transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:12] This is The Week in Art, I'm Ben Luke. This week, an exhibition in Germany marks 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster, Paula Rego at the Munch Museum and a flower painting by the British artist Gluck. This Sunday, the 26th of April, marks the 40th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Soviet Ukraine. It's the most serious disaster ever to occur in the nuclear power industry, with widespread effects then and now. An exhibition in Potsdam in Germany called The Chernobyl Disaster, 40 years ago and yet still relevant, continues until Monday, the 27th of April, and I spoke to one of its organizers, Ola Kovalevska. A new exhibition at Munch, the Museum in Oslo, explores the work of Paula Rego, with new research on her interest in the artist after whom the museum is named, Edvard Munch. I speak to the curator of the exhibition called Paula Rego, Dance Among Thorns, Kari J. Brandtzæg. And this episode's Work of the Week is Convolvulus from 1940 by Gluck, the mononymous British painter. The picture is part of the exhibition called Handpicked, Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today, which opens this weekend at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge in the UK. I spoke to its co-curator, Naomi Polonsky, about the work. Don't forget you can subscribe to The Art Newspaper on our website or app. Do also subscribe to this podcast and to our sister podcast, A Brush With, wherever you're listening. The latest episode of A Brush With features a conversation with the American painter Sanya Kantorovsky. Please also leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts. Now if you watched the HBO series Chernobyl, you might remember this chilling element of real footage amid the fictionalised retelling of the story of the world's worst nuclear power disaster. That is actual audio from the phone calls between employees at the Chernobyl nuclear plant and dispatchers at local emergency stations. The accident killed around 30 workers and led to radiation injuries in more than 100 others. According to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, Soviet authorities, after much prevarication and denial, evacuated around 115,000 people from areas surrounding the reactor in 1986 and after that year relocated about 220,000 people from Ukraine, where Chernobyl is, and from Belarus and the Russian Federation. A 2,600-square-kilometre exclusion zone now surrounds the plant. Vast amounts of the three countries were contaminated with radioactive materials, and radionuclides from the Chernobyl release were measurable in all countries in the Northern Hemisphere. The full health toll of the disaster is difficult to quantify, but among residents in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident. While the destroyed reactor was covered first by a concrete and steel sarcophagus, and then by an internationally funded protective shield, it has become a cause of great concern since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and was even damaged by a Russian drone last year. Meanwhile, Russia now controls the far larger Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine. An exhibition at the Nikolaikirche in Potsdam in Germany, called The Chernobyl Disaster 40 years ago and yet still relevant, features numerous works that reflect on the ongoing importance of the disaster. It's organised by the Ukrainian association Push UA and curated by Ola Kovalevska. And I spoke to Ola about the exhibition. Ola, the exhibition that you're hosting to mark the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is importantly pointing to the fact that it's still a live issue. That's to say, it still has relevance today. Why was it important to you to do that?

Speaker 2:
[04:32] Yes, of course, for us, this is very important to draw attention to this ongoing disaster. And especially in the terms of war, because Chernobyl reactor, the fourth block, which is actually the one which has exploded, it was, of course, protected by special confinement. But still, during the war actions, some drones attacked this block and it was damaged. And nobody speaks about this. And we have to do something about this. Actually speaking about the Chernobyl tragedy, but also to speak about also this nuclear blackmailing, which Russia every day makes to the whole planet.

Speaker 1:
[05:18] Absolutely. Because at one point, it occupied Chernobyl, but it also very importantly, occupied Zaporizhzhya, which is an even bigger, it's basically the size of 20 Chernobils, they say. So the scale of potential nuclear disaster today is what you want to highlight.

Speaker 2:
[05:35] Yes, actually, Chernobyl was occupied, but then it was set free. But Zaporizhzhya stays in occupation, and it's really terrible what they do there, and how they use this area. And of course, we have to speak about this, we have to remember this, and it's very, very important not to forget about this. And we all pray that it will stop soon. But I think there should be more complicated, more rave measures.

Speaker 1:
[06:07] One of the things that you point out in the press release about the project or the information about the project is it's a time for vigilance, that there is perhaps not enough attention on the awareness of the nuclear threat today, that we think of Chernobyl as something that happened 40 years ago. But as I say, it is live today because of the attention that the Russian authorities and armies are paying to the nuclear infrastructure in Ukraine. It's tremendously important to raise that awareness in that sense.

Speaker 2:
[06:38] Yes, of course. And this is why we wanted to show with this exhibition, with the choice of the projects in it, to show that it's not only us Ukrainians who think about this. The international artists have also created projects to speak about this problem and to speak about this tragedy, but not only to remember that it happened 40 years ago, but also to really highlight the current situation. For example, this international poster exhibition project by the graphic association, the fourth block in Kharkiv, which started on the fifth anniversary of Chernobyl. And since then, 12 triennale happened, and it showcases works from the whole planet, from Mexico, from Japan, from China, different countries, Germany, Ukraine, of course. This is really important for us to show that it's not only us Ukrainians who complain or worry about something that happened in the past, but it's important now and it's important for everyone.

Speaker 1:
[07:44] One of the things that's important, of course, is that, as you say, it was founded in Kharkiv and it continues today, even amid the war. It's important that there isn't a gesture of resilience or defiance in continuing that poster project and its urgent message today.

Speaker 2:
[07:58] Yes, we are really excited about the way this design association works. They also made a huge exhibition in Kharkiv right now, opened it with big posters and the best works from different years. And also this year's competitors. The works are really strong and we really recommend to visit the website, to check out Facebook page, really interesting works.

Speaker 1:
[08:26] I wanted to also ask you about one of the kind of cornerstones of the project, which is this book, which was actually produced for young people. It's a book which is called Reactors Do Not Explode, A Brief History of the Chernobyl Disaster. The idea about Reactors Do Not Explode is about the misinformation that began the very moment the reactor exploded in Chernobyl in April 1986. This idea that it was impossible for that kind of reactor to explode. And of course it did. We know it did. But it's about educating young people about what happened. In other words, people that weren't alive when this happened. It's about telling them what happened and of course about the political and social implications of the way that the Soviet Union behaved when Chernobyl happened, right?

Speaker 2:
[09:15] Of course. In the Soviet Union, everything had to be like in the fairy tale, in the magic universe. Unfortunately, it was very far away from reality. And this book, Reactors Don't Explode by Kateryna Mikhailitsyn and Stanislav Dvornitsky and illustrated by amazing studios, Serigraf, illustrators from Kiev, Anna, Ivanenko and Zhenya Polosina. These girls, they really made amazing illustrations. And this book, it explains children really what happened, how happened step by step with every chronologic action and what actually were the results of this strategy. But also we see in this illustrated chart that the number of reactors in the world didn't go less. It just developed in the bigger numbers. And after that we have big question, why? Why is it going on again? Nothing stops. It's not enough that so many people were affected, their lives were affected. So many people died and people in Ukraine until now have very strong health problems and cancer is just spreading. It's really terrible and they still continue building.

Speaker 1:
[10:41] It's important then to focus on the works of the photographer Victor Maryschenko, who you also include in the exhibition. I really urge people, if you are unable to get to Potsdam to see this exhibition, to see Victor's photographs, which you can find online as a website dedicated to his work. One of the really striking thing about his photographs is that it's focused on people. There are very many photographs out there of Trennobyl and the effects on the buildings and infrastructure and so on around it. But one of the things that he does with such really devastating effect, I think, is to focus on people. Can you tell us about those and what are you able to include in the show?

Speaker 2:
[11:22] Yes, we had a chance, together with our volunteer association PushUA, we had a chance to contact to his son Tor, who gave us access to his digital originals.

Speaker 1:
[11:34] Right.

Speaker 2:
[11:34] Yes. There is something very special about his photographs. It's a documentary photo, but we don't see trying to make art of it. It's just a direct glaze at people and the way they were preparing to evacuate, the way many people then came back. Of course, not so many as they were evacuated, but more than 100, and they were staying in their radiative villages and living their lives.

Speaker 1:
[12:03] Within the exclusion zone basically, which is now 2,600 square kilometers. But some people went back and lived in that area.

Speaker 2:
[12:11] Yes, and they continued to celebrate their holidays, their marriages, funerals, and the life continued, and these pictures show us how different is this from this Chernobyl reality, from what we think about Chernobyl.

Speaker 1:
[12:29] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[12:29] If you have possibility to check out the website, you can see it's really difficult to describe every picture. But my favorite one is with two women dancing with cigarettes. It looks totally free, it's unexpected, and you would never expect to see this picture in context of Chernobyl.

Speaker 1:
[12:51] Absolutely. But these two women, they're liquidators, right? So they are among the groups of people that were basically tasked with clearing up after the disaster and putting themselves at enormous risk in order to protect other people or to somehow clean the exclusion zone. But as you say, there's this sort of carefree feeling about that image, but it makes it all the more tragic to a degree, doesn't it? It makes it very, very emotional when you see that, because you know the dangers that those women are putting themselves through on a daily basis, it's for the purpose of that project.

Speaker 2:
[13:25] Of course. And the very special thing about Ukrainian people, we can say that Ukrainian people can go in fire and water, as we say, for the others. I think they didn't think of themselves as the heroes or something that they will be some, save the planet, but they were just doing their duty and what they can do to help. And this was really important. And there was also one work in the exhibition. It's a small installation made by also Ukrainian artist Irsi. She dedicated this work to liquidators, to those who were diving into the reactor water to switch off something there.

Speaker 1:
[14:11] Yeah, they stopped the water flowing into the reactor, which could have caused a thermal explosion, which would have been far worse than the actual explosion that did happen, right?

Speaker 2:
[14:20] Yes. It's really impressive what people are able to do when they are dedicated to their people, to their country. And that's why we see this every day now.

Speaker 1:
[14:33] I mean, one of the things that seems to me is a really important part of this exhibition is that the way that Chernobyl is often framed is as a disaster for the Soviet Union. But of course, the implications of the disaster are very much felt most by Ukrainians and actually some Belarusians, actually, because obviously the disaster massively affected Belarus as well as Ukraine. It seems to me that one of the purposes of the exhibition is to say that this is absolutely a disaster for the Ukrainian people. It is not just the Soviet disaster of 1986.

Speaker 2:
[15:07] Yes. Actually, it was mostly for Ukraine and Belarus, a disaster, but to Russia, it didn't go too much. And so we can't say that Soviet Union is irrelevant here. It's more Ukraine and Belarus and also a little bit to the Baltic side. What we have now is that we are decolonizing history of Ukraine in the eyes of the whole world. And everywhere where is written Russian or Soviet, you can divide on 10 and ask yourself, is it Russian or it was Ukrainian who was in colonized period? So many artists which are considered to be Russian, actually are Ukrainians and like Burlyukts, for example, yes, and many others.

Speaker 1:
[15:59] Well, Olga, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[16:02] Thank you for attention.

Speaker 1:
[16:08] The Chernobyl disaster 40 years ago and yet still relevant is at the Nikolaikirche in Potsdam in Germany until Monday, the 27th of April. The podcast Journey Through Time presented by the historians David Olashoga and Sarah Churchwell recently produced a six-part series exploring the Chernobyl disaster and its implications and you can find that wherever you're listening. Coming up, Paula Rego in Oslo and Gluck in Cambridge. That's after this week's news bulletin. The Right Wing Council running the English County of Kent has removed an early work by the artist Anthony Gormley from a public site. The piece Two Stones, 1979-1981, which stood outside the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone, was sold back to the artist by the reform run Kent County Council for an undisclosed sum, according to a council spokesperson. Gormley was commissioned to create the piece in 1979 by Kent County Council or KCC and Arts Council England while teaching at Maidstone College of Art. Kent County Council said in a statement that it recognizes the cultural significance of Two Stones and Gormley's connection to Maidstone, but the decision to sell the work was taken in order to manage what it calls significant financial pressures facing the county. It added that the sale enables the council to raise income without increasing costs for residents or reducing frontline services. The local news outlet Kent Current reported that the work was valued at £859,000 in KCC's Statement of Accounts from 2024 to 2025. A spokesman for the council, however, said that the council is unable to provide the sale price as it is subject to the confidentiality clause of the sale agreement. Gormley declined to comment on the sale of the work. A gunman opened fire from the top of the Pyramid of the Moon at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan in Mexico on Monday. Killing a Canadian woman and injuring 13 more people, including two children. Seven were shot while the others sustained injuries while attempting to run down the steep pyramid. Teotihuacan, once among the largest cities in Mesoamerica, is located 40 kilometres from Mexico City. The pyramid's first level reopened to the public last year after five years of renovations. The Mexican president, Claudia Scheinbaum, said that the shooting, quote, pains us deeply. She added that she had instructed the security cabinet to thoroughly investigate the events and provide all necessary reports. Official reports have identified the gunman as Julio Cesar Hasor Ramirez, a 27-year-old Mexican national. The newspaper El Milenio reported that his shirt bore the phrase disconnect and self-destruct, linked to online subcultures associated with mass violence after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The Columbine shootings occurred on the same date, 20 April. The shortlist for the Turner Prize, the UK's most prestigious art award, was announced on Thursday. The prize is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work over the previous year. The four shortlisted artists are Simeon Barclay, Kira Freje, Marguerite Humeux and Tanua Sazraku. The exhibition of the artist's work will open up the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art or MIMA on the 26th of September, and the winner, who will receive £25,000, will be announced on the 10th of December during a ceremony at the museum. The three runners up will get £10,000 each. The Turner Prize jury is chaired by the Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, who said that this year's selection, quote, presents a rich and diverse range of work, spanning installation and performance, and with a strong emphasis on sculptural practice. The jury this year consists of Sarah Allen, the head of program at the South London Gallery, Joe Hill, the director of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Suk-Kyung Lee, the director of the Whitworth in Manchester, and the Arts Council Collection Director, Elona Pardo. You can read these stories and much more on the Art Newspaper's website or app. We'll be back after this. Welcome back. Now, Paula Rego is the subject of a new exhibition at Munch, the Oslo Museum named after Norway's most famous artist's son, Edvard Munch. The exhibition is a full career survey and features many of the landmark works from across Rego's long working life, which spanned the 1950s until the 2020s. Rego died in 2022. It also illuminates new research that links Rego's early work to her profound interest in the great Norwegian artist. The curator of the exhibition, which is called Paula Rego, Dance Among Thorns, is Kari Brandtzæg and I spoke to her about the show. Kari, the title of the exhibition, Dance Among Thorns, seems to me to be an incredibly Paula Rego centric title. It's a perfect title for the particularity of her practice. So tell us about that.

Speaker 3:
[20:51] That title came to me quite early when I started to work on the art of Paula Rego. The reason behind it was that I started to research the artworks and I so much wanted to include the dance by Rego from the Tate. It's such a beautiful and really monumental painting full of sorrow and grief. And you could see there also Paula as a child, a grown up and then suddenly alone as a widow on her own after the death of her husband, Victor Willing. It struck me also as a kind of connection to The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch. And this is an exhibition for the Munch Museum. And you know, here in Norway, it's not that many people who know about Paula Rego. And I also tried to find entrance into her artistry for the Norwegian audience. So my stomach feeling said that here is something not explored. It is this very obvious relation between Paula Rego and Edvard Munch that you can see in this similarity of these compositions as The Dance and The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch. And when I went on with my research, I also came across of this beautiful painting that is in the Gullbenken called Time, Past and Present.

Speaker 1:
[22:36] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[22:36] There you see a man posing also nearly in a similar way as the very central work by Edvard Munch called History. So I thought this was quite interesting. So I asked Nik Willing, Paula Rego's son and her director of estate, Oh, could we find something that document her interest for Edvard Munch because it's so obvious. And Nik said, yes, she admired her work, but it was not possible to find any kind of evidence of when and where the art of Edvard Munch came to her attention. So that became a very important part of the research and further behind also this title, Dance Among Thorns.

Speaker 1:
[23:31] But you eventually came across a letter, didn't you? I love this. I read in the catalogue. It must have been the most triumphant moment for you when in November 2025, you found a letter from Paula Rego to her mother, in which she talks about visiting a Munch exhibition. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3:
[23:47] Yes, I will say I would not have managed to do this without the help of the archive to Paula Rego and Nick and Eloisa Rodriguez, who is working in the archive. So I just kept asking, can you do some search, do you find any documentation? Maybe she went, could you look in the passport? Did she come to Oslo? Did she visit the Munch Museum in Oslo when she was alive? But then suddenly Eloisa came across this letter, and we were very excited, all of us. And that was, so I'm very happy for all the help I got from the archive.

Speaker 1:
[24:32] It's wonderful, in that letter, she doesn't just say that she saw his work along lots of others, she singles him out, doesn't she? So she says, what impressed her most was Munch, and she says, it's so impressive that you can't imagine. So she's writing to her mother about this epiphany that she has in front of Munch's works, right?

Speaker 3:
[24:51] Yes, and that letter is also so beautiful written. And her mother was also very much into art, but she never became an artist. And you see that the art was something that the mother and daughter had in common.

Speaker 1:
[25:07] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[25:08] And she writes, mother, do you know Edvard Munch, who painted this famous The Scream? Do you remember? So already they knew about The Scream, obviously. Yeah, she was on a school trip. She was in a school in Kent, a finishing school, where many girls went to just to be prepared for marriage and not be anything more than a wife and a mother. She went to this exhibition. And as an art historian and a researcher at the Munch Museum, I find it also very interesting that she actually visited the first retrospective exhibition by Edvard Munch after he died in 44. And this was in 51 in London at the Tate Gallery. And this really comprehensive show on Edvard Munch came from a Museum of Modern Art in New York, and then to London. It is just four or five artworks that was not shown in London. She saw every central motif by Edvard Munch in that exhibition, and also the dance of life by Edvard Munch. So that became also very important for me to check all the lists of artworks. What did she actually see? But what she found most interesting was a painting called Inheritance.

Speaker 1:
[26:41] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[26:42] She's writing, oh, but it's so impressive, so impressive that you can't imagine above all a painting called Inheritance, which shows a seated woman crying with a skeleton child, all painted green in her lap. I became very touched actually reading this letter and this skeleton baby, I feel that something that is following her in her artistry, the rest of her life actually, and you can see that in so many artworks.

Speaker 1:
[27:18] As you point out, what they share, of course, you're not arguing that somehow Paula Rego was enthralled to Munch for the rest of her life and worked in his idiom for the rest of her life, but what you're pointing out is a shared territory, a fearless territory, emotional territory, as well as societal territory. You point out very importantly, for Paula Rego, art for art's sake was not enough. She needed it to connect to the world in various ways, and that includes politics, for instance.

Speaker 3:
[27:45] Yes, absolutely. And that also is something that became, if we go back to the title, The Dance Among Thorns, it is the thorns of fascism. She was raised in Portugal under the Salazar dictatorship and women were supposed to do nothing. They should go to the church. They should obey their husbands. They could not travel on their own. They could not get any jobs. And all these restrictions, there's something Paula fighted against. And she was lucky. She was raised in this quite privileged family. And they were living in Estoril, just outside Lisbon and in Eriquera, the family house with her grandmother. And she was also encouraged to, by her father, and I suppose also by her mother, to go to art school because she was very gifted early on. And she started to draw and make these really beautiful small things. She got the opportunity, but she also, she knew she was privileged. And I think she felt a kind of urgent to be honest and to raise against Salazar's dictatorship. And that you can see in the political collages she makes in the 1960s. That is also an important part of this retrospective.

Speaker 1:
[29:19] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[29:19] So I wanted to shove her political engagement that lasted through her whole life. And she was so honest. And she had this incredible imaginations. And she's also forcing herself to make new kind of styles, techniques, colors, and the turn from the political collages to the more figurative, lonely, solid female figures. No, so it has been a really rich and engaging artist to dive into and learn more about. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[29:58] Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things about those early political collages is that, you know, she comes to the Slade when she's extremely young. I think she's 17 when she first arrives at the Slade in London.

Speaker 3:
[30:07] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[30:08] And she is therefore thrust into a scene, which is, you know, that post-war London scene where you've got quite dominant figures like Francis Bacon and so on. One of the things that's really striking is that quite soon she's making deeply political works which are entirely her own language. And again, one of the things that I'm most impressed by about Paula Rego is that sort of single mindedness that you see right from the start. There's, yes, she has influences around her, but her language is absolutely her own from really, really early on, isn't it?

Speaker 3:
[30:37] Yeah. I think she's really unique and it comes from inside. And of course, it's obvious Munch had this influence and was important for her in these formative years, but she always is very open, curious. She has a political kind of platform all the way in the aesthetics and in the inspiration from art and literary searches. She's always attentive to what is going around. And that is also something that I find really extraordinary. And you could also say her interest for fairy tales and stories is something also that is following her art from the beginning.

Speaker 1:
[31:25] As you say, in her very, very earliest years, when she's a child, those fairy tales are animated in her by, for instance, her grandmother and so on. So she has a connection to fairy tales, but she finds a way, as you say, with that extraordinary imagination, to bring it into connection with politics and so on. And it's that sort of tension, again, that dancing within thorns. There's a sort of sense in which there's a playfulness, even when she's dealing with the most difficult subjects, there is that sort of fierce imagination, which comes right the way through the career.

Speaker 3:
[31:54] Yes, so that is also these different layers in this title. It's also point to her inspiration from fairy tales. I don't know if you have it in England, but it is this Toone Rosa, Thorns, this Princess of Thorns, or what you call it. And it's also the Thorns, her struggles against the fascism, and it's this dance. So the dance in this exhibition she made in 1988 is the entrance, it's a central motif. When you enter the exhibition, you meet the dance, and you also see an example of a pencil drawing by Munch, the dance of life. And then you also meet draws. This recently hit her to a non-paintings that Nick Willing found during this process.

Speaker 1:
[32:48] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[32:48] That she painted after she visited the Tate in 1951 and saw the Munch exhibition.

Speaker 1:
[32:58] And you draw a connection, I think, a really powerful connection there, also with Keta Kolvitz, right? So the way she's reflecting on the subject, and especially about womanhood and the nature of female identity and so on, from the early years, she is connecting to the ways in which Keta Kolvitz dealt with those subjects and dealt with abortion, for instance, which we can come on to. But she's responding to a wide variety of sources as well, isn't she?

Speaker 3:
[33:21] Absolutely. And that was also something that struck me. This subject regarding abortion, and then you see at this drawer, this little small painting. It's very slim and a bit small. And you see this woman, obviously pregnant, with a little child as well, clinging to her leg. And that is also such a similarity to Keta Kolvitz and the poster she made for the getting abortion rights in the Weimar Republic in 1923. So that is also some of my arguments for this. So it's not only Munch. She has a lot of inspiration sources. And it's this political message and being a woman in a male world in the art. She also was in London when she came to the Slade School of Art. She was already back then concerned about female rights and the female's right to have equality and opportunities.

Speaker 1:
[34:29] Let's explore the abortion series more. It's one of her most famous bodies of work, of course, and was made in direct response to the fact that there had been a referendum in Portugal where the referendum had gone against abortion being legalized. It's really interesting to me that on the one hand, this is partly as with so much of her work based on personal experience. So she had had abortions in 1950s London and so on. But also it's really significant that she actively referred to her abortion series as propaganda. She was in no uncertain terms about the role of this body of work. She wanted to affect change with her art. And that's a striking, really amazing quality, I think. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3:
[35:12] I find that really, really interesting to have kind of clear message in that way she had in her art. It's not very often because many artists refuse to have political messages in their art. But as she wrote, it was not in 1998. It was back in her homeland in Portugal. It was this election and it was too few voters turning up. Back in London, she was following this election and she became so angry and so sad that it didn't turn out to support women's possibility to get an abortion if they became pregnant. Because she knew so many fates back in her homeland and so much sorrow that followed unwished pregnancies. So she made this as a total response. And she is also talking about the series she calls Untitled. Because as she said, it's obvious it is about abortion. When you see these women in these small rooms, like locked down in their own pain, trying to recover from illegal abortions with no health care. And she did a triptych in 1998. And I am so lucky. First, it was difficult to loan it in. But I'm so lucky I could show this triptych in the Dance Among Thorns. And that is about school girls, very young girls having illegal abortions. And then she started on the series on ten pastels called untitled pastels, which is now called abortion pastels. That is in the same form size as the others. She made ten. And she said, I did this for propaganda. And this became very important also to organize a second referendum in Portugal in 2007. Then luckily enough, abortion became legalized.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] As you say, it had a direct effect. You know, she said it was propaganda and it literally did affect things. It was part of the debate. It's an extraordinary thing that her art did have an effect on the world. And that's tremendously important, isn't it?

Speaker 3:
[37:44] Yes, it's incredible. I really admire artists that dare to be that clear in their message and to have effect on the art in, what should I say, a good way. That makes it more human, makes it more safe for all kinds of people and people in difficult situations.

Speaker 1:
[38:05] I wanted to end by talking about, I know that as part of your essay, you write that you contacted Tracy Emin to ask her about Paula. I think what she says is really important, actually. Tell us about that. You emailed Tracy, because you'd worked with her, of course, at the Munch Museum. Tell us how you corresponded with her.

Speaker 3:
[38:20] Yes, I have worked with Tracy Emin, and she's also an artist I really admire for her braveness and honesty. I saw her art in 1997, and it became very important for me. That's also about being a female, having getting child, getting not child abortions. I worked with her first in 2005 for a group exhibition in Oslo at the National Museum. And then when I was asked that I want to do a solo exhibition with her art, because obviously she's also very interested in Edvard Munch. My man Munch is how she says it. And we had this really lovely time. We went to the cabin to Edvard Munch, when we should do this solo exhibition for the opening at the New Munch Museum here in Oslo, in Bjørvika, in 21. So we had this really jolly, great time exploring Edvard Munch and having a swimming Munch's water, as Tracy pronounced it. And when I worked on Paula Rego, it was some similarities here also with Tracy Emin. And I asked Tracy, what's your opinion about Paula Rego? How do you see her work? Oh, yes, Paula Rego, she was my external tutor, actually, at Royal College. I thought, oh my God, yes, of course it is a link here. And she said that she was not set in to her art at that point, but she respected her for her honesty. And because Tracy felt her art was much wilder.

Speaker 1:
[40:07] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[40:08] But I also found out that both Paula Rego and Tracy Emin with Matthew Collishaw, they exhibited together at the Thundling Museum in 2009. And that makes so much sense that they were together in that exhibition, because that's also about rejected children, about the question of how to take care of the next generation and so on. So that is so important.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] Well, Kari, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker 3:
[40:46] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[40:53] Paula Rego, Dance Among Thorns, is at Munch in Oslo from the 24th of April till the 2nd of August, and the largest exhibition to date of Rego's Drawings and Works on Paper opened last week in London. Paula Rego, Storyline, is at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London until the 23rd of May. And now it's time for the Work of the Week. Kettle's Yard in Cambridge this weekend opens the exhibition Handpicked, Painting Flowers from 1900 to today. It features work by more than 40 artists, including historical figures like Henri Rousseau and David Bomberg, and major contemporary artists including Louise Bourgeois, Chris Ofili and Jennifer Packer. Among the highlights of the exhibition is the painting Convolvulus from 1940 by Gluck, the British painter, and I spoke to one of the co-curators of the exhibition, Naomi Polonsky, about it. Naomi, we normally begin by talking about where the artist was when the work was painted, but I think the pivotal date in terms of this work is not just 1940 when the painting was made, but actually 1932. There's a long story that leads up to the creation of this painting involving multiple people, so tell us where it all begins.

Speaker 4:
[42:02] Yeah, so this painting has an absolutely fabulous backstory. It was made in the summer of 1940 during the Blitz on Britain with air raids and dogfights in the sky. But as you say, Gluck began painting flowers in 1932. She had painted some before, but this is when she started seriously looking at that subject matter. And it coincided with her introduction to the celebrity florist, Constance Spry. They were introduced by a mutual friend, the interior designer Prudence Morph, who ordered a bunch of white blooms from Spry for Gluck's new studio at Bolton House. And in a letter to Gluck, Morph wrote, I think she has a genius for flowers and you have a genius for paint. So that ought to make for happiness. And these were very prescient words because Spry sent a beautiful bouquet, which Gluck was so struck by that she was inspired to paint it. And when the two met afterwards, they fell instantly in love and went on to have a four year relationship. And their relationship ended quite suddenly when Gluck left Spry for the playwright and philanthropist, Nestor Obermer. And she was with Nestor Obermer when this painting, Convolvulus, was made. As I said, it was made during the war and they were both taking refuge from wartime London. In East Sussex, Gluck was living in a small house called Miller's Mead. And she was going through a difficult time in her life. She wasn't so much affected by the war as by her intimate relationship with Nestor Obermer. She was suffering from a serious depressive episode, which was partly prompted by Obermer's reluctance to separate from her husband, who was a much older man who was a playwright, Seymour Obermer. And it's my interpretation of this painting that with the choice of subject matter, white flowers, which is what Spry had given her eight years earlier, and had led to their relationship, she was intending to elicit some kind of sexual jealousy, perhaps, in Obermer. So there's a very interesting sexual element behind these flowers. And I think something that reinforces that is the fact that the leaves on the Convolvulus are almost heart-shaped.

Speaker 1:
[44:37] Yes, very much so. Let's unpack loads of that, because it's such a fascinating story, as you say. First off, let's talk about Gluck as a person, because I think apart from anything else, she's become a queer icon today. But she's living in a society in London, which is permissive enough for her to be able to live as she intends, which is effectively with this androgynous personality. She lives with a masculine appearance. And that society, she's living in Hampstead, she's from a privileged background. But it's really important, she's an utter trailblazer in terms of queer identity in the 1930s, isn't she?

Speaker 4:
[45:10] Yes, exactly. So she was born Hannah Gluckstein, but she adopted the genderless mononym Gluck, which she went by for the rest of her life. And when she was young, she started dressing in masculine clothing and she took a lot of interest in the way that she fashioned herself. She was introduced by Constance Bride to the fashion designers, Elsa Shaparelli and Victor Stiebel, who made clothes specially for her. And indeed she had various serious relationships throughout her life with, as I said, Constance Bride and then Nesta Obermeyer. And then afterwards she had probably the most serious romantic involvement of her lifetime. And she was very open about these relationships. She had a complicated relationship with her mother. She used to refer to her as the meteor. But she wrote to her quite candidly about her relationships with women. And as you say, she has now become an icon of queerness and queer art. I think something that exemplifies that is that her self-portrait from 1942 was on the poster of the Tate Britain exhibition Queer British Art in 2017.

Speaker 1:
[46:27] Yeah, absolutely. And also the way that she depicted her queer relationships. So with Nesta, for instance, there's an amazing portrait that was made after they had visited Glyndebourne and had this incredible moment which sort of embodied their love in some way, which is a sort of dual portrait where Nesta's hair, which is blonde, it almost acts as a halo over Gluck's head, right? She is absolutely representing her life and her love through her paintings. And actually, the flower paintings are an extension of that, aren't they?

Speaker 4:
[46:55] Absolutely. So, that painting was made in 1937. It was just a year after her relationship with Nesta Obermer began, and she referred to it as the Uwe painting.

Speaker 1:
[47:07] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[47:07] And she spoke about how Nesta Obermer was her wife and her muse, and they used to mark a specific day, the 25th of May 1936, as the day of their marriage, even though Obermer continued to be married to her husband Seymour Obermer.

Speaker 1:
[47:25] Let's talk about flower paintings, because it is remarkable, isn't it, that the beauty of that bouquet that she was sent triggered in her this desire to paint flowers. She had developed a style which was incredibly precise before that. But the way she depicts flowers from that point on is astonishing. And I think it rivals those Dutch 17th century paintings in that sort of intensity and clarity that they have. It's really astonishing, isn't it, when you behold them?

Speaker 4:
[47:53] They are astonishing paintings. And I think 18th century still life is exactly right, because in that period, continuing on from the 17th century Dutch still life, there was specifically a lot of interest in the depiction of textures. And that is very much present in Gluck's paintings of flowers. For example, in this one, Convolvulus, the flowers themselves fill almost the entire composition, and they're set against this beautiful powder blue backdrop. And at the very bottom, you can just see the top of a marble tabletop, which is depicted very precisely and exquisitely. And something that's really striking about this painting is that it's Convolvulus, which many will know is a common weed. It's colloquially known as bindweed or morning glory. But she portrays them as though they are cultivated ornamental flowers. They have these beautiful white trumpet shaped flowers, and then the cascading stems, these little buds which are almost quite spiky. There's an edge to them. And they extend out of an immaculate glass vessel, which again recalls those still life paintings. And Dutch still life was a genre that was connected very closely with women artists because they were not allowed into the life drawing room. And within the hierarchy of genres, that was seen as a feminine one. But of course, Gluck rejected the idea that she fit into any kind of tradition of women artists because of her androgyny and the way in which she fashioned herself.

Speaker 1:
[49:38] Now, tell us that it took five weeks to make this painting, I believe, which would have meant if she was working directly from life, she would have had to keep replenishing the flowers. Do you have any sense of how much of it was observed from life and how much it was a work that was ultimately made in the studio?

Speaker 4:
[49:54] Yeah, so this is quite a fascinating aspect of the painting. It was made from life, but as you say, Convolvulus wilts incredibly quickly within just a few hours. So she had to forage in the garden hedgerows for replacement flowers from which to paint. And that's part of why it took her such a long time to make this painting. But there was another painting that she made a few months later that took her seven months to complete. So in comparison, the five weeks that it took her to make this one seems quite speedy.

Speaker 1:
[50:25] Positively a breeze. You mentioned about the sexual jealousy that you think this might represent, but she was under no illusion that there was a sexual quality to her depictions of flowers. I mean, you think about Georgia O'Keefe sort of completely resisting that idea of that sexual reading of her works. Whereas Gluck was absolutely clear that there was a sexual kind of element to these compositions, right?

Speaker 4:
[50:50] That's totally right. For Gluck, flowers were an expression of love and eroticism, and she was keenly aware of the sexual element in many of her flower paintings. So of her floral painting Lords and Ladies, for example, she wrote, I feel like a bee penetrating them for their sweetness. And another painting she described is loving them, the flowers, and stroking them with my most chosen brushes. So there was a lot of intimacy in the way that she wrote about these paintings and about the flowers.

Speaker 1:
[51:25] Tell us about the presentation of the pictures, because obviously within the context of the actual work, there is an element of Trompe Loi, as you say, particularly with this marble tabletop, you know, there's this gorgeous moment where the flower rests in the bottom right of the picture against the marble tabletop, and then its shadow kind of melts into the veining of the marble. It's really beautifully done actually. But crucially in terms of Gluck is that she developed a kind of framing technique, right? Are you able to reflect that in the way that you're showing this picture?

Speaker 4:
[51:56] Yeah, so amazingly, this painting has a Gluck frame which was very exciting to discover. And she designed her Gluck frames in the same year that she met Constance Spry in 1932, because she was frustrated both with more historic, ornate gilt frames and the modern ones which were widespread at the time that she was painting. So she invented an art deco style three-tiered wooden frame that was painted or papered to match the wall on which the painting was hung. So again, with the trompe l'oeil, it was supposed to give the illusion that the painting was part of the architecture of the room. And she became quite suspicious that other people were stealing her idea and design for this frame. So she registered and patented the design of it and was assiduous in watching for infringements. And she transformed one of the galleries at the Fine Arts Society where she exhibited throughout her life into the Gluck Room and all of the paintings within it had these distinctive Gluck frames.

Speaker 1:
[53:07] And they're amazing, aren't they, because they bring the image forward from the wall. So they don't recede into the wall, they are projected out from it, but they obviously also stress the illusionistic quality of the painting. So on the one hand, it comes out into our space, but then we are encouraged to leap into the image. It's a really profound effect as well when you see it in the flesh.

Speaker 4:
[53:24] Totally. I think it really draws you in. And this painting isn't particularly large scale. Some of her floral paintings were really vast. The first one that she made after she met Constance Bray, Chromatica, is very, very large scale. We tried to locate that painting with the view to including it in the exhibition, but we weren't able to find it. And a lot of her flower paintings have been lost, or at least their whereabouts are unknown. But we were extremely happy when we were able to loan this painting. It's really gorgeous and, yes, draws you right into the composition.

Speaker 1:
[54:02] I mean, you mentioned the Fine Arts Society exhibitions there and the Gluck Room and so on. She was enormously well loved in her lifetime, wasn't she? You know, there were big public appreciation as well as critical appreciation of her work.

Speaker 4:
[54:15] Totally. She had quite a storied career because in her early life, she joined the Colony of Artists in Lamorna, in Cornwall. And then in the 1920s and 30s, her exhibitions were very highly praised. She received a lot of attention on her portraits and landscapes and flower paintings. And she mingled with the rich and successful, including Cecil Beaton, Queen Mary, the wife of George V, Siri Maugham, who was an influential interior designer. And in the mid 40s, she then went through a difficult period and stopped painting and didn't exhibit for 30 years. And then in the early 70s, again, she had an exhibition at the Fine Arts Society and began to attract excited attention from a new generation.

Speaker 1:
[55:10] But it's taken until now really for another generation to pick that up, hasn't it? So in other words, she's been the subject of academic study and so on. But in terms of public appreciation, now it seems like a ripe time to discover a bit more about her for a new generation.

Speaker 4:
[55:23] I think so. And I think it's maybe a bit of a cliche to talk about artists being ahead of their time. But I think that it is true of Gluck that in her approach to gender and sexuality, and in many of her painting techniques as well, she speaks to our current moment in a way that maybe she didn't so much in the time that she lived.

Speaker 1:
[55:47] Well, Naomi, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker 4:
[55:49] Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:
[55:57] Handpicked, Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today is at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge from the 25th of April to the 26th of September. And that's it for this episode. The podcast is produced by Alexander Morrison and David Clack, and David's also the sound designer and editor. Thanks also to our designer, Daniela Hathaway, and to our guests, Ola, Kari, and Naomi. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Blue Sky. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. Bye for now.