Andrew Lambirth looks forward to some great exhibitions in the year ahead
There’s a very full year’s viewing ahead to cheer the eye and gladden the heart however bleak the financial prospects. For a start, the National Gallery is mounting a major exhibition focusing on the fascinating relationship that Picasso had with the art of the past. His reworkings of Goya, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Chardin and Delacroix, together with responses to more contemporary masters such as van Gogh and Gauguin, provide a riveting dialogue of minds. Picasso: Challenging the Past (25 February to 7 June) will offer new ways to look at the Old Masters as well as a different take on Picasso. The autumn blockbuster is The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600–1700 (21 October to 24 January 2010). Featuring such artists as Velázquez, Zurbarán, Alonso Cano and Pedro de Mena, and juxtaposing paintings with polychrome sculptures, this should be something of an intensely focused revelation.
At the National Portrait Gallery, two exhibitions stand out: Gerhard Richter Portraits (26 February to 31 May) and Constable Portraits: The Painter and His Circle (5 March to 14 June). I think Richter is overrated, but some of his best and most memorable work may well be in portraiture, much of it consisting of paintings based on photographs. Constable’s portraits are often overlooked in the excitement over his landscapes, but anyone who can paint with the directness and psychological acuity of the famous study of a Suffolk child (in the V&A) deserves to be celebrated as a portraitist. Eagerly anticipated.
The Tate and its various regional outposts always have plenty to offer, and the following is merely a selection. Van Dyck and Britain at Tate Britain (18 February to 17 May) is a welcome re-appraisal of a 17th-century artist much thought-of in the past but somewhat out of-fashion today. At Tate Liverpool (20 February to 10 May) is a retrospective of Glenn Brown (born 1966), who paints distorted copies of other people’s pictures, old and new, and is considered to be important for doing so. In the summer, two shows at Tate Modern look promising: Futurism and Per Kirkeby, both June to September. Kirkeby (born 1938) is a Danish artist best-known for his large semi-abstract paintings. Meanwhile, Richard Long (born 1945), the man who walks for art, gets the retrospective treatment at Tate Britain (3 June to 6 September). Sold Out (1 October to 17 January 2010) at Tate Modern is yet another show about the legacy of Pop Art, as witnessed in the work of Warhol, Koons, Kippenberger et alia. Tate Britain looks at Turner and the Masters (23 September to January 2010), rather as the National Gallery looked at Picasso earlier in the year. Will the Tate’s show be as revealing? And, finally, at Tate St Ives, The Dark Monarch (3 October to 10 January 2010) examines the haunted land of Cornwall through the arcane extremes of modernism.
The Whitechapel reopens in April with a whole new suite of galleries and an ambitious programme featuring simultaneous exhibitions. The first clutch of shows (April to June) include a retrospective of the German sculptor Isa Genszken (born 1948), widely regarded as a seminal figure by contemporaries but little-known here, changing displays from the British Council Collection — a very good idea to give that extensive and prestigious collection a public airing — and a show of the Whitechapel Boys. The latter include Bomberg, Epstein and Gertler along with lesser lights such as Bernard Meninsky, Alfred Wolmark and Isaac Rosenberg. Definitely time to put the Whitechapel back on your personal maps.
The year starts at the Royal Academy with Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy (31 January to 13 April). Architectural exhibitions are always difficult to make work — let’s see what they can do with computer animations and models, without shipping visitors out to the Veneto. You’ve heard of Hokusai and Hiroshige, but you may not know Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861). Well, that’s about to change with a magnificent show of Kuniyoshi’s prints in the Sackler Galleries (21 March to 7 June). Some landscape, but plenty of Japanese warriors. For a bit of light relief, don’t forget the Summer Exhibition (8 June to 16 August), honoured by time but derided by many. And then John William Waterhouse, the Pre-Raphaelite who painted the Lady of Shalott so emotively, is given a retrospective (27 June to 13 September). Autumn treats include a major Anish Kapoor exhibition (19 September to 13 December) — who says that RAs never get the main galleries? — and an intriguing trio in the Sackler: Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Eric Gill (24 October to 24 January 2010).
At the Courtauld two forthcoming shows particularly caught my eye: Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops 1913–19 (18 June to 20 September), and Frank Auerbach: London Building Sites, 1952–62 (16 October to 17 January 2010). Roger Fry set up Omega to keep the Bloomsberries in gainful employ decorating furniture, fabrics and ceramics. Will there be one of their tea-trays to test Brian Sewell’s assertion that Howard Hodgkin’s paintings look just like them? Hope so. The Hayward Gallery is showing in the spring Annette Messager (born 1943), ‘one of the most important contemporary artists working in Europe’, as the press release assures us. This phrase appears so often in the course of a year as to be meaningless; perhaps a ban should be imposed. The Hayward’s summer show is Ed Ruscha (born 1937), he of the vast slogans and Pop Art teases. That’ll be worth seeing, I hope.
At the Barbican is Le Corbusier — The Art of Architecture (19 February to 24 May), which will focus on his paintings, films, sculpture and books, alongside photographs, architectural models and interior settings. Hope it’s not too dry. The V&A is planning another period extravaganza, with Baroque 1620–1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence (4 April to 19 July). If it’s difficult to stage architecture exhibitions successfully, it’s even more difficult to do an all-encompassing style survey like this without buildings. How will the V&A manage? Worth a visit to find out.
I love the smaller London museums and try to visit them as often as possible. The Estorick Collection is cleverly forestalling the Tate with a Futurism show called Unique Forms: The Drawing and Sculpture of Umberto Boccioni (14 January to 19 April). At Dulwich Picture Gallery are three potentially enjoyable shows: Sickert in Venice (4 March to 31 May), Utagawa Hiroshige (July to September) and Master Drawings from the Art Gallery of Ontario (14 October to 17 January 2010). Of the three, Sickert appeals to me most, but all sound good, with Hiroshige offering an interesting comparison with Kuniyoshi at the RA. Among the riches on display in the provinces I have room to mention only one of the many intriguing exhibitions — Utmost Fidelity: The Painting Lives of Marianne and Adrian Stokes. A pairing of unusual Victorians, this show starts at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (31 January to 28 March) and travels to Southport, Harrogate and Penzance through the year.
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