«Paul McCartney. Paintings» exhibition will open in the PinchukArtCentre from 17 June till 13 July. The exhibition presents 41 works by Sir Paul McCartney created from 1988 to 1999. Several works will be exhibited in public for the first time. Paul McCartney’s first ever art exhibition took place in 1999 in Siegen, Germany. This exhibition of McCartney paintings is the first in Eastern Europe.
Much like Willem de Kooning, McCartney is interested in the act of painting. He is not content with free abstraction, but is a distant relative of American expressionism with French Surrealist influences. McCartney, however, brings the surrealist play with elements from reality to an abstract level. Taking a closer look at his oeuvre, it seems as if McCartney never uses a definite style, or even that he does not aspire to develop a personal style. What the works have in common, however, has to do with the artist’s method. It’s as simple as the way McCartney applies paint onto the canvas, paints over existing paintings or paints over found materials on canvas.
From a historical perspective, painting is a way to represent a view or an image of reality. Through the ages, artists have searched for ways to render reality as true as possible, using perspective, shading and balanced composition. But that is not how Paul McCartney creates paintings. McCartney chooses painting itself as the subject of his paintings — a vehicle for connecting thoughts and ideas. He also leaves so called external decisions, such as the choice of colour, the brush style and the scale of each painting series to the process of creating the painting.
Paul McCartney’s sole contribution regards the structure of the work and the way he combs the canvas with paint, using simple, playful, yet active brushstrokes. At times he pours the paint directly on the canvas, also without making pre-conceived choices, such as Georg Baselitz, Franz Kline, Gerhard Richter or Julian Schnabel have done.
In doing so, McCartney seeks to change the rules concerning the final image, composition, foreground, background and the combination of colours. With his works, there is just the act of applying the paint to the canvas. This is the purest form of painting.
Sir Paul McCartney will open a show personally on the following day after the Independence Concert that he presents on Saturday 14th June 2008 in Independence Square, Kiev, Ukraine. The exhibition will be open for public visiting on the June 17 — just a one day before Paul McCartney’s birthday.
Paul McCartney had no formal art-education even though as a child he won an Art Prize at school. He seriously started painting when he first met Willem de Kooning who has played a big influence on his art. During the last 20 years Paul has created about 500 works. He does not sell his paintings and keeps all works at his studio. For a long time Paul McCartney didn’t publicly show his work. The first public exhibition of his paintings was held in 1999 in Germany.
