In the 1940s, Henri Matisse advised young artists to make copies of their favorite paintings. Nearly half a century later, Damian Elwes decided to follow his advice with a twist. “I went to Paris and made paintings of the studios of my favorite artists,” Elwes says. What began as a way of learning from deceased masters – including Matisse – has developed into a vast body of visually- and conceptually-rich work to be exhibited in a solo show at Modernism Gallery next month.
Elwes has painted the studios of great artists ranging from Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne to Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo to Cy Twombly and David Hockney. His lush canvases not only reference their work aesthetically but also excavate their creative processes by meticulously reconstructing spaces that no longer exist. To research each artwork, Elwes delves deeply into history, scrutinizing dozens of photographs and literary sources as well as the masters’ own paintings. He also seeks out the buildings where the artists’ studios were once situated. In the case of Matisse, his sleuthing resulted in the rediscovery of the house in Collioure where the artist invented Fauvism in 1905. In the case of both Cezanne and Kahlo, he successfully reconstructed the original arrangement of furniture.
“The sense of painterly well-being that pervades [Elwes’ canvases] comes from painstaking research,” explains the art critic Anthony Haden-Guest. “Elwes wants the viewer to feel he is witnessing creation… to feel what it is like to inhabit each of these painters.”
For Elwes, there’s also the conviction that these studios are found compositions. “These people were so visual that even the negative space has been thought about,” Elwes observes. “So what I’m doing is painting thousands of still lives laid out for me by the most creative minds of the last century.”
Picasso’s many studios, as painted by Elwes, are emblematic. For instance, the studio at Bateau Lavoir, where Picasso created Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907, contains one of the Iberian stone age heads that helped inspire the language of Cubism. (The studio also contains several of Picasso’s paintings – including the Demoiselles – allowing Elwes simultaneously to fulfill the ambition inspired by Matisse and Matisse’s own advice about copying favorite paintings.)
In historical terms, Elwes’ canvases represent an invaluable contribution to the understanding of how some of the 20th Century’s greatest artists were influenced by their physical surroundings. In conceptual terms, the paintings are absolutely contemporary, reactivating familiar masterpieces through recontextualization, as has been achieved in different ways by Roy Lichtenstein, John Baldessari, Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman.
Damian ELWES (born 10 August 1960) is a British artist who lives and works in Santa Monica, California. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across America and Europe.
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