ART & ARCHITECTURE INTERVIEWS for FIVE BOOKS, ESSAYS, FIELD NOTES

No. 3 - Lives in Paint

Welcome to Appel Art Journal No.3, featuring the latest Five Books interviews relating to art and architecture, and things that have crossed my path. A conversation with Lucian Freud’s long-time friend and collaborator William Feaver sets the stage for a newsletter dedicated to painting.

INTERVIEW | In Conversation with William Feaver | 08.10.20

The Lives of Lucian Freud

The title of William Feaver’s authoritative biography suggests that Lucian Freud packed several lives into his one life span. Though ferociously private, Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to Feaver, his confidante and frequent collaborator, on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver's transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume account. We spoke about the best books for understanding the life and work of this central figure of the School of London, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the most acclaimed painters of the last century, longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford prize.

WHAT’S CAUGHT MY EAR & CROSSED MY SCREEN

Podcasts with painters

Who are the true heirs to Lucian Freud? Those artists working today who achieve the qualities that he was striving for, the ‘greater ruthlessness’, as William Feaver describes it, the ‘intensification of reality’ that characterizes his best work? Jenny Saville is surely one. She features among other painters in an exceptional series of conversations hosted by Ben Luke of The Art Newspaper. Which artists, historical and contemporary, do these painters most admire? The museums they return to most often? Books, music and other media that most inspire them? And what is art for, anyway? Top picks from the first season of episodes - which include Chantal Joffe and Rashid Johnson - are the opener with the Kenyan-British painter Michael Armitage and Jenny Saville, whose modus operandi mixes antiquity with hip hop. Below, Diamond Platnumz by Armitage from 2016. Above, Fulcrum by Saville from 1998.

Transitional Positions - Expressionism today

In and out of lockdown, the online openings and exhibits have been coming thick and fast, even well before Art Basel and Frieze bombardments. One thoughtful and thorough exhibit still available to view online is Transitional Positions, curated by Eric Fischl, and featuring work from the print and drawing archives of Galerie St. Etienne - masterpieces from Germany and Austria by Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Gustav Klimt, Käthe Kollwitz and Egon Schiele - juxtaposed with contemporary artists Ellen Berkenblit, Angela Dufresne, Nicole Eisenman, Tracey Emin, Sullivan Giles, Chantal Joffe, Gladys Nilsson, Jennifer Packer, Ellen Phelan, Jenny Saville and Joan Semmel. Above, Käthe Kollwitz in juxtaposition with Ellen Phelan. Below, study for Intertwined by Jenny Saville. The superb essays, by Fischl and the contributing artists, are alone worth the visit.

Scorched Earth

London readers prepared to venture out are urged to head to Cork Street Galleries to see Scorched Earth, a charity exhibition hosted by Migrate Art, featuring work by Mona Hatoum, Anthony Gormley and others, and using paints produced for Migrate using ash from burnt crops in Iraqi Kurdistan, which were destroyed deliberately by militia groups. All proceeds raised will support Migrate Art and their charity partners — RefuAid, Refugee Community Kitchen, and The Lotus Flower. Below, Migrate Art founder Simon Butler collecting material. Whether to use black, which tone, or how to mix it from other colors, is a formative question for many painters. Consider adding Scorched Earth pigments to the palette, a rich earthen black available in oil or acrylic by Jackson’s.

Cancel culture confusions - Philip Guston

Another podcast which caught my ear features the painter Philip Guston’s biographer. I'm with Guston's daughter on the recent debate about the cancellation of his forthcoming exhibit... “this should be a time of reckoning, of dialogue. These paintings meet the moment we are in today. The danger is not in looking at Philip Guston’s work, but in looking away.” Guston’s not an artist it’s easy to get a handle on. This podcast interview with Robert Storr on his huge new book about the painter is a rewarding and revealing listen, not only about Guston, but about the history of American painting generally. Skip to the 21-minute mark if Grayson Perry is not your cup (or saucer) of tea (though he has interesting observations himself about the roots of ‘cancel culture’ from his fanciful peregrinations across America). Consistently interesting interviews via The Art Newspaper. Below, The Tormentors by Guston from 1947.

Lucian Freud would famously grind charcoal into his paints to give them a London-like grittiness. His work is a panoply of fascinating characters, from lowlifes to high society. Like Dickens, one character that Freud draws out very vividly is London itself. In my conversation with Freud’s long-standing friend and collaborator, we talk about five books that situate Freud at the core of the School of London painters. Here is an artist whose life is indissociable from his painting.

Painting. What is it for? One of many questions tackled by Ben Lukes of The Art Newspaper in an excellent new series of interviews. Painters are in constant conversation with their forebears, as these conversations make strikingly clear.

Lineage also forms a central element in the juxtapositions of contemporary with classical work made so thoughtfully and thoroughly in an online exhibit curated by Eric Fischl: ‘Artists often perceive imminent change before the public at large. Our world has been in a state of socioeconomic upheaval for many years now. The [pandemic'] crisis and the protest movement are neither the beginning nor the end of these transitions.’ Philip Guston’s work may be a case in point, the flashpoint in recent debates about what it is or is not fitting to exhibit in public.

It is surely fitting to use painting and paint to raise awareness of one of the defining dilemmas of our age: mass migration. Watching paint dry is shorthand for tedium, but pausing to reflect is always salutary. When the paint itself is made from the charred remains of senseless conflict, the activity becomes an urgent and important plea for us to reflect individually and collectively on how we live our lives, and how our own lives are related to the lives of others.

Thank you for taking the time to read this third edition.

Romas Tauras