Introduction to exhibition catalogue

Ian A C Dejardin, Director Dulwich Picture Gallery

I first came across Nicholas Williams’s work in 2001, when I was on the panel of judges for the Hunting Art Prize. He won First Prize that year, with the extraordinary painting entitled Searching III, and I can still remember the impact the painting had on me when I first saw it. It attacked on several levels. Firstly, as a technical achievement: here was gob-smacking virtuosity. It is rare to look at a contemporary work of art and find oneself asking, “How on earth did he do that?” (as opposed to “Why on earth did he do that?” which I find myself asking rather too often). Peering closely at the leather jacket—old, creased, stiff and worn; or the billowing, volcanic clouds; or the boots; or—not least—the powerful and imposing black man who is the dominant feature of the picture. All these things are handled with eye-deceiving skill. But that was the least of it. Realism is a conjuring trick that has been within the grasp of many artists over the centuries, a gift seemingly (albeit as a result of intense hard work) given to some with better hand/eye co-ordination than is generally given to the rest of us. It is not an infallible talisman of quality, however. No, what brought me, and my fellow judges, up short was a combination of this and other qualities. For instance: the picture is gorgeous—not a very trendy word, you’ll find, in contemporary art criticism—in colour, and brooding in atmosphere. And it is telling a story: clearly it is about something, even if it is left very much to the viewer to make up his or her mind as to what. The man is nearly naked – it is his discarded leather jacket, shirt, trousers, boots that we see hung from, or under the great brooding tree on the left. He is engaged in some mysterious offering, his cupped hands apparently putting or planting something into the square hole—itself mysterious because it seems to be part of the fabric before him. Beside this green cloth on which he sits (and which also forms the material of his loincloth) there is a shrine lit by three candles. So, this is some kind of ceremony, intensely private; a ceremony invented by the artist (I presume), who only gives us one clue outside the picture – its title, Searching. Some kind of spiritual quest, then; to do with man’s relationship with earth, perhaps; something in which the trappings of everyday life (in this case, clothes) are irrelevant and discarded. Then you notice that the title is in fact Searching III – so, there is presumably more; this painting is one of a series: this is not just a title, this is a theme.

Here, in this exhibition, lies the confirmation of all the questions posed by that one painting. For a start there is Searching I—the same private ritual, this time with a naked female figure, blue cloth and another shrine—equally gorgeous in colour and troubling in atmosphere. This theme is revealed here as part of a repeating cycle of seeking (Searching), fulfilment (Plateau) and renewed seeking (Transition), a never-satisfied, endlessly yearning pursuit in which attaining the unattainable yields only passing satisfaction. An allegory of the human condition, in other words. Parallel to these phases of desire and pursuit, there are paintings which convey the material world, in terms of the ever-present and unchangeable—defined as ‘Immediate’—and the by-products of past phases of the cycle, called ‘Vestiges’.

At this point, let me declare my special interest. As the Curator of England’s oldest public art gallery (Dulwich Picture Gallery), responsible primarily for a collection of great 17th and 18th century paintings by masters such as Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Tiepolo and Watteau, I find myself on surprisingly familiar territory looking at Nicholas Williams’s work; it is like discovering a new Counter-Reformation artist, only with a completely modern twist. A still-life by Caravaggio, the great Roman Baroque artist, for instance, is no mere bowl of fruit, painted for its prettiness. It is in fact a reminder that all things must pass; these fruit, for all their beauty and deliciousness, will rot; they will die; and—this is the point—so will we. Williams’s still life of vegetables, Immediate II, borrows the remarkable beauty of representation—the draped velvets, elaborate composition and exquisite colouring of the old masters—in evoking the various potatoes, cabbages, leeks and parsnips; but it is clear that he also is not primarily interested in mere beauty. These objects represent a broader world, the world which he defines as ‘Immediate’: that which is present, unaffected by the cycle of human endeavour. This, and other beautiful still lifes such as the flower piece, Immediate III—a vase of flowers offered up on an altar-like table against a dark background—seem to challenge the viewer to take their beauty for granted if you dare. But elsewhere, in his series of ‘Trophies’, fruit and vegetables are presented speared by stakes, like 17th century criminals’ heads on Tower Bridge—a reminder of how human beings invariably do take beauty for granted; exploit it; kill it, even. The ‘Vestiges’ series looks at another aspect of this, focussing on objects made by humans as part of their pursuit, only to be discarded or rendered redundant by the passing of time.

Another painting, Revelation, seems to link these various themes, and this time the reference to Caravaggio is explicit. The two protagonists of Searching I and Searching III sit at a table with other witnesses as a central figure uncovers another beautifully observed still life of leaves, wild flowers and mushrooms. All these figures contemplate this revelation of the miracle of nature; but the leaves are already turning brown. The Caravaggio quote is to the composition and certain details of The Supper at Emmaeus in the National Gallery, London – the moment when the risen Christ is revealed to his companions, the grand-daddy of all revelations, of life after death.

In Nicholas Williams’s cycle, attainment again takes on a superficially baroque appearance: for instance, Plateau II, which apparently shows the same woman of Searching I. Here, we must assume that she has attained her spiritual goal; she contemplates inwardly, with eyes closed; the glass jars half-filled with earth that featured on her shrine stand on a table beside her, stoppered with velvet. She reminds me of nothing so much as a contemplative Saint—the Magdalen, or St Catherine of Siena—in prayer. She represents a (brief) moment of certainty and calm.

In art-historical terms, many of the paintings that I have mentioned so far would be described as ‘history paintings’ – a term which in previous centuries represented the highest attainment for an artist, that of painting religious or mythological scenes idealised from the imagination. The difference, of course, is that Williams has not turned to the Catholic religion or Classical mythology, as the artists at the Dulwich Picture Gallery inevitably did. He has created his own religious and mythological language, unique to him, but using recognisable elements of his baroque predecessors’ battery of skills – representational brilliance, allegory, symbolism, a heightened awareness of mortality in the objects of the material world, an equally heightened and unashamed embrace of sheer beauty as a powerful tool. His artistic language encompasses still life, as we have seen, but also portraiture—his figures are all clearly ‘portraits’ in the sense of being accurate portrayals of real models—but a special case is the ‘portrait’ entitled Transition. Rembrandt would have called this a ‘tronjie’, that is, a study of a head in which not likeness, but expression, or some other temporary effect, say of light for instance, was the aim. Williams has defined the notion of ‘Transition’ in the context of his cycle as ‘renewed desire’; and here, in this face, he captures a particular, fleeting moment, when ‘contentment following attainment’ (i.e. ‘Plateau’) is disturbed by the sudden awareness of a new object of pursuit. He has observed the effect on a face of a galvanising, troubling thought – the sudden furrow of the brow, the tensing of the muscles, the focus of the eye looking not at you, but through you. This is a portrait, then, yet not a portrait; one recognises something universal in it.

It is obvious that Nicholas Williams combines a deep love and knowledge of the old masters (particularly Caravaggio, I think, but not just him) with a rare technical ability. But, just as importantly—and this is rare—he is not intimidated by the art of the past. He brings to his work a remarkable depth of thought and a powerful, individual imagination that means he escapes the trap that awaits so many ‘realist’ painters—that of looking like a pale shadow of what has gone before. Williams may paint like modern-day Counter-Reformation artist, but his subject matter is worlds away and unique to him, visually and intellectually gripping. So, it never looks anything but contemporary – indeed, his themes and obsessions could only have emerged from the latter part of the twentieth century, the century of popular psychology and ‘alternative’ culture.

Which leads me to the extraordinary triptych that is the climax of the cycle, and the show. A triptych! With closing, painted doors and everything! This was the ultimate achievement of so many Baroque artists – you need only to go to Antwerp Cathedral to see possibly the most imposing examples of the form, by Rubens and Van Dyck. So steeped in Western culture are we that it is hard to imagine how utterly bizarre those great religious objects of veneration would look to someone who knew nothing of the Christian religion in its Catholic form: the swooning saints, the outlandish martyrdoms, the miraculous survivals and horrific deaths, the flying angels, the amazing conjunction of heaven and earth, the intercession between deity and mere mortal. Inbuilt in the triptych form is that other powerful tool of the Church – the overwhelming effect of revelation, the opening of the closed doors to reveal the wonders within. Williams has exploited this form for his own ends and produced his own quasi-religious icon, bringing together in a moment of grand revelation all the themes of his remarkable cycle. On the outer doors, a miraculous shower of apples falls. In the predella below, they appear as trophies on stakes, and their process of decay unfolds from left to right. When the doors open, the inner doors contain two figures where interceding saints would be in Rubens or Van Dyck; these are a man and a woman, dressed in the familiar garb of Williams’s seekers, i.e. practically naked except for velvet loincloths. He has a pick; she a spade. He is active; she is meditative. The central image, the great altarpiece of the cycle, contains one figure we certainly recognise – the black man from Searching III, stretched out (dead?) at the base of a rocky pile on which seats an older man holding the stoppered jar we associate with the searcher who has reached the ‘contentment following attainment’. All the complex lines of this dense composition seem to lead to his disturbing stare, which directly involves us as witnesses of the mystery. Another man makes the familiar offering to his little portable shrine; a woman stares to the horizon. Then, most amazing of all, reclining on the clouds above, three naked figures, two female, one male – angels or goddesses? The male figure reaches down towards the seated older man, as if reaching for the man’s jar, thereby possibly triggering the cycle of desire and pursuit all over again. And all of this is played out against a distant, serene landscape over which billow sulphurous clouds of surreal beauty.

Mysterious? Certainly. But beautiful and astonishing also: a quasi-religious experience for an irreligious age.