Laura Gascoigne

Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed

There are a few good things in the show including a classic Hockney and a virtuosic Jeff Wall

'A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)’, 1993, by Jeff Wall, in the Capturing the Moment exhibition at Tate Modern. Image: © Tate / Jai Monaghan

‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. So shouldn’t painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?’ argued Picasso. The inventor of cubism took advantage of his liberty in ‘Buste de Femme’ (1938) to turn Dora Maar into a precursor of Peppa Pig, flaring her nostrils to form a snout.

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