Sculpture at Heide

Rings of Saturn, Inge King, 2005–6A couple of weeks ago some friends and I visited Heide to view the Less is More exhibition. It was a very wet and dreary day, so we did not spend the time wandering the sculpture garden, but I did manage to get a few snaps of a few pieces.

Inge King’s imposing Rings of Saturn (2005–6) is made from stainless steel, and sits atop a little hillock; the ‘big balls’ scattered below were added to the lawn to complement this sculpture. They are by Xenian Living Light, a company providing architectural lighting to commercial projects. They look far more effective glowing in the dark (when the nearby carpark is cropped out).

Xenian big ballsThe three-piece sculpture Pebbles is by Wona Bae, an artist and florist, whose designs are inspired by the cycles of nature. Pebbles is constructed from Victorian cork, an inviting and interactive piece. The three giant bales are scattered in Sunday Reed’s garden of the rustic cottage housing the Heide I gallery. 

Pebbles, Wona Bae, 2012Pebbles, Wona Bae, 2012

Minimalism: Reflections of You

Ceiling Piece (detail), Peter Kennedy, 1970Minimalism is a term thrown about by everyone in the commercial arena these days, but the art movement originated in New York in the 1960s. It was founded on the principle that ‘less is more’. The exhibition Less Is More – Minimalism + Post-Minimalism Art in Australia at Heide Museum of Modern Art explores the work of 34 Australian artists, many of them contemporary. Key American pieces provide a touchstone and counterpoint to the Australian work.

In minimalism, art was streamlined. It did away with all extraneous detail, and was reduced to simple shapes or textures that were constructed of one or two materials. Often reflection and light played a part, such as in Peter Kennedy’s luminous and futuristic Ceiling Piece (1970), constructed from coloured tube lighting (below).

Ceiling Piece, Peter Kennedy, 1970The art was about the object itself, not a representation of the world within a two-dimensional space. In order to minimise the composition, simple abstract shapes or modular forms were repeated in sequences or grids. In Post-Minimalism, artists introduced soft, pliable materials, amorphous shapes and new mediums such as video.

But simplicity of form does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience.

Mirrorchrome, Giles Ryder, 2006I.O.U., Mikala Dwyer, 2009Though the forms are uncomplicated and might not deliberately convey the artist’s vision of the world, shapes do carry the weight of the history of the world in symbolism. We all have this history subsumed within our consciousness, so we cannot help but respond to these apparently simple shapes in our individual fashion. Stark and shocking, they are in fact as complex as human beings – they reflect ourselves – sometimes literally, as in Giles Rider’s shocking pink Mirrorchrome (2006). And what of Mikala Dwyer’s huge, reflective I.O.U (2009)? Its weight is literally and metaphorically crushing. There is nowhere to hide from it. In the silent face of them, we must ask questions, and perhaps go down paths we would prefer to leave untrodden.

White Cube Fur Garden, Kathy Temin, 2007But sometimes they are more tactile, more friendly, such as Kathy Temin’s White Cube Fur Garden (2007), or soothing and sensuous as Daniel von Sturmer’s Painted Video (Sequence 4) (2009) where paint pools hypnotically, forming ever-widening circles that somewhat resemble a target.

As curator Sue Cramer states, ‘Though it began in the 1960s, Minimal art has generated some of the most influential and important ideas used by artists today, and for this reason it has a particular relevance for contemporary audiences. The movement was interpreted and re-worked by Australian artists … and after a period of being out of favour has been re-engaged with by subsequent generations of Post-Minimal artists …’

On until 4 November 2012, Less is More at Heide Museum of Modern Art is a rewarding experience, worth the half-day trip out.

Untitled, Donald Judd, 1969–71Cubic Modular Piece No 3, Sol Lewitt, 1968Untitled Floor Structure, Nigel Lendon, 1969Ceiling Piece (detail), Peter Kennedy, 1970

Artists at Work

Mark Rothko, 1964, ph Alexander Liberman

It’s fascinating to see artists at work. So often we see the product of their labours, but not so much the environment in which they were created. Watching someone live draw or paint, or sculpt is even more interesting: you see their concentration, the occasional frustration or contemplation. It’s almost hypnotic, soothing, and sensuous.

Here is a voyeuristic peek of artists at work, or simply in their studio environment. The last image, of Henri Matisse, shows him not in his studio, but seated at a table reading the latest issue of Vogue – this tickled my fancy. The photographer, Alexander Liberman of US Harpers Bazaar fame, states:

I had just brought him a copy of Vogue, which contained my photographs of his chapel in Vence. He was intrigued by the magazine as a strange combination of the sacred and the frivolous. Matisse, close up, that stern unforgiving eye, haunted me. He spoke very little, and I was terrified in his presence.

Cecil Beaton, ph Irving PennRaoul Dufy, 1945, ph Cecil BeatonChristian Bérard, 1937, ph Cecil Beaton; Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890 (ph unknown); Henri Matisse, 1909 (ph unknown)Betty Parsons, 1960s, ph Alexander LibermanNoel Coward, 1943, Cecil BeatonLe Corbusier, 1954, ph Alexander LibermanOssip Zadkine, 1954, ph Alexander LibermanRobert Rauschenberg, 1965, ph Alexander LibermanYves Klein, 1956 (ph unknown)Agnes Martin, 1973, ph Alexander LibermanHenri Matisse in 1947; c1953-54; c1954Henri Matisse reading Vogue, 1951, ph Alexander Liberman

Images from: Toulouse-Lautrec by Matthais Arnold (Taschen, 2004); Beaton by James Danziger (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1980); Matisse by Volkmar Essers (Taschen, 2002); Then – Alexander Liberman Photographs 1925–1995, by Alexander Liberman and Calvin Tomkins (Random House, 1995); Klein, by Hannah Weitemeier (Taschen, 2001)

Christian Bérard: A Theatrical Man

Christian Bérard (1902–1949) is one of my favourite fashion illustrators, for his wonderful airy touch – his paintbrush hardly seems to skim the surface – the carefree, gestural lines, and the light and minimal colour palette.

Yet the Frenchman, nicknamed Bébé by his friends, was more than that: he was also a painter, a theatre set and costume designer, a book illustrator, and he even designed textiles and interiors. A social butterfly, he was the darling of Paris in the 1920s and 30s.

Bérard at work in the Vogue Paris office, 1937, ph. Roger Schall

A popular man, witty, charming and kind-hearted, Bérard lived large through heady times and left a great legacy.

Bérard was most famous for the set and costume design of Jean Cocteau’s (a life-long friend) film La Belle et la Bête, but he also designed the sets and costumes for ballet and the theatre. And like many artists before and after him, he turned to commercial illustration work when he required income, contributing to magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He also worked as a fashion illustrator for Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Nina Ricci.

A truly theatrical man, Bérard never lost his sense of childlike wonder: he loved carnivals, street fairs and dressing up – creating costumes for parties at the drop of a hat. A popular man, witty, charming and kind-hearted, Bérard lived large through heady times and left a great legacy. Somewhat fittingly, he died while at work at the theatre: giving some final instructions to the director Louis Jouvet and some actors, he stood and said, “Well, that’s that,” upon which he collapsed from a cerebral embolism.

One of the actors present, Jean-Louis Barrault wrote after his death: If I had to choose only one among the many impressions of Christian Bérard that spring to mind, it would be one that soon became for him a profession of faith: the joy of living, to the extent of perishing from that joy … It is as if, while I think intensely of him, all of the Bérards leaping about me reply:

‘Love of life is based on suffering, anguish, nostalgia, sorrow and sadness … that’s true, but all that is the source of joy.’ [Venetian Red]

For a more thorough biography, visit Venetian Red and read Christine Cariati’s excellent story on the artist.

Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1932

Margrethe Mather: Out of Weston’s Shadow

Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston in 1922, photographed by Imogen Cunningham; the only portrait of the couple ever taken.Today a little-known photographer, Margrethe Mather was in fact the greatest influence on the development of Edward Weston’s early career.

They first met in 1913, in Los Angeles, working together as artistic partners and even co-signing the photographs they produced. Lovers for eight years or so, they were associated professionally for twelve years. A rebel, romantic, secretive and unpredictable, yet kind and generous, Mather was not only Weston’s model and muse: she was also his teacher. She influenced his vision and broadening his outlook, artistically and socially, introducing him to radical new ideas about politics, aesthetics, sexual mores and life in general.

Maud Emily Taylor, seated in a Chinese chair, c. 1918Player on the Yit-Kim, 1918Apart from this, Mather was an inventive artist in her own right. Beginning as an uncommitted amateur, she quickly developed into a highly respected professional She was meticulous, with a strong and demanding sense of proportion and design. “If it doesn’t look right, it isn’t right,” she became famous for saying to her artist friends.

“If it doesn’t look right, it isn’t right.” – Margrethe Mather

Mather opened her own studio in 1916, working then in a traditional pictorialist style, and taking portraits. A couple of years later she refined her style to one of extreme simplicity, reducing detail, and playing with composition, negative space and tonal variation to create interest.

Pierrot, 1920Johan Hagermeyer and Edward Weston, 1921The Marion Morgan Dancers, 1921, co-signed by Mather and WestonIn 1928, after the failure of a proposal to the newly formed Guggenheim Foundation that she made with Billy Justema, Mather put down her camera for a couple of years. In 1930 she picked it up again to create a series of images of repetitive patterns made from everyday objects: chains, shells, fans, combs, glass eyes, ticker tape, broken china and cigarettes. They were to be prototypes for textiles and interior design components.

When they were exhibited at the M H de Young Memorial Museum the following July, reviewers referred to her as ‘Margrethe Mather, San Francisco Modernist’. It was to be her last contribution to photography – apart from a few magazine assignments – and she died twenty years later on Christmas Day, 1952, aged sixty-six.

Water Lily, 1922Fan in Hand, 1925Mather, in her fear that she would be remembered merely as Weston’s lover and muse, had begged him to pretend that she didn’t exist. She would have been all but forgotten by historians as she had hoped were it not for the scattered mentions of her in Weston’s diaries. Fortunately for us, her innovative, spare and elegant work has stood the test of time, and she is remembered.

Japanese Combs, 1931Fans, 1931

Images from the book Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston – A Passionate Collaboration, by Beth Gates Warren