Enfilade

In conjunction with the London Festival of Architecture:

Capital Investment: Sir John Soane’s Model of Tyringham Hall, Buckinghamshire
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 3–28 June 2014

Sir John Soane revived the use of architectural models in Britain in his teaching and in his architectural practice. One of the more beautiful architectural models in Sir John Soane’s Museum is for Tyringham Hall, Buckinghamshire. Made by Joseph Parkins, c. 1793–94, in box wood, the highly detailed model was commissioned by Soane to present to his client William Praed, a Fleet Street banker. Soane designed and executed his country house from 1792 to 1800, and this model is an exceptional survival of a Soane Office ‘presentation model’ given to a client to explain volume, the arrangement of rooms and the play of light in the completed building (the model opens to reveal the interior arrangements of rooms and staircases). This is a rare opportunity to see this highly detailed presentation model which is not usually on display to the public. A model by a contemporary architect will be shown alongside to demonstrate the use importance of architectural models in today’s architectural practice.

Palais du Tau, Reims (Photo by Ludovic Péron, 9 September 2007, Wikimedia Commons). From Wikipedia: “The building was largely rebuilt in Gothic style between 1498 and 1509, and modified to its present Baroque appearance between 1671 and 1710 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Robert de Cotte. It was damaged by a fire on 19 September 1914, and not repaired until after the Second World War. The Palace was the residence of the Kings of France before their coronation in Notre-Dame de Reims. The King was dressed for the coronation at the palace before proceeding to the cathedral; afterwards, a banquet was held at the palace. The first recorded coronation banquet was held at the palace in 990, and the most recent in 1825.”

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From the Palais du Tau à Reims (the 22-page press release is available as a PDF file here) . . .

Splendours of Royal Coronations from Louis XIII to Charles X
Sacres Royaux, de Louis XIII à Charles X
Palais du Tau, Reims, 28 May — 2 November 2014

Curated by Frédéric Lacaille and Benoît-Henry Papounaud

Le Centre des monuments nationaux présente, en partenariat avec le château de Versailles, l’exposition Sacres Royaux, de Louis XIII à Charles X au Palais du Tau à Reims du 28 mai au 2 novembre 2014.

C’est au Palais du Tau, qui a accueilli à 33 reprises le roi la nuit précédant son sacre, que le Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN) a choisi de présenter cette exposition d’envergure, en partenariat avec le château de Versailles. Les visiteurs pourront y découvrir les cérémonies de sacres de 1610 à 1825, fondement essentiel de la monarchie absolue, qui consacraient le pouvoir, la puissance et la légitimité du roi. Ce partenariat d’exception avec le Château de Versailles donnera à voir de nombreuses œuvres encore jamais présentées au grand public.

Découvrez, au palais du Tau, séjour des rois pour leur couronnement, plus de 70 œuvres, témoins des fastes du règne des Bourbons, à l’occasion de cette exceptionnelle exposition en partenariat avec le château de Versailles. Au travers de tableaux, dessins, gravures, tapisseries, pièces d’orfèvrerie, éléments textiles et mobilier, l’exposition évoque les différentes étapes de la cérémonie du sacre des rois de France. Le calice des sacres, dit de Saint Remi (XIIème siècle), ou le manteau du sacre de Charles X, conservés au palais du Tau, sont mis en lumière aux côtés des collections du château de Versailles et de pièces prêtées par d’autres institutions, tel le Mobilier National, la Bibliothèque nationale de France ou le musée de l’hôtel Le Vergeur de Reims.

Le commissariat est assuré par Frédéric Lacaille, conservateur en chef au musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, et par Benoît-Henry Papounaud, administrateur du Palais du Tau.

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Information about the catalogue is available as a PDF file here:

Frédéric Lacaille, Alexandre Maral,  and Benoît-Henry Papounaud, Sacres Royaux, de Louis XIII à Charles X (Paris: Éditions du Patrimoine, 2014), 64 pages, ISBN: 978-2757703878, 12€.

Press release from The National Gallery for the exhibition:

Making Colour
The National Gallery, London, 18 June — 7 September 2014

Curated by Ashok Roy and Caroline Campbell

Moses Harris, Prismatic Colour Wheel, from ‘The Natural System of Colours’, hand-coloured etching, 1769/1776
(Royal Academy of Arts, London)

Making Colour, the first exhibition of its kind in the UK, offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to discover the wide-ranging materials used to create colour in paintings and other works of art. Using the National Gallery’s own paintings and loans from major UK cultural institutions, the exhibition traces the history of making colour in Western paintings, from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century. The exhibition brings together the worlds of art and science to explain how artists overcame the technical challenges involved in creating colour. Work on this subject has long been a specialism of the Gallery’s internationally recognised Scientific Department. Making Colour shows the material problems faced by artists in achieving their painterly aims, the breakthroughs they struggled for, and the difficulties they faced in creating works of art that were both beautiful and enduring. Making Colour looks at its subject from multiple perspectives. It examines the origins of paint sources—be it the natural world or human invention—and their supply, manufacture and application, as well as their permanence and colour effect.

The rich and diverse display with National Gallery paintings at its core is part of the ‘National Gallery Inspires’ programme of exhibitions. Drawn from the National Gallery collection, the exhibitions take a fresh view of National Gallery paintings alongside special loans and featuring world-leading research by Gallery experts. Making Colour shows the central importance of colour to painting, but also incorporates minerals along with textiles, ceramics and glass, demonstrating the material connections in these sister arts.

The exhibition begins by examining how theories of colour—such as an awareness of primary colour, or of the colour spectrum—have influenced painters’ use of pigments, and their quest for new materials. Visitors then journey from lapis lazuli to cobalt blue, ancient vermilion to bright cadmium red, through yellow, orange, purple and verdigris to deep green viridian in a series of colour-themed rooms. Finally, they enter a dazzling central room devoted to gold and silver. These metals were of fundamental importance to the colour effects of European painting through many centuries, although they do not appear on the traditional colour wheel.

Making Colour is illustrated at every stage by National Gallery paintings, complemented by selected objects on loan, such as Joseph Mallord William Turner’s paintbox. The exhibition includes Claude Monet’s Lavacourt under Snow (about 1878–81) on display with lapis lazuli figurines from the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Anthony van Dyck’s Lady Elizabeth Thimbelby and her Sister (1637) and elaborate majolica plates from the British Museum help to illustrate the story of yellow. In the red room Degas’s Combing the Hair (La Coiffure) (about 1896) and Masaccio’s Saints Jerome and John the Baptist (about 1428–29) are displayed alongside fragments of beautiful crimson velvet brocade on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The exhibition is complemented by a scientific experiment that introduces a new world of contemporary and scientific thought on colour. It deals with human colour perception, and the degree to which it is individually variable. It will also consider the ways in which the brain processes different visual information—for example in lighting paintings—and the impact that this has on our perception of colour.

The computer-controlled experiment in lighting and perception will be presented beside the Sainsbury Wing exhibition galleries, designed to demonstrate how we perceive and register colour, and to show that the eye and brain respond to colour in unexpected ways. The experiment has been developed with the advice of Professor Anya Hurlbert, Professor of Visual Neuroscience and Director of the Institute of Neuroscience, University of Newcastle and the support of the Wellcome Trust.

Ashok Roy, Director of Collections at the National Gallery, said: “Art and science really do come together in Making Colour. By exploring the materials that make up the array of artists’ pigments, we can begin to comprehend some of the historic circumstances and difficulties in creating colours that we now take for granted. The inclusion of objects such as early textiles, mineral samples and ceramics ensures an enticing display that provides a new angle from which to approach familiar works in the collection.”

Caroline Campbell, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500 at the National Gallery, said: “Artists from the Middle Ages to the present day have sought to find suitable pigments and colours. This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate this quest for colour. Thanks to the work of our Scientific Department, we can add another layer to our understanding of how artists created such beautiful images.”

Making Colour is curated by Ashok Roy, Director of Collections, and Caroline Campbell, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500.

Ai Weiwei, Iron Tree, 2013, click here to enlarge.
Photo by Jonty Wilde, courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park

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Press release (17 April 2014) from Yorkshire Sculpture Park:

Ai Weiwei in the Chapel
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, West Yorkshire, 24 May — 2 November 2014

Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is proud to announce an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, opening in the Park’s newly refurbished 18th-century chapel following a £500,000 restoration. The project, the first by Ai Weiwei in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010, will be accompanied by poetry readings from the works of celebrated poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei’s father. Ai Weiwei in the Chapel opens to the public on Saturday 24 May 2014.

Iron Tree, 2013, a majestic six-metre high sculpture is presented in the chapel courtyard, while the installation Fairytale-1001 Chairs, 2007–14, is presented inside the chapel with three other works: the porcelain Ruyi, 2012; the marble Lantern 2014; and Map of China, 2009. The sculptures shown within the chapel relate to ideas about freedom and to the individual within society, whilst also connecting with the history and character of the building.

Iron Tree is the largest and most complex sculpture to date in the artist’s tree series, which he began in 2009. Inspired by the wood sold by street vendors in Jingdezhen, southern China, Ai’s trees are constructed from branches, roots and trunks from different trees. Although like a living tree in form, the sculptures are obviously pieced and joined together, being all the more poignant for their lack of life. Iron Tree comprises 99 elements cast in iron from parts of trees, and interlocked using a classic—and here exaggerated—Chinese method of joining, with prominent nuts and screws. Combining both the natural and crafted, the sculpture will rust over time and its installation in the secluded chapel garden makes a meditative space that gives pause for thought and is a powerful reminder of the cycles of nature.

Ai Weiwei, Fairytale-1001 Chairs, 2007, click here to enlarge.
Photo by Jonty Wilde.

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The second part of the exhibition, Fairytale-1001 Chairs, extends Ai’s major project for Documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007, for which he brought 1,001 Chinese citizens to Kassel for 20 days, representing each person with an antique chair. This transformational experience highlighted the complications of travel for ordinary Chinese citizens. Since his arrest in 2011, Ai’s own travel has been strictly limited and his passport is currently confiscated.

Unable to travel to Yorkshire, and working from plans and photographs of YSP’s chapel, Ai has selected 45 Fairytale-1001 Chairs and has conceived an installation of nine rows of five chairs in the nave. Spaced so that each chair is solitary, they give heightened awareness of the collective and the individual. The chairs date from the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) and in this context challenge the class and ritual functions of such furniture, which originally was the preserve of privilege. In the stillness of the chapel, visitors are invited to take a seat and consider freedom, refuge, sanctuary and their antonyms, and to reflect on who may have sat before them, both on the chairs in China and within the 270-year-old Bretton Estate chapel. Through this simple act of participation, histories and cultures meet in a contemplative environment. As the artist has said, “those chairs are part of the fairytale—a symbolic gesture about memory and our past.”

Ai has selected two other works for the chapel. Ruyi translates to “as one wishes” and so alludes to wish-fulfilment. Sitting somewhere between fungal organic form and human internal organs, this lividly-coloured porcelain sculpture is one of a number of Ruyi made by Ai Weiwei that take the traditional Chinese sceptre of the same name, used by nobles, monks and scholars for around 2,000 years. Like talking sticks in other cultures, ruyi denoted authority and granted individuals the right to speak and be heard, so enabling orderly and democratic discourse.

Ai Weiwei, Lantern, 2014. Photo by Jonty Wilde, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

For some years the Chinese authorities have surrounded Ai’s home with surveillance cameras and every step he takes outside is recorded and monitored, resulting in 2010 with the series of works, Marble Surveillance Cameras. At around the same time, in a humorous gesture of mockery and defiance, he decorated the real CCTV cameras with red Chinese lanterns. For the chapel, Ai builds on this series and premieres the marble Lantern, carved in stone from the same quarries used by emperors to build the Forbidden City, and more recent rulers to build Mao’s tomb. Map of China, formed from iron wood reclaimed from Qing dynasty temples, shows China as an isolated land.

With the artist’s consent, we also present readings of works by Ai’s father, Ai Qing (1910–1996). Considered one of the most important 20th century Chinese poets, Ai Qing initially supported Mao Sedong. However, in 1958, he was found guilty of ‘rightism’ and with his family, including the baby Ai Weiwei, was sent to a labour camp and then exiled until Mao’s death, after which the family was able to return to Beijing. Readings will be made from across Ai Qing’s oeuvre, starting in 1932, and including important poems such as Snow Falls on China’s Land, My Wet-Nurse, and Wall. They demonstrate Ai Qing’s extraordinary ability to convey the strength of nature and the human spirit, even in adversity, and so connect with Ai Weiwei’s own life and this exhibition in particular.

About the Chapel

Built in 1744 by Sir William Wentworth, the Georgian sandstone chapel is historically important within YSP’s Bretton Estate. Nestled within the deer park, the Grade II* listed building was a part of the life on the estate during the 18th and 19th centuries, although it wasn’t until its acquisition by YSP in 2001 that it became more generally accessible. Artists shown here prior to restoration include James Lee Byars, Shirin Neshat and Jem Finer.

Restoration work carried out over the last nine months has transformed the gallery into a unique and versatile gallery space. Outside the building, work has included the renewal of the roof, repairs to eliminate water ingress and damp, and the renovation of external stonework. Inside the chapel, repairs have been made to the floor and internal timbers, while climactic conditions have been enhanced with the introduction of new lighting, heating and ventilation systems, and an environmentally friendly air source heat pump. Visitors to the Park will now enjoy improved access to the chapel with a new pathway from the visitor centre, wheelchair access into the building and an accessible toilet.

The £500,000 restoration of the chapel was supported by: English Heritage, Country Houses Foundation, The Wolfson Foundation, The Headley Trust, The Pilgrim Trust, the Holbeck Charitable Trust, The Leche Trust, The John S Cohen Foundation, Sir George Martin Trust, Kenneth Hargreaves Charitable Trust, Linden Charitable Trust, Jill Franklin Trust, and generous visitor donations. The lead professional advisor on the project was W. R. Dunn & Co Architects (RICS Conservation accredited building surveyor) and the appointed main contractor was William Anelay.

The summer kicks off the first of what’s planned as a regular feature of annual temporary exhibitions at the Society of Antiquaries of London:

Portraying the Past: Paintings from the Society of Antiquaries of London
Burlington House, Society of Antiquaries of London, 30 June — 1 August 2014

An exhibition of the Society’s collection of paintings including portraits of eighteenth-century antiquaries and rare fifteenth- and sixteenth-century portraits of medieval and Tudor monarchs and rulers of early modern Europe. These include the outstanding group of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century panel paintings bequeathed to the Society in 1828 by Thomas Kerrich, FSA, including portraits of Richard III, Henry VII and Henry VIII, as well as such works of international importance as the portraits of Jan van Scorel, by Antonis Mor, and of Mary I, by Hans Eworth.