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Rachel Howard 'Regulus', 2011 (Detail), acrylic, house hold gloss and oil on canvas
The exhibition of paintings 'Folie A Deux' at Blain/Southern is until 22nd December. I know Rachel is part of the
London scene, well known for hanging out with Mr.Hirst and being a kind of
gothic girl with a Francis Bacon vibe and married to the Director of
OtherCriteria, but we won't hold that against her. This is an interesting
painting, for me she does have her moments when her she focuses on abstraction. But I think she gets distracted at being a kind of naughty British Cecily Brown with her suggestive figures, these leave me cold. Blain/Southern explore some interesting childhood ideas in their
press release:
'Howard grew up on a farm in County Durham and attended a Quaker
school, the questions that unsettled her childhood and troubled her in
adolescence (“If God made me, then who made God?”) remain anchored in her work.
“I am petrified of death,” she explains, “I can accept that I will rot and
putrefy, but it’s the idea that I will no longer love, paint or think that
chills me”. Rachel Howard does not believe in God. But she believes in life –
in living, and she believes in art – in painting. It is this faith that shines
through her work, and imbues her art with a quality that Joachim Pissarro has
declared “sublime” according to Kant’s Critique of Judgement: “The
sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it
immediately involves, or else by its presence, provokes, a representation of
limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.” Howard’s
work is total and limitless in its refined glossy abstraction: it allows us to
grasp a part of human existence that can not be seen but only felt.' ..and this
is an interesting painting also, reminds me of the last Rothko paintings where
they just empty out their life..these are real suicide paintings, he was found dead in his studio weeks later.
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Rachel Howard 'Suicide Painting 4', 2007, household gloss and acrylic on canvas |
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Mark Rothko 'Black on Gray' 1969 |
Bonsoir David, cette grande élégance picturale est le reflet d'un bel esprit. see you soon :-)
ReplyDeleteGrande de vous entendre, Thige! Oui, spirituel des abstractions peu, mais un peu trop léger? Bonsoir mon ami ..
ReplyDelete