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présentation : français - english De prime abord, Renny Tait est un peintre architectural. Mais cette apparence est trompeuse, comme les peintures elles-mêmes. Le bâtiment a l'air éminemment reconnaissable - comme par exemple la Cathédrale Saint Paul. Un second regard montre que l'artiste a pris de grandes libertés avec le vrai monument et son emplacement. Tait traite ses sujets comme des vies inanimées, et exerce un contrôle absolu sur la composition, le contenu et le fond. Robert HELLER, octobre 1997. At first sight, Renny Tait is an architectural painter. But this appearance is deceptive, like the paintings themselves. The building looks eminently recognisable - like St Paul's Cathedral, for instance. A second look shows that the artist has taken great liberties with the actual building and its setting. Tait treats his subjects like still lifes, and exercises absolute control over composition, content and background. The power stations, factories, domes and towers play the same role as the fruit in Zuburban's " Still Life with Basket of Oranges " - the source for a Tait vision of a cement factory. A pewter dish becomes a water tower : the basket itself is transformed into the central golden cylinders : and a ceramic cup is changed into a rich, butter-coloured tower of pipes. Tait has also borrowed colour relationships from Giovanni Bellini : lapis blue skies set behind golden domes. Just as the buildings resemble still lifes, so the new series of pictures of household objects like mugs, kettles and coffee jars are painted to resemble architecture. Like his fascinating use of perspective, Tait's representation both deceives and delights the eye. The actual motif is given full treatment, but stands as the basis for bold studies in the interplay of colour, form and light. Each painting forms a precise and mathematical pattern. The fact that Tait began as an abstractionist thus makes complete sense.After he left Edimburgh College of Art, the visibe world began to intrude upon his hard edged abstracts. A pure white 1930's residential block behind the V&A, which Tait's studio overlooked, began to appear in his work as a windowless ghostly presence.It provided the springboard for the brilliant quasi-architectural studies which made his high and still growing reputation. These beautiful paintings, with their virtuoso technique, bridge the worlds of classicism and abstraction. The later influences - Mondrian, Morandi, Barnett Newman - blend comfortably with the very different worlds of Bellini and Wren to form Tait's own mysteriously depopulated universe of colour harmonies and glowing light. They remind the viewer in calm but seductive terms of two important truths : that all art is abstract, and that neither beauty nor painting is dead. Robert Heller, October 1997. |
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biographie
1965 : né, Ecosse |
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expositions FOIRES D’ART CONTEMPORAIN COLLECTIONS PUBLIQUES BIBLIOGRAPHIE EXPOSITIONS PERSONNELLES EXPOSITIONS COLLECTIVES PRIX |
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