OCA students on flying carpets and fairy tales

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An OCA study group is just back from a sumptuous exhibition that brings together works by the London based artist, Raqib Shaw, who mixes imagery taken from his Indian background with rococo decorative devices and comic book monsters.
One of the students, Barbara Milne, wrote: ‘It was a fantastic visit, Gerald, as always, was full of knowledge and lead us through the understanding of the art in its historical and mythological contexts, with references to mythology, Shakespeare and children’s fairy tales and discussion of post-modernism and how it fits with this concept. The art was wonderful to look at with its use of colour, form and Kitsch sparkle – but had deeper tones of meaning which had uncomfortable overtones that repelled me.’
Another OCA student, Trauti Hard, who went, reported: ‘The works were highly decorative, visually stunning and, on closer inspection, quite disturbing and subversive. Shaw employs a variety of different media – e.g. industrial paints, enamel, paint used for stained glass windows and precious stones. It is decadent, over-the-top, kitsch, mystical, monstrous, transgressive. The work reminded me very much of Yinka Shonibare. Like Shonibare, Shaw grew up in post colonial society, and came to study and make his home in England. He makes cultural references to traditional art, points up our fascination with having and owning, showing the decadence of a capitalist society even though, like Shonibare, it looks as if he is also part of it.
Gerald reports:
The OCA study group split into two to choose their favourite pieces and to introduce them to the others. Then we looked at the artist’s work from a post-modernist perspective in terms of the artist’s use of irony, appropriation and his combination of materials. We examined it in relation to so-called ‘decadent’ works produced by artists at the end of the nineteenth century. In this context we talked about how Klimt and other artists of the Viennese Secession explored ideas of ‘the mystical, the monstrous, the artificial and the nervous’. We discussed how Aubrey Beardsley and Simeon Solomon shared these Viennese concerns and combined them with exotic influences. We then examined the impact of their works on Edwardian children’s book illustration and on the creation of a fin de siècle gay aesthetic.
Having introduced these ideas, we looked at their influence on Shaw’s portrayal of fairy-tales and flying carpets. We talked about how they influenced his scenes of screaming monkeys and unicorns in bondage and his combination of oil, acrylic, enamel paint and sparkly diamantes. We also discussed the way in which his anachronistic use of tondos and his precarious arrangement of multiple drawings in separate frames deliberately undermined the seriousness of his images.
After lunch we went in search of other exotic images in the permanent collection. We looked at the stagy gestures of two Indian servants in Stubbs’ famous painting of a cheetah, which Shaw had parodied in his own commissioned work, which he had placed next to it. We went on to examine John Souch’s portrait of a Chester merchant of 1636, which contains, perhaps, the first portrayal of an imported Indian cotton tablecloth in England in. We then used the portrait, which includes a painting of the merchant’s dead wife, as a starting point to discuss Etty’s dramatic portrayal of love and death in his painting of The Sirens. This led on to other kinds of depictions of ‘the other’ including a comparison of the portrayal of working class life in the work of Gainsborough, Jock McFadyen and LS Lowry. From there we discussed Donald G Rodney’s photograph of a model house made out of a piece of his own skin. The work deals with his treatment for sickle cell anaemia, a rare and fatal disease present only in people whose family history is associated with some part of Africa.
Before visiting the craft gallery to look at ceramics by 18th century Staffordshire potters and the Chinese masters that had influenced them, we studied some late Victorian works of the same period as the fin de siècle images that had influenced Raqib Shaw. These included Turkish ceramics by William de Morgan and recycled furniture by William Burges that incorporated Persian textiles and medieval roundels. We also looked at a series of late Victorian classical works of scantily-clad nymphs by Tissot, Leighton and Alma-Tadema. By this time it was hardly a surprise to see that Raqib Shaw had parodied their naked flesh by placing a swan devouring a science-fiction monster in their midst. The sculpture with its deliberately heavy-handed references to the myths of Leda and Prometheus was surrounded by dozens of wilting daffodils. Its placing in a fussy architectural recess by the front door provided an appropriate farewell to an often kitsch but highly enjoyable visit.
The Raqib Shaw exhibition will continue at Manchester Art Gallery until the 26 May. Photographs by Donald G Rodney, Helen Chadwick and other artists can be seen there until the end of March.