Hope: World Icon
18 June 2011 - 27 November 2011
Showcase Gallery
It is both very exciting and pertinent that the first exhibition to be shown in the Showcase Gallery following the recent restoration project centres around Watts’s most iconic painting, Hope. The prime version (oil on canvas, 1885- 6, Private Collection) has kindly been lent to Watts Gallery for the duration of the exhibition. It is the focal point and its prime location in the gallery highlights it and gives it the gravity it deserves. The Showcase Gallery has an intimacy which allows viewers to focus on a particular picture on display as well as quietly study everything else that has stemmed from it.
Hope: World Icon explores the revered legacy of this image of a blind- folded young woman sitting upon a globe stooping awkwardly over an archaic lyre and straining to listen to the faint sound she makes from plucking the last remaining string. Included are small preparatory drawings that Watts made using pencil and a larger one in red chalk, drawn from the Watts Gallery Collection.
Hope: World Icon highlights the many replicas of Hope which were made on a massive scale to satisfy it’s audience; private, religious and political. Photographs by Frederick Hollyer (1838- 1933) and Emery Walker (1851- 1933) are juxtaposed with prints of Hope in books, on stamps, and on ciggarette cards.The exhibition shows how the image has become famous across the globe. It has been construed as political satire in newspapers, including its recent use in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and was referred to recently in The Guardian where it was used to represent the recent uprisings against Mubarak’s regime. The display shows that Hope has been the inspiration for music, poetry, drama, and film.
Watts was constantly motivated by universal ideas and concepts such as love and death, and hope and despair. Watts’s interpretation of Hope followed long- standing traditions and depictions in Greek mythology and Christianity. Yet Watts re-invented the established depictions and painting with such sensitivity that it has and still does touch people in a new, fresh and contemporary way.
