Modern Couples Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde: Barbican Nov 2018 6/10

This exhibition is worthy. Two of its stated objectives are to show how women within partnerships have been side-lined and how collaborations have been portrayed as the products of the male.  The exhibition pamphlet helps you to look at the correspondances between the couples. 

There is loads to see in this show and some enjoyable art. There’s a painting by Hannah Höch, otherwise only known for her collages, called The Bride (Pandora) 1924/37 which is marvellously surreal. There is one of Hepworth’s wood carvings Tides I 1946, owned by the Tate, that has cracked deliciously into waves. I found the little painting Bird Superior: Portrait of Max Ernst c1939, that Carrington gave to Ernst on her departure to Mexico, strangely moving.  The stand out painting in the show of an apparently lesbian couple, Deux Amies, by Tamara de Lempicka is an odd inclusion as she is not one of the modern couples.The pieces that Duchamp cast from Maria Martins’ body e.g. Female Fig Leaf are on show, here is the objectification of women writ large, things that Duchamp could fondle after Martins returned to Brazil “finding the relationship impossible”.

The idea of exhibiting the work of couples together creates a mix of eclectic and interesting art. Furthermore I was introduced to artists, such as Unica Zûrn and Romaine Brooks, that I didn't know before and whose work I admired.  

The real problem is that the exhibition is like a dull text-book.  First you read about the couple then you look at the work and there are 46 couples.  The notes on the wall are necessarily brief and so boring that in the end I stopped reading them.  Beyond the words is the work and I felt that much of that was second rate.  Perhaps it depends on how much you know about modern art, if you know little the texts will be a good introduction to the artists, if you know a lot then they reveal nothing new.

Perhaps the most damming thing is that whilst reciprocal influences are talked about few are demonstrated and when they are you think: "so what, nobody works in a vacuum!" A joint project is clear in the work of the Lake Murnau artists: Münter, Kandinsky, von Werefkin and Jawlensky. If their works hadn’t been captioned then they could have been crafted by the brush of a single artist. 

Overall 6/10 as whilst I enjoyed two hours in the show I felt it failed to achieve its enormous ambitions.