It looks like Tate Britain might be the place to be at present since it’s hosting the Turner and the Masters exhibition- details here. When I heard about this show, I was slightly sceptical, not out of disrespect to Turner, but to the kind of exhibition that pits the moderns against the old masters. Earlier this year I was disappointed by the Picasso: Challenging the Past exhibition at the London National Gallery, which proved to be an arid sprawl of Picasso’s art and photos of old masters- most of the Goyas, Velasquez's etc could not be shown due to cultural politics. I thought it was more a case of Old Masters 2, Picasso 0. By contrast, the current Turner show has all the makings of a draw since the redoubtable romanticist will meet his match in the likes of Claude, Poussin, Rubens, and Ruisdael.
The title of this post is inspired by the fact that Poussin’s Winter- Deluge of 1660-4 is being shown in the same space as Turner’s own version of this apocalyptic canvas. Poussin’s Deluge is one of the most unforgettable of his oeuvre; it evokes with its monochromatic treatment darkness visible- the end of the day, and perhaps the end of the world. I’ve written substantially on this elsewhere, but it gets my juices going to know that it will be possible to view it in the same installation as Turner’s Deluge. For him and other painters of the era of romanticism, Poussin’s canvas proved talismanic for those wishing to convey a pervasive despair at the state of the world. Artists on both sides of the channel took their cue from Poussin who would not have understood his painting used as a vehicle for the transmission of deep pessimism. The black/white pattern was, I think, meant to convey the complex theological ideas of clerics Poussin knew in Rome in his final years, not the embittered and bleak personality of a man close to death. Turner’s Deluge of 1805 is closer to the despair usually associated with Poussin’s original, though Turner's version is very much of its time, conceived with the idea of the romantic sublime in mind; humanity huddles in the foreground while figures in the middle ground seem powerless against the unrelenting forces of nature.
Much has been made about the idea of Turner’s competitiveness and rivalry with the Old Masters. I’m not so sure this is right angle on Turner and tradition. Sure Turner was ambitious and strove to excel in his art, but his interaction seems more complex than a battle with the old masters. I suspect Turner’s rivalry was reserved for his contemporaries and he just displaced that competitive streak onto tradition. He was hardly a Picasso locking himself away to do battle with Velasquez. The competitive angle seems to me a theme used by the curators for marketing purposes. Still, whatever Turner’s motivation in creating emulative masterpieces, there’s no doubt that the public will be overwhelmed by the deluge of art on show at Tate Britain. It should be one of the exhibitions of the year. Not to be missed.
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