<\/strong><\/em>Central Academy of Fine Art Art Museum, Beijing, March 8\u2013May 1, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maggi Hambling (b. 1945) is one of Europe\u2019s leading figurative artists, renowned for portrait painting and drawing, but also for her paintings of the sea near where she lives in Suffolk, England, and her sculptural works, from the monumental to the intimate. This spring, Hambling will exhibit for the first time in China, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing. The CAFAM exhibition revolves around two main groups of work: a retrospective of Hambling\u2019s drawings and two series entitled \u201cWalls of Water\u201d, a series of eight large-scale paintings that was shown at the National Gallery in London and a subsequent series of ten monotypes shown at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Ran Dian met the artist at her London home to discuss the show. We start by discussing her drawings and I ask her how they relate to her paintings. Maggi lights up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi Hambling<\/strong>: \u201cThe Walls of Water paintings which we\u2019re going to show [at CAFAM], and the monoprints, would have been impossible unless I had got up early every morning and gone to the North Sea near where I live in Suffolk and made drawings\u2026 [Drawing] came into my life when I was 7 or 8 and it is the basis of everything I do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Maggi wants to emphasize how she works generally: \u201cMy great thing is: as Brancusi said, \u2018It isn\u2019t difficult to make a work of art but difficult to be in the right state to do it.\u2019* I try to become a \u2018CHANNEL<\/em>\u2019 so that the truth of the subject can come through me into the canvas, on to the drawing, whatever it is I\u2019m working on. So, there\u2019s a subject <\/em>that\u2019s in charge of me <\/em>rather than the other way around.\u201d I note that in China, the distinction between painting and drawing is seen as somewhat artificial. \u201cThey\u2019re absolutely right! Look at \u2018Laughing 2\u2019 (2018), is it a drawing or a painting?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is true. Certain people in England, particularly in art history, tend to get very hung-up on superficial definitions (Brexit is a form-over-substance example). Maggi agrees: \u201cThey always want to make you an \u2018\u2013ist\u2019! I\u2019ve always refused to be an \u2018-ist\u2019. If anyone says I\u2019m an expression-ist, a portrait-ist, a landscape-ist \u2013 [I say] no, I\u2019m not! Because the moment one\u2019s an -ist, you\u2019re safely put in a box somewhere and they\u2019ve got you<\/em>!\u201d and walleyed Maggi gestures cutting her throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem is not just a matter of categorizing or the category itself, but that categorization stops people looking and Hambling wants you to look, to really pay attention: who is this person she has drawn? How is the sea moving? Why is this huge stainless-steel scallop shell rising up on the Suffolk beach? This is not simply a matter of contemplation: she wants you to feel what is going on: the movement in a face, a body, a person; the surging winter waves; even the echo of Benjamin Britten\u2019s opera, Peter Grimes<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ask Maggi about color. I am thinking of her portraits, but she seizes upon the example of her sea paintings. \u201cPeople talk about the North Sea as being grey but to me it isn\u2019t, it\u2019s full of color! All those bronze, silver, pewter colors but also wonderful moments of turquoise and raw sienna. The color comes from what I see in front of me.\u201d Hambling uses color, in drawings and paintings, in portraits, seascapes and on bronzes, not for merely decorative purposes but structurally. Shifts between lighter and darker hues, individual lines or broad patches of color speak to the particular personality of the subject. Fleeting moments of raw sienna or turquoise whether in her sea paintings or portraits, emphasize both movement and time<\/em>, and perhaps precisely because both the moods of people and the of the sea are equally changeable and fleeting. Color is not just texture and emotion. Color is time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI re-met Henrietta on 4 February 1998, two days after my father\u2019s funeral, at the end of a dinner following the Francis Bacon opening at the Hayward Gallery in London. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those eyes had first blazed through mine across a large Boxing-Day lunch in Wiltshire five years earlier. The next significant encounter concerned money: Henrietta wrote asking for <\/em>\u00a3<\/em>400 to settle some annoying bills and in exchange she would work. It all began at the end of May and she posed most Mondays for the next seven months.\u201d \u2013 as recounted in the book <\/em>Maggi & Henrietta.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Henrietta Moraes was a long-term member of Soho\u2019s demimonde. She was painted by Francis Bacon 15 times. By all accounts, she had a fierce, incandescent personality. At the end of her life, Maggi and Henrietta became close and Maggi painted and drew Henrietta many times, including after death. The portraits form a passionate tribute to a life and a life lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi: \u201cIf we go back to that [painting] of Henrietta, that was done at the very end of the day. I had tried \u2013 tried<\/em>\u2013 several portraits on that canvas and they had all failed. I had started at 9 o\u2019clock in the morning and it got to 4 in the afternoon and I was absolutely exhausted. So, I got a turpsy rag and removed all that paint that remained and this sort of grey wash remained. And I thought, I\u2019ll have one more go. So that painting, and it\u2019s one of my best paintings, happened in about 20 minutes but I couldn\u2019t have made that <\/em>unless I had made the bundles of shit beforehand \u2013 one after another! Then that [portrait] just happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi makes the point a number of times that her paintings are not matters of forethought or procedural consideration but emanations of the very process of painting. She is possessed by the act of painting, drawing, creating. \u201cTo get back to the Brancusi quote, about being in the right state to do it [to make art], I am only aware of the bad painting that has to be got rid of. But when the painting paints itself<\/em>, those are the moments one works for and I\u2019m not at all aware of what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want her to spell this out, so I ask whether to get to that symbiotic point, one of her paintings has got to go through all of the other states of failure first. She answers emphatically: \u201cOh yes! I can work for months on a painting and then destroy it, and then that painting can suddenly happen [be finished] in a morning but only because of all the months of doubt and failure that have preceded it. And the moment when it happens! \u2013 like that painting of a waterfall there happened very, very quickly!\u201d Maggi nods towards a tall, narrow canvas leaning on the wall behind her that could easily be mistaken for a classical Chinese shanshui painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c<\/strong>I never think about style\u2026I try to constantly \u2014 it\u2019s an overworked word \u2013 to experiment! <\/em>The paintings of the sea led on to the \u2018Walls of Water\u2019, which again, in turn, resulted from witnessing the great storm that occurred just up the coast from where I am in Suffolk. And then came the \u2018Ice Cap Melting\u2019 paintings. One thing leads into another and I\u2019m constantly on the move. I\u2019m still amazed \u2013 at the grand old age of 73! \u2013 I\u2019m still surprised by what oil paint can do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the word \u2018style\u2019 is something that other people may use but I don\u2019t use it myself. When I\u2019m painting the sea, I\u2019m trying to make that energy of the sea happen on the canvas. And of course, movement; I hope people see that, also in my portraits.\u201d Maggi shrieks with laughter, \u201c\u2013 unless they\u2019re of dead people! \u2013 I hope you [can] see that they\u2019re still breathing!\u201d Maggi is renowned for continuing to draw and paint portraits of close family members and friends, years after they have died. Maggi recomposes herself and looks at me intently again. \u201cSo, the energy <\/em>of movement is of crucial importance, [whether] the energy of water or whether the person I am drawing gets up and makes a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMovement is very important in my work. When I\u2019m painting the sea or the \u2018Walls of Water\u2019, it\u2019s that energy of the waves that I try to recreate with oil paint on canvas, so that the eye, the viewer\u2019s eyes, are kept on the move the whole time. My eyes \u2014 say I was painting you \u2014 would be on the move the whole time, to see the relationship between the top of an ear and the corner of your mouth or the top of your forehead and your Adam\u2019s apple. This is the thing that I think oil paint can do that photography can\u2019t do, because however much you might be moved by the subject, say by Diane Arbus or Juergen Teller, it\u2019s history because it\u2019s behind glass and it\u2019s happened. But with great painters \u2014 Rembrandt, Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock \u2014 it is as if it\u2019s happening in front of you. That\u2019s why I think painting will never die because if it\u2019s got any life to it, it is as if it\u2019s happening in front of you, if you think of late-Titian, or late-Rembrandt, or Rothko or van Gogh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we are looking at portraits, paintings and drawings. \u201cSo many portraits seem to me to be completely dead. They are of dead people even when someone is trying to paint them when they\u2019re alive.\u201d This is something I have been wanting to discuss with Maggi, because not only does she frequently continue portraying family and lovers, years after they have died, but actually also quite frequently people asleep or dreaming. So I say, \u201cTo be honest, to me even your memento mori<\/em>, your skulls, seem to have a lot of movement. It\u2019s your way of drawing. Sometimes it\u2019s more abstract, sometimes it\u2019s more detailed, but the line is present in everything. So, the relationship between the drawings and the paintings \u2014 and the paintings [about water] can be very abstract \u2026 but even in these paintings line is very important.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, I used the wrong words. One in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MH<\/strong>: \u201cNow look here Chris Moore! You\u2019re using the word \u2018abstract\u2019 \u2014 I always fight that off in every way possible! There\u2019s nothing abstract in my work! <\/em>Lett [Haines, one of Maggi\u2019s teachers] used to say the only true abstraction is the circle, the square and the triangle. I dispute the word \u2018abstract\u2019! I don\u2019t hold with it in regard to my work. It\u2019s all figurative. You have to use \u2018abstract\u2019 qualitatively, if you like, for tension and composition, but all my work comes from something around me and is dictated by what happens to me in life. If someone has died, I go on painting them, if it\u2019s someone I love.\u201d She stares at me and slips the knife in. \u201cGeneralization is the worst enemy of art\u2026When I am drawing a person, it has to be as if I have never seen an eyebrow before, or never seen an elbow or foot, otherwise it wouldn\u2019t have any life to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversation has been segueing from theme to theme and back and forth and briefly we return to Henrietta but not in the particular but as artist\u2019s model, a \u2018sitter\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi<\/strong>: \u201cThe subject has to be in charge. Something my first art teacher said to me was that the artist doesn\u2019t choose the subject, the subject chooses the artist. So, the subject, be it Henrietta or a \u2018Wall of Water\u2019 has to be in charge of me, I am the channel and it comes through me onto the canvas or paper. So, this emptying of myself, of all my bullshit, baggage and all that stuff, that\u2019s the difficult bit: to get rid of all that, so that the painting can happen. The subject must dictate every mark I make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expecting Maggi to continue discussing portraiture, I ask her \u2018How does the subject choose you?\u2019 but she wrong-foots me. By now, this is unsurprising. For Maggi, each painting, each drawing, each monotype-print and each bronze or ceramic sculpture is most particular. Yet while each is composed of unique histories and locations which define their making, the process of making them, the artist using herself as a sort of existential conduit for their making, inevitably creates relationships between them, in the swirling lines of a lover\u2019s face or the rage of the coastal tempest. This is not a matter of anthropomorphism but how she experiences life, whether with people or nature. \u201cI paint what happens in life. With the \u2018Walls of Water\u2019 I was at Southwold during this incredible storm, this force of nature \u2014 very frightening, very beautiful \u2014 happening in front of me. And those paintings couldn\u2019t have happened unless I had made many sea paintings before them. And I don\u2019t think the energy of those sea paintings would have happened unless I had made this plaster sculpture of Henrietta, of her mouth, eating a meringue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was a year later that I realized that the kind of movement going on, between the mouth and the lips and the meringue, the mouth becoming a meringue and the meringue becoming a mouth, was the energy I wanted to get into the sea paintings. I feel the sea is like a mouth because it\u2019s devouring, erosion is happening, the coastline changes the whole time.\u201d Maggi has a critical eye, but it is not egotistical. As a man, I hesitate to describe any female artist\u2019s work as romantic but the romance in Maggi\u2019s work is grand and Proustian, the great forces of nature, sex and storms, colored by laughter, loss and time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n We have been talking for almost two hours and we are finishing up. I ask if I can photograph her shoes. I get another odd look, but I insist the leopard-print shoe with starfish-pattern socks on the floor littered with cigarette butts says something good, too. Maggi laughs and obliges with aplomb. Before I leave though, Maggi wants to emphasize her view one more time, insists upon it. The words are measured and modest, and they sum up how and why she paints, draws and sculpts: \u201cA couple of times you\u2019ve used the word \u2018thinking\u2019, and I try not to think at all. [When making art] there\u2019s the eye, the hand and the heart, and the heart is the most important. My work is about love really, however corny that sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n * \u201cIt is not the work itself, it is to keep oneself in condition to do it, that is difficult.\u201d Quoted by Dorothy Dudley, Br\u00e2ncu\u015fi<\/em>, Dial 82, February 1927<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi & Henrietta. Drawings of Henrietta Moraes by Maggi Hambling<\/em>. Preface by John Berger (Bloomsbury: London, 2001)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi Hambling with James Cahill. War Requiem & Aftermath<\/em>. Unicorn Press Ltd: London, 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jennifer Ramkalawon, Maggi Hambling Touch: Works on paper<\/em>, Ex. Cat., Lund Humphries in collaboration with The British Museum: London, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggi Hambling. The Works<\/em>, Unicorn Press: London, 2006<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1945 Born Sudbury, Suffolk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chris MooreTranslated into Chinese by … Continue reading
by Christopher Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>
Maggi Hambling is smoking. Fag ends litter the painted floorboards of her bright South London studio. Paintings are stacked around the walls; maquettes crowd tables and window sills. As I enter, Maggi sits at her drawing board, fixing me with a hawk-like gaze. A Juergen Teller photo perfectly captures this look. But Maggi\u2019s twinkling eyes and laughter give the game away, revealing a warm and raucous personality\u2014though there is occasional self-doubt disguised with self-deprecation too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Juergen-Teller-JUE160618_0291-copy-528x396-1.jpg\")
\u00a9 Juergen Teller, All Rights Reserved<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Night-wave-breaking-1_oil-on-panel_11x18cm_2005-528x311-1.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
The Color of the North Sea<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Laughing-2_Oil-on-canvas_66x61cm_2018-528x582-1.jpeg\")
Henrietta<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Style and experimentation<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Henrietta-June-1998_Oil-on-canvas_53x43cm-528x650-1.jpg\")
Movement<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Wall-of-water-1_Oil-on-canvas_198x226cm_2010-528x457-1.jpg\")
Walls of water<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Henrietta-eating-a-meringue_2001_plaster_51x60x60cm-528x588-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Wall-of-water-2_Oil-on-canvas_137x170cm_2011-528x462-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Maggi-Hambling_Wall-of-water-3_oil-on-canvas-2011-528x429-1.jpg\")
![\"Maggi](\"http:\/\/www.randian-online.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Maggi-Hambling_Wall-of-water-5_Oil-on-canvas_198x226cm_2011-528x453.jpg\")
The eye, the hand and the heart<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"Maggi](\"http:\/\/www.randian-online.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Maggi-Hambling-2018-foot-528x704.jpeg\")
Short Bibliography<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Short Biography<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
1981 National Gallery, London
1983 National Portrait Gallery, London
1987 Serpentine Gallery, London
1991 Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
1995 Jerwood Painting Prize, Royal Academy of Scotland, Edinburgh and Royal Academy, London,
2007 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
2013 The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg
2015 Somerset House, London
2018 National Gallery, London
2019 Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing<\/p>\n\n\n\n