Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists: A victim of its own noble ambition

Telegraph

15-05-2025

Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists at the progressive Pallant House Gallery aims to celebrate the relationships between artists and the artistic representation of these relationships. A simple enough concept, one would have thought. I was excited for my visit down to Chichester, enticed by the promise of many and various works – there are more than 130 works on show, including paintings by British establishment icons such as Lucian Freud, Cedric Morris, David Hockney, Paula Rego and Celia Paul.
The exhibition opens with flair. Viewers are greeted by a selection of colourful figures from Lubaina Himid's 1994 installation Vernet's Studio, set against a bright lemon-yellow wall. These life-size, painted wooden cut-outs of formidable female artists from times gone by were initially exhibited as part of a 26-piece show where viewers were invited to walk among the carnival of characters and see how many they could name. Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo, sternly gazing out beneath her bushy brow, is the most instantly recognisable of the menagerie. English op art painter Bridget Riley is more subtly represented by a contoured abstract form emblazoned with her characteristic stripes.
Each of the figures in this delightful yet dysfunctional ensemble are based, in terms of pose and composition, on figures from Horace Vernet's painting The Studio (1820-1), and so Seeing Each Other opens with a neat double entendre. British artist Lubaina Himid has not only created entertaining and interrogative portraits of female artists, but she has also modelled these cut-outs on a 19th-century artist's depiction of his own studio.
But dexterity and wit quickly dissipate as you enter the first room of the exhibition entitled: Artistic Bohemia, where the likes of Roger Fry, Nina Hamnett and Augustus John are both maker and muse in various works depicting the circles of London's art schools in the early 20th century. The most telling portrayal is a painting by John Currie, depicting himself and his fellow Slade students, alongside the proprietor of their favourite Soho hangout, the Petit Savoyard. Currie's Some Later Primitives and Madame Tisceron (1912) shows his cohort through the highly stylised lens of an early Renaissance fresco: one can imagine the chirrupings of mutual sycophancy that went on into the small hours at that café. But poor old Currie was no Piero della Francesca.
It was in the room entitled 'Intimate Relationships' that my ability to digest the connections between the artists, sitters and styles began to flounder. Curatorship is not only about telling a story, but also about making sure that the works being used to tell that story are aesthetically cohesive and visually harmonious. Just because two people loved each other, and created art works of each other, it doesn't mean that those two works should hang next to each other on an exhibition wall. And when there are over five or six such groupings in a room, the mixture of works on show begins to feel akin to the chaos of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. I looked around at the cacophonous hodgepodge of works on the walls and felt as though I had been abandoned at a party full of strangers, only I didn't have a drink, and everyone at the party was inanimate.
The concept of this Pallant House exhibition reads very well on paper: a chance to be immersed in the great relationships between some of the brightest (and lesser known) stars of the British art establishment of the past century. However, the multitudinous diversity of works on display leaves the viewer dizzy – fewer, more impactful displays might have been better. For example, an intimate nook late in the exhibition, dedicated to the School of London, juxtaposes portraits of Lucian Freud asleep by Celia Paul, and Paul by Freud – it is one of the most vulnerable juxtapositions in the show. In these moments, the brilliance of the exhibition's curatorial vision is fully apparent. But Seeing Each Other is a victim of its own ambitious intentions. All in all, the show is, at best, good in parts.