Anthony whishaw

Richard Davey

Anthony Whishaw

Richard Davey

Anthony Whishaw

colour, its ribbons of pink, red, turquoise and blue weaving sinuous patterns around the picture surface to suggest a series of joyful, dancing rhythms. Nearby was St Paul’s Multiview II (2009–10; no. 2), a painting that combines elements of cubism and abstraction, collage, realism and topographical architectural drawing. The composition’s fractured space sends the viewer’s gaze ricocheting around multiple viewpoints, sometimes sliding off steeply angled geometric planes of colour, sometimes being drawn into distant views of Wren’s iconic dome.

Whishaw’s two other paintings hung amid the dense grouping of small works in another gallery. Like his depiction of St Paul’s, Flying Above II (2011–15; no. 4) had an architectural focus. As we look down on the rooftops of a Spanish hilltop pueblo, the towers of a church rise out of a blue-and-green mist, with roofs and chimneys tumbling around them in a cubist cascade of multiple viewpoints. Some of these architectural features are painted with a hard-edged clarity while others are left as mere suggestions, half-glimpsed through the fog. Mirrored Flowers (1998–2005; no. 5) employs multiple viewpoints too, but that is where the visual similarity ends.

Using elements of both abstraction and figuration to create a fantastical Escher-like composition, the work contains conventional landscape elements, with hints of sea and sky, fields and fences, flowers and stars. Yet it is also a fantasy, with two horizon lines, multiple perspectives, and two dark curving lines that evoke the mirror of the title, pulling the viewer, Alice-like, through the surface into a tilting, twisting pictorial space that is at once logical and incoherent.

For those wanting to pigeonhole artists into schools or ‘-isms’, Whishaw’s eclecticism can be frustrating. His paintings defy classification. Despite being a

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2 St Paul’s Multiview II, 2009–10 Acrylic collage on canvas, 83 x 220 cm Private collection 3 St Paul’s Multiview I, 2009–10 Acrylic collage on board, 38 x 37 cm Private collection

Royal Academician, and exhibiting widely in group shows with other major British artists, he has never been one to follow trends, or to align himself with a particular stylistic group. He resists art-historical categorisation or contextualisation, pursuing his own unique path and commitment to his materials. One moment he is exploring cubist constructions of space, the next, trompe-l’œil playfulness.

His use of photocopies and collage, and his application of plastic cups, plastic flies and other objects to his picture surfaces, suggest that he is someone with contemporary concerns and an interest in experimentation. And yet his subjects are often traditional or come from his everyday experience, focusing on architectural details and picturesque scenes reminiscent of the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. His disregard for stylistic boundaries and subject hierarchies has all the hallmarks of postmodernism, and yet Whishaw’s art is without the knowingness and parody of much contemporary work.

The four pieces Whishaw submitted to the Summer Exhibition in 2015 had so little in common in terms of style or content that they could easily have been mistaken for the work of four different artists. But it is this very commitment to diversity rather than uniformity, and a refusal to be defined and restricted by labels, that unites Whishaw’s prolific output. Even in his eighties he still wants to explore the boundaries of paint, and to push its ability to inspire, delight, evoke memories, shock and excite, as he has always done – not by focusing in and narrowing down his work into an identifiable visual signature, but by constantly trying new things, hoping to be surprised and intrigued by what might emerge.

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colour, its ribbons of pink, red, turquoise and blue weaving sinuous patterns around the picture surface to suggest a series of joyful, dancing rhythms. Nearby was St Paul’s Multiview II (2009–10; no. 2), a painting that combines elements of cubism and abstraction, collage, realism and topographical architectural drawing. The composition’s fractured space sends the viewer’s gaze ricocheting around multiple viewpoints, sometimes sliding off steeply angled geometric planes of colour, sometimes being drawn into distant views of Wren’s iconic dome.

Whishaw’s two other paintings hung amid the dense grouping of small works in another gallery. Like his depiction of St Paul’s, Flying Above II (2011–15; no. 4) had an architectural focus. As we look down on the rooftops of a Spanish hilltop pueblo, the towers of a church rise out of a blue-and-green mist, with roofs and chimneys tumbling around them in a cubist cascade of multiple viewpoints. Some of these architectural features are painted with a hard-edged clarity while others are left as mere suggestions, half-glimpsed through the fog. Mirrored Flowers (1998–2005; no. 5) employs multiple viewpoints too, but that is where the visual similarity ends.

Using elements of both abstraction and figuration to create a fantastical Escher-like composition, the work contains conventional landscape elements, with hints of sea and sky, fields and fences, flowers and stars. Yet it is also a fantasy, with two horizon lines, multiple perspectives, and two dark curving lines that evoke the mirror of the title, pulling the viewer, Alice-like, through the surface into a tilting, twisting pictorial space that is at once logical and incoherent.

For those wanting to pigeonhole artists into schools or ‘-isms’, Whishaw’s eclecticism can be frustrating. His paintings defy classification. Despite being a

10

2 St Paul’s Multiview II, 2009–10 Acrylic collage on canvas, 83 x 220 cm Private collection 3 St Paul’s Multiview I, 2009–10 Acrylic collage on board, 38 x 37 cm Private collection

Royal Academician, and exhibiting widely in group shows with other major British artists, he has never been one to follow trends, or to align himself with a particular stylistic group. He resists art-historical categorisation or contextualisation, pursuing his own unique path and commitment to his materials. One moment he is exploring cubist constructions of space, the next, trompe-l’œil playfulness.

His use of photocopies and collage, and his application of plastic cups, plastic flies and other objects to his picture surfaces, suggest that he is someone with contemporary concerns and an interest in experimentation. And yet his subjects are often traditional or come from his everyday experience, focusing on architectural details and picturesque scenes reminiscent of the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. His disregard for stylistic boundaries and subject hierarchies has all the hallmarks of postmodernism, and yet Whishaw’s art is without the knowingness and parody of much contemporary work.

The four pieces Whishaw submitted to the Summer Exhibition in 2015 had so little in common in terms of style or content that they could easily have been mistaken for the work of four different artists. But it is this very commitment to diversity rather than uniformity, and a refusal to be defined and restricted by labels, that unites Whishaw’s prolific output. Even in his eighties he still wants to explore the boundaries of paint, and to push its ability to inspire, delight, evoke memories, shock and excite, as he has always done – not by focusing in and narrowing down his work into an identifiable visual signature, but by constantly trying new things, hoping to be surprised and intrigued by what might emerge.

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12 Corrida, 1955–56 Oil on canvas, 100 x 300 cm Tate London

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12 Corrida, 1955–56 Oil on canvas, 100 x 300 cm Tate London

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22 Autumn Burn, 1981 Acrylic collage on canvas, 122 x 213 cm Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

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22 Autumn Burn, 1981 Acrylic collage on canvas, 122 x 213 cm Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

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132 Contradictions, 2001–02 Acrylic on canvas (shaped triptych), 40 x 86 cm

133 White Water Weir, 1998–2000 Acrylic on canvas (shaped triptych), 73 x 40 cm

using it to trace a serpentine path across the rest of the canvas. The rope also crosses the boundary between the front and back of the painting, often diving through a hole in the surface before reappearing through another elsewhere. In other works, such as In Search of Nectar (2007–08) and Memory Block (1997–99; no. 135) the mixing of plastic flies and spiders, plastic cups, metal brackets, nails, chains and metal grilles, with their painted counterparts, asks similar questions of identity: is this painting emerging into reality, or is the real world becoming a painting?

Some of the objects and subjects that Whishaw chooses to paint may seem banal: a plastered wall dotted with windows covered in grilles, a Filofax, some rope, bouncing balls, ‘windows’ being dragged across a computer screen. But like Duchamp’s urinal and bicycle wheel, these simple, ordinary objects have been chosen deliberately, not only for the moments of playfulness and humour they offer, but because in their very banality they do not confront viewers with complex narratives, but always bring them straight back to the work’s material surface – the space where the real and illusory meet.

134 Sportif IV, 2002–03 Acrylic collage on canvas, 68 x 68 cm Private collection

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132 Contradictions, 2001–02 Acrylic on canvas (shaped triptych), 40 x 86 cm

133 White Water Weir, 1998–2000 Acrylic on canvas (shaped triptych), 73 x 40 cm

using it to trace a serpentine path across the rest of the canvas. The rope also crosses the boundary between the front and back of the painting, often diving through a hole in the surface before reappearing through another elsewhere. In other works, such as In Search of Nectar (2007–08) and Memory Block (1997–99; no. 135) the mixing of plastic flies and spiders, plastic cups, metal brackets, nails, chains and metal grilles, with their painted counterparts, asks similar questions of identity: is this painting emerging into reality, or is the real world becoming a painting?

Some of the objects and subjects that Whishaw chooses to paint may seem banal: a plastered wall dotted with windows covered in grilles, a Filofax, some rope, bouncing balls, ‘windows’ being dragged across a computer screen. But like Duchamp’s urinal and bicycle wheel, these simple, ordinary objects have been chosen deliberately, not only for the moments of playfulness and humour they offer, but because in their very banality they do not confront viewers with complex narratives, but always bring them straight back to the work’s material surface – the space where the real and illusory meet.

134 Sportif IV, 2002–03 Acrylic collage on canvas, 68 x 68 cm Private collection

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147 Reverie III Triptych, 1988–90 Acrylic collage on canvas, 168 x 306 cm

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147 Reverie III Triptych, 1988–90 Acrylic collage on canvas, 168 x 306 cm

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154 Turbulence II, 2001–06 Acrylic on canvas, 173 x 414 cm

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154 Turbulence II, 2001–06 Acrylic on canvas, 173 x 414 cm

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