'Everyday' Concerns...

Today the opposite of tomato is the aesthetic of Vilhelm Hammershoi

Recently invested in a too-good-a-bargain-to-miss Japanese tea set (£6 down from £20) that, once home, I came to realise & calculate was actually the seventh tea pot to take up residence (one for every day of the week - perhaps a subconscious dream come true!): although not a collector in the assiduous sense, such objects are very difficult to resist if they should accord to 'the aesthetic', as was the case with this particular example, of a colour & design not previously owned...


graphite & watercolour, on watercolour paper/30x20cm

As very possibly stated during previous posts referencing the work of Robert Ryman & Jasper Johns, I'm particularly partial to the aesthetic of 'the white painting', with this subject - & beautiful object - thus providing suitable material for exploration when set upon & before white horizontal & vertical planes: the & act & ongoing process of looking is all with such an endeavour, attempting the transcription of what one sees - being surprised & challenged by 'lost' edges, where the tones of figure & ground merge, & reflections upon & by the glazed surface of the teapot - rather than what (one thinks) one knows.

Coincidentally, another recent acquistion has been the catalogue of the exhibition of work by Vilhelm Hammershoi currently showing at the Royal Academy in London.


I was introduced, with great fascination, to the work of this artist - active over the cusp of the 19th & 20th centuries - almost 10 years ago, when a previous publication to extensively feature reproductions of his paintings came to my attention whilst working in the arts campus library of the institution (then Cheltenham & Gloucester College of HE) from which I'd recently graduated in Fine Art.
Instantly, I was captivated by Hammershoi's aesthetic: his quiet, still paintings of interiors either empty or otherwise peopled (without being at all 'inhabited') by a single female figure, often faceless, viewed from the rear, & the small, recurring selection of furniture & objects contained, mute, therein, the spaces admitting light from large, tall windows but - giving them an insular, somewhat hermetic quality - rarely offering a glimpse beyond, at least to the world outside their confines - utterly compelling.

I was then reminded, some years later, of the artist courtesy of a BBC TV programme made by Michael Palin, himself an admirer of Hammershoi, seeking to locate more of his paintings & also to uncover the mystery of the man which so atmospherically pervades his oeuvre. A related search for books on the artist revealed little in the way of obtainable items - said book being by now out of print, obviously very rare & thus prohibitively expensive - much to my disappointment, interest being awakened by reacquaintance with the work of such a singular aesthetic.

This programme then made a pleasantly surprising reappearance recently (in fact on the evening of the Euro 2008 football Final, the first half of which I thus had to forego), after which, struck once again by the essential-to-one's-own aesthetic of Hammershoi's work, the book search resumed - without, of course, any real hope of 'affordable' success.
However, delightfully, the repeat broadcast transpired to have been made, obviously although without the statement of such, in relation to the occurence of the then-upcoming exhibition at the RA, itself accompanied by a lavish catalogue: oh, joy unconfined & a hardback copy straight in the Amazon shopping basket thank you very much.

The catalogue indeed is a most handsome volume, a worthy & essential (but aren't they all?) addition to the library: a selection of intriguing, informative essays accompany the illustrations, which themselves are in the process of being pored-over avidly, for inspiration, clues & all-round fascination. Strange how Hammershoi's paintings, including a few fine portraits, landscapes & architectural subjects, have such a timeless quality: their stillness & quietude - often unsettling, always compelling - obviously contributes to this, as does their aesthetic of a predominantly grey palette, beautifully modulated in its tonal range, which, as it frequently lends the paintings' appearance a certain chalky, misty, dusty quality, recalls both Gwen John & Morandi & the similarly still, quiet, interior-domestic, hermetic worlds of their paintings.
Also adding to this sense of Hammershoi's work transcending time (if not space & certain confines of) are the influences discernible, adapted to the artist's own unique sensibility, which largely eschews contemporaneous developments in modern painting in favour of a harking back to a certain classicism of earlier Danish & Dutch art (especially the familiar genre interiors of the latter & artists such as Vermeer & de Hooch) in particular. Any modernity they might display - subtly - is perhaps the Kierkegaardian existential sense of enigmatic unease one comes to feel upon prolonged study of their suggested but unresolved 'narratives' of person, things & very specific place.

One such recurring object to be found within Hammershoi's painterly lexicon is a white & blue-patterned punchbowl, the direct reference for the above watercolour around which this post is composed, the challenge being to suggest the object's form through the necessarily subtle range of available tones as perceived.



Another painting features a white Royal Copenhagen coffee pot, with a blue pattern, its top half placed before a white ground, the subtleties of its form a challenge to communicate, a subject I've found, in the process of oil painting, in the past, to be a compelling, irresistible one.


Vilhelm Hammershoi detail of Interior, Strandgade 30, 1899
oil on canvas/61x54.3cm

In a further instance, Hammershoi places more white porcelain ware against, this time, a horizontal white plane, again subtly conjuring the solid forms & their glazed surfaces from the flat tablecloth.


Fine inspiration indeed.

Listening to:

Test Match Special Eng v SA, 3rd Test (3rd day)

(Test match cricket being, of course, a game played in white kit!)