3. Three British Artists CLERIHEWS

A Clerihew is a comic verse consisting of two couplets and a specific rhyming scheme, aabb.  It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) at the age of 16. Normally the first line names a person, and the second line ends with something that rhymes with the name of the person. (From: ‘Shadow Poetry’).

Since Damien Stephen Hurst
Onto the YBA scene he burst,
With dead sheep and bejewelled skull,
Artsy Life has never been dull.

David Hockney RA
Is top-of-the-pile I would say.
His reds, his blues and his greens
Are just bursting out of his scenes.

I sing of Sir Stanley Spencer,
Painter of Cookham’s splendour.
May his ‘Resurrection’
Inspire introspection.

N.B. The Young British Artists, or YBAs^[1]—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the first generation of YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, while the second generation mostly came from the Royal College of Art. (Wikipedia)

Art On The Rack

tall and slender
thin and lean
what do such racked
such skeletal
figures mean

imagination extended
perception broadened
brought to brush and canvas
stone and chisel
bronze and rasp
unique reality
given expression
in the artist’s eye
and distorted vision

el greco
modigliani
giacometti
parmagianino

artistic differences
paralleled
in paint and bronze

fashion’s fad
now continued
on the catwalk

do my eyes
deceive me
with beauty
in the eye of the bewildered
creating
or perhaps following
fashion

emaciated
underfed
and stretched out models
tapered
taut
and elongated
in the artist’s vision

paraded to their public
asked to accept
an interpretation
allowing retrieval
of a larger truth

thus to become
stricken and striated
darlings
of a new generation

fêted now
as great and good
but fated still
to be misunderstood

---

The images at the top are, from left to right  . . .
El Greco:  ‘St.John The Baptist’ – c.1600; Oil on Canvas
Giacometti:  ‘Walking Man’ – 1960; Bronze
Modigliani: ‘Lunia Czechowska in Black’ – 1919; Oil on canvas
Parmagianino: ‘Madonna With Long Neck’
The bottom picture is of ‘Catwalk models’ – from Pinterest.

 

Life Drawing Class

LIFE DRAWING CLASSES

Life drawing classes in Chelsea
The chance of a lifetime fulfilled
A chance to perfect my technique
I should’ve been delighted and thrilled.

But it wasn’t quite like that in practice;
Whilst I became more and more zealous
I found to my utter dismay
My fiancée grew terribly jealous.

So I gave up these classes to please her,
My art took a secondary place
To a contented future with landscapes.
Yes, I gave in to her whims – just in case.

So, I never will be a Paul Rubens,
And Lucien Freud’s not for me.
I timidly gave in to persuasion,
All governed by wifely decree.

 

Cartoon – Acknowledgement to artist unknown.  The other 4 sketches are my own – WHB  ©

Runswick Bay & Staithes

These are my Pen & Wash sketches of two quite different but equally fascinating coastal villages of North Yorkshire, England.  Below them is a short article about their history of attracting and inspiring artists. 

These two villages lie only a few miles north of Whitby and within the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.  The villages, only about 4 miles apart, each grew up around an inlet of  Yorkshire’s North Sea Coast.  Both villages have a distinctive character and are fascinatingly atmospheric.  At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries  they nourished separate artistic communities, which are now considered to be of greater significance than has previously been recognised because of the number of artists who worked there and the paintings they produced.

One of the best known of these was the Yorkshire-born artist Arthur Friedenson who visited Runswick Bay to work many times.  Friedenson was initially apprenticed as a sign writer, before training as an artist in Paris and Antwerp. However, it was in this lovely Yorkshire coastal village that Friedenson met his future wife, and after they married in November 1906, he returned to Runswick Bay the following spring in order to paint the picture below. It was much admired at the Royal Academy that year, and purchased for the nation.  

Arthur Friedenson – Runswick Bay -1907 . . .  Tate Gallery

An interesting website, which contains a lot of material about the art galleries and museums in the area, can be found at:     Staithes & Runswick Bay Art Galleries