Challenging Perception: René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle, Tate Liverpool.

Review by Kenn Taylor

The imagery of Belgian surrealist René Magritte has long become a part of popular culture. More importantly than that though, he can be said to be one of the artists who has had the most profound effect on how we perceive the world, his pioneering vision in painting expanding our capacity for what could be visually possible. This large retrospective at Tate Liverpool, the biggest in the UK since the 1980s, takes a thematic approach, split into sections that look at Magritte’s key preoccupations and the compositional and conceptual devices he used throughout his work.

Despite its thematic nature, the show starts chronologically with his early works such as The Menaced Assassin (1927), which depicts a scene of the aftermath of a murder, influenced by Magritte’s love of pulp fiction. It’s referential, uncanny nature and pale palette being features that would be seen throughout Magritte’s career. For all of his surrealism, there's a definite humanity to Magritte’s work. The Flavour of Tears (1948) shown in duplicate, believed to have been made twice so a cash-poor Magritte could supply two interested collectors, shows a bird which is also a leaf being eaten by a caterpillar. It's a striking piece of surrealism, but seems to touch on wider notions of life, death and the cycles of nature. Magritte also clearly had a sense of humour, and there is an element of mockery in some of his works, specifically from his Période Vache. In La Famine (1948) the Eiffel Tower is reduced to garish daubs and a French Policeman to a comic figure, apparently an attack on his alienation from the Paris surrealists.

It's often been said that Magritte’s work wasn't technically brilliant. Indeed there are finer hands to be seen, and admittedly only a few pieces look particularly more impressive in their original form than reproductions. But it is clear to see here that perhaps it is his easily reproduced graphic style that has aided his work in permeating visual culture so much.

The section Idiotic Works shows the rarely seen commercial work that over many decades helped keep Magritte afloat financially. Obviously by its nature this work is compromised from his vision, he apparently deeply resented having to do it, but hints of his surreal vision can be seen, such as in the advert for Distillerie Luxor Bruxelles Elixir Sus Advocaat (1935) where his sun and moon with faces dominate the space much more than the drink itself. There is also an adjacent selection of his photography and film. Some of this reflects many of his ideas in a different medium, showing a similar interest in perception and mystery, but the majority of it is quite forgettable.

At the heart of Magritte’s work was a challenge to conventional perception. This varied from visual tricks and puns, like the giraffe sitting in a wine glass in The Cut-Glass Bath (1949) to the more fundamental questioning of language and human communication, the flexibility of perception and reality and, ultimately the ‘freedom of mind', a title of one his works.

Particularly resonant pieces include Panorama for the Populace (1926), its layers, a key concern for Magritte, revealing buildings beneath trees which themselves are beneath a beach. In The Key to the Fields (1936) meanwhile, perception is literally shattered, as a landscape painted on a window is seen broken into fragments, identical of course to the scene outside in ‘reality’.

A section called Fractured Nude examines Magritte’s work with the female form. It’s clear that, to him, the human body was just another object to be played with and manipulated, not to mention de-personalised. This is highlighted by Representation (1937) where the midriff of a woman, minus head and limbs is shown, the work’s frame tracing the outline of the body. The shape and line and our perception of it is everything for Magritte, even at the cost of the person.

The Dominion of Light (1952) featured in one of the final sections is powerful and simple as night and day are show co-existing and merging. Quiet, considered, crisp, surreal, funny, uncanny, making us examine what we perceive to be real; it seems to sum up Magritte. It’s more subtle than his well-known ‘Bowler Hat’ images, but perhaps more powerful and a good ending to the show.

Rather than appreciating the fine quality of viewing original works, it is rather seeing so much of his output gathered together that draws you deeper into the man and his work and the overriding impression you get is of his constant drive to question the bounds of perception and convention. We take such things for granted now, they're common even in advertising, but Magritte was a pioneer in challenging was we perceive to be real.

This extensive and thoughtful show is well worth seeing for anyone who wants to look deeper into works that have perhaps been taken for granted, and into the life and work of a man who helped change what was possible in how we see the world.

René Magritte The Pleasure Principle runs until 16 October.

tate.org.uk/liverpool

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
René Magritte
Golconda (1953)
The Menil Collection, Houston © HERSCOVICI, Brussels - 2011

Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contemporary Video, Guggenheim Museum Berlin.

Review by Katerina Valdivia Bruch

The Guggenheim Museum Berlin presents in Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contemporary Video, six artists from its collection that address possible or fictional realities through video. Reading the title, one might think that fairytales or myths will be the topic of the exhibition. Instead, the videos are critical reflections about society using a symbolic narrative.

The meditative video of Chinese artist Cao Fei, who was a resident artist at the Osram factory in China thanks to a bursary from the Siemens Art Program, gives a hint about this. During six months, she had the opportunity to talk to the employees and ask them questions about their daily lives, their dreams and how they motivate themselves to leave their homes in order work in a factory. From these regular meetings and talks, she created the video Whose Utopia (2006), divided in three parts –Imagination of Product, Factory Fairytale and My Future Is Not a Dream. Whose Utopia pays attention to the individual wishes and dreams of the employees, who are performing their dreams, either dancing or playing music, while working. Almost simultaneously, a girl is dancing wearing an angel’s dress and some seconds later we see her in her normal working clothes. Another moment of the video shows a young man playing an electric guitar to an absorbed and non stopping working audience. The song, My Future is not a Dream evokes a melancholic resignation of dreams that might not come true.

In a similar way, Argentinean artist Mika Rottenberg presents a claustrophobic and absurd working atmosphere in her video installation Dough (2006). A group of women with exaggerated bodily proportions - either extremely fat, with long fingers or flexible extremities - are working in a small and warm place cutting, extending, turning and packing a big piece of pastry, that is sent to the other women colleagues by an obese employee, who is constantly kneading the dough. This claustrophobic atmosphere is augmented by a wooden installation, giving the audience a little frame to see what is happening in this environment, in which flowers create allergic reactions, and tears and sweat help to enlarge the dough. In some way, both videos are reflections on modes of exploitation of labourers in factories, generally organised by foreign businesses from rich industrial nations.

Francis Alÿs’ When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) is a utopian look at inclusive cultures. In a slum in the outskirts of Lima, Peru, the artist asked 500 people to literally 'move' a dune, scooping it some centimetres above its level. The artist created this piece for the third Lima Biennial (2002), motivated by the political situation of Peru during the corrupt government of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). The symbolic movement of the mountain by the group is almost an act of faith, pointing out that every single individual is important in order to reach a common goal. The geological displacement is a 'social allegory' and, as the artist says: “When Faith Moves Mountains attempts to translate social tensions into narratives that in turn intervene in the imagined landscape of a place. The action is meant to infiltrate the local history and mythology of Peruvian society (including its art history), to insert another rumour into its narratives. If the script meets the expectations and addresses the anxieties of that society at this time and place, it may become a story that survives the event itself. At that moment, it has the potential to become a fable or an urban myth.”

What if the landing on the moon would have been done by women? This question is answered by Aleksandra Mir in her video First Woman on the Moon (1999). Commemorating the 30th anniversary of landing on the moon by the troupe of Apollo 11, the artist recreates a fake moon landing on a beach in the Netherlands. Parodying the historical moment, the episode is recorded by the press, including the creation of sand craters by huge caterpillar bulldozers. The epic and almost magic moment is when the US American flag is planted on the ground by a woman, mocking a moment that some people consider part of a conspiracy theory.

Another moon landing is the one presented in One Million Kingdoms (2001) by French artist Pierre Huyghe. The protagonist of this animated story is the Japanese manga character Annlee, purchased by Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno in 1999, 'rescuing' it from being condemned to be buried in oblivion. In this video, Huyghe gives Annlee a new role as a solitary girl walking on the moon. A landscape of mountains appears, when the girl starts to speak. However, her voice is an electronic version with excerpts of talks by astronaut Neil Armstrong during the landing on the moon in 1969, interrupted by extracts of Jules Verne´s novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), as if the girl is remembering passages of fictional and real stories, and overall about mass-mediated myths.

In this exhibition, myths and fables are presented as actual reflections on society, veiled with symbols and allegories about reality, for instance gender inequality and inhuman working conditions. The concept of creating a utopian world in contemporary art expresses that, once upon a time, another world was possible.

Once Upon A Time runs until 9 October.

deutsche-guggenheim-berlin.de

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
© 2011 Cao Fei, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou

Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010, Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Review by Paul Hardman

There is a moment in the film that accompanies the Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010 exhibition, when the artist seems momentarily irritated with the interviewer. The subject of the influence of his former tutors, Bernd and Hilla Becher, has come up, and it is apparent that the comparison of their work to his is something that Struth has become a little tired of.

It is impossible though, not to address the influence of the Bechers, when considering Struth, or any other of the alumni of the Düsseldorf School of Photography (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) who were taught by the Bechers in the 1970s. The rigorous consistency of the Bechers’ work, along with their teaching of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) must have made a deep impression on all of their students. In the film, Struth recalls the intimacy of the teaching at that time, when just a few students formed the group and would be taught intensely, socialising with their tutors outside of the academy as well as in class.

Bernd and Hilla Becher, of course, had an incredibly consistent body of work that is completely peerless, they stuck to their subject of documenting industrial buildings from when they first collaborated in 1959, for over 40 years. These images of cooling towers, gas towers, oil refineries and so on, record entire typologies of structures, in an approach that is exhaustive. Their compositions were always formally straight forward, and completely dispassionate, nothing is emphasised or exaggerated, and each building was recorded in exactly the same way.

The Bechers’ rigorous approach clearly has had an influence on Struth, but unlike that other great Düsseldorf alumni Andreas Gursky, whose compositions simplify subject matter into flat rectangular strips on a vast scale, Struth’s photography is willing to include complexity, and in many of the images in this exhibition he fills the frame with intersecting lines and forms. This is shown whether in the oblique aerial views of Korea, intensely detailed pictures that include whole landscapes of forests, streets, and tower blocks – photographs of the insides of labs and space technology, in which wires and gadgets provide a baffling tangle – or the huge images of forests and jungles, the Heaven series, in which almost the entire floor to ceiling frame is filled with interwoven foliage.

Struth continues the tradition of objective and dispassionate work, championed by the Bechers, and he maintains a clear fascination with technological and urban development. In many of his photographs the buildings are presented in such a way that people can be seen to scale with their surroundings, dwarfed by the vastness of the built environment. Tower blocks are revealed to be something slightly monstrous as they tower above or oppressively crowd around the more human scale buildings. In the accompanying film Struth himself compares an oil rig, in one of this exhibitions most striking images, to a chained bear. His photograph shows a rig in a dock, with chains coming from the foreground of the image right up to the higher parts of the structure, so that it appears that it is indeed some kind of beast to be restrained and feared. In this image then, it is possible to detect a clear break with the style of the New Objectivity, although subtly, Struth does allow himself to make a comment and take a point of view, rather than simply taking the role of the observer, the documenter. He allows his subjective ideas to make their mark on the image.

Struth’s work is also characterised by a diversity of subjects, he does work in sequences or ‘typologies’, but even within these sets he allows himself substantial movement. A case in point is the photographs of visitors to galleries and museums. In some of these he has photographed the visitors as they are, bustling around the paintings of the Prado, in others he has replaced the real visitors with extras and the images take on a more epic quality, so that huge panoramas are created. The opening exhibition of the show is from these series, a group of gallery visitors are viewed from the perspective of the painting, or slightly below it, so that we find ourselves looking up at the rapt faces of the visitors. Of course, since there is some ambiguity over whether these people are genuine, or are in fact posed by Struth, this photograph sets up a kind of reflexive dilemma creating a self examination as one explores this exhibition, ‘how do we act in the gallery space, how genuine are we ourselves in this role?’.

The exhibition moves from the gigantic scale of the tower blocks and museums to a much more comfortable scale in Struth’s series of family portraits. This change of scale and pace provide a different dimension to the exhibition that affects how the other images are seen. These again are global in reach, from Japan to Germany to the U.S., but instead of marvelling at the complexities of urban development, the subject becomes the subtleties of family relationships, the balance of power in these relationships, family resemblances, vernacular interiors and so on. But on another level the subject is similarly to the urban panoramas, how an individual finds their place in a wider group, in a wider context, and again, this becomes a reflexive situation. The question arises as to what these family portraits of (mostly) anonymous sitters reveal, and what they hide. A viewer must find themselves considering their own families and in turn the vastness of humanity in general – something that may not have been the case if these photographs were not preceded and followed by the other more macro scenes of modern cities.

It is in setting up these tensions that this exhibition raises itself to another level, above the technical expertise and spectacular imagery that is on display. In both the arrangement and placing of the pictures in the gallery, and in the complexities inherent in the ideas of each series, the exhibition builds and builds, and Struth’s work proves itself as a subtle but masterly oeuvre.

Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010 runs until 16 September.

whitechapelgallery.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Semi Submersible Rig (2007)
Courtesy the artist