Tate Etc. issue 31
Visiting and revisiting art, etcetera
Highlights include an homage to Henri Matisse including interviews with Jacqueline Duheme and Francois Gilot as well as contemporary artists’ reflections on Matisse’s cut-outs, Jeff McMillan on British Folk Art, a look inside the studios of Piet Mondrian, Aleksandra Shatskikh on Kazimir Malevich, a studio visit with Lee Ufan, Gabriela Burkhalter on art and the playground, and personal reflections on works in the Tate collection from Chris Killip, Scott Myles, Caroline Corbeau-Parsons and Lydia Gifford.
Tate Modern’s current exhibition, Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, is the most comprehensive show ever devoted to the artist’s paper cut-outs, made between 1943 and 1954. Comprising around 120 works, many seen together for the first time, it reflects him at the height of his inventive powers, even though he was living the final chapter of his life. Tate Etc. talks to one-time Matisse assistant Jacqueline Duheme and his friend, the artist Françoise Gilot. While artists Thomas Demand, Beatriz Milhazes and Philip Taaffe write about their personal fascination with Matisse.
Old shop signs, ships’ figureheads, spirit vessels, naïve paintings, and needlework samplers… what is folk art? Steeped in tradition, and often created by self-taught artists and artisans, this unsung art form reflects an aspect of the UK’s cultural heritage that has often been overlooked. Jeff McMillan, the co-curator of Tate Britain’s forthcoming exhibition British Folk Art, presents some of the more unusual items to go on display.
Piet Mondrian’s paintings have become some of the best known and most loved works of the twentieth century. Author Charles Darwent takes a look at the studios in which he created them—in Amsterdam, Paris, London and New York—and how important they were to the process.
Kazimir Malevich was a radical, mysterious and hugely influential figure in modern art, who lived and worked through one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth-century history. As Tate Modern’s exhibition will show, the inventor of Suprematism (epitomized by his painting Black Square) was far more than a formalist innovator. He was, as Aleksandra Shatskikh writes, also an extraordinary visionary. Plus, Tate Etc. invites a selection of artists from around the world, including David Batchelor, Irwin and Mary Heilmann, to reveal how Malevich has inspired their work.
The artist Lee Ufan grew up and studied in Korea before moving to Japan, where he has been based for more than 50 years, while spending much of his time in Europe. He is best known as one of the prominent members of the Monoha movement, which, with similarities to Arte Povera, had a focus on everyday materials, though, as he reveals to curator and researcher Sook-Kyung Lee, his work has been informed as much by his transcontinental existence as his Asian roots.
The urban playgrounds that we know take for granted appeared largely thanks to the enterprising Scandinavian urban planners, landscape designs and artists of the 1940s who saw the value of connecting play, art, education and public space. Curator and urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter looks at how the golden age of playgrounds is gradually being eroded by increasing safety standards and commercial pressures.
Tate Etc. – Europe’s largest art magazine
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