TWELVE TRAVELS: BRITISH ART ON THE MOVE
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| Andy Goldsworthy, Bright sunny morning (1987) |
A sweeping show unpacks British artistic luggage in Setagaya
A good wine, as they say, travels well, developing a more interesting flavor, or at least maintaining its original one, when uncorked many miles from its country of origin. Good art pulls off a similar trick, as this chronologically wide-ranging, UK-sourced exhibition suggests.
Built around the works of 12 very different artists, "Twelve Travels: British Art in Sensibility and Experience" seeks to give unity to its diverse offerings through the theme of “travel,” meant both literally and metaphorically. The colorful, cartoonish paintings of Anthony Green, with their autobiographical content, show an artist "travelling inwards" to his memories of childhood and the past. Henry Moore’s sculptures and lithographs (several of which depict Stonehenge) represent a "journey" into the distant past, and a visual and tactile "exploration" of line and shape.
Although the unifying concept of “travel” is an interesting one, I felt that it was stretched to breaking point. Another example of this is the works of the two Great Masters on display, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. These are clearly second-rate works, included for their name appeal.
While Turner's Woman with Tambourine (1840s) and Pallanza, Lake Maggiore (ca. 1846-48), with their airy brushstrokes and sophisticated sense of the Victorian Grand Tour, sit easily within the exhibition’s itinerant concept, Constable’s Dedham Vale (ca.1805-17), a solidly painted chunk of the English countryside, seems rather to be yearning for its pint of bitter and a Cornish pasty.
The travel concept works better with those artists who managed to journey to Japan, bringing their British sensibility with them. These include the Boyle Family, whose modus operandi of randomly selecting and minutely reproducing bits of ground in resin, fiberglass and other materials has a certain pointless, Python-esque charm, and the 19th-century painter Charles Wirgman, one of the first illustrators to bring oil painting techniques to Japan after the country ended its seclusion in the 1850s. Wirgman painted charming scenes and exotic figures competently. But, like a lot of early Western art in Japan, competing with the lightly and brightly colored indigenous variety, his palette tended towards the heavy and murky.
The best art is from those who found a spiritual affinity here with their own inner muse. The ceramicist Bernard Leach, represented by several fine works, including Tako Plate (1928), is an obvious case.
Others include the sculptor David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy, an artist who literally collaborates with nature to create ephemeral and location-specific artworks.
Nash’s rough-hewn wooden sculptures, made with local timber, celebrate the characteristics of the material—Japanese oak and elm—and in so doing retain the natural vigor of the wood. This is evident in pieces like Walking Ladder (1984), which seems to have run off, leaving someone hanging from a roof gutter somewhere.
Goldsworthy’s works—leaves woven together, ice sculptures, stones arranged into patterns on-site, etc.—are mainly presented through photography. In both these artists we detect a warm resonance between the British love of nature, filtered through post-industrialism, and Japan’s Shinto-based culture.
Because the exhibition is supported by the British Council, an organization ever keen to emphasize Britain’s new “multiculturalism,” the work of Palestinian refugee artist Mona Hatoun is also included. Her drab and wordy video installation, obsessing about the tragedies of the Middle East, doesn’t make the journey to Japan successfully, and I doubt whether it has even “arrived” in Britain.
C.B.Liddell
Metropolis
30th January, 2009
Built around the works of 12 very different artists, "Twelve Travels: British Art in Sensibility and Experience" seeks to give unity to its diverse offerings through the theme of “travel,” meant both literally and metaphorically. The colorful, cartoonish paintings of Anthony Green, with their autobiographical content, show an artist "travelling inwards" to his memories of childhood and the past. Henry Moore’s sculptures and lithographs (several of which depict Stonehenge) represent a "journey" into the distant past, and a visual and tactile "exploration" of line and shape.
Although the unifying concept of “travel” is an interesting one, I felt that it was stretched to breaking point. Another example of this is the works of the two Great Masters on display, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. These are clearly second-rate works, included for their name appeal.
 |
| Woman with Tambourine (1840s) |
The travel concept works better with those artists who managed to journey to Japan, bringing their British sensibility with them. These include the Boyle Family, whose modus operandi of randomly selecting and minutely reproducing bits of ground in resin, fiberglass and other materials has a certain pointless, Python-esque charm, and the 19th-century painter Charles Wirgman, one of the first illustrators to bring oil painting techniques to Japan after the country ended its seclusion in the 1850s. Wirgman painted charming scenes and exotic figures competently. But, like a lot of early Western art in Japan, competing with the lightly and brightly colored indigenous variety, his palette tended towards the heavy and murky.
The best art is from those who found a spiritual affinity here with their own inner muse. The ceramicist Bernard Leach, represented by several fine works, including Tako Plate (1928), is an obvious case.
 |
| Walking Ladder (1984) |
Nash’s rough-hewn wooden sculptures, made with local timber, celebrate the characteristics of the material—Japanese oak and elm—and in so doing retain the natural vigor of the wood. This is evident in pieces like Walking Ladder (1984), which seems to have run off, leaving someone hanging from a roof gutter somewhere.
Goldsworthy’s works—leaves woven together, ice sculptures, stones arranged into patterns on-site, etc.—are mainly presented through photography. In both these artists we detect a warm resonance between the British love of nature, filtered through post-industrialism, and Japan’s Shinto-based culture.
Because the exhibition is supported by the British Council, an organization ever keen to emphasize Britain’s new “multiculturalism,” the work of Palestinian refugee artist Mona Hatoun is also included. Her drab and wordy video installation, obsessing about the tragedies of the Middle East, doesn’t make the journey to Japan successfully, and I doubt whether it has even “arrived” in Britain.
C.B.Liddell
Metropolis
30th January, 2009
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