Art Overdose

We went on a cultural weekend, my friend and I. First visit was to Pallant Art Gallery in Chichester. It is not the greatest of spaces with seven galleries being too grand, rooms is better, leading off a central galleria. However, the lighting is sensitive and the content worth the visit.

In the galleria hung the standing exhibition of Modern British Art: The First 100 Years - based on the assumption the art in Britain ended some time around 1977. Work by Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, and Eduardo Paolozzi took me back to the days when my hair reached my shoulders.

Examples from four artists under the title of The Scottish Colourists were exhibited in three rooms. It was interesting in that it demonstrated the extent to which landscape influences the palette.

I always associate Scottish Art of the late 19th, early 20th century with tertiary colours, reflecting the heather, moors and peaks of the Highlands. It was notable in several works on show; however, when the artists make their obligatory trip to France, they choose a primary-based palatte, influenced, no doubt, by the Impressionists but also by the fact their usual choice would be totally inappropriate. One painting stood out; washed-out in tone, it was a view of the corner of a white-washed building under the shadow of a tree. It so well expressed the feeling of torpid heat, one could smell the very individual fragrance of over-heated air.

The last exhibition we visited was Outside In, examples of Art Brut or Outsider Art, executed by those historically associated with the fringes of society - prisoners, drug and alcohol abusers, those with mental illness or learning difficulties…

The theme of most of the work was as might be expected - alienation, despair, loneliness - but some art transcended those bonds and was truly outstanding.

The following day we went to the Church of All Saints, Tudely, near Tonbridge in Kent; a small jewel box of a church blessed with stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. My companion has blogged on the history behind the commission, I shall just offer you these images:

 

You can see what I mean by the jewel box effect. The church is simply painted in white with no other decoration to clash with the windows.

All the windows are predominately blue, reflecting, perhaps, the drowning of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid for whom the windows were commissioned as a lasting memorial. The only two windows that are immediately optimistic in colour values stand either side of the entrance.