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Artistic diversity

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

Love
National Gallery, until 5 October

On the other side of the room is a great trio: Vermeer’s serene ‘Young Woman Standing at a Virginal’, a hymn to blue and the power of light, Raphael’s ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ and Cranach’s ‘Cupid Complaining to Venus’. Interesting to compare how the Cranach differs from a medieval tapestry while pausing to admire the depth of eroticism he manages to infuse into this acceptable ‘classical’ subject. The hat Venus wears is in the height of 16th-century German aristocratic fashion and makes a much more lascivious image, being partially clad, than the purity of a completely nude figure.

Round the corner is a fabulous array of pattern-making by Holman Hunt, called ‘The Pot of Basil’, with the rather tacky inclusion of a lustre watering-can at bottom right, a strange and unexpected lapse of taste. Turner’s ‘Hero and Leander’ is next, an example of paint overpowering subject if ever there was one. The badly drawn eponymous figures are scarcely visible among the complex light effects and atmospheres Turner conjures up, the wisps and veils of gorgeous paint he invented for our delectation. But about love? Hardly at all.

Among the other exhibits are a couple of contemporary Indian miniaturists who specialise in a distinctive brand of Pop Art, a glazed ceramic long-eared rabbit by Grayson Perry bearing the repeated legend ‘God please keep my children safe’, an ironic conjunction when one considers that rabbits tend to eat their young in times of danger, a lovely blond-toned Tiepolo painting of Cleopatra, and fine things by Goya, Claude and Alma-Tadema. The subject of these paintings can only very loosely be described as love, but, as a theme designed to attract the punters and an excuse to pull together a lively and varied selection of mostly high-quality work, it succeeds. And if I want to think about love, I can always consult the poets.

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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).