Tate Britain
28 February – 27 August 2018
A landmark exhibition at Tate Britain celebrates how artists have captured the intense experience of life in paint. All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life will showcase around 100 works by some of the most celebrated modern British artists, with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon at its heart. It will reveal how their art captures personal and immediate experiences and events, distilling raw sensations through their use of paint, as Freud said: ‘I want the paint to work as flesh does’. Bringing together major works by Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and many others, this exhibition will make poignant connections across generations of artists and tell an expanded story of figurative painting in the 20th century.
Groups of major and rarely seen works by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon will give visitors a chance to immerse themselves in the rich sensuality and intimacy of these two modern masters. Key paintings spanning Freud’s career will explore his studio as both context and subject of his work and will show how his unflinchingly honest depictions of models became more sculptural and visceral over time, in works such as Frank Auerbach 1975-6 and Sleeping by the Lion Carpet 1996. In contrast to Freud’s practice of working from life, the exhibition will look at Bacon’s relationship with photographer John Deakin, whose portraits of friends and lovers were often the starting point for Bacon’s work, including Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne 1966. Earlier works by Bacon like 1950 will be shown alongside a sculpture by Giacometti, both artists having explored the enduring presence of isolated figures.
Looking to earlier generations, the exhibition will show how this spirit in painting had been pursued by artists like Walter Sickert and Chaïm Soutine – key precedents for portraying an intimate, subjective and tangible reality. The teaching of William Coldstream at the Slade School of Fine Art and David Bomberg at the Borough Polytechnic also proved hugely influential. Employing Freud as a fellow tutor, Coldstream encouraged the likes of Michael Andrews and Euan Uglow to fix the visible world on canvas through intense observation, while Bomberg’s vision led students like Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and Dorothy Mead to pursue a more tactile, embodied experience of life. This generation’s work encompassed a wide variety of subjects, from Auerbach’s and Kossoff’s enduring fascination with London’s streets and public spaces to F.N. Souza’s spiritual and symbolic figures, and from Coldstream’s and Freud’s focus on the body in isolation to Michael Andrews’s and R.B. Kitaj’s interest in group scenes and storytelling.
The exhibition will also shed light on the role of women artists in the traditionally male-dominated field of figurative painting. Paula Rego explores the condition of women in society and the roles they play over the course of their lives, while always referring to autobiographical events, as in The Family 1988. Her work underwent a particularly profound change in the late 1980s and 1990s when she returned to working from life. The exhibition will also celebrate a younger generation of painters who continue to pursue the tangible reality of life in their work. Contemporary artists like Cecily Brown, Celia Paul, Jenny Saville and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye work in dialogue with this tradition while also taking the painting of figures in new directions.
一個在泰特英國美术馆里程碑式的展覽,歌颂了藝術家們如何通过油画捕捉到強烈的生活體驗。
《人性充盈:培根、弗洛伊德及百年写生史》,將展出近100位最著名的現代英國藝術家的作品,其中包括盧西恩·弗洛伊德和弗朗西斯·培根。展覽將揭示他們的藝術是如何捕捉個人的、直接的經驗和事件,通過使用繪畫這個媒介來提煉原始感覺,正如弗洛伊德所說:“我要繪畫能夠像血肉一樣鮮活”。展覽匯集了Walter Sickert,Stanley Spencer,Michael Andrews,Frank Auerbach,R.B. Kitaj,Leon Kossoff,Paula Rego,Jenny Saville,Lynette Yiadom-Boakye等眾多藝術家的主要作品,這次展覽使得不同時代的藝術家之間產生深切的聯繫,並講述了一個展開式的,關於20世紀人物像繪畫的故事。
盧西恩·弗洛伊德和弗朗西斯·培根的幾組主要和鮮為人知的作品,將帶領觀眾沉浸在這兩位現代大師的豐富的感官中。弗洛伊德職業生涯的重要繪畫作品是將他的藝術家工作室作為他的作品的背景和主題,展示了他對模特描繪的不妥協和誠實的一面是如何隨著時間的推移,變得更具雕塑性和內在性,如作品Frank Auerbach1975—6和Sleeping by the Lion Carpet 1996。與弗洛伊德的生活實踐形成對比,展覽將關注培根與攝影師John Deakin的關係, John Deakin的朋友和戀人的肖像往往是培根作品的起點,包括Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne 1966。
展覽還將揭示女性藝術家在傳統觀念上以男性為主的,具象繪畫領域的角色。Paula Rego探討了女性在社會中的狀況和她們在生活過程中扮演的角色, 並一直涉及自傳式事件的主題, 比如像作品The Family 1988。