John Martin is one of those artists who have enjoyed huge popularity combined with critical opprobrium, both in his own day where he was derided as a 'people's painter' and later where few other artists have been subject to such posthumous extremes of critical fortune, and yet, despite the critical drubbing, have been hugely influential:
'Martin's paintings anticipate biblical epics and disaster, movies and CinemaScope; sci-fi illustrations, concept albums and heavy metal graphics; Spider Man and the avatars of video games. Film directors have acknowledged the immense debt, from DW Griffith to Cecil B DeMille and Roland Emmerich' - The Observer, 25 September 2011
Artists like Martin and, in particular William Blake, must surely be inspirations to all those artists whose creative vision is not fully understood or appreciated within their lifetime.
Gerhard Richter and Wilhelm Sasnal stand in the opposite space as current critical favourites but no less vital for all that. It seems appropriate that both have had major exhibitions which have overlapped in London as, in a visual culture flooded by photographic images, the work of both attests to the continuous spellbinding power of painting. In their work painting is addressed to historical crisis while their use of readymade images explores the nature of appearance and the capacities of vision.
Richter is also fascinated by reflection, both in plain glass and in mirrors. He showed his first Mirror in 1981 but this was a continuation of his work with glass begun with the 4 Panes of Glass in 1967. Richter treats both glass and mirrors as a source of uncertainty and unpredictable visual effects. These are works which are concerned with chance because the images presented change all the time. According to Richter, they 'show something that isn’t there at all, at least not where we see it.'
Playing with reflection is currently a popular activity. Henry Krokatsis’ works are composed solely of the bevelled, faintly ornamental mirrors that were mass-produced and ubiquitous to British suburban interiors between the 1920s and the 1960s. These relics have been reconfigured and expanded to reference the high-status interiors of Europe’s grandest Rococo houses, with their cabinets de glaces and pier mirrors. These works reference minimalism via their geometry, austerity and lack of gesture yet they simultaneously embrace arbitrariness, material history and the narrative reward of subject matter.
Josiah McElheny's The Past Was A Mirage I Had Left Far Behind has transformed Gallery 2 at the Whitechapel Gallery into a hall of mirrors through the use of seven large-scale, mirrored sculptures arranged as multiple reflective screens for displaying reconfigured abstract films. The sculptures refract the projections and reflect the viewer within the work, saturating the gallery in images and light.
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Arcade Fire - Black Mirror.
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