Writers of Influence: Shakespeare to J.K Rowling could be the one of the most successful exhibition in the past few years at the Graves Gallery, bringing portraits of great writers, all of which can normally be found at the National Portrait Gallery.
The exhibition is not the only noteworthy aspect, as the retrospective is a collaboration between Museums Sheffield and its Young Curators, a group of Sheffield’s 15 to 19-year-olds who have picked the pieces, developed the themes and written the captions.
They were assisted by youths from partner galleries in Southampton, Plymouth and Sunderland showing that even the more technical aspects of the exposition helped form a creative community.
What is intriguing with Writers of Influence is its willingness to tackle the political and social issues raised by the authors’ work or lives.
Post colonialism and the advent of the first African American president is alluded to in Zadie Smith’s photographic portrait, the empty white backdrop representing the dominant whiteness in western literature.
The beginnings of African American literature and the history of slavery are represented by an engraving of Olaudah Equiano.
Other stigmatised, isolated, artists are also depicted. Elliot Fry’s portrait of Oscar Wilde sits alongside an iconic image of Ian Curtis by Kevin Cummins, capturing his tormenting depression.
The struggle of feminist authors is discernable in the moving picture of Angela Carter. In Virginia Woolf’s portrait by her sister Vanessa Bell, the warm colours and sweeping brush strokes mirror the author’s preoccupation with scratching the surface of domestic life.
In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf asked ‘What would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?’. And the Bard crops up here too, in John Taylor’s Chandos Portrait, often regarded as the most accurate likeness of Shakespeare.
Taylor has caught the realism and humility of Shakespeare’s expression, as the beauty of this centre piece lies in the chiaroscuro, the golden earring contrasting with the overwhelming darkness, emphasising the writer’s masculinity.
Elsewhere, visitors can see images of celebrated poet Ted Hughes, as captured by the equally acclaimed Henri- Cartier Bresson, while the perfectionist aestheticism of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is felt in Man Ray’s symmetrical composition.
This is an unmissable exhibition, which evokes Huxley’s words: ‘If you say absolutely everything, it all tends to cancel out into nothing. Which is why no explicit philosophy can be dug out of Shakespeare.’
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