Contemporary Art - Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Contemporary Art - Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Some of the 20th century exhibits in the museum's permanent collection. The curators remind us, how, in the 20th century, art stopped being in the service of religion, morality, ideology or even realism, and art carved a space for itself. The 20th century was a period of revolutions in art that includes paintings of everyday life, Abstraction, art that questions art, art as social commentary, photography, video, the use of ordinary materials and feminism. Thus, art became free to define its own boundaries.

Sarah Dobai, Emily and Emmanuel, (C-type photograph)

I loved this photograph and I am very sorry I got all these reflections on it. I tried various ways of taking the photograph and all I achieved was getting reflections from different art works.

Barbara Hepworth, Winged Figure I, 1957, (bronze, wire and isophon)

Terry Frost, Three Graces, 1960, (oil and charcoal on canvas with canvas collage)

Ian Hitchens, Warnford Water, 1959, (oil on canvas)

'My pictures are painted to be listened to'

Warnford Water is an example of a panoramic abstract landscape format that Hichens pioneered, reminiscent of the immersive effect of Monet's multiple Waterlily paintings installed wall to wall in the Musee de L'Orangerie in Paris.

Spencer Frederick Gore, Nude on a Bed, 1910, (oil on canvas)

Lynn  Chadwick, Idioorphic Beast, 1953, (iron)

The critic Herbert Read saw the alien sculptural forms of Lynn Chadwick as a reaction to the horrors that had been revealed in the death camps of WWII.

Aubrey Williams, Shostakovich Symphony No. 13, Opus 113 for Bass, 1981, (oil on canvas)

Richard Smith, Salem, 1958, (oil on canvas)

Peter Lanyon, High Moor, 1962, (oil on canvas)

In 1959, Lanyon took up gliding to 'get a more complete knowledge of the landscape'. The Cubist forms of his ealry work gave way to the freer gestures and frenetic circling of High Moor, which place the viewer amongst the wind and sea. He nevertheless claimed to artist Alan Davie that he 'always had a clear image in my mind before starting a painting'.

Ai Weiwei, A Ton of Tea, 2007, (compressed Pu Erh tea)

A Ton of Tea brings together many of Weiwei's interests in a post-Minimal and richly scented giant cube of tea. The apparent simplicity of form and material makes reference to post-war art history and globalisation, through the humble substance of tea, China's oldest export.

William Scott, Black, Grey and Blue, 1960, (oil on canvas)

'I have a strong preference for primitive and elementary forms'.

Tala Madani, Manual Grid, 2011, (oil on canvas)

Tala Madani moved to America from Itan when she was 13 and has said that her difficulty learning English attracted her to art. The way Madani combines the language of Abstraction with the figurative shares something with Roger Hilton's quest to 'reinvent figuration'.

Roger Hilton, June1960, (oil on canvas)

Tala Madani, Instruction Manual, 2100, (oil on canvas)

The man reading his Instruction Manual merges with the manual in a play on 'man' and 'manual' that seems to mock masculine attachment to rulebooks.

Tala Madani, Double Head Index, 2011, (oil on canvas)

Madani's titles are directly descriptive and yet the subjects remain elusive. These are paintings full of linguistic and visual puns. But the emphasis is on painting, with all the characteristics of expressive painting: sensual, fresh and bold. Double Head Index shows two headless figures, revealed in their mirrored reflections to be attached to the one body, as one man attempts to become the larger personality of the other.

19th and 20th Century Art - Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

19th and 20th entury Art - Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

The paintings in this post show how French artists broke with academic tradition and found new ways to paint nature and the modern human-made world around them.

The Impressionists were reacting to a changed, industrialised and increasingly globalised era, which was chronicled by writers such as Charles Baudelaine and Emile Zola, and round a radically different aesthetic and scientific approach to depict the visible world. They were interested in the role of light, its changing qualities and the part the human eye plays in the perception of colour. They painted outdoors using brighter colours and visible brushstrokes to capture movement. They also used cropped compositions, which illustrate the influence of photography and the new experience of Japanese prints in Europe.

The British paintings in this post show the lasting international influence of French 19th century art and how artists adopted the radical changes in style and subject matter in their own work.

Lucien Pissarro, The Turkeys, 1893, (oil on canvas)

The recreation of the dappled light shows the artist's interest in (Neo-) Impressionist techniques and their views of the roles of light and the human eye. Lucien Pissarro was taught to paint by his father, Camille Pissarro, and both artists were interested in Seurat's theory of the optical mixing of colour. Here, the brushstrokes keep each colour separate, achieving a vibrant effect in the lush foliage.

Lucien Pissarro, La Frette, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Edouard Vuillard, Interior with Madame Hessel and her Dog, 1910, (oil on cardboard on panel)

Vuillard's harmonious colour scheme was achieved by his choice of materials. The picture was painted directly onto unprimed cardboard, its warm mid-tone often left untouched by any pigment. The surface of the cardboard is visible in all areas of the painting, particularly in the sofa and floor.

Eva Gonzales, The Donkey Ride, 1880, (oil on canvas)

Here, Gonzales chose a scene of contemporary life, but deliberately made a narrative reading of this painting impossible. After Gonzales' sudden death aged thirty four, the unfinished painting was found in the artist's studio. The area around the man's jacket is unresolved. Donkey Ride is the only work by Gonzales, who is one of a number of female Impressionists, in a public collection in the UK.

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Beach Scene, St Ives, 1886, (oil on canvas)

The influence of Forbes' time in Paris can be seen here in his practice of painting outdoors (en plein air), his focus on modern life and the daring composition, which was influenced by Japanese art and contemporary photography.

Alfred Sisley, The Entrance to the Village, 1870, (oil on canvas)

Sisley was born in Paris of English parents and lived in France all his life.

Edward Lear, The Mouuntains of Thermopylae, 1852, (oil on canvas)

The intense colours Lear used show the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites.

looking closer

Edward Lear, The Tiber near the Ponte Molle, Rome, 1878, (oil on canvas)

William Janes Muller, The Carpet Bazaar, Cairo, 1843, (oil on canvas)

Jean Marchand, The Aspidistra, 1912, (oil on canvas)

The Aspidistra is a still life, interior and city scape all in one.  The leaves of the pot plant seem to sway rythmically, while the folds of the curtain have a solid, sculpted appearance. The rooftops outside are heavy geometric blocks of colour and form.

Winifred Bourne Medway, Portrait of Miss Annie Kenney, 1910, (oil on canvas)

Annie Kenney was a Suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant wing of the women's suffrage campaign, led by Emmelline Pankhurst.

Kenney worked in a cotton mill from the age of 10. After hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak she led women factory workers in the campaign in Lancashire. Between 1907 and 1911 she was based in Bristol leading the South West branch of the WSPU. She was arrested 13 times and endured force-feeding, which possibly shortened her life. When she recalled the day women won the vote in 1918, she said 'though I had no money I had reaped a rich harvest of joy, laughter, romance, companionship and experience that no money can buy'.

Medway and her sisters grew up in Bristol and were also involved in the campaign. Medway's portrait shows Kenney five years into her activism.

Laura Knight, Epsom Downs, 1936, (oil on canvas)

'Even today [1965] a female artist is considered more or less a freak and may be undervalued or overpraised by sole virtue of her rarity and her sex'. Laura Knight.

Knight borrowed a Rolls Royce to travel to Epsom where she painted these Romani fortune-tellers in the fairground by the racecourse.

Knight was taught to draw by her mother before entering Nottingham School of Art, aged 13.  She and her husband lived in Newlyn from 1907 to 1919 where they knew Dod Procter and Stanhope Forbes. Sometimes seen as part of the art establishment, Knight was the first woman to become a member of the Royal Academy since Angelica Kauffman in 1768. She often chose marginalised people for her subjects: dancers, the Black patients and nurses in a racially-segregated hospital in 1920s Baltimore, women munitions workers, and travellers at Epsom, which had had a Roma community from the 16th century.

looking closer

looking closer

Dod Procter, Winter Scene from the Artist's House, (oil on canvas)

'Dod' Procter was born Doris Margaret Shaw in Hampstead. She attended Stanhope Forbes' school in Cornwall aged 15 when her family moved to Newlyn. She was considered the most talented student and she travelled to France, meeting Cezanne and Renoir. Procter experimented early on with the geometric pre-Cubist style of Cezanne and this undated wintery view is possibly a later work from whe had settled in Zennor. Procter was friends with Laura Knight, Alfred Munnings and Alethea Garstin.

Henry Scott Tuke, Boys Bathing, 1898, (oil on canvas)

Tuke felt that painting outdoors was the best way to capture 'the truth and beauty of flesh in sunlight by the sea'.

Harry Watson, Holidays, 1920, (oil on canvas)

Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.

The collections in the museum include natural history; geology; local, national and international archaeology, including an Egyptology section; history; pottery including English delftware. The art gallery contains works from all periods, including many by internationally famous artists, as well as a collection of modern paintings of Bristol.

The building is of Edwardian Baroque architecture.

The main hall is stunning. 

Hanging from the middle of the ceiling is a replica of the first aircraft built in Bristol. It is one of three made for the film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines in 1965.

The entrance to the Egyptology section

Banksy, Paint Pot Angel (cast in resin with commercial paint, on a painted wooden base, 2009)

Banksy has altered a statue of an angel - the sort that you might find in a cemetery or a garden centre - by tipping a paint pot on its head. The intention is to challenge what people expect to see in a museum like this and question the value we place on art.

A plateosaurus





A different view from the first floor

Lots of art on the landings and stairs, including:

John Craxton, Creatures in a Mountain Landscape, 1950-51.

Doris Brabham Hatt, Brandon Hill, 1931, (oil on canvas)

Kehinde Wiley, Mojisola Elufowoju, (from the Yellow Wallpaper series), 2020, (oil on linen)

Ken Armitage, Moon Figure, 1948, (bronze)

Jacob Epstein, Kathleen, 1935, (bronze)

Nagae Shigekazu,  Forms in Succession 1, 2012, (slip-cast porcelain)

Casting is usually seen as an industrial method for mass-producing everyday ceramics, but Nagae transcends this stereotyope with his experimental sculptures. For his series Forms in Succession he first casts two thin porcelain pieces with razor-sharp edges using moulds and hangs them together in the middle of the kiln. This causes the pieces to sag, creating a sculpture with a sense of organic movement.

The Egyptology Gallery:

I went in the Egyptology gallery in search of Fayoum.

There were mummy cases

and one Fayoum.

Jessica Ashman, Those That Do not Smile Will Kill Me, Decolonising Jamaican Flora. Installation, part of current exhibition.

Ashman's installation challenges the Enlightenment version of scientific research. She explores the history of European colonisers and the extraction and exploitation of Jamaica's natural resources and people. She is creating an alternative narrative that explores how Indigenous and African-Jamaicans used plants to resist their enslavement. 

She has conjured three figures: two women foraging and planting and a deity. They embody rebellion through the magic of  horticulture. The rebellion included growing food to eat and sell, harvesting plants for medicine and birth control, hallucinogens to connect to spirituality and even poisons.The title of the installation is a proverb about the Jamaican fruit, ackee: when the fruit does not split or 'smile', it is poisonous.