Our favourite paintings: the great Auteur Gallery
In the biography ‘Descents of Memory – The Life of John Cowper Powys’ I stumbled upon Liam Hanley a painter who grew up in North Wales, but later moved to London. It was the son of neglected novelist James Hanley, who lived for many years in North Wales and came to consider himself Welsh.
Of his work Liam Hanley states: “If my painting had to fit into a category it would be landscape, though landscape from the pictorial point of view is not what I seek. I am concerned with the land and what man does to it.”
Thanks a lot for that- new discoveries all the time! I wonder when i’ll regain my interest in films. I’ve been ordering a few Welsh art books as my Xmas treat.
Glenys Cour, going strong aged 88
I really appreciate your interest in things Welsh, Martinus. Belgium has such a great art tradition of course.
One Welsh artist who’s been getting some overdue attention, in Wales anyway, thanks to two series of TV programmes on Welsh artists by Rolf Harris, is Evan Walters.
The Artist’s Mother Peeling Potatoes
Figure against a Striped Background
A Welsh Collier (Thomas Rees of Llangyfelach)
The Artist’s Mother Asleep
He developed a double vision style. Several outstanding paintings in the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea can’t be transposed here but….click the links. Hidden treasure, i think
Loved the Futurists of yesterday’s Italy Unpacked. Thought I’d share AGD’s thoughts. (it’s ill and I’m late, sorry for any mistakes)
…Milan isn’t stuck in the past. Progressive, forward-thinking, it fostered one of the most revolutionary art movements of the early 20th century, Futurism.
It was dreamed up in 1909 by an eccentric poet and orator called Marinetti.
The Futurist Manifesto, it’s a guide to enjoying modern life. Everything that an Italian perhaps at the beginning of the 20th century might find disconcerting, that rapid movement of a tram, a crowded street, the sudden sense that everything’s moving, it’s confusing.
(they visit the gallery[Novocento Museum]. the soundtrack is brilliant here, you should watch the program)
Here they begin, they’re in Paris, they’re in the cafes, they’re reading the papers, they’re doing what Picasso had done, they’re trying to think, “What would it bee like to be a modern artist?” And I think, suddenly, on this other wall, bang, you’ve got the answer.
achille funi -uomo-che-scende-dal-tram-composizione-1914
He’s painting Milan, he’s painting a man getting off a tram.
I think what he’s trying to, he’s trying to capture that, you know when we were on the tram, that sene that the world is not still. That there’s the sound, you can almost hear the shriek of the tram.
Think of someone like Toulouse Lautrec painting the can-can girls. Well, this is an Italian artist, Gino Severini, and this is what he makes of the can-can.
Severini – Dyna Dancer (1912)
This is very much an artist who’s read Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto. And he’s interest in that we are inhabitants of the machine age. and when he looks at the chorus line, it’s as if he sees a group of people who’ve turned themselves into a kind of animated piston engine. You know, legs kicking.
They were setting themselves quite a difficult task, which is to capture in a still frame, a sense of movement.
This picture, once you read the title, you can see the subject.
Giacomo Balla – Girl Running On A Balcony
One of the things I like about Futurism is, that they’re trying to break up the language of the past.
[a section on Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture, Unique Forms Of Continuity In Space — It’s the Futurist man striding into what he thought was the future.]
[then a section on Sironi, but I’m tired]
I have some new favorite paintings!
Barocci is a neglected old master now getting attention with major exhibition in London:
^ Oh! I love that! Thank you, Kenji.
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Kenji
I’ve been taking a break from films to concentrate on Welsh art.
Mary Griffiths: Procession
Mary Griffiths: Pepukai, Head Study
Mary Griffiths: Angela and Emma
Mary Griffiths tries to counter the current imbalance in art galleries- the dominance of conceptual art, over social interactions, human relationships and love. She made several paintings of Angela, with Pick’s Disease, a degenerative brain disorder, and her daughter Emma.