Messums, London Cork Street
The artist braved the freezing Pennines to cast a Romantic painting in a bold new light, while her restaging of Manet’s Olympia is wonderfully subversive
A woman stands majestically on a rocky, icy precipice; she looks out at a vast frosty tract, covered in thick, flawless snow. Her back is turned to us, the mood is contemplative. She surveys her domain, straight-backed, black hair licking the back of her neck.
It’s a photograph by the UK-based Chinese artist Yan Wang Preston. But there is another version of this image, a famous Romantic painting by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich. It is titled Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, made circa 1817. In that work, a clothed, flame-haired male Rückenfigur (a person seen from behind) stands on a jagged ridge and gazes out over a foggy landscape; the painting is the epitome of 19th century liberalism and romanticism, the lone figure in the rugged landscape contemplating his place in the world.
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