Chapman Brother (singular) at Sussex Coast College

21 May

“Run for the Hills the Chapman Brothers are coming,” the slightly annoying poster at Sussex Coast college said, annoying because it meant the opposite, just in the way that businesses calling themselves the Secret Toy-shop or referring to themselves as the best kept secret don’t actually want you to stay away. At the due time – 12.00 on Friday – some seventy or more students congregated in one of the classrooms and we waited. The report went round that Dinos was not coming, and we waited some more. Then we heard that Jake was parking and would soon arrive and we waited a bit longer.  Then we heard there were problems on the motorway.  He was not exactly up to the Justin Bieber standard of keeping  people waiting but when you are trying to get work finished  before your final exhibition, you can think of better ways to spend time.

Students at Sussex Coast College getting ready for the Gap,am Brothers

Students at Sussex Coast College getting ready for the Chapman Brothers

At 1.00 some people started wondering whether this was performance art and just about everybody disappeared for a bit to find something to eat. Finally at about 1.20 when most of them had come back, Jake arrived accompanied by some bloke who sat up at the front and didn’t introduce himself. I guess he was a PR. Jake seemed very affable and rather bored and the PR kept talking which was irritating, as we were there to hear Jake.

Jake Chapman and unintroduced bloke talking to art students at Sussex Coast College

Jake Chapman and presumed PR bloke talking to art students at Sussex Coast College

Damien Hirst had been on Desert Island Discs that morning and Jake told us he was a good chap and implied he didn’t much like Tracey Emin because of her attitude to tax and because she was a Conservative supporter, which seemed fair enough. He explained about making a replica of her tent, All the people I have every slept with,” the one which got burnt in the fire at the Momart Warehouse. “We called it  ‘The same only better’ “and went on to say that they had been thinking about making a number of replica tents, which people could sleep in at a music festival. So that sounded quite fun.

A few of us asked questions – I asked about the relationship the brothers had with each other, which he had clearly been asked a million times and then about whether they had ever rejected any idea on grounds of taste and Jake said they didn’t set out to shock – which you might believe, or again you might not;  but it was all quite friendly and jokey.

Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal

Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal : Chapman Brothers

Then one student asked why his work featured pre-pubescent girls, which seemed a fair question but brought a slightly odd reaction. Now anybody who knows anything about the Chapman brothers, must be aware of the fibreglass mannequins which have penises instead of noses. Not everybody will know the name of the work, which is quite a mouthful  – Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal. Instead of answering the question, Jake started prevaricating about which work she was referring to, and then the PR stepped in and said they weren’t human, and Jake said they weren’t pre-pubescent and it was easy to misunderstand, or something like that. Then his mobile went and we didn’t get a full answer and he went off to talk to someone more important. We had had all of 20 minutes.

I reckon if you are a celebrity artist you ought to be able to manage to talk to a bunch of art students without a PR to support you. If you have one,  you really ought to have a ready answer to questions like that. One possible answer might be that he depicts pre-pubescent girls to satirise the way that the media sexualises them. That they are ‘not human’ really won’t do,  particularly when the dehumanisation of women and girls is part of what drives rape culture.

That evening Jake was holding a session at the Jerwood Gallery. I had the offer of a ticket, but I decided I had had enough. Those that went said it was quite good fun. He had people playing Exquisite Corpse, you might have played the game at school. You  fold up paper and then different people draw  heads, bodies and feet and you unfold the paper and – bingo – you have a result.  It sounds as if a reasonably good time was had by all. A group of Sussex College Students almost won the competition for the best drawing. They were down to the final two.   The first prize was a visit to the Chapman Brothers studio. The second prize – you’ve guessed it  - was two visits to the Chapman Brothers studio – actually it wasn’t – I made that bit up.

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Tom Hammick and Patrick Adam Jones’s Map

18 May

About a year ago, Julian Bell, Tom Hammick and Andre Jackowski held what was billed as a joint exhibition  – Dreams of Here at Brighton Museum. In the event the result was more like three separate exhibitions; not only were the three artists in separate rooms but even of the colour of the walls of the rooms were different. So when Hammick and Patrick Adam Jones were invited hold an exhibition together at the Baker Mamonova Gallery  in St Leonards, the two artists were keen that the exhibition should be a dialogue. When I visited Map this weekend, the paintings in the window gave an initial impression that they might have succeeded. Inside  it was clear that whilst the pair might have arrived at the party together, once there, they merely nodded politely at each across the room rather than engaged in deep discussion.

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Paintings by Tom Hammick and Patrick Adam Jones in the window of the Baker Mamonova Gallery

It was hardly surprising; their styles are very different. Tom Hammick’s are the more representational; shacks, gardens and people, particularly his wife and daughter, frequently feature in his works and while the viewer may not immediately understand all the thinking that goes into the painting, they will have a fair idea of what it that they are looking at. In contrast, Patrick Adam Jones works are often layered and the details may be partly obscured so that the complexity only becomes apparent through study.  Hammick chooses bright, bold, vibrant colours – he achieves some wonderful blues and purples; Adam Jones frequently favours shades of white and near white and works in wax which give the works an extraordinary translucency. They come together to some extent in the size of the works and, in this exhibition, there was supposedly the link of the map, though it was somehow rather hard to spot: Adam Jones sometimes uses maps as a base for his works and with  Hammick the works are – well – loosely connected to places – but then aren’t most things?

It was interesting to see how the artists had developed over the last year. Hammick’s works were familiar;  the subject matter and colours were those one has come to expect. They included the woodcut of the Exon filling station and the painting Compound which both appeared at Brighton last year and an extremely desirable print Edgelands, which has also appeared before in different colour combinations – all classic Hammick works. There were also some new paintings, on a smaller scale than I had seen hitherto, including Orchard a simple but beautifully coloured painting of a ladder against a tree and Island Study.

Tom Hammick: Compound

Tom Hammick: Compound

Tom Hammick: Island Study

Tom Hammick: Island Study

Adam Jones had a number of his wax based paintings in the exhibition, such as Inside, shown below. I like the way with these works that you can see different elements in different lights.

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Patrick Adam Jones:Inside

There was  a departure in the highly complex piece,  Of Course, a large mixed media piece, involving a collection of works on paper behind glass on which he had applied a series of digits.

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Patrick Adam Jones: of Course

It was interesting and I was intrigued by the way the digits were more evident against some of the backgrounds than against others; this was a work which needed time appreciate the different elements. I particularly liked the way that the numbers gave the impression of the passing of time.  But, probably annoyingly since it must have taken  ages to create, some of the water colours impressed me as much – there was a  series of nine that worked extraordinarily well together.

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Patrick Adam Jones: Watercolours

There were some of the familiar words which Adam Jones has used in many of his paintings – I could have been a farmer but these little paintings which had clearly been done quickly had a freshness and somehow a sense of mystery which made you want to study them and which I really liked. So it appears do other people; three had been bought already; I predict it will not take long before the others are gone as well.

Map is showing at the Baker Mamonova Gallery in  43-53 Norman Road, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex  until June 1.

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The allure of an irregular sun

8 May

I have been thinking about the shape of the sun. You know it is definitely round because you can see it is in the early morning, or behind cloud or come to think of it in these extraordinary pictures by NASA. The rest of the time you can’t see the shape of it because, if it is out and shining it is simply too bright to look at. I have been reflecting on the appearance of the sun because I have just spent a few days with friends staying with prolific landscape artist Jean-Claude Roy and his Canadian wife Christina at their beautiful farmhouse in the heart of the Charente-Maritime. Roy is quite an extraordinarily successful artist, represented by some 15 galleries in France, Canada and the US. He finds it hard to keep up with the demand for his work.

Jean-Claude Roy is seen in the rear of his studio surrounded by his paintings

Jean-Claude Roy preparing paintings for exhibition in his studio

He must also be one of the most productive artists alive today. Some  forty-five years ago he read that Picasso had painted 10,000 works in the course of his lifetime. Roy decided to see if he could do the same. He reckons that so far he has totalled 6,800. Some 800 of his paintings of Newfoundland ‘outports’ – fishing villages – have been brought together in a book designed by Christina; already it is on its second printing.

When I caught up with him, he was busy preparing for his next exhibition and there were paintings everywhere in the large airy studio where the works are finished. While Roy works in the French impressionist tradition by painting outside, he also likes to view his paintings under artificial light because that is how they will be seen when purchased.

A painting by Jean-Claude Roy is on a table outside his studio

A painting by Jean-Claude Roy of the market at Saintes

The same square as shown in Jean-Claude Roy's painting of the market at Saintes

The square at Saintes where the market took place

Roy specialises in the landscapes of the Charente-Maritime and of Newfoundland and, possibly because it may be difficult to paint in the open on rainy days, the sun appears in many of his paintings and has become something of a trademark. He explained to me that while the landscapes he paints are all of actual places, the sky is largely abstract. In early works the sun appears to have started out as an orb but one day after trying to peer at the sun too closely he was left with black spots in front of the eyes which lasted for days; after that the suns in his paintings became black and dotty, then over time he came to depict them as black in an otherwise sunny sky.  These days the sun is more usually an irregular shape but often with a black edge.

A painting in the studio of Jean-Claude Roy; it has a characteristic black sun

A painting by Jean-Claude Roy showing a black sun

A painting of the Charente Maritime landscape in Jean-Claude Roy's studio

A work being finished in Jean-Claude Roy’s studio

Amazingly, after looking at the landscapes in the studio and then touring round the Charente-Maritime  and seeing the old towns, the ‘claires’, salt water ponds, where the famous oysters are produced, and noticing the extraordinary light of the region produced by the mixture of land and marsh and sea, not only did the landscape seem more and more to resemble one of his paintings but the sun itself coming out behind cloud, seemed to take on that characteristic irregular shape with a black edge.

More paintings can be seen on Roy’s website: http://www.jcroy.com/

BT, Broadband failure and why Sir Michael Rake should be concerned

29 Mar

You may have noticed that Artelogical has been strangely quiet for over a month. Let me tell you why. You might remember back in January it was snowy. It has been snowy since, but in January it was seriously snowy in Hastings and our road did not have the benefit of grit or salt or anything like that and so on the 21st, a date now embedded in my mind, a car skidded and bumped into one of those little dark green boxes that you see about. I now realise how important those boxes are. They hold a jumble of cables that provide phones and broadband to the surrounding houses and I can tell you in all seriousness, they do not appreciate being bumped into.

A green BT junction box

The junction box – the cause of all the trouble

So on January 21 our broadband went off and we assumed that someone would quickly come to fix it. Ah I was young and foolish then. Of course we didn’t know at that point what was wrong but we phoned the BT help line which put us through to the call centre India and were promised an engineer. He duly came and declared our line OK and told us the sad tale of the junction box. The broadband didn’t get better; it would come on for a bit and go off again sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours and every time it went off for more than about eight hours, we rang the help line in India and spoke to a different person, who, I kept reminding myself, was an underpaid young graduate doing the worst job in the world, taking calls from irritated customers in what for them was the middle of the night.

(Incidentally, I really tried not to sound irritated – I know I didn’t succeed. Then when you rang off there would be an automated call asking you how satisfied you were with the call centre operative, fairly satisfied; with BT – very dissatisfied; would I recommend BT to a friend? – absolutely not.)

Anyway, the poor underpaid graduates would apologise for the inconvenience, promise to help and insist on sending out another engineer to check our line, even though we assured them that the line was fine and it was a problem with the junction box. When we told them there was no point, they would say they would report that we were refusing to have our line checked. So out would come yet another engineer who would explain that there was no power in the junction box and that EDF, not BT were the villains.

It turned out that what was happening was that somebody, we never did find out who, was putting batteries into the junction box; the batteries would last eight hours and then, like those drumming rabbits in the Duracell ad, would go off till somebody else came and put in another one, which could take some time. It was truly unsatisfactory but not as bad as it was to become.

Time passed and then, about a month ago, the broadband which had been intermittent stopped entirely.  The call centre people in India sent out another engineer, who told us that he had found what the trouble was and that he just needed a spare part. The fibre optic cables had degraded because they didn’t respond well to batteries. Then he rang us to tell us that the matter was being transferred to another team and that he couldn’t have the part.

After that the stories started getting more fantastical. It was not the fibre optics, we were told by a supervisor in India, we had gone up the food chain by that point, but a health and safety issue. It wasn’t safe to put the batteries in because somebody might get electrocuted. And it was all EDF’s fault. We contacted our MP, Amber Rudd, who was incredibly helpful,  who contacted the chairman,  Sir Michael Rake, and a very nice lady called Mandy, from his office tried her best to get to the bottom of it and provided us with a dongle which meant at least we could check our emails but not really much else.

Another engineer told us that power would be resumed on the 17th – it wasn’t. Then I saw another engineer working on the junction box who told me that the batteries were being replaced and we should be getting broadband at least some of the time and if we had a fault we should call the help line and complain. We called the helpline and complained. We also told Mandy – but, even though she was in the chairman’s office, she couldn’t find out what was going on. We complained to Amber Rudd that EDF wouldn’t restore the power and despite every engineer having blamed them for weeks, it turned out it wasn’t EDF at all – they were completely in the clear; it was Eon – or that is what they told us. Who knows?

Finally, on Wednesday, 66 days after the accident and at the point we were about to break the contract and see if Sky could do any better, the power was restored to the junction box but the broadband still didn’t work.  And we would still be without broadband today had not an extremely helpful engineer called Graham, who deserves company recognition, decided to take responsibility for the problem and get to the bottom of it. He finally traced the fault; two wires had been interchanged, possibly by the engineer who had been talking about degraded fibre optics;  if that had been found earlier, we could have had at least  intermittent broadband for the last month.

Obviously on the customer satisfaction scale we come in as deeply dissatisfied. But just about everybody was apparently trying to do their best. If I were Sir Michael Rake I would ask some really serious questions about the way the company is organised. We are largely captive customers because all other providers use the junction box, so he may not be terribly worried that the service is appalling. But sending multiple engineers out to check and recheck the same perfectly sound line is not a good use of resources. Failing to have effective service level agreements in place with electricity providers needs to be put right. Having different teams work on the same patch but whose members don’t work together is again extraordinarily inefficient. There should be more engineers like Graham who have the ability and authority to fix problems.  Most of all, it should be possible for somebody in the chairman’s office to be able to get accurate information about what is going on. At the moment they can’t.

PS The BT Vision Box still isn’t working.

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Painting with light

22 Feb

I defy even the most hardened hater of contemporary art not to enjoy Light Show now showing at the Hayward Gallery. It is like a theme park for adults, although, coming to think of it,  I’m sure most children would love it too. It has all the colour and all the fun of the fair and it doesn’t jiggle you about, except perhaps your eyes a bit, and it doesn’t turn you upside down, well only figuratively. There are over 20 works in the exhibition; these are just a few of them. Do go and see it and take an art hating friend.

Cylinfder II at the Hayward Gallery

Leo Villareal: Cylinder II

Leo Villareal’s Cylinder II does everything you want it to; the lights change in complex ways so that you are constantly seeing different patterns and combinations. As there are 19,000 of them, there is apparently no fixed sequence and no beginning or end. Satisfyingly they also reflect in the glass balustrades of the walkways turning them into artworks as well.

A splodge of light like paint from a tin is projected on the floor of the Hayward Gallery

Ceal Floyer: Throw

Ceal Floyer’s Throw is an extraordinarily simple concept but also hugely effective. A splodge of light is projected on the floor like fallen paint from a tin. If you can paint with light, it stands to reason you can spill it too.

Francois Morellet: Lamentable

Francois Morellet: Lamentable

Over recent years, neons have increasingly found their way into art galleries but too often they appear a lazy form of art and the wires detract from the overall effect, but Francoisy Morellet’s Lamentable is extraordinarily elegant. It is apparently lamentable because the segments could form a circle but are hanging instead from a single point. I suppose it would have been too immodest to call it Magnifique

Cerith Wyn Evans

Cerith Wyn Evans: Superstructure

I first saw Cerith Wyn Evans’ Superstructure at the De La Warr Pavilion on a freezing cold day when the fact that the pillars alternatively lit up and radiated heat was especially welcome. The only sculpture in the display that I noticed used heat, it made me wonder, as it had before, how else heat could be incorporated into artworks. I also wondered, rather prosaically perhaps, about the cost of the electricity bill.

People stand looking as Conrad Shawcross sculpture casts shadows in the Hayward Gallery

Conrad Shawcross: Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV

Shadows on the ceiling cast by Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV

Shadows on the ceiling cast by Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV

I mentioned that the exhibition was like a theme park and one of the effects of that, I found, was that my inner child increasingly wanted the artworks to do tricks – to move, to heat up or at least to flicker. This one, Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV by Conrad Shawcross, therefore really performed; a moving light revolving in this intricate grid casts ever-changing shadows on the walls, floor  ceiling and viewers. It is apparently about the process of mapping the molecular structure of insulin  by crystal radiography. You don’t need to know that to enjoy it; the changing patterns are themselves mesmerising.

Three figures stand in Carlos Crusz-Diez's Chromosaturation in the Hayward Gallery

Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromosaturation

Carlos Cruz-Diez has created 84 Chromosaturation installations to date; about a year ago I saw one in Paris. I didn’t realise that time the way that it could cause visual disturbances I was just struck by the colours.  This time I gave it long enough and began to experience the colour in a different way and see it as more solid and somehow filling the space, like floaters in the eye – or perhaps I became aware of floaters that were there all the time. The effect was not totally pleasant but certainly interesting.

Olafur Eliasson: Model for a Timeless Garden - fountains under strobe lighting

Olafur Eliasson: Model for a Timeless Garden

When it came to disturbed perceptions it was Olafur Eliasson’s Model for a Timeless Garden which was the clear winner. For once visitors to the exhibition were on their own to touch or not touch the artwork as they chose. No attendant could stay in the room very long. Eliasson who also created the Weather Project at Tate Modern in 2oo3, has illuminated a series of fountains with strobe lighting. The effect was to create a series of sculptures as the water was momentarily frozen in time, creating a series of different forms. It was fascinating but for me it had the effect of giving me a strange sensation in my ears. This seemed to have no rational reason – my eyes I could have understood, but why the ears? Not only contemporary but surreal.

Light Show is showing at the Hayward Gallery until 28 April 2013

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Installation at the Printworks

9 Feb

A week may be a long time in politics but it is precious little time to build an art installation. I know: it was an exercise I did last year on the Fine Art Contemporary Practice course at Sussex Coast College and though it was fun, it was also pretty stressful knowing that the Private View would happen at the end of the week whether or not you were ready. Yesterday, I was the visitor to the Private View put on by the first year students. They may have been stressed beforehand, but  I was enormously impressed. It was held at the Printworks in Claremont Street, Hastings which is  a wonderful building – atmospheric, great beams, exposed brickwork -  that kind of place. Many of the installations reflected its history.   Here are few of the works I liked the best.

To Print I and To Print II: Bev Thornley

To Print II is a  text installation  by Bev Thornley which projected quotations about people who might have worked in the building. The words appeared letter by letter making you aware  not only of what was written but also the interior of the building by the way that beams, plaster and missing plaster were brought to life by the light of projector. It was accompanied by To Print I which was a sound installation of the noise of printing machines.

Printed words appear in the corner of the exhibition space in the Printworks

To Print: Bev Thornley

The Metamorphosis in Space : Claire Henley

Made out of wire,  Hastings Observer newspaper clipping and coloured paper, these butterflies were designed as a symbolic representation of the changing passage of time.  They looked  striking at the top of the spiral staircase, the colours glowed against the dark background .

Rainbow coloured butterflies are suspended above the spiral staircase at the Printworks

Metamorphosis in space: Claire Henley

Stairecase Song: Barbara Mullen

Barbara Mullen also used the staircase; unfortunately her piece which was a sound sculpture cannot be shown: for that you had to be there. It was  created by recording the sound created when the  staircase was played like a xylophone. It was an imaginative use of the space, and as you walked up and down the stairs the sound of your own footsteps added to the effect.

Untitled: Carolina Lawson

This simple installation by Carolina Lawson appeared to be breeze-blocks improbably suspended by ribbon but in fact it was an illusion, created by the lighting and the wrapping; they were in fact made of cardboard. They certainly looked heavy and that made you think about the way the Printworks had been built.

Breezeblocks are apparently suspended by ribbon at the Printworks in Hastings

Untitled: Carolina Lawson

Strike Off: Aimee Whatford

Aimee Whatford was drawn to the close connection between telecommunications and  early newspaper printing and so created this installation out of galvanised wire. Suspended from the ceiling, it had a ghostly presence, reflecting past communications within the building while  the twin pillars which are somewhat convoluted, possibly suggest understandings and misunderstandings.

Galvanised wire forms are hung from the ceiling at the Printworks in Hastings

Strike Off: Aimee Whatford

Safe Journey Beautiful Boy: Jaz Schalicke

This strange video was most intriguing; two stills are shown below; among the tense stripes, words would fleetingly appear and disappear. They were gone before you could truly read them but I made out tears, loss and as you can see in the still on the right despair.

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Peep Holes into the Past: Janee Waters

Scattered throughout the building were these small circular prints. Janee Waters explained that she had discovered old newspapers and magazines in the toilets of the building, as well as old wallpaper and had reflected that they might have been printed on the premises. She therefore created the peep holes which took selected text from advertisements in magazines aimed at women as home-makers.

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Manet at the Royal Academy

1 Feb

A few months ago I visited the pre Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain and then went straight in to see the Turner Prize shortlist which seemed weak in comparison. I had not quite the reverse experience this week but close. I visited the new Manet Exhibition at the Royal Academy and then almost immediately went to A Greater Splash over at the Tate. To my mind A Greater Splash had it over the Manet and seeing the two together provided an object lesson on why art has to keep moving and innovate even if you don’t always like the innovations.  I will talk about the Greater Splash soon. Today it’s Manet.

Luncheon on the Grass

Déjeuner sur l’Herbe: the version you want to see is in Paris

The retrospective of Manet’s portraits Portraying Life  has been trumpeted by the RA as “singularly important” and  “unmissable”.  According to the Sunday Times 45,000 tickets were pre sold, more than those sold for Van Gogh at the same point, so getting there early in the run seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, it is  the paintings you probably most want to see that are missing. There is no Olympia, the  Musée d’Orsay in Paris keeps it safely behind their walls and doesn’t let it go; there is only a small and rather miserably fuzzy Déjeuner sur l’Herbe borrowed from the Courtaulds, that pesky Musée d’Orsay has hung onto the big, bold, superbly painted one and the curators  had not even managed to persuade the Courtaulds to lend them the The Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

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Music in the Tuileries Gardens: normally on show in the National Gallery

True there was the Music in the Tuileries Gardens, though this is normally hanging in the National Gallery, so not worth a special visit, the Railway and Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets which is currently plastered over posters on the underground. But they were diluted by what the RA described as status portraits, in other words portraits designed  to make their subject feel important. While wandering around this exhibition it was possibly intellectually to appreciate the loose brush work  which was to make Manet the father of  modern art, but I found it  impossible to feel emotionally why he was so revolutionary.

Indeed, for the most part, the paintings appeared decorative, safe and a little boring. They provided a glimpse of 19th century Parisian life, interesting if you recognise the spot where Music in the Tuileries Gardens were painted.  It was also instructive to note  how he used a dab of light to suggest noses or expressions and how well he could paint eyes. He had his failings too, which is encouraging for all artists whose work does not always go as planned.  I noticed, for instance, that he did not really enjoy painting hands. Of course he could if  he put his mind to it – he was Manet. But when he was doing portraits in a hurry either to satisfy rich clients or simply because he wanted to get on to the next canvas, you will see that hands get hidden more than the law of averages suggests  should happen. They were tucked in pockets, or in muffs,  behind backs or just below the bottom edge of the canvas.

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Manet: Portrait of Georges Clemenceau

Isabelle Lemonnier with a muff

Manet: Isabelle Lemonnier with a muff

He was also not great at  horses, Look at the Cavalier (Equestrian Portrait of Mr Arnaud) the horse’s head has a slightly cardboard cut out feel. Apparently the x-ray evidence shows the portrait was completed by another hand – maybe it was the horse’s head that was painted by someone else – or  its hind legs, or ……well actually none of it is very good.

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Manet : The Cavalier (Equestrian Portrait of Mr Arnaud) apparently finished by another hand

There were of course several superb paintings there, and ones which are not so easy to see without travelling further afield than Paris. The Luncheon painted in 1868 is particularly intriguing.

manet luncheon

Manet: The Luncheon – the young Leon looks past us with a haughty expression

Look at  the rather haughty  and bold expressions of the young man Leon, who might or might not have been Manet’s son. It  is similar to  the expression of the young prostitute staring boldly out of the picture in Olympia and also that of the nude in Déjeuner sur L’herbe . Whereas both the woman looks at us in the other two pictures, Leon’s gaze goes beyond us, looking at something or somebody he sees over our right shoulder but it still has the boldness, the quality of taking stock, that is part of what makes  both Déjeuner and Olympia so arresting.

I enjoyed seeing the Luncheon; I also liked the portrait of Georges Clemenceau, shown above; and Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, though I had seen it so many times in the publicity for the exhibition, it was hard to summon up more of a reaction to it than – ‘oh yes, there it is.’ I now know more about Manet than I did before I went, but overall there just weren’t enough of the most celebrated pictures there to be satisfying. It was as if the Musée d’Orsay had put up a virtual sign at the exit saying, “you’ve seen the rest, now see the best.” I went as a guest of a member, but I can’t believe you wouldn’t feel a bit short-changed if you were paying the full suggested £17 entry fee. There was something else too. Without the best, the works seemed so strongly rooted in another time. Manet may have been the father of modern art, but at the Royal Academy, in this exhibition, you could really feel the generation gap.

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