Viva Brighton Issue #65 July 2018

ART
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Vanessa Bell, View of the Pond at Charleston, East Sussex, c.1919, oil on canvas, Museums Sheffield © Estate of
Vanessa Bell / Henrietta Garnett
Gwen John, Self-portrait, 1902, oil on canvas Tate. Purchased 1942 © Tate, London 2018
extravagant claims. So with Vanessa Bell’s Interior with a
Table we are told: ‘Here the painter… employs a strategy
used by many women artists of painting a view through
a window as a means of depicting the landscape beyond
it.’ I think that it would come as a bit of a surprise to, say,
Matisse in the South of France, David Jones in Portslade,
or Christopher Wood in St Ives to learn that this was a
predominantly female ‘strategy’.
But even if you don’t buy the exhibition’s thesis, there
is plenty to marvel at. With artists such as Eileen Agar,
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Dora Carrington, Prunella
Clough, Gwen John, Winifred Nicholson (a particularly
generous selection) and Dorothea Tanning represented, how
could it be otherwise?
Also at Pallant (until 2nd September) there’s a small show
of Dorothy Bohm’s photographs; born 1924 in Königsberg,
and still going strong. The last time I saw her work was at
the Ben Uri Gallery in London in August, 2016. Those were
her photographs of Paris in the 1950s, but Pallant’s show is
devoted to her views of Sussex dating from the late 1960s
and early 1970s. There are quite a few of Brighton.
Finally even regular visitors to Pallant House Gallery, with
its collection of Twentieth Century Art unparalleled outside
London, shouldn’t miss their latest loan from a private
collection. It’s an absolutely exquisite Paul Klee, dating from
1920 and entitled Inschriftartig.
David Jarman
Pallant House Gallery, until 16th September
Ithell Colquhoun, Alcove 11, 1948, oil on board, collection Prunella Clough, The White Root, 1946, oil on board, Tate Purchased 1982 © Tate, London 2018 / All rights
Richard Shillitoe © By kind permission of the Noise Abatement reserved, DACS 2018
Society, Samaritans and Spire Healthcare
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