“The collection Display: staged grand guignol: surrealism and beyond”

by Britney Pease

Andy Warhol was quoted as saying: “Art is what you can get away with”. Similarly, Albert Einstein once said: “Creativity is intelligence having fun”.

Leeds Art Gallery offers many different forms of art documented, in several ways through a frame. Exhibitions are a great way of consuming different pieces of artwork in little time.

The Collection Display: Staged Grand Guignol: Surrealism and Beyond exhibition looks at different forms of designs, both simplistic and quirky. The exhibition saw Sculptures, paintings, Installations and photographed art from both female and male artists of the 19th and 20th Century.

“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity” – Alberto Giacometti.

The photograph below embodies the unusual, and simple piece of work that Chadwick created.

The style of art consisted of, liquid inside the eyeball with specks of bluebells around to make it look like an eye. The installation was made to look like a real-life eye, which is very out of the ordinary for any form of art that has been made. Helen Chadwick is best known for being a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist, famous for creating unusual and elegant perceptions of the Human Body. In her work, she was best known for incorporating binary opposition into her work by adding male and female, organic and man-made themes.

The sculptures in the exhibition gallery were created by three different artists, who all embodied their own creativity and made it their own. The artists who created these pieces of sculptured artwork are from the 20th century. Jeff Nuttall was a prolific artist, as well as being in many different industries and, the photograph below embodies his creativeness in what he could do in regard to sculpture and, made sure artist lovers that viewed his artwork resonated with it in finding it an unorthodox piece of art using bold colours to get people away from paintings and onto sculptures. The wood-effect sculpture shows a female, and a pair of hands representing emotion, with the right-hand sculpture showing decorative pieces of art. Roberta and Bob Smith, or his alias, Patrick Brill, is best known for being a contemporary artist as well as being in other industries. The photograph below is simple yet creative with two figures to accompany the name of the art with many sending a message to others as inspiration, often to younger people to inspire them to become artists. This sculpture shows an unorthodox yet beige representation of what looks to be a food related item with orange wood-effect puppet with string attached.  John Davies is best known, as seen in the photo below for creating minimalistic yet elegant pieces of art based on Human figures tied in on an emotional level. The Three heads sculpture shows the simple yet small art with small, medium and large figures. This sculpture is shown to be a series of sizes of human heads on a metal wire appearing to be each expressing a different emotion, which is what Davies is best known for in his artwork and career.

Steven Campbell, best known for being an innovative painter of all time located in Scotland created a piece of artwork in which it was difficult to explain to his artist audience, however, the stature of the men in the artwork complements what Campbell does and what he is known for. He allowed his work to viewed in an academic style to which he allows access to the viewer. Both of their artwork is situated in Leeds art gallery for many art lovers to go and view along with several amazing artists from different backgrounds creating different styles of art. This form of art above is among the most popular forms of art that artists like to create. “Three men of exactly the same size in an unequal room” was known for being a ‘postmodern’ painting by many critics.

Paula Rego, best known for being a storytelling painter, telling stories through art. Her style of art has transformed over the years from abstract art to representational art, and in her work, uses pastel colours over oils as her creativity comes to life when those colours are used. “The artist in her studio” shows a female mistress in the middle smoking a cigarette whilst her apprentices are set to work to paint a series of items, as seen in the photo, of cabbages and objects. Her model led a very masculine life, yet had a feminine personality, and therefore wanted to incorporate that into her artwork.