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Artistic diversity

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

Love
National Gallery, until 5 October

The pictorial intelligence so inventively at work in Hockney’s picture is sadly absent in Emin’s self-obsessed tirade. What a treat to see Hockney’s painting again (on loan from the Arts Council), fresh and glorious more than 45 years after it was made. The autobiography or element of self-exposure in the Hockney is only part of the whole tough and radical image; in the Emin, the self-exposure dominates and attempts to compensate for the lack of any formal, aesthetic or intellectual rigour. In this it does not succeed: you have to be interested in Miss Emin before you bother to give this work more than a cursory glance.

Hanging near the Hockney is a Chagall of flying lovers — all right if you like bunches of generalised flowers and folkloric symbolism. I’d have preferred some of Jeffery Camp’s much more original flying lovers (original in drawing, colour, composition and emotional complexity), but to include a living underrated English artist seems beyond the remit of the exhibition. However, we should be thankful for the inclusion of such great (and still remarkably little-known) works as Stanley Spencer’s ‘Contemplation’ (1937) from ‘The Beatitudes of Love’ series, borrowed from the Spencer Gallery in Cookham. Here’s an artist who can play about with form (call it distortion if you like) and scale in a totally personal way and make something extraordinarily moving of it.

There’s a marvellous double portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby next to it, a harmony in pinks and blues which also happens to be an excellent representation of the newly married Mr and Mrs Thomas Coltman. It’s full of movement, from the over-arching line through Mr Coltman’s arms and shoulders, echoed in his wife’s right arm and the horse’s bent neck, to the returning curve of the dog’s back as it fawns at the horse’s knees. And all these localised surface movements are played off against the majestic diagonal thrust of the tree trunk.

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Roger W Quinton

September 5th, 2008 8:09am

I am so sad that Mr Lambirth has failed to feel the passion of Tracey Emin's words in her work at this exhibition. The work is much deeper than simply picture or structure, it has emotion burned into it. I know nothing about art, and I defer to Mr Lambirth in that respect, but perhaps I understand a little more about deep and true love and the pain involved - it is this that Ms Emin has displayed for all to see, and it is this that makes the two portions a work of genuine art (perhaps only for the masses - people like me).