PIFO Gallery is pleased to present "Ode to Joy: Gillian Ayres & John McLean" from June 16 to July 23, 2023. Gillian Ayres and John McLean are eminent artists that are no longer with us, and the exhibition presents carefully selected masterpieces from different stages of their creative careers.
Like many great artists throughout history, Gillian Ayres (1930-2018) completed her self-education outside of formal educational institutions. In addition to her studies at the Camberwell College of Arts in London, she was introduced to the joy of color by Gauguin and Van Gogh and was inspired by the vivid life of Picasso and Matisse. 1 These artistic experiences established her distinctive vision. She disliked the prevailing trends in the British art world then, and her approach was close to the "action painting" associated with American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s instead of authoritarian “cold abstraction.” She cares about the unexplored possibilities beyond points, lines, and planes, which refer to colors, textures, and forms. In her opinion, this side is more imaginative and brings her the native pleasure of painting. For one's eye, those visual experiences that come from nature, such as variations in texture, should be as important as color. The artist leaves traces of her actions on the material while allowing the qualities of the material itself to come to the fore. The vitality of images comes from the variation of brushstrokes and gestures, the changing viscosity of the medium, and the thinness, heaviness, delicacy, or roughness of the paint……In Gillian Ayers’s works, one can feel the collision between delicate colors and rough textures.
Color is the foundation of all paintings by John McLean (1939-2019), known as “the great color artist” in the Western art world. John McLean is one of the most highly regarded artists by American art critic Claremont Greenberg. He had been drawn by chance to the unsophisticated, natural colors on porcelain from the East: “They had a pale cyan color, thinly brushed on, without further color, and I realized that it was a chesty brushstroke, not blind, but every movement had the momentum of painting from hand to brush.” This may help explain the originality of John McLean, who, after Matisse and Miró, explored “a more skilled use of shape”: He sees the abstract elements in his work as influenced by external experience and as carrying an emotional dimension. By keeping on unconsciously painting with liquid paint on a large canvas, he conveys a certain narrative in an abstract, rhythmic composition, allowing any shape in his brushwork to be interpreted symbolically or metaphorically.
Gillian Ayres and John McLean, who were close friends and taught at the Winchester School of Art for many years, both focused on abstract painting and added their unique understanding. When confronted with their works, viewers can feel the vigorousness of those colors, as can be heard in Beethoven's Ode to Joy (1785), a string quartet composed for Schiller's poetry. Gillian's compositions are exciting, touching the vastness of the universe in a rush of color. McLean's images are so dynamic that the joy and sorrow of life are melted into the moving colors and symbols. When people look at paintings and listen to music, the brain will produce a physiological response and get a strong sense of pleasure with a large amount of “dopamine” springing up.
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[1] “Picasso and Matisse Exhibition” held by Victoria and Albert Museum in 1945, London. In the winter of 1947-48, the Tate exhibited works by Van Gogh. “40 Years of Modern Art”, presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1948, was an exhibition from private British collections that included first-class works by Paul Klee, André Derain, Picasso, Miró, and Matisse. In December of the same year, “40,000 Years of Modern Art”, which combined prehistoric, African, Australian Aboriginal, and Oceanic art with works by major modern artists such as Picasso, Max Ernst, Henry Moore, and Miró, was exhibited, and deeply shocked Gillian Ayres.
