Disconcerted to find Marlborough full of paintings by Nina Murdoch, we were first concerned we had gone on the wrong day. It's a great painting Nina does and one might as well use the idea several times and sell it several times rather than just get paid once.I'm only quoting Don Paterson quoting Sorley Maclean on George Mackay Brown. Lovely poem. What? That one he always wrote.
We needn't have worried. Maggi's upstairs, but surely not relegated to upstairs and no longer headline news. No, not that, either. These are small canvasses, 30.5 x 25.5 cm, and might be lost in wider spaces. There's something of Tony Hancock's quantative costing, from The Rebel, involved here. A 30.5 x 25.5 cm will set you back £6500 whereas the self portrait that greets you, 152 x 122, is £50k.
I'm going to Ascot on Saturday, Maggi. If I'm much luckier than I expect to be, I'll be in touch.
Valkyrie, above, lifted from elsewhere, is representative, unwilling to be entirely figurative but certainly not abstract either. Maggi's signature passionate brushwork only allows the image to emerge marginally, to a greater or lesser extent, as if from a storm.
Everybody will recognize Trump. You'll need to be much further ahead on images of Greta Garbo than me to recognize her 'want to be alone' silhouette. I entirely get the two-faced nature of the politicians, who are un-named and possibly generic because it can't be Jim Callaghan with so many better examples to choose from. Candidates for the model for the rock star included Alice Cooper and Ian Hunter but we might be flirting with specific identities much of the time and a good proportion are self portraits, whether acknowledged as such or not and ghosts ghost about the collection as ghosts, or suggestions of ghosts, often have in Maggi exhibitions.
Self-Portrait, Blushing raises the unlikely possibility that the lady ever would but she's only human.
There are always traces of more colour to be found on closer inspection, deep in the mix like instruments you don't know you've heard in an orchestra. You need to look, you need to stay longer and, once on one's way, one always wishes one had and, it turns out, I also should have looked at the visitor's book but I didn't realize.
And if Mike Nesmith probably won't go to Rio, I might have to miss the other exhibition in Hastings. One can have most things, and do one's best, for seriously cared-about people but there are quite a few of them and completism is an illness rather than a tribute. But one is never disappointed, having dutifully turned up, for a proper painter, betting without the compelling personality, just the paintings.
And, for as long as I can be, I'll hope to be there because this is the sort of art, the sort of painting, that needs to be there, ahead of David Hockney and some of the inmates at Hastings, not all of who are primarily painters.
I've heard Maggi make the point and I make it here, too, by using the label 'painting', as usual. It is about 'painting' specifically, not more broadly about 'art'.