When is a great show actually a mediocre exhibition? When the bulk of the works on show come from a private exhibition and you’re trying to hang a theme around it, like Capturing The Moment at Tate Modern. Its ends up feeling contrived so I left the exhibition thrilled to have seen some amazing works that I hadn’t seen before in person, but feeling that I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take away from the exhibition.
This exhibition is centred around works from the YAGEO Foundation, Taiwan, founded by Taiwanese collector, entrepreneur and philanthropist Pierre Chen in 1999. In addition, works from the Tate collection have been added to expand and flesh out the theme of the show – that the arrival of photography changed the course of painting forever.
‘In this unique exhibition, we explore the dynamic relationship between the two mediums through some of the most iconic artworks of recent times.’
Whilst this gives us the opportunity to see some wonderful works of art, it did leave this visitor, and the friends I went with, confused at what the curators were trying to say or achieve. The relationship between the two art forms is sometimes explicit, but often superficial. Grief, worry and motherhood link Picassos’ ‘Weeping Woman’ (inspired by a photo of a mother who had lost her baby) and the masterful image by Dorothea Lange ‘Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California’ but is that enough? Within the context of Lange’s depression photographs, the famous image is so much more than that. The first room, featuring works Bacon, Picasso, Freud, Lange and Neel, feels largely thrown together, stunning works though they are.
‘Lens-based media could offer a much more convincing representation of reality than painted canvas. Painters developed new styles and perspectives in response to this challenge, particularly when exploring the human figure.’ Tate Curators.
The next rooms group together artists that explore the nature of the mediums they use, and their ability to produce the depiction of sensations and emotions, rather than the precision of the mechanical eye.
‘In Francis Bacon’s work every brushstroke is emotionally charged. He approaches the act of painting as an assault upon the human form, creating images of a complex and tormented inner self. Similarly, Paula Rego’s painterly technique forcefully expresses the violence of her subject matter.’ Tate Curators.
We then move onto the large constructed photos of Jeff Wall, which are assembled fictions, just as meticulously planned and created as the compositions that have preceded them.
‘A Sudden Gust of Wind captures what seems like an instant frozen in time. It depicts four figures caught in a sudden gust that has swept across the open landscape. The photograph is, however, meticulously staged. The composition is based on a woodcut by Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), and it took Wall over a year and more than a hundred separate shots to complete.’ Tate Curators.
Andreas Gursky‘s constructed visions of reality are always a joy, created from a myriad of exposures to create stunning images that envelop the viewer with exquisite detail. In a different way, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes also draw the viewer in, though in this case with the virtually infinite view towards the horizon and almost meditative abstraction.
In Thomas Struth’s photographs, visitors gaze at paintings and we in turn gaze at them. For another meta layer of the viewing experience, one can watch visitors look at the visitors looking at the paintings! The act of looking is key.
Louise Lawler’s use of close-ups and unconventional angles creates striking compositions, and we are invited into a critical dialogue with the habits and conventions of looking at art. Through her focus on an insignificant object used for art installation, typically hidden from view, she ‘subverts the conventions of viewing art within gallery spaces’.
Gerhard Richter nearly gets a room to himself, sharing it with Wilhelm Sasnal. Richter’s paintings are truly beautiful, using photos as their source to explore a range of ideas. ‘Barn’ was painted from a photograph taken near the Bavarian Forest in Germany.
‘The work continues a tradition practiced by German romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). But while Friedrich was concerned with depicting the sublime power of nature, Richter is more interested in if a painting of a photograph can maintain an ‘accurate’ representation of reality.’ Tate Curators
‘Two Candles’ is wonderfully blurred depiction, and references Memento mori. ‘Aunt Marianne’ painted in 1965, shows a four-month-old Richter with his aunt, who was later murdered by the Nazi eugenics programme in Dresden during the Second World War. The smeared look of the painting at once reminds us of the erasure of so many in war, and the fact that this is a painting, not an ‘accurate representation’ of the original image.
In the penultimate room, ‘Convergance’, the use of photographic imagery, advertising and screen printing by artists is explored. Warhol, Boty and Hamilton capture their world and environment, explore the cult of personality and investigate the sexual politics of the era, though only Boty exposes the objectification of women.
‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ is worth the price of admission alone, as I had never seen it before. David Hockney’s painting is much larger than I had realised, and is part of a series of double portraits he painted in the late sixties and seventies. From a distance, the painting is almost photorealist, but close up you can clearly see Hockney’s painterly technique. Opposite this is Rauschenberg’s painting, ‘Almanac’, an example of the photo-collaging he explored, encouraging the viewer to make their own personal links and associations.
Niideka Akunyili Crosby’s ‘Predecessors’ gives a welcome african perspective, clearly revelling in the source images taken family photographs and personal memorabilia, Nigerian popular magazines
and newspapers.
‘Canoe Lake is based on a still photograph Doig took from the horror film Friday the 13th 1980. He has made several paintings that refer to the film. Always using photographic images as a compositional starting point, Dog’s paintings often have a strong sense of atmosphere or hidden presence. There is a tension between the potential for sublime beauty and the horror of death, decay and obliteration.’ Tate Curators.
The images that engaged me in the final room were Salman Toor’s ‘9PM, the News’ and Lorna Simpson’s ‘Then & Now’. The first highlights Pakistani life and the influence of the media and popular culture, and the second uses iconic reportage shots of clashes between Black residents and police in Detroit in 1967, to highlight the lack of significant change in the US today.
I took the image below on my visit to see ‘Capturing the Moment’, a painterly abstract photo. If the show has focused on painting that used photos as their source, or vice versa, or images that subverted paintings or painterly photographs, or even directly explored the relationship between the two mediums and artists who worked in both, it may have had some change of gelling. In trying to do everything, all at once, for everyone, in an effort to shoehorn a private collection into a cohesive narrative for an exhibition, it ends up being scattershot and contrived. But counter intuitively, definitely worth seeing as there are truly stunning works of art on display.
Images © Jonathan Dredge, text © TATE Modern and Jonathan Dredge.
Modern Eccentrics 