Dimensions: support: 1600 x 2438 mm
Copyright: © Alan Davie | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: Alan Davie’s "Birth of Venus" at the Tate is really something! It's a large canvas absolutely exploding with shapes and color. I don't quite see Venus in the Botticelli sense. What do you make of it? Curator: Well, isn't that the fun? Davie wasn't after a literal birth, more of a primal scream of creation! It’s a feeling, an energy made visible. Do you feel that energy, that raw impulse? Editor: I do, now that you mention it. It's like the moment before something new comes into being. Curator: Exactly! And look how he layers those colours – nothing is still, everything is in flux. It’s about the potential, not the finished product. I find it very hopeful, don’t you? Editor: Absolutely! It's a whole new way to think about birth. Curator: Yes! And hopefully a new way of looking too! It’s always there, that potential for creation, if we just keep our eyes open.
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Alan Davie’s approach to painting often involved improvisation (he was also a jazz musician). He was attracted to the idea of relying on chance and the unconscious. Davie believed art should be ‘a matter of making original magical things’. The imagery in Birth of Venus provided ‘a distinct suggestion of the primeval womb, birth place, cavern, source of fruitfulness and love’. His painting reflected a widespread interest at the time in myth and the symbols used to represent birth, procreation and death. Davie explained in 1957, ‘I paint simply to find enlightenment and revelation.’ Gallery label, April 2019
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