There's an exhibition of British art between 1945-65 at the Barbican at the moment and it's well worth seeing, it's almost a compendium of modern British art. The curators have obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating this exhibition and there are around 200 objects included, mainly paintings but also installations and objects. The exhibition is nicely laid out in the spacious upstairs gallery area with paintings grouped thematically although in one space I decided the theme was simply 'loads of colour'. That seems fair enough to me. It had works by the names you'd expect to see in an exhibition covering these years (Bacon, Auerbach, Bowling, Freud and Hockney) but it was the works by artists I'd never heard of that provided the real excitement.
It's a strange period for art, the 20 years immediately after the war, especially in Europe with our devastated cities including the major British cities. Artists who lived through the war with the particular memories they must have had, the wrecked cityscapes around them, the death, all must have influenced what they produced. Rationing of food continued into the 1950s, intellectual and practical arguments about what the future should hold, clearing up bomb sites and starting to build again and recreate cities and society with the help of those coming to Britain from the former empire and then the dawn of the '60s and hope and the world that led to today.
The first painting that made me cross the gallery for a closer look was this strange creation by Prunella Clough called 'Bypass I' (1960). What on earth is it about and what is it meant to be? I don't know. Is it a physical road bypass that exist all over the country to take traffic away from something or to arrive somewhere quicker? Or is it more like a surgery bypass operation? Or something else? I have no idea but I stood there trying to see a pattern, a repetition, a thematic trick that might explain it but all I saw was shape and a limited palette.
A painter I haven't come across before was Avinash Chandra who started out painting Indian landscapes but moved to portraying the human body and I was fascinated by his 'Early Figures' (1961). He has two works in the exhibition but this, for me, was the more interesting since there was clearly something going on but I couldn't see what it was. The figures are obviously human (in some form) but what are those little flying things above their heads? Artists had been experimenting with depicting the human body for a long time before this was painted but it doesn't seem to be derivative of anything (that I can think of) so there's an obvious thought process going on here that was new and inspiring.
I really like the playfulness of Jean Cooke's 'Through The Looking Glass' (1960), a lovely painting of some colourful flowers in their plant pots - how delightful - but on closer inspection you see that it's actually an elaborate self-portrait. At the back of the scene is a mirror and in it is a small reflection of the artist. I didn't realise this at first, I was just admiring the lovely plants and flowers and then she suddenly came into view as I scanned the painting.
After wandering round I finally found a large painting by Frank Bowling - just look for colour and you'll find him - but to get to his work I had to pass three smaller works by Anwar Jalal Shemza and had to stop to take a closer look. I was particularly taken by his 'Still Life' (1957) with it's rich colours and solid shapes. Apparently Shemza often painted using Islamic themes but this painting fits into the long tradition of still lives using whatever was on the table in front of the artist (or constructed on the table by the artist) but rarely in such a rich palette. I'd be happy to have this one on my living room wall. The colourful Bowling painting was one of his dying swans from 1965 that I had to examine closely.
In the same section of the exhibition as the Bowling painting is this one by Gillian Ayers, 'Break Off' (1961). I've got no idea what it's supposed to mean or represent and I suspect it's more of an emotional expression than anything else. But it caught my eye and made me stop in front of it and scan the canvas.
All in all, it's an interesting exhibition and explores lots of different ways of creating images and paintings as well as photography and sculptures. It features 48 artists and around 200 objects, so it's a good size. It's on until the end of June so there's plenty of time to visit if you fancy seeing it.
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