Session Three: Theory

This was led by Ed Jeavons and started with a presentation that took us through a list of different types of painting and in so doing introduced an interesting range of artists work: many I had not heard of.

'Ambitious New Plans' Jules de Balincourt

 First off was 'Political' and he used a painting by Jules de Balincourt.

Then he suggested 'Race' and we looked at the rather wonderful work of Mark Bradford: "map-like, multifaceted paper collages point not only to the organization of streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles, but also provide striking imagery of crowds, ranging from civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to present-day protests concerning immigration issues." I very much like his mixing and mashing and then sanding the down and adding more. Multi layers and rich texture of real things. A nice collection here

 Then we got onto Gender (can't control the italics: this post has a typographical life of its own!) the example here was Cecily Brown. A lot of here work is abstract impressionism and when she does go more figurative I would say she is less concerned with gender as a political statement, and more  with feminine eroticism. But I like her abstracts: although this was what we looked at:

Cecily Brown: Teenage Wildlife

 The next category was 'Painting Tradition'. This seemed rather odd as a category but Ed showed us a range of painters making the case that they were deliberately located themselves within the tradition usually to subvert it. Although his first example was the 2006 Turner Prize winner Tomma Abts with what I would call respectful abstracts in the graphic style. An example here.
Then Frank Auerbach with  the emphasis on 'truth' and honesty his heavy use of paint  springs from the classical tradition, but is repurposed in a visceral manner. "Each brush stroke searching for truth" I particularly like this mono tonal portrait I found later:

Frank Auerbach: Head of E.O.W. IV

 

 

 

And finally in this section we looked at Glenn Brown who Ed described as mocking Auerbach  and talks about 'these paintings are habits of the hand'. Good example here.

There are another five categories to go, but I will stop here. maybe to return.