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VisualArt
PRINTS, DRAWINGS & PAINTINGS DÜRER’S FAME National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Tue 11 Oct ●●●●●
German handball star Pascal Hens gazes out from a black-and-white poster, his torso naked, gaze serious, his pose one of self-deification. This is enhanced further by a tattoo on his stomach of two disembodied hands clasped together as if in prayer. It’s an image made familiar by its own iconic status, which, in the context of the poster, borders on a state of heroic kitsch. Further down the corridor in a glass case sits a green- moulded plastic hare taken from an installation that filled a Nuremburg square with 7,000 of the little critters. Again, the familiar 21st-century apparel of this piece points to both parody and homage.
Both works, in fact, are two of the most recent examples that take from 16th century German maestro of woodcuts and engravings, Albrecht Dürer. Hens’ buff-bellied tattoo is inspired by Dürer’s ‘Study of Praying Hands’, while the electric green hare looks to one of Dürer’s most vivid images for inspiration. This isn’t some recent postmodern appropriation, mind, but, as this striking selection of Dürer’s own explicitly monochrome works set besides some of his contemporaries and acolytes proves, Dürer was in fact one of the earliest examples of art star, whose fan-boy copyists manufactured their own output in his image.
The opening woodcut in this laterally-inspired show, ‘The
Circumcision’, has no less than three homages by Dürer’s contemporaries, while 19th century Scottish artist William Bell Scott depicts the man himself looking out over Nuremberg in the nearest thing found here to a pin-up. Beyond the romanticised image, Dürer’s biblical works for the tellingly entitled ‘The Apocalypse’ are knee-deep in an ecclesiastical and transcendental melodrama that holds an eternal appeal for serious young men everywhere, whatever century they’re in. (Neil Cooper)
GROUP SHOW ALISTAIR FROST & GERDA SCHEEPERS Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 6 Aug ●●●●●
With works that deal with painting as their surface connection, but later reveal a linguistic undercurrent, the latest show at Mary Mary is an exploration of symbols and signs. Gerda Scheeper’s minimal figurative paintings focus on both the sensual and removed topic of a pre-sex-scene film shoot. The white and grey acrylics are thinly spread on black fabric, suggesting the bedspread itself and the act- to-be between the seemingly indifferent cast. One piece, referencing the linguistic sub-plot of the show, simply titled ‘DREHBUCH’ translates as ‘film script’, suggesting a removed, lifeless performance.
Frost’s paintings enact a similar post-structuralist musing with pieces hinting at a trendy retro style, specifically early Windows and Mac clipart. They sit in tension between subdued IKEA art and a criticism of symbolism. Forcing the work into a kitsch metropolitan reading is the scattered remnants of the opening night’s beer and sushi cartons, dunking the work into a self-referential art world narrative. Scheeper’s ‘Untitled work (No 7)’ references this theme a bit more subtly in an ambiguous wall drawing signifying the gallery set-up itself. (Alistair Quietsch)
EMBLEMS & EMBLEM BOOKS BREAKING THE RENAISSANCE CODE The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, until Tue 4 Oct ●●●●●
Depending on whether you’re a critic or an avid fan of the bestselling Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown both heralded and slew the art of emblematic thinking. This small yet punchy exhibition puts examples of Dürer, Rembrandt and Holbein’s use of symbolic referencing alongside artists such as Hervé Télémaque and Alasdair Gray. But it is the original emblem books first printed in 1531 that sit like jewels among modern versions of the same. Today advertising is the emblematics of the
modern world. The viewer is lured in to relate the slogan to the picture, and the need for the product replaces the moral message of the historical emblem. Included in the show is a fitting example of Britain’s oldest brand, Tate & Lyle Syrup. Unchanged since 1885 the label sports the emblem of a dead lion with Biblical motto – ‘out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ Instrumental in setting up the Tate Gallery in London, English sugar merchant and philanthropist Sir Henry Tate’s legacy is today a branded enterprise in itself. Closer inspection will reveal intriguing connections.
(Talitha Kotzé)
GROUP SHOW GRAVITY’S RAINBOW Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 23 Jul ●●●●●
The acid house smiley face on the sunny yellow ball of Peter Liversidge’s shelf-load of single-hued detritus speaks volumes about this colour-focused group show of eight artists that takes its title from Thomas Pynchon’s baroque noir. It begins with a joke by Yves Klein, who in 1954 published a booklet of coloured paper rectangles that purported to be the creations of some hip young kid on the block, but which were actually found off-cuts. The fact that Liversidge, too, has painstakingly remade his own rubbish out of clay and placed it next to the original adds to the gag. Kay Rosen’s wall paintings ape Pynchon and Klein by using colours on the basis of their aspirationally- inclined names, ending up with mint choc chip style blocks as demonstrated by ‘Mud Hut between Willow Tree and Apple Tree beside Rocky Road separated by Hedgerow from Copper Canyon’. This is painting and decorating as art, as are Ian Davenport’s candy-stripe paintings in which rivulets drip down to form mixed-up splodges on the floor, where David Batchelor’s giant balls of single- coloured rolled up cables await a giant kitty-cat to bounce them into touch. (Neil Cooper)
21 Jul–4 Aug 2011 THE LIST 89