10/09/2026
‘What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?’ the English novelist, E.M. Forster, justly asks. But as Popova reminds us, there is also the netherworld, forest floor and undergrowth, a greater hidden realm of roots. A realm, after Muir, ‘bound fast by a thousand invisible cords’ in one universe. For Standing, it is this fusion into a single enigmatic realm which yields a richer vision and greater ‘spell against despair.’ If, for Claude Monet, there is the longing ‘to stay always like this, living in a corner of nature,’ then, for Standing, it is the greater gnash and snarl of root and spirit, vegetal and animal, that compels. There is nothing sedate or effete in Standing’s paintings – nothing picturesque. If his paintings attract one, it is not because they are beguiling or charming. If they eschew the contrapuntal – the punctuated contrasts of light and dark – they also eschew a giddy impressionism. And if beauty too is of little interest, it is because Standing refuses to fetishise the world he inhabits.
Marc Standing, “Landscape of the Unimagined”, on view at Graham Cotemporary in Hyde Park Corner until 11 October.
Graham Britz Marc Standing
