Review of Jeanne Mammen: The Observer. Retrospective (1910-75) at the Berlinische Galerie

17/12/17

Jeanne Mammen: The Observer. Retrospective (1910-75)

Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
6 October 2017 – 15 January 2018

Outside the sphere of art historians, Gertrud Johanna Louise Mammen, known as Jeanne, is not a well-known name – not in Germany and certainly not in the rest of the world. Yet her output was prodigious, as the current retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie amply demonstrates. She was born in Germany in 1890, but her family moved to Paris where she enjoyed a carefree and progressive upbringing (including art studies at the Académie Julian, as well as at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels). In 1914, she returned to Germany and, from 1919, worked from a small fourth-floor, two-room living-quarters-cum-studio at Kurfürstendamm 29 in Berlin for more than 60 years, until her death in 1976.

During her lifetime, she gained a reputation beyond Berlin as a chronicler of life in the city, providing for herself largely by designing film posters for the then booming UFA studios and selling her illustrations to fashion and satirical magazines, including Simplicissimus, Uhu and Jugend. Especially during the 20s and 30s, when out and about, she was never without her sketchbook – several of which are included in the exhibition – capturing the goings-on in cafes, bars and on the streets. Her graphic work from this era might be likened to the new objectivity of Otto Dix or George Grosz, but whereas their works tend towards the satirical, with an underlying political critique, expressing pity or disdain for their subjects, Mammen’s drawings and watercolours, while still often employing grimace and caricature, are far more empathetic and, dare I say it, feminine, imbued with emotion, both of her own, as onlooker, and of the relationships between those depicted. The titles are often almost conversational, as, for example, You Have Beautiful Hands (c1929), depicting a chatty scene at a manicurist.

Read the full review here

Review of Visual Wit and Social Critique. Satire from Goya to Grosz at the Museum der Moderne, Rupertinum, Salzburg

10/10/16

Visual Wit and Social Critique. Satire from Goya to Grosz

Museum der Moderne, Rupertinum, Salzburg

30 July – 20 November 2016

Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, in which 12 people died when the satirical magazine’s office in Paris was attacked by terrorists, and, most recently, the killing of Nahed Hattar, outside a court in Amman where he was being tried for sharing an Isis-themed cartoon on Facebook, the subject of satire as a means of artistic expression is more salient than ever. These events have raised the question of just how far an artist ought to be allowed to go in his exaggeration and mockery of others, as a means of reflecting and questioning – and sometimes even working through – controversial issues of the time.

Drawing about 200 works from its own collection, the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg has, accordingly, decided to put on a thorough and timely exhibition, exploring this freedom of expression, from the 18th century to the present day. A roll call of powerful critics – William Hogarth (1697-1764), Francisco Goya (1746-1828), Honoré Daumier (1808-79), James Ensor (1860-1949), Otto Dix (1891-1969), George Grosz (1893-1959) and Ronald Searle (1920-2011), to name but a few – and publications, the exhibition offers a rip-roaring ride through turbulent events of politics, religion and gender battles.

Read the review here

Portfolio: Jeanne Mammen

23/01/15

Portfolio: Jeanne Mammen

“I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, only to be able to see others.”

Born in Berlin, brought up in the well-to-do Parisian suburb of Passy, and educated in art in Paris, Brussels and Rome, German painter and graphic artist Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) returned to Berlin in her mid-twenties, where she set up a small studio at Kurfürstendamm 29. She lived and worked here for over 50 years, providing for herself by selling her illustrations to fashion and satirical magazines. She was never without her sketchbook and especially liked to draw women, whom she portrayed in a gentle and understanding way, poignantly depicting them in their social background.

Further information about Jeanne Mammen can be obtained at the website www.jeanne-mammen.de, or contact Cornelia Pastelak-Price at the Förderverein of the Jeanne-Mammen-Stiftung e.V., e-mail: cornpaprice@gmx.net

To read the rest of this portfolio and to enjoy the images, please see the February 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine

Review of Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) at the ICA

02/09/13

Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper)

Curated by Sarah McCrory

ICA

19 June – 8 September 2013

Turning the corner towards the ICA’s lower gallery this summer, the visitor finds himself entering the target range of an immense, phallic gun. This is sadly somewhat unsurprising, however, given the ICA’s apparent remit to present art which will shock: such extreme efforts to bamboozle have come to be rather commonplace within its walls. Indeed, this whole exhibition, consisting of works on paper by eight artists from the 1940s to today, seems hell bent on creating a scandal. Perhaps it is simply trying too hard, then, since, despite the serious intent of the artists to challenge weighty political issues such as war and feminism, I was left, to be honest, little more than bored.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a belief that as long as it is making a political point, it doesn’t matter whether or not your art is any good; puerile scribbles will suffice. And this is very clearly the case with Judy Bernstein (born 1942), artist of the aforementioned gun, Fuck by Number (2013). The enormous drawing, in black charcoal and red paint, depicts an erect penis/gun, with its testicles as the barrel, shooting an American flag, and surrounded by statistics from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing their horror and futility. Around the corner are smaller charcoal drawings, likewise conflating sexual violence and acts of war, and littered with crude verses and scribbles like those you might find as graffiti in a public toilet.

Alongside Bernstein are works by Margaret Harrison (born 1940), recent winner of the Northern Art Prize. Her offerings are less violent, but no less explicit. In Good Enough to Eat (2) (1971), for example, a dominatrix is sprawled between the slices of bread in a sandwich, whilst in Dolly Parton/Allen Jones (2010), she kneels on all fours, supporting a table top, as in Jones’ own subversive sculptures. Turning the gender balance tables, there are also works like Captain America (1997), where the comic superhero stands astride, displaying a tiny penis and larger-than-life strap-on breasts. The graphic novel style of these drawings blends well with their mix of humour and biting critique of male power.

Upstairs is largely male dominated, apart from Marlene McCarty’s (born 1957) detailed ballpoint drawing of a gorilla enjoying illicit sexual relations with two female scientists. Mike Kuchar (born 1942) presents equally fantastical scenarios in his homoerotic phantasmagoria, commissioned for comic publications such as Gay Heart Throbs.

As the “old master” of social and political critique through art, George Grosz (1893-1959) also has a work on display: Stickmen Meeting Members of the Bourgeois (1946), in which a group of grey, lifeless stickmen are shown aimlessly following two fat, ruddy, sweaty members of the bourgeoisie, the contents of their bulging stomachs exposed to show plentiful beer and meat.

Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) has been credited with influencing the acceptance of diverse ethnicities into the fashion world, through his hedonistic drawings for New York magazines, whilst Cary Kwok (born 1975), who also trained in fashion, has filled nearly a whole room with biro drawings of men at the moment of ejaculation. This, to me, far from shocking, is merely mildly nauseating.

The final contributor is Tom of Finland (1920-1991) who achieved cult status for his erotic drawings of homosexual male encounters, in which his characters are uniformed servicemen, sailors, lumberjacks and biker rebels. Again, these are technically well drawn, and perhaps they were shocking at the time, but now, in an age of mass graphic bombardment, they come across largely as if they were pages torn from a comic book.

Indeed, this exhibition considers the crossover between the commercial and the aesthetic via the medium of drawing, as well as looking at how this has been used to voice political and critical opinion. In some instances, there is intricate detail; in others, childish scribblings. Quite why there needs, however, to be such an overbearing focus on the pornographically explicit, I am not sure. I’m all for freedom of speech and expression, and even for art that truly shocks, but, in this case I was just glad to reach the end.

Images:

Judith Bernstein

DICK IN THE HEAD series

2010

charcoal, pastel on paper

41.5" x 29.5"

Marlene McCarty

Group 8: (Karisoke, The Virungas, Rwanda. September 24, 1967. 4:30pm.)

2006

ballpoint pen and graphite on paper

courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Mike Kuchar

Prehistoric Pets

1980-1990

courtesy of the artist, and François Ghebaly Gallery

George Grosz

Stickmen meeting members of the bourgeois

1946

courtesy of David Nolan Gallery, New York

Antonio Lopez

Gianni Versace Campaign

1984

© the Estate of Antonio Lopez

courtesy the Suzanne Geiss Company

Tom of Finland

Untitled

1963

© Tom of Finland Foundation, Incorporated