Stanley Spencer, Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, 1952-9 (private collection) © the estate of Stanley Spencer. All rights reserved / Bridgeman Images. Image credit: Stanley Spencer Gallery
Stanley Spencer's last great vision, nearly half of which remains nothing more than a tantalising spider's web of pencil lines, is the centrepiece of the current exhibition at the Cookham gallery dedicated to his work. Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta was in Spencer's words conceived as an image of love. His love for a place, his love of god, his love of life. The problem was life kept getting in the way. Finally fashionable, readmitted to the Royal Academy (from which Spencer had resigned over rejected paintings in 1935), and permanently in need on money, Spencer found himself distracted by demands for portraits. God was not on his side either: cancer required an operation and extended recuperation. For a poorly, near- 70 year old, employing painstaking precision, precariously perched atop a stool on 3a table, and faced with a canvas so large it was permanently partly rolled up, the task must have seemed all but impossible. Spencer was a man of details, never inclined to see the big picture and other distractions were of his own making - fleshed out scenes like Dinner on the Hotel Lawn which never made it into the final composition were still lovingly worked through.
Christ Preaching as it stands is thus both poignant and frustrating. And the same could be said of the exhibition. The Spencer Gallery may not be the smallest in the UK but it's not far off. Just a single room with mezzanine, it feels churlish to begrudge them the £7 entrance fee and their marvellous little open access library and archives, not to mention their extensive holdings of Spencer's work, certainly warrant a bigger venue. This exhibition is well curated by Amy Lim and others and comes with its own slim catalogue. The wall texts and labelling although slightly repetitive cover the Regatta, Spencer's life and links to Cookham and the development of Christ Preaching. They have on loan two lovely Victorian interpretations. one of Edward Gregory's studies for Boulter's Lock has a deliciously thick marmalade-y colour; Hector Caffieri's Going to Cookham Lock is all delicate fluff. Good primary sources show champion women punters and evoke the crowds.
Stanley Spencer, The Last Supper, 1920, Stanley Spencer Gallery, © the estate of Stanley Spencer. All rights reserved / Bridgeman Images. Image credit: Stanley Spencer Gallery
Spencer's preparatory works from small soft chalk scribbles to crisp pencil precision dominate the ground floor of the exhibition. They are fascinating enough to warrant more space, both in terms of method and of the developing final image. Hung as they are beneath the final canvas, you have to strain upwards to see how they connect: Christ Preaching is really too large for the wall, only really visible by standing awkwardly on the stairs. Paintings from the collection add context: portraits, landscapes, bathers, frustratingly random, and in some cases disappointingly bland. Spencer is at his best cataloguing life's oddness, not representing aldermen and vicar's wives. He was also increasingly obsessed with detail at the expense of composition and form with the late works, his jaunty cherry and green palette veering towards Beryl Cook-like caricature (his work will feature in an exhibition of Cook's work at The Box, Plymouth, next year). The Last Supper, all malt brown and wriggling toes, stands out amongst the later works on show for its austere repetition.
Spencer's never-realised Church House project, which he envisaged including the Last Supper, the Baptism (here represented by a drawing which depicts a seated Christ surrounded by joyous fish) and Christ Preaching, receives only the briefest mention. I can't help thinking this would have made for a better exhibition. Alternatively, a focus on Christ Preaching, which despite the exhibition's slightly misleading title, is definitely the star of this show, would allow the preparatory works the focus they deserve. An even braver choice, might have ditched the large canvas entirely and focused instead on the regatta and Spencer's nostalgic love of Cookham. The real problem, you suspect, is curators whose ideas - and an artist whose works - deserve more space. To feel the marvellous atmosphere of Spencer's work you have to be immersed in it (as you can be at Burghclere Chapel). That is hard enough in the context of an unfinished canvas, but here the high hang, diffuse curation and above a micro-venue act as unnecessary extra barriers.
No comments:
Post a Comment