Paintings from the 50s

Transcription

1 GILLIAN AYRES Paintings from the 50s

2 GILLIAN AYRES Paintings from the 50s

3 A mark with a brush, on a chosen area of canvas primed with G.P. Undercoat dry or wet with turps -, with colour paint consistency size weight (tone). 1 Gillian Ayres s statement in the Arts Council organised touring exhibition, Situation, November 1962.

4 INTRODUCTION A shape a relationship a body oddness shock mood cramped isolated acid sweet encroaching pivoting fading bruised. Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, opened to the public on 17 March Designed by the architectural practice HAT Projects, the gallery was the vision of Alan Grieve, Chairman of Jerwood Foundation, and built to house the Jerwood Foundation s collection of 20th and 21st century art along with a changing contemporary programme of exhibitions. To date, this changing programme has included British artists associated with Jerwood: Rose Wylie (born 1934) and Gary Hume RA (born 1962), both of whom were nominated for Jerwood s celebrated painting prize in This catalogue has been produced to accompany Jerwood Gallery s exhibition, Gillian Ayres: Paintings from the 50s. The exhibition will put into the public domain the most comprehensive survey of Ayres s works from the 1950s and 1960, which first brought her recognition and established her as one of the leading abstract painters of her generation. The straightforwardness of the exhibition title, Paintings from the 50s, references the forthright character of Ayres, yet also belies the complexity of her visual language. Ayres s paintings are a phenomenon in themselves. Indeed, working with Gillian in the preparation of this show echoes the experience of engagement with her paintings: one must give oneself over to her paintings, and trust in them. This exhibition coincides with a solo exhibition of more recent works at Alan Cristea Gallery, London. It has been 30 years since Ayres was elected as an Associate Royal Academician, and over 50 years since she took part in the Arts Council s Situation, a touring exhibition showcasing the YBAs of the day. Ayres was appointed OBE in 1986, was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989, became a Royal Academician in 1991 and was appointed CBE in We are extremely grateful to the team at Alan Cristea Gallery and David Cleaton-Roberts in particular, for his ideas and encouragement which have enabled this show to happen. We are equally appreciative of the efforts of the governors, staff and pupils of South Hampstead High School, for their generous loan of the Hampstead Mural installation, 1957 presented in Room 1. I would like to extend my special thanks to Lara Wardle, Director of Jerwood Foundation, for her inspiration and encouragement to develop this show, and for her insightful catalogue essay, and also to the board and staff team at Jerwood Gallery, for enabling the exhibition to happen. Finally, I wish to thank Gillian and her family, notably her sons, Jim and Sam for their collective support and generosity. I am particularly appreciative of the faith and trust that Gillian has taken in Jerwood in allowing us access to her home and studio to plan the show. Elizabeth Gilmore Director, Jerwood Gallery

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7 Gillian Ayres: Paintings from the 50s painting s own nature a mark making its own image in its own space the canvas viewed as a whole image and space an essence perhaps like a space a sailor of Magellan s would have felt when the world was flat and he had sailed off the Edge. In a recent programme made for the BBC series, Portrait of an Artist, Razia Iqbal asks Gillian Ayres whether she can imagine not painting and it seems telling that this question appears almost incomprehensible to Ayres as she pauses and replies, I have thought of that. It s like if you were blind, yes, would you want to live? I don t know if I would want to live. I don t know the answer to that. People probably do live without art, strangely now. But do they? I can never quite believe this but I don t feel I could have done myself. Sorry. It is this absolute compulsion to live with art and paint that has driven Ayres to become a key figure of 20th and 21st century British art. Ayres continues to paint and produce dynamic canvases in her studio in North Devon in her ninth decade, and it feels a fitting moment to bring together some of her large-scale paintings from the late 1950s and The majority of the nine works (on show in the Foreshore Gallery and Room 1) have not been exhibited previously and such a large group of paintings from this crucial point in Ayres s career have never been shown together. Hampstead Mural, 1957 (on display in Room 1) was the result of a bold commission from a young architect, Michael Greenwood, who was renovating South Hampstead High School. The brief was to produce large-scale works for decoration of the school dining room and Ayres was provided with four panels of board primed with gesso and, as requested by her, household paint brushes, cans of Ripolin and turpentine. Ayres worked with the panels on the floor at the school, pouring and brushing a huge quantity of paint onto the vast surfaces. The result of the commission is a series of four panels, two of which are diptychs, which demonstrate a torrent of artistic expression on a scale that was unprecedented at the time in abstract painting in this country. Nothing, even in the important 1956 Tate show, Modern Art in the United States, matched the size of Hampstead Mural and it remains an extraordinary commission for a young artist. The desire by artists working in the late 1950s to paint large-scale paintings prompted one of the two criteria for inclusion in the seminal Situation show, held at the RBA Galleries in Roger Coleman (who was part of the exhibition s organising committee) wrote in the introduction to the catalogue, The conditions set by this committee were that the works should be abstract (that is without explicit reference to events outside the painting landscape, boats, figures ) and not less than thirty square feet. The majority of the works by the other artists displayed at Situation were geometric in appearance, however, Ayres s three works, which included Cumuli, 1959, and Muster, 1960 (on display in the Foreshore Gallery) alongside those by her husband, Henry Mundy, and also William Green demonstrated freer,

8 more gestural qualities. In her paintings, in which Ayres s brushstrokes and mark-making are apparent for the viewer to see and appreciate, she embodies the American art critic Harold Rosenberg s comment, What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. Ayres s technique of working straight onto the board or canvas without pre-planning gives her work a directness, which is communicated to the viewer through the paint surface. The splashes and drips can be followed across the surface and the history of the painting s creation can be uncovered by the deciphering of the layers applied. In this way the paintings encourage the viewer to contemplate the event of their creation; the enjoyment that Ayres had in working on them becomes an enjoyment that the viewer can share in looking at the works and following this process. In some areas of the paintings, Ayres has scraped back the paint to reveal the board beneath, which emphasises the materials used in the creation of the work. This truthfulness to the materials used is reflected in Ayres s choice of paint at the time: all the paintings on display are painted mainly in Ripolin, a French household enamel paint that became popular with artists in the 20th century and was used extensively by Picasso. The paintings are pure abstract works, which do not require interpretation; instead the areas of bold colour and history of mark-making become the subject of the works. Although Ayres has used Untitled to caption some of the works, many others from this period have a title which suggests a subject, place or in some cases a sense of movement, for example: Cumuli, 1959; Unstill Centre, 1959; and Muster, Cwm Bran, 1959, and Cwm, 1959, refer to a town in Wales and Ayres, together with Mundy, visited Wales on a number of occasions to walk and climb the wild, mountainous landscape. Mel Gooding, in his comprehensive monograph on Ayres, notes that they climbed the mountain, Cader Idris at least seventeen times and he writes, Climbing to the top of Cader Idris it is exhilarating to pass through smoky clouds, mist-blinded, to emerge then into bright sunlight and the rediscovery of colour and look up to see the high cumulus rising into clear blue skies, piling billow upon billow, and down to see the lower mists now disguising ridge and gully, erasing the view of Llyn-y-Cau (see M. Gooding, Gillian Ayres, Aldershot, 2001, p. 52). This translation of an experience of landscape into a painting relates Ayres s work to artists, such as Turner, Constable and James Ward whose paintings she had admired on visits to the National Gallery and Tate. Ayres s paintings make powerful statements created in bold sweeps and gestures of pure colour. Their potent presence creates as much of an impact today as they did when they were first shown in the early 1960s. Ayres talks at the start of the BBC documentary about her hope that people are uplifted by her work and also of the works receiving a response from viewers. It is a great privilege for Jerwood Gallery to bring together this important group of works, which have not been seen since their inclusion in exhibitions held contemporary to their making. The paintings continue to resonate with relevance and reaffirm Ayres as one of the most significant abstract artists of her generation. Lara Wardle Director, Jerwood Foundation

9 BIOGRaphy Born 3 February, Barnes, London Educated at St. Paul s Girls School, London Camberwell School of Art 1949 First Young Contemporaries exhibition 1951 First exhibited with London Group Worked part time at AIA Gallery 1957 Commission for 80ft panels at South Hampstead High School 1958 Son James born Teaching at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham Teaching at St. Martin s School of Art, London 1966 Son Sam born Head of Painting, Winchester School of Art 1981 Moved to North Wales 1982 Elected Associate Royal Academician 1985 TV film for Open University on abstract art with Norbert Lynton 1986 Awarded OBE 1987 Moved to Cornwall 1991 Won the Gold Medal at the Seventh Triennale, India Elected Royal Academician 1995 Joined Gimpel Fils, London 1996 Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art, London 1997 Sargent Fellowship, The British School at Rome 2005 Honorary Fellow, University of the Arts London 2011 Awarded CBE for services to the arts Lives in London and Cornwall

10 CREDITS 1 Gillian Ayres in her studio in Chiswick Mall, Cumuli, cm (diptych) 3 Unstill Centre, cm 4 Hampstead Mural, 1957 (on display at South Hampstead High School, part shown) ripolin on board comprised of two single panels and two diptychs cm; cm; cm (diptych); cm (diptych) 5 Cwm, cm 6 Cwm Bran, cm 7 Muster, cm 8 Untitled, cm 9 Gillian Ayres in the garden at Beverley Road, Barnes, All images courtesy the artist and Alan Cristea Gallery. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Jerwood Gallery. ISBN: Design by Rose

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