Contradictions: Bacon, Freud and the London Painters

 I was mystified by this exhibition, at AROS in Aarhus, Denmark (November 2017). I can’t deny it included Bacon and Freud, as the title states, and many, if not all the painters were based in London at some point. Some exhibitions have a theme, something running throughout the show that enables you to see this or that work in a new light, alongside another. Despite the undoubted quality of many of the 90 or so paintings shown here in their own right, seemed to gain little from being placed alongside each other. I tried several criteria before admitting failure, but in the end, all I could say about this group of painters was that they were to be found in London at various times from the 1950s to the 1990s – and that doesn’t tell you much. Perhaps the other uniting factor is that the Tate owns all of them, which at least explains one rationale for the show.

 On further examination it turns out that R B Kitaj coined the phrase “school of London” (rather than "London Painters" – when I googled this, all I got was painters and decorators). From the Tate glossary of art terms:

School of London was a term invented by artist R.B. Kitaj to describe a group of London-based artists who were pursuing forms of figurative painting in the face of avant-garde approaches in the 1970s 

Well, many of these paintings date from well before the 1970s, but perhaps you could try to define them by opposition to something else – hardly much of a criterion. Let’s not worry too much about this definition, and see if there are any possible criteria for looking at these paintings together. But all I found was a lack of commonality:

• Oppression v sensitivity: there were large-scale images of oppression and dread by Bacon. Nearby were highly sensitive depictions of nudes by Coldstream, Uglow and Freud. They bore little relation to each other. Freud, Coldstream, Uglow have an emphasis on the human form, in the case of Coldstream and Uglow almost as a still-life, a powerful, respectful nudity, whereas most figures in a Bacon painting would I am sure prefer not to be there at all. Freud can paint like this, but can also stray in the direction of suggesting vulnerability and unease. In Freud, the individual is typically overwhelmed, either by their surroundings, or by some other figure dominating (or penetrating) them. 
• Caricature v portrait study: there was nothing in common between Kitaj or Bomberg and Uglow and Coldstream. Kitaj and Andrews create highly stylized, caricature-like figures, as does Rego. Uglow and Coldstream depict the painstaking measuring they carried out to capture the human form in proportion. Rego would say that proportion is not the point. 
• Narrative v portrait: Rego, Andrews, Kitaj are painters of stories, while Uglow and Coldstream attempt to capture the essence of a human through portraiture. Even when the subject is naked, the figure remains a recognisable individual, with almost tangible corporality. By contrast, Paula Rego and R B Kitaj are both telling stories through their paintings, albeit in very different ways. Rego tells a narrative, even creating a triptych in Hogarth-like fashion to show the progression of a marriage. Kitaj uses a kind of collage, assembly of components that together create a kind of story or argument around a topic 
• Identifiable location v never-never land: David Bomberg paints the swimming pool where his child used to swim. David Kossoff paints Christ Church in Spitalfields. In contrast, Uglow’s nudes are in an unidentified interior, and have no sense of a specific location. Michael Andrews paints specific locations (Study for a man in a landscape, where the man is identified) as well as images set in no specific place (Man who suddenly fell over). 

What are we to make of it all? It’s a fascinating show, with some memorable images not often displayed, such as the early Coldstream portraits, and Freud’s 1947 Girl with a Kitten, as well as the magnificent Rego The Betrothal. Trying to pull all these pictures together is beyond me. But never mind, if the pictures themselves are good enough. Just enjoy the view, and don't try to lump them together.