Snowed Under - Esther

As if lockdown wasn’t enough, here we are beleaguered by snow. For weeks, it was ice & that wasn’t great but now we have deeper snow than there has been in about ten years round these parts. I’m not keen on being cold or wet so I’m not a fan of snow, however it has afforded the art world almost infinite inspiration. I’m prepared to look on the positive side of snow just for today.

Alexander Calder (USA, 1898-1976): Ráfaga de nieve, 1955

When you have to drive in a blizzard, I find there’s a very particular anxiety accompanying the experience. It’s an almost psychedelic vision, all those head-lit crystals hurtling towards you in a vortex of what feels like doom. There is no such sense of anxiety in the mobile Ráfaga de nieve, part of Calder’s Snow Flurry series where the benign flakes are tumbling gently 2.5m down. 

Hayami Gyoshū (Japan, 1894-1935): Snow, 1930

Snow is a universally beautiful & deceptively simple image. If you live where there is snow, you recognise it immediately, delicate bare branches & twigs labouring under the added weight. It has a distinctly Japanese sophistication to its style. Indeed Gyoshū was known for his use of the traditional Nihonga style, using millennium-old techniques & media although he also took interest in developing more modern methods. If you would like further recommendations, I’d advise a look at his studies of birds & insects & his florals are particularly beautiful.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (modern-day Netherlands, 1530-1569): The Hunters in the Snow, 1565

Would this even be a snow or winter art list without Breughel’s Hunters? I think not. Well known for his ability to combine genre painting with landscapes, Breughel’s scenes are a fascinating & frequently amusing insight into 16th Century Flemish life. His paintings are often a Where’s Wally?-esque panorama of poor, rural villages & dwellings, pioneering a move away from endless religious subjects. The Hunters in the Snow is a little different (for Brueghel) in terms of a necessarily monochromatic palette & a broader vista. No matter how cold, slippery, wet & difficult the conditions might be, the inhabitants have to get on with their daily lives, unconcerned with the fabulous – imagined - scenery around them. We don’t see their faces - they blend in as part of the nature of the area, like the dogs & nearby birds.

Annette Lemieux (USA, 1957-): Potential Snowman, 2001

Not all of Lemieux’s work appears as whimsical as this, although it often contains humour. Sometimes verging on the surreal, her titles give the work its context. In deconstructing a snowman (if you’ll allow me that…) & then painting its components white, she invites us to at least think about & consider the ordinary in more depth.

Pan Gongkai (China, 1947-): Snow Melting in Lotus, 2011

This installation is one where Pan Gongkai explores the smothering impact of Western art on that of China. Here the withered lotus plants are being submerged by the snow. Text from his own treatise On the Boundary of Western Art runs along the top. The piece combines traditional ink painting with modern technology & provides a different perspective on how we view Chinese ink painting primarily by framing it in a 3D context. As well as this, we can respond to the concept of spring emerging from winter. Snow will melt & the lotus will flourish again.

Harald Sohlberg (Norway, 1860-1935): Winter Night in the Mountains, 1914

This is one of a series of works by Sohlberg, created using various media & depicting the Rondane mountains. The use of different shades of blue lend this particular version an eerie, yet familiar air; I’m imagining being outdoors at night in deep snow & the muffling effect it gives all sounds. If you look very closely, he has painted a cross on one of the peaks to the right of the painting. I especially like the bare branches in the foreground. There is a school of thought that suggests that very little white paint is necessary to portray snow. Sohlberg proves it.

Simon Beck (UK, 1958): Snow Art, 2018

Simon Beck studied civil engineering & worked as a cartographer until beginning his snow (& sand) art career in 2009. His previous skills are no doubt a great deal of help in creating his – 30-per-winter – artworks however that would be to underestimate the artistic technique & beauty of the pieces, much as the work of MC Escher used to be regarded. As with many installations & other artworks, they are indeed problems to be solved, but they nevertheless captivate & inspire wonder as works of artistic magnificence. They are created by trudging through the snow in snowshoes.

To get some idea of the phenomenal scale of his works, this clip shows some of his pieces in situ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai-O73Ixcj4 

Néle Azevedo (Brazil, 1950-): Minimum Monument Project (“Army of Melting Men”), since 2005

In the same vein as Simon Beck’s work in terms of an idea of impermanence in art, are the affecting “Melting Men” works by Néle Azevedo. They consist of hundreds or thousands of ice sculptures & have variously represented the dead civilians of WWI, historical events & global warming over several different countries. She first creates the ice figures in moulds, then carves into them individually. It’s an incredible labour considering the installations can last for as little as half an hour.

Józef Chełmoński (Poland, 1849-1914): Partridges in the Snow, 1891

For all the many thousands of artworks, depicting the bleakness of cold & snowy weather, Partridges in the Snow is one of the most simply beautiful & bleak. These exquisitely painted birds struggle in a vast wintery wasteland – at almost 2 metres wide, I imagine it must feel as if you’re toiling with them when face to face with the work.

Egon Schiele (Austria, 1890-1918): Winterlandscape with Willows, 1907

Here, Egon depicts the kind of snow that seems foamy & thick rather than light & powdery. He achieves this with extremely thick swipes of oil paint across the board. It’s so thick in fact, he can scratch into it to create the effect of new bare branches on cut-back trees. & you can see that he too was able to create the effect of snow without swathes of white so instead we see pinks & blues along with the browns & yellows. 

Just for fun, here is the (actually rather good) 2005 statue of Egon himself beside the Egon Schiele Museum in his hometown of Tulln by Mikhail Nogin (Russia, 1959?) in the snow.