Pierre Bonnard - The Colour of Memory

The Tate Modern is currently holding an exhibition of the work of Pierre Bonnard and I headed down there a few weeks ago to check it out. The exhibiton focuses mainly on his mature work where he had developed a highly individual command of colour. He used that colour to paint sensuous images of everyday life. As a textile designer, it was very inspiring to see his use of colour up close and the unconventional use of contrasting hues. One of the best examples of colour use is this scene below which uses a bold purple shade to convey the light on the table top.

Bonnard also painted everyday scenes like the 'Woman at a Table' below, which were snippets of life. The composition is also more unconventional, and more like a snapshot in its set up. The viewpoint makes us feel like we are sharing the meal with the woman, who is up so close that her head is cropped. I love the vibrancy of the red dress and rosiness of the cheeks.

In 'The White Tablecloth' below, the simplicity of the cloth sets off the items that are placed on it and surrounding it. I zoomed in on the richly coloured garment of the woman standing.

Bonnard created many room scenes, which used unconventional angles and viewpoints. I love the use of colour in the painting below which combines rigid angles of the interior (along with a fab yellow patterned wallpaper) with the softness of the landscape through the window.

The painting below, has a still life in the foreground and then you notice the woman standing with her back to us in the background, as if she is just about to leave the room.

Bonnard worked on many nude paintings and liked to use mirrors to challenge the idea of space and time. In the painting below he shows two different angles of the pose - the nude in the foreground and her reflection in the mirror, where the suggestion of an outstretched arm is shown.

In 'The Mantelpiece' below, Bonnard creates a complex visual structure with a stretching woman reflected in the mirror and a painted nude on the wall behind her. The nude stands where the painter would be, but the painter does not appear in the reflection.

The 'Nude Crouching in the Tub' below relates to a specific photograph that Bonnard took. The relaxed pose was captured on film and then recreated in painted form. Bonnard used photography and its spontaneous composition as an influence on his paintings and soon no longer relied on a camera to create these poses.

The warm tones of the painting below appealed to me. The orange of the floor reflects the light of the  late afternoon sun coming through the window.

Bonnard's paintings of the bathing nude introduced a new element to his paintings and showed how different the body looks under water. The painting below is the first of four paintings addressing this theme. In this painting, the nude stretches across the width of the canvas and the composition can be divided into a series of horizontal bands - the tiled wall, the white bath, the immersed body, and the rim and the floor.

This later version of a nude in the bath (below) is much moodier, with a more intense and expressive use of colour. Marthe de Meligny was his lover and model. Her health started deteriorating and she would take baths every day following water treatment for her ailments. Bonnard captures the intimacy and melancholy of their relationship through this painting. I love the use of purples, blue and mustard yellow to create the heaviness of the emotions.

This wonderful exhibition is on at Tate Modern until 6th May 2019.

Marlene Dumas

Yesterday I headed up to the Tate Modern to check out the much anticipated Marlene Dumas exhibition. She is a South African painter based in the Netherlands and is apparently seen as one of the most influential painters working today. I'm afraid I had never heard of her until I saw the advertisements for the upcoming exhibition, but I was immediately intrigued to know more. The poster and pamphlet advertising the exhibition uses a haunting image of a woman who's eyes have become deadened by darkening them with an indigo paint. This 'deadening' or haunting look of the eyes becomes a recurring theme in her paintings. She focuses mostly on the human form, exploring subjects such as sexuality, love, death and shame, and many of her work included close-ups of faces, often displayed en masse.

Marlene never draws directly from life, but uses existing images to work from. The interesting thing is that instead of appearing photorealistic or staged, they have an amazing fluidity and spontaneity to them. I have dabbled slightly in using watercolour and ink and know how hard it is to control. She does it with ease and an emotion that is hard to imagine creating. Within a few sweeps of a wash, she captures the features and emotions of a person.

The above image is what inspired me to see the exhibition.

The image above is the first piece of work that you see on entering the exhibition. It's a series of ink and graphite 'portraits' and began with images that Dumas had discarded from another work.

The above image was painted after the death of Dumas' mother and was a response to her feelings of loss and loneliness. She uses of an image of Ingrid Bergman from the film 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'. She is crying and the tears have been exaggerated by distressing the surface of the canvas.

These two paintings were hung together in a room dedicated to Dumas' 'Magdelenas' series of canvases. It depicts women from historical art, alongside modern women and is a view on how differently women can be portrayed in the media. Naomi campbell is on the left as a semi-nude fashion model, Princess Diana on the right as a demure stately figure.

Wayne Mok

Wayne Mok is an artist who was born in Hong kong but now lives and works in London. I love his use of colour, whether it is as geometric shapes in his "What Now" and "Homage to Homage" collections, or as a more gestural style in his "Hide and Seek" collection.

These pieces could also work as beautiful textile designs. You can see more of his work here.