Last Saturday was a beautifully bright autumnal morning. I strolled from my home in Clerkenwell to Sir John Soane's Museum at Lincoln's Inn Fields to see Face to Face, a delightful little exhibition of engravings, etchings, screen prints, and lithographs. It is a collection on the development of portraiture by British printmakers from the mid-20th century to the present.
David Hockney
William Scott
Alessandro Raho
If you have never been to Sir John Soane's Museum, it is a beautiful, labyrinthine collection of artefacts curated by Soane during the 19th century. It is packed floor to ceiling with classical casts, models, books, paintings and room settings with furniture for every mood.
Above are some of the treasures collected by Sir John Soane
Tracey Emin at the White Cube Gallery in front of one of her extreme blow-ups
Having absorbed the portraits in the exhibition, I thought about a review I had read the day before in The Guardian. It was about Tracey Emin's new show at the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey, where she has an array of work from sculpture and neon to embroidery and drawing. In the glowing, five-star review, art critic Jonathan Jones linked Emin's understanding of drawing with Michelangelo's. I had to read that line twice. Why?
Well, this is a drawing by Michelangelo…
And this is a drawing by Emin…
Either Jones should have gone to Specsavers, or he needs to be certified—or perhaps both. Emin's drawing ability is frankly laughable. However, Jones went on to say that Emin's drawing skills are "a master class in how to use traditional artistic skills in the 21st century." He added that her nudes "have a real sense of observation."
I couldn't resist sharing three more descriptions: "Framed blue meditations on the human body," "Flowing and pooling lines of gouache define form with real authority," and "The rough, unfinished suggestiveness of her style evokes pain, suffering, and solitude." I agree with the pain and suffering.
Since I was a small boy, I have loved the skill of artists who draw beautifully. In my professional life, I have had the pleasure of commissioning many great people. So, it was baffling for me when Emin was appointed 'Professor' of Drawing at the Royal Academy a few years back. Emin has said she'd never learnt to draw, but the RA still went ahead with the appointment. In a recent Guardian web chat, she said, " They sacked me." I wonder why?
Imagine the Royal Academy of Music employing a violin teacher who could barely play the instrument. Or a film school appointing an editor who couldn't edit or a cinematographer who had never used a camera – you get my drift. It just wouldn't happen. But, in the world of "art, it's okay; you can appoint a Professor of Drawing who frankly can't. But at the time of Emin's appointment, the RA produced a postcard of one of her drawings to sell in its shop…
Going along to the White Cube Gallery did not change my view. If you have a pristine, white gallery space with perfect frames hung and aligned beautifully and the works printed with great craft onto exquisitely textured watercolour paper, virtually anything will look good. The metal and skeletal plinths that hold Emin's Dreadfully lumpy bronzes are far more interesting than the works they support. Often, the artist fabricators are the unsung heroes whose behind-the-scenes work transforms artists' ideas into reality.
White Cube. The perfect gallery space.
One of EEmin'ssculptural works.
The tables were very nice.
The Soane exhibition is an example of a collection of artists who can draw. Emin gets by with extreme blow-ups of her crude drawings. We all know that enlargements, with their accidental textures and imperfections, help make works look far more interesting than they are. Emin has now reached such heightened celebrity that she could even wipe her bottom on a piece of the best Fabriano handmade paper and have it framed and hung in the White Cube. Jones would laud it "the height of truthful autobiographical artistic expression" or some similar claptrap.
Anyway, here are some of my favourite artists/illustrators in no particular order. They all have one thing in common: they can draw…
Stanley Spencer
Picasso
Marc Boxer
David Hockney
Egon Schiele
Robin Jacques
David Gentleman
Laura Carlin
Jenny Saville
Quentin Blake
Brian Grimwood
Henri Matisse
Lucian Freud
Glynn Boyd Harte
Roger Law
Edward Ardizzone
Andrew Wyeth
Sara Fanelli
Justin Todd
David Remfry
Gustav Klimt
Théodore Géricault
Ronald Searle
I could have gone on and on. My point is that all the above are widely different in style and technique, but they all have something Tracey Emin lacks in drawing: supreme ability.
In the 21st century, an artist celebrity is as, if not more, important than their work.