agoraphobia finds a friend
Primary competition for the average museum
Lately, the over-busy mega-populated, push-to-shove city of London has been overloaded with single artist shows at the Tates; Arshile Gorky and Van Doesburg at the Big Smokestack, Henry Moore at Old Tate. After being blitzed through the eyeballs with a supermarket full of Pop artists a few months ago at Tate Modern, it’s a relief to have a quiet rendezvous with an individual artist while nobody’s looking. The solo artist exhibits are especially useful, not to mention more interesting and comprehensible, for those who have few chances to visit museums and galleries because, well, the pub is just that much closer to work. But hear me out, denizens of the Lamb And Flag. Discovering the early life of the artist, along with their first works, their collection of weird and debased friends, and the scrapes with the law and/or disease that accompany a lifestyle so destitute, is not a million miles away from the danger inside The George and Dragon. If nothing else, it’s a mysterious window into a fighter’s life.
The Pop Art show presented earlier by Tate Modern, by comparison, was merely one big jug of Kool-Aid after another. While enjoyable in the way that someone from Texas might enjoy a gun show, weaving the web between Andy Warhol and the copycat artists who followed, doesn’t produce much in the way of historically memorable moments. It was just a big day of fun with colour, noise and packaged goods…and a reminder you have to buy more stuff on the way home. At the Pop Art show you get a sense of the life and times of the population (albeit with an ironic and scolding attitude). At the same show, however, you don’t get a sense of the artists and their motivations. I could have been in Las Vegas and met with the same, quasi-depth of philosophical arguments. Honestly. I have those sorts of friends.
Arshile Gorky: a man without name and age
With the single artist shows, however, it feels like someone’s told you an important story about someone you thought you knew enough of already. It’s like reading the obituaries, but without the gloomy mandate. Did you know that nobody knows Arshile Gorky’s age when he passed away? Even he didn’t know what year he was born. His mother died of starvation without, apparently, telling him his age, and he didn’t think to look it up before producing a passport. As professional, Gorky was fierce in his erudite education, and copied the modern masters proficiently. Left with few choices, Gorky’s work shows evidence of Picasso’s point of view, the bioforms of Joan Miro, and the colour composition of Cezanne. At one point, however, he found his individual voice, and became what he’s know as today: the link between the European Moderns and America’s Abstract Expressionists.
Theo van Doesburg was rule-committed...
Opposite Gorky on the third floor at Tate Modern, was the mammoth exhibition of the European Avant Garde in the 1920’s and 30’s. This exhibit is easily an afternoon of standing on your poor feet, searching for the nearest bar just to have a time out, before recovering with an obvious nap. Theo Van Doesburg seems to be at the centre of not only the de Stijl movement, but, as I discovered, secreted amongst the Dadaists as well. That probably explains the largess of the show.
...until he wasn't.
Van Doesburg was also at the apex of the moment in time when art turned into design. He was inclined to be rule-bound on form, line, and colour. That is, he was rule-bound until he wasn’t, like when he used the name I K Bonset to write for Dadaist publications. At the time, in the years after the apocalyptic First World War, re-creation of a better world was in the air. In the re-build, or Population 2.0 as I’m sure some over-zealous PR person must have wanted to call it, modern life was clipping along swiftly, providing wide berth for artists to not only create art, but to imagine new architecture, furniture, visual graphics, films, even music. Entire design industries owe at least a slight nod to Van Doesburg and his avant-gardian pals.
Henry Moore relaxing after work
Finally, in Henry Moore at Old Tate, a broad mix of materials is presented with impressive results. Moore could have been the multimedia specialist of his day. It’s not often when a sculpture artist has a large collection in one place, and in this case, it provided a sense of variety in materials. Having that sort of well-explored, primal education is like learning to make ice cream by trying out every possible flavour. Think how good you would be at making ice cream. Think how big you would be. Maybe that’s how we got to Pop Art in the first place. It’s all making sense.