Bird’s words
Forgive the following. Sometimes I just need to wander off. Every now and then I have to look at something other than statistics on the pain and suffering of homelessness, or the tragedy of Gaza. Asked once by a man far younger than me how I can carry on the fight for social justice I said “Because I lose myself, I wander in the desert.” Or I go to look at art.
Gauguin and the Contemporary Landscape at the Ordovas gallery must be one of the smallest exhibitions ever curated, consisting of five paintings. Only one painting, Le toit bleu or Ferme au Pouldu– is by Gauguin, with two paintings each by Peter Doig and Mamma Andersson. The effect should be underwhelming; in fact it is not. You could spend 10 minutes looking at the works and depart. But you would have missed the point of the exhibition. The impact of this small collection of paintings did throw me; though I am always happy to be thrown. To be foxed by what the curator of a show intends to achieve, even if I don’t get it.
The West End of London, just above Piccadilly, has been home to small private galleries since as long as I can remember. I first started visiting them in the early 1960s on home leave from my young offenders’ institute. I was determined to be Britain’s greatest artist and the West End galleries were a great spur to me.
Last week I went for an hour and looked at the Ordovas gallery show nestled in Savile Row, next to the abandoned police station. I felt profoundly moved by this enigmatic show. Why only five paintings? Was it really about landscape? Certainly the three painters represented were showing bits of nature. But were they not more about human life than about nature? Nature painting you would imagine would be exclusively about views of nature, not human constructions in nature.
But the Gauguin is of a farm, with a peasant and a dog and a farm building. Camp Forestia (Care Taker) by Peter Doig is of a white cabin on the edge of water and reflected in the water. It’s brilliant but it’s not actually nature, though it is set in nature. Mamma Andersson’s Stubbornly Waiting is a tree severely trimmed almost to a stump, not looking very natural in a bleak backdrop of nature.
So the enigma of why such a small collection of paintings is added to by the enigma of the exhibition’s name. But I can live with that, because more than anything these days I need creative enigma. Our life and times are full of enigmas. Life increasingly seems to be a trail of unsolvable enigmas. Trump and the destruction of muc
