Perfect Pallant - Hepworth and Kitaj

The Pallant House Gallery http://www.pallant.org.uk/ is in Chichester and has a great collection of 20th century British art. (And they've got a posh cafe, a small but perfectly-formed shop and it's half-price on Tuesdays.)

They seem to rehang pretty often but the exhibitions are always worth a look if you hunger after high quality art close to home (well, for me, anyway). Always some Auerbach, and I like a bit of Auerbach, all lovely sludgy colours like my grandma's front room forty years ago!

Last week, we went to have a look at the RB Kitaj exhibition in the modern galleries. He's an Auerbach/Bacon/Smith contemporary. Boy, he's tricky. I don't mind having to work at it, but I wasn't sure how much of his stuff hung together. A lot of it just didn't seem visually resolved to me (OK, who's going to tell me that being 'visually resolved' is a bourgeois concept?).

His early work particularly fell into that category, one snippet bouncing off another in ways that were difficult to connect and in the end, I didn't care about, despite the blurb trying to tell me.

Here's one that did work for me. Why? The super-dynamic body position, the outrageous collaged on head, the Matisse-y block colour.

Warburg as Maenad (1962) by RB Kitaj

Having said that he was a marvellous draughtman and really could paint. His work The Sailor (David Ward) had so much exciting fluorescent underpainting coming through that the flesh seemed to glow.

Would I recommend a visit? Yes, if you like to get a bit annoyed and to feel you've had an aesthetic work-out. It's all input in one way or another.

And more importantly, the Barbara Hepworth exhibition, which I hadn't even realised was also on was a revelation, in a couple of rooms of the old house. The Hospital Drawings, largely from 1948 and '49 were a result of time she spent in an operating theatre with surgeons. For me, the whole feel of these works was lovely: chalky, limited colour palette, lots of heads and hands in rapt concentration around a subject, never seen but somehow a glowing focus in the centre of the picture. There was a religious fervour and hush around, like the wise men around the manger, glowing with holy light.

From The Hospital Drawings (1948-49) by Barbara Hepworth

Click on the picture to see a larger version and the delicious texture is clearer. It made me want to rush home, gesso a few sheets of stout paper and then slap on some acrylic and some watercolour over the top (the latter to nestle in the gesso and paint folds) and then sandpaper the lot to get some great textures to work on.