Adrian Lewis - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Adrian Lewis
Art History, 2001
This review critiques Paul Hayes Tucker's general methodology for analysing Impressionism, especi... more This review critiques Paul Hayes Tucker's general methodology for analysing Impressionism, especially the way that he relates form and semiotic social-content 'meaning'. It especially critiques his explanation of side-by-side painting.
Cassone, 2015
This review disputes the claim of the 2014 National Gallery exhibition 'Inventing Impressionism' ... more This review disputes the claim of the 2014 National Gallery exhibition 'Inventing Impressionism' that Durand-Ruel invented Impressionism.
Cassone, 2014
This review views Rubin's approach in terms of current fashionable trends of analysis and accuses... more This review views Rubin's approach in terms of current fashionable trends of analysis and accuses it of never addressing the central problematic about the relation of imagery and general approach, quoting Monet's words to indicate how it falls short of 'getting' Impressionism overall.
Cassone, 2015
is the art dealer most associated with the Impressionists. His memoirs reveal a complex character... more is the art dealer most associated with the Impressionists. His memoirs reveal a complex character and a very astute businessman. Paul Durand-Ruel's father had a stationer's shop which expanded into art materials and picture sales. The son began working in his father's art gallery around 1856 and began showing Barbizon School paintings in the 1860s, alongside old masters and academic paintings and prints. In 1871 he began buying paintings by Pissarro and Monet, expanding the following year into Courbet, Manet, Degas, Sisley and Renoir. At that point he ran into financial problems and it took until 1880 for him to resume buying from the Impressionists. Thereafter he supported their work massively, presenting it in solo shows, and generally tried to corner the market in their work as other dealers began to compete for it. His network of galleries, especially in the USA, and his practice of buying back in, meant that thousands of Impressionist works passed through his hands, including hundreds that are now in the best European and American permanent collections.
Cassone, 2014
A Ctitique of the exhibition 'Impressionist France', especially the association of Impressionism ... more A Ctitique of the exhibition 'Impressionist France', especially the association of Impressionism and Monet's Nymphéas with nationalism and national identity
Camille: Monet's Inspiration, 2012
Review of Mary Matthew Gedo's Monet and His Muse
Cassone, 2011
A critique of Foucault's book on Manet
Impressionism: Painting Quickly in France, 2001
Richard Brettell's catalogue, published close on the heels of Anthea Callen's study of painting m... more Richard Brettell's catalogue, published close on the heels of Anthea Callen's study of painting methods in The Art of Impressionism, is a timely contribution that contributes significantly to the current refocus on the painterliness of Impressionism. When though so many popular books delight in the painting of Impressionism, his suggestion that its painterliness has suffered neglect may strike some as faintly ridiculous. What he has in mind is not so much its aesthetic appreciation as scholarly enquiry into its significance. Brettell attributes the recent art historical disinterest in painterliness to the attack on formalism by the 'new art history' of the last two decades. Formalist art history itself however usually operated in the realm of discursive abstraction. At the start of the catalogue, he himself rightly suggests a broader scholarly neglect of painting as manual labour. The title of Richard Brettell's catalogue is meant to define as the core of Impressionism those paintings done directly and quickly in front of nature. Thus he is only willing to call 'impressions' about one-third of Monet's 1870's production. This selectiveness certainly made for a wonderful exhibition, but it may also pander to the idea of a 'real' Impressionism which would exclude unrealistically more lengthily produced works. It might also separate these 'impressions' from less loose but related works, thereby missing the meaningfulness of their total seriality in terms of a systematic exploration in time of the relationship between the artist and the world. Laforgue wrote, in an 1883 essay appended to the catalogue, that "the subject and the object are…forever in motion". Focus on the most immediate enactment of such contingency must not preclude a picturing of this shiftingness of relationship through a sequence of sometimes less immediately wrought paintings. Monet's ability to be "totally consumed by his motifs" receives the bulk of attention, preceded by a study of the variability of Manet's painted gesture. Morisot and Renoir are coupled together in the liquidity of their sketch-like strokes, while Sisley's painting is seen increasingly to court disintegration in its small transcriptive marks. Brettell includes some intriguing examples of rapidly made paintings by Pissarro and Caillebotte. Surprising final additions are Degas, who may never have painted an 'impression' but fabricated scenes in his studio that were painted with the gusto of an 'impression', and Van Gogh, whose brushstrokes are seen as culminating the association of seeing and handling in a new haptic extreme. Brettell's method lies in close observation of the disturbance or not of previous paintlayers, allowing him to ascertain the rough number of painting-sessions involved because of the day or two needed for an oil-paint layer to dry. His identification of an 'impression' is on the basis of no more than an initial lay-in and brief follow-up later, though any follow-up at all strictly problematizes the notion of direct instantaneous painting. Thus even Monet's famous Impression, Sunrise is identified as involving three distinct painting-sessions across at least a couple of days. This close attention to dried paint-layers is not new in itself, but the systematic application of it as a procedure proved fascinating to the public when this information was included on the picture-labels of the exhibition itself.
The Art Book, 2003
Claiming Monet's paternity of modern art is rank bad stylistic art history.
The C.N.A.A. Collection, 1992
An edited catalogue of the art collection of the Council for National Academic Awards, giving a s... more An edited catalogue of the art collection of the Council for National Academic Awards, giving a sense of what values were esteemed within the art education profession in the 1960s-70s. The collection formed by the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design was passed onto the CNAA after the NCDAD passed on art education validation to the same body, and the collection decorated the CNAA offices. An essay contextualizing the idea of art professionalism was turned down for the catalogue but appears here alongside the catalogue entries by Adrian Lewis. A useful document for the history of British art education.
Art History, 1989
The wilful ineptitude which early Cézanne chose to pursue as an undoing of his academic skilling ... more The wilful ineptitude which early Cézanne chose to pursue as an undoing of his academic skilling is culturally and contextually explored in this critique of Lawrence Gowing's text for the 1988 RA exhibition of Cézanne's early years.
During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Co... more During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys, b.1920). A close relationship had developed between the two men as a result of Constant's stay in London for three months on a British Council grant and Hilton's return with him to Holland in February 1953, during which visit Hilton encountered the paintings of Mondrian. The correspondence extended from mid-March to November 1953 and included at least eleven letters, nine of which survive. It involved a dialogue on artistic ideas which is characteristic of Constant's international contact-making and sense of his role as an avant-garde catalyst of the wider cultural repositionings he deemed necessary to help effect the reconstruction of society.' While this exchange reflects - but cannot be said to have inflected - the dynamic of Constant's theorising, for Hilton it undoubtedly had a more fundamental impact. Indeed he was quite explicit about the de...
Apollo the International Magazine of Arts, 2000
Burlington Magazine, 2010
The writer comments on an autobiographical text by the artist Roger Hilton, published here for th... more The writer comments on an autobiographical text by the artist Roger Hilton, published here for the first time. The text is written in the artist's hand on one sheet of letter paper, and can be dated to after 1959–60. The fact that the text is in French suggests that it was written in relation to his exhibition at the Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich, Switzerland, in June 1961. Structured into four parts, covering chronologically the periods 1911–39, 1940–49, 1950–59 and 1960–61, the text refers to many of the significant moments or passages in Hilton's life and career, at least as he remembered them at around the age of 50, and can be amplified from what is known of his life. Changing focus from his personal life to his painting and, finally, to comments on art-world politics, and self-consciously using a written form associated with literary projects, Hilton has constructed his own narrative of his emergence as an artist.
Art History, 2001
This review critiques Paul Hayes Tucker's general methodology for analysing Impressionism, especi... more This review critiques Paul Hayes Tucker's general methodology for analysing Impressionism, especially the way that he relates form and semiotic social-content 'meaning'. It especially critiques his explanation of side-by-side painting.
Cassone, 2015
This review disputes the claim of the 2014 National Gallery exhibition 'Inventing Impressionism' ... more This review disputes the claim of the 2014 National Gallery exhibition 'Inventing Impressionism' that Durand-Ruel invented Impressionism.
Cassone, 2014
This review views Rubin's approach in terms of current fashionable trends of analysis and accuses... more This review views Rubin's approach in terms of current fashionable trends of analysis and accuses it of never addressing the central problematic about the relation of imagery and general approach, quoting Monet's words to indicate how it falls short of 'getting' Impressionism overall.
Cassone, 2015
is the art dealer most associated with the Impressionists. His memoirs reveal a complex character... more is the art dealer most associated with the Impressionists. His memoirs reveal a complex character and a very astute businessman. Paul Durand-Ruel's father had a stationer's shop which expanded into art materials and picture sales. The son began working in his father's art gallery around 1856 and began showing Barbizon School paintings in the 1860s, alongside old masters and academic paintings and prints. In 1871 he began buying paintings by Pissarro and Monet, expanding the following year into Courbet, Manet, Degas, Sisley and Renoir. At that point he ran into financial problems and it took until 1880 for him to resume buying from the Impressionists. Thereafter he supported their work massively, presenting it in solo shows, and generally tried to corner the market in their work as other dealers began to compete for it. His network of galleries, especially in the USA, and his practice of buying back in, meant that thousands of Impressionist works passed through his hands, including hundreds that are now in the best European and American permanent collections.
Cassone, 2014
A Ctitique of the exhibition 'Impressionist France', especially the association of Impressionism ... more A Ctitique of the exhibition 'Impressionist France', especially the association of Impressionism and Monet's Nymphéas with nationalism and national identity
Camille: Monet's Inspiration, 2012
Review of Mary Matthew Gedo's Monet and His Muse
Cassone, 2011
A critique of Foucault's book on Manet
Impressionism: Painting Quickly in France, 2001
Richard Brettell's catalogue, published close on the heels of Anthea Callen's study of painting m... more Richard Brettell's catalogue, published close on the heels of Anthea Callen's study of painting methods in The Art of Impressionism, is a timely contribution that contributes significantly to the current refocus on the painterliness of Impressionism. When though so many popular books delight in the painting of Impressionism, his suggestion that its painterliness has suffered neglect may strike some as faintly ridiculous. What he has in mind is not so much its aesthetic appreciation as scholarly enquiry into its significance. Brettell attributes the recent art historical disinterest in painterliness to the attack on formalism by the 'new art history' of the last two decades. Formalist art history itself however usually operated in the realm of discursive abstraction. At the start of the catalogue, he himself rightly suggests a broader scholarly neglect of painting as manual labour. The title of Richard Brettell's catalogue is meant to define as the core of Impressionism those paintings done directly and quickly in front of nature. Thus he is only willing to call 'impressions' about one-third of Monet's 1870's production. This selectiveness certainly made for a wonderful exhibition, but it may also pander to the idea of a 'real' Impressionism which would exclude unrealistically more lengthily produced works. It might also separate these 'impressions' from less loose but related works, thereby missing the meaningfulness of their total seriality in terms of a systematic exploration in time of the relationship between the artist and the world. Laforgue wrote, in an 1883 essay appended to the catalogue, that "the subject and the object are…forever in motion". Focus on the most immediate enactment of such contingency must not preclude a picturing of this shiftingness of relationship through a sequence of sometimes less immediately wrought paintings. Monet's ability to be "totally consumed by his motifs" receives the bulk of attention, preceded by a study of the variability of Manet's painted gesture. Morisot and Renoir are coupled together in the liquidity of their sketch-like strokes, while Sisley's painting is seen increasingly to court disintegration in its small transcriptive marks. Brettell includes some intriguing examples of rapidly made paintings by Pissarro and Caillebotte. Surprising final additions are Degas, who may never have painted an 'impression' but fabricated scenes in his studio that were painted with the gusto of an 'impression', and Van Gogh, whose brushstrokes are seen as culminating the association of seeing and handling in a new haptic extreme. Brettell's method lies in close observation of the disturbance or not of previous paintlayers, allowing him to ascertain the rough number of painting-sessions involved because of the day or two needed for an oil-paint layer to dry. His identification of an 'impression' is on the basis of no more than an initial lay-in and brief follow-up later, though any follow-up at all strictly problematizes the notion of direct instantaneous painting. Thus even Monet's famous Impression, Sunrise is identified as involving three distinct painting-sessions across at least a couple of days. This close attention to dried paint-layers is not new in itself, but the systematic application of it as a procedure proved fascinating to the public when this information was included on the picture-labels of the exhibition itself.
The Art Book, 2003
Claiming Monet's paternity of modern art is rank bad stylistic art history.
The C.N.A.A. Collection, 1992
An edited catalogue of the art collection of the Council for National Academic Awards, giving a s... more An edited catalogue of the art collection of the Council for National Academic Awards, giving a sense of what values were esteemed within the art education profession in the 1960s-70s. The collection formed by the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design was passed onto the CNAA after the NCDAD passed on art education validation to the same body, and the collection decorated the CNAA offices. An essay contextualizing the idea of art professionalism was turned down for the catalogue but appears here alongside the catalogue entries by Adrian Lewis. A useful document for the history of British art education.
Art History, 1989
The wilful ineptitude which early Cézanne chose to pursue as an undoing of his academic skilling ... more The wilful ineptitude which early Cézanne chose to pursue as an undoing of his academic skilling is culturally and contextually explored in this critique of Lawrence Gowing's text for the 1988 RA exhibition of Cézanne's early years.
During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Co... more During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys, b.1920). A close relationship had developed between the two men as a result of Constant's stay in London for three months on a British Council grant and Hilton's return with him to Holland in February 1953, during which visit Hilton encountered the paintings of Mondrian. The correspondence extended from mid-March to November 1953 and included at least eleven letters, nine of which survive. It involved a dialogue on artistic ideas which is characteristic of Constant's international contact-making and sense of his role as an avant-garde catalyst of the wider cultural repositionings he deemed necessary to help effect the reconstruction of society.' While this exchange reflects - but cannot be said to have inflected - the dynamic of Constant's theorising, for Hilton it undoubtedly had a more fundamental impact. Indeed he was quite explicit about the de...
Apollo the International Magazine of Arts, 2000
Burlington Magazine, 2010
The writer comments on an autobiographical text by the artist Roger Hilton, published here for th... more The writer comments on an autobiographical text by the artist Roger Hilton, published here for the first time. The text is written in the artist's hand on one sheet of letter paper, and can be dated to after 1959–60. The fact that the text is in French suggests that it was written in relation to his exhibition at the Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich, Switzerland, in June 1961. Structured into four parts, covering chronologically the periods 1911–39, 1940–49, 1950–59 and 1960–61, the text refers to many of the significant moments or passages in Hilton's life and career, at least as he remembered them at around the age of 50, and can be amplified from what is known of his life. Changing focus from his personal life to his painting and, finally, to comments on art-world politics, and self-consciously using a written form associated with literary projects, Hilton has constructed his own narrative of his emergence as an artist.
Much of contemporary art suffers from the self-contradictory morality of replicating a reprehensi... more Much of contemporary art suffers from the self-contradictory morality of replicating a reprehensible reality.
This essay exxplores the aesthetic failure of contemporary art in terms of McCarthy's 2003 instal... more This essay exxplores the aesthetic failure of contemporary art in terms of McCarthy's 2003 installation outside of Tate Modern.
Examples of work by Eliasson and El Anatsui are used to argue for the harmful dropping of specifi... more Examples of work by Eliasson and El Anatsui are used to argue for the harmful dropping of specific life-experience as the basis for art-making and the characteristic of other-directedness in contemporary art.
This essaay asserts the aesthetic nullity of Michael Craig-Martin's 'paintings'.
This essay discusses the aesthetic failure of the 'assisted readymade', using as an example Mauri... more This essay discusses the aesthetic failure of the 'assisted readymade', using as an example Maurizio Cattelan's Nineteen Hundred
Matta-Clark's Splittings and Salcedo's Shibboleth are typical contemporary art gestures that fall... more Matta-Clark's Splittings and Salcedo's Shibboleth are typical contemporary art gestures that fall short of the aesthetic dimension and fail aesthetically.
Mass media material is often today simply re-presented as fine art. The point of this essay is to... more Mass media material is often today simply re-presented as fine art. The point of this essay is to question and challenge such assumptions, indeed to suggest the aesthetic worhtlessness of such activity.
The notion of the 'intentional fallacy' was basically correct.
Reproducing the aesthetically worthless is worthless aesthetically.
How contemporary art hobbles serious artists
Cultural production today has created its niche in the arena of public space and has dedicated it... more Cultural production today has created its niche in the arena of public space and has dedicated itself to confusing and surprising art viewers as a matter of principle to 'make us think' or 'keep the culture moving', as the mantras go. The argument is that contemporary art practices, vaunted as a liberation from ideology, actually operates to peddle ideology in various ways, since it operates in a public sphere bent on creating models or patterns of what we should think, how we should see things, how we should be. The whole context (ideological as well as simply cultural) is important for how we read contemporary works, but not necessarily in the way that contemporary practitioners would like to believe.
The firework events and associated paintings/drawings of the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Chiang have c... more The firework events and associated paintings/drawings of the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Chiang have created enormous public and artworld attention, including being featured in a Netflix film Sky Ladder (2016) 1 and in Simon Schama's
relational art is relating with the art taken out.
I examine a typical example of how contemporary 3D work choses to rely on a triggering of associa... more I examine a typical example of how contemporary 3D work choses to rely on a triggering of associations from image, material, process and site. This essay tests out critically what is going on (or not) in the relation between image and site, process and claims to meaning.
From the late 1980s onwards, certain sorts of photography (a highly limited section out of the ra... more From the late 1980s onwards, certain sorts of photography (a highly limited section out of the range of art-photographic practice) have been increasingly visible (indeed, rather dominant) in art galleries and museums. One critic and scholar,
In 2005, Rachel Whiteread filled the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with hundreds of polyethylene box... more In 2005, Rachel Whiteread filled the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with hundreds of polyethylene boxes made from plaster casts of a number of battered old cardboard boxes. Whiteread produces what are in effect assisted ready-mades, to use Duchamp's term. The process of casting from ready-made elements was practiced by Duchamp himself when he cast a female breast and pubic area, as well as his own cheek, 1 a process taken up by Bruce Nauman 2. Nauman's A Cast of the Space Under My Chair (1965-68), for example, embodies in advance the whole premise of the oeuvre of Rachel Whiteread. Since Whiteread's oeuvre copies the process and principle of Nauman's ghostly non-sculpture, it raises two separate issues. The first is whether you can talk about a 'Duchampian tradition' as a counter-narrative of modern art, or whether the ready-made premise actually leads to repetition and reiteration, which is the opposite