Laura Gascoigne

Artistic rumblings

Volcano: Turner to Warhol<br /> Compton Verney, until 31 October

issue 21 August 2010

Volcano: Turner to Warhol
Compton Verney, until 31 October

On my desk is a lump of lava, a memento of Vesuvius. It doesn’t look like much, but neither does the volcano from the cinder track that winds around to its summit. From close to, Vesuvius is a giant ash heap; it’s from across the bay that the magic works.

Never does distance lend more enchantment to the view than in the case of volcanoes: when they’re exploding they’re plain dangerous, and when not they’re really rather dull. Their allure is as elusive as a rainbow’s, and it was in rainbow colours that Andy Warhol painted Vesuvius in 1985, making it look like a Neapolitan ice cream blown under pressure through the end of a cone.

Warhol’s ‘Vesuvius’ is only the most extreme variation on the volcanic theme in Compton Verney’s Volcano: Turner to Warhol, an exhibition of some 200 images and associated objects that takes us on an imaginative world tour of exploding mountains, from Heimaey to Nyiragongo and Cotopaxi to Fuji.

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