Planet of the Shapes:Robert Mangold at the Pace Gallery.

"I am attracted to generic or 'industrial' colours; paper bag brown, file cabinet gray, industrial green, that kind of thing" - Robert Mangold

 

Ring Image C (2008)

Good to know. Robert Mangold's life, judging by the art on show at the Pace Gallery's current A Survey 1981-2008 exhibition of his work, doesn't look too difficult. From the outside, the lives of (presumably) rich and successful artists look like a right doss. Yeah, they do long hours - but it's long hours doing something they love and there's nobody telling them they can't pop out for a walk, a drink, or a meal whenever they like.

It seems as if the likes of Mangold just wake up and think "I think I'll do a ring/cross/column today" and then do it. That's enough to have art critics fawning and art dealers spending megabucks but it doesn't, hardly ever, impinge on the public consciousness. Art may have the power to change, reshape, the world (and has done) but, for the most part, artists don't show much interest in doing so.

 

X Within X (Red Orange) (1981)

 Attic Series V (1990)

They take it easy - because that pays the bills. That's one way of looking at artists like Robert Mangold - and it's a perfectly valid way of looking at it too. The aquamarine blue of Ring Image C and the speedy orange cross of X Within X both appealed to my artistic sensibilities (other works much less so) but no more than, say, an evil eye pendant or a Chevrolet grille emblem.

They certainly didn't get me to "questioning" the "primacy of the rectangular format" and my expectations, as threatened, were far from subverted. In fact they were met - and my expectations had not been particularly high. I just fancied a trip out and to look at some art.

 

Column Structure VI (2006)

 

Aqua/Green/Orange + Painting (1983)

Which, to be fair, I got. But unlike, for example, the RA's brilliant exhibition of American abstract expressionism in 2016, it didn't make me re-evaluate what a painting could be or what a painter could do. Instead I looked at some shapes and wondered if Mangold ever went to bed and thought "fuck it, I'll draw a face tomorrow for a change". All the mathematical symbols reminded me of Ed Sheeran's boring albums far more than they did Ada Lovelace or Hannah Fry.

So I walked round the one room gallery, just me and an invigilator, and I enjoyed looking at a cross or found an ellipse a bit ugly. As with the Ugo Rondinone exhibition the week before I longed for more explanation of the work and not being able to go to the pub afterwards (unless I wanted to sit outside - and it was cold so I didn't) I wondered if the trip had even been worth it.

 

Green Ellipse/Gray Frame (1989)

 

Column Structure III (2006)

 

Column Structure VII (2006)

 

Curled Figure XII (Version 1) (2002)

I got a blog out of it so perhaps it had. It made me think but not so much about what art can be or what art can do but how I may need to be a little more selective about the events I choose in the future. This was free and, again, it was good to get out (and I also appreciate that in another context, perhaps a group show with other artists, I may appreciate Mangold's work and its place in the canon more) but this was the third of three mildly disappointing post-lockdown art experiences.

My next show is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's Fly in League with the Night at Tate Britain (it's a paying one and I've got my slot booked) and as I'm already a big fan of her work, I'm hoping she will reignite my passion for art which, right now, with far more important things going on in the world, is flickering rather than blaring. I wonder if that is the shape of things to come.