THE GANG: PHOTOGRAPHS BY CATHERINE OPIE @ THE WALKER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL

As part of Liverpool's Homotopia Festival 2014, the Contemporary Art Society presents 'The Gang' photo-series, an exhibition of work by the renowned American artist Catherine Opie, at the Walker Art Gallery. Opie’s portraits of her friends from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community are intended to subvert American archetypes. Opie’s attempt to make visible a misunderstood sector of American culture produces a body of work that is at times explicit and even shocking in its content, but also playful and intimate.

The Gang: Photographs by Catherine Opie (1990), running at the Walker Art Gallery ,part of Liverpool’s Homotopia Festival 2014.

The iconic image presented to the Walker by the Contemporary Art Society with the support of the gallery, gives the exhibition its name and is one of 25 photographs by Opie on display. It features Opie’s friends photographed together in a humorous pose that is defiant, yet tender.

Catherine says: “I made The Gang after individually shooting them all for the 1991 body of work, Being and Having. It was great to see them with their moustaches and I couldn’t resist making some group photos of them… I think it is perfect in celebrating Homotopia as this work was made 20 years ago, in relationship to visibility within my own queer community. It is good to celebrate and reflect on equality that has been achieved and celebrated as well as the fight in regards to homophobia that continues.”

Divinity Fudge 1997

Vaginal Davis, 1994

Cathy (Bed Self-Portrait) 1987
C-print
Edition 4 of 8
-Catherine Opie

Nicola 1993
C-print
Edition 2 of 8
&
Monica 1990
C-print
Edition 2 of 8.
-Catherine Opie

The exhibition comprises both striking black and white and colour photographs taken from 1987 to 2012. The subjects are mostly Opie’s friends from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer community.        

 The element of the exhibition I found to be the most compelling and perhaps surprising was the palpable presence of the artist/photographer herself in her work. Whilst exploring Opie’s ‘Girlfriend’ series, the photographer is very much present throughout as she is both the documenter and participant.Through her‘Girlfriend’ series, Opie undoubtedly explores her own lesbian identity – capturing honest, striking and provocative portraits of her lovers and friends. It is this theory that grasps my interest, as Opie welcomes her audience into a world that has been absent from mainstream publication.  Her works’ are brutally honesty, she lays herself bare and unmasked in the same way she exposes the subjects of her portraits- in this way it is clear to see how she subverts stereotypes and common prejudices towards the gay community.

 The Walker Art Gallery’s Head of Fine Art, Ann Bukantas said: “We are thrilled to now hold The Gang in the Walker Art Gallery’s collection. We’re very grateful to Contemporary Art Society for presenting the piece, which is another demonstration of our commitment to inclusion and audience diversity. The acquisition has been the inspiration for this exhibition.

“Catherine Opie is an interesting artist whose work gives personal insight into an often marginalised community through her explorations of identity, sexuality and gender. What is unique about the work is the warmth and intimacy – and sometimes the humour – of the images which break down the sense of ‘otherness’ and instead evoke an increasing empathy. Her work is perfect for the context of the 2014 Homotopia Festival.”

The Contemporary Art Society’s Director, Caroline Douglas added: “Catherine Opie is one of the most compelling portrait photographers worldwide and her work is emblematic of how artists reflect the changing values and mores of wider society.

“The donation of The Gang is the result of an intense period of research into works by artists who deal with LGBT themes and demonstrates our commitment to the Walker Art Gallery, to whom we have donated over 80 works since 1979.”

MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS : THE ARTIST AS COLLECTOR @ BARBICAN ART GALLERY, LONDON

Flying postcard, 1960-90 © Martin Parr Collection

The art of collecting is a subject which has interested me for quite some time. So naturally, when I heard about Magnificent Obsessions , a new exhibition at the  Barbican Gallery devoted to artists and their personal private collections, I couldn't resist a visit while I was in London.

History it seems is rich with hoarders: Dutch painter Rembrandt was a notorious collector, gathering everything from seashells to musical instruments and weaponry, while Dr Seuss accumulated an extravagant compendium of hats throughout his lifetime. Frank Sinatra collected model trains, as does Rod Stewart, while Tom Hanks collects typewriters. Our favourite modern day heroic hoarder may be Johnny Depp, who gathers bugs, bones and a miscellany of items once owned by Jack Kerouac.

Cookie Jars formerly in the collection of Andy Warhol Courtesy of Movado Group.

Curated by Lydia Yee, it is the first major exhibition in the UK of its kind, displaying a vast cabinet of curiosities which celebrates Andy Warhol’s cookie jars, Martin Parr’s postcards and Arman’s eclectic assortment of masks.
                                           
“I think of a collection as being like a map of a person’s life" — Damien Hirst

 Montage display of 24 tropical birds, mid-19t Courtesy of the Murderme Collection 

Damien Hirst’s multiple collections of skulls and tropical birds are also on display, alongside an entomological cabinet created in 2013 which is methodically lined with insects. “I think of a collection as being like a map of a person’s life,” he explains. “Like the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the beach of somebody’s existence. A collection is deeply personal, and says so much about who the collector is.” Hirst recalls an obsessive hoarder who lived next door to him in the 1980s. “When he disappeared I got into his house and it was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. It was 60 years of existence in one room, piled all the way up to the ceiling: collecting gone mad. I started using his belongings to make collages. It’s something I still think about when acquiring new objects and curiosities… I think the collector is always part of a bigger story.”

Elephant figurines from the collection of Peter Blake Photography by Hugo Glendinning

Another serial collector is Peter Blake, who has an artist studio packed with Victorian taxidermy, enamel elephants, toy trains and masks. Blake’s interest in collecting can be traced back to his childhood, when he was evacuated to Worcester with his sister to live with his eccentric grandmother, who filled her home with mincing machines and packed cocktail cabinets. “She never even drank cocktails,” remembers Blake. “I went to Gravesend School of Art in 1945, and by the station there was a kind of junkyard. The very first time I went there, I bought a papier-mâché Victorian tea tray, an outsider art painting of the Queen Mary and a complete set of leather-bound Shakespeare. So I bought myself a library and from then on I collected, sometimes towards art, sometimes just for the sake of it. That triggered a lifetime of collecting.”

Collage Artists: Hannah Höch to Man Ray

   After visiting the Hannah Höch exhibition at the Whitechapel        Gallery earlier this week, I was inspired to look at the work        of other notable collage artists:

From its roots in European Dadaism in the early years of the twentieth century, shadowing modernism and tracing its way through photography, collage is a medium as diverse as it is politically charged. Emerging as a reaction to the First World War, collage allowed artists to interact with existing materials – anything from newsprint and magazines to maps, tickets and propaganda and photographs – to rip them apart and then reassemble them, creating visually dynamic hybrids.

Coined by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, the term ‘collage’ points towards a medium simultaneously serious and tongue-in-cheek; a technique that is deeply referential of the political world in which the works were produced. Via the assemblage of different objects and images, collage interrogates the fundamental concept of what it is to create art, whilst offering a prismatic reflection of the social change and upheaval of the twentieth century. From the originators and pioneers of the form to more contemporary practitioners, AnOther presents its top 10 collage artists.

1. Hannah Höch

Höch’s most famous work, effortlessly titled ‘Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany’, shows her ideals and techniques in synthesis. A collage of newspaper clippings, the work challenges the racist and sexist codes upholding Weimar Germany. Throughout her career, Höch would challenge the marginalised place of women in twentieth century Germany. She drew together fashion magazines, illustrated journals and photography to pioneer a form bent on demonstrating that art itself could be collected from the everyday clutter of modern life.

Kurt Schwitters, Untitled (With an Early Portrait of Kurt Schwitters), 1937-8

2. Kurt Schwitters
Unlike the other Dada artists, Schwitters was not based in Berlin, but in Hanover, where he worked until the Nazis exiled him from Germany, when he came to live in The Lake District in England. Throughout his montages, collages and assemblages, Schwitters developed the concept of Merz – ‘the combination, for artistic purposes of all conceivable materials’ – in which he argued that everyday found objects including wood, plasterboard, wheels, cotton were equal in expression to paint itself.

Raoul Hausmann, Merz, Picture as Rainbow, 1939

3. Raoul Hausmann
Friends with Schwitters, Hausmann abandoned painting in 1923 and centred his work on photography. He invented an apparatus known as the Optophone, which turned kaleidoscopic forms into music. As well as sound poetry, Hausmann’s oeuvre contains photograms, rayograms and pictograms.

Man Ray, Dora Maar 1936

4. Man RayThough informally related to the Dada and Surrealist movements, the American artist Man Ray contributed impressively to avant-garde, fashion and portrait photography, in particular with his solarised and isomorphic portraits of Lee Miller. Ray’s photomontages play with femininity and form, as in his multiple exposures of Alice Prin, better known as Kiki de Montparnasse, and Dora Maar.

Eileen Agar, Precious Stones, 1936

5. Eileen AgarBritish artist Eileen Agar was one of the only female members admitted into the Surrealist group on her own artistic terms, and not simply as a model or a muse. Like Höch’s, Agar’s works are social critiques and show humour and irony. In ‘Precious Stones’, she superimposes a classical cut-out profile over a catalogue page showing antique jewellery.

Joseph Cornell, The Hotel Eden, 1945

6. Joseph CornellInfluenced by the Surrealists, Cornell took collage into new directions with his pioneering work in assemblage. Cornell lived in New York, daily collecting the materials for his art from the bookshops and antique shops of Manhattan. He is most famous for his intricate wooden boxes, filled with lithographs, colourful birds and other trivia.

Nancy Spero, Notes in Time, 1979

7. Nancy SperoNancy Spero’s engagement with political, social and cultural concerns throughout her career as an artist in New York is best illustrated in her collage on paper ‘Notes in Time’. Inspired by Grecian scrolls and the story of Troy, the frieze-like collage is comprised of twenty-four panels, each nine-feet long, punctuated by 96 quotations, including poetry by H.D., and multiple female figures. It is a grand non-narrative celebration of the female form, but also documents a female struggle against political stereotype.

John Stezaker, Muse (Film Portrait Collage) XVIII, 2012

8. John StezakerBritish artist John Stezaker studied at the Slade School of Art in 1973, and went on to produce work which challenged the predominance of Pop art. Stezaker’s collages are irreverent; his use of glamourous 1950s portraits, of dapper suited men and Hollywood stars, mashed together with postcards of landscapes and with other faces, has the effect of the uncanny. In 2012, Stezaker won the Deutsche Börse photography prize to a mixed reception, as a few critics questioned whether a conceptual artist – who deals with the destruction of photographs – could win a prestigious photography award, proving that collage as an art form continues to be nothing if not controversial.

Jesse Treece, Mountains Between

9. Jesse TreeceUsing vintage magazines and books, Jesse Treece creates surreal and simple works, often using images of space and children to create an inimitable perspective on everyday life.

Annegret Soltau, Self Portrait

10. Annegret SoltauGerman artist Annegret Soltau constructs collage using photographs of her own face and body, stitched with black thread, confronting explicit issues in an imaginative manner.

Hannah Höch @ The Whitechapel Gallery, London

White Chapel Gallery , Hannah Hoch.

White Chapel Gallery , Hannah Hoch.

White Chapel Gallery , Hannah Hoch.

White Chapel Gallery , Hannah Hoch.

This week I visited a  retrospective of the work of Hannah Höch at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, for the first major UK exhibition of the influential German artist's oeuvre .

Hannah Höch was an important member of the Berlin Dada movement and a pioneer in collage. Splicing together images taken from popular magazines, illustrated journals and fashion publications, she created a humorous and moving commentary on society during a time of tremendous social change. 

'Acerbic, astute and funny, Höch established collage as a key medium for satire whilst being a master of its poetic beauty.'

Höch created some of the most radical works of the time and was admired by contemporaries such as George Grosz, Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, yet she was often overlooked by traditional art history. At a time when her work has never seemed more relevant, the exhibition puts this inspiring figure in the spotlight.

taatshäupter (Heads of State) (1918-20)

Flucht (Flight) (1931)

Bringing together over 100 works from major international collections, the exhibition includes collages, photomontages, watercolours and woodcuts, spanning six decades from the 1910s to the 1970s. Highlights include major works such as Staatshäupter (Heads of State) (1918-20) and Flucht (Flight) (1931) as well as her innovative post-war collages.

Hochfinanz (High Finance) (1923)

The exhibition charts Höch’s career beginning with early works influenced by her time working in the fashion industry to key photomontages from her Dada period, such as Hochfinanz (High Finance) (1923), which sees notable figures collaged together with emblems of industry in a critique of the relationship between financiers and the military at the height of an economic crisis in Europe.

Höch explored the concept of the ‘New Woman’ in Weimar Germany, presenting complex discussions around gender and identity in a series of both biting and poignant collages. The exhibition includes a number of works from the series From an Ethnographic Museum, in which Höch combines images of female bodies with traditional masks and objects and layers of block colours, capturing the style of the 1920s avant-garde theatre and fashion.

Um Einen Roten Mund (Around a Red Mouth) (c. 1967) 

Höch remained in Germany during World War II and retreated to a house just outside Berlin. Entering a period of 'lyrical abstraction' that explores the materials and possibilities of a newly developing consumer culture, the exhibition also includes her later works, such as the Raumfahrt (Space Travel) (1956) as well as Um Einen Roten Mund (Around a Red Mouth) (c. 1967) which makes use of cut-outs from colour-print and popular culture, incorporating red lips, petticoats and crystals.

White Chapel Gallery , Hannah Hoch.