A Sense of Sight
Abstract Work 1974-2020
Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing
20 March - 9 May, 2021
Pale Vasco, 1974, oil on canvas, 212 x 137 cm
This exhibition features painting and sculpture spanning nearly 50 years, it is the largest survey of Le Brun’s abstract work ever presented. In addition to seminal examples of his work from throughout his career, the exhibition includes loans from Le Brun's archive and new paintings. It is his first solo museum exhibition in Asia.
Texts are extracts from the catalogue essay
Pale Vasco was painted when I was doing a one year Masters at Chelsea School of Art after the Slade. The title refers to the sonnet by the French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmé “Au seul souci de voyager” (translation difficult but broadly: “For the sole sake of sailing onwards”) which uses the figure of the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama to describe the aspiration of the poet’s imagination in looking forward and the regret in looking back. At that time I was just setting off myself, aged 22, so the analogy is clear - with the central white form serving sometimes as a sail, sometimes a cloud.
Large Stem Composition, 2020, patinated bronze, 299 x 273 x 45.5 cm
Whilst selecting this exhibition, I was intrigued to see how clearly some of the themes of my later work are predicted in early paintings. Their return was not consciously planned but seemed to come about naturally. Above all these early paintings derive their energy from the attempt to integrate both figurative and abstract elements, as in Untitled July 1978. You can also see the tendency to divide the canvas into separate parts.
Painting, July 1978, oil on canvas diptych, 235 x 151.5 cm
Passage, 1984-85, oil on canvas, 210.8 x 213.3 cm
Tristan, 1988, oil on canvas diptych, 272 x 514 cm
In 1987 I was invited through the DAAD programme of the West German Government to spend a year working and living in West Berlin. The city at that time was effectively an island with restricted access. If the national myth and symbol of the British has been the sea, then for the Germans it is surely the forest. I subsequently made a series of very large paintings on this immensely resonant theme, the source of endless stories and images in folk tales, mythology, and history.
Tristan is the hero of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. He is also the knight Tristram in the mediaeval legends of King Arthur. When we say the name, we hear the French “triste” or sad, and we hear also “tryst” meaning a secret meeting - especially of lovers. There is a more recent painting in this exhibition made in 2020 with this title. Tristan is heavily painted, so much so that it needed an entire layer of canvas covering over the right-hand part to allow me to proceed.
Ever since the experience of seeing the great masterpieces of Delacroix, Gericault and Courbet in the Louvre Museum, I have felt the need for an art of grandeur, that could stand as an equivalent in visual form for the depth and emotional range of the symphony or the most substantial works of literature. By the time the painting was complete the original motif had been overcome by the reality of the work itself, being now neither trees, nor leaves, nor water but having its own sure identity and presence.
Flame Temple, 1997, oil on canvas, 170.5 x 150.5 cm
Truth, 2013, oil on canvas, 150 x 125 cm
Painting in its nature is always something that hints at and suggests further images. It is the task of the painter to guide these endless possibilities into some coherence. My entire painting life has seen figurative and abstract elements acting like a warp and weft, continually interweaving as my intuition and the painting itself required. However, there seems to have come a time, and a change, difficult to describe, when I no longer needed to follow the lead provided by recognisable images, but instead was content without them. Occasionally traces of the image remain as in Truth, 2013. It was as if my accumulated working history, and the experience and intelligence (if you’ll allow that notion) of my hand was prepared for a further voyage – almost like a fresh start - towards the elusive idea of an art of pure painting such as - Mirror, Mirror 2018. If my early self was attracted to the enigmatic painting of Giorgio de Chirico, then what could now be more seductive than the enigmatic presence and effect and wonderful openness of colour? This is where I am today - evidently still guided by the path of painting, and just as curious to follow where it leads.
Mirror, Mirror, 2018, oil on canvas diptych, 280.9 x 230.3 cm
Woodlines XXV, 2020, oil on canvas diptych, 220.6 x 461.2 cm
The title for this series of paintings came to me from printmaking. The question I had set myself was how to make the most straightforward woodcuts out of what I habitually do, such as cutting, pressing and covering. Ordinary actions which in themselves feel already dense enough with implication to hold up outside any context of digital sophistication or technical possibility. For me, the cutting suggested a direct analogy with the forest or wood and path making. Some paths lead to a clear destination, some just wander along or return on themselves or even suddenly end. Putting oneself on the wood-path or wood-line is therefore to set out, guided not by everyday logic, but by something else.
Tyger, Tyger, 2020, oil on canvas diptych, 200.2 x 441.4 cm
Quadrant, 2020, four part oil on canvas, 210.6 x 240.8 cm
Red Brick Art Museum
Maquanying West Road and Shunbai Road, Hegezhuang Village, Cuigezhuang Township, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Opening hours Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-17:30
redbrickartmuseum.org
Images and film copyright Christopher Le Brun, DACS 2020