Generation exhibition

About two weeks ago,  we went the National Gallery in Edinburgh to see the Generation exhibition. It was really good to see some real work as most of the time, we only see images on computer.

I like the On Form and Fiction room by Steven Campbell. When I first went in, I didn't know where to look, I just felt the whole room was very beautiful, especially with the music and the lights. I walked around, had a roughly look. Then I walked around again but slowly, trying to see each of his paintings and drawings. The individual work is beautiful, but I more liked the way how the whole room was installed.  It reduced the weight of each individual work but enhanced the installation as a whole.

Another work I liked was the six clay portraits by Christine Borland. She asked six different sculptors to create a portrait for the same person by giving them the same Information. The outcome was six completely different portraits. I liked her idea and I was sure the outcome was what she expected. This work reflects the fact that how we look at things affects what and how we understand. It is fascinating that artists always questioning and finding ways to identify the truth. And I think this is a very pure intention.

The work I like most was the Callum Innes' Exposed painting. The whole room felt very calm. The color was beautiful. The orange was so bight and felt cheerful. The paint remove method creates depths and lights inside the painting. I watched two short videos about his studio in Edinburgh after the exhibition. His studio was very big, very neat and clean like his paintings. He also does water colors. He demonstrated how he apply paint and constantly washed his bush.I guess to keep his bush clean is very important.

I am looking at Rothko at the moment. They both paint on large canvas, using rectangles, using layers of paint. But the feeling of their work are completely different. Rothko's work feels less controlled although I am sure everything was under his control too. His edges were rough, there were hidden lights in his painting. The depths and the way he mixed color make you feel a kind of uncertainty. While Innes' painting are very neat with hard edges. He uses bright  colors. His work make you feel calm and certain. He said his work are not abstract, they are figures to him which I cannot quite see it that way at this moment.

Eduardo Paolozzi

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005), British sculptor, collagist, print maker, filmmaker and writer. I found a lot of his collages and sculptures are very interesting.

no title, screen print on paper, 1967

This work maybe is not the best to represent Paolozzi. I chose this one because I like the color and the way how he put them together. The color is very striking. Different colors together can create different effects. I think he must deeply understand the color theory. By using colors in different ways, he successfully create a lot of layers on a flat surface. We can clearly see there are 8 layers at the background and the rectangle is on top of them. There are two diagonals in the rectangle and two half diagonals. We can see black is at the bottom, then gold, then blue. I am not quite sure about the red though. By slightly change the direction of the lines, visually we can see some sections are lower than others. For example the two green section in the rectangle. One is lower than the other one. The purple triangle looks like  on top of the red. Then a gold line beside creates a balance on this section. At the right side, he created lots of small squares. I feel these squares calm the whole image down and also add balance to it. I like this work, looks simple, but the way to put the colour together is very complicated.  There must be a lot of thought behind it. 

Vollard suite

 Vollard Suite are 100 etchings produced by Picasso between 1930 and 1937. I did not know these work before. When I looked through them, the work are just astonishing. It felt  like that a lot of them were based on some kind of story. Without knowing the background story, it was quite difficult to understand to tell what these are about. But just too the work itself, I really like them. 

  

Young sculptor at work Etching, 23 March 1933

This is the first image I saw when I Google it. The title tells us what is happening. I can hardly believe this is etching. The lines are so simple apart from the flower vines. From practice I know anything looks simple, it won't be easy to produce. This requires very high drawing skills and very deep understanding of human body. It is just incredible that a few lines can form a human body. And if you look at the man's face, full of emotion. How can a few lines make his eyes looking so deep? The sculpture, eye closed, beautiful but motionless, again, very simple lines. She must make the young man thinking about the women he loves or he is actually making a sculpture of her, He is in pain, missing her. Again, simple lines, but you can feel the weight of his left hand holding the knife as if he is curving all his love and pain into this sculpture. The vine connects the two figures together. It is beautifully shaped, adds romantic feeling to the image and implies a beautiful future.  I like this work.