A Busman's Holiday

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A trip to Cornwall is hardly complete without a trip to Tate St Ives, a thought clearly shared by many judging by the number of people we met queuing at the entrance.The Guardian’s Deborah Orr wrote a scathing report of the gallery and its Summer Exhibition last week how it suffered from a “lack of ambition” with regard to some of the more interactive art adding that “nothing in the gallery inspired awe, or even wonder at the capabilities of human talent”. I have to disagree. An exhibition featuring the works of Agnes Martin, Lucio Fontana, Margaret Mellis, and Naum Gabo can hardly be called “non-nourishing, snack-food art” even if you don’t appreciate all of it. 

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I found the work of Naum Gabo quite extraordinary assisted by seeing the working drawings on display. Acknowledging that these works were being made at a very austere time in Britain during the darkest days of the war in conjunction with the experimenting planned use of the latest materials - acrylic and nylon was really inspiring. For me this demonstrated an artist whose work was really trying to make sense of the chaos he must have experienced and witnessed first hand on his journey as a Russian-Jew from Moscow to Berlin, to Paris, to Cornwall and St Ives and finally to the US in 1946. In particular the “spheric theme’ explored many times in his lifetime and examples of  which are featured in this small exhibition.

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The sense I had was that it connected so strongly with a sense of movement and rhythm powered by a central axis very much like the wings of an insect flying in a figure of 8 pattern. I went away wondering about the sense of symmetry, balance and poise Gabo was trying to achieve in these pieces and how it reflected on his own spiritual and philosophical view of the nature of civilisations, history and the universe. So whatever was intended by the artist I went away from the exhibition looking and thinking about his works and trying to understand them in my own way.

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For more images and information on Naum Gabo’s work visit the Tate. For inspiration for making a toy with few resources have a look at this small film featuring Nina Williams, Gabo’s daughter and “The Constructivist Ballet”.

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