Don McCullin: Life, Death and Everything in Between - 2

Don McCullin: Life, Death and Everything in Between - part 2

at Gazi, Athens.

This is the second post on this exhibition. You can see the first part here  .  If you don't want to read the introduction again, move down to the first photograph.

47 images from Don McCullin's book, Life, Death and Everything in Between, which document humanity's most poignant moments, from the depths of conflict and despair to glimpses of resilience and beauty.

McCullin is particularly recognised for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and impoverished.

Between 1966 and 1984, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine, recording ecological and human-made catastrophes such as wars, among them Biafra in 1968, and victims of the African Aids Epidemic. His hard-hatting coverage of the Vietnam War and the Northern Ireland conflict is held in particularly high regard.

In 1982, the British government refused to grant McCullin a press pass to cover the Falklands War, claiming the boat was full. At the time, he believed it was because the Thatcher government felt his images might be too disturbing politically.

He spoke of his approach to entering war zones: 'I have risked my life endless times, and ended up in hospital with all kinds of burns and shell wounds. I have those reptile eyes that see behind and in front of me. I'm constantly trying to stay alive. I'm aware of warfare, of hidden mines'.

Some of the photographs I took are spoiled with too much reflection. I was tempted not to include them, but I so wanted a record of them.

A young child soldier at a First Aid hospital in the last days of the war, (Cambodia, 1975)

looking closer

South Vietnamese capture a Viet Cong suspect. (Mekong Delta, Vietnam, 1965).

A man carries his wife who is dying from cholera, (Bangladesh, 1971)

Contaminated water cooling a cholera victim, (Bangladesh, 1971)

looking closer

A 16-year old boy named Stephen, living with a mental health condition and with tropical sores, close to death, (Biafra, 1968)

A dead North Vietnamese soldier and his belonging, (Hue, Vietnam, 1968)

Young boys boxing near the Caledonian Road, (London, England, 1960)

Homeless man sleeping while standing, (Whitechapel, London, England, 1970)

A flooded field near my home, (Somerset, England, 2021)

Tribal people returning from a market, (Mentawai Islands, 1982-83)

looking closer

Taking gifts to the sea gods, (Bali, Indonesia, 1984)

Early morning delivery of home furnishings, (Kolkata, India, 1997)

Finsbury Park, (London, England, 1960)

The Valley of the Tombs, (Palmyra, Syria, 2007)

The Great Colonnade, (Palmyra, Syria, 2007)

 

Don McCullin: Life, Death and Everything in Between

Don McCullin: Life, Death and Everything in Between

at Gazi, Athens.

47 images from Don McCullin's book, Life, Death and Everything in Between, which document humanity's most poignant moments, from the depths of conflict and despair to glimpses of resilience and beauty.

McCullin is particularly recognised for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and impoverished.

Between 1966 and 1984, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine, recording ecological and human-made catastrophes such as wars, among them Biafra in 1968, and victims of the African Aids Epidemic. His hard-hatting coverage of the Vietnam War and the Northern Ireland conflict is held in particularly high regard.

In 1982, the British government refused to grant McCullin a press pass to cover the Falklands War, claiming the boat was full. At the time, he believed it was because the Thatcher government felt his images might be too disturbing politically.

He spoke of his approach to entering war zones: 'I have risked my life endless times, and ended up in hospital with all kinds of burns and shell wounds. I have those reptile eyes that see behind and in front of me. I'm constantly trying to stay alive. I'm aware of warfare, of hidden mines'.

Some of the photographs of the photographs I took, are spoiled with too much reflection. I was tempted not to include them, but I so wanted a record of them.

A mother with her new pram and baby in the steel town of Consett, (County Durham, England, 1974).

Tormented, Unhoused Irishman, (Spitalfields, London, 1970).

Unemployed Men Gathering Coal from the Shore, (West Hartlepool, County Durham, 1963)

Turkish Cypriot defender leaving the side entrance of a cinema, (Limassol, Cyprus, 1964)

Women and children fleeing an impeding massacre, (Karantina, East Beirut, Lebanon, 1976)

Cambodian soldiers with anti-tank gun. (Cambodia, 1970)

Sagar Island, (Delta Ganges River, India)

Woman with clay lip plate from the Mursi tribe, (Southern Ethiopia, 2006)





Blind Man with Leprosy, (Sonepur Mela, State of Bihar, India, 1987)

looking closer

Early morning at the Kumbh Mela, (Allahabad, India, 1989)

The holy festival, (Sagar Island, Junction of the Ganges and Grahmaputra rivers, India, 1977)

Horse market at Sonepur Mela, (India, 1987)

Surma tribe, (Omo Valley, southern Ethiopia, 2003-2004)

Officer Peter Osadebe addressing one of his dead soldiers during the Nigerian-Biafran War, (Biafra, 1968)

looking closer

Nurses attending a very badly burnt child, injured by napalm, (Saigon, Vietnam, 1968)

US Marines plundering possessions of a dead North Vietnamese soldier, (Hue, Vietnam, 1968)





looking closer

From Monet to Warhol - 5: Surrealism, Pop Art

From Monet to Warhol - 5: Surrealism, Pop Art

at the Goulandris Foundation, Athens.

This is the last post on this exhibition. If you want to see the previous posts, you can go here for Impressionism, here for Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, here for Japonisme and Nabis, and here for the Unclassifiables. If you do not wish to read the introduction to this post again, move down to the Surrealism section.

A wonderful exhibition, which gave me great pleasure. Firstly because it was great seeing paintings that I had seen before and loved. Secondly because some of it was new to me, and this includes artists I had not come across before, artists like Maurice Denis whose work was such a pleasant surprise.

The ensemble of eighty three works of forty five artists, mostly paintings,  which is on loan from the Swiss private collection, was assembled over three generations, affording us the opportunity to retrace the history of modern art from the 1880s until the present day.

Most of the major movements, currents and trends that have marked the evolution of painting are touched upon here in varying degrees of detail: Impressionism, Symbolism, Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Japonisme, Synthetism, the Nabis, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. They reflect the increasing changes imposed on perspective, colour and figuration, as well as the historical context in which they were conceived.

Surrealism:

In 1924 a group of young European artists and intellectuals gathered in Paris and decided to create a new artistic movement. Under the aegis of Andre Breton who drew up their founding manifesto, it expressed their refusal to allow logic a central role in the course of their lives that must henceforth be ruled by the power of imagination or chance. The term Surrealism, first pronounced a few years before by Guillaume Apollinaire, was chosen to designate their line of thinking. 

Breton organised and managed this movement with an iron hand, and it would reach its summit in the 1920s and 1930s, expanding internationally. However, the increasing disagreements within the group led its members, notably Max Ernst, Man Ray and Rene Magritte, to take their own separate paths.

Max Ernst, Yellow Seashell, 1928, (oil with graphite on paper on canvas)

Rene Magritte, The House, 1947, (gouache on paper on cardboard)

Man Ray, The Wall, 1938, (oil on canvas)

Domesticated Egg, 1944

Domesticated Egg is part of an ensemble of 37 works - readymades, drawings and photographs - that Man Ray assembled under the title Objects of My Affection. Through this selection the artist confirmed that he had not lost his colourful sense of humour and reclaimed his lotyalty to the Dada spirit of his beginnings.

Pop Art:

At the end of the 1950s in New York, as well as in London and Paris, young artists wanted to put an end to the supremacy of Abstraction by reintegrating in a thundering way, figuration and the everyday life into their work. This collective effort was dubbed Nouveau Realisme in France, and Pop Art in the USA and met with resounding success.

Not one of the painters affiliated with this movement acknowledged belonging to a group. Nevertheless, the points in common that connect works of Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, without mentioning Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg, make them the representatives of a new art. 

Andy Warhol, Man Ray, 1974, (screeprint in colours on wove paper)

Man Ray was for Andy Warhol both a model and a source of inspiration. Warhol created six portraits of Man Ray along with an edition of 100 silk-screen prints.

Tom Wesselmann, Mouth Study for Minneapolis Catalogue Cover, 1968, (oil on canvas)

Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke, 1965, (porcelain enamel on steel)

Roy Lichtenstein, Yellow and Black Brushstroke, 1970, (marker, coloured pencil and graphite on paper)

Roy Lichtenstein, Water Lily Pond with Reflections, 1992, (screeprinted enamel in colours on processed and swirled stainless steel).

From 1968 Lichtenstein began drawing inspiration from the works of Claude Monet. First, he concentrated on his Haystacks, then his Rouen Cathedrals, and finally his Water Lilies that he associated with his own earlier series Reflections.

Roy Lichtenstein, Portrait Triptych, 1974, (left and central sheets: coloured pencil and graphite on paper. Right sheet: coloured pencil and paper collage on paper)