Metamorphoses
Friday, January 7, 2022
100 Years of 'Mertz': 1922 -2022. The poetry of fragmentation and decay.
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
NYC27
KEVIN ROY
A
Photo Journal
27 Days in New York City
The Greene
Gallery St John’s International School.
Opening/Vernissage
Friday October 1st 2021 16h-18h
ALL WELCOME
In film and photography, history and
myth, both the fantasy and reality of New York City has fascinated generations
of creative artists and their audiences throughout the 20th century
and beyond. This unique city’s unmistakable landmarks have formed a backdrop
for countless human dramas played out in a great melting pot of humanity,
producing some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. The
history of photography from its 19th century origins to the present
day runs parallel to the meteoric rise of this modern city, as well as the ebb
and flow of American economic prosperity and politics. Kevin Roy’s well-crafted
digital images are both a celebration and a nostalgic elegy to that city and to
some of the most celebrated and inspirational black and white photography of
the last century. With warmth, humour and professional precision he offers us a
timeless photo journal of 27 days walking a city he knows well and loves. This
is an intimate and personal view of both the urban fabric and its residents,
the city and its character. Paradoxically, carefully framed yet spontaneous
moments are captured and frozen in the eye of the camera. These images raise as many questions as they
answer in their thoughtful and gently ironic juxtapositions, and they challenge
us with their ambivalence towards and ambiguity about the relations between
time and place, appearance and reality, and the nature of the black and white
photographic icon itself, both analogue and digital, in the age of instant
electronic gratification.
Along with the exhibition and opening we plan
to host an interview, discussion and presentations, with invited groups of
students, teachers and parents, with a critical analysis of some of the iconic
images from a selection of 20th century photographers whose work has inspired
Kevin Roy’s photographs. In addition we will supplement and enrich this focus
by taking the IBDP visual art students on an art trip on November 10th
to Museum of Photography at Charleroi. https://www.museephoto.be/
Alan Mitchell
Artist’s Statement
The
inspiration came from a childhood with far less media than we have today, where
I spent hours actually turning pages to look at still images in publications
like Life Magazine and National Geographic. Rebuilding Egyptian Temples,
Vietnam, the Civil Rights struggle in America, I can still see those
photojournalistic images in my mind. The obsession began with a $10 Brownie,
the Kodak kind, and road trips in the family station wagon. Over five decades later,
after a series of ebbs and flows in creative output due to the exigencies of
life, my photo kit now weighs more than my cloths when I travel. I continue to
be inspired by both well and little-known photographers, but mostly by my urge
and need to wander through and observe the world, and to capture details in
places, things, and people that speak to and express the emotion of the place
they inhabit, both present and past. My passion persists through the fact that
there will always be more to see, and the question, “What can I learn next?”
Kevin
Roy
Doors and Windows through Time and Space
Re-imagining, designing, constructing and painting a 15th century triptych in the
manner of the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend.
"....It is another world entirely, and it is enclosed within this one, with a peculiar geography I can only describe as infundibular. " He paused for effect. 'I mean by this that the other world is composed of a series of concentric rings, which as one penetrates deeper into the other world, grows larger. The further you go, the bigger it gets. Each perimeter of this series of concentricities encloses a larger world within, until, at the center point, it is infinite. Or at least very very large".................
John Crowley 'Little,Big' Edgewood page 48
Finding, researching and
assembling the elements of the ‘collage’.
The word ‘collage’ or
‘assemblage’ of existing fragmentary ‘found’ elements into a new configuration
or whole is an accurate description of an aspect of the creative process
involved in copying, following or working in the style of the Master of the St
Ursula legend. Working in the workshop or circle of the artist implies a
contemporary context in or near the atelier of the master, whilst following,
copying or working after the style of the painter at a later date has a long
history in the production and re-production of works of art, with many great
masters themselves, like Rubens, producing copies or versions of works by
earlier masters like Titian.
Rubens’ attitude towards reproducing an
image was very different to the way we have come to view copies of Old Master
paintings today. It was the Romans who first replicated artworks, copying Greek
sculptures, and repetition was considered the best way of learning throughout
the medieval period. During the Renaissance, the cult of the artist’s identity
grew so that copying a work was as much an education as a means of honouring
the master.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/a-brief-history-of-old-master-copies
Even the idea of faking or
forging the work of venerated earlier artistic style has been a practice since
the Renaissance with artists as venerated as Michelangelo, early in their careers,
establishing their technical and artistic credentials through creating works
convincingly in the style of antique Roman sculpture passed off as genuine to
admiring collectors. His celebrated statues of the sleeping Eros and Bacchus are
cases in point.
“He
also copied drawings of the Old Masters so perfectly that his copies could not
be distinguished from the originals, since he smoked and tinted the paper to
give it an appearance of age. He was often able to keep the originals and
return his copies in their place.”
Giorgio
Vasari, ‘The Lives of the Artists’
The references below explore the
issues of forgery and the ethics of restoration:
Laurence Shafe: ‘The Genius of Art Forgery’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hgOsVxaM0
Fake - not fake: restorations-reconstructions-forgeries: the conservation of the Flemish Primitives in Belgium, ca. 1930-1950Exhibition: 26 November 2004 - 28 February 2005.
‘With this project, the Groeninge Museum takes the important initiative of prompting a public debate about the grey area between restoration and forgery – the first debate of its kind and one that is likely to prove controversial. In view of the composition of the Bruges collections and the history of how they were assembled, this exhibition concentrates on the Flemish Primitives. The central subject is the work of the Flemish painter, art dealer and restorer Jef van der Veken (1872-1964), who is regarded as one of the founders of the restoration of old paintings in Belgium.’
‘Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur’
Whilst I had no intention to fake
or forge a 15th century Flemish panel painting, I was interested in
this tradition of learning from old masters by making an ‘authentic copy’ so to
speak, by using similar historical technical methods of construction and
following as closely as possible the practical processes of painting from the
ground up to get closer to the mind and spirit of the artist and the work, and
experience a tangible sense of connection to the historical past. This reconstruction was also partly inspired
by the examples from the Hamilton Keer institute, but unlike the students at this prestigious institution, I approached my project in a freer more intuitive and creative way rather than with a strictly academic and scientific method.
https://www.hki.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/projects/paintingtechniques/crucifixrestoration
I was lucky in that I could study
closely at first hand the actual paintings by the Master of the St Ursula
legend in the Groeninge Museum in Bruges alongside making use of often
excellent museum the digital resources online.
I chose to create a triptych with
a central panel of the virgin and child flanked by angels with inner side ls
representing the annunciation ‘en grisaille’ by freely adapting several works
by the Master of the St. Ursula legend which came from different contexts into
a configuration which he is not known to have made but which he could
conceivable have done.
The outer panels with their calligraphic text were based on a work by Hugo Van de Goes which was probably assembled in its current form in the 19th century from different works.
The Virgin and Child with Angels.
Portrait of Ludovico Portinari
The panel on the left,
which I used for the central panel of my triptych, is of ‘The
Virgin and Child with Angels’ currently in the Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the companion to the now separated right hand
panel, the portrait of Ludovico Portinari with a view of Bruges in the
background, from a votive diptych. This right-hand panel is in the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Lodovico
Portinari’s powerful family represented the interests of the Medici in
Flanders. Hinged to Portinari’s portrait, the painting would have offered
intimate, perpetual access to the Virgin and Child, who are made present in an
image of visionary splendor.
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/230596
https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102092.html
Both paintings are by
the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, active in Bruges c. 1470 - c. 1500. Little is known about the Master of the Saint
Ursula Legend, so called by the art historian Max Friedländer as an emergency name after a series of
panels in the Groeninge museum in Bruges, and certain
stylistic similarities between works attributed to him. It is likely that this
anonymous painter lived for a while in Brussels and later moved to Bruges, as
his style includes references to Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes and
Hans Memling. A 15th century Bruges painter who might be the same
artist has been identified as a certain Pieter Casenbroot who was registered in the Bruges guild
of saddle makers and sculptors in 1460.
https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/112129
For the side panels I needed to find an
appropriate flanking subject by the same artist that would fit the proportion
of the central panels of the Virgin and Child. An annunciation theme seemed the most likely to
fit the theme and format, and there were several possibilities I considered
using as references. The first that I
looked at came from the two opposite panels at the top of the large side panels
of an altar piece (in their closed state) by the same master of the Saint
Ursula legend in the Groeninge museum in Bruges. These were painted ‘en
grissaille as trompe l’oeil sculptures in niches. On the opposite side the
panels in their open state reveal the polychrome narrative sequence of events
from the life of Saint Ursula. The large central panel of the altar piece here is
of course missing.
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Outer side panels in closed state ( with the annuciation figures at the top) |
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Inner side panels in the open state with scenes from the legend of saint Ursula |
For the outer panels in a closed
state I needed something that would match the scale and proportion, be
appropriate to the theme of inner subjects of the Virgin and Child and
Annunciation but also create a contrast with the juxtaposition of word and
image, and a play on the idea of the incarnation. (‘Et verbum caro factum est’-
‘And the word was made flesh’). The painting below, with it’s calligraphic text
on the inner part of the side panels, attributed by the National Gallery to a follower
of Hugo Van de Goes, was probably assembled in its current form in the 19th
century from different works. The
complexity of working out how to get this transferred onto a gold or copper
leaf ground by working in the negative space between the letters was an
interesting challenge.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/follower-of-hugo-van-der-goes-virgin-and-child
Left hand panel text
Ave Sanctissima Maria m[ate]r Dei Regina Celi porta Paradisi Domina Mu[n]>di pura Singularistu es Virgo Tu sine pec[cat]o Concepta concepisti Ih[esu]m sine o[m]ni
Hail, Most Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Gate of Paradise, Mistress of the world, thou are a uniquely pure virgin; yourself conceived without sin, you conceived Jesus without any stain.
Right hand panel text
Tu Peperisti Creatorem et saluatore[m] Mundi In quo non Dubito libera me Ab omni malo Et Ora pro Peccato Meo Amen.
You have borne the Creator and Saviour of the World in whom I do not doubt. Deliver me From every
evil and pray for my sin. Amen.
The practical stages of the process.
I was able to use the seasoned wood remaining from of the salvaged solid oak paneled doors which we used in the house to construct the panel, along with some recycled carved mouldings to create the engaged frame.
Once the central panel was prepared I created a box cradle to support it and take the hinges for the side panels which I also then measured and matched, with appropriate mouldings, repeating the linen, sizing and gesso process to prepare the painting surface.
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Traditional egg tempera panel with gold leaf and traditional materials, cinnabar, malachite, lapis lazuli, from Kramer paints. |
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Saint Veronica with the Sudarium by the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend. Oil on oak panel 1480-1500 |
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Detail of the face of Saint Veronica with the Sudarium by the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend. |
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Detail of angels on right hand side of the central panel |
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Details of the faces of the Virgin and child |
The final assembled panels in place awaiting the hinges and below, hinged and hanging on the same recycled solid oak door panels it is actually made from which have also been re-purposed as wood paneling in the hall to match the doors.
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
A moment in time.
'The most sensational surprise was the sudden discovery, one day, that my pictures, for the first time in history, had become walls.'
A Report on the Wall, Antoni Tàpies
Agnès Biro and Shendy Gardin have curated a nostalgic and atmospheric homage to poet and translator Christine D’haen in a brief three day expo which I managed to see on Sunday 19th. ‘A moment in time’, initiates a dialogue between contemporary art and the unrestored rooms of this elegant 18th century house which was once the writer's former home. Walls, windows and doors provided a series of evocative frames and multi-layered surfaces of changing light and muted colours of exquisite subtlety, which entered into correspondence with the individual works of art by several artists including a grainy slide projection 'Seine' by Klara Lidén, a monoprint 'found' postcard by Tacita Dean, and Berlinde de Bruyckere's hanging wax, epoxy, iron and string sculpture, 'Romeu' my deer, 1V
Time was
made visible in the laid bare anatomy of the building structure and the
archeology of the surface of the wall itself, with traces of re-plastering, re-papering
and re-painting, aging, fading, staining, cracking, peeling. This exhibition is in a sense an exercise in ‘arte povera’ and a kind of 'memento mori', made from the accumulated traces of
life itself, an ‘after image’ of something fugitive; desire and
loss, presence and absence, fullness and emptiness. In attempting to
capture and freeze a ‘moment in time', even as it escapes our grasp, the curators and artists have evoked an imagined past in the tangible present. Through the poetics of light and space,
the aesthetics of silence and stillness, and the articulation of individual contemporary
works of art in dialogue with each room, the house and its ‘memory’ of the
art and life of a writer is experienced with a new emotional force in the mind
and perception of the viewer.
The evocation of both presence and absence in the fragmented or deleted 'image', the use of muted colours, light and shadow, and the traces of time in the faded, stained, torn and damaged paper surfaces and the trompe l'oeil ambiguity of boundaries, of where the image ends and the frame begins, are all elements I have tried to explore in my own small scale paintings below and in the links.