This is a fascinating artist, in that he has convinced himself that he is doing something "beautiful" or I should say artistic. He is giving us banality, bleak ordinariness, and dejected and disappointed human beings. The writer, Maureen Mullarkey, is quite taken in by it all, as is the case with contemporary critics of art, who don't critique paintings as much as eulogize the painters.But, Mullarkey is also a painter. And it is no wonder she is so taken by Uglow. Her style, stark and bleak, is very similar to Uglow's.
Here is some information about Uglow (what an apt name, one doesn't need much to turn it into ugly).
Uglow was predominantly a painter of the human figure, although he also painted still lifes and landscapes. His method was meticulous, involving a great deal of measuring and correction to create images that are not hyper real, but appear almost sculptural. Writing in 1990, Tim Wilcox said "[Uglow's] staple is the traditional studio nude but set in relation to an artificial space contrived by the artist himself with geometrical markings and the odd prop used as if by a minimalist stage designer."[Source: Wikipedia]The telegraph's obituary says this about his style:
Although a high proportion of his relatively small body of work consists of portraits, landscapes and still life paintings, Uglow was thought of principally as a painter of nudes. These he attempted to paint as he saw them, a devotion to truth rather than to beauty which led him to develop an unusually rigorous method of working...It is interesting that the most critical writing on Uglow's work is found in his obituary by a nameless writer. This supports my observation that contemporary art critics are afraid to express their dislike of contemporary painters.
The results, much influenced by Piero della Francesca, Cézanne and Giacometti, were in the classical tradition, though curiously flat on the canvas and stripped of extraneous emotion or sensuality. [Source: The Telelgraph]
This mere blogger is a little more forthright when he writes:
Rather than using paint like De Kooning to express conceptual truths through the application of paint, Uglow is using paint to illustrate observable truths. That is the difficulty with these paintings, they do not offer that personality and come off as a little analytical and cold.But then he capitulates soon after:
The formal aspects of his work would inspire any formal junkie or figurative painter with its nuanced observations and Uglow’s visible handy work despite this criticism. However, his work should be taken with a grain of salt. Uglow’s method of painting evolved from the idea of concept before form, that is what makes it personal. He is one of those rare painters which forces you to reevaluate your own aesthetic, because the paintings are so visually compelling.And the best (most clear-sighed) critique is from Adrian Searle at the Guardian, who writes:
Uglow was a student at the Slade of William Coldstream, whose own life paintings had about them a chilling air of self-denial, and Uglow went on to develop Coldstream's approach through his own years of teaching in the same art-college life room. To me, it always smelled like a death room; every year a new crop of belated Euston Road painters would emerge from it, their pallid painted figures nicked with little registration points and tiny painted crosses, like so many torture victims, done-over in shades of umber and grey.The rest of the article is worth reading,and it is here.
A style like any other, this was and is a look masquerading as a moral quest. About it all hangs an air of futility, and a sense of something murdered... Here, the act of looking and recording is presented as a joyless test.
Adrian Searle studied art at various art schools in England I could find only one of his works, which is not very good, but has a better "story" than Uglow's nudes.
I wondered if his cricicism of classical painters is as eulogizing. This is his article title on a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery in London: Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery – the greatest show of the year?
And he has sexualized, and even homosexualized, Caravaggio's paintings:
There is a frisson of the trans-gressive about Caravaggio's art, a morbidity as much spiritual as it is - to modern eyes - sexual and social. It's difficult not to come over a bit queer looking at Caravaggio, whatever one's sexual orientation or habits; whatever, even, one's actual sex...I wont go into this much, excpet to say how irritatingly unimaginative and unlearned he is, despite his professed erudition. For example, David was a young man when he confronted Goliath:
But there are so many metaphors and symbols here for the modern eye. Look at the sexualised massiveness of Christ's torturers in The Flagellation (click here to see the work), and the homoerotic aspects of earlier Caravaggio, as well as of the ephebe-like St John The Baptist (click here to see the work). Think in particular of the androgynous David with the Head of Goliath (click here to see the work); the lovely sag of David's diaphanous shirt, his beardless face a foil to the bloody gurning head of Goliath (supposedly a self-portrait of the artist), which he proffers. David gazes at his victim's squinting head not as a trophy but with something like compassion. He holds the slender blade of his sword against his own crotch, at an angle that mimics a male erection. Above the blade a gape in his clothing looks very like the folds of a vagina.
Meanwhile, the Philistine [Goliath], with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. [1 Samual 17: 41-42]It was precisely the bravery of the young David, "little more than a boy," which set him apart from, and eventually earned him a place in the Bible.
To prove my point about Searle's insidious speculations about David, this art critic writes:
David then cut off Goliath’s head and presented it to King Saul. You would think this would be a moment of triumph, or maybe triumph mixed with disgust, but instead we see what I can only call stern regret.But I suspect Searle is one of those post-modern, atheist artists who believes that man should be glorified, rather than God. I would conclude that's his reason for having such a visceral dislike for Uglow's paintings, who has reduced man to dreary, banal everyday-ness.
Of course it has all of Caravaggio’s hallmarks: the murky shadows from which the figures emerge into stark light, the masterful modeling of the human body, the touch of gore...
David with the Head of Goliath is a double self-portrait. The young Caravaggio has slaughtered and decapitated the old, dissolute Caravaggio and holds the head of his victim with a mix of sorrow and disgust...
It’s easy to think of Caravaggio as simply a bully. A jerk with a taste for violence. But I think this painting more than any other makes it clear he was more than that. He knew who he was, he knew his sin and his guilt; he knew the depths he had fallen. That beautiful youth was still inside of him, and he looks at the wreck he has made of his own life and sits in judgment at his own choices.
But his differences with Uglow (and Mullarkey) is only a matter of degrees. Man can be eulogized through ugliness too, as a forceful, powerful element combating the ever-scorned beauty. In their Godless world, they have all put man above God.
David with the head of Goliath
1610
Caravaggio (1573-1610)
Oil on Canvass
49 in × 40 in
Galleria Borghese
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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