Visit to The TATE

Visit to Tate Britian


We first went to the JMW Turner part of the museum where it had sketches, water colour paintings, drawings and Etchings of his work, there was a area of which you could copy selected pencil works of his, and a colour chart of the progression and discovery of different colours from 1880 - 1840 and used palette's of Turner's. 

19th century 

JMW Turner  Basle, engraved by Charles turner 1807 Etchings and Engravings for the Liber studiorum Etching on paper Presented by A Acland Allen through The Art Fund 1925 Philip James De Loutherbourg 1740-1812
An Avalanche in the Alps 1803  Oil on canvas Support: 1099 x 1600 mm Painting presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1965

I am very much interested in how nature is captured through paintings this also looks very biblical as the avalanche looks like clouds and at the bottom it looks like light is shining up out of the ground, I find this very interesting as it to me doesn't look like 'An Avalanche in the Alps' but more like a passage out of a biblical story the use of dull colours surrounding a light directly in the middle of the piece very much looks like a description out of the bible.


Frederic, Lord Leighton 
An Athlete Wrestling with a Python 1877 

The painter Frederic Leighton was infatuated with Italian art. His extensive study in Frankfurt, Rome and Paris made him well aware of the way modern figure painting depended on copying Roman sculpture. His paintings of the 1870s resemble classical sculptures, with perfect nudes, precise outlines and rhetorical poses.This is the earlier of his only two life-size sculptures, both made with the assistance of Thomas Brock. In subject and scale it is evidently intended as a challenge to one of the greatest classical sculptures, The Laocoön, showing three men being crushed by two sea serpents.

20th century

Roland Penrose 1900 - 1984

The last Voyage of captain cook 1936 - 67

Painted wood, plaster and steel

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson 1889 -1946

Twentieth Century 1932 - 35

Oil on canvas

This painting was created in response to the spread of Fascism in Europe in the 1930s. The figure that dominates the centre of the picture is based on Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Thinker. is threatned by the bayonets, guns and crowds below.

Art and Language

Micheal Baldwin ; Mel Ramsden

born 1945, born 1944

                                              

Portrait of V.I Lenin with Cap, in the Style of Jackson Pollock IIII 1980

Enamel on canvas

John Craxton 1922  2009 

Aderholl Mill 1943 - 4

Oil paint on board 


Adeholt Mill in Dorset was the home of the designer E.Q. Nicholson who was, with Peter Watson and Lady Norton, one of the main supporters of Craxton wrote to Nicholson in his early years. Craxton wrote to Nicholson in 1942 ' that all the best pictures that I have done have been done with you, down at Alderholt.'


Paul Noble born 1963
Lidonob 2000

Graphite on paper


Patrick Caulfield 1936 - 2005
After Lunch 1975

Acrylic on canvas


I like this piece especially because it looks as if it uses two forms of media, painting and photography. It captures two different kinds of reality by using these different mediums, both the detailed and simplified. I think the artists' two different styles both show an intense amount of precision, the main portion looking like a blueprint design and the other focused more on colour giving contrast to the piece not to mention that it is all crafted in accuracy. Researching more into Caulfield's work i have found that this particular piece was one of the first examples to which he used different mediums of styles, this one using both photo realism and his classical use of the figurative. There is also a modern feel to the piece much like you would find in Pop art, Caulfield was labeled as such, but he rejected both the name and movement calling himself more of a 'formal artist'. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/03/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries]              
his work mainly focuses on the figurative, but the inclusion of photorealism gives the picture more depth; it is as if you are seeing into two worlds. He generally works with the inanimate as shown here with the placement of chair, table and fish tank and shows quite a cubist figurative observational approach to common place objects also shown in his other works such as 


 Oh Helen, I roam my room

And.. 


Fruit and Bowl

the difference between these two and the piece I found in the TATE is that these are screen prints which was also what he specialised in other than painting. His work has been described as a "simplified presentation of the everyday." [http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?obj=15272] which I would fully agree with, they are not meant to express serious, deep hidden social messages they instead 'bring wit and irony' and are loveable because of there familiarity and expression within bold lines and block colours. His use of these bold line and block colours have quite a fun nursery quality to it, it's simple not complicated with "oh it has a little bit of brown in it" the point is simple it's a pear, you see green and it is GREEN simple and to the point. In my work I hope to implement a certain kind of wit and funniness with finesse and somehow make my not so interesting summer interesting by making the common place some how eye catching and exciting through line and colour.