As diligent readers may recall, my last piece of bloggerific artistic analysis was posted out not from the usual hard-edged, mean streets of our unforgiving capital city down south but from the warm welcoming walkways and sunny scouse boulevards of that pearl of the north, Liverpool. The basecamp for my recent exploratory sojourn, however, was an hour’s train ride away to the east in an adequate, if slightly shabby, two-and-a-half-star hotel stuck on the perimeter of Manchester’s Piccadilly Square. I suppose, in retrospect, it may have been a bit of a mistake to select such a centrally located venue since the area also seemed to attract a fair number of mendicants and other spaced-out – or maybe that should now be updated to spiced-out – unfortunates. And, after a hard day’s gallery-going, the necessity to side-step small pools of vomit when traversing the streets in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, whilst also ignoring the imprecations of those presumed responsible for making these unhealthy, unhappy deposits, meant that returning to the hotel each evening was accompanied by the decidedly downbeat, not to say, semi-tragic requirement to acknowledge humanity’s continuing capacity for enduring misery and expressing despair.
Then again, I always think that one should always try to look on the bright side of life and, very much to my pleasant surprise, the hotel actually managed to make quite a reasonable job each morning when it came to preparing the fresh fried delights of a traditional full English breakfast and so, consequently, at least each day definitely started off on a more optimistic note.
Now, naturally enough, I had intended to write a sort of generalised review about the art of the city, based around visits to the main Manchester Art Gallery (situated in the centre of town) and the Whitworth (sited just off the university campus area to the south), both of which have been blessed with grand extensions, renovations and general upgradings in recent years. This was especially so since the person responsible for overseeing these two major spaces was, until very recently, Maria Balshaw who has, of course, now moved on and been promoted to take over from Nicholas Serota as the capo di tutti capi of the great imperial Tate conglomeration of artistic assets that is such an important part of the nation’s overall cultural capital wealth. Inevitably, Balshaw will now be playing the key role in influencing the general direction of travel for contemporary curatorial practice in this country for the next few years or, indeed, if she mirrors Serota’s rottweiler grasp on the role, the whole of the next twenty-five year generational allotment. Unfortunately, however, for those hoping that a look at Balshaw’s Mancunian legacy might provide insight of crystalline clarity into this possible potential future, the picture is somewhat less than pellucid.
On the plus side, walking through Manchester Art Gallery’s permanent collection of 18th and 19th century British art, displayed in nine rooms and grouped under broad thematic headings such as Face and Place – Portraiture and Landscape, Grand Tour and Grand Style – The Influence of Travel and Natural Forces – Romanticism and Nature, is a real pleasure. The works are well chosen, well displayed and the text on the wall panels that introduces each room provides a sensible enough art historical introduction to enlighten the novitiate. Highlights here include Stubbs’ Cheetah and Stag with Two Indian Attendants, Etty’s enormous Ulysses and the Sirens, Holman Hunt’s Shadow of Death, Millais’ Autumn Leaves as well as other equally stylish works from Turner, Landseer, Frith, Waterhouse and Leighton. Unfortunately, however, crossing over into the newer part of the Gallery things take a slight downturn. Lowry and Valette, a look at the miserabilist Salfordian primitive and his French mentor is quite interesting and occasionally revealing; but works in The Edwardians section are weak and dreary; Art in the Netherlands is a bit run-of-the-mill and not helped by the cramped display; and the Clore Art Studio seems to be the location for a totally ill-fitting and unnecessary children’s play area. And, rather irritatingly, the four other temporary exhibition spaces in the Gallery were all closed while I was there in order to hang the work from artists taking part in a forthcoming South Asian arts festival. A room containing artefacts of South Asian Design was open to view but the relatively small and unadventurous display of glass cases full of pots and plates, and the parades of display-stand mannequins looked, at least to my amateur eye, all a bit dull but worthy, even – dare one say it – ever so slightly tokenistic.
For similar reasons of rehanging, the upper galleries at the Whitworth were also all closed off when I called in but quite a few of the remaining, ground floor spaces were open and, sadly, just as disjointed and, frankly, uninspiring as when I last visited the place a couple of years ago. Since its renovation, the Whitworth has vastly increased its acreage of wallspace and floorspace but, very much like the new extension at Tate Modern, both institutions now seem to be embarrassed by finding themselves stuck with the intractable problem of how to assemble and display the suitable volumes of high quality artworks and carefully researched and structured exhibitions necessary to fill them all up. And as for the Whitworth stuff I actually did get to see – Raquib Shaw’s installation; Barbara Brown’s textiles; Sooni Taraporevala’s photographs; Alexander and John Cozens’ watercolours; and New Arrivals, a very large room with a small number of recent acquisitions – well, there seemed to be little commonality or resonance between any of the displays or even in the manner in which they were displayed and, individually, none was sufficiently striking or interesting to hold my attention more than cursorily.
So, all in all, the Manchester scene is a very mixed bag of tricks with the permanent section of the main city gallery a real treat and everything else either a disappointment or worse – a situation that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the prospects for the new regime at the Tate. Although, if Balshaw were to set about rejigging Tate Modern’s permanent collection into some kind of coherent narrative structure then that would certainly help to win over one member of the grumbling gray demographic.
As I said some paragraphs earlier, I had intended to write a generalised sort of review about the art that I encountered in Manchester but, as half of the exhibitions were closed off, I sort of changed my mind although, despite my earnest intentions, I seem to have ended up writing it anyway. And, such is the prolixity of my inadvertent digression, I haven’t really left myself all that much space to cover the actual events of today’s artistic ramble. I won’t, therefore, bother reiterating the point about the optimistic breakfast and instead get straight on the tram and head off toward Salford and the fifteen minute ride that deposits me at the terminal stop designated as MediaCityUK. I think this area is probably meant to be the bustling centre of a busy digital silicon techno info hub whirligig powerhouse thingummybob HQ but, evidently, all the hipster creatives that would normally populate such a swinging community must take Saturday mornings off and remain in their loft apartments for the place is near desolate as I walk the empty pathways to get to the Imperial War Museum North. The reason I’m here is not to see the main collection of tanks and trucks, guns and uniforms, and other military heavy hardware and light ephemera that combine to illuminate the bellicose diversions of the last century. Frankly, I find all that stuff a bit grim and, anyway, the open-plan layout of exhibits and information here is far too messy and confused for someone like me who prefers a simple linear pathway when it comes to following any form of didactive documentary display. No, the reason I’m here is to take a look at the retrospective of paintings, drawings and literary works by that most curious of British modern artists, Percy Wyndham Lewis.
I’m not sure that the exhibition manages to unravel the knotted conundrum personified by this clever, waspish, skillful draftsman but it does provide ample confirmation of his talent for innovation in design and portraiture, and general bloody-mindedness in most other areas of his personal and public life. As one of the very small group of British artists who was actively excited by the radical possibilities provided by the experimental Modernism that was energising its way through the rest of continental Europe’s artworld at the start of the 20th century, Wyndham Lewis developed his own form of abstracted figuration to try to capture the essence of the machine age aesthetic that was powering the accompanying societal changes. But if the creation of these heavily stylised works was inspired by a sense of fearsome utopianism, then it was inevitably crushed by the shared experiences of the grisly mechanistic horrors of the First World War, so that while Wyndham Lewis’ later paintings retain the same vibrant power, they are noticeably more reasonable and realistic and certainly less romantically robotic.
Depending on one’s stance, Wyndham Lewis’ general reputation was either greatly damaged or greatly enhanced by the bumptious exhortations and damning, denigrating ranting that filled the pages of his magazine Blast. But his place in the art history books is forever fatally damaged by the initial enthusiastic support he propagated in his writings for the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini that later, pre-war recantations utterly failed to exorcise. And, despite making a strong case for the brilliance of his artistic production, it seems unlikely that this exhibition is going to be able alter that unhappy situation.
All of which leaves me just three final sentences to reference the building next door. So, here goes: The Lowry is a sort of theatre-cum-art-centre housing a generous selection of works by the eponymous artist that will doubtless charm his many fans while confirming the opposing opinions of his many detractors. But, surely, all can unite in thinking that Lowry himself would be astonished at the inappropriately exuberant pastiche architectural style used to construct the building named in his honour, and, frankly, appalled by the quite extraordinary choice of interior décor with its flashing clashing, purple and orange colour scheme. Ugh!
