Much can happen in a few weeks where art is concerned and I’m delighted to say that some of my paintings were sold in a silent auction last month to raise funds for a couple of charities, the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Daniel Spargo -Mabbs Foundation.” The Music Mash Up” event in September which included this auction raised over £7,000 due to the wonderful efforts of Julia Parlett, a friend and former colleague in the music industry, who bravely fought and overcame cancer and was treated at the Royal Marsden. Her superb promotion and organisation of the event, sense of humour and indomitable spirit are an example to us all and her drive and enthusiasm contributed so much to the success of this initiative.
My next recent artistic encounter was to be reminded of the Dada movement and some of the conceptual art which has been around for the last eighty or so years. Whilst I find many of the developments in art inspirational and stimulating, I do get angry at some of the exhibits I see, and believe many of the ‘artists’ concerned are simply ‘con artists’ that should know better as they are only too well aware that their exhibits are meaningless. I’m not taken in by scrunched up bits of paper rolled up into a ball, jars of human excrement, or blu-tac stuck on a wall being designated works of art or for that matter even the concept of a sequence of coloured dots on a drinking mug! Those high profile artists producing this kind of rubbish should know better as they are intelligent individuals. I can accept that some ideas are novel but I can’t see that there is any originality, creative effort, skill or labour involved with this kind of nonsense. Go away, think harder, be inventive and do something a bit more worthwhile, please, and concentrate on what you are really good at!!! However, as is customary in the pretentious upper echelons of the art market, I have decided to pay homage to these perpetrators of the emperor’s new clothes by creating my own humble effort which, at current market rates, should be worth about £500!!
“Face with adornment” – paper, charcoal and blue-tac
And now for something completely different and totally positive. “Once Lost” is a solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture by Michelle Pearson Cooper at La Galleria, Pall Mall www.lagalleria.org inspired by primeval landscapes which is currently on and, in sharp contrast to the kind of exhibits described above, consists of beautifully painted and drawn wild animals by an artist with great understanding of her subjects and immaculate, confident technique in each of the mediums used – oil, charcoal and bronze. Across the pavement at The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery (www.roa-galleria.com) I have also just visited the The Young Masters Art Prize show featuring emerging talent under 40 and established contemporary artists. This is a magnificent display paying homage to the skill and innovation of the Old Masters and art of the past but with a distinct twenty first century take on such work. The exhibits are very impressive by some of the best creators of visual art around today and will certainly be difficult to judge. Both these shows, which are only on for a short time, are highly recommended.
In the last few weeks I’ve returned again to the story of Alma Mahler, the Viennese society beauty who not only married Gustav Mahler, but attracted a host of men from the worlds of music, art, architecture and literature during her long life from 1879 to 1964. They included the artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, Alexander von Zemlinsky another composer, Walter Gropius (Architect) and Frans Werfel (Novelist) whom she both married after Mahler died. She was the toast of Vienna, was pursued by Klimt and had a notorious affair with Gropius. Kokoschka one of Alma’s many lovers included her in his painting The Tempest otherwise known as The Bride of the Wind. Here are my own paintings of Mahler and his wife.
Alma’s life with Mahler was a complex one as she always aspired to be a composer and, indeed, some of her songs have been published but when she married Mahler he insisted that she should give up any ambitions she had to pursue such a career. Tragedy also occurred in their family life when their daughter Maria ‘Putzi’ died of diphtheria in 1907 when Mahler also discovered that he was suffering from a bad heart. Mahler’s final years were blighted by the breakdown of his marriage as Alma, still in her twenties and close to a breakdown, went to a sanatorium to rest and recover from the strain of their daughter’s death and collapsing marriage. There she met a handsome young architect, Walter Gropius, but Mahler discovered the liaison and insisted that she should choose between the two of them. After this Mahler made a much greater effort to show his love for Alma before he died in 1911, aged 50.
Finally, I haven’t done much painting in the last month or so, but I am working on this portrait sketch of Jonas Kaufmann, the charismatic German tenor who has appeared at the Last Night of the Proms and is probably one of the very best around at the moment.
Jonas Kaufmann
It still needs some work both on the likeness and colour so I’m using this image to make a few corrections too. .