Etel Adnan, 'Le départ', tapestry, 2013.
Having been caught up in work-related business the past few months, I’ve neglected Good at Looking somewhat. I’ve been looking, but not writing. So it is with regrets and apologies that I am posting only now about an exhibition that ended last weekend. It’s too late to inspire readers to go and see it, but I hope it will inspire some of you to look out for future shows of her work.
I hadn’t known that I would love the work of Etel Adnan; in fact, I hadn’t even heard of this Lebanese-born artist until I happened upon her show at the White Cube in Bermondsey, which was also showing a more well-known artist, Tracey Emin. Emin’s show, ‘The Last Great Adventure is You’, features gouache nudes and large-scale embroidered versions of these beautifully rendered, thoughtful paintings. Emin is an artist who weaves her personal life into her work and lays bare the painful and traumatic as well the joyful and the tender.
I hadn’t known that I would love the work of Etel Adnan; in fact, I hadn’t even heard of this Lebanese-born artist until I happened upon her show at the White Cube in Bermondsey, which was also showing a more well-known artist, Tracey Emin. Emin’s show, ‘The Last Great Adventure is You’, features gouache nudes and large-scale embroidered versions of these beautifully rendered, thoughtful paintings. Emin is an artist who weaves her personal life into her work and lays bare the painful and traumatic as well the joyful and the tender.
 Tracey Emin, from 'The Last Great Adventure is You', 2014 |  Tracey Emin, from 'The Last Great Adventure is You', 2014 |
In the room opposite we glimpsed bursts of colour that were a complete contrast to the black and white of Emin’s works. Adnan is primarily a poet and journalist – more than that, she is a leading voice in contemporary Arab American literature. Born in Beirut in 1925, and having studied in Paris and the US and lived in both the US and Lebanon, she settled in northern California in the late 1970s. The 26 paintings in this exhibit are primarily abstract landscapes – bright, expressive blocks of colour suggesting mountain, horizon, coast, sun. All are deeply resonant places for her.
 Etel Adnan, 'Untitled', oil on canvas, 2014 |  Etel Adnan, 'Untitled', oil on canvas, 2014 |
The exhibition notes explains that Adnan works on a table rather than an easel, and she often applies paint directly from the tube in bold swipes across the canvas, resulting in compositions exuding intense energy. She is quoted as saying that ‘Images are not still. They are moving things. They come, they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even visual – ultimately they are pure feeling.’
For more on Etal Adnan, see here.
White Cube, Bermondsey: Tracey Emin, 'The Last Great Adventure is You', and Etel Adnan, 'Inside the White Cube' 8 October - 16 November 2014
For more on Etal Adnan, see here.
White Cube, Bermondsey: Tracey Emin, 'The Last Great Adventure is You', and Etel Adnan, 'Inside the White Cube' 8 October - 16 November 2014
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