Nerve 16 - Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell

During our Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008, a specially commissioned work 'Art Matters: The Pool of Life' (shown right) was displayed at the Bluecoat. The creators of this work, The Singh Twins, who grew up on the Wirral, are some of Liverpool's most successful contemporary artists. An exhibition of their work, including Art Matters: The Pool of Life and a film The Making of Liverpool are currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery (11th March - 20th June 2010).

Amidst the colourful profusion of instantly recognisable figures, places and events stands a lone, nude woman (shown below) sandwiched in a theatre box between Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth II. Upon further investigation - or if you're very observant - you might discover that this woman comes from Vanessa Bell's painting The Tub.

Bell had few connections with Liverpool, the most prominent being that Cunard commissioned, then rejected her designs for the Queen Mary. Cunard never disclosed the reasons but one might suspect that the works produced by Bell and her partner in both life and painting, Duncan Grant, were simply too lively and luscious for the atmosphere of luxury aboard the Queen Mary.

So why did the Singh Twins include this figure - and why might Bell be important to us here today in Liverpool? Between September 2007 and March 2009, The Tub was displayed at Tate Liverpool in the 'The Twentieth Century, How it looked and how it felt' exhibition. Although there were plenty of pictures of women, Bell was one of the few female artists included in this otherwise wide-ranging and varied show.

The Singh Twins' 'past-modern' approach brings together multiple sets of cultural influences, 'challenging existing stereotypes and redefining generally accepted, narrow perceptions of heritage and identity in art and society'.1 Bell's legacy remains an under-explored area in cultural history, yet like Amrit and Rabindra Singh she was a woman who challenged categorizations and redefined the remit of female artists. Amongst the first generation of women to be granted access to the same artistic training as her male peers, Bell's career spanned 6 decades and a range of styles from severe abstraction to kitchen sink realism, as well as a range of media from photography to ceramics.

The Tub depicts Mary Hutchinson, her husband's mistress at Bell's Charleston farmhouse, now a museum. The Tate Liverpool show contextualised it with a series of other female bathers, a popular subject for Modernist artists. However, unlike these other works where the voyeuristic gaze of the male artist can be felt as a violatory presence on the unaware female body, Bell's bather seems both in harmony with her surroundings and to register the presence of the artist. Within Art Matters: The Pool of Life, this figure stands out for its stillness and solemnity amongst the other brightly coloured and gilded celebrants. Although superficially The Singh Twins' work is very different from anything within Bell's oeuvre, this inclusion seems a fitting tribute to a woman who in many subtle ways has been instrumental in shaping the way the twentieth century looked.

Amidst the bustle of activity of Art Matters: The Pool of Life, The Tub might be seen as representing a small corner of quiet strength and vision, an essential facet of Liverpool life.

1. www.singhtwins.co.uk/profile

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