Review by Euan Uglow – No wonder Cherie Blair hasn’t been a model for long, these pictures are exhausting just to look at | Art and design

eThey say Wanoglu is an artist’s artist, and therein lies the problem. If you approach his effortful paintings out of curiosity—how to build form, capture precise perspective, proportions—I can see how her visual works (intricate little dashes, crosses, vertical lines, geometric grids) would be inspiring. But many of us come to art to be inspired, moved, and felt. Despite their artistry, Uglow’s 70-plus paintings in Gallery MK leave me cold.

First, some context, which we get as soon as we enter – in a slightly maddening move, the artist’s five-room retrospective opens with a room of seven paintings, of which only two are his own. After studying at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London from 1948 to 1950, he moved to the Slade. He was influenced by Paul Cézanne and Alberto Giacometti, as well as three teachers, all of whom are represented here.

Things speed up in the next room, bringing Uglow, who died in 2000 at the age of 68, into better focus. In 1959, he rented a studio in Battersea, London, and began developing his own style – painstakingly designed paintings based on intense observation. In the early works there are flashes of life. There, in the plump, pretty juicy beads strung around the neck of his slender girlfriend, Gloria Ciccone, and the bright flashes of sky blue and ocher exploding against the black in the stunning portrait of the Ghanaian painter and activist, Marigold.

I’m warming to it until I come face to face with the first of a series of large-scale nudes, these cut and sliced ​​in a way that makes me think of a meat cleaver. Which is really strange, because there is nothing sexy about Uglow’s nude women, which is a world apart from his more famous London contemporaries such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud. If anything, you could compare them to carcasses, as any flesh comes off the bones, which stick out at odd angles. The central room is dedicated to nudes lying on one wall and standing on the other, a frieze with a feminine shape. Frieze, or freeze: The word that comes to mind is fixed. The woman’s left breast in the fifth root is bare (1974-1975) is upright and solid, when it should definitely flop.

Like Freud, Uglow placed huge demands on his models, scrutinizing them for days, weeks, and months, Years. He used three models in Three in One (1967-68) – a ghostly white outline hints at the arm of a former girl, while a heavy white fireplace swirling above emphasizes the artist’s macabre process. Just look at the dates: “Diagonal” (1971-1977), a very elegant and at the same time haunting picture of a tall, lean model stretched like a plank on a folding chair on a horizontal canvas, took six years. It was not uncommon for his sitters to withdraw partly through the picture.

This is what happened with Cherie Blair, who appeared twice, the second time semi-nude in an open blue dress (the tabloids had a field day when the photo came to light). As a trainee lawyer, she was introduced to Uglow by the head of her chambers, and stood before him before realizing she did not have the time Uglow asked of her. Hanging next to her unfinished portrait is a polished canvas designed by an alternative.

There are moments of brilliance. The pink sole of the right foot in Pepe’s painting (1984-85) is an intimate and gentle film, and there is a lot of character in the deeply bent left foot of that model in The Diagonal. But the rosy legs of the striding model in Zagi (1981-82), who seem about to move, look as if they have just emerged from a very hot bath. And Noria (1998-2000) Sarah Lucas’s bunny is without the humor.

And that’s the problem with Uglow. He takes himself very seriously. He once said: “I want the brain to intervene between observation and sign.” Another often quoted phrase: “The proper subject of a painting is the painting itself. It is not what is painted that is important, but how.”

This may be what matters to the artist, but it doesn’t always provide a rich viewing experience. It’s true that in the age of artificial intelligence, there’s something reassuring, even exciting, about seeing the time and effort he’s put into his images — but too much methodology sucks the life out of the art.

The exhibition ends with a series of still lifes: a very beautiful chrysanthemum; A lone plastic cake, which does nothing for me after seeing Wayne Thiebaud’s creamiest and most exquisite slices at the Courtauld last year; Palm Tree Game (your guess is as good as mine); Deteriorating and spoiled peaches.

For a brief moment, I wonder if I’m seeing a glimmer of self-parody when I read the title of the show’s final work: Mouse Loaf (1991-92). Uglu worked on the painting for more than a year, insisting on his strict and uncompromising approach even as rodents gradually gnawed away at the pile of bread. To prevent it from collapsing, the artist filled it with plaster. Life chews cold.