The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

Diary

Robert Motherwell

Abstract Expressionism

16th September - 26th November 2016

bernard jacobson gallery

28 duke street st james’s london sw1y 6ag

+44 (0)20 7734 3431 http://www.jacobsongallery.com

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991)

Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 130

1974-75

Acrylic on canvas

243.8 x 304.8 cms (96 x 120 ins)

Perhaps it’s because your correspondent is an Essex girl—Americans, think New Jersey—but

to my mind The Vulgar: Fashion Redeined (until 5 February), which opened at the Barbican

Art Gallery on 13 October, just isn’t vulgar enough. Yes, the show gives this slippery and loaded

term a thorough, academic and non-judgemental seeing-to. And yes, it is a treasure trove of

wonderfully excessive transgressive displays—from 19th-century Viennese bonnets to Vivienne

Westwood’s igleaved body suit—but a little more curatorial humour wouldn’t have gone

amiss. Not only does the exhibition’s design present its lashy provocative line-up in a sombre

black-screened setting, replete with po-faced wall panels, but this spirit extended to the private

view crowd, who were almost uniformly decked out in darkest monochrome. Notable—and

welcome—exceptions to this tide of sobriety were two of fashion’s grandest and most vivid of

dames, Zandra Rhodes and Pam Hogg, both of whom had fantastically lamboyant pieces in the

show. It seems that the fear of being considered vulgar is still stronger than many would like to

admit. As the wonderful and unashamedly over-the-top milliner Stephen Jones (who probably

has more works in the Barbican show than anyone else) told us: “What we must never forget is

that the vulgar is tremendous fun.”

It may have been chucking it down, but spirits

remained resolutely high for the 29 September

unveiling of David Shrigley’s giant bronze thumbs-

up sculpture on the fourth plinth in London’s

Trafalgar Square. The 7m-tall elongated thumb

has the upbeat title of Really Good. The artist

informed the damp gathering that the work is

about the idea that not only art, but also all of us

can—and should—”make the world a better place”.

A euphoric mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who

acted as a rousingly animated MC, led the shouted

mass countdown to the unveiling. But before the

drapes were whipped o to reveal the erect digit,

the mayor, who was somewhat dwarfed by the

lofty Shrigley (not to mention his sculpture), raised

a laugh from the crowd with his self-deprecating

observation. As someone who is “ive foot six

inches in height”, Khan said, he was glad “we made

sure that for my irst public sculpture unveiling, we

found the highest sculpture and the tallest artist”.

Thumbs-up all round.

Mark Wallinger’s Self Relection show, in which

he has installed a mirror across the entire ceiling

of Sigmund Freud’s study at the Freud Museum

in Hampstead, north London, is one of the most

successful of the many artistic interventions

in this legendary room. As well as alluding to

Freudian notions about the doubled self and

self-relection, it presents a weirdly disorientating

and decidedly unheimlich perspective for anyone

entering the room. All these subjects and much

more were given an illuminating airing at the

beginning of the week in a sparky conversation

between Wallinger and Fiona Bradley, the

director of the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh.

As Dr Freud would have undoubtedly agreed,

it is in the nature of live talks that surprises can

spontaneously emerge, as was the case when

one audience member quizzed Wallinger about

the erotic, bordello connotations of the mirrored

ceiling. The questioner’s description of himself

as an architect who had become familiar with

mirrored ceilings “while working on a suburban

brothel” raised a few ripples of nervous laughter

before he added that he was converting the

building to a new purpose and removing,

rather than installing, its relective surfaces.

Ego and id, indeed.

The art-loving musician Jarvis Cocker presided

over the unveiling on 25 September of

James Brett’s The Gallery of Everything, the

emporium of Outsider art that describes

itself as “London’s irst commercial gallery

dedicated to non-academic artists and

private art makers”. It was something

of a trip down memory lane for Cocker,

since the gallery’s irst show was devoted

to many of the artists featured in his 1998

Channel 4 TV series, Journeys into the Outside.

But while a number of Cocker fans were in evidence,

everyone agreed that the true star of the afternoon was Andrew E. Bruce,

butler extraordinaire—and a page to the royal household, no less—who put us

more mature visitors into Proustian overdrive with his graceful dispensing of

platters of classic 1970s Rich Tea biscuits, along with strong brews from the

tea urn. Apparently this paragon of courtesy and service will be in intermittent

attendance at the gallery throughout the exhibition’s two-month run.

Shrigley gives fourth

plinth the digit

Jarvis and Jeeves grace

The Gallery of Everything

Mirror, mirror—Wallinger gives the Freud Museum an erotic new look

Grayson Perry is no slouch at

addressing audiences. As well as

being a well-known artist, he’s

a Bafta-winning TV presenter

and delivered the prestigious

BBC Reith Lectures to a live

audience—all done in full make-

up and a series of outrageously

extravagant frocks. But the

showman-artist declared the

performance of his new live

show Typical Man in a Dress at

Brasserie Zédel on 16 October

to a small invited audience of

family and friends to be “the

most terrifying I have ever done”.

He needn’t have worried. His investigation of masculinity and questioning

of embedded notions of manhood—as he put it, to introduce “a bit of self-

awareness to get the psychological bowel movement going”—went down a

treat. The dresses were fab, too. Granted, the audience conformed to a very

particular demographic. Of the males present, two were psychotherapists and

others included such shining examples of metrosexuality as the natty cultural

critic Ekow Eshun and the Observer food critic Jay Rayner, who in the Twitter

questionnaire deined masculinity as “being handed the unopened jam jar to

get the lid o”.

Typical Man in

a Dress delivers

lamboyant

man-ifesto

Grayson Perry addresses the crowd in

his usual lamboyant style

Jarvis Cocker takes

the biscuit

An excited Sadiq Khan helped to unveil

David Shrigley’s sculpture in Trafalgar Square

Dressed to excess: some of the more restrained exhibits in the exhibition

THE BUCK STOPPED HERE

London: Louisa Buck

Sense-of-humour shortage

at Barbican’s ‘vulgar’ show

44 THE ART NEWSPAPER SECTION 2 Number 284, November 2016

BARBICAN: MICHAEL BOWLES/GETTY IMAGES