▽ TRACING THE CENTURY @ TATE

The biennial may be over but the city’s wealth of engaging art exhibitions and shows certainly makes up for the loss. My visit to Tate’s Tracing the Century exhibition yesterday was my first experience of viewing art after the biennial; fortunately, it did not feel like the come down after the biennial celebrations - rather, I felt it maintained the same level of energy and interest. It was certainly a pleasant change to visit an exhibition that did not conform to the theme of Hospitality, as after weeks of biennial events I was getting rather bored with the contextual restrictions of the theme.  Furthermore, after the vast amount of conceptually-driven video art I had seen during the biennial, and had frankly become rather tired of, it was brilliant to see pieces that were focused more on a tangible experience of art and possessed a rather interesting and diverse range of mark making techniques.

Tracing the Century: Drawing as a Catalyst for Change addresses the fact that drawing possesses boundless potentials for utilisation and has the ability to transcend a fixed set of conventions, which is why it can be incessantly re-invented and thus stimulate change in artistic production. As well as addressing drawing as a perennial artistic method the exhibition also regards artworks focused on the human body and the inner self, inspiring a profound discussion and juxtaposition between figuration and abstraction. As these two notions characterised art of the twentieth century, the exhibition meritoriously explores them in relation to each other, as opposed to exploring them as separate entities. My personal favourites within the exhibition tended to be those that reacted to the ‘figuration’ theme, as their focus on physical subjects meant they usually revealed a higher degree of draughtsmanship and mark making; after weeks of seeing conceptually-driven works in the biennial, this was something of a novelty. When I initially entered the exhibition I was quite unaware of its size; however, whilst proceeding further into it I became conscious of its vastness. Nevertheless, with it containing around one hundred works from the Tate collection, the substantiality of the space is clearly justified. I was particularly impressed by the exhibition’s means of curation - it had a real flow to it and there were many occasions throughout when pieces residing next to one another would not only complement each other aesthetically but would also share an interesting contextual parallel. The system of captioning was also effective, as captions were listed on the edge of the wall, and therefore not in the way of the art. Effectively, they inform the audience but do not detract attention away from the art. In my opinion, disturbing the viewing of displayed pieces is an error very easily made within museum or gallery captioning; therefore, I think Tate did a really good job of it throughout this exhibition.

Arguably one of the most thriving aspects of the exhibition is the great wealth of monumental names exhibiting – Picasso, Warhol, Gauguin and Emin, to name a few. I particularly admired how Tate had incorporated a fair share of great female artists, such Tracey Emin and Nancy Spero and had displayed them amongst the works of prodigious male artistic figures. It was a pleasant reminder that the art world has come along way with regards to the politics of gender.

I found Warhol’s boy drawings really special; there was a sense of emotion within them that is somewhat lacking within most of his more celebrated works. Laudably, they remind us of how great of a draughtsman he was, as due to his prolific production of prints and conceptual works, this was albeit forgotten.  Nevertheless, there is still a lingering sense of control and order, quintessential to the rest of his oeuvre that is produced by the controlled lines and abstracted shapes. It is clear, throughout the drawings that Warhol possessed a somewhat voyeuristic interest in the male body; therefore, it can be argued that these works provide an honest allusion to his sexuality, a subject that was at times just as ambiguous, as his curious, idiosyncratic persona. My favorite Warhol drawing was Resting Boy. The delicacy of the lines makes the male figure within the piece seem almost feminised. The piece recalls an innocent kind of desire, which evokes a pleasant wealth of emotion in the viewer. Explicitly voyeuristic, the boy looks as though he is sleeping and being watched. There is not, however, a sense of perversion behind the piece – but rather, a notable degree of innocence. Though there is undoubtedly a degree of sexual desire pervading through the drawing, I personally felt it was overridden by an evocation of naivety and innocence, with the slumbering figure looking rather young and angelic.

I was also captivated by William Orpen’s Anatomical studies, which were obviously an allusion to the exhibition’s theme of figuration within twentieth century art. They reminded me of my recent studies of Jean-Michel Basquiat, as he, just as Orpen, possessed a large focus on anatomy within his work and was inspired by the classic anatomical study - Gray’s Anatomy.  Orpen’s draughtsmanship within these pieces is truly meritorious – the intricate detailing, beautifully executed lines and meticulous psychical accuracy are truly something to behold. These drawings were originally used by Orpen to teach his students at the Metropolitan School of art in Dublin and would have therefore been seen more from a logical, educational perspective. It is great that the pieces can now be appreciated simply as works of art, as they are so beautifully rendered. One could undoubtedly argue that this level of draughtsmanship is somewhat missing from today’s art with the fashionableness of technology and with artists, to some degree, being expected to be social and political activists or to possess deep conceptual meaning within their work.