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Visitors to a major JMW Turner exhibition may well be surprised to see the opening work is by Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst sharks, a Bridget Riley stripe painting and some Doc Marten boots supplied by the curator herself are also on display.
“Surprised? That’s what we’re hoping,” said Melissa Gustin, the curator of British art at National Museums Liverpool. But by the end it will all make perfect sense, she hopes. “That is the vibe we are after. We want visitors to see the connections, the histories and the legacies.”
This year is the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, which has meant a lot of Turner shows around the world. Gustin has counted at least 24.
She has spent two years curating the Turner show at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, which opens to the public on Saturday.
For her, the challenge was to showcase Liverpool’s incredible collection of Turners, one of the finest outside London, but also offer something different – which is why the show explores Turner’s impact and legacy on later generations of artists.
The show argues that Turner was grappling with many issues that are still a problem today, whether climate breakdown, immigration, or what the role of the artist is.
“Of course, if people only want to engage with the Turners, that’s fine,” Gustin said. “There are plenty of them to look at. If people only want to engage with the modern and contemporary, there’s plenty of that as well.”
Fortunately for Liverpool, a good number of the city’s rich 19th-century art patrons collected late Turner works when it was unfashionable.
It means Liverpool has Turner paintings such as The Falls of the Clyde, a favourite at the Lady Lever Gallery, and The Wreck Buoy, normally on display at Sudley House.
According to John Ruskin, Turner’s friend and champion, The Wreck Buoy, a dramatically violent seascape with crashing waves and a dazzling rainbow, was the “last oil picture he painted before his noble hand forgot its cunning”.
At the new exhibition, it is displayed next to a work where danger and death also loom – a Hirst work with two small sharks in formaldehyde, apparently swimming in a loop.
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Elsewhere in the show, a Bridget Riley stripe painting is displayed next to two pearly Turner Venetian watercolours and a huge painting by Maggi Hambling of crashing waves she observed at Southwold, in Suffolk.
“It is a very genteel place and then suddenly nature was there like a primeval force,” Hambling has said. “I’ve never seen waves like it, it was extraordinary. It was very beautiful but terrifying.”
There are also paintings by Monet, Pissarro, Ethel Walker and Sheila Fell in the show, as well as many works by Turner that are rarely seen.
“We do have this stunning collection but many are works on paper, which can’t be displayed very often,” said Gustin. “People don’t know that we have them, so the 250th anniversary seemed a good opportunity to get them out.
Gustin said the generosity of contemporary artists and their studios had been hugely important – including the studio of Koons, which almost immediately said yes to a request for the loan of a blue glass “gazing ball” on a hand-painted, oversized copy of a Turner painting that hangs at Tate Britain.
It is not a famous Turner, but it is one of Koons’s favourites, the artist has said.
Gustin said: “I think it is a really powerful opening to the exhibition. It says so much about how the most contemporary artist, one of the most important living artists there is … is still looking and thinking so seriously about these works.”
Elsewhere, there are exhibits loaned by Gustin herself, including a Bershka Turner sweater and a pair of Turner Doc Marten boots. “I bought the sweater from Asos and I wear it,” she said. “I will be wearing the boots.”
