Saturday 31 December 2011

Matthias Weischer - part 1

Some more contemporary painting. This is part 1 of a 2-part post on the works of Matthias Weischer, a painter from Leipzig, Germany, who is gaining international acclaim from critics and collectors for his individual work, and through his association with David Hockney.

Dr Jean-Christophe Ammann, former director of Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst: “I understood that I was confronted with a real painter, and not only with somebody who is moving the brushes around, as is often the case today,” said in 2001 when he first saw Weischer’s paintings – and bought one for the museum’s collection.

Weischer enrolled at the influential Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts) in 1995 and, following three years’ tuition with a master painter, received a diploma with distinction in 2000. His paintings explore space through the construction and deconstruction of imagined interiors, creating rooms within rooms and building up layers of paint, while simultaneously creating overlapping perspectives. The interior spaces Weischer paints are the stage sets of everyday life, often decorated with patterned carpets, furnishings or other props. The recipient of the 2002 prize for young artists in Saxony, Weischer has received several grants for his work, which is exhibited at galleries, museums and institutions in Europe and the United States. Most recently, he was invited to exhibit eight paintings at the prestigious Venice Biennale. An entire room of the Italian Pavilion was dedicated to his work.

“The central focus of my art work is the fusion of the experience of space and time,” says Weischer who acknowledges that there are both parallels and differences between his paintings and those of his Mentor David Hockney, his lifelong “model”.

David Hockney is very appreciative of Matthias Weischer’s work and reflects fondly on his time spent with him. “His work interested me at first because of his attitude to pictorial space and as I got to know it, more layers were revealed,” Hockney says. “He knows looking is a very positive act. The more one looks the more one sees. His skills as a draughtsman are revealed here, the deep pleasures of the hand, the eye and the heart.”


Title and date unknown

Title and date unknown

2001 Familie 0-Mittag 
oil on canvas 190 x 240 cm

2002 Untitled 
oil on canvas 102 x 120 cm

2002 Untitled 
oil on canvas 190 x 170 cm

2003 Chair 
oil on canvas 190 x 170 cm

2003 House 
oil on canvas 180 x 240 cm

2003 Interior 
oil on canvas 75 x 96 cm

2003 KO 
oil on canvas 75 x 85 cm

2003 Living Room 
oil on canvas 170 x 190 cm

2003 Untitled 11 
oil on canvas 150 x 300 cm

2003 Zweiteilig (Bisected) 
oil on canvas 235 x 304 cm

2004 Automat 
oil on canvas

2004 St. Ludgerus 
oil on canvas 300 x 251 cm

2006 Tuch (Cloth) 
oil and tempera on canvas 150 x 200 cm

2008 Zwölf Blicke (Twelve Eyes) 
oil on canvas 120 x 200 cm

2009 Bühne mit 9 Objekten 
oil and egg tempera on canvas 200 x 400 cm

2009 Die blaue Wand (The Blue Wall) 
oil and egg tempera on canvas 200 x 300 cm

2010 Ab 
oil on canvas 40 x 30 cm

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Claude Monet - caricatures

Claude Monet is of course famous for being one of the founders of The Impressionist movement. His water lily paintings will be familiar to everybody. Less well known is that fact that as a teenager his first forays into art were through caricature portraits.
On November 14, 1840, two days after the birth of Rodin, Claude-Oscar Monet was born in Paris, Rue Laffitte. The family moved in 1845 to Le Havre, in Normandy, where Monet's father, entering into partnership with his brother-in-law, Monsieur Lecadre, hoped to make a fresh start in the grocery business.

In Monet’s own words: "At fifteen I was known all over Le Havre as a caricaturist. My reputation was so well established that from all sides people came to me and pestered me for caricatures. I had so many requests, and the pocket money my mother could spare me was so meager, that I was led to take a bold step, one which needless to say shocked my parents: I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only framemaker who could eke out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride."

When Boudin saw Monet's caricatures, he realized that the youngster had genuine talent. He made inquiries about him in the shop and the frame-maker tried to arrange a meeting between them. But Monet showed no interest and even went out of his way to avoid Boudin until one day by chance, they ran into each other at the frame-maker's. The shopkeeper seized the opportunity and introduced them.

"Boudin came over at once and started talking to me in his soft voice, saying nice things about my work: 'I like your sketches, they're very amusing, very neatly done. You're gifted, anybody can see that. But you're not going to stop there, I hope. This is all right for a start, but you'll soon have had your fill of caricature. You want to buckle down and study hard, learn to see and paint, go out and sketch, do some landscapes. What beauty there is in the sea and sky, in animals, people and trees, just as nature made them, just as they are, with a character of their own, with a life of their own in the light and air of nature.' But Boudin's advice was lost on me. As for the man himself, I couldn't help liking him. He meant what he said, he was sincere all right, I felt that. But I couldn't stomach his painting, and whenever he offered to take me out sketching with him in the open country, I always had some pretext or other for a polite refusal. Summer came, my time was more or less my own, I could hardly put him off any longer. So to get it over with I gave in and Boudin, with unfailing kindness, took me in hand. In the end my eyes were opened and I gained a real understanding of nature, and a real love of her as well."


c1854 Auguste Vacquerie 
graphite on paper 28 x 18 cm

c1855-6 Caricature of a Man 
graphite and chalk on paper 24 x 14 cm

c1855-6 Caricature of a Man with a Large Nose 
graphite on paper 25 x 15 cm

c1855-6 Caricature of Léon Manchon 
charcoal and chalk on paper 61 x 45 cm

c1855-6 Caricature of Man Standing by Desk 
graphite on paper 20 x 17 cm

c1855-6 Man with a Big Cigar 
conte crayon and pastel on paper 60 x 38 cm

c1855-6 Mario Uchard 
graphite on paper 32 x 24 cm

c1855-6 The Man in the Small Hat 
graphite on paper 20 x 15 cm

c1858 Caricature of a man with the snuff box

c1858 Caricature of Rufus Croutinelli 
graphite on paper 8 x 13 cm

1859 Caricature of my friend Dermit

c1860 Caricature of Jules Didier 
charcoal and chalk on paper 67 x  44 cm

Caricature of a Scotsman with a Pipe

Caricature of a Woman with a Bad Arm

Caricature of a Young Man

Caricature of a Young Women at the Piano

Caricature of Actors

Caricature of Jules Husson

Caricature of Philibert Audebrand

Caricature of The Hunter and his Dog in a Boat

Friday 23 December 2011

Dexter Dalwood – part 2

This is part 2 of a 2-part post on contemporary English artist Dexter Dalwood. For biographical notes on Dalwood, and earlier works, see part 1.


2004 Birth of the U.N.

2004 Truman Capote 
oil on canvas 173 x 213cm

2005 Burroughs in Tangiers

2005 Herman  Melville

2005 Trial of Milosevic I 
oil on canvas 268 x 378cm

2006 Brighton Bomb 
oil on canvas 200 x 160cm

2006 Bringing It All Back Home 
oil on canvas 250 x 200cm

2006 The Deluge 
oil on canvas 274 x 457cm

2007 Altamont 
oil on canvas 210 x 174cm

2007 The Calm 
oil on canvas 200 x 250cm

2008 Death of David Kelly 
oil on canvas 203 x 173cm

2008 Greenham Common 
oil oncanvas

2008 Lennie

2008 The Umbrella Murder

2008 Under Blackfriars 
oil on canvas 207 x 248cm

2009 Burroughs' Tell 
oil on canvas 170 x 200cm

2009 Death of Lincoln 
oil on canvas 150 x 175cm

2009 Gorky's Studio 
oil on canvas 200 x 250cm

2009 Hunter S Thompson 
oil on canvas 148 x 150cm

2009 Mandalay 
oil on canvas 200 x 250cm