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On both facet of a doorway in Pallant Home hold two work. One is of Jean Cooke, painted by her husband, John Bratby. The opposite is of John Bratby, painted by his spouse, Jean Cooke. Bratby, a pioneer of kitchen-sink realist portray in Britain, was infamously merciless to his spouse. He scratched over a lot of her works and imprisoned her in his room when he feared she would depart him. Bratby’s portrait of Cooke epitomizes his disdain: in his distinctive thickly utilized brilliant colours, he paints Cooke bare at their kitchen desk—crowded with cornflakes packing containers, jam jars and different gadgets he owned. She appears to be like chilly and afraid, her eyes pleading with the viewer; she’s as a lot a shopper good in his eyes because the breakfast cereal. On the opposite facet of the door hangs Cooke’s portray of Bratby. In her depiction, the Offended Younger Man is rendered a middle-class stereotype, sitting on the similar chequered kitchen desk. An unflattering portrait, Bratby appears to be like neither good-looking nor radical. As a substitute, the painter who was obsessed together with his self-image is proven to be conservative, bland and boring. The portray was Cooke’s delicate revenge in opposition to Bratby.
This pairing is among the many many work which might be in dialogue with one another in “Seeing Every Different: Portraits of Artists,” presently on show at Pallant Home in Chichester, an enthralling nation city within the south of England. A brief practice from London, Pallant Home’s exhibition examines the varied methods artists use their medium to painting different artists. Some do it as an act of affection, portray muses, spouses, family and friends. Others, like Bratby, betray their very own prejudices of their depictions. Some, like Cooke, use artwork as retribution.
It’s a wonderful idea, hampered solely by the load of its potential. With a quick so huge, how can one curate a present that flows and maintains some narrative semblance? “Seeing Every Different” brings collectively greater than 150 artworks by over eighty artists—work, sculpture, pictures—masking a century of creative admiration and jealousy. The entire works are British, and the exhibition is partially a chronicle of British creative style, with works from the Bloomsbury Group to the YBAs. Certainly, the present is the third in a trilogy of exhibitions by Pallant Home exploring British artwork, and at occasions “Seeing Every Different” looks like a historical past of twentieth-century Britain.
Most of the artists represented—each on and off the canvas—are family names. Hockney, Bacon and Freud all take pleasure in loads of face time. A very transferring portrait is Freud’s research of his pal and lover John Minton. Minton requested Freud to color his portrait after seeing and being impressed by a portrait of Bacon by Freud. Minton’s lengthy face is uncomfortably near Lucian Freud’s canvas on this 1952 portrait that eerily captures Minton’s despair in its colour, proximity and expression. Minton dedicated suicide a couple of years afterward.
Freud himself is depicted elsewhere within the exhibition by one other of his lovers, Celia Paul. In Lucian Sleeping, the unhealthy boy painter appears to be like near loss of life as he sleeps. He’s light and completely powerless in Paul’s rendering. Some portraits empower, others infantilize. A portray like Lucian Sleeping helps erode the mythology round that almost all fabled of artists. When the muse in query can be an artist, it offers us a complete new lens by which we are able to view the opposite’s work.
There are different sensible standouts in “Seeing Every Different.” Mary McCartney’s {photograph} of Tracey Emin, who’s mendacity on a mattress dressed as Frida Kahlo, an homage inside an homage. Some portraits are conceptual, like Lubaina Himid’s painted picket cutout, which is a portrait of Bridget Riley, mimicking Riley’s brilliant strains and colours. Johnnie Shand Kydd’s pictures seize the wild vitality of the nineties, offered in a video slideshow that offers the exhibition some pulse.
Some artists depict artists from a earlier time, like Gillian Sporting’s {photograph} during which she depicts herself as Georgia O’Keeffe. However most works within the exhibition are depictions amongst contemporaries—artists who knew one another in actual life. It’s humorous to assume how somebody can forge such a crafted public persona by their very own life and work, just for it to be shattered—or at the least compromised—by another person’s depiction. Some gazes in Pallant Home are variety. Others are merciless. Some are detached, which is unquestionably the worst of all.
“Seeing Every Different: Portraits of Artists” is on at Pallant Home Gallery by November 2, 2025.
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