Enough art! - Opie and the rest (part 1)

I just about overdosed on arty input this week in Bath.  It started simply enough with the Julian Opie exhibition at the Holburne Museum - having completely managed to miss Joseph Wright of Derby there, I didn't want to fail to see this one, even if I wasn't sure I cared a jot about Opie.  A lot of his work has always seemed to me like someone drawing with a big thick black felt pen and then colouring it in with nice, flat acrylics, or the computer equivalent of that process, but either way resulting in something akin to Ladies and Gents signs on toilet doors - worth a glance and pleasant enough designs, but not something to make me linger.

Actually it was really enjoyable, though I'm not sure my opinion has shifted enormously, and if it's moved much at all it's only because I've seen this show of his work, which I find always gives me the hint of a sense of ownership.  It's now slightly mine and I feel a sort of loyalty to it.  Odd but true.  Anyway, the show was more or less what I expected but more fun.  There were works that fell into the 'expected' category  

Keith, mechanic

This is Monique, 17

and there were computer pictures that moved - they were unexpected, good fun, and my mother particularly liked them. Thank you to the Holburne and to Julian Opie, by the way, for allowing photos - these might not (all) look quite like my usual photos but that's because I mostly cropped off the crookedness.  Of course.

Julian with teeshirt. He blinks, he breathes. It's quite disconcerting at first.

Imogen. Imogen couldn't make up her mind whether she was happy, so so, or a little wistful.

Marina in purple shawl. Marina also had uncannily real eyes which blinked and earrings swinging constantly. She spooked me, rather.

Then there were heads based on portraits, with all the shading coloured in without the need for light (I quite liked that),

Reed 1 and Delphine 2.  Or possibly the other way round

plenty of neon (or maybe just light) and movement

and all sorts of other.  'Julian Opie makes smart, original, argumentative portraits' starts one end of the exhibition catalogue (yes, it starts at both ends) which is probably true - I won't argue with it, anyway (ho ho).  Half the exhibition wasn't Julian Opie at all (hence the catalogue structure) but instead works from his collection - the majority being centuries old portraits in oils, that, rather like Opie's own work, were pleasant enough.  I suppose part of the problem might be that I don't go for portraits much.  Though I always admire how much in an oil painting can be achieved with so little precision - a few apparently slapdash strokes of colour here or there and intricate lace or a glowing pearl necklace appears.  Amazing.  One of the older portraits appealed - Portrait of an Unknown Man by Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy - but the rest were just there.  Anyway, I enjoyed the show, and that'll do me.

Portrait of an Unknown Man - while the texture of his black clothes was barely (yet effectively) suggested, the hands were very well executed, though it probably won't show here (couldn't hold the camera still enough) 

Most of the rest of the week's art was because Fringe Arts Bath was on.  After a while the slightly calcified sponge that is my brain decided that it was full and that any further art was just going to flow straight off because there was nowhere left for it to soak in to, but I'd seen quite a lot by then.  I'll save that for next time.  To finish off for now, here's the Holburne, front and back, with more Julian Opie on show.  The museum had to fight hard to get its extension, but it changed it from quite a nice Georgian building mostly full of, um, decorative clutter (interesting decorative clutter, but nevertheless) to somewhere far more interesting both inside and out.