Top Twenty

On view here are 20 of the latest assignments given to artists by gallerists Alan Miller and John Strutton (artists themselves), whose tasks for past participants have included designing bird houses, World Cup trophies and pub signs. For this show, each artist was given one of the National Gallery’s 20 top-selling postcards, a canvas of equal proportions to the original, and the task of creating a work in response. Despite some feeble attempts, most compel and some even manage to shed new light on Old Masters.

Standout paintings in which the source is altered yet unmistakably present include one by John Kindness, in which the colours and attire of Van Eyck’s ‘Wedding Portrait’ are left intact while the couple’s faces are obscured, as well as a Da Vinci group scene, reduced by Peter Harris to one sweet face, haloed by a coffee-mug stain. In several less straightforward (and for that, more intriguing) pieces, the tie to the original is formal or conceptual, as in Lothar Götz’s system of intersecting angles and blocks of colour extracted from a Vermeer interior. Some artists have treated their esteemed models with humorous irreverence, none moreso than Elinor Evans, who converts a Stubbs horse into a donkey, ridden by a rollicking monkey. In a tidy conclusion, postcards of the ersatz National Gallery paintings serve as the show’s catalogue.
Sarah Andress, Mon Aug 20