'There is a language simply of form and colour that can be as moving as any other and that seems to affect one quite as much as the greatest poetry of words'.
Vanessa Bell - A World of Form and Colour, Part 1.
We went to to Milton Keynes (you can see my post on the town here ) especially to see this exhibition. It's the largest ever display of work by Bell and it was fantastic. There were some paintings that I was hoping to see which were not part of the exhibition, particularly Strudland Beach, but it did not matter, as there was so much wonderful work there to enjoy. There is a post on Strudland Beach which you can see here . You can also see all three versions of that iconic painting here .
Bell was a pioneering modernist. Her work was at the forefront of British abstraction, but she also produced many portraits, still lifes and landscape paintings. At the same time, she created conditions in which artists could flourish. This involved organising the Friday Club for artists to meet and co-founding the experimental design collective, Omega Workshops.
She was also an important part of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of influential English artists, writers and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. Collaboration formed an essential part of Bell's approach to art, including with her sister, Virginia Woolf, and the artist Duncan Grant with whom Vanessa Bell's all-encompassing approach to art found its ultimate expression in Charleston, the farmhouse they shared in East Sussex.
Vanessa Bell was born into a wealthy literary family living in Kensington, London. She studied art in South Kensington and at the Royal Academy Schools. Following the death of her parents, Bell moved, together with her siblings, to 46 Gordon Square in the unfashionable Bloomsbury area where she rejected Victorian attitudes and sought a radical new way of living. She began the Friday Club where male and female artists were regarded as equals and exhibited together.
Through these events she developed relationships with her future husband, the critic Clive Bell, as well as her life partner and collaborator, the artist Duncan Grant and other members of what became known as the Bloomsbury Group. Travel around Europe introduced Bell to the Old Masters, especially in Italy, the continental avant-garde in Paris and various folk traditions. Houses rented in Sussex provided spaces for Bloomsbury artists and authors to meet and work together. In 1910 Bell met the painter and critic Roger Fry whose exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists was deeply influential. She recalled: 'here was a sudden pointing to a possible path, a sudden liberation and encouragement to feel for oneself'.
Cornish Cottages, 1900, (oil on board)
This portrait seems to have been completed quickly, with the arms and hands appearing unfinished. But, oh! that face.
Virginia Woolf in Fancy Dress, 1911-12, (oil on canvas)
Byzantine Lady, 1912, (oil on composite board)
Virginia Woolf in Fancy Dress, 1911-12, (oil on canvas)
Byzantine Lady, 1912, (oil on composite board)
The heavily painted model is painted in a style which Bell had just started using, working in larger patches of colour.
Large patches of colour, outlined in balck with an abstract background.
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In Ocrober 1912, The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition opened, in which Bell's work was exhibited. In 1913, together with Rober Fry and Duncan Grant they co-founded the Omega Workshops. Here, they rejected Victorian and Edwardian styles and challenged the barriers between fine and decorative art by designing modern furniture, textiles and ceramics. Shortly after the opening of the Workshops, Bell embarked on a radical abstract phase of painting which, although short-lived, positioned her at the forefront of experimental artistic innovations.
Conversation Piece, 1912, (oil on board)
The three figures have been identified as Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf and Adrian Stephen, Bell's brother. Bell made several portraits with blank faces, focussing instead on form, gesture and bright post-impressionist colour.
The years immediately preceding 1914 were revolutionary for the Bloomsbury Group, and conversation was the way in which ideas were worked out. As Leonard Woolf recalled, 'it was the springtime of a conscious revolt against the social, political, religious, moral, intellectual and artistic institutions, beliefs an standards of our fathers and grandfathers'. Bell delighted in the freedom of speech and ideas presented by this period of her life.
Nursery Tea, 1912, (oil on canvas)
This was the largest painting Bell had made and represented a new way of working. She wrote to Roger Fry in June 1912: 'I have been painting my nursery scene... I am just in an exciting stage as I flatter myself that I'm painting in an entirely new way... I am trying to paint as if I were mosaicing, not by painting in spots, but by considering the picture as patches, each of which has to be filled by one definite space of colour, as one has to do with mosaic or woolwork, not allowing myself to brush the patches into each other'.
The painting shows two nursemaids with the artist's two young sons, Julian and Quentin, on the left, described by Bell as 'the one spot of satisfactory colour with his orange hair in a bright pink dress'.
In this painting Bell takes a conventional subject but makes a radical departure from traditional representations of children with her use of scale and modernist technique.
Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting, 1912, (oil on wood)
Bell painted artist-siblings Frederick and Jessie Etchells, abstracting her subject and omitting all details, including facial features, for the first time. The garden, seen through the open window, and the easels are reduced to flat bands of colour.
In this painting Bell outlines her forms in free-flowing black lines in a technique Roger Fry termed her 'slithery handwriting'. The use of black alongside bright colours and a cubist background, creates movement.
Oranges and Lemons, 1914, (oil on cardboard)
A rare example of Bell painting a landscape during WWI. It also demonstrates the continuing influence of her experimentation in abstraction during 1914. Although depicting farm buildings looking onto the Chichester Estuary, Bell reduces the forms to abstract planes of ochre, purple, grays, yellow and cryan, punctured by the verticals at either side and the boat mast in the centre.
Landscape with Buildings, 1912, (oil on plywood)
This painting was cut in half and used to make two shelves for a cupboard in Bell's bedroom. The two halves were reunited and restored by the Charleston Trust.
This painting was cut in half and used to make two shelves for a cupboard in Bell's bedroom. The two halves were reunited and restored by the Charleston Trust.
While in Italy, Bell developed the technique of outlining forms with a dark line. Her landscapes, focus on large blocks of colour and flattened planes with views often framed by windows, doorways and bridges.
Street Corner Conversation, 1913, (oil on board)
Street Corner Conversation is one of a number of paintings from this period in which Bell depicts closely grouped figures, including A Conversation and Conversation Piece. However, Street Corner Conversation is a radical change in style with sharp diagonals and clear bands of more subdued colour.
Abstract Painting, 1914, (oil on canvas)
Around 1914-15 Bell produced a handful of abstract collages and paintings, a development that followed from her applied art designs for the Omega Workshops. Bell worked in abstraction only for a very short period and they were private experiments, not exhibited or sold during her lifetime. However, the existence of these paintings places Bell at the forefront of British artists making non-objective work and her experiments in this are continued to influence the architecture and colour dynamics of her later work.
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