A day in Liverpool

Until 2020 we had regular days out in Liverpool but we lost the habit. Over the past 2 years I’ve only been twice – once on a solo visit to the Tate last year and then, just before Christmas for the Kate Rusby Christmas concert at the Phil. But we’re determined to get back into getting out and about in our local cities and a couple of weeks ago we caught the train into Liverpool for a day out.

Leaving Lime Street station we made our way to the Pierhead and the Tate Gallery/ I was keen to see the Turner exhibition and the show devoted to the four artists who were candidates for the Tate Prize last year. Bowland Climber had been there and reading his post about his visit had whetted my appetite so I’d been keen to find an opportunity to get over to the Gallery

First of all the Turner exhibition.

Waves breaking against the wind (c 1840)

Dark Waters was a relatively small scale exhibition in just two rooms with only a limited number of seascapes – some unfinished works – together with sketchbooks and works on paper. One of his most famous works, The Fighting Temeraire, depicts a ghostly battleship being towed by a steam tug over a placid sea during a blazing sunset. He clearly was fascinated by the sea and painted many seascapes, in many cases depicted savage, stormy seas, some of which were included in the exhibition.

Turner is a favourite artist of mine, but there are two sides to his work. Some of his masterpieces reflect the conventions of the day – Elysian landscapes and mythological and historical subjects. The other side is the one I like and admire. As he got older his paintings became much wilder and impressionistic – almost abstract in some cases, particularly his later works. In many ways he could be considered to be the first Impressionist, although the French would probably disagree. However, the Impressionists must surely have been influenced by him.

On entering the gallery and having our membership cards “zapped”, the first works we saw were sketches and drawings, ideas for possible larger scale works. Turner certainly knew how to draw and a few lines and squiggles portrayed boats, ships, people and the sea.

The stars of the show, though, were the paintings. The exhibition emphasises the influence of Dutch marine art.

Van Tromp Returning after the Battle off the Dogger Bank exhibited 1833 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00537

But Turner developed his own approach with dramatic, swirling, stormy seas

Stormy Sea with Dolphins c.1835-40 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N04664

Some of the paintings were unfinished I’d still love to have one on the wall above the fireplace at home.

Two electronic audio installations, Resounding Water 2022, and Life and Death by Water 2021 by Lamin Fofana, an electronic music producer, DJ, and artist. He grew up in Sierra Leone and Guinea before moving to the US when he was a teenager. He currently lives in Berlin. The music was, rather like Turner’s paintings, abstract, rather than melodic, but created an ambient atmosphere that complemented the works. Both pieces included “field recordings” taken in Liverpool, Freetown, Sierra Leone; New York, and Berlin, reflecting the “triangular route” of the Atlantic slave trade. Life and Death by Water also included a hummed melody from Rivers of Babylon – the most well known versions by the Melodonians (a Reggae group) and Boney M – but originally a biblical hymn expressing the lamentations of the Israelis taken captive by the Babylonians.It represents the suffering of Africans taken into slavery and other displaced peoples over the ages.

The exhibition closes at the beginning of June but I hope to visit again before then.

After a brew and a snack in the cafe we went up to the top floor to visit the exhibition of works by the finalists of the 2022 Turner Prize.

Each of the four finalists had a room to show their work. The prize wasn’t specifically judged on these displays but took into account their body of work. Nevertheless, they gave a good insight into the artists’ work, style and approach.

The first room was allocated to a multi-media artist, Heather Phillipson. We entered through a short, narrow corner and was immediately dazzled by the video images of the eyes of various animals, clipped from nature documentaries, shown on screens lining both walls.

We passed into the larger room, lit with a bright electric blue light where there were more moving images of storms and swans projected onto the walls and on video screens. Earphones hung from the ceiling where visitors could listen to an audio commentary.

A not so subtle message about the environment, the use of whizz bang technology certainly made an impression.

The next room showed the work of the winner of the 2022, prize Veronica Ryan. It couldn’t have been more different than the previous room. It was much more low key with small scale works representing natural forms including fruit, beans and seeds as well as fabricated containers and lightbulbs.

My first reaction was surprise that this was the winner’s exhibition as it was so low key with the room only sparsely filled with the sculptures and with a number of then hanging from the ceiling in string bags. However, checking on my phone I realised that she had been awarded the prize for her work in general, including her Windrush memorial of giant sculptures of Caribbean fruits displayed on a street in Hackney, east London.

Sin Wai Kin’s work in the next room was a return to flash-bang multimedia with video images, mannequins and cardboard cutouts. The focus was the artist himself playing different characters. The Tate website tells us that these

exist across the spectrum of femininity and masculinity and reappear in different contexts, creating new constellations in the artists’ expanding universe

I wasn’t keen. It was my least favourite and I found it rather pretentious. But that’s only my opinion, of course. I moved on to the final room devoted to the work of the photographer Ingrid Pollard.

The first of two rooms showed a selection of photographs, pub signs, prints and objects, created and collected over 25 years, from her 2018 exhibition Seventeen of Sixty Eight that focused on the representation of the black figure in British life. I was particularly drawn to a large pub sign. In the town where I grew up there was a pub called the Black Boy (it was near the Black Horse, a pub that had once been run by my great grandparents). As I grew up and developed more of a social conscience I had started to feel uncomfortable with the name of the pub and the plaster model of a young black boy’s head above the entrance. The title of the original exhibition The title, Seventeen of Sixty Eight, relates to the 68 pubs in the UK that have “Black Boy” in their name. No doubt many people would see this as harmless, but to me there’s a clear underlying racism that is far from harmless but reinforces a harmful stereotype. Other exhibits echo this message.

In the next room ‘Bow Down and Very Low’ was inspired by a film from 1944, ‘Springtime in an English Village’, which included a young black girl who had been installed as a village May Queen. It centred on an image of the girl curtseying, copies of which were displayed.

The image was interpreted as a representation of how black people were subjugated – forced to bow, curtsey or otherwise show deference. I felt that the same analysis could be applied to other groups, including the working class in general.

The display included three kinetic sculptures made from found objects, developed in conjunction with with artist Oliver Smart. The central sculpture bowing as if subjugated by the one of the right which wielded a baton. The one on the left, which included a saw and wasn’t operating due to safety concerns.

This video shows the sculptures in operation. The one on the left making a rather loud grating sound as the saw scrapes against the metal strip as it flexes.

Initially I’d been seduced by the dynamic display of flashy visual images by Heather Phillipson, but having spent time looking closely and talking to room custodian about the work I left feeling that Ingrid Pollard’s lower key work was my favourite section of the exhibition.

We made our way down the rest of the building, we visited the other rooms. There had been some changes in the displays since our last visit.

We’d spent a few hours in the gallery and had enjoyed it, but the day wasn’t over. We made our way along the waterfront, first of all to visit the Open Eye Gallery on Mann Island – always a good bet – and then had a look around the Museum of Liverpool Life.

No, it’s not Elvis, but local lad Billy Fury

Feeling hungry now we went for an early meal at the Elif Turkish restaurant on Bold Street.

It’s good value and the food is good so it’s very popular. It was busy when we arrived but we were early enough to get a table. People were queuing outside as we left to catch our train back to Wigan.

Art and Shadows

Mesh sculpture (1961) – Katsuhiro Yamaguchi

It’s a while since I’ve been to see an art exhibition. Covid resulted in galleries being closed and since they reopened a reluctance to be in an enclosed space with a large number of people meant that I lost the habit. But during May I’ve started to make more of an effort to get back into the habit and I’ve visited both the Manchester City and Tate Liverpool galleries.

Something I’ve always found interesting is how some sculptural works cast shadows which add another aspect to the experience. While I was visiting the Tate there were a number of works where the interplay of light and shadows were part of the artist’s intention. The sculptures were suspended from above, creating effects that changed as they turned and moved due to the air movement. In some cases, the materials used were translucent, allowing some light to pass through projecting an image made of light and shadow light on nearby surfaces.

Linear Construction No. 2 (1970-71) – Naum Gabo

Spatial Relief (red) REL 036 (1959) – Hélio Oiticica 

Lekythos (1962) – Lenore Tawney 

I didn’t note the details of this work – doh!

Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool

Last Saturday we travelled over to Liverpool to take a look at the latest exhibition at the Tate on Albert Dock. It’s had a lot of good reviews so I wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about. I didn’t know a great deal about the artist, Keith Haring, but had seen some of his works, probably most notably his large canopy was hanging in the ceiling of the stairwell in the grand hallway of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam during a visit last year. He’d painted it for a solo exhibition at the museum in 1986.

So, the extensive Tate retrospective was a good opportunity to find out more about the artist. The exhibition was busy (but not crazy busy like some of the blockbusters held in London), so it was clearly popular. But there was plenty of space to allow us to take time to look at the paintings and reflect on them.

The Tate exhibition website tells us

A part of the legendary New York art scene of the 1980s, Keith Haring (1958–1990) was inspired by graffiti, pop art and underground club culture.

Haring was a great collaborator and worked with like-minded artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. All were interested in creating art for the many. Haring designed record covers for RUN DMC and David Bowie, directed a music video for Grace Jones and developed a fashion line with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. In doing so, he introduced his art and ideas to as many people as possible.

Tate Liverpool website

The exhibition covered the whole of the top floor of the Tate and there were a large number of works on display from the whole of his career, including these two early works when he was influenced by Walt Disney cartoons. And cartoon like figures and symbols were prominent in his work throughout his career. Unlike most Tate paid exhibitions photography was allowed.

When he moved to New York, he became known for chalk drawings he produced on the black paper on empty poster spaces in subway stations; drawing quickly as people walked past and stopping to watch him. There was a video in the exhibition of him doing just that and then getting arrested! The pictures became popular that they were taken away almost as soon as they were finished. There were a few examples in the exhibition, although they were difficult to photograph due to reflections in the glass protecting them.

He’d paint on almost anything he could lay his hands on, like this Yellow Taxi bonnet (or “hood” as our American friends would say!)

and quite a few works on display were painted on tarpaulins – a lot cheaper than canvas.

A number of icon like symbols recur throughout his works, including a crawling baby, a dog, a figure with a whole in its stomach, a cross, computers and some others. Most of his work contain one or more. There’s a good discussion of the symbols and what they represent here, and the Tate provide a key in the free booklet you’re given as you enter the gallery.

He was a political artist and many of his works carry a message, whether about nuclear energy, South African Apartheid, gay rights, racism or drugs.

And, as a gay man living in New York in the 1980’s, he used his art to raise awareness of AIDS. He himself was diagnosed with the disease in 1988. His poster Ignorance = Fear refers to the challenges people who were living with AIDS faced. 

Here’s a few more examples of his work

Before the visit, I was a little sceptical about the exhibition. I knew about his cartoon like paintings and thought it would be fun, but that I’d have tired of it after seeing a selection of them. But that wasn’t how it worked out. Despite the apparent simplicity of his style, there was a lot more depth and complexity than I expected.

There was a lot to see – besides the paintings there were a number of videos about his life and work – so there was too much to take in in one visit. One advantage of being Tate Members is that we can hopefully go for another look before the exhibition finishes in November.

Art and about in Liverpool – Part 1

Last Saturday we drove over to Liverpool as we wanted to have a look at a couple of exhibitions. It was a fine day and quite pleasant for walking by the waterside to the Tate Gallery on the Albert Dock.

First stop was the exhibition at the Tate of works by the Fench artist
Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955) . There were over 40 works on display, including paintings, collage, book illustrations and film spanning his career. He’s an artist I was familiar with, but hadn’t seen many of his works, so the exhibition was an opportunity to learn more.

Some early works were influenced by his experiences in the First World War between 1914 to 1917 , when he fought on the front-line at Argonne and Verdun, including an abstract Cubist style painting of soldiers playing cards.

La partie de Carte (1917)

His early works were Cubist and Futurist and he had his own approach dominated by cylindrical shapes earning the moniker “tubism”. But, as with many artists, his style changed over time

Léger’s work was heavily influenced by his surroundings and his experience of modern life. Included in the exhibition are his collaborations with architects Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand. Also on display is his experimental 1924 film, Ballet Mécanique.

He dabbled with Surrealism, often combining Surrealist and Cubist styles.

Leaves and Shell (1927)

He often used bright primary colours,particularly in his later works.

Two women holding flowers (1954)

Politically on the left, fleeing the Nazis he lived in the USA from 1940 to 1945 but returned to France after the war when he joined the Communist Party. Many of his later works were influenced by his politics.

He believed the primary purpose of making art is to enrich the lives of everybody in society. In order to bring art into people’s everyday lives he worked on posters and murals as well as on the easel. His paintings depict construction workers and people enjoying leisure activities. These everyday scenes are reflected back to us in a new light and the characters are given dignity in their normality. (Tate website)

In the next room to the Leger retrospective there was a free exhibition of works by two South Korean artists Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho. It was centered on a new film commission Anomaly Strolls 2018, largely shot in deserted alleyways and pubs across Liverpool with some scenes shot in Korea. 

Extending their project News From Nowhere 2009, the artists use science fiction to question the role and importance of art to our present day society. As they have said: ‘Sci-fi is always the fable of the present. By employing a way to look at the future instead of the present, we wanted to address current issues, especially in relation to what art is and what art could be.’   (exhibition website)

The exhibition also includes Moon and Jeon’s 2012 film El Fin del Mundo (The End of the World).

On separate screens, we see different points in time: a man remains committed to creating art as a global catastrophe unfolds, while a woman goes about a sanitised life in its aftermath. Documenting relics of the past, she comes across a strange object the man had incorporated in his artwork. The encounter triggers profound new emotions in the woman, and her strange discovery connects our two protagonists across time. (exhibition website)

Video installations are not my favourite type of art, but sometimes there’s a work that captures my interest. This was certainly the case with these two works. They weren’t too abstract, telling a story, and I’ve also been a fan of science fiction.

There was much more to see in the Tate, and there had been some changes to the free exhibitions since our last visit. But we moved on as we needed to grab a bite to eat and there was another exhibition we wanted to see at the Walker Gallery.

Ken’s Show: Exploring the Unseen

While we were visiting the Tate in Liverpool on Sunday we managed to catch the last day of the free exhibition “Ken’s Show: Exploring the Unseen”. Tate Liverpool opened in 1988 so last year was it’s 30th anniversary. As part of the celebrations the Gallery gave their chief Art Handler, Ken Simons (one of the back room staff who set up the exhibitions) and who has worked at Tate Liverpool since it opened (having previously worked in the London Galleries) free reign to pick 30 works to go on display in his own curated exhibition.

On display are a selection of Ken’s favourite artworks from the Tate collection alongside artists who had their first UK showing at Tate Liverpool. Highlights include Joseph Mallord William Turner, Dame Barbara Hepworth and Mark Rothko.

His taste is clearly similar to my own as I liked just about every work that he’d selected, and I felt it provided quite a good introduction to Modern Art.

The works on display included

Snow Storm – Steam boat off a harbour’s mouth (1842) by Turner

A mud painting by Richard Long Untitled (1991)

Winged Being (1961) by Jean Arp

Figure (Nanjizal) (1958) by Barbara Hepworth

Howard Hodgkin’s Rain (1984-9)

 

 

Life In Motion: Egon Schiele/ Francesca Woodman at Tate Liverpool

Last Sunday we decided to visit Tate Liverpool to catch up on their latest exhibitions. The main show at the moment is devoted to the work of two artists who lived at the opposite ends of the 20th Century  – Egon Schiele the American photographer Francesca Woodman. As usual for the paid exhibitions at the Tate, no photographs allowed inside.

Lately, Tate Liverpool has had a tendency to have joint exhibitions, trying to show connections between different artists. In this case, the Tate’s website tells us that

Both artists are known for their intimate and unapologetic portraits, which look beneath the surface to capture their subjects’ emotions. Schiele’s (1890–1918) drawings are strikingly raw and direct. He had a distinctive style using quick marks and sharp lines to portray the energy of his models. Woodman used long exposures to create blurred images that captured extended moments in time. Her photographs can be surreal, humorous and at times painfully honest.

and that

The close encounter between these two exceptional artists offers an intense viewing experience and a new perspective on their personal and powerful works.

Most of the reviews I’d seen before our visit questioned the relevance of this pairing and I have to say that it was difficult to see what the justification was. They both had short careers, dying young (Schiele from Spanish flu in 1918 when he was 28 and Woodman taking her own life when she was only 22) and their works concentrated on portraying the human body. But there were more differences than similarities. It wasn’t so much that the media they worked in  – Schiele created paintings and drawings while Woodman was a photographer – but the nature of the work. Woodman’s photographs almost always take her own body as the subject while although Schiele painted and drew some self portraits, particularly early in his career when he couldn’t afford to hire models, these were a minority of his oeuvre. And the biggest difference for me is that Schiele’s work is intensely  erotic while although Woodman is naked in her photographs they are not in the least sexual.

Still, that didn’t spoil if for me. I guess that mentally I saw it as two separate exhibitions that just happened to be intermingled with alternate sections devoted to each artist. I’d seen an exhibition devoted to Schiele at the Courtauld 3 years ago and so although it was interesting to see another large selection of his work I particularly enjoyed discovering Francesca Goodman’s photographs.

There was a large selection of drawings and paintings by Schiele, covering his entire career. He was

A master draughtsman, he is known for his erotic depictions of women and himself. He depicted his subjects in unconventional poses, with expressive faces – ranging from anguished to climactic – and with an emphasis on the hands, which were often greatly exaggerated. (exhibition guide)

Even today his drawings and paintings are quite shocking – some of the works included in the exhibition were very explicit. It’s hard to appreciate just how controversial they must have seen when they were first displayed. In my post about the Courthauld exhibition I commented that although his work is technically brilliant, I felt some unease about their subject matter in the explicit way he portrayed his female models. I felt the same at the Tate.

This is one of his milder sketches

I was interested to see how his work started to change towards the end of his career. He still concentrated mainly on drawing naked women, but his style became more naturalistic, less angular and more rounded, with bodies sketched out with just a few strokes of his pencil.

I wonder how his style would have progressed if he hadn’t died so young.

Francesca Wood man was a very prolific artist, mainly taking small scale black and white photographs featuring her naked body. But, as I mentioned above, they were not intended to be erotic or sexual. She used long exposure times and soft focus and many of the pictures incorporate blurred figures. She incorporated objects such as furniture, wallpaper and plants, concealing parts of her body,

and sometimes used materials such as sellotape and clothes pegs to distort her body.

Her compositions were clearly influenced by the Surrealists and some of the photographs in the exhibition reminded me of the work of Man Ray.

As is too often the case, she wasn’t commercially successful during her tragically short lifetime, her photos being rejected by galleries and she failed in an attempt to get involved in fashion photography. This combined with the failure of her personal relationship, and, no doubt, other issues, led to her committing suicide when she was only 22, on 19 January 1981.

 

Space Tapestry at Tate Liverpool

The ground floor gallery at Tate Liverpool is currently showing Space Tapestry: Faraway Missions, a large-scale wall hanging made by the artist Aleksandra Mir with 25 collaborators, aged 18–24, using Sharpie marker pens..

The exhibition web site tells us that the work was

Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and the anonymous artists who depicted Halley’s Comet in 1066

The whole work is 200 metres long and three metres high, 3000 hours over 3 years to complete. Only part of it is on show in Liverpool, the rest is being displayed at Modern Art Oxford

The main work is accompanied by 39 smaller drawings depicting a series of probes that have been sent into outer space since the 1950s

Portraying a Nation at Tate Liverpool – Part 2 – Otto Dix: The Evil Eye

The second part of the current exhibition at Tate Liverpool features paintings and works on paper by Otto Dix who is best known for

his unforgiving depiction of Weimar Society and the Great War from whence it was forged. Along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is  considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit. (www.ottodix.org)

The exhibition website also tells us

Dix was a key supporter of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement, a name coined after an exhibition held in Mannheim, Germany in 1925. Described by art historian G.F. Hartlaub, as ‘new realism bearing a socialist flavour’, the movement sought to depict the social and political realities of the Weimar Republic.

The exhibition includes a large number of his paintings and an important series of prints together with some contextual materials. Consequently it’s a good survey of his work.

The Painter Otto Dix and his Wife Martha (1925-6) by August Sander

The first section of the exhibition concentrates on his paintings and watercolours depicting the “underside” or the fringes of society. They’re quite brutal caricatures that don’t pull any punches. But they show quite a different side of Weimar Germany than August Sander’s photographs of more ordinary “mainstream” people taken during the same period. As the Observer’s reviewer puts it

Dix’s Weimar is a nightmare of raddled prostitutes, drunk customers and violent sailors, of rape, murder and maggot-ridden skulls.

Reclining Woman on a Leopard Skin (1927)

The Observer again

Dix’s paintings are fiercely indigestible; you are meant to look at the livid cheeks and poisonous impasto and recoil. He believed in the disruptive power of ugliness.

Dix had volunteered at the outbreak of the First World War and served as an artilleryman and machine gunner on the Western Front, where he took part in the Battle of the Somme. In 1918, weary of trench fighting he volunteered as an aerial observer and trained as an aeroplane pilot. He was traumatised by the war and suffered recurring nightmares. His world view was coloured by these experiences which are depicted in a series of 50 etchings, many of which which don’t make comfortable viewing. I felt they were the most affecting part of the exhibition.

Assault Troops Advance under Gas (Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor) (1924)

After viewing the horrors of war so graphically portrayed in the etchings, the next section of the exhibition brought us back down to earth with a series of more sober (a relative term when considering Dix’s work) portraits.

Self-Portrait with Easel (1926)

This was a major source of his income during the 1920’s. His style was a mixture of realism and caricature, both old fashioned and avant-garde, as we can see in this example

Portrait of the Jeweller Karl Krall (1923)

Portrait of the Photographer Hugo Erfurth with Dog (1926)

He painted them using the techniques used by the Renaissance “old masters”. This involved using a layering effect, with egg tempera  finished with oils. There was a video on display of an old film which showed him “in action”.

The final section of the exhibition showed a different aspect of the artist with paintings of his family and a series of 14 watercolours painted in 1925 for a picture book for his five-year-old stepdaughter, Hana Koch. The subjects of these watercolours include mythical and biblical figures and stories such as St George fighting the dragon, St Christopher, Jonah and the whale, and David and Goliath.

Portraying a Nation at Tate Liverpool – Part 1 – People of the 20th Century

On Saturday we drove over to Liverpool – the main purpose being to visit the latest exhibition at the Tate, Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919–1933. It’s actually two exhibitions: ARTIST ROOMS: August Sander, and Otto Dix: The Evil Eye.

August Sander was a German photographer who between the two World Wars attempted to document the people of Germany in a series of photographs People of the Twentieth Century. The exhibition includes well over 100 photographs (I lost count) from this series

August Sander – Self Portrait

He took portraits of people from all segments of society grouping them into seven distinct categories: ‘The Farmer’, ‘The Skilled Tradesman’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Classes and Professions’, ‘The Artists’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Last People’.

To take the photographs he used an old-fashioned large-format camera, glass negatives and long exposure times. This allowed him to capture his subjects in minute detail.

At the same time his set up meant that there was a shallow “depth of field” which meant that the background is out of focus. This means that the viewer concentrates on the subject rather than their surroundings.

The image many people have of the Weimar Republic was of a rather wild, bohemian society where “anything goes”. He certainly captured this aspect of the times with photographs like this one of a secretary with her fashionable, shapeless dress,  androgynous, almost masculine hairstyle and manner. She looks like someone out of Cabaret

Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne

He also photographed intellectuals such as the subject of the second half of the exhibition – Otto Dix

The Painter Otto Dix and his Wife Martha

But the majority of his subjects were ordinary workers, farmers, mothers and children. which probably paint a truer picture of life between the wars in Germany

Blacksmiths

The Man of the Soil

Police Officer

He also included portraits of people on the fringes of society – including the blind and disabled people. The same people who would soon be persecuted by the Nazis. His portraits however, for the times, are sympathetic.

Sander had leftist views and was clearly on the side of the outsiders. Included in the exhibition were a number of Jewish victims of persecution, such as this young lady.

A victim of persecution

The photographs were originally taken for their passports as they were attempting to leave Germany towards the end of the 1930s. They show real, ordinary people at a time when the Nazis were presenting  distorted caricatures of Jews.

Sander wrote

”It is not my intention either to criticize or to describe these people, but to create a piece of history with my pictures.”

and to achieve that aim he also photographed the very people who were responsible for the persecution

National Socialist, Head of Department of Culture

even though one of their victims was his own son, an active socialist.

Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]

The Tate has displayed the photographs chronologically along with a commentary listing the events occurring when they were taken, rather than grouped by ”type,” as Sander intended. I wonder whether this loses something. Nevertheless I felt that it was an excellent exhibition of outstanding portraits, showing the skill and the dedication of the photographer as an artist.

William Blake at Tate Liverpool

Satan smiting Job with boils

Tracey Emin’s bed was being shown as part of an exhibition which is meant to explore the connection between this controversial work and the paintings of William Blake.

According to the Tate

This new display affirms Blake’s Romantic idea of artistic truth through existential pain and the possibility of spiritual rebirth through art, shared in the work of Tracey Emin.

I have to say I found it difficult to see any real connection – if there is one it is rather tenuous. But it was great to see a significant collection of magnificent prints and drawings by Blake, most of which I hadn’t seen before “in the flesh”, displayed together in Liverpool. A real treat.

William Blake is something of a hero of mine. As well as a visual artist – a painter and printmaker – he is also well known as a poet. He was a political radical – a supporter of the French Revolution – and a religious visionary.

 

(Picture source : Wikipedia)

He was also an innovator, developing a printing technique known as relief etching and used it to print most of his poetry. He called the technique illuminated printing and the poetry illuminated books. Many of the works on display in the exhibition were created using this process.

This is just a small selection of them

Pity (c 1795)

This image is taken from Macbeth: ‘pity, like a naked newborn babe / Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air’. Blake draws on popularly-held associations between a fair complexion and moral purity. These connections are also made by Lavater, who writes that ‘the grey is the tenderest of horses, and, we may here add, that people with light hair, if not effeminate, are yet, it is well known, of tender formation and constitution’. (Tate website)

The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve c.1826

This work shows Adam and Eve discovering their dead son. His brother Cain, the murderer, flees the scene. Despite his evil deed, Cain, appears as an ideal male figure. (Tate website)

Nebuchadnezzar 1795–c.1805

 

The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (formerly called ‘Hecate’) circa 1795

Enitharmon is an important female character in Blake’s mythology, playing a main part in some of his prophetic books. She is the Emanation of Los, and with Los gives birth to various children, including Orc. Although symbolising spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration (some critics have argued that Blake’s wife Catherine was the inspiration for the character) she is also used by Blake to represent female domination and sexual restraints that limit the artistic imagination (Tate website)