A Place Called Space: Vanessa Bell - A World of Form and Colour: Furniture, Textiles, Ceramics

Vanessa Bell - A World of Form and Colour: Furniture, Textiles, Ceramics.

at MK (Milton Keynes Gallery)

This is the third post on this exhibition. You can see the first part here and the second part here

I am going to reproduce the introdution from the first post so that each post can stand independently, but if you have seen it, then skip the introdution and go straight to the photographs.

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 see. 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.

In 1913, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant 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.

Design for a folding screen: Adam and Eve, 1913-14, (graphite, bodycolour + oil on woven paper)

Art historian Christopher Reed has discussed Bell's representation of Adam and Eve as an 'ambition to have Eden without the Expulsion... These energetic nudes dance their way through a narrative that promises to end, but in the enveloping warmth of the yellow light they reach into'.

Nude with Poppies, 1916, (oil on canvas)

Bell paintd Nude with Poppies as a preliminary design for a bedhead commissioned by her friend, and Clive Bell's partner, Mary Hutchinson. She worried about its reception: 'I hope she won't be horrified to hear there's a nude figure of the most romantic description with poppies'.

Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, Omega painted desk, 1912, (paint on wood)

The Omega Workshops, established by Roger Fry in 1913 with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell as co-directors, sold furniture, fabrics and household accessories designed and made by artists. Objects were shown anonymously and sold unsigned. In the run up to the launch of the Workshops Bell wrote to Roger Fry: 'I do think we shall have to be careful, especially in England where it seems one can never get away from this fatal prettimess. Can't we paint stuffs (fabrics) which won't be gay and pretty?'

looking closer

Decorated fan, 1913-16, (silk and ivory)

Omega rug design for Sir Ian and Lady Hamilton, (oil on paper)

For this scheme Bell painted friezes, inlaid furniture, created mosaics and stained glass, and designed a special rug for the entrance hall. The final design is shown here, as well as a more densely packed preliminary design.

Tea Things, 1919, (oil on panel)

Design for Omega bed-end: Vase of Flowers, 1917, (oil and gouache on paper)

Maud

White

Pamela

Designed 1913, printed 2024, (linen, cotton and nylon)

Three textile patterns for the Omega that are attributed to Bell

After Bell moved to Charleston in 1916, she and Grant began an ongoing project of decorating and redecorating the walls, doors and furnishing. Charleston was a home and refuge for the artists and their unconventional living arrangements as well as a complete work of art and one of their most important legacies. Charleston also provided a haven for others, many of whom were gay, including the economist John Maynard Keynes and authors Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster and Raymond Mortimer. At the same time, Bell and Grant strarted receiving commissions to decorate society homes which were published in magazines including Vogue and The Studio.

From the 1920s onwards Bell also designed dust jackets for the books published by Hogarth Press, owned by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, including all of Virginia Woolf's all publications. From the days of the Omega Workshops, Bell had been producing and decorating ceramics and textiles and this continued after the Workshops' closure in 1919, working in collaboration with potters including her son Quentin and designers including Clarice Cliff. Bell and Grant's largest ceramic production was the Famous Women Dinner Service commissioned by art historian Kenneth Clarke in 1932, which included 50 decorated plates celebrating famous women throughout history.

Doors of Duncan Grant's bedroom at Charleston, 1918

In early 1917 Bell decorated the fireplace in Duncan Grant's bedroom and in 1918 painted the two doors.

Decorated Screen, 1920, (watercolour and gouache, with chalk, charcoal and graphite and with paper collage elements)

Decorated by Vanessa Bell Table, 1950, (painted wood)

Vanessa Bell, Vase and Flowers, 1929, (oil on canvas)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Fire surround, 1929, (oil on wood)

Duncan Grant, Bacchanale, 1929, (oil on canvas)

Duncan Grant, The Toilet of Venus, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Chairs, 1929, (wood and Cane)

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932-34, (50 hand-painted Wedgwood ceramic plates)

In 1932, the art historian Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane Clark ordered a fine dining dinner service from Bell and Grant. They received a service including 50 plates painted with portraits of famous women, as well as the artists themselves. The famous women they chose to depict came from across the world and from ancient history to the contemporary.

The Famous Women Dinner Service forms part of a wider ambition to record women's histories, with Virginia Woolf later writing: 'The history of England is the history of the male line, not the female. Of our father we know always some fact, some distinction. They were soldiers or they were sailors; they filled that office or made that law. But our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, what remains?'

Bell described the dinner service in typically modest and tongue-in-cheek fashion, as 'portraits of celebrated females - it ought to please the feminists - of all times'.

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Studies for the Muses of Arts and Sciences, 1920, (oil on canvas)

In 1920 John Maynard Keynes commissioned Bell and Grant to decorate his study with panels on either side of the door and bookcase, as well as curtains and furnishing. The artists planned eight figures - four male (by Grant) and four female (by Bell) - representing the muses of the arts and sciences, although, as Bell wrote 'in fact we're always changing theirs arts and their sciences'. Their recent experience of visiting Italy and of seeing Italian Renaissance fresco painting may have influenced these decorations.