Sunday, November 13, 2011
Huge, queer and tawdry
On Tuesday to the John Martin exhibition at the Tate Real. Most edifying & interesting, if the bottom line is pretty much the TLS headline over its review of the show on 4th November, the title of this post.
A nicely curated show which was not very popular on the day that we visited, so one could move around in comfort. So unpopular in fact that we got a two-for-one deal with our rail tickets from Southwest Trains, thus knocking a tenner or so off the bill, partly offsetting the twenty I put out on the souvenir catalogue. A souvenir catalogue which demonstrated the difficulty of reproducing paintings. When the real thing is fresh on the brain, reproductions tend to look very dull and flat; even modern reproductions, presumably coming with all the art that printing science can manage.
It seems that Mr. Martin, a self made man of artisan origins, made a very large amount of money from his pictures. First take was exhibiting the picture in a big town, charging perhaps 5p a go - a reasonable sum at the time. Second take was selling the picture to some rich coal merchant for perhaps £1,000 a go. Third take was selling prints of the picture at perhaps 25p a go. The picture seems to be that each of the three takes generated roughly the same amount of dosh. There were clearly plenty of people about who wanted edification combined with amusement; presumably much the same people as the people who put the bread on the tables of the likes of Beethoven and Thackeray, very roughly contemporaries. The most popular painter of his day. Outshone Turner for a while, although I dare say, rather like the similarly successful Simenon, he really craved for 'nuff respect from the establishment, in his case of arty painters. Sadly for him, even the present exhibition takes several opportunities to explain that his technique reflected his beginnings as a painter of pots. One such was the painting called 'Pan and Syrinx', an early landscape which I rather liked, having tired of the more apocalyptic offerings.
Like the pre-raphaelites, he had a lot of his pictures put into special frames, frames designed especially for the picture in question. This included a particularly lurid snaky one for the picture of pandemonium. As a parvenu, he also went to the bother of having a special cabinet built to show off his connections with the great and the good. I guess the chap had very good manners, manners good enough to get him over the hurdle of his regional (if not estuarine) accents, this being before the day of the promotion of such accents in the media.
He was also something of a wow at a printing technique called mezzotint, so I now know what mezzotints and aquatints are. Something that someone called Michael J. Campbell has clearly known about for years. Mr. Campbell's name appeared on the tickets for a large proportion of the exhibits and eventually I worked out that this probably meant that he supplied the exhibit in question. But both the explanatory material on the walls and the catalogue were a bit coy about who this chap was who figures so large on the tickets. Is he a bit shy and retiring? Google was not terribly helpful; plenty of chaps about with this name but not the right chaps. But I do find http://campbell-fine-art.com/ which probably is the right chap although the site tells me nothing about the chap himself. But his site would sell me duplicates of a couple of things that I have already so he can't be all bad.
Along the way I also learn of the biblical origin of the phrase 'the writing on the wall', since confirmed by that edifying site http://www.christianityoasis.com/christianityoasis/, a site which provides very chatty and accessible translations of bible stories. Their version of this one is rather fun; much talk of the pots of boiling oil destination for those who booze for pleasure (as opposed to the odd spot of wine as part of communion) out of God's own pots. Someone must be pouring a lot of money into this stuff.
And on the way home we learn that the newish bus station at Vauxhall includes a pissoir. Which seems a very sensible feature given the large numbers of people who pass through who might have need of such a thing - which can process people much much faster than the alternatives. A simple fact of life which has eluded the organisers of the Epsom Derby in the past.
PS: alarmed to read over the oeufs matinal that Epsom council have adopted a robust management style at the allotments where I used to allot. You now get visited by some ranger type who harangues you about the tidiness or otherwise of your allotment. I fear that I would have been classed untidy and so worthy of regular visits by said ranger - which would have really got up my nose. Or up my back. Some chap practically on benefit with the nerve to lecture me about how to run my allotment? It is perhaps just as well that I have moved on.
A nicely curated show which was not very popular on the day that we visited, so one could move around in comfort. So unpopular in fact that we got a two-for-one deal with our rail tickets from Southwest Trains, thus knocking a tenner or so off the bill, partly offsetting the twenty I put out on the souvenir catalogue. A souvenir catalogue which demonstrated the difficulty of reproducing paintings. When the real thing is fresh on the brain, reproductions tend to look very dull and flat; even modern reproductions, presumably coming with all the art that printing science can manage.
It seems that Mr. Martin, a self made man of artisan origins, made a very large amount of money from his pictures. First take was exhibiting the picture in a big town, charging perhaps 5p a go - a reasonable sum at the time. Second take was selling the picture to some rich coal merchant for perhaps £1,000 a go. Third take was selling prints of the picture at perhaps 25p a go. The picture seems to be that each of the three takes generated roughly the same amount of dosh. There were clearly plenty of people about who wanted edification combined with amusement; presumably much the same people as the people who put the bread on the tables of the likes of Beethoven and Thackeray, very roughly contemporaries. The most popular painter of his day. Outshone Turner for a while, although I dare say, rather like the similarly successful Simenon, he really craved for 'nuff respect from the establishment, in his case of arty painters. Sadly for him, even the present exhibition takes several opportunities to explain that his technique reflected his beginnings as a painter of pots. One such was the painting called 'Pan and Syrinx', an early landscape which I rather liked, having tired of the more apocalyptic offerings.
Like the pre-raphaelites, he had a lot of his pictures put into special frames, frames designed especially for the picture in question. This included a particularly lurid snaky one for the picture of pandemonium. As a parvenu, he also went to the bother of having a special cabinet built to show off his connections with the great and the good. I guess the chap had very good manners, manners good enough to get him over the hurdle of his regional (if not estuarine) accents, this being before the day of the promotion of such accents in the media.
He was also something of a wow at a printing technique called mezzotint, so I now know what mezzotints and aquatints are. Something that someone called Michael J. Campbell has clearly known about for years. Mr. Campbell's name appeared on the tickets for a large proportion of the exhibits and eventually I worked out that this probably meant that he supplied the exhibit in question. But both the explanatory material on the walls and the catalogue were a bit coy about who this chap was who figures so large on the tickets. Is he a bit shy and retiring? Google was not terribly helpful; plenty of chaps about with this name but not the right chaps. But I do find http://campbell-fine-art.com/ which probably is the right chap although the site tells me nothing about the chap himself. But his site would sell me duplicates of a couple of things that I have already so he can't be all bad.
Along the way I also learn of the biblical origin of the phrase 'the writing on the wall', since confirmed by that edifying site http://www.christianityoasis.com/christianityoasis/, a site which provides very chatty and accessible translations of bible stories. Their version of this one is rather fun; much talk of the pots of boiling oil destination for those who booze for pleasure (as opposed to the odd spot of wine as part of communion) out of God's own pots. Someone must be pouring a lot of money into this stuff.
And on the way home we learn that the newish bus station at Vauxhall includes a pissoir. Which seems a very sensible feature given the large numbers of people who pass through who might have need of such a thing - which can process people much much faster than the alternatives. A simple fact of life which has eluded the organisers of the Epsom Derby in the past.
PS: alarmed to read over the oeufs matinal that Epsom council have adopted a robust management style at the allotments where I used to allot. You now get visited by some ranger type who harangues you about the tidiness or otherwise of your allotment. I fear that I would have been classed untidy and so worthy of regular visits by said ranger - which would have really got up my nose. Or up my back. Some chap practically on benefit with the nerve to lecture me about how to run my allotment? It is perhaps just as well that I have moved on.
# posted by Jim @ 12:40 AM 
