In memoriam: Paula Rego (1935 - 2022)

Paula Rego died today. The art world has lost one of the greats. I'm so glad I got to see her some of her work one more time at the Venice Biennale, where it inhabits an entire room in the Central Pavillion.

Rego didn't paint to please the viewer, she painted to unsettle them. Her pictures tell uncomfortable, ambiguous, and sometimes downright disturbing stories that we struggle to make sense of. And the longer we stand in front of them, the more we are intrigued and confused, often nowhere near understanding what they are about. But therein lies the beauty, the originality and depth of her art.

Always defying the established conventions of the bourgeoisie she was born into and the dogmas of religion and society at large, Rego created 'cruel tales' that are populated by sinister looking characters that subvert roles and dynamics, all shrouded in dark secrets and unspoken truths. Her distinctive figurative style merged the literary, the religious, the political and the personal giving life to a nightmare-like reality where people, mostly women, look both elated and miserable, kind and evil, calm and furious. We will never know which, but we can have a good guess.

Rego's uncompromising visual universe was and will remain truly unique because of its juxtapositions, ambiguity and twist and turns, none of which we should expect to fully understand. Rest in power, Paula.

#paularego #femaleartist #figurativepainting #rip #artblog #blogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Paula Rego by Chris Garnham February 1988

National Portrait Gallery, London

On Italian National Day, 02/06/2022

On 11 June 1946, the Italian people voted in an institutional referendum to replace the monarchy with a republic. I won't lie, it was closer than I like to think, but they did it: 12,672,767 votes for the Republic vs 10,688,305 for the Monarchy. Importantly, this was also the first time that women voted at national level. As the journalist Anna Garofalo recalls: "The ballots that arrived at home inviting us to do our duty had a silent and peremptory authority. We turned them over in our hands and they seemed more precious to us than a piece of bread. We held the ballots as if they were love letters."

On the 1st of January 1948, the new Constitution of the Italian Republic came into force. Its 1st article reads: "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour. Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution." Italy was one of the founding countries of the EEC (European Economic Community) in 1957 and of the European Union in 1991.

Italians are famously not very patriotic, I guess the country's shambolic politics have a lot to answer for, and we much prefer waving our flags at football matches. But it's on days like these, where elsewhere not too far they are spending millions of taxpayers' money to celebrate a stale bubble of privilege that is both obsolete and obscene, that you realise how deeply you are, and always will be, connected to your country of birth.

#festadellarepubblica #italiannationalday #2giugno #republic #vivalarepubblica #italy #italia #giacomoballa #blog #blogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Giacomo Balla

Bandiere all’Altare della Patria, 1915

Where Once the Waters, David Cass - Venice Biennale

My experience at the Venice Biennale is that it is often the fortuitous detour, aka me getting lost like I inevitably do, that is going to take you to the most unexpected rewards. This is how I came across David Cass' installation near the Giardini (now sadly closed so apologies for the late post).

David's work is about the rise of sea levels, an issue Venice knows all too well. The idea behind Where Once the Waters is to raise awareness about the variation in sea level in the place nearest our birthplace since we were born. David asked people to submit their data on his website and then typed the results provided by oceanographic organisations across the world on some 600 personally addressed letters he never sent - they are all posted on a wall here. On the opposite wall, a collection of painted everyday objects like small tin boxes of different shapes where David explores the theme of the sea and shifting horizons.

David wasn't there when I visited, but I spoke at length with his delightful dad. He told me that it took his son 3 years to do all the researching, collating, painting and, I'm assuming, typing, for this project. As I was listening to him, I realised there was something profoundly moving, almost poetic, behind the care and the time devoted to the design and completion of this installation. I could picture David sat before his typewriter writing to strangers around the globe, no two letters the same, delivering alarming data in a way that is both matter-of-factly and intimate, and I just knew his concern for this issue is genuine.

#davidcass #whereoncethewaters #climatechange #searise #conceptualart #venicebiennale #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

© David Cass