Enfilade

Press release (August 2017) from The National Gallery:

Monochrome: Painting in Black and White
The National Gallery, London, 30 October 2017 – 18 February 2018
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 21 March — 15 July 2018

Curated by Lelia Packer and Jennifer Sliwka

At the National Gallery this autumn, journey through a world of shadow and light. With more than fifty painted objects created over 700 years, Monochrome: Painting in Black and White is a radical new look at what happens when artists cast aside the colour spectrum and focus on the visual power of black, white, and everything in between.

Paintings by Old Masters such as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres appear alongside works by some of the most exciting contemporary artists working today including Gerhard Richter, Chuck Close, and Bridget Riley. Olafur Eliasson‘s immersive light installation Room for One Colour (1997) brings a suitably mind-altering coda to the exhibition. With major loans from around the world and works from the National Gallery’s Collection, Monochrome reveals fresh insights into the use of colour as a choice rather than a necessity.

As Lelia Packer and Jennifer Sliwka, curators of Monochrome: Painting in Black and White, explain: “Painters reduce their colour palette for many reasons but mainly as a way of focusing the viewer’s attention on a particular subject, concept, or technique. It can be very freeing—without the complexities of working in colour, you can experiment with form, texture, mark making, and symbolic meaning.”

Monochrome: Painting in Black and White guides visitors through seven rooms, each addressing a different aspect of painting in black, white and grey, also known as grisaille.

Sacred Subjects

The earliest surviving works of Western art made in grisaille were created in the Middle Ages for devotional purposes, to eliminate distractions and focus the mind. As colour pervades daily life, black and white can signal a shift to an otherworldly or spiritual context. For some, colour was the forbidden fruit and prohibited by religious orders practising a form of aesthetic asceticism. Grisaille stained glass, for example, was created by Cistercian monks in the 12th century as an alternative to vibrant church windows, with its translucent greyish panels sometimes painted with images in black and yellow. Light and elegant in appearance, grisaille glass such as this window panel made for the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, Paris (1320–24, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) gained popularity outside the order and eventually became de rigueur in many French churches.

Studies in Light and Shadow

From the 15th century onward artists made painted studies in black and white to work through challenges posed by their subjects and compositions. Eliminating colour allows artists to concentrate on the way light and shadow fall across the surface of a figure, object or scene before committing to a full-colour canvas. The beautiful Drapery Study (possibly study for Saint Matthew and an Angel), (about 1477, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio is a template work which an artist could reuse in multiple finished colour paintings. This particular motif for example reappeared in a frescoed vault in San Gimignano, Italy.

Independent Paintings in Grisaille

Increasingly, paintings in grisaille were made as independent works of art, complete unto themselves. This section explores the inspiration and desire for such paintings, prized for their demonstration of artistic skill, for the insights they provide into the artist’s craft, and for their profound consideration of a particular subject.

Jan van Eyck’s Saint Barbara (1437, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp) is the earliest known example of a monochrome work on panel, drawn in metalpoint, India ink, and oil on a prepared ground. Although there has been ongoing debate as to whether a master colourist such as van Eyck intended Saint Barbara as a sketch in preparation for a painting in colour or a as a finished drawing, the panel was admired and collected as early as the 16th century suggesting that a taste for independent monochrome pictures existed from an early date.

Jacob de Wit, Jupiter and Ganymede, 1739 (Hull: Ferens Art Gallery).

Monochrome Painting and Sculpture

For centuries artists have challenged themselves to mimic the appearance of stone sculpture in painting. In Northern Europe, a taste for illusionistic decorative elements—such as decorative wall painting and sculpted stucco—may have helped give rise to stunning works of trompe l’oeil painted on panel or canvas. Jacob de Wit excelled at this practice and his Jupiter and Ganymede (1739, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull) could easily be mistaken for a three-dimensional wall relief.

Monochrome Painting and Printmaking

Beginning in the 16th century, painters developed ingenious ways to compete with new developments in printmaking. An exceptionally rare grisaille work by Hendrik Goltzius, Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze (1606, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) for example, dazzled viewers who could not fathom how it was made, as it very much looks like a print but was drawn by hand on prepared canvas.

Black-and-White Painting in the Age of Photography and Film

Similarly, the invention of photography in 1839, and that of film much later, prompted painters to imitate the effects of these media, in order to respond to, or compete with their particular qualities. Gerhard Richter employed a press photograph of a prostitute who had been brutally murdered as the foundation of his painting Helga Matura with Her Fiancé (1966, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf). The grey palette—for Richter, “the ideal colour for indifference”—removes any sentimentality about Helga’s murder. By deliberately blurring the photograph, the artist makes the viewer aware that this is an altered image, contrasting with the crispness and apparent objectivity of the original.

Étienne Moulinneuf, after Jean-Siméon Chardin, Back from the Market (La Pourvoyeuse), ca. 1770, oil on canvas, 46 × 38 cm (Los Angeles: LACMA).

Abstraction

Abstract and installation artists have often been drawn to black and white. When artists have ready access to every possible hue, the absence of colour can be all the more shocking or thought-provoking. In 1915, Kiev-born artist Kazimir Malevich painted the first version of his revolutionary work, Black Square (in the exhibition is the 1929 version from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)—an eponymous black square floating within a white painted frame—and declared it to be the beginning of a new kind of non-representational art. Works by Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly all exemplify the use of minimal colour for maximum impact.

Artists intrigued by colour theory and the psychological effects of colour (or its absence) manipulate light, space, and hue to trigger a particular response from the viewer. In this way, Olafur Eliasson brings the exhibition to a close with his large-scale, immersive light installation, Room for One Colour (1997). In a room illuminated with sodium yellow monofrequency lamps, all other light frequencies are suppressed and visitors are transported to a monochrome world.

National Gallery Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, says: “Artists choose to use black and white for aesthetic, emotional, and sometimes even for moral reasons. The historical continuity and diversity of monochrome from the Middle Ages to today demonstrate how crucial a theme it is in Western art.”

Exhibition organised by The National Gallery in collaboration with Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf.

Lelia Packer and Jennifer Sliwka, Monochrome: Painting in Black and White (London: The National Gallery, 2017), 240 pages, ISBN: 978 18570 96132 (hardback), £35 / ISBN: 978 18570 96132 (paperback), £20.

Lelia Packer is Acting Curator of Paintings, Watercolours, Miniatures, and Manuscripts (excluding France) at the Wallace Collection, London. She was formerly McCrindle Curatorial Assistant at The National Gallery.

Jennifer Sliwka is Deputy Director of the Visual Commentary on Scripture Project and Senior Research Fellow, King’s College London. She was formerly Ahmanson Curator of Art and Religion at The National Gallery.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Chinese Ladies Playing a Board Game, Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period (1736–1795), 2nd half of the 18th century, watercolour and opaque watercolour on silk (Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg)

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Press release from the Berlin State Museums:

Exchanging Gazes: Between China and Europe, 1669–1907
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 29 September 2017 — 7 January 2018

China and Europe are linked by a long tradition of reciprocal cultural exchange. These transactions were particularly intensive during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), which is regarded as one of the key phases of Chinese cultural and political history. Exquisite gifts were exchanged. European envoys attempted to establish official trade relations with China. But their efforts were in vain, as the Chinese established trade barriers, with the exception of the port of Canton—although they were very much interested in European science, art, and culture.

The exhibition illustrates the richly varied nature of this mutual fascination in objects ranging in date between 1669 and 1907. Many of the almost one hundred pieces could be classified as Chinoiserie or so-called Europerie: they provide us with information about early modern European images of China and also allow us to trace the predominant images of Europe in China. Highlights of the exhibition include impressive paintings, exquisite porcelain objects, a door from a wood-paneled room, as well as large-format photographs and copper engravings. The photographs and engravings show the ‘European palaces’ which Emperor Qianlong, who reigned from 1736 to 1795, had built in one of his parks. Today, only their ruins exist: British and French troops burned down the palaces and destroyed the extensive gardens during their 1860 Chinese campaign. Surprisingly, however, in this way they created a visual subject that was much-loved by European photographers after 1870.

Until now, the reciprocity—and sheer variety—of cultural exchange between China and Europe has hardly been appreciated or shown in an exhibition setting. The chosen objects offer impressive testimony to a long- lived and mutual interest between the two cultures. In addition, they can help us understand how Europe’s conception of China and China’s conception of Europe changed over the course of 250 years.

Particularly in the 18th century, it was not only Europe looking to China’s art production but also China looking to that of Europe. The fact that these exchanging gazes are to be taken quite literally and that they were cast back and forth now and again is demonstrated by the Chinese production of porcelain: around 1700, European missionaries living at the imperial court contributed to the development of the so-called foreign colours (yangcai). The chinaware that was subsequently decorated with the new shades of red and pink (famille rose) became so popular that it developed into an export hit and hence also had a lasting impact on European dining culture.

An exported plate, which was produced in China and shows two pilgrims on their way to Cythera, the island of love, allows the term ‘exchange of gazes’ to be connected more closely to the 18th century. In the European love discourse of that time, this term is connected with the concept of the love of souls. This type of love enables an encounter between lovers at eye level; yet it also involves the danger of unilateral self-reflection. Certainly this metaphor of love cannot be transferred unmitigatedly to the cooperation of cultures. Nevertheless, it points at two contradictory foundations of cultural exchange: such an exchange is only possible if, apart from differences, common features are recognized, for instance in the characteristics of systems of rule or in courtly cultures. At the same time, ‘exchange of gazes’ can allude to the fact that it is first and foremost one’s own self-interest that is respected in these constellations.

Due to political and economic changes, China and Europe had to repeatedly reconsider themselves, which means they had to come to a kind of self-understanding as well as set themselves in relation to each other. This becomes particularly evident when looking at objects called Chinoiseries, as they reflect the European image of China prevalent throughout the 18th century. Chinoiseries can be juxtaposed with the so-called Europeries, which were produced in China and give insight into the Chinese image of Europe. In order to present the foreign as alien, it had to be at least partially adapted to the familiar, which is why the objects exhibited here can be aesthetically classed in-between China and Europe. Many objects can additionally be found ‘between’ China and Europe because they circulated as export goods, diplomatic gifts or as possessions acquired abroad, all in order to develop an altered effect in their respective new repositories. It is furthermore evident that motifs and techniques migrated not only between these cultures but also between genres and materials. Prints, for example, became built architecture and vice versa. The exhibition, moreover, offers the rare occasion to simultaneously view Chinoseries and Europeries, which are usually stored in different collections. This therefore allows the gaze to wander back and forth and, in so doing, to comprehend that China and Europe share a common history.

Even though there are hardly definite dates that mark the history of exchange between China and Europe, the years in the exhibition’s title indicate two important stages in the European production of images of China. In 1669, Johan Nieuhof’s travelogue was published. Nieuhof had joined the first Dutch delegation of the United East India Company travelling to China in order to intensify the trade relationship with the empire that increasingly isolated itself—a venture which failed. From a historic point of view, the journey’s true success was Nieuhof’s richly illustrated travelogue that was published in large numbers and became one of the most important sources for European knowledge about China.

1907, on the other hand, marks the creation of four architectural photographs by Ernst Boerschmann, who travelled China as an architectural historian and re-established Western knowledge on Chinese architecture. This had become possible only because the major European powers had gradually forced the opening of China beginning in the second half of the 19th century. The objects exhibited here render not only the changing relationship between China and Europe from the late 17th to the early 20th century comprehensible—how and why it shifted in the direction of colonial policy—but also the traditional tendencies which persisted through these changes. Boerschmann, for instance, perpetuated the myth that porcelain was used as construction material, even though this was not his personal view.

A special exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in cooperation with the Max Planck Research Group ‘Objects in the Contact Zone: The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things’ at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence – Max Planck Institute.

Curatorial concept: Professor Dr. Matthias Weiß

From Michael Imhof Verlag:

Matthias Weiß, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, and Joachim Brand, eds., Wechselblicke: Zwischen China und Europa 1669–1907 / Exchanging Gazes: Between China and Europe 1669–1907 (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2017), 352 pages, ISBN: 9783731905738, $70.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save