Visual Art
PRIN EDVARD MSUNCH: PRINTS Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Sep 00“
Death, existential angst and the Impossibility of love are recurring themes In this exhibition of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s prints. Devised as a cunning strategy to publicise his paintings, the appeal of the prints is more timeless, and the Hunterian Art Gallery has put up a fine selection of 40 woodcuts, lithographs and etchings on loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo.
Within the lines, shades and shadows of this exhibition lies evidence of the tormented search for clarity and an insistence on an explanation for life. Stylistically influenced by the post-impressionists and a founder of visual expressionism, Munch was more interested in line than colour, and his subject matter evolved to depict a state of mind rather than an external reality.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many daytime visitors at a visual art exhibition in Glasgow, as crowds moved through the gallery in serpentine locomotion.
There is one work you will struggle to spend time with alone, as all visitors want to ponder the infamous
88 THE LIST 25 Jun—9 Jul 2009
scream for a while - perhaps in an attempt to experience a bit of fin de siecle ennui. One critic claimed that ‘The Scream’ was a response to Schopenhauer’s statement that ‘the limit of the power of expression of a work of art was its inability to reproduce a scream’. It comes as no surprise that Munch would take on this challenge.
Munch’s subject matter, rendered in blues, greys and greens, centres around languid lovers, a melancholic Madonna, femininity, discontented figures by the shore in the moonlight, and distraught portraits of himself and contemporaries.
Most of his prints have an idiosyncratic quality. Not his portraits: their execution allows for the pensive personalities of his subjects to filter through - the distinctive grizzled bristles of Mallarmé’s beard, the confident outlines of Nietzsche’s larger-than-Iife face and the search for meaning in the eyes of Norwegian playwright, Ibsen.
As a type of ‘artist’s proof’ in its entirety, this exhibition portrays a milieu that gave rise to an active distortion of reality and in effect conjures up a boozy nausea very relevant to our time. (Talitha Kotzé)
REVIEW PAINTING
HELEN BAKER: IN COLOUR Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh, until Thu 23 Jul 000
www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW MIXED MEDIA MOYNA FLANNIGAN, ISABEL NOLAN & HANNELINE VISNES Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 18 Jul ”0
There's something quietly playful going on in this understated group show. a feeling that's captured best by Isabel Nolan's ‘The Unfolding Moment'. A small rug laid out on the floor beneath two framed pieces. its vivid greens covered with a pattern, looks like something that came as part of a grown-up board game designed for ice-breaking fun. Elsewhere. in Nolan's “City Fox', a headlined 'YES‘ seems to indicate the urban snaffler's positive intentions.
There's more nature to be found in Hanneline Visnes' ornate depictions of eagles on a jet-black background. though the solitary tree that dominates the mightily titled ‘Stain' looms even larger and more predatory. Moyna Flannigan's anthropological inclinations focus more on human behaviour in a series of delightfully charming depictions of elongated figures. Two offerings from Flannigan's ‘The Beach Series' find poised swimmers about to take the plunge. Best of all, though, are ‘J‘accuse 1 & 2'. in which solitary, near theatrical figures with oversized hands and darkly comic intentions contemplate their own cunning imaginings.
There's not much to link these three very different bodies of work. Such variety. though, works in the show's favour, which is delivered with a welcome brightness and lightness of
touch. (Neil Cooper) I, “x . ;-r"f\ a 1/ J l )‘I’ ‘/ 4" A
Helen Baker describes her new paintings as resembling ‘shrunken Bridget Rileys frayed and left on the wrong wash cycle' . It' s a canny comparison. Where Riley's op-art pieces were born from a precise structural aesthetic. Baker's mosaic-like pieces look careworn in comparison. Yet they share with Riley's work an underlying precision in their grid-like construction. While the blocks and dots with which Baker coats her colour-washed canvases (created while on a residency in Rome) are minimally abstract in their sensibilities. the colours she uses are complementary to and reflective of nature. Each painting feels like an impressionist landscape, as seen after being blinded by the sun. or witnessed in a reflective pool of water.
Baker uses two distinct forms. The first is on a colour-washed canvas, with distinct blocks of colour painted In sequences which echo square bricks being arranged in an ascending structure. Names such as “Block‘ and ‘Build' suggest that there's some kind of architectural representation at work here. albeit arranged in such a way that a mess of colours and styles comes together to create the coherence of a modern urban landscape. Other pieces use far smaller spots of colour to create a dot-matrix effect on the backgrOund wash. with the blue and white on black effect of ‘For Pucci' and the white and greys on red of ‘For Gucci' creating the rung-out fabric effect Baker described in reference to Riley. These implicitly suggest that Rome‘s status as a centre of fashion commerce might not prove as enduring as its architectural history. (David Pollock)