Pallant House Gallery (Part 1)

As it was the start of half term I wanted to make the most of it and I decided to take a trip to Pallant house. I could not remember the last time I went to this gallery. I thought It would be best to go and see other local exhibitions within my area other than Brighton. This was important because I knew they were going to ask me at university interviews which galleries and exhibitions I had been to recently. 

The first part to this blog post was all about the first exhibition space I went to whilst I was there. From looking on their website I found that there was a vast collection until 19th February of work produced by Edward Burra. This was the first major exhibition for the last 25 years showcasing his art. It was amazing to see a selection of 70 works from across his career. Most of his subjects involved everyday people at leisure in bars and clubs, the black culture and the sub culture of ports and harbors. Later on before dying in 1976 he produced dancing skeletons and stunning landscapes. The exhibition also involved the influence of jazz, cinema and the darker sides of humanity upon his artwork.

I wanted to do a little bit of research of Edward Burra before going, to understand why he created work. A key theme to him seemed to be harbors, I found out that he sailed to New York, but was hoping for a new life just like many of the other working class. Burra was trapped in a prematurely body, crippled by a combination of congenitally inherited rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia, he lived a painful life. He was so weak that he could not push oil paint onto a canvas so he worked with watercolour or gouache, holding his brush in the eccentric claw like grip of his swollen right fist. He used large sheets of paper and painted from memory the vivid expressions on peoples faces. He was as much keen on performers faces on stage as the viewers watching.

Costume Designs for the Inhabitants of the Gorbals. Watercolour: 1944

Edward Burra's ability to present working class people with individual and dignity made him an obvious choice to design costume sets and clothing. The watercolour is based upon the story line of 'Miracle in the Gorbals' during World War Two. The story was based in the Glasgow slums, a young girl who had committed suicide brought back to life by a stranger who is murdered by an angry mob. I really like the way the image watercolours have been applied with block colours that are subtle, but also involve a lot of detail in the pinstripe trousers etc. This was created in 1944.

Sugar beat, East Nnglia 1973. Watercolour on paper by Edward Burra.

I was fascinated by this large scale watercolour. It emphasized the flat strangers of the East Anglian Fens. Burra juxtaposes suburban bungalows and garden gnomes with ghostly workers. His friend asked him why he painted transparent people and Edward replied "Don't you find as you get older, you start seeing through people?" I find this incredible because I have always imagined what it would be like to see someone transparent. I imagine it must have been really hard to create a dual layer of watercolour. I think this painting really relates to my work at the moment involving movement and time. Edward must have involved the sense of time because he said in reply over the years I have started seeing through people. My images also appear very similar to this because when I use a long shutter speed, the outcome appears ghostly and you can see through the subjects. With a short shutter speed you can still see the outlines of the figure. This also gives another feel of time because the ghostly agricultural workers could be seen as dead.