Catalogue

PICTURES IN YOUR DREAMS

  1. PRESERVED IN OIL AND TIME by Jan Vermeer, nominated by Teresa
    Red brick merchant's house in Delft, around 1670 - one side of street - tall building 2 stories high starting with large, shuttered, leaded-light windows. On either side of the open front door two men stand in doorway - father and son, hands in pockets.
    In an alley towards back of house stand two women cleaning and washing. A duck eats crumbs from the cobblestones between them. The alley has a lintel across from the main house to a smaller building, its front door to the far left of the picture. The lintel, covered in a green climbing shrub, has a large cat asleep across it. A smaller cat plays with a leaf in the street. At an open window stands an elderly woman waving to two young, laughing women, walking towards her with grocery-filled baskets.

  2. SNOOPY AT THE GATES by Charles Schultz, nominated by Lewis Henniford M.L.S., PhD.
    Snoopy as St Peter welcomes Schultz through the Pearly Gates.

  3. UNDER THE EYES OF GIANTS by Iona Mc Baton, nominated by Paul Steele.
    Portrait of Commodore A. McFadden, Commander of the first manned mission to the Moons of Saturn. The painting consists of a close up view of the Commodore's helmet taken at the moment when the doors of F.S.S.Terra Lumnus had opened to reveal the farscape following the first landing. Reflected in the visor and again in the eyes of the Commodore is the image of the ringed world they had travelled so far to study. The tears running down the Commodore's face each reveal a different facet of the farscape from the surface of the first landing site to each moon the Terra Lumnus will later visit. The artist has fully captured the sense of utter awe the Commodore and his crew described at that moment.  

  4. TEARS OF THE BUDDHA by Salvador Dali, nominated by Pol.
    Dark brooding sky in red and golds bearing down on endless midnight jungle.     Image of Man revealed in torment lies broken below the tree from which he has fallen. Twisted shadows, cloaked in further shadows of crimson and black sit gathered at his feet like vultures waiting for the end. Despite his obvious agony Man has one hand raised to the skies in an attempt to catch the drops of rain which distracted him in the first place and had caused his fall.

  5. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR COMPOSER by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol. Temporary exhibit.
    Pieree Boulez at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The view is from the side, taking in part of the audience and part orchestra with Maestro Boulez standing on the rostrum at the end of the performance, acknowledging applause. Marilyn Monroe stands beside him, evidently singing to the accompaniment of the orchestra. She appears exactly as in the 'Kennedy Birthday' except that her facial features are more angular and duplicated in full face and left profile. The principle colours for Ms Monroe are (reading clockwise from top left) red, green, blue, yellow.

  6. I SAID DO IT AGAIN,DO IT AGAIN by Sidney Harold Meteyard, nominated by B.
    A delicate figure is draped elegantly over a decadently quilted couch of electric blue silk.     Every crease and shadow is visible in the material. This itself could be percieved to be the focus of the painting. It is illustriously rich in both colour and texture. The oils in Metayard's painting make every animate and inanimate surface come even more alive and vibrant than our eyes would naturally allow us to see things.The man is wearing a long silken white Japanese dress with blue flowers. It hangs off his tiny frame clinging only to tiny hips, tiny waist. His pale skin is exaggerated by the deep red used to define the man's thin lips. His skin is flawless, almost transparent; not unlike fellow Pre-Raph Wallis' "The Death of Chatterton" . His hair, long and mousy brown, is being teased by one of his bony hands. A playing card is held between the fingers of the other. This painting defies the limits of ones visual senses.

  7. ASYMPTOPE WITH SMALL BIRD by Joan Miro (from an original sketch by Stephen Hawking), nominated by Michael Sheinbaum.
    A small bird is staring at the red sky. Its gaze forms a curve plotted against the x-axis of the tree on which it is perched and the y-axis of the horizon. The y value is a constant. The x-value for each tick of the y is half the value it takes to reach 100. So the first value is 50, the next value is 25, the next is 12.5, then 6.25, and so on. The plot will approach the edge, but never quite meet it, even after many turns when it will become infinitely close. This art piece expresses a notion of perfect eternity, a notion that somehow matches the asymptope with a successful love relationship.

  8. THERE'S NO NEED TO BE SNIDE ABOUT IT or BUT YOU WOULDN'T LET THAT STOP YOU by Barnay M. Anaheim (American, 20th C), nominated by David Franks.
    Small areas of painstakingly executed geometric patterns. checks, paisleys, Greek-keylike repetitions in yellows, oranges, reds, pinks and electric green alternate with brutal applications of phthalo greens and blues, black, white, off-white, ecru, tan, putty, khaki, peach, and pale apricot in primarily diagonal orientations.  In no particular correspondence, orderly patches of matched popcorn kernels and stripes of alternating colours give way to frenzied arcs of randomly-distributed kernels.  The artist's discomfiture is further apparent in the wrenching of the three panels from their normal orthogonal relationships to a  skewed, obtuse-angled array.  Pathetic shards of self-sticking plastic towel rings, soap dishes, and handy little shelves cling tenaciously amid the dichotomous remains.  The division of the work into three panels is due entirely to its being executed on a shower enclosure.  Approximately sixty percent of the fibreglass surface is obscured by the encrustations of paint, popcorn, and fixtures; the remaining visible surface is evidence enough that the enclosure fared no better as a shower than it has as art.  This work is nearly concurrent with the artist's attempted creation of the libretto and stage designs for an opera, La Brebis d'Amour. There is no hint here, except perhaps to the pessimistic, that the artist would soon lapse into a coma.

  9. APHRODITE AT THE WATERHOLE (Preparatory sketch) by Anthony Alolysius St. John Hancock nominated by Gavin Jay
    A previously unknown drawing dating from Tony's formative 'pre-Parisian' days. This magnificent drawing forms part of a series of sketches for his landmark sculptural piece 'Aphrodite at the Waterhole'. Lost for over forty years until being recently discovered down the side of an easy chair, this is  a crucial work in the development of his 'Infantile' school of art. The sensuous treatment of his subject matter led to speculation of a romantic involvement with his muse and landlady Mrs. Crevatte, although Tony was always quick to deny this.

  1. JUST GOING TO THE SHOPS by DaCh nominated by Marina Sub
    The simplicity of this picture belies a wealth of information in every tiny space therein. Like an Ogri cartoon, no space is left blank: some tiny pigment of colour or old food lets you know what the artist is thinking. The shop in the title is more a picture of the earth, but taken from the viewpoint of a very skinny being, not quite human, trying to enter. The front door, such as it is, is somehow resembling the outline of Europe, and yet if that is so, well the sea looks filthy. I am not sure I am describing what the painter had in mind, for even the painter changes his or her mind along the way. The baskets in the entrance of the store appear to be the shapes of cars or fridges. Heavy in its subtlety! The artist cleverly leaves sections of canvas clear of the main picture but fills it in with what looks like maps.


    PICTURES IN YOUR DREAMS nominations

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