Georges de la Tour, Entre Ombre et Lumière @ Musée Jacquemart-André

Georges de la Tour, Le nouveau né, c. 1645

It was no surprise to see the extraordinary creations in and of light in Georges de la Tour's paintings now on exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André. De la Tour has a reputation as the seventeenth-century master of artificial light. Even if his paintings are rarely shown, the proliferation of copies and fakes makes them ironically familiar. Other than his crafting of light, perhaps the most exciting element of these paintings was the exaggerated intimacy of the scenes, the way that figures hovered around candle or torch light in small, enclosed spaces, always at night time, always in meditative poses. Even when the figures are in action, they are stopped still, reflecting, thinking, as if caught in a photograph. 

Georges de la Tour, La Madeleine Penitante, c. 1635-40

There was something about these paintings that made me see them as well ahead of their time. The use of light as more than illumination of a scene, often becoming the very subject of the scene, such that many other details of the paintings fade into the background. The fact that all the women, whether it is a religious figure or a peasant, look to be the same model hardly matters once we are pulled into the private world of her thoughts, effulgent in an illuminated space. That said, their pensive faces and often deliberately positioned hands are quietly expressive, even if we cannot access what those emotions are.

Georges de la Tour, La Femme à la Puce, 1632-1635

As the line between secular and religious becomes blurred in the paintings, it hardly matters if we are looking at the Virgin and St Anne or a pregnant peasant woman, a contemplative villager or a saint, La Madeleine or a prostitute. What matters is that all the figures appear to engaged in a transcendent experience and invite us into their private world. Though de la Tour was clearly a man committed to the scriptures, particularly as they were represented in painting, he was more interested in composition, lighting, and creating internal emotional worlds through soft orange glowing flames. 

Georges de la Tour, Les Joueurs des dès, 1651

So little is known about de la Tour during his lifetime. From records, it is know that he was born and lived in Lunéville, a small town in Lorraine. Where he learned, not just to paint, but to create worlds of mystery and contemplation through candle light, is itself a mystery. While historians continue to debate the unknowns of de la Tour's life, the lack of information also means that we are free to let our imaginations roam as we contemplate the paintings. There is widespread opinion that he must have visited Italy and been exposed to Caravaggio's painting - because of the light - but Caravaggio was doing something very different with light. Caravaggio's light and shadow was conceived and executed to energize, to sweep his figures into scenic action, and create perspectival lines. De la Tour used it for the very opposite reasons: to create secret, inward worlds. I saw a number of other resonances, for example, El Greco's long delicate fingers and hands placed in strategic positions, as well as his figures huddled around a flame in paintings such as An Allegory with a Boy Lighting a Candle in the Company of an Ape and a Fool, 1577-79. 

El Greco, An Allegory with a Boy Lighting a Candle in the Company of an Ape and a Fool, 1577-79

There is also something about these works that made me think that de la Tour was the Manet of his day, painting people on the street as the result of their environment, in unforgiving worlds. His paintings of old peasants against grey backgrounds, in what look to be theatre costumes reminded me of Manet's street portraits. Like Manet, de la Tour seemed to have empathy for those who had been left out of the prosperity of their time, giving them dignity and personality through painting where they may have had little in life.

Georges de la Tour, Vieillard, and, Vieille Femme, 1618-19

Though the Musée Jacquemart-André's exhibition spaces are themselves small and at times too intimate as viewers are squeezing past each other moving between rooms, the hanging of the paintings was quite wonderful. That said, the lighting often conflicted with the light given off by the painting. Each painting has been lit to ensure that the only place from which to look at it without glare is directly in front. However, this was not always possible with the crowds. Nevertheless, a patience with the crowds will bring the rich rewards of these quiet meditative works. 

Philip Guston, L'Ironie de l'Histoire @ Musée Picasso

Philip Guston, The Studio, 1969

The recent exhibition of Philip Guston's paintings doesn't explicitly address the "irony" of history that is mentioned in its title, but the connections are clear. At least, there are various possible interpretations, all of which are plausible. Staging an exhibition of Guston's political work at the Musée Picasso, alongside works by Picasso, itself strongly suggests an ironic repetition of history. Though the connection between the two artists is evident, it was brought into the foreground in this exhibition. Guston was influenced by Picasso's deformed and mutilated figures in his depiction of the Nazis' bombing of Guernica, as well as his repeated satirisation of the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. When Guston moved to figuration after sixteen years of painting abstraction, wanting to represent the violence of late 1950s and 1960s America, and the absurdity of president Richard Nixon, he had a ready example in Picasso's depictions of the same from thirty years earlier. 

Philip Guston, Poor Richard, 1971

Juxtaposing Picasso's political portraits and Guston's Nixon paintings and drawings, together with some of his depictions drawn from the media representation of the Second World War, the war on America's streets in the postwar period, and the violence of the Vietnam War demonstrates a repetition of history that is logical as well as ironic. Once Guston moves to his representations of white supremacy in the American South and his deformed, grotesque bodies, intertwined in bloody revolt, he expands Picasso's vocabulary. In addition, this connection highlights just how political Guston was. His engagement with the corruption of power in the satirical portraits and drawings of Nixon, especially when his face is one big scrotum and his nose an erect penis, seems as essential to the resistance as marching on the streets. Despite the pushback from artists and critics in his time, Guston's work from the 1960s and 1970s is incredibly radical once he returns to figuration. The return was anything but a turning away from the search for freedom of expression and liberation as some said of these paintings the time. Though perhaps we have to be in an era of explicit American violence all these years later to see the irony.

Philip Guston, Painting, 1954

Included in the exhibition are two exquisite abstract works, hung to illustrate Guston's ties to abstract expressionism. I was drawn to these two works both because they were new to me, but also, because they show Guston's connection to Mondrian. In this work, we see the vibrations and rhythms of Mondrian, as well as the direct, spontaneous expressive brushwork of De Kooning, without the references to self. The Structure of a work such as Painting (1954), its short, thick horizontal and vertical strokes makes the painting appear predetermined. Contrarily, the cloud of red and orange, literally floating on a pink and creamy background gives it a mystery and a surreality. (Note that the reproduction doesn't do the painting justice).

Philip Guston, Large Brush, 1979

Of course, Guston is continually painting himself, if not his personal subjective self. Rather, he is always looking for his self as artist. His persistent question through the exhibition and across his oeuvre is, what is the place of the artist within the idiocy and violence of this country at war? In one of the most disturbing paintings that could well be a self-portrait, a brush is dipped in a saucepan of red paint. It is as though the paint is boiling over, streaming down the sides of the pan as the brush is taken out, getting ready to paint. Of course, the red paint is recognizeable as blood. The painting is disturbing because it brings together the social violence and the artist's responsibility to that same violence, a responsibility taken up in representation. 

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980

The exhibition finished with a series of works painted between Guston's first heart attack and his death a year later. Guston had a looming sense of his own death, but this didn't stop him painting, it just meant smaller canvases. In his final year, he painted curious, misshapen objects often looking like the spoils of war: bombs, a patched up grey teapot/satchel/elephant, what could be a landmine, all floating in a background of grey paint. To the end, death, violence and the battlefield were the preoccupations of this great American painter.

The greatest irony that will occur to many visitors to the exhibition is still another one. As we watch the United States whither in the face of the current administration's corruption and blatant power grabs, it is for artists to speak truth to power. And ironically, some of the most outspoken critics of current American politics (if we can even call it that as it is more like gangsterism) are the country's comedians. I came away from the exhibition wondering whether more American painters would take up Guston's mantle and speak out against the current regime, thus extending the lineage from Picasso. 

Kerry James Marshall, The HIstories @ The Royal Academy

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, at the Royal Academy in London opens with some of Marshall's most brilliant pieces, summarising and portending the treasures to come in the exhibition. Included in the first room are paintings about painting: models, artists, studios, museums, students, visitors. All of the stages of production, exhibition and reception of painting are on display in this impressive introduction to his career. Ultimately, his oeuvre, in one way or another, is dedicated to the practice of representation in painting and what it means in the world, how painting has been commodified, or not, throughout history. Within this frame is another concern that runs deep into the oeuvre: blackness. How black people perform identity, are represented, seen, received and commodified, in art and in life. He asks what it means to be black, what it means to be seen as black. Marshall's concerns are sweeping and profound, ricocheting well beyond what lies within each painting's frame.

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (studio), 2014

So many of Marshall's paintings are about looking; who looks, who is looked at, how we look, and most importantly, changing the perspectives and angles from which we look. From the opening of the exhibition, in works grouped together for their representation of the art world—models, studios, museums, students of art—paintings are filled with reflections, mirrors, and the performance of the one in the image. In a painting such as Untitled (Studio), 2014, the artist poses the head of her model before a spotlight, as if it is a photograph. The painting is already started on the left of Marhall's canvas, though it could be a different painting. A dog looks on, a nude model in the background appears to watch as does a man dressing behind a sheet that is both the red background in Marshall's painting and a screen for the man. There is so much going on in this painting, all of the layers skewed by the angle from which the viewer of Marshall's painting is anticipated. 

Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty/School of Culture, 2012

In a later room, paintings set in a beauty school find related performances in mirrors and narratives of being looked at. As spectators, we are again placed at a very strange perspective, looking up as if watching a theatrical performance. The head of a blond white woman is shown in the foreground, skewed, elongated, compressed, in an obvious echo of the skull in Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533). Rather than a reminder of the transience of life as is Holbein's skull, Marshall here seems to remind his viewer of the fabrication of the image of women. Where we stand in relationship to the image will depend on whether or not we see the entire woman's head. As with Holbein's painting, the out of place head is only fully visible from certain angles. As such, the curious motif is surely commenting on perspective and the importance of where we stand and how that takes on a larger thematic meaning. How we see women, depends on where we stand. In a twin work De Style (1993) [drawing on Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergères], men in a barber shop perform as if for a camera. Again through the use of mirrors, we see both opposite walls and the men having their hair done. Thus, Marshall draws on the history of art to converse on manufacturing an image, the importance of being seen in a particular way, and the distortions we bring to images. In addition, both of these works are particularly about creating a black identity, being seen as black, and being consumed by a viewer. That said, for Marshall all of the actors in his paintings are black, and therefore, the layers of representation and meaning are both racialised, and without borders.

Kerry James Marshall, Invisible Man, 1986

In a series of works that draws on literature rather than painting, Marshall cleverly paints invisible men. The faces and bodies fade into the black of the background, with only eyes and teeth canb be seen when standing at a distance. In these paintings he draws again on the racial stereotypes of how black men are seen (and consumed) by a white culture. For example, The Wonderful One, 1986 references the singing and dancing minstrel. What's interesting is that all of Marshall's figures are painted black, not brown, and black itself is rich and textured. Even when the works are not specifically about invisible men, there is always a facelessness to his figures because of their blackness. In a painting such as Vignette, 2003, a boy and girl are running through a love fantasy. The figures are silhouettes that have lost their corporeality to the fantasy of their love story, signified by butterflies and colourful birds all around them. This facelessness is also surely a comment on our blindness to them as people. White faces would have identities where black do not: black people are invisible in a particular way, and Marshall draws on this to show us that their skin colour (black) makes them less than human, diminished in the eyes of the beholder. 

Kerry James Marshall, Vignette, 2003

There is so much more to say about this exhibition, but people will need to go and see the brilliance of Marshall's paintings—both in their intellectual engagement and sparkling colour, even when the paintings are black—for themselves. The reworking of art history is everywhere, both in the representation and absence of black people. And always, Marshall does multiple things at once. To give a last example, in Gulf Stream (2003), he references Winslow Homer's famous painting and by painting gold netting around the frame, creates a keep sake, a lovely postcard of the charmed life of black people on the boat. He both confronts Homer's representation and the slave trade in a cheeky revision of the historical narrative. 

Kerry James Marshall, Gulf Stream, 2003

I came away convinced that Kerry James Marshall is the Manet of our time. Like Manet, he is a painter who is deeply concerned with the social issues of his time, motivated more than ever to shift painting beyond its familiar limits, while all the time paying homage to those limits as what enable his brilliance. In addition, like Manet, Marshall paints in a realist style that is not quite realist, altering the perspective through which we look at and see the world, drawing our attention to our blind spots.This might be the best exhibition of 2025, and as it makes its way to the Kunsthaus Zurich in 2026 and Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 2027, my hope is that not only more and more people will see the works, but that Marshall's work continues to receive the recognition and applause that it so richly deserves.