Cornwall is looking beautiful under summer sun and outdoor pursuits beckon, but St Ives provides the perfect alternative when the beach palls or rain threatens. Besides the Tate, there are a number of commercial galleries, and chief among them is Wills Lane, which offers a stimulating variety of fine and applied art. For the summer period I have selected a Critic’s Choice for the gallery (until 5 September); of 14 artists, some better-known than others: Maggi Hambling, David Inshaw and Colin Self rubbing shoulders with Tyrel Broadbent, Roland Collins and Nigel Ellis. Landscape is one theme, the sea another. Ceramic fish by Marcia Blakenham flee the marauding black-headed gulls evocatively drawn by Jason Gathorne-Hardy, Adrian Berg’s luxuriant landscapes swap tips on pattern with Stephen Chambers’s screenprints, and John Hubbard’s delicate watercolours of trees contrast with the lively impasto of Tory Lawrence’s north Cornish views. Victoria Achache’s colourful still-life paintings and Jo Welsh’s boxed tableaux bring further diversity. Etchings are another theme, with fine things from Self (birds and bee-keeping), Inshaw (cricket) and a complex surreal narrative from Welsh.
At Tate St Ives some of the best galleries have been given over to an appallingly slight piece of nursery nonsense by a Dutch artist called Lily van der Stokker (born 1954), but at least there’s a worthwhile selection from the Tate’s permanent collection in the other spaces. (There’s an admission charge for this Tate, so the visitor is entitled to some value for money.) The display is called Object: Gesture: Grid and is subtitled St Ives and the International Avant-garde (until 26 September), featuring such home-grown talents as Margaret Mellis, Peter Lanyon, Sandra Blow and Patrick Heron. It’s both exciting and thought-provoking to see these artists juxtaposed with the likes of Pollock, Hofmann, Rothko and de Kooning, but however revealing the conjunctions the show is incomplete without Roger Hilton. There’s a superb Brancusi ‘Fish’ from 1926 in bronze, metal and wood, cleverly lit to cast four different shadow profiles, and a playful construction/found object by Eileen Agar called ‘Fish Basket’. In the last room is some fine gridded minimalism by Mondrian, André, Judd and Mary Martin. Just the sort of informative display the Tate does so well.
In Bath, at the Victoria Art Gallery (by Pulteney Bridge, until 5 September), is an exhibition of landscapes by Matthew Smith. Let me at once declare an interest: I am a passionate admirer of Smith’s paintings and I helped to select and organise this exhibition, as well as write a catalogue essay for it. Smith is a marvellous painter, a rich and unusual colourist, a devotee of thick, luscious paint and an unashamed celebrator of life. He is perhaps best known for his nudes and flower paintings, but he also painted more than 100 landscapes, many more than was generally realised before the publication of the catalogue raisonné of his work last year. This is the first time there’s been an exhibition devoted to his landscapes, and I think it will be a revelation for many, not only in the range of subject, but also in approach, as a number of his watercolours and drawings are also included. His art has been a little neglected of late: high time to look at him again.
Craigie Aitchison, who died last December, a true original and the most loyal of friends, is grievously missed, but at least we have his art to console us. There’s a substantial exhibition of his paintings, ranging from 1950 to 2007, opening on 30 July and running until 25 September at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, as part of the Festival. The show will focus on still-life paintings and portraits but also includes Crucifixions and pictures of Aitchison’s beloved Bedlington terriers. When it comes to the spare poetry of design and purity of colour, Craigie had few rivals.
In London, a couple of shows which continue through the summer deserve special mention. At Chris Beetles (8 & 10 Ryder Street, SW1, until 4 September) is a magnificent survey of the black-and-white photographs of Edwin Smith (1912–71), highly unusual in their degree of imaginative receptivity to buildings and landscape. Not only did Smith have a feel for the oddness of things and a flair for the unexpected aspect, but his greatest strength is a precise yet unassuming particularity. He had a remarkable gift for textures (look at the way he photographed the walls of Furlongs, the house of artist Peggy Angus, where Ravilious used to stay), and for unfamiliar views (see his St Ives, 1964, or Temple Bar transported to the depths of leafy Hertfordshire). Utterly beguiling.
Meanwhile at Timothy Taylor Gallery (15 Carlos Place, W1, until 27 August) is a mixed show called The Tightrope Walker, dealing with art, design and furniture in post-war Paris. The attempt to rehabilitate Bernard Buffet’s reputation is misguided, but there are some wonderfully textural Dubuffets and a rather fine Anna-Eva Bergman abstract. Composed of near-geometrical floating shapes like the parts of modern furniture waiting to be assembled, it fits very nicely with the sculptural tables and bookcases nearby. A group of Hans Hartung’s deeply considered drawings and prints are the other principal reason for visiting this show.
Finally, a day out at Henry Moore’s headquarters at Perry Green, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, is always a delight. Besides Hoglands, the Moores’ home with its idiosyncratic collection of art and artefacts, and the grounds with their workshops and studios, there’s always a special in-focus exhibition. This summer (until 30 August) in the Sheep Field Barn gallery is a display of the books, prints and portfolios that Moore worked on. He was a prolific graphic artist, producing over 700 prints, of which nearly half were made for a series of deluxe books and portfolios, including collaborations with W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell and Sacheverell Sitwell, or on themes such as Stonehenge, an elephant’s skull or sheep. The exhibition is commemorated by a beautiful book by retiring head of collections and exhibitions, David Mitchinson, entitled Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios (price £75). If you can’t get to Perry Green this summer, the book is a worthy substitute.
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