Last weekend I was in London for the London Tattoo Convention. When we arrived on thursday, a day before the convention, we thought it would be cool to visit the Tate Britain, knowing there would be a Turner exposition (because the shitty layout of this blog, the images i'll add are either at the top or at the bottom of this page, and propably in random order).
Now, if you don't know Turner, i suggest checking it out. If you're in London, i'd suggest going to the exposition soon and not read another word.
The expo was set up to show turner fighting for a place amongst the old masters. He'd look at paintings of others (Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens etc.) and tried to do the same stuff. Both the inspiration and the result are displayed, next to each other.
So you get Turner, with his very very nice atmosphere and (most of the times) very dynamic compositions, as well as Rembrandt with his deep deep colours, beautiful light and strong contrast and Rubens (only 1 painting if i'm not mistaken) with his transparent painting.
It is needless to say that we got blown away by the works, they are the masters for a reason after all. But the biggest punch in the balls came in one of the last halls.
A HUGE painting by loutherbourg. The glorious first of June. A MASSIVE painting displaying a battle at sea. A very dynamic composition grabs you by the balls from a distance, making sure that every fucking body in the room notices the painting.
So yeah, it blew me away, i felt humble. But then i got close to the painting and i could see all the faces, all the gestures, all the bodies, the people falling off the ship, the people climbing in the ropes, the soldiers standing in formation on the ship, everything. The amount of detail and realism was crazy...
"Fuck this museum, fuck this. Fuck the convention, fuck Rembrandt, fuck it. Let's go home..." was the first thing that came into my mind when i was able to think again.
Seriously, no shitting you, this painting is awesome. I cannot find any decent pictures of it on the internet, nothing will do it justice, so do yourself a favor. If you are able to go see it, somewhere, DO IT!
Ofcourse the paintings of venice, the paintings of ships and paintings at the sea of Turner are amazing as well, but man...
I'll add some photos to this post(click to make em bigger, wish it was always that easy huh...), but it wont really do the paintings justice. Go see it man. Go.
