It is a brave curator who decides to stage an exhibition of miniatures. Never going to be spectacular, it can look meagre on the walls and it always requires an extra effort on the part of visitors, here for instance offered magnifying glasses to peer through. In Miniature Worlds the Laing Art Gallery has taken up the challenge and run with it, presenting a show of 130 works (many of them loans) in paint, print and even sculpture which celebrate 'little' art from Thomas Bewick up to the present day. With Bewick, of course, they have a trump card - a popular, local name - and they also hitch a ride on the Turner anniversary juggernaut with ten of his works from Tate, but this is a cleverly staged show which has clearly thought about the difficulties of display. Their opening display and 'poster' choice sets the scene: William Beilby's River Landscape Seen Through Trees has a theatrical magicality as he stage sets his background and we are encouraged to mentally shrink and enter his world. His palette is continued in the cool, green Wind in the Willows walls which provide a gentle background which subtly references the landscape theme. Respite is offered in the comfy chairs of the Book Discovery Zone. And who can fail to be buoyed up by the sight of Mrs Tittlemouse?
One of the great things about this exhibition is how it champions printmaking, especially in wood. Bewick's 'Tyneside's Tiny Masterpieces' (as they are dubbed here) have an infectious combination of skill, charm and humour. William Blake, who could have a miniature exhibition all of his own, is represented by his only series of wood engravings from Virgil's Pastorals. So rustically rough and dense that they resemble wood grain itself and make Samuel Palmer's etched Herdsman's Cottage look like an exercise in sophistication. We see John Tenniel who drew his designs for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland directly onto woodblocks. There is also a focus on the twentieth century revival with the likes of Eric Ravilious and Claire Leighton, both of whom create a compelling strength and certainty in their work which belies the small scale.
JMW Turner, The Alps (The Alps at Daybreak), for Rogers’s ‘Poems’, c.1830–2, Tate
Names more associated with painted, grandscale drama, like Turner and John Martin demonstrate their quiet side: Martin belligerently cramming a cast of thousands onto a piece of paper; Turner taking a minimalist approach which conjures the Alps' solid rock out of a few brushstrokes, revealed as through a half-defrosted window. However, the real joy here comes from seeing artists who devoted themselves to the small: Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter may be often downgraded to mere 'illustrators' but their mastery of their material is beyond doubt. I am reminded of the nostalgic pleasure of Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies exhibition recently at Lady Lever (Greenaway is also the subject of an exhibition at Burgh House in London at present).
The Modern Visions section offers up new names and an interesting challenge to the perception that contemporary artists tend to go large or go home. Paul Coldwell's sculptures are small worlds in themselves. Joanna Whittle's luminous frames within frames literally enshrine landscapes. Vicken Parsons evokes infinite space and shifting clouds with a few brushstrokes on wood. At the other end of the spectrum, Richard Hamilton homes in on the ultra-specific, in a grainy, granular close-up that creates it's own soft-focus nostalgia. The Chapman brothers' Goya-esque vignettes seem out of kilter in this world of wonder and strangeness.
Miniature Worlds is a triumph of a show. By the end, rather like playing with a doll's house reality seems to shrink and we, the viewers, become giants looking intently in. What starts as effort becomes a joy of small things and close looking. Calming, therapeutic, rewarding, who would have thought you could get so much out of so little.
No comments:
Post a Comment