Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Christopher Wood and Modernist Primitivism

Christopher Wood
Angelfish, London Aquarium
1930
oil on cardboard
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums

" . . . not trying to see things and paint them through the eyes and experience of a man of forty or fifty or whatever they may be, but rather through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except those things which would strike him as being the most important . . ."

– Christopher Wood in a 1922 letter to his mother

Christopher Wood
Battersea Park, London
before 1930
oil on canvas
Dorset County Museum

Christopher Wood
Zebra and Parachute
1930
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

"Zebra and Parachute is one of Wood's last paintings.  The image brings together an unusual collection of elements that give the work a surrealist flavour.  A zebra appears against the backdrop of a modernist building.  The animal stands on the building's roof terrace near a raised flowerbed.  The distinctive lines of the architecture, which include strong diagonals produced by a zig-zagging ramp and the cylindrical forms of two chimneys or towers in the background, suggest an almost abstract arrangement that contrasts with the altogether different pattern produced by the zebra's stripes.  A dark shadow falls just in front of the zebra, casting the right-hand zone of the terrace into semi-darkness and adding to the mysterious atmosphere of the image.  In the sky above this scene, a parachute is descending.  The tiny figure that dangles in the parachute harness appears to be limp and lifeless.  The distinctive architecture of the building in Zebra and Parachute identifies it as the Villa Savoye, near Paris, designed by Le Corbusier (1887-1975).  The villa, begun in 1928, was finished in 1931, and construction was well underway at the time Wood produced this painting.  . . .  Along with this work, Wood produced at the same time the closely related painting Tiger and Arc de Triomphe [directly below].  In it, he set up a similar juxtaposition of the exotic and the man-made, this time placing a lazily sprawling tiger and a sitting leopard against a wooded background with a view of the Arc de Triomphe monument behind them.  Both paintings are reminiscent of the work of Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), known particularly for the depiction of animals in jungle settings in a naїve style."

– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery

Christopher Wood
Tiger and Arc de Triomphe
1930
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Christopher Wood
The Jumping Boy, Arundel, West Sussex
1929
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield

Christopher Wood
The Steps, Chelsea
1927
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Christopher Wood
The Rainbow
1927
oil on canvas
Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate

Christopher Wood
Le Plage, Hotel Ty-Med, Tréboul, France
1930
oil on panel
Museums Sheffield

Christopher Wood
Landscape near Vence
1927
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Christopher Wood
Landscape at Vence, Little White House
1927
oil on canvas
Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge

Christopher Wood
Cassis, France
1927
oil on canvas
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Christopher Wood
Bankshead, Cumberland
1928
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum

Christopher Wood
Street in Paris
1926
oil on panel
Southampton City Art Gallery

Christopher Wood
The Porte d'Honneur and the Petit Palais, Paris
before 1930
oil on panel
National Trust for Scotland, Brodie Castle

Christopher Wood
Flowers in a Black Jug
before 1930
oil on canvas
Leeds Museums and Galleries