Helen Frankenthaler in 1957, photographed by Gordon Parks. © The Gordon Parks Foundation

'No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.’
Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room of One’s Own’

I recently attended an excellent exhibition examining the artist’s studio over the last one hundred years. (‘A Century of the Artist’s Studio’, curated by Iwona Blazwick, runs at the Whitechapel Gallery until 5 June.)

Through a selection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, films and reconstructions, the show considers the diverse characteristics of a successful creative workspace.

A studio can be an attic, a loft apartment or a spare room; a shed, a farmhouse or a disused factory. It is a place for escape, reflection, experimentation and creation; a location for catalysts and stimulus, for intimate exchange; a scene for collaboration and collective effort.

No surprise perhaps that studios often feature in artists’ work. Wheelchair-bound Frida Kahlo painted herself painting her doctor. Mequitta Ahuja depicted herself bent over her desk, deep in thought. Lucien Freud’s portraits often included his own furniture. Bruce Nauman filmed a man dancing on the perimeter of a square marked out on his workshop floor.

Kerry James Marshall, *Untitled (Painter)*, 2008, Acrylic on PVC panel in artist’s frame, 73 x 62.9 cm. Collection of Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III. © Kerry James Marshall.

'I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.’
Joan Miro

A painting by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham presents us with an image of a clean, well-lit studio, a blank canvas waiting at the easel. But the norm for most artists seems to have been much more chaotic. The walls of Francis Bacon’s workspace were daubed in paint, the floor strewn with passport photographs and Polaroids of lovers; with old newspapers and pages torn from magazines and medical textbooks.

Studios are often expressions of an artist’s personality and creative style. Robert Rauschenberg’s looked like a tip, Jackson Pollock splattered paint everywhere. Here’s half-naked Picasso surrounded by his canvases, revelling in his genius.

Studios often include props and prompts for inspiration. Matisse liked to work alongside the same jugs, ornaments and textiles. Sculptor Kim Lim carefully pinned images that interested him to a board.

'I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.’
Albert Einstein

*Mequitta Ahuja, Notation, 2017 (detail). Oil on canvas, 213.4 x 182.9 cm. Courtesy the artist and Tiwani Contemporary.*

Studios can be a hub for exchanging ideas, a centre for a creative scene. Andy Warhol’s silver walled Factory played host to parties and Velvet Underground gigs. Wolfgang Tillmans photographed his loft space after a late night event - a mess of Malboro packs, Peroni bottles and Stella cans.

But studios are also a retreat, where the artist can process thought and work things out in private. Alberto Giacometti sketched ideas on the walls. Alexander Calder’s workshop looked like a garage where he could tinker away endlessly at his mobiles.

'When you start working, everybody is in your studio - the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas - all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.’
John Cage

The studio of Francis Bacon, ‘luminous dabs blossoming across the walls’. Photograph: Perry Ogden © The Estate of Francis Bacon All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2021

For Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant the studio was their home. They painted their fireplaces, walls and screens, filled the space with their own furniture, pictures and pottery, blurring the lines between art and craft, between figurative and abstract. Kurt Schwitter turned his house in Hanover into an art installation: a magical white wooden cave of stalagmites and stalagtites.

'Room service? Send up a larger room.’
Groucho Marx

I left the exhibition reflecting that our offices are rather bland, anodyne, corporate affairs - all polite modern furniture, brightly coloured walls, ping pong tables and witty atrium displays. Not that different from our Clients’ workspaces.

A properly creative business should be a place for stimulus and inspiration, for experimentation and discovery; a place that enables privacy and seclusion, but also congregation and exchange. Surely a creative business should have a creative environment.

At the exhibition there’s a fabulous 1957 photo of Helen Frankenthaler by Gordon Parks. Sitting on her studio floor, her head resting on one hand, she regards us with quiet confidence. She is surrounded on all sides by her paintings – big, soft and colourful; fluid, organic and abstract. Her studio seems to have become her art. It projects and protects her. It just seems to be her.

'I've really got to use my imagination
To think of good reasons
To keep on keepin’ on.
Got to make the best of a bad situation,
Ever since that day I woke up and found
That you were gone.’
Gladys Knight & the Pips, 'I’ve Got to Use My Imagination’ (B Goldberg / G Goffin)

No.368