Dimensions: support: 1703 x 1220 x 25 mm
Copyright: © Maggi Hambling. All Rights Reserved 2010 / Bridgeman Art Library | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Here we have Maggi Hambling’s “Father, Late December 1997,” a large work in charcoal and pastel, now part of the Tate collection. Editor: My first thought is how fragile and fleeting it feels. The figures seem to be dissolving into the white of the paper. Curator: Hambling's work often grapples with mortality, loss, and memory. She’s exploring the patriarchal figure and its disintegration within a shifting societal landscape. Editor: The rapid, almost frantic marks really convey that sense of decay, the impermanence of the body, even the pastel, so easily smudged, contributes to that feeling. Curator: Exactly. Hambling situates the personal loss within broader discussions of masculinity, its performances, and its challenges in late 20th-century Britain. Editor: It’s interesting how the materiality of the art directly reflects the subject matter; the decay in the material echoes the father's own decay. Curator: Yes, and the title itself, so specific in time, anchors it within a very particular historical moment of familial and social change. Editor: Seeing how process and emotion can intertwine so powerfully really shifts my understanding of Hambling’s practice. Curator: It's a powerful reminder that art can embody both personal and societal struggles. Editor: Indeed, it leaves you pondering the fragility of both our bodies and our social structures.
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tate 3 months ago
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hambling-father-late-december-1997-t07835
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tate 3 months ago
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Hambling is best known for her intimate portraits of friends and family. One of her first exhibitions, held at the Morley Gallery, London SE1 in 1973, was of portraits drawn from memory and from observation. Her subject matter subsequently extended to allegorical paintings and sculpture and a number of near-abstract watercolours and drawings. Father, Late December 1997 is one from a series depicting the artist’s father, Henry Hambling (1902-98), recorded by his daughter during the last five years of his life. It was shown in an exhibition devoted to him, entitled Father, at Morley Gallery in 2001. The painting was initially titled Father, Christmas, but Hambling changed the title as she felt that it could easily be misinterpreted as portraying Santa Claus. A number of the works in the exhibition at the Morley Gallery marked a technical departure for Hambling in that she began to paint on board, although this particular work is on canvas. They are distinguished by a sketchy style of painting, closer to the characteristics of drawing than those usually associated with the application of paint. Hambling had recently begun to make sculptures by pouring strands of molten wax into sand and then casting the wax in bronze, creating a kind of three-dimensional drawing. Father 1994 (private collection) is a bronze sculpture depicting Henry Hambling’s head made in this manner. Hambling believes that this method of sculpting strongly influenced the style of painting she used for the portraits of her father.
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