.
Rain on water, I stand staring at the Seine during a downpour and struggle to describe what it is exactly I am witnessing. An image on my iPhone, likewise, unable to capture the experience. I am in water, staring at water, peppered by pellets of water.
Water flows through the lines of Elliot’s Wasteland at the expense of an often barren and dry landscape, 'spring rain stirs dull roots', a possible allusion to the spiritual infertility of modernism, the Phoenician sailor a possible reference to The Fisher King, who’s flowing, wound results in lands inability to produce new life.
Historians have often speculated that Ille Saint Ouen could be the setting for Le Dejeuner Sur l’herbe, originally titled Le Bain (the bath). Manet’s seminal work has Victorine Meurent, his constant model, meeting our gaze, confronting us as the viewer whilst a second female protagonist bathes in the flowing water of the Seine, Manet deploys different visual devices, genres within the work, landscape, figurative and still life and comparisons can be drawn with the different voices we find in the waste land. The narrative is fragmented, at times, encyclopaedic.In 1863 when Manet’s painting was first exhibited art critics were less offended in principal by the content, more column inches being given over to Manet’s technical skills. Today the idea of a woman naked or partially undressed is common place in contemporary visual culture. The nude was not uncommon in 1863, but Victorine appears naked Compositionally Manet references The Judgement of Paris, images of which were widely available in the form of affordable prints and reproductions. It should be noted however that despite the setting, a landscape location, the painting is very much a studio painting, a construct or tableaux. Here a useful comparison to make might be Gustave Courbet’s 1885 ‘The Painters’ Studio’. Executed on a scale usually reserved for history painting, the painter has peopled his studio with characters from contemporary society, the artist himself sat center stage , hand outstretched not unlike the male figure stage right of Victorine and in both paintings an unclothed model. Visual quotations are not uncommon throughout art history, handed down and the baton passed.
Courbet also chooses to include Baudelaire in the piece, absorbed, book in hand, a possible manifesto for modernism.
The rain refuses to let up and I turn away from the Seine and head towards the Musee d’Art Moderne a mirror image, architecturally, of the Palais de Tokyo, both museums now reflected in the large puddles that have begun to form. I am not alone in noticing the mirroring repeated in the water of the puddle, a woman has paused to point her camera phone at the reflection while her friend captures this mise en scene on her own camera phone.
'The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing'.
Pierre Bonnard.
Today alongside the paintings we can view a number of examples from Bonnard the photographer. I have often suspected Bonnard of using photographic source material alongside studies and drawings, his figures caught in suspended animation and Marthe never aging from one painting to the nextThe photographs have a blur, the shutter speed not quite fast enough to deal with the painters hand or eye.
The two women from earlier have made it inside out of the rain and are now occupied photographing each other in the space and in front of paintings . They perform well rehearsed poses, a learned language from viewing thousands of similar images, the camera a node in the countless digital platforms of the big flat now.
Back outside the rain has eased but the Siene continues to flow at a pace, a back drop for yet more photographs as a small group of tourists capture a glimpse of the Eiffel tower above their shoulders The tower was first photographed in 1889 by George Garen as it rose from the ground and crowned Belle-Époque Paris. Erwin Blumenfelds iconic fashion photographs that further cemented Paris as the centre of couture came much later andtoday a google search will reveal a staggering 327 million images of or including the Eiffel tower, Blumenfeld’s alongside Garen and soon to be joined by the tourist now heading further down river.
Upon seeing one of the earliest photographs the painter Paul Delaroche (1797 – 1856) is famously quoted to have declared painting as dead, he would later expand this declaration to certain types of painting, stating painting could never again claim sole ownership of the role of faithful representation or portraiture. The advent of digital cameras has dealt its own blows to photography, authenticity and the ability to faithfully represent are questionable with a digital image, the photographic negative an original source has been replaced by a code or series of zero’s and ones. With a digital image there exists only copies and the camera, once an apparatus for capturing light has now became an apparatus for projecting light.
Crowds flow by as I sit outside Chez Hanna on Le Rue Rosiers eating Kadaif and sipping a coffee. The street is one of the main arteries flowing through the Marais.
The Marais home to various communities from outside France and Paris over the centuries now finds itself a go to destination for visitors. The customers sat with me outside Hanna’s pay little attention to the throng, their conversations punctuated by glances at screens held in the palm of the hand, digital intersections in an area of Paris renowned as a cultural intersection.
And it is an intersection that occupies me when making my paintings, the intersections created between the narratives, devices and formal qualities of the figurative tradition employed throughout arts histories and the everyday images we produce and consume. The images I make attempt to explore threads that flow like water through the history of painting and contemporary visual culture whilst emphasizing the attemporal nature of images
Peter McArdle
1965 Born Tynemouth , Tyne and Wear. UK
Education
1989 – 92 BA (Hons) Fine art.
2018 -19 MFA Fine Art
1992 – 95 Co- Director , Matrix Arts .
2003 – Formed The Gateshead Stuckists
2005 - Editor of The Stuckist Website
2008 – Left The Stuckists.
Exhibitions / Professional Practice
2000 20/21 The British Art Fair London
2002 Metropolis , Mark Jason Gallery , Bond Street , London
2002 20/21 The British Art Fair , London
2003 Art London, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2003 Focus, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2003 Metropolis 2, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2003 New Contemporaries, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2004 BLUR, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2004 Faces, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2004 New York Art Fair, Mark Jason, London
2004 The Stuckist Punk Victorian, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
2004 The Stuckists, Lady Lever Gallery, Liverpool
2004 Diverse, Mark Jason Gallery, Bond Street, London
2005 The Stuckist , La Viande Gallery , London
2005 Love and Bullets , Transition Gallery < London
2008 Go West , Spectrum Gallery , London
2018 ‘Stories from The Big Flat Now . Abject Gallery Newcastle upon Tyne
2020 ‘Pause & Punctuate’. GAS Contemporary .
2022 ‘Everybody knows this is nowhere: Painting in the Northeast now. NCA Gallery.
2023. ‘X’ Contemporary British Painting. NCA Gallery.
Collections
Prudential Life Assurance , London
Standard Chattered Bank , London
Warrander Grant publishing London
Awards and Commissions
Work commission by The Tyne and Wear Development Corporation.
Numerous commissions By Arts Resource , Sunderland
Billboard Commission for the Coalition against Crime (Reproduced on billboards for “The year of Visual Arts.
Publicity
Featured in Arts Review
Recommended in Hot Ticket , London Evening Standard
Recommended in The Guardian art Guide (Weekend)
Interview BBC Radio London
Interview BBC Radio Newcastle
Review in the London Evening Standard
Featured ‘The Crack Magazine’ Newcastle Upon Tyne
Featured Narc Magazine
“Augurs well for the future of British painting” , Arts Review
“ A top draughtsman with a funky fluid style “ London Evening Standard
