play with textures and layers. Both are interested in sculptural volume, in the relationships between matter and emptiness. The first is “Minjung Kim: The Memory of Process” at White Cube Mason’s Yard. A Korean artist who studied in Europe, Kim uses traditional Korean forms in modern ways, using the minimalist languages of abstraction and serialisation. In her large compositions, Kim layers and collages dried and burned bark, creating strange shapes or images that suggest landscapes. They’re incredibly tactile and full of depth. 
The other exhibition, “Tara Donovan: Compositions” at Pace, plays with stratification and minimalism as well, creating sculptural volume, layers and depth within a frame. I first encountered Donovan’s work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and I’ve been interested in her practice ever since. I remember standing and watching seven years ago as they installed her large sculpture at the museum, creating a strange mass of styrofoam cups on the ceiling of the contemporary wing. It grew cup by cup, layer by layer. It’s a memory that kept coming back to me as I stood in Pace. Her compositions here are abstract but suggestive. Simple from a distance, they reveal their depth slowly, as you approach.
I saw another exhibition at my front door too— “Charles I: King and Collector” at the Royal Academy. I won’t be regaling you with my views today though. Instead, I’m going to be saving my thoughts for an exciting new venture! Some of you might know, my husband James has a podcast where he talks about the queens consort of England. As a little one off for his paetron patrons, we’re going to record a bonus episode about the exhibition and about Henrietta Maria’s place within it. I’ve never done anything like it (except for the one time I was on a university radio show), so fingers crossed it all goes smoothly…
I also recently headed up to Camden Arts Centre to see their exhibition “Giorgio Griffa: A Continuous Becoming” and to Parafin Gallery to see “Hiraki Sawa: Fantasmagoria”. I’ll be reviewing both exhibitions for this is tomorrow, so keep a look out for them in early March! I’ll be sure to post the links here too.
I hope you’ve all had a good and arty start to the year too and here’s to the rest of 2018. It’s promising to be a good year for art in London, so I’m sure that I won’t be away for too long.
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