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Inspiration from Artists Week 135 Featuring Artists: Paula Rego and Kathleen Buchan
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Posted
Welcome to week 135 of the Inspiration from Artist Thread , before starting off this weeks thread I would like to tell you of a change to the current program .
Next week thats week commencing the 7 Oct I will be introducing Raymond Leech and Jenny will be introducing Lucille Clerc on the Sunday evening.
The Railway Poster week will now take place w/ c 14 Oct .
Can I also add that we are coming to the end of the current list of artist , I will be looking to producing a new list mid October if you have any artist who you would like to feature then please let me have names .
This week Robert will be introducing Paula Rego ,tomorrow lunch time . On Wednesday I will introduce the artwork of Kathleen Buchan .
Have a good week and please do let me have any name to include in the upcoming list.
Posted
Dame Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego DBE RA GCSE GOSE GColCa 1935 - 2022, was a Portuguese painter who lived for much of her life in Britain. There's an exhaustive biography on Wikipedia which it would be pointless to reproduce here. She espoused many issues around feminism, was very pro-abortion - or at least very opposed to its being illegal - and her paintings reflect this and other issues that concerned her. Much of her work is in pastel, though there are oils and watercolours, works in other media. She used her art to express her passions and opinions quite explicitly, in a way that her contemporaries - eg Hockney and Auerbach - do not.
As will be seen from even the small sample below - I've not selected the more explicit images - she is hard to categorize; her work showed great variety in treatment and technique, taking inspiration from any number of artistic movements that helped her convey her meaning. I've always found her work unsettling - I think you could call it iconoclastic, without much fear of contradiction.
Posted
I am not going to pretend that this artist's work appeals to me, but I was struck by Robert's 4th example which seems to be at odds, stylistically with the others. A little research showed the lady adopted several different styles. and, at first sight, would you think the examples below are all by the same hand?
Posted
Interesting, Tony. I've just checked the monograph I have (repatriated from my late mother's effects, as I had gifted it to her), and I can't see a single *unpopulated* landscape in there. The edition I have was 1999, so maybe the landscape came later. But yes, she had many styles, and I'm guessing she had a stressful family life in her early days. My mother's favourite living artist at the time.
Posted
One of her later projects was Crivelli's Garden, in response to the Italian(?) artist. I saw the exhibition at the NG. Very interesting.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/past/paula-rego-crivelli-s-garden/crivelli-s-garden-character-key
Edited
by Norrette Moore
Not sure what's happening here, but it can't be good...
Some more....
Posted
Went to an exhibition of Paula Regis paintings many years ago in Liverpool Tate. Was a tad non plussed , her painting ability is exceptional but the subject matter is , as Lew says “uncomfortable I know I left the exhibition not quite knowing what I felt. I certainly wouldn’t want one on mt bedroom wall.
Posted
Her technical ability is unsurpassed. Her subject matter is another question - I hesitate to express an opinion, since the issues she cared about hardly affect me at all; the question, I suppose, is - to what extent does political or social argument have a legitimate place in art, however you define it?
To which I have no ready answer! A good friend of mine was the novelist Edward Upward (1903 - 2008) - a remarkable man, of whom his contemporaries said, or some of them did, that he sacrificed his artistic gifts on the altar of Marxism/Leninism. Well - in my view, he created a unique body of work that no one else did or could have done - but he would have had a happier and more rewarding life if he'd not allied himself to a political creed which I've increasingly come to think of as being both bankrupt and misguided: I'm not sure that's the point, though... I've spent a long time thinking about that, without coming to a conclusion. Rego had a very definite philosophical and political point of view, without being attached to a definite political philosophy, or at least not a coherent one particularly. She didn't suffer at all, as Edward certainly did, because her attitudes were anti-religious, certainly anti-Catholic, and allied to feminism but not to Marxism. She got away with it, to the extent she did, because her politics were not aligned with a totalitarian system or a definite belief system - she picked, she chose, she hit upon the feminist wave and rode its crest.
I don't like her work, to be quite clear - it's not that I disagree with it, but then I don't particularly agree with it either: I think there's very little room allowed for disagreement with it, whereas Edward left any amount of room for him to be rejected; Rego clung closer to received liberal, anti-Catholic, non-dogmatic opinion (except - it is, in its way, quite dogmatic: it's just that most of us seem to like to say we agree with it: without necessarily subjecting it to overmuch scrutiny).
There are "controversial" opinions which liberal society broadly accepts, relieved that someone else is expressing them; and controversial opinions about which we're far less certain and confident. If anyone cares - and why should they? - I think Rego banged on, too long, on themes she had long exhausted through their repetition. Others would argue that they NEEDED to be repeated, because they'd never properly sunk in. As those themes are particularly relevant to women, the wise man retreats and leaves women to make the running in pursuing them.
Posted
I think some political subjects have their place in an artists oevre, so long as it's not overdone. I'm put in mind of Goya's Third of May, or David's Death of Marat. And from an historical perspective, sometimes art is the only record we have.
I'll confess I had a bash last year at a depiction of recent conflicts, and last Friday I started on a tree....the Cedar of Lebanon. I'm sure many had a go at the famous Sycamore on Hadrian's wall.
But indeed, Rego, gives no quarter. She was working something through imho.
Posted
She covered subjects that had a profound effect on her. I recall some art critic (pardon my language) stating that artists should only concern themselves with the subjects that matter, like war and other inhumanities. No thanks. There's a place for it, but never 'only'. I'm with Renoir, who said 'Why shouldn't art be pretty, there are already enough unpleasant things in the world.'
I find some of her earlier work interesting, when she was more abstract...
This is 'PARIS' from 1976...
....the Firemen of Alijo from 1966...
Her work became more figurative, and always with a strong narrative...this is WAR from 2003...
Here's a triptych called the Betrothal, it's after Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode.
People who write about her emphasise her storytelling, her narrative. I have to confess I don't know what half on them are about, apart from the more obvious ones, like her long series of paintings about abortion. I tend to be put off by paintings that require lengthy explanations explaining what you are looking at, a painting needs to stand on its own to some degree.
She was very serious about her art, and I respect that. My problem is I'm looking to enjoy art( I'm shallow, I guess), and 'enjoyment' is not the thing that her powerful paintings encourage.
....the Firemen of Alijo from 1966...
Her work became more figurative, and always with a strong narrative...this is WAR from 2003...
Here's a triptych called the Betrothal, it's after Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode.
People who write about her emphasise her storytelling, her narrative. I have to confess I don't know what half on them are about, apart from the more obvious ones, like her long series of paintings about abortion. I tend to be put off by paintings that require lengthy explanations explaining what you are looking at, a painting needs to stand on its own to some degree.
She was very serious about her art, and I respect that. My problem is I'm looking to enjoy art( I'm shallow, I guess), and 'enjoyment' is not the thing that her powerful paintings encourage.
Posted
Very interesting! She was certainly an exceptionally skilled artist but I can only assume she had a tortured mind. I can appreciate that she put great feeling and thought into her work and I don’t object to art depicting war and pain, but her feminist work if that’s what it’s called, is not for me.
Normally when looking at these threads we choose to add some work that we like, but in this case I just can’t.