The Turner Contemporary Art Gallery Drops a Brick.

Carl Andre, the brick man of art will be having an exhibition at The Turner Contemporary Art Gallery in Margate, starting from the beginning of next month.

Andre is famous for selling an art exhibit to The Tate Gallery in London that consisted of some bricks.

I guess The Tate had the last laugh with that one as the bricks are worth over a million pounds now.

The next few days are the last chance you have to see the Alex Katz exhibition at the gallery in Margate.

After that as far as I can see the majority of the gallery will be closed for the rest of the month. 

The gallery calls this Spring exhibition installation period15 January 2013    - 31 January 2013 you can check this on their website http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions

I was tentatively wondering if I could get away with closing my bookshop in Ramsgate for this long, but I think the local readers would get withdrawal symptoms. a different sort of art I suppose   

Turner Contemporary pictures press releases, display of local graduates work, some thoughts.

One of the chores I have set myself is the Thanet Press Release blog, it is quite enough dealing with a blog one writes oneself without having to field spam and inappropriate comment about posts one hasn’t actually written.

Press releases often come by email unlabeled and unsuitably formatted for the internet, meaning that they are a pain to post, a major exception here are the press releases from The Turner Contemporary art gallery. 

Their press release emails are properly formatted for web publication, this is today’s http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/local-art-graduates-show-at-turner.html I just have to copy and paste the whole thing, images and links, out of the email and into the blogger editor, perfick as Master Bates would say.

When it comes to the high definition images available to the press from their website, things are a tad more difficult, the latest press release said there were a whole raft of new ones and over the next little while I will endeavour to publish them below and attach all of the right credits, not the easiest of tasks believe me. 

If you land here before I sort this out I can only say an explanation for the pictures will come as I grasp the slidy thing on their website that seems at the moment to have a life of its own. The images should all expand, to the largest size I can put on blogger, when clicked on and then clicked on again.   

Alex Katz Photo Manu Palomeque

Alex Katz at Turner Contemporary Photo Manu Palomeque

Alex Katz exhibition opening day Photo Manu Palomeque

Alex Katz exhibition opening day Photo Manu Palomeque 2

Alex Katz exhibition opening day Photo Manu Palomeque

Alex Katz in conversation with broadcaster Matthew Collings Photo Manu Palomeque

Alex Katz with Director Victoria Pomery Photo Manu Palomeque

Platform Graduate Showcase Alexandra Hanschell, Architectural Fracture, 2012

Quote from artist:

"In recent years, contemporary artists have demonstrated a preoccupation with mobility by creating works that are meant to be experienced transitively; permeating with a sense of specific topology in which social dimensions of movement and boundary figure prominently.

Considerate of the unique identity embedded within a site, I create works which question our travel experience within a building by deconstructing the archetype of transitional space; rendering the space in complete conflict. Intermediate spaces may be defined as two spaces separated by distance but which are linked to a third: a transitional space. What happens when this space is blocked - obstructing the movement of people through a building with ease? What becomes of this space when it is deprived of its function? The space is dramatically altered and its context redefined."

Platform Graduate Showcase Dominic Mafia, Picnic, 2012

Platform Graduate Showcase Karen Crosby, Traces, 2012

Walter Richard Sickert 1860-1942, The Front at Hove (Turpe Senex Miles Turpe Senilis Amor) 1930 Oil paint on canvas, 63.5 x 76.2 cm © Tate

Alex Katz in conversation with broadcaster Matthew Collings Photo Manu Palomeque

Give Me Tomorrow Today, a ramble about life, art and politics in Thanet.

After my last post about the Alex Kats exhibition Give Me Tomorrow at the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery in Margate, where I tried and failed to write some sort of art criticism, I once again find myself sitting in front of the keyboard in my bookshop, with it just too busy to get on with anything serious.

I am coming to the conclusion that Alex Kats is just this guy who paints, and if you are just a person who likes looking at pictures then I recommend you go and look at his paintings.

With the size and bright colours you may at first think that his work ought to be displayed on the great wall of Ramsgate, but he has nailed some expressions, people types if you like, so well that I find some of the images are still vivid in my mind a couple of days later.

A funny thing happened on Google just now. I was looking for some images of paintings related to The Turner Contemporary art gallery, that I could use to illustrate part of this post without infringing anyone’s copyright.

So I Googled “Turner Contemporary painting” and clicked on the image tab, it seems I am the artist most commonly associated with the gallery, further down the page is work by both me and Alex Katz painted on a beach.

Here is the screen shot, my work circled in red and Alex’s circled in blue.

I was very nearly expelled from school for painting and drawing when I was about fifteen, so I stopped doing any until about a year ago and only started again as I thought I was now far to old for this activity to have significant consequences.  

On to the world of local politics, yesterday I bunged the latest video of the thoughts of the leader of Thanet Independent Group up on the Thanet Press Release Blog, here is the link to the post http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/new-john-worrow-leader-of-thanet.html

Looking at the comment there I do wonder about our local Conservatives, perhaps they think they are going to get elected next time round with a good working majority, they don’t seem to be looking for common ground with the independents, just in case they need their cooperation to stay in power.

For me the biggest worry here is that if the Conservatives ever do get back into power locally, what they will mostly be seeking is retribution.

I will ramble on here later as something has just come up and it seems a good moment to click the publish button.

On to Ramsgate Maritime Museum and The Great Wave at Container, possibly the 37^th view of Mount Fugi (the third wave crest from the left)

Anyway I wandered around the back to sit on the bench and eat my sandwich only to confronted by a new fence, this fence seemed to offer no impediment to progress of a healthy youngster, but stopped me in my tracks.  

I then carried on to the end of everything, where the banking of empty properties produces a noticeable vacuum to be confronted by two dimensional beach huts.   

I looked around the back and these really are, what they signify in the great developers void is anyone’s guess, are they for instance the completed part of The Royal Sands? 

Looking through the rest of the pictures on my mobile phone, I am reminded that on Sunday while considering if Alex Katz’s pictures had travelled well and ruminating on the differences between the English and the Americans, where probably the most significant is linguistic, I stopped off at the Boating pool Café in Ramsgate. 

Now when an America says for instance: “I’m mad about my flat” he or she doesn’t mean that he is pleased with his Royal Sands apartment, he or she means they are angry about their puncture.

The snack I obtained at The Boating Pool Café is perhaps best described visually.  

Back to art and of course the absence of The Thanet Times today and page three yesterday, I have drawn extensively on the works of Picasso and Renoir here to create an alternative page three illustration in pen and chalk.

You may need to expand it to by clicking on it to fully appreciate how a child who could draw a reasonable likeness, of say a teacher, could come close to being expelled for the contents of their art folder.

Seriously though the thing that interests me and David Hockney (with Van Gough’s ear) illustrated, is how artists do the original drawing. By this I mean how do they make something look like it is.

Alex Katz at the Turner Contemporary Margate first impressions.

The new exhibition by the American artist Alex Katz at the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate passed the first test for me, which is always, do I want to paint after visiting an art exhibition.

Photography is banned in the exhibition, so if you want to get some idea of the artist’s work just google “Alex Katz” and click on the image tab.

I drew quick sketch below sitting outside the LOLA and Company café on Margate Harbour Arm straight after visiting the exhibition, sorry that it’s a bit runny, watercolour is like that.

I used very poor quality paper which has a tendency for the surface to disintegrate too.

Alex Katz is acclaimed as one of America’s greatest living artists, so I was interested in people’s impressions of his work, one of the people I spoke to who said they didn’t like it, said when I asked her why? “It’s too American for me.”

I will try and ramble on about it here and add a few pictures of Margate today.

If you start the exhibition as I did you first arrive in a gallery of pictures by artists who influenced Alex Katz. There are a couple of Marlene Dumas large heads of people lying down that are very striking. And of course lots of people looking at pictures and behaving as though they would like to be looked at while engaged in this activity. There is also some sort of alarm or something that is obviously connected with the gallery that keeps emitting a high pitched whistle. This could be a deliberate part of the exhibition, but I don’t think so.

There is a group of pictures by Walter Sickert, if like me you like this artist then these pictures make it worth going to the exhibition, even if you discount everything else there.

Close by and still in their wet period is a very good David Hockey of a young man bending over in the shower.

There are also some Stubbs horse paintings and the inevitable Turner, it was at this point I slightly lost confidence in the exhibition, I mean; did turner who’s faces usually look like partly risen dough, really influence Alex Katz who’s faces are like photos with the contrast set on ultra high?    

   There was the usual strong smell of rotting seaweed outside the gallery, contrasting with the amazing view and reflections.

I think perhaps what Katz has achieved that I find most distinctive is that the people in his pictures have a similarity with ones memory of people viewed when one was a child. 

Aspects of the architecture of The Turner Contemporary are brutal in the way the Arlington House is and I wanted to photograph this as I wondered whether this influenced David Chipperfield, so taking my large camera with me as I lack the skill to express this with my mobile phone's camera, wasn't a complete waste of time. You may have to click on this one to expand it for the desired effect.  

Here is my view when sketching the Turner Contemporary, my defence is that almost as soon as I started the people sat in front of me, perhaps I should have included them in some way.

I have Just managed to download and upload the images from the gallery's website, so i will add some explanatory text when I get time. 

Alex Katz, Eleuthera, 1984, Oil on linen, 305 x 670.5 cm Private Collection, Courtesy Galería Javier López, Madrid © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 

Sorry about beating around the bush here and putting the post up bit at a time, Alex Katz is an artist that interests me, and it is the portraits of middle class New England Americans that interest me the most within his work.

Being a bookseller makes books my bag, and my favourite New England author is John Irving, never having been to America, I suppose I am looking out for bears and not finding them in Alex Katz. 

Anyway these first four pictures fall into this bracket and there is a way in which the changes in the English class system is producing people more of this type here and now in the this part of the world. Think DFL Whitstable and so on. So this may help when taking a bit a bit of a deeper look at these pictures.

Alex Katz studied art especially modern (not contemporary) art to a fairly high level, so a deeper look may be a good here, his pictures are a bit - attractive advertising hoardings on the surface, so the exhibition is pleasant enough to look at, even if you don’t want to apply your mind to it. 

Alex Katz, Black Hat (Bettina), 2010, Oil on linen, 152.4 x 213.4 cm
Private Collection, London © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Image courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris - Salzburg 

Alex Katz, Islesboro Ferry Slip 1975, 198 x 213.4 cm Art © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 

Alex Katz, Round Hill, 1977, Oil on Linen, 180.3 x 243.8 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Partial and Promised Gift of Barry and Julie Smooke Art © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Digital Image © 2012 Museum Associates / LACMA 



I am, always have been a bit of a slow thinker and as the exhibition is on locally with free entrance, I will probably view it several times, all the harder because of the copy of Troilus and Cressida being read in one of the paintings. 

Alex Katz, Penobscot, 1999, Oil on board, 229 x 305 cm © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Henri Rousseau 1844-1910, Bouquet of Flowers c.1909-10, Oil paint on canvas, 61 x 49.5 cm  Tate, Bequeathed by C. Frank Stoop 1933