The Revolution Continues

I entered the Saatchi Gallery with no idea what to expect from the current exhibition. The Revolution Continues: New Art from China is a collection of contemporary art from a huge variety of artists each with unique styles which culminate to produce an astonishing body of work. All the Pictures featured in this post were taken by myself or my girlfriend, Debra Guo. The image above i chose to present first due to its breathtaking attention to detail, entirely rendered with lead pencil! The image, by Qiu Jie, is entitled Portrait of Mao - a play on words as 'mao' in Chinese is translated as 'cat.' The cat, in Chinese depictions, can be used to bestow a blessing, and this, along with the Calligraphic inscription drawn from Song Dynasty masterworks and cherry blossom articulation gives the work an unmistakeably distinct eastern feel which i can't help loving.


Pictured above is a detail of Zhan Wang's Ornamental Rock No.71, a seductively tactile warped mass of stainless steel that I read was made by moulding a flat sheet of metal to a natural rock formation. The abstract impression formed creates a contrast between such a seemingly malleable surface and the reality, which is of course an extremely tough and resistant work of art. The polished lobes seem almost liquid, common with the properties of mercury, imbuing the sculpture with a tense dynamism and implacing the expectation in the viewer's mind that the sculpture will at any minute disintegrate into a pool of silvery molten metal.


Zheng Guogu animates a structure of metal supports and calligraphy scripts by adorning it with copious quantities of wax that seems to almost be in the fleeting moment of cascading downward. The piece, entitled Waterfall, also bears an intense tension between two concepts - permanence and temporality. The monumentality of the framework and etheriality of the wax drips are together described as generating a 'cyclical purity,' enhanced by the pure white of the wax. This photograph, as well as the others in this post really does convey the exceptional abundance of space within the gallery itself. The very tall, open rooms are lit fantastically, and allow the viewer to experience a work of art in its own space rather that cluttered up with various other pieces either side of it. It is for this reason that the exhibition worked so well, and I was able to appreciate everything for what it was.

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

After an enthusiastic recommendation from one of my Art History teachers, i found myself in the Renaissance Faces exhibition in the National Gallery where i found a star-studded array of iconic portraiture. Several very highly acclaimed works were dotted throughout the show amongst some less well known that I had not yet come across before, but was happy to have found. Having studied the Medici family in depth, i was surprised to see in front of me the bust of Francesco Sassetti (sculpted by Antonio Rossellino and pictured above), who happened to be the manager of the Medici bank. This very important role i felt conveyed exceptionally though the stark expression and piercing eyes of the figure, which I was led to discover were accentuated through the use of small lead discs inserted into the pupils. There is a sense about this sculpture of incredible restraint and unerring reserve, which is a reflection of not only the core values of the Medici family, but their style of patronage as well.


There was an extraordinary collection of painting, a portrait of Il Tagliapanni (The Tailor) by Giovanni Battista Moroni, pictured above, is a great example of the gravitas and intensity of gaze that so many of the images in the exhibition had about them. The black silk he is holding would have been highly valued at the time, the depth of colour only achieved by a laborious process of dyeing several times, suggesting the work to be self commissioned, as the tailor is shown to be dealing with very expensive and sought after materials. What drew me to this portrait was the way that the subject's face and hair almost looks contemporary, and would probably have been slightly odd for the time. This however allowed me to experience a somewhat greater affiliation with the tailor, in a sense it was less like looking eyes of a man in the past and more like looking into the eyes of a man standing in front of me. It is a sensation I find hard to describe but one that I felt the need to try and convey as it was one of the reasons I came away from the exhibition in the satisfied state I did.


This bust, depicting Niccolo Strozzi, a very wealthy and powerful yet somewhat greedy member of the Florentine Strozzi family, shows quite graphically his obesity, with beautifully sculpted cheeks that you almost want to grab! Somewhat different from the depiction of Francesco Sassetti, Niccolo Strozzi swaps an intimidating and piercing expression for a glazed-over, blank gaze. The astoundingly shallow depth of carving on the robe adorning Niccolo's torso reflects not only Mino da Fiesole's skill but also the wealth of the family, in being able to afford such exquisite damask silk. Again here, what i was interested to see was that the sculpture reflected the style of patronage- the Strozzi family, famous for commissioning Gentile da Fabriano's San Marco Altarpiece, have their lifestyles reflected in the opulent and extravagant depiction of the Adoration of the Magi scene of the Bible. I do find it hard spending more than about an hour and a half absorbing portraiture, and so i was pleased to have rounded off the exhibition with a few sketches studying sculptural drapery.

Design Cities

William Morris, Marcel Breuer and Zaha Hadid were all featured in the Design Museum's exhibition: Design Cities. Pictured above is a selection of hanging lamps that featured in the exhibition by Tom Dixon, a series called 'Beat.' I'm a sucker for sleek, smooth, minimal design and so these hand beaten lamps enticed me.

This selection of Alessia Bettini cutlery also caught my interest, i was especially impressed with the slight bend in the spoons that would enable right handed users of the product easier access to the head of the utensil. I have to say i was much more intrigued by the contemporary design over the older that was on show, however i still appreciated some of the older English design concepts. The exhibition covered 150 years of design from several design capitals of the world in their hay day. One quote i did pick out from the older section was from Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament (1856) where he writes- "The more closely nature is copied, the further we are removed from a work of art." This, for me, is a pretty interesting quote, that would bode well with Matisse who once wrote in magazine La Revue Blanche (1908)- "I cannot copy nature in a servile manner."

Finally i was most captured by Zahid Hadad's design for the 2012 London Olympic Aquatic stadium, whose fluidity and simplicity of form reflect perfectly the role and function of the building. Like a Medieval church suggests divinity with its walls and an exterior packed biblical sculpture, this piece of architecture suggests the ripple of a wave as an Olympic swimmer carves through water.

Cildo Meireles

I recently visited the Cildo Meireles exhibition on the 4th floor of the Tate Modern. Cildo is a Brazilian conceptual artist with a think tank full of exceptionally quirky, humorous and powerful ideas. The exhibition itself was hugely impressive, possibly the most being the Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) (1987) where 600,000 pennies lay underneath a ceiling of 2,000 hanging bones, connected by a column of 800 communion wafers. The idea behind it is the connection of material power, spiritual power, and the inevitable consequence of the conjunction of them both - tragedy, represented by the bones. I found it quite worrying that i was instantly drawn to the sea of coins, however 600,000 small, round, shiny pieces of metal worth anything are bound to ensnare the interest of anybody over a few discs comprising of wheat flour and water.

Room one was possibly my favourite, certainly the room that contained the highest density of realised ideas. It contained pieces like Money tree (1969), a stack of Brazilian banknotes with an asking price of twenty times that of the actual monetary value, after having been objectified as an art piece by being placed upon a plinth by the artist. This piece along with the 'zero dollar bill' and 'zero cent' coin were all explorations of the idea of value, and how we perceive material object's worth. In the same room were a series of drawings backed up by four sculptures exploring space, with hallucinatory alterations to the corner at the meeting of two walls.

One thing i really enjoyed about the exhibition was the interactive ability the viewer has with many of the installations. Fontes (1992/2008) is a room with a spiral walkway whose path becomes more and more narrow as the viewer progresses inward until you reach the central area where the path dissolves into nothing and you are entirely consumed by some of the 6,000 room-height hanging rulers that make up the 'walls' or 'sides' to the path. It's fairly difficult to describe but when inside the room the is some sense of complete disorientation, as the definitions of time and space are removed. To explain, 1,000 clocks line the walls, however the numbers on the clocks are laid out at unequal and random intervals, making it impossible to tell the time. The ruler's measurements are similarly spread out and confusing, with no logical underlying structure to the placement of each increment of measurement. The idea of the room is therefore to remove any sense of time or space, and connected with the fact that you have the physical ability to become almost lost within the hanging rulers of the room, it is not only an interesting idea but an entertaining experience.

I walked into room three to find a spotlight highlighting an area of the floor in an apparently otherwise empty room. As is walked closer i saw something small and rectangular placed on the floor bathing in the spotlight and it was only when i knelt down to get a really good look at it that i saw what it actually was. A small 9mm by 9mm cube consisting of two pieces of wood somehow joined together was literally the only thing in the room. Not only was this a wonderfully intimate experience with a piece of art, that being a work of immensely small scale, there is also some very interesting ideas behind it. The inspiration for Southern Cross (1969-70) comes from Meireles' understanding of a problem in his home country.

He describes how the piece represents "the oversimplification imposed by the proselytising missionaries (essentially the Jesuits) on the cosmology of the Tupi Indians. (Who reside in southern Brazil) They reduced an indigenous divinity to the god of thunder when in reality their system of belief was much more complex, poetic and concrete matter, emerging through mediation of their sacred trees, oak and pine. Through the (rubbing together of) these two timbers the divinity would manifest its presence." The piece 'Southern Cross' is indeed fabricated from these two woods, and so the story and plight of the Tupi Indians is revealed through the viewer's inquiring interest upon finding a sculpture so small. I also like the idea that this little sculpture has the conceptual ability to burn down the entirety of its surroundings. Good stuff.