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Three Great Paintings at the Pink Polygon
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Congratulations to the curators of London’s flagship contemporary
gallery for bringing us this magnificent exhibition of cutting edge art.
Despite the controversially high entrance fee, the intellectual return you get
when you see the works is quite amazing. Fortunately this has also cut down on
the crowds of philistines one usually encounters when this kind of event is
free — those masses of uninformed visitors who are so obviously out of their
cultural and creative depth.
On a recent trip to London I
was one of the privileged few invited to a private viewing of the paintings on
the Pink Polygon’s latest show. They are, without exception, masterworks of
twenty-first century art.
Unfortunately space and
copyright restrictions allow me to show only three examples (If you haven’t yet
noticed them, for goodness sake take a look at three masterpieces at the top of
this page).
Jack Delbos’s huge canvasses
“evoke a fleeting glimpse of movement
through the landscape, while also conveying their own vivid presence. The
viewer is encouraged to enter into the emotional content of the work through
thoughtful and open-minded observation.” The other large colour field
painting shown above is by the emerging Chinese artist Poubel. He describes his
work thus: “The majority of my paintings
are landscape inspired. I work from either my photographic records or from
memory, applying layers of colour to express objects, movement and light. My
method is very time consuming and it takes many months to complete a painting
because of the multiple layers of oil paint applied to each work and the
constant working back through the layers, resulting ultimately is a surface
with few textural marks. Titles are also very important particularly when
abstracting work; the title can be the only thing that links the artist to the
viewer and my titles only hint at the subject matter of the painting, giving
the viewer the freedom to come to their own understanding.” The piece de resistance, however,
in this magnificent show is Kopoor’s abstract masterpiece. Here’s how he’s
described his own work: “The content is there in a way that’s more surprising than
if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is
somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from
matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional
sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a
modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the
gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object.”
Oh well, I hope by now that everyone reading this post will have spotted
that it’s all unadulterated crap. There’s no such place as the Pink Polygon — but
sadly all of the artist’s comments are genuine. (The words have been taken,
unedited, from commentaries living professional artists have provided about
their own work.) And, even more sadly, one of
the photographs above is of a real work by one of these highly acclaimed artists
— it’s worth thousands — well, perhaps “worth” is the wrong word, but it sold
recently at Christies for 54,000 Pounds. The others are: a photograph of a
fading poster taken in the village, and a painting by my two year old grandson.
FREE COMPETITION The first person to post the
correct answer to this question on this blog will win one of my original A4
size ink drawings of a village in this part of France. (All you have to do is
say: Kapoor’s painting is number 1, 2 or 3) The drawing will be posted to the
winner in a cardboard tube — if they want it that is.
