32 arts

THE WEEK 14 November 2015

art

Of all the young artists who lived and worked in St Ives in the postwar period, Peter Lanyon was “probably the most brilliant”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. In his lifetime, he was seen as a “British equivalent” to American abstract expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, but the truth is that his work was “barely abstract at all”. Rather than being “entirely concerned with form, colour or space”, it shows “a very British preoccupation with landscape and atmosphere” that harks back to Turner and Constable. A new show at The Courtauld Gallery concentrates on Lanyon’s experiences as a glider pilot, and the aerial landscapes they inspired. It is a “gem” of an exhibition that “demonstrates the strength of his talent” – and makes his death at the age of 46 seem all the more “tragic”.

Lanyon was “intimately familiar” with the Cornish coast he so frequently painted, said Marina Vaizey on TheArtsDesk.com. He was born in St Ives in 1918 to a rich mine-owning family. After studying painting in London, he served as a flight engineer with the RAF during the Second World War, and when hostilities ended, returned to St Ives, by then a “thriving avant-garde artists’ colony”. One day, in 1956, he noticed three gliders flying over

the coastline, and the sight prompted him to take up flying as both a hobby and a source of artistic inspiration. His passion for flight is evident from the works here, which convey great “exhilaration and excitement”. Silent Coast, for example, is a “gloriously seductive” painting that captures the “ever-changing” relationship between land and sea. The “dancing brushstrokes” of High Wind, by contrast, evoke the sensation of being “buffeted” by “invisible currents of air”. Lanyon’s “ecstatic exploration” of gliding came at a heavy price, however. In 1964, he crashed his aircraft and died as a result of his injuries.

All the paintings in this show are “lithe, strong and beautiful”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer.

They look like “no other pictures of the sky”. Lanyon saw the world in “constant flux” from the seat of his glider, and his work shows it. Paintings such as Thermal – created after he had been flying for a few years – are “pure shimmer and surge”, while Bird Wind, an imagined encounter between a glider and a bird, “gives a strong sense of his thinking”. It has taken half a century for a museum to bring these paintings together. “Exhilarating, uplifting, startling in their high originality”, they are “the revelation of the year”.

Exhibition of the week Soaring Flight: Peter LanyonThe Courtauld Gallery, London WC2 (020-7848 2777, www.courtauld.ac.uk). Until 17 January 2016

José-María Cano is an artist probably best known for his virtuoso paintings in paraffin wax. He takes this highly unconventional artistic material and heats it up with a blowtorch, before slathering the molten substance over his canvases using a wax gun as a “brush”. The results are nothing if not distinctive: the thick, mottled surfaces are immediately striking, and have the yellowed tint of sepia photography. In the past, Cano has concentrated on subjects as disparate as economics and bullfighting, but always returns to the theme of mankind’s tendency to take leaps of faith, whether in the markets or the corrida. These new works depicting the Moon also explore devotion; they were inspired by St Teresa of Avila’s

treatise on the seven grades of prayer. The knobbly texture of the wax is eerily evocative of the cratered lunar surface, and the detail is almost photorealistic. There is something slightly unsettling about them, but this, one feels, is precisely Cano’s intention. Paintings are priced at £20,000, plus VAT.

79 Beak Street, London W1 (020-7439 0000). Until 12 December.

Soaring Flight (1960): part of a “gem” of an exhibition

Where to buy…The Week reviews an exhibition in a private gallery

José-María Canoat Riflemaker

The Far Side (2015): £20,000, plus VAT

For a decade, foreign buyers have been purchasing work by the Chinese conceptual artist Tao Hongjing, says The Daily Telegraph. His work offered a modern spin on traditional themes, with Chinese characters in neon lights and futuristic Buddha statues. The artist himself, however, was never seen. Now it has been revealed that Tao is not, in fact, Chinese at all. He is Alexandre Ouairy, a French artist living in Shanghai. Ouairy (pictured) has had little success under his own name. “The collectors were primarily foreigners and they wanted to buy Chinese work,” he explained. “I saw all that counterfeit Louis Vuitton and Prada, and I said to myself, if they make fake bags, why don’t I make a fake Chinese artist?” He adopted the name of a Chinese philosopher, and his work jumped in price from 1,500 yuan to 200,000 yuan (£150 to £20,000). Ouairy revealed his true identity at a new show last week. The reaction, he said, had generally been “warm”.

The French face of Chinese art

© C

OU

RT

ES

Y O

F A

RT

S C

OU

NC

IL C

OLL

EC

TIO

N, S

OU

TH

BA

NK

CE

NT

RE