Monday 22nd August – Post I – Musings on Understanding
Third week of the show. Alone in the rear gallery space, I contemplate the works around me, and their ‘relationships’. The overt thematic is the reciprocal nature of artists, since, say I892, when Jeanne Donnadieu’s pastel painting, The Misunderstood, was first shown. The title of the piece might be seen as appropriate, as this, the only piece in the show not by a contemporary artist, is currently being researched in the hope that a definitive decision on the identity of the sitter can be established. The subject – a sitter in rolled-up trousers, work boots and crumpled top hat – certainly looks like Vincent van Gogh; if this is proved to be the case, it will be one of only two full-length images of the artist – who at that time lived four doors away from Donnadieu, in the rue Laval. So, already, this title is working on more than one level. Indeed, as part of this thematic, it might be said that the artist’s view of the subjects on show in the work, is an artist’s understanding; whilst some of the images are of definitive likenesses, portraits, if you will, others are more ambiguous projections of people; people in conversation, glanced, perhaps; people performing – projecting an image of themselves, some more ‘recognisable’ than others; people just being people through paint.
As an example of this, John Devane’s image of Alison Lambert, has brought out, in paint, a convincing likeness of the artist, who in turn, herself makes large scale drawings of people; or should I more precisely say, human forms, as her imagery develops more through the process of making and destruction with a thought in mind to convey a recognisable (in the sense that you feel you might know them) ‘human’ image with emotional resonance. The visual circularity here, is that Devane’s other strand of work on show is of the ambiguous human form perhaps glimpsed which captures in a quieter way the resonance of the everyday or the recognisable feeling of ‘knowing’ without knowing the story, the situation, the place. No less constructed through painstaking process, additions and erasures than Lambert’s drawings, there is an impression of transience in these works. They feel recognisable to me, but sort of slippery – as I look I can ‘feel’ the gaze of a figure, as a partner in the painting, without seeing much detail of the eyes. It is recognition of fellow humanity, without specificity – an understanding reached on an instinctive level, the sort of short-hand you gain between someone you are close to.
http://www.vincentvangoghportrait.com/index.html
http://www.jillgeorgegallery.co.uk/artists/lambert/lambert.htm
