Document generated on 09/24/2021 5:03 p.m. Vie des Arts English Reports René Viau, Françoise Belu, André Seleanu, Jean De Julio-Paquin, Bernard Lévy, Yves Prescott, Hedwidge Asselin and Marie Claude Mirandette Volume 51, Number 208, Fall 2007 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/52501ac See table of contents Publisher(s) La Société La Vie des Arts ISSN 0042-5435 (print) 1923-3183 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Viau, R., Belu, F., Seleanu, A., De Julio-Paquin, J., Lévy, B., Prescott, Y., Asselin, H. & Mirandette, M. C. (2007). English Reports. Vie des Arts, 51(208), 103–110. Tous droits réservés © La Société La Vie des Arts, 2008 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Holy Water Cannot Help You Now, 2005. OXFORD, U.K. Courtesy Modern Art Oxford STELLA VINE RETROSPECTIVE What she is, is a contemporary figurative painter, her paintings, MODERN ART OXFORD however, are far from being stuck in 30 PEMBROKE STREET OXFORD 0X1 1BP some kind of revisionist back-track­ ing. She is undeniably modern and TEL+ 44(0)1865 722733 original, and very much the voice of FAX+ 44(0)1865 722573 the times. www.modernartoxford.org.uk Her models aren't always heroin- fuelled pop stars. She also does por­ Several years ago, Charles Saatchi, traits from photographs, among the most successful and equally them paintings of mother and child controversial collector of modern and a series of images of Princess art in Britain, put together a show Diana. The exhibition also includes of recent discoveries that he called, portraits of the artist's family. what else, New Blood. According to him, those were the voices of the fu­ Hung salon-style on the walls of ture; an eclectic contingent of action the gallery, they form an unusual sculptors and instant painters, pantheon of figures, a tragicomic mostly from Germany. The show had mutual-admiration society. a slow run and few took notice of Vine's detractors are many. To its so-called stars. most her art is tasteless and im­ moral, but to others she is a breath Until they came upon Stella of fresh air, even if a tad fetid. Vine's paintings. In her introduction to the cata­ Uke previous Saatchi protégés- logue accompanying die exhibition, Tracey Emin, she of the unmade bed Now, ten years since the death of clude portraits of fashion model Germaine Greer writes: "As a woman installation that received the 1998 Princess Diana, the media are once Kate Moss, cigarette in hand, with paints her face everyday, Stella Vine Tinner Prize much to the horror again abuzz, and that's a good thing the inscription 'Holy water cannot paints the painted face, the mask be­ and chagrin of art-connoisseurs, for Stella Vine and her retrospective. help you now', as well as her some­ hind which celebrity females take and Damien Hirst whose latest When Saatchi purchased the time boyfriend, musician Pete Doherty, cover even as they flaunt themselves. creation, a diamond-studded skull, painting, Vine was the media's fa­ both performers famous for their Paint cannot tie. Every brushstroke recently fetched $100-milliion- vorite topic and aspects of her life drug addictions. threatens disintegration." Vine has become the artist everyone story became fodder for the merci­ "Diana and her demons, Kate loves to hate. But unlike Emin's The paint in Vine's works seems less British tabloids. and cocaine, Jose Mourinho and his vapid sexually charged installations, to be alive. It does not sit on the face, For it is not just her style and dog. Is any subject too raw for this and Hirst's vulgar excesses mas­ it drips and dribbles in the form of subject matter that shock and pro­ notorious artist?" wrote Waldemar querading as talent, Vine actually running mascara or blood-red voke. Stella Vine herself is an out­ Januszczak in The Sunday Times. puts brush to canvas. smeared lipstick; what is dead are spoken and colourful figure. The answer is "no", and that's the eyes of the subjects, veiled with One of the Young British Artists, Born in 1969 in Northumberland, great, for Vine's nonchalantly irrev­ drugs or apathy, despair or elation, as they are known, she rose to in­ she studied painting part-time at erent take on society's fascination belonging to people trapped with­ stant fame when Saatchi bought two Hampstead School of Art in 1999, with celebrities, no matter how inane out realizing the tight circumference of her paintings in 2004. One was but what the press likes to draw out their antics, is strangely apt and en­ of their public persona. of Princess Diana, and the other de­ time after time, is the fact that she tertaining. She selects images from Dorota Kozinska picted heroin addict Rachel Whitear, earned a living as a stripper before newspapers and magazines that whose death was a media sensation giving it up for art. capture the facial expressions and in Britain in 2000. Both were con­ Lost in all this juicy gossip is emotions that are often very per­ troversial images, with the parents Vine's art. She paints in a raw, naive sonal, mirroring the torrid stories of of Whitear pleading for the image style, using bright, at times sweet these fleeting pop stars. of their daughter not to be displayed colours, subverting the portraits by Vine's free, loose application of in the 2004 New Blood exhibition. caricaturising the features, turning the paint adds rawness to her works, The Diana controversy was them into graffito-like or poster art and combined with an element of even fiercer. Vine's portrait of the reminiscent of Andy Warhol's un­ self-portraiture, makes them impos­ Princess, with words scribbled in abashed appropriation of famous sibly irresistible. One cannot be bad red lipstick across her picture, faces. Vine uses thickly textured and while looking at art. spelling: "Hi Paul, can you come brighdy coloured paint that some­ "I'm not interested in being a over. I'm really frightened...", (a ref­ times looks as if it is mixed directly shocking artist and not interested in erence to her buder, Paul Burrell), on the canvas. Her paintings are being a celebrity myself', Stella Vine shocked the public. For the Brits, loud and exuberant, at times funny, is quoted as saying. this wasn't merely bad art. and quite often tragic. "This was treason", in the words Recent paintings on show at of one reviewer. Pete Doherty, 2005 this, her first ever retrospective Courtesy Modern Art Oxford incorporating some 100 works, in­ VIE DES ARTS NP208 103 ENGLISH REPORTS VANCOUVER The works appear to be organic composed of a hundred, small, as Paul Freeman's pastel drawings in that they look as if they grew in heroic gestures-salutes to the infinite of distopic elk with more than the nature and not simply from the variety of form attainable from mod­ usual compliment of anders. Julian DALE ROBERTS hands of Dale Roberts. Some re­ est, cellular, elemental foundations. Forrest's indifferent renderings of NEPTUNE'S CHILDREN semble the more exotic fungal Yvonne Owens website photos of soldiers in their 1-251" August 2007 growths that adorn tree trunks in the barracks and David Janzen's large Jeffrey Boone Gallery North Western rain forest, their ruf­ painting of a collapsed water tower 140-1 East Cordova Street fles and fringes the gills of delicately EDMONTON bearing the words "Welcome to Vancouver, BC V6A 4H3 hued mushrooms. Some blossom Arcadia" are terrific images but un­ into their shapes and contours like necessarily transcribed into paint. Tel: 604-838-6816 ALBERTA BIENNIAL OF www.jeffreyboonegallery.com tiny arboreal entities. Seen in terms However, Sarah Adams-Bacon's of the vegetative realm of their ma­ CONTEMPORARY ART 2007 36 drawings of class pictures, al­ terials' primary origin-the cultures LIVING UTOPIA AND DISASTER though awkward, are handmade and industries of the sea-they evoke October 27,2007-January 6,2008 translations that read tike a dialogue intensely expressive seaweed with memories rather than a tran­ growths, or some of the more flam­ Walter Phillips Gallery scription. The effect is greatly as­ boyant underwater plants that fur­ 107 Tunnel Mountain Drive sisted by handwritten accounts of PO Box 1020, Station 14 nish the aquarium environments of the author's relationship with, and Banff, Alberta T1L1H5 tropical fish. Placing them into the the later fates of, the documented aquatic realm of animal fife might Tel: 403.762.6281 people. The matter-of-fact stories of interpret the forms as the miner­ Fax: 403.762.6659 bullying, cliques, intolerance, early alised accretions of brilliantly [email protected] pregnancies, alcoholism, and sui­ coloured coral colonies, or the coil­ June 23-September 9, 2007 cide will resonate with anyone who ing extravagances of mollusc shells Art Gallery of Alberta had a childhood. and sea anemones. Undersea geol­ 2 Sir Winston Churchill Square Flying the flag for abstract paint­ ogy might provide a visual reference Edmonton, Alberta ing this year are Mark Mullen and Ge­ more along the Unes of deep-sea T5J 2C1 offrey Hunter. This inspired pairing mineralizations or lava flows-or the www.artgalleryalberta.com/ pits Mullen's confections against decorative flanges of unfathomable Hunter's workman existentialism.