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7 January
This is Part III of a review of a current exhibition at Tate Modern of the work of Mira Schendel (Part I is here, and Part II is here), which is due to finish on 19 January 2014
Room 7 is where Schendel’s work begins to get interesting, foreshadowing the work in Room 12, just as do the two works that appear in Room 8, in the series Little Trains, the installation in Room 10.
We are told that the installation of pieces in the series of Graphic Objects emulates the installation in The Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1968, and where she made use of the transparency of the rice-paper. Whether it is meaningfully claimed that ‘transparency’ had a special usage that Schendel made of it is unclear (pun intended), but this is what the room guide asserts :
Schendel’s concept of transparency was derived from the writings of the German philosopher, poet and linguist Jean Gebser (1905 – 1973), who used the word to refer to human consciousness, experience of time and to a form of the spiritual.
Maybe some significance is lost, and also in not following word for word the philosophy, poetry and lyrics, but the work’s strength, in being an accretion of smaller works, is by positioning them in relation to each other.
In a similar sense, Variants 1977 makes one aware that one could be shorter, or taller, and perceive the installation somewhat differently, inevitably looking through one of the ninety-three panes (one is white on black), or not looking through it except by bending or standing on tip-toe. It does so more effectively than the installation in Room 7, and, as the room guide says, it is a constellation or cloud, a sort of Cloud of Unknowing.
Here, the panels are very small and they interpose a sense of depth, with what is near overlapping, at different points, central and far others. It is beyond proper description of photographic representation, and just deserves to be seen.
Little Trains are sheets of rice-paper that hang loose on a thread, and the smaller, in particular, of the two in Room 8 evokes an oriental mood, as if not so much kimonos as samurais. They consist less in what they show than what we can project onto them, and similarly, with some of the Transformables that are hanging nearby, we are meant to look less at their resemblance to strands of DNA (or some other biological material) than at the patterns of varying shade that they cast. Sadly, these are not hung in such a way to make much of that aspect.
Max Bense was the only one who understood that...these things [Transformables] didn't function as objects, because all that mattered was the light and shadow, a continuation of some drawings of mine, those done on that ultra fine, transparent paper.
(1970 - 1974)*
Room 9 is passed over, because it contributes, with its Calculations, Circumscribed Letters and Typed Writings, as much to what matters about Schendel as the Monotypes and Graphic Objects. Room 10 contains an installation, made for the 10th Bienal de São Paulo in 1969, called Still Waves of Probability - again, it achieves its aims by repetition of the same (or similar) material, and here, as we walk around it, it becomes more or less permeable to our sight, sometimes seeming dreach before our eyes, sometimes seeming as if nothing intercepts the view of the other side of the room.
It means more than this attempt to describe it suggests, more than what Schendel said (as quoted in the room guide) that it meant to her, and more than in the Biblical text that she chose to accompany it (from I Kings 19 : 11 – 12**), in black on Perspex :
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
One might relate to the work without the text, or without the words being understood in a Judaeo-Christian context – say, as the search at the sub-nuclear level, and what gives matter mass – but it speaks in these gradations of very loud and powerful, yet very quiet and peaceful, and with all the changes of state in between. Arranged before the other installation, and with the sixteen works (akin to the stations of the cross, though not in number ?) that constitute Homage to God – Father of the West (1975) en route in Room 11, this is the richest part of the exhibition.
Again, one might not relate to a Hebraic God – as number 11 has it, The living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – but there is the notion of a family line and of protection, to which we all, in varying ways, can relate in thinking about the group of people of whom we are part have fared. For others, the stark statement of number 12, God is love, will make it harder to relate to these works, but, as the room guide makes clear, the church was what permitted her to survive, and it could be seen as quite a personal statement, as was, say, her participation in the São Paulo Bienal, which others thought right to boycott.
As a thinker and an artist, Schendel was quite clear about making her own choices of what was best for her conscience and for speaking through her art. Arranged on either side of walls tapering towards each other, this is a rare twentieth-century statement of faith, and rewards attention for the bold marks and the consequence of her choice of medium***.
As to the tail of the exhibition, what appears in Room 13, with its concentration on day and night, is subject to quite a bit of interpretation, manipulation even, where the room guide says ‘They [tempera and gold] also refer to the determination of the Self’. Of them, and of the concluding trio of series in Room 14, I say that they are not on a par with the striking pieces that occupy Rooms 10 to 12 :
Itatiaia Landscapes feel like a rehash of a series of the Mononotypes in Room 6, whereas, a little in the way that the Roy Lichtenstein show had him persevering to the end with his Benday dots, making landscapes (I recall that being true of another Tate one, and, whilst I could be thinking of Damien Hirst, I think that it was probably not) : it could have been Miró, because nothing pf his that was shown transcended, for me, the four triptychs that were displayed in pairs of two…
Even if one ultimately thinks that Imogen Robinson is harsh about Schendel's works in her Review : Mira Schendel at the Tate Modern for Just A Platform, it is of interest to find comments where she echoes finding pretension in the curation and the claims made
End-notes
* Taken from the exhibition's chronology of Schendel's life.
** The words are well known from the ending of John Greenleaf Whittier’s hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’.
*** Where it falters is with the curatorial choice of translation for the description of number 16, Der Geist – rendered The Ghost, the word ‘spirit’ might have been a better choice.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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8 April
On my fourth visit to the Kurt Schwitters exhibition at Tate Britain (Schwitters in Britain), I shall probably conclude having looked at everything, and might even manage some time with the ‘Kurt-inspired’ installations by Laure Prouvost and Adam Chodzko.
Four visits ? Yes, because, unlike those of the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at (Tate) Modern (Lichtenstein : A Retrospective) these works, in my experience, need time to be appreciated, and also space. As a Member of Tate, I have my admission free and at will, without the need for a ticket, and I can accordingly pace my viewing. (With the Arshile Gorky exhibition at Modern, I misjudged a little, and needed to travel down for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of its closing weekend.)
What I have learnt (so far) is :
(1) One can have no appreciation of the pieces in Room 5 (Hand-held sculptures) from photographic images (I have seen such)
(2) In fact, without having them endlessly rotate on a turntable (not least because some are fragile, or, maybe, unstable), I believe that filming some of the works revolving would have benefited the typical visitor’s appreciation of, for example, Chicken and Egg, Egg and Chicken, Untitled (The All-Embracing Sculpture) and Speed (all dates to come)
(3) There are various reasons, some to do with the effect of shadow on Schwitters’ constructions (both on canvas and paper, and these free-standing ones), and others to the fact that he has, for example, vividly painted planes of Chicken and Egg, Egg and Chicken that are not – almost necessarily with a three-dimensional object (although there is more to it than that) – visible at all times
(4) In fact, the moving image as an interpretive element is under-represented in the show (whereas the installations both use film) – we do not, I assume, have footage of Schwitters reciting the Ursonate or any other of his poems, stories, etc., which is why we have the well-known three-by-three grid of photographs of him performing the former (plus audio)
(5) I have not yet done more than pass through Prouvost and Chodzko’s parts of the exhibition, but it does beg the question why their work, even if it is a response to his, is part of the show about Schwitters – how interesting are commissions from 2011, as against, say, some reactions in artwork that are contemporaneous to his time in Britain (seven years, after all), or even reporting Hirst’s inspiration to go to art college because of Schwitters’ collages ?
(6) What we do have, which I suggest is more of archive interest, are the photographs of the Merz Barn that were taken in situ by the team led by Richard Hamilton, and we have an almost excessively full chronology* of the failure to save the remains of the Merzbau, and of the near-failure to preserve the Merz Barn, both before and after the Hamiltonian survey
(7) I criticize the inclusion of a film-loop of those photos for several reasons : (a) they include rulers whose scale is never made explicit, (b) it is also not clear what the – often enough – poor-quality images (usually too dark) depict, because there is no over-arching shot of that wall of the Merz Barn, except in the course of the loop (which, of course, one cannot consult), and (c) a large-scale quality image of the wall as it can now be seen in Newcastle-upon-Tyne would show far more (or one could even have had a touch-sensitive one that would project a choice of images, being various levels of close-up or one of the ones from the survey)
(8) There are two large plaster pieces (a little like columns, as displayed, but resembling shapely newel-posts, or legs), which, I understand, were found in the Merz Barn, and which are ‘displayed’ in oblong Perspex boxes, placed against the wall, so that one side is invisible – unlike the four Perspex cubes that contain the hand-held sculptures, one cannot even walk all around them, and so film of them being either rotated or circled would give more sense of their curves, their construction, and their continuity with the smaller pieces
(9) But enough of all these observations for how the Schwitters show could have been better or different, because so many visitors (typically for a gallery) are doing themselves no favours by appreciating the works on canvas, wood, cardboard or paper without standing back from them
For I believe that Schwitters used the bus-tickets, say, or newspaper clippings, pieces of packaging, corrugated card or paper, gauze or net purely for their visual effect – if, after we have seen a shape mutedly through a piece of net, we will not see it close to, and we will not see the composition by knowing that that part of it is paper, that part oil-paint on the paper, that part a piece of stone adhered to the surface
(10) The exhibition contains some examples of his use of pointillist marks in landscape and abstract work, but, again, we do not get the best from Seurat by being so close that we see what the painting is made of, but not how the technique is meant to work and be viewed – same with painters such as Sisley or Pissarro
(11) As to the materials that Schwitters used that derive from reproductions of works in national collections, there are some cases (Room 3 contains some) where one is quite clearly meant to see that he is transforming or subverting a representation of an identifiable original, which is entirely consistent with the assertion that he made in 1919 :
The word Merz denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes, and technically the principle of equal evaluation of the individual materials
(12) Schwitters goes on to make his meaning quite plain – and I like it that he talks, along with paint, about things as if there is a harmonious democratization :
A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint
(13) For this reason, I reject the curatorial interpretation put on his use of a copy of G. F. Watt’s Hope in c. 63 old picture 1946 :
The inclusion of an advertisement for Dr Scholl’s Foot Comfort Service brings the lofty symbolism of the original painting, positioned upside-down and overlaid with scraps of paper so that it is barely recognizable, down to earth
Well, if Watt’s painting is inverted and so overlaid maybe it is not meant to be recognizable, and could there, therefore, not be any ‘bringing down’ except in the recognition of a student of art history ? As to the advert, I see no greater significance in the wording than in that of many a scrap used in other collages (‘Merz’ itself is an appropriated fragment, after all) :
The person who looks at a bus-ticket in one and ponders its provenance might as well be in London Transport Museum as the Tate, because I believe that Schwitters’ eye is good, a self-reinforcing belief, because I stand back from his paintings, find a harmony in them, and that, if I put my thumb up to remove a detail, the painting is no longer balanced – it is interesting to get close and see how he achieved it, but just doing so is mistaking means and end
All in all, although some things could have been done differently, I am glad to have had this exhibition to visit, and, when I am not hearing inane comments on Schwitters or his art from other visitors (which makes me run a mile), or avoiding their proceeding to a painting that had looked ‘free’, or even their deciding to stand in my way, I can fondly hope that people have the chance to get to know his work better.
Not everything works as effectively as the select few that really do sing, but almost all have something to say, and it is a joy to become aware of his works of portraiture, landscape, and – in the flesh – sculpture.
Viva Kurt !
End-notes
* I refuse to say ‘time-line’.
