THE MYSTERY OF THE UNFINISHED

CLAUDIA DE GRANDI

STEPHEN NEWTON

MATTHEW RADFORD

ALAN RANKLE

CHARLOTTE SNOOK

SUZIE ZAMIT

ROGUE GALLERY

65 NORMAN RD ST LEONARDS ON SEA TN380EG

17 FEBRUARY – 26 MARCH 2023

In the Autumn of 1999 I visited an exhibition which included Auguste Rodin sculptures from the Cantor Collection at the Nassau County Museum where an inspired curator had juxtaposed some of Rodin’s small bronze figure studies alongside similar sized bronze studies by Willem de Kooning from around a century later

These sculptures were similarly finished in black patinated bronze which gave a sympathetic aesthetic aspect to the singularly visceral physical qualities they shared.

The erotic figures by Rodin modelled finely with edges of a working velocity, seemed to convey a previous incarnation to the abstracted forms of de Kooning ripped and fingered into pulsating shifting shapes..

Speaking with the sculptor Suzie Zamit about my ideas for an exhibition I mentioned how I’d been intrigued about the similar way these two artists had worked on studies and how a rough study captures the essence of the artist’s vision She said, we’re talking about the mystery of the unfinished, and we realised we had a title

Yet this title embodies not only the ‘unfinished’ aspect of such studies and sketches, resonant as they are with the essential brio and panache of an artist’s ideas, often more succinctly than ‘finished’ works John Constable’s full sized rough studies are commonly considered to compare favourably with his exhibited paintings, and the insightful watercolours and drawings by Andrew Wyeth have an authority well beyond his meticulously completed temperas Just as in the case of the conceptual evolution from Rodin to de Kooning, it’s relative to the dialogue an artist has with influential mentors from the past, and their own influence on artists of the future.

The dialogue of art itself is the mystery of the unfinished

Alan Rankle 2023