Those paying attention to previous blogs may recall that a couple of weeks ago, having reached the British Museum’s Print Room, I felt in such a poor state of health that I couldn’t muster up enough energy to actually look at the exhibition. Initially, I thought I was suffering the crustacean curse of a dodgy prawn curry eaten the night before though, as it very painfully turned out, it was, in fact, the migration of a tiny kidney stone that was upsetting my inner equilibrium. With that problem now, quite literally, passed, I feel I must emulate the jockey who has been thrown from his mount and get straight back onto the metaphorical horse, thus banishing any of the possible psychological traumas associated with my unfortunate nephritic indisposition.
In short, today I vow to make my return to the Museum’s hallowed halls and its hordes of eager touristic visitors. But first, for completion’s sake, I’m obliged to detail a couple of slightly disappointing detours made en route to Great Russell Street. So, the first stop of the morning is at the Camden Arts Centre where, if you’re interested in mid-20th century Polish graphic design, you’re in for a real treat in the form of a fairly comprehensive retrospective of the works of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. I confess the names were unfamiliar to me and I suppose I found all the cartoons, concrete poetry, theatre designs and other graphic displays mildly interesting but a little bit dated, a little bit obscure and a little bit arcane, even for my eclectic cultural interests. I can’t help wondering why this particular pair were chosen instead of focusing on some British design team, as I think this country probably has a pretty strong international reputation when it comes to innovations in the realms of commercial art. I suppose it must have been a question of sponsorship or something like that. Who knows how the gallery director makes her choices for what appears in the Centre? Presumably, it must also have seemed a jolly neat idea when planning the gallery programme to twin this show with another text-based exhibition – the arty, wordy graffiti of Karl Holmqvist – but the proof reading of this particular stodgy, logorrheic pudding combo, at least for me, suggests otherwise.
It’s a short tube ride to Kings Cross and then a walk to the Pangolin gallery, only to find that the place is shut for Easter. Drat! I did check on my Google machine before I set off and I’m sure it told me that the place was open today but I suppose the algorithm didn’t take into account the holiday break. Oh well, I’m left peering through the windows which, luckily, are big enough to let me see most of the show and, although I can’t get close to the works, I think I get a general feeling for what they’re about. I suppose the simplest way to describe Jeff Lowe’s sculptures is to say that they’re abstract and most of them seem to be like metal nets twisted into a series of bold, clunky geometric shapes – quite interesting, quite attractive but not particularly inspirational, exciting or profound. Of course, maybe they are deeply profound and I’m just too far away or too shallow to realise what I’m missing but, sadly, stuck on the wrong side of the glass, missing it, I am, and I can’t pretend otherwise.
So, it’s back to Kings Cross and a bus that takes me to the British Museum which, thankfully, ignores the Easter shut down and is definitely open for business. In fact, as soon as I start to approach the mighty portico, I realise that I should probably have picked a different date to make my return visit. Today is Easter Saturday and it quickly becomes apparent that visiting the Museum has become one of the more favoured secular rituals attendant upon marking the holiday and consequently, instead of the place being full of bustling visitors it is absolutely jam packed – no, make that super sardine-packed. It’s resulted in the installation of a squadron of strategically placed invigilators to create a one-way pedestrian traffic flow system in a desperate attempt to try to keep the crush of bodies moving along, lest they all grind to a halt and then congeal into one immoveable mass of squirming body parts. Finally, after a long diversion around the Egyptian galleries, I manage to barge my way past the mob and climb the stairs to the relative peace of the Print Room. It’s a peace interrupted by the cries and squeals of some babes in arms and then what seems to be a noisy under-fives relay race taking place in one of the galleries. Quiescence is finally regained after I give the parents of the excitable progeny, who are causing these disturbances, stares of such withering intensity that even Evil Eye Fleagle would be impressed.
So, how is the expenditure of all that energy and effort on my part to return to the Print Room to be rewarded? Well, the Museum is displaying the entire portfolio of 60 watercolours received in a bequest from the artist Francis Towne on the occasion of his death, 200 years ago. The suite of works document the artist’s extended trip to Italy in 1780, starting with a series of topographical records of the countryside around Rome before leading onto his studies of the various ancient monuments that are dotted around the capital. But the exhibition is more than just a collection of pretty vistas and picturesque archaeological ruins. A careful reading of the labels accompanying each of the paintings combined with the explanatory wall panels provides a fascinating insight into both technical developments in 18th century watercolour painting as well as the professional trials and tribulations of the artist who produced them.
It seems that Towne was an autodidact who managed to make a relatively successful career as a drawing master – a sort of freelance art tutor to the genteel amateurs of the upper echelons of society in Exeter, the city in which he lived for most of his life. But while this position was sufficiently well paid to allow him to undertake his great oversees adventure to Italy, it seems to have been looked upon with some condescension by the metropolitan art establishment in London. The result was that despite Towne’s desperate desire to have his professional artistic skills acknowledged by being accepted as a member of the Royal Academy, he never was – each of his repeated applications thwarted by failing to receive sufficient votes from the other artists.
Unacknowledged by his peers during his own lifetime, what is the judgement of posterity? Well, fashions change and the characteristics of his watercolours that some of his contemporaries saw as faults and flaws were what some later critics hailed as the very achievements that made his work particularly appealing. I admit that, having no great knowledge of 18th watercoloursists, I’m relying on the gallery guide and the wall texts for my information here, but it seems that having initially fallen into total obscurity by the end of the 19th century, there was a revival of interest in Towne’s work a few decades later. The collector, critic and curator Paul Oppe was his main cheerleader and champion, claiming that the ‘…flat planes and spare angular design…’ found in much of the artist’s output made him a pioneering forerunner to certain aspects of 20th century Modernism…which may be all a bit fanciful.
So, what did I think of the show? Well, I found the exhibition really very interesting and enjoyable but I suppose, in the end, I’m with the Academy on this one. I think Towne’s a good artist but not a great one and he sort of falls between two stools: lacking the technical facility to paint with the precision detail and accuracy that defines the true, forensic realist, but, equally, too rigid and formulaic to experiment with a looser style that might allow for a more emotional response to his works. Not wishing to stick the painting knife in, his colours are all a bit bland, never veering far from an earthy palette of yellows, greens and grays, and he occasionally has a bit of trouble with his perspective, especially on those occasions when he tries to introduce figures into the works or recreate the complicated interlocking arches and masonry of a building like the Colosseum. But, I suppose these are fairly minor quibbles and if there are no absolute stunners in the show then the great majority are solid and respectable and not unattractive and it’s one of those occasions where very competent curating has resulted in the whole of the show being very pleasantly greater than the sum of its arts.