It was a cold(ish) January day when I walked into Mayfair's Marlborough Gallery. It was my third exhibition of the day and, as I'm undergoing a period of sobriety at the moment, I didn't even have a pint to look forward to afterwards. Just an evening of television - and neither Have I Got News For You or The Last Leg were on - and they're my Friday night favourites.
Winter Lies In The Arms Of Spring (2023)
So - a friendly face would have been nice. But Liorah Tchiprout's Two Eyes Wide Open At The Edge Of Dawn exhibition (with its weird use of majuscule and miniscule lettering in the painting's odd titles) just featured a load of women looking miserable. Cheer up love(s), it might never happen.
I am, of course, being facetious. I don't like it when you don't smile for a photo and some wag makes some boring, cliched, comment - and surely painting, even more than photography, should be able to capture all different kinds of emotions. Then again, Tchiprout's work, for the most part, mainly captured the emotions of boredom, disdain, and sadness.
Daylight Licks Its Finger Tips and Turns a Page (2023)
The Eye Talks With the Light (Portrait of Els Keezer) (2023)
Seemingly, it's what she does. We're told, in a leaflet you can pick up at the door, that these paintings (all made last year) feature "subjects who gaze confidently at the viewer or who turn away in thought" but that's not how they looked, or still look, to me.
Virtually none of them are turning away from the viewer (though, I admit, some are refusing to meet the viewer's gaze) and none of them are gazing confidently (apart from, perhaps, Saccharine - she's my favourite). Many of them look as if they've just received the worst news of their lives so far. In fact, in the cases of the double portraits it looks as if they being comforted after hearing that news.
Fortune and Love Favour the Brave (2023)
The Moon Laughs at Me (2023)
When the King is in the Field (2023)
Also, what's with the titles? There are some fairly poetic ones (Fortune and Love Favour the Brave, Winter Lies In The Arms Of Spring, and Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn which gives the exhibition its name) and then there are the other, more bizarre, ones:- Remember Who Your Dogs Are, I Opened My Heart And Quickly Said "Drink" (don't rub it in), and Inhales the Different Dawn.
Your guess is as good as mine. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a bit of mystery in art. In fact, mystery can be a very important part of art. But there's nothing here to help us solve that mystery, to help us understand how the titles relate to the paintings. Which, for me, makes the whole exercise seem more than a little self-indulgent.
You're Always Certain and I'm Never Sure (2023)
In All this Push and Pull (2023)
Remember Who Your Dogs Are (2023)
Tchiprout's sitters are referred to as "players" ("a cast of players" even) and are said to be performing acts of self-assuredness (hmm) and sorrowful longing (yep, can see that one) but if you think it's cruel that she's asking her sitters to look all sad then don't fret. The sitters, sorry players, are dolls that Tchiprout had made herself. The chairs, lamp etc; are models too - though the dog is real. It's the artist's own.
Unable to understand what was going I delved further into the leaflet and discovered that the exhibition's title comes from a poem by the American Celia Dropkin (she was born in 1887 in Bobruysk, then in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus) and reflects Tchiprout's interest in Yiddish women writers. Which, I can say with absolute confidence, is not a subject I have any knowledge of.
Her Hands are Fetters (2023)
Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn (2023)
Not the Lovers Choice, But the Poets (2023)
I Opened My Heart and Quietly Said "Drink" (2023)
Inhales the Different Dawn (2023)
Up until now my tone, as you may have observed, has been both dismissive and flippant but I would like to add that I do find some of the paintings quite beguiling. The quizzical expression on I Opened My Heart and Quietly Said "Drink" entices, I'm inclined to wonder what the sitter/player/doll is thinking about in Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn, and the comforting embrace between the two players in Her Hands are Fetters seems to intuit a genuine sense of friendship.
The sadness of the player in The Moon Laughs at Me looks eternal, the matronly disdain in Easily Swept Away carries a haughtiness that feels inviolable, and Saccharine, as I've already mentioned, looks all sexy and French. Like some long forgotten ye-ye singer.
Or maybe that's just me projecting on to these images. Which is surely what the artist intended anyway. If you don't give us a back story we'll make one up. It's a rule of life and it's a rule of art. These paintings, though persuasive and convincing, don't have quite enough about them for a person as unimaginative as me to concoct a fantastical enough story around them. Must try harder. Both me and Liorah Tchiprout.
Winds Her Dizzy Hair and Sings (2023)
Easily Swept Away (2023)
In This Push and Pull (2023)
Saccharine (2023)
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