Blue trees for City of London Festival

No better way to cheer up my walk through the city on a dreary Thursday night than the blue trees installation. 

 In order to force people to stop and notice trees in the city and realise their worth, artist Konstantin Dimpoulos has coloured the trunks of trees in three sites a vivid cobalt blue.

It's an unresting and unsettling feeling to see something so familiar altered. It was like walking through a dream or surrealist landscape.

These beautiful sculptures will be around until after the festival.

http://www.treesforcities.org/about-us/20th-birthday/the-blue-trees-of-london/

Saints Alive

You're never left with nothing, you're left with minus. In conversation with Michael Landy

Michael Landy rose to fame with as a YBA in the mid-1990s with his installation 'Break Down'. In a disused C&A department store on Oxford Street- a victim of financially hard times in the centre of consumerism- Landy systematically documented his every possession, then destroyed every single one. This radical art work ridiculed possession but also got the the heart of sentimentality; his mother was too upset to stay and watch her wedding photographs be destroyed an had to be escorted of the premises.

After a long series of similar wild installation pieces, then a significant absence from the scene whilst Emin is ever the tabloid favourite and Hirst is making millions, Landy has crashed back with his Saints Alive exhibition at the National Gallery.

Following a succession of artists such as Bridget Riley, Ron Mueck and Peter Blake, Landy was asked to take up residency at the gallery. Weird for him in many ways by his own admission as he has neither painted before nor had a full time job before.

What struck Landy most profoundly about the collection he was asked to respond to was St Catherine's wheel. He found 13 of these in paintings and wondered what they were and why they weren't highlighted. This spurred him on to discover the stories behind the saints, unlock the symbols to reveal the tragic stories of their martyrdom. 

Landy said that You're never left with nothing, you're left with minus in relation to the debts he rang up following the destruction. But it is a profound idea that has resurgence in Saints Alive. The stories of the saints are today largely forgotten, St Apollonia pulling out her teeth to rid her of her cursed beauty, St Francis if Assisi inherited the wounds of Christ, the stigmata. Even though they are forgotten, we are left with paintings not nothing and a largely secular society- a minus if you will- rather than nothing.

Landy's kinetic sculptures bring the stories of the saints to life for a 21st century audience. See doubting Thomas prodding the wounds of Christ and St Michael wrestle the devil. His main focus throughout the creation if these sculptures was the Catherine wheel. Originally he wanted to create a huge one that rolled around the gallery picking up visitors. At least that might have worked, most of Landy's sculptures in ironic Landy style keep breaking down and returning to the workshop. Whilst of course it was an eventual aim that these sculptures would break down- just listen to the racket as St Jerome beats his chest with a rock- I'm not sure even the artist anticipated the quite so frequent Break Down of his sculptures. Like he says, you're not left with nothing, you're left with minus, in this case an installation in constant need for repair.

Vermeer & Music

A popular and easy criticism to make of the Vermeer&Music exhibition on show at the National Gallery until 8th September 2013, is the distinct lack of Vermeer paintings. Certainly the show may be lacking in volume, but considering there are only 19 known Vermeer paintings in the world, five isn't so bad. Who can blame the gallery for using the snappy, big celebrity name of Vermeer, rather than simply calling it Music and the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, which would an altogether more apt title.

Overlook the poor titling however, and the exhibition is joy. The work if Vermeer and his contemporaries is incredibly noisy if you're willing to look closely enough and this exhibition, though extensive use of  musical instruments displayed alongside the paintings allows us to hear what has been silently captured in an image.

The Academy of Ancient music have teamed up with the National Gallery for this exhibition and are performing original 17th-century musical scores on original 17th-century instruments in the exhibition space. The overall effect of which is bewitching.

The concert, at the time Vermeer was painting, did not refer to a large dance hall, but simply a gathering of friends in the home who would play music together. The lead would strike up his instrument and play the first few notes of basso continuo, which in baroque music means bass-line. This carries melody and the rest is improvisation. What this means is that no singular performance if the same piece will ever be the same. The selection of vanitas still lives displayed in the first room of the exhibition really capture this idea of music as a moment, ephemeral, to be savoured but cannot be kept.

More intimate than a concert, was the music lesson. Rarely could young men and women spend so much time alone together than under the guise of musical tuition. 

Johannes Vermeer's The Music Lesson from the Queen's Collection captures perfectly this intimacy. Whilst it seems innocent enough on first glance, the artist reflects for us in the mirror above the virginal the young woman plays, a tender exchange of a loaded glance between tutor and pupil. The warm sunlight streaming through the sash window engulfs the young pair in a balmy, amorous glow. If further and direct allusion to the pairs romantic involvement were needed, it can be read directly from the virginal 'MUSICA LETOTIAE COMES MEDICINAL DOLORIS', music is the companion of joy, the medicine of sorrow. 

This exhibition has also provided the National Galley the opportunity to show off the work of the scientific department. On loan from Kenwood House, Vermeer's Guitar Player has been thoroughly examined whilst in the National Gallery. The findings show that it is still on its original canvas and from the same period as Woman Seated at a Virginal and A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal from the National Galleries own collection.

Seeing these three paintings if similar subject and size displayed together is a real and rare treat. Whilst the two paintings with virginals show the young woman engaged both with her craft and the viewer- the women peer out at us, placing us in the position of tutor and therefore probably love interest- the guitar player glances away. Her attention has been caught elsewhere and we are left to wonder what we can't see rather than dwell on what we can. What this display of the three paintings reveals therefore is Vermeer's acute understanding of both the relationship of tutor an pupil, and of painting and viewer. His pictorial devices that make us want to cross the yard and climb through his lit windows to the woman inside, have also made us want to strike up the harpsichord and join in the lesson.

This exhibition is alive. There's so much energy and noise and romance that its nice to catch a break. My favourite painting in the exhibition isn't a show-stopping Vermeer, nor a unique ivory lite, but a tiny oil painting by Carel Fibritus. This tiny canvas depicts a market square in the early morning. The vendor can be seen yawning just behind his instrument wares. Shuffling along the dusty street alongside the gentle water of the pond are a mother and daughter walking together. If you listen carefully the peace is broken only by the merry chiming of the church bells. In this case, depicting silence is as powerful as depicting music.