Sandro Chia at Hillsboro Fine Art

On Thursday 1^st May 2014, Carol and I went into town to an opening at Hillsboro Fine Art of new oil paintings and watercolours by Sandro Chia. Although I had been waiting with baited breath for this exhibition for many months - I had doubted if I would actually go to the opening - since I had come to hate the posturing and desperate networking of openings. However, two weeks before the exhibition, Sandro Chia (who I had friended on Facebook the year before) messaged me. I was so shocked and surprised by his gesture and I told him he had been a teenage hero of mine and I said I would attend the opening where he said he would like to shake my hand. Since the age of nineteen Sandro Chia had been one of my minor heroes though sadly I had never actually seen any of his work in the flesh. A key member of the Italian Transavanguardia that emerged in the early 1980’s, Chia was one of the seminal figures in the revival of figurative Post-Modern art. However, after a meteoric rise he quickly fell out of critical favour, collector interest - and most devastatingly fashion - as did most of the Neo-Expressionists of the period with the arrival of Neo-Geo and Neo-Conceptualism. Chia continued to exhibit all over the world - however his work was given scant attention by the in-crowd who almost unanimously dismissed 80s art as an embarrassing chapter in the history of taste. That Chia had continued doggedly to pursue his own vision despite almost two decades of neglect and lack of favour by the art world taste makers impressed me and I was very fond of the new works I saw him post on Facebook. So I was excited to go to the opening despite my chronic social phobia and self-loathing depression.                                                                                                      

  

Before going to the Hillsboro, Carol and I decided to have a drink in the rock bar Fibber McGees to take the edge off. I had three Southern Comforts and Red Bull and Carol had two pints of Strawberry Kopparberg. I remarked to Carol that I still felt more comfortable in places like Fibbers than posh stuck up places. After an hour, we headed down to the Chia exhibition in great form. We were fashionably late, though Chia had still not arrived.    Apparently he had only arrived in Dublin from Miami the night before.  I was very fond of Chia’s new oil paintings and watercolours - though Carol was far less impressed by them comparing them to Clip Art and only liked his use of kindergarten colours and rough-cut frames. I liked Chia’s faux-primitive style of painting which made his oil paintings look like clotted poster-paint works by a talented, but lonely and solipsistic child. I noted how in the early 1980’s Chia had produced vast oil paintings but now his work was greatly reduced in size and ambition since his fall from grace in the mid 1980’s - though his themes and characters had not changed in over thirty-four years. Although, I found Chia’s repetitive painting of single male artist figures for over thirty years bizarre - I did enjoy the small differences in treatment he created. His figures did not fly around like they had in the early eighties when he was at the height of his fame - and they looked more worn down by life. Another theme his new work repeated, was the male artist showing his work to teddy bears – an ironic comment by Chia on his audience in the art world – though the number of teddy bears looking at his work had diminished and they seemed less interested than before. I wondered why there were hardly any female figures in his work and if his whole oeuvre was a comment on male loss of purpose and identity in a post-feminized world. I also liked the handmade frames Chia had made from pieces of roughly cut wood painted chalk white. The oil paintings were priced at €26,000 and the watercolours at €3,000 – very expensive in real world terms, but very cheap for an artist who had once been at the top of the art world pantheon. Only one had sold, though if I had been a collector with money I would have bought one, perhaps Cool Artist an artist figure in a snow storm with a snowman with a grin looking on.                                                                                       

Chia finally arrived at exhibition about an hour late and he was soon surrounded by well-wishers chatting with him about his last showing of work in Ireland at the Rosc group show in 1984, querying his Irish connections and talking about the weather. Meanwhile I bought the catalogue which cost €10. Finally, Sandro Chia sat down on the same bench where we were sitting on the opposite side. So I took my chance to say hello and wish him well. “Hi Sandro!” I said at which he jumped up and started chatting with someone else. I thought he had not heard me or maybe someone else had caught his eye first. A few minutes later he sat back down. “Hi Sandro, I am David Murphy, I am friends with you on Facebook!” I said excitedly. “Oh I had to delete one of my Facebook accounts, too many maniacs, stalkers and lonely people.” He replied contemptuously, not even bothering to look at me. I was absolutely gobsmacked. No one had ever been so rude and disrespectful to me for no reason in all my life. For five minutes I sat in silence with Carol - trying to take in what Chia had just said to me. Had I upset him by mentioning Facebook, or after chatting with me online had he looked at my art and decided I was to be avoided? Either way, I decided not to let him get away with it. “But Sandro you are the one who emailed me the other day!” I angry challenged him. “Maybe I was lonely.” He mumbled. “You know, I always wondered why your career had got nowhere. I mean from 1980 to 1983 you were up there and then suddenly your career went over a cliff. I read people thought you were arrogant! And now I know it’s true!” I shouted at him. “I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave the premises.” John Daly the owner of the Hillsboro interrupted. “What about your career? You’re frustrated!” He replied calmly. “Well you know what, I am a maniac, but at least I am honest and you are nothing but a spiv.” I shouted. “I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave the premises.” John Daly interrupted again. “No problem!” I replied and peacefully left the gallery. It was the first time in twenty years of gallery going and heated debates that I had been asked to leave a gallery.                         

Later we met up with a friend and had a pint in Jurys Inn before heading home. I was left feeling totally disgusted with the art world. Virtually every single hero I had met in the art world had been a disappointment – though for sheer two-faced rudeness Chia topped them all. I still liked Chia’s work - but then my taste for early 1980s art was ‘manic’ and out of step with fashion. Worse still, I could never return to the Hillsboro - the one gallery in Dublin I genuinely loved because of their attempted revival of Neo-Expressionist painters.

Patrick Graham Half Light at Hillsboro Fine Art

On Thursday 24^th October 2013, Carol and I went in to own to see the opening of Half Light a new exhibition of paintings and mixed media collages by Patrick Graham at Hillsboro Fine Art. Apart from Carol’s openings, it was the first opening we had gone to in years, and I was frankly nervous about being in public again, but I was such a fan of Graham’s work I could not miss it. Also, I was feeling at such a low about my own art I hoped to get some inspiration from the seventy year olds canvases. Before going into the exhibition we had a meal at KFC which I enjoyed more than any meal in a fancy restaurant.                

Graham’s exhibition consisted of three large diptychs in oils called Half Light and eight mixed media collages called the Lamb Series. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed by them - feeling they added little to Graham’s oeuvre. There was little to grab hold of in these new works by Graham. Apparently Half Light was an attempt to capture the spirit of the sea in Co. Mayo without resorting to direct representational imagery. For example Half Light III was basically nothing more than two grey canvases scrapped down a few times and eventually finished off with fat horizontal brushstrokes in clotted and ugly oil paint, and it had taken Graham over two years to paint. That such a minimal and to my mind still unsatisfactory work could have taken Graham two years was incredible. These minimal works simply did not inspire me with the kind of confident belief in Graham that for example the late works of Rothko did.                                                                                                                                                     

On the other hand, Graham had always built up his paintings through a constant process of painting and scraping down - to arrive at a final eloquent statement - it was just that these works paired down the recognisable imagery to an extreme I had not seen before in his work. Graham’s stripping down of the expressionist excesses of his previous work - to speak of the silence of air - seemed to be appropriate after the end of the era of decadent excess of the Celtic Tiger and the new age of austerity, condemnation and puritan self-examination. In reducing his painting to its barest expression, I felt Graham had at least caught the mood of the times where all of us were left questioning what was really important and what was merely spectacle. So I found these paintings haunt my imagination more than I had thought they would.                                                                                                                           

The mixed media collages that formed The Lamb Series, I found were similarly vague and disjointed, though they did have little sparks of figurative genius. They seemed to battle again with the themes of; the temptation of the flesh, artistic pride and an absent God, which had previously cropped up in Graham’s work. However, I wondered if Graham’s famous reaction against his early facility and illustrational modes had in these works left the viewer with little to admire. Perhaps, they did avoid obvious Expressionist theatrics and left the viewer something to muse about, however I was underwhelmed. I also noticed that this doubt about the veracity of traditional representation, led Graham to mangle form in a sadomasochistic way. Seen in reproduction, these works were even more inscrutable, so I was glad to have seen them in person. Thinking again about them, I wondered if they should have been called The Dying of the Light – a series of final repudiations of the world. I spent €10 on the exhibition catalogue, which I discovered had a very revealing interview with Graham; however the quality of the reproductions was awful.                                                                                                                                


I wanted to go up to Patrick Graham and wish him all the best, but could not summon up the courage to talk to my hero - besides I was unsure what I could say about his new work. While at the opening we met up with Rob and had a few glasses of wine. Surrounded by arty and rich people, I began to feel panicked and depressed. I felt very uncomfortable at the show, and we decided to leave early. We went for a pint in Jury’s Inn, which I need to calm my nerves. Rob drove us home and had a couple of coffees at our house which I enjoyed.                

Basil Blackshaw at Eighty

On 11^th September 2012, Carol’s friend Anne drove us up to the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio in Banbridge Co. Down to see a retrospective of paintings and drawings by Basil Blackshaw a painter’s painter who had been a hero of my old art teacher Kenneth Donfield. There were few Irish artists I would travel such a distance to see - but Basil Blackshaw was one of them. The border between North and South was so subtle that we looked around unsure if we had entered the North. But when we saw the Union Jack flying over housing estates - a primal shudder ran down my spine. Still apart from the flags there was little to distinguish between Republic of Ireland bungalows and Unionist bungalows. After a life time of watching ‘The Troubles’ on television, I had avoided Northern Ireland like the plague, so it was my first ever trip to the North and I was pleasantly surprised by how normal it was. The centre was a beautiful one with very friendly and helpful staff. Before going around the exhibition, Anne bought us coffees and delicious scones with cream and strawberry jam.                                                                                  

                 

I did not think much of F.E. McWilliam’s work, though I did find his more intimate and personal small sculptural maquettes more interesting than his large scale bronzes. I found F.E. McWilliam’s version of surrealism kitsch and inelegant and his expressionistic work inspired by the bombings of The Troubles unredeemably brutalistic. Looking at McWilliam’s various 3d playthings, it struck me again that sculpture could descend into abysmal kitsch faster than painting ever could. However, I admired F.E. McWilliam’s more conventional portraits and busts from early in his career – and it struck me again, that many regional artists had not profited from their modernist adventures. McWilliam seemed to have given up on such slow and deliberate study of form and turned to make a series of pastiches of fashionable styles - yet originating nothing. Still, I wondered what kind of artist he might have been if he had more integrity and courage to avoid the allure of each passing fad.                                                                      

 The retrospective of over sixty years of work by Basil Blackshaw proved to me that he was painting better and better. His early work was very strong and always wonderfully painterly with hints at an obsessive interest in Cézanne and Walter Sickert. More conservative art lovers must have been most impressed by his realist paintings and drawings of horse races but I found them somewhat irrelevant in the age of photography and lacking the intimacy of his paintings of his pets. Though, Blackshaw’s portraits of friends (mostly male) were evocative, I personally found his ‘portraits’ of his dogs and horses truly insightful and full of love and respect. Blackshaw never made a casual or sloppy brushstroke though his freedom and searching might have made the unsophisticated think otherwise. He was a master of creams, browns, greys, blacks and muted colours - yet his efforts at strong pure colour did not convince me.                                                                                   

                                                                

It was Blackshaw’s paintings since the age of sixty-eight that most impressed me. They married a modern day freedom reminiscent of Cy Twombly and even Basquiat (especially with their deployment of writing and painterly erasure) with a lifetime of realist skills and criticality – to create some of the strongest arguments in favour of contemporary painting. They were so much more than mere ideas in paint - they were paint come to life to embody a spiritual manifestation. His hard-won virtuosity went beyond uncritical illustration, tedious realism and crass expression into a painterly grandeur only a few ever achieved. In his late paintings he made everything look childishly easy - but as a fellow painter I knew what kind of mental and physical labour had gone into such final life affirming freedom. These late paintings were some of the very best and most relevant I had seen in years. I felt inspired to paint in the presence of such valiant and free expressions. Before we left we bought the catalogue for the exhibition, however I was disappointed when I saw how poorly lit, discoloured and unfocused the reproductions of the paintings were.                                                                                                                      

Strangely in retrospect, I found my initial impression of Blackshaw’s work diminished. His early work struck me as too academic and his later work overshadowed by the far greater examples of Cy Twombly and Jean Michel Basquiat, still he was one of the few real painters in Ireland.

Julian Schnabel at Hillsboro Fine Art 2009

Tipped off by a friend on MySpace, I learned that an exhibition of works on paper by Julian Schnabel was on its last day of display in the Hillsboro Fine Art gallery, which specialized in 20^th Century and Contemporary Art. So on Saturday 10^th October, at 9:45am, I left my house full of excitement and travelled into town on the bus over-flowing with expectation. I had hoped Carol would join me but she had to sleep after a night of collaging.                                                                                                      

Hillsboro Fine Art, was directly opposite the Rotunda Hospital’s new entrance on Parnell Square. However when I arrived at the gallery at 10:30am - when it was due to open - I found the door locked and the galleries lights off. In desperation, I rang the intercom three times and then knocked on the door three times, before realizing there was no one there. From the window, I could see a beautiful Schnabel painting on paper - under glass and framed in a lovely black frame. I was so close and yet so far!                                                            

I decided to go to Chapters bookshop in order to kill sometime - where I bought a small book on Egon Schiele. Then I went back to the gallery at 11am but it was still closed! So I went down to Easons’ to look around. It was absolutely packed with news people, photographers and slack-jawed heavy-metal fans, pressed around to see Ozzy Osbourne who was signing books. I saw the back of his head as he signed autographs but I felt contemptuous of the whole circus. I went to McDonalds and had a Big Mac meal, which I loved.                                                                                                                                       

Then I went back to the Hillsboro gallery only to find it still closed at 12pm. I was just about to leave when a gallery woman came and unlocked the door. “Eh, is the exhibition still open to view?” I asked her desperately. “Eh, yes you can come in, but I am only here to receive a delivery.” She replied in a kindly manner. “Oh, thank you! I’m not a collector, I’m just an artist but I came into town especially to the Schnabel’s! I am a huge Schnabel fan!” I exclaimed. She let me into the gallery and turned on the lights.                                                                                                         

Apart from Schnabel’s works, the exhibition New York Contemporary included small paintings on canvas by Ross Bleckner, Donald Baechler, David Salle and Jeff Schneider - none of which I was very impressed by - in fact I could think of countless Irish painters who had shown better works in Dublin in recent years. But, I was delighted and enthralled, by the Neo-Abstract-Expressionist Schnabel works on view.                                                                                                                

He was represented by about six hand-painted screen-prints, with resin dripped on them. They dated from 1995 and came from editions of 80. In fact, despite the fact they were in part screen-prints, Schnabel’s personality oozed from them. Again, I was struck by the Joie de Vivre of Schnabel’s Neo-Salon brand of Expressionism and its total lack of angst. The colours were bold and strong – fuchsia pinks, cobalt blues, and darker blues and burnt reds - brushed on in semi-thick, textured, gestural strokes - around which he wrote words like; La Blusa Rosa, Otono, Mujer, Invierno, and Primaveral’ which gave the works their titles. The works reflected Schnabel’s new life with his Spanish wife Olatz and his visits to Spain that year. They were inspired works, which relied on Schnabel’s subconscious manipulation of forms and materials. They reminded me of late Miró canvases that mixed surrealism with the sale and effects of Abstract-Expressionism and the later works of Cy Twombly with their ad-hoc mixture of classical words and abstract scribbles of paint. The largest pieces like La Blusa Rosa I were about 40” x 32” where as the others were slightly smaller at about 40” x 30.” They were all works on stiff watercolour paper of an average quality. Dripped and pooled on the paper, was thick golden looking resin, in anthropomorphic shapes, which proved very effective and suggestive of phalluses or torsos. Even if to the uninitiated, his work could have looked slap-dash, haphazard and crude - I was struck by the artfulness within the apparent chaos of Schnabel’s work. I found his abstract works emotionally engaging and his brushwork skilful and measured. He just had a knack for making beautiful splashes and swirls of paint - which evoked thoughts of places and people.                                                                            

There was also a colour lithograph based on a black and white photo of his stunningly beautiful wife Olatz. She looked out of the picture with a sultry stare, with her hands behind the back of her head - above which he had crudely painted in white My Wife. It was merely a family snapshot, given the professional artists gloss, of a fine art print enhancement and glorification. It was factory made Expressionism and the weakest work on show. The work was the 31st print, of an edition of 2000, and was selling for €2, 500! The more ambitious pieces were not priced. Despite the worst economic depression in Ireland since the 1930s, I was astonished to find all the Schnabel works had sold – though I agreed with the buyers and only wished I had that kind of money.                                                                

Also in the show were works by Jeff Schneider who used a cowboy motif repeatedly, but his efforts looked little-better than a young graduates efforts. There were a couple of black and white paintings in oils by Donald Baechler, which I liked, but did not think they added up to much.                    

            

I looked around to find the David Salle works but could not recognize them. Ross Bleckner was represented by two small oil still-life’s of flowers in a kind of fuzzy Post-Impressionistic style which left bare linen underneath to add to the fuzziness. I thought them utterly redundant works. So I concentrated my last few minutes looking again at the Schnabel’s and for once I was consumed with the desire to own art. I thanked the woman and left soaring on air as I walked back through the city.