Oversized insects are climbing up the walls of the basement, dogs are partying, a broken dog-puppet lies on an old worn table top, other dogs have replaced their master on favourite chairs and play Twister while, in a different role reversal, a naked man, collared like a dog with a chain leash is crashing into a car windscreen. All this was taking place in the heart of Mayfair in “Animal Farm – Beastly Muses and Metaphors” at Sǀ2, the latest exhibition at Sotheby’s contemporary art space in St George Street, opened in October 2013 across the road from the more traditional auction rooms, and now established on the London scene with five contemporary selling exhibitions a year organised.
The Gallery was designed by David Kohn Architects with the same attention to detail that comes through in his competition-winning design for a new quadrangle for New College Oxford. “Animal Farm – Beastly Muses and Metaphors” explores the long, complex and varied relationship between humans and animals, both domesticated and wild, a connection which has been represented in art from prehistoric cave paintings up to the modern day.
Curator Suzanne van Hagen has brought together an international selection of work spanning the last century from Francois Pompon’s bronze sculpture of a Polar Bear of 1921 and George-Lucien Guyot’s powerful Seated Orangutang with Spread Arms (c.1930), through Pablo Picasso’s Bull Fight (1948), Max Ernst’s Femme, Maison, Moineau, (1965), Joan Miro’s Oiseaux (1976), Lynn Chadwick’s Beast Alerted (1990), Lucien Freud’s Pluto Aged 12 (2000) to Gavin Turk’s Pandy Warhol bears and wallpaper (2014) and to 2016 with Polly Morgan’s animal-skin sculptures, Dean Adam’s ceramics and Friederich Kunath’s fox I am Starting to Feel OK.
A multi-media exhibition with sculpture, prints, paintings, photography and, in the 21st century, digital work such as Moussa Sarr’s videos, with counterpoints between sculptures in the room and artworks behind, such as George-Lucien Guyot’s Orangutang Alison Katz’s hanging monkey, in date almost 80 years apart.
