Because I have neglected visiting Whitechapel for some time, I made the effort to go and see the Albert Oehlen exhibition there. It is called "I will always champion good painting". This is not the kind of work that I find easy to appreciate or get to grips with. There is two levels of the exhibition, plus a room where a filmed interview takes place.
It is not possible to take photographs so I bought a hard-back catalogue where the reproductions are not very good. And two postcards which are 60p each.
The ground floor has 11 oils all similar dimensions, i e large. A lot of these were untitled. Because they are untitled it was difficult later to work out which was which from my notes compared to the catalogue, but on the other hand, when I went to see the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at the Tate Britain, I thought the titles were compelely unnecessary. So are we in favour of titles or not? The paintings of Oehlen downstairs are abstract although he has used faintly familiar images in a few of them, for example skulls, a tree, an eye. There has been a great deal written about Oehlen, I have discovered, so there is little point in me writing more. The filmed interview is printed again in the catalogue, so more words, more "art speak", in a wordy art scene. But I think some of the interview is edited out, because I noted that Oehlen said that he had no "painting" classes when he was at art school in Hamburg in the late 1970s, with the tutor being Sigmar Polke. I calculate is he about 54 now. He described his "grey" paintings and the "collage" paintings as being easier to do, because of course the grey ones are all in greys and the collages have some of the work done for him. He said that he had been inspired by Dali when it came to the collages.
The amount that is written about artists such as him and the Brit Art artists suggested to me that they exist partly to provide bread and butter for art journalists.
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