It seems suitable that just round the corner from the Zurbarán exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts is the Musée Magritte. Surrealism was in the air of 20th-century Belgium, just as much as it was in the atmosphere of Spain. And of course in many cases its leading figures — Buñuel, Dalí, René Magritte
Last week, three exhibitions celebrating the art of Germany; this week, a show commemorating the first world war fought against that great nation. In this centenary year of the beginning of WW1, there will be numerous events marking the start of hostilities. (Will there be as many celebrating the anniversary of their cessation, I wonder?)
Like most ambitious artists, Julian Cooper has been pulled this way and that by seemingly conflicting influences. The son and grandson of Lake District landscape painters — his mother was a sculptor — he fell among abstractionists at his London art college, Goldsmith’s, in the late 1960s. But when I first saw his work in
It’s German Season in London, and revealingly the best of three new shows is the one dealing with the most modern period: the post-second world war era of East and West Germany and the potent art that came out of that split nation. In Room 90 is another immaculately presented British Museum show of prints
In 1914 Fernand Léger gave a lecture about modern art. By then recognised as a leading Cubist artist, he had the year before signed up with the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who already represented Picasso and Braque. ‘If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it,’ Léger argued. ‘The existence of modern
When I visited the Richard Deacon exhibition at Tate Millbank, there were quite a lot of single men of a certain age studying the exhibits with rapt attention — some even making notes. (I realise I’ve just described myself…) This is perhaps because the show is all about the glories of construction, and reminiscent of
Exhibitions are made for two main reasons: education and entertainment. Although I recognise the importance of education I am, by nature, a devotee of pleasure and want people to enjoy what they see in museums — not just feel that they must learn from it. Great exhibitions marry the two impulses effortlessly, and on balance
In a crowded storeroom at Ikon, Birmingham’s contemporary art gallery, its director Jonathan Watkins is unwrapping the pictures for his latest show. His excitement is infectious. He’s like a big kid on Christmas day. This exhibition marks the start of Ikon’s 50th season, for which he’s devised a special programme — a history of Ikon,
Curtain walls, dreaming spires, crockets, finials, cantilevers, bush-hammered concrete, vermiculated rustication, heroic steel and delicate Cosmati work are all diverse parts of the architect’s vocabulary. But while Gothic, Classical, Baroque and Modern are well-thumbed volumes in his library of style, the architect’s real language is profound and prehistoric. Or, at least, it consists of prehistoric-style
Tourists are attracted to queues, art lovers to quietude. So while the mass of Monet fans visiting Paris line up outside the Musée d’Orsay and the Orangerie, connoisseurs head to the Musée Marmottan, an institution so surprisingly little known that it had to rename itself the Musée Marmottan Monet to flag up the fact that
I suspect I am not alone in finding it surprising to encounter at the close of this exhibition an unexpected Hannah Höch — a gently spoken elderly lady filmed wandering among the overgrown flowers in her garden, talking of beauty. A far cry from the radical firebrand and Dada collagiste of interwar Berlin whose works
In this round-up of exhibitions in London’s commercial galleries, I feature three shows of little-known but mature contemporary British artists. There is a great deal of interesting and worthwhile art being made out there, but not enough of it comes to public attention. Most museums won’t show it, and there are only a handful of
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I was properly aware of being the one who wrote The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; clearly not the same man. The artist Castiglione was a tempestuous character, always losing his temper and getting
Last year saw the centenary of the London Group, a broad-based exhibiting body set up in a time of stylistic ferment in the art world as an independent alternative to the closed shops of the academies. Formed from the amalgamation of the Allied Artists’ Association and the Camden Town Group, it boasted such notable founder
It is often said of John Craxton (1922–2009) that he knew how to live well and considered this more important than art. Perhaps there is a certain truth in this, but if he really believed it, did he have any business in being an artist? And an artist he undoubtedly was, by temperament and sensibility,
The death of painting has been so often foretold — almost as frequently as its renaissance — that any such prediction today is nothing short of foolhardy. Of course, painting is alive and well and living in London, but you wouldn’t know that from the current exhibition of five artists at Tate Millbank. (By the
Rediscovering the unduly neglected is one of the chief excitements of those who curate exhibitions and write books. And there’s nothing I enjoy more than saluting the achievement of those who bring back to our attention an artist who – for one reason or another – has slipped off the art world radar. Before this
‘If I go to war, I go on condition I can have Giotto, the Basilica of Assisi book, Fra Angelico in one pocket, and Masaccio, Masolino and Giorgione in the other,’ Stanley Spencer wrote to the artist Henry Lamb in 1914. The sixpenny Gowans & Gray edition of the Masterpieces of Giotto now in a
Turner’s contemporaries regarded him primarily as a marine painter. This perception extended to his persona, with many who met him commenting on his nautical gait, manner of speaking and other salty characteristics. He frequented ports and coastal parts, relished sailing in storms, was immune to seasickness and famously had himself lashed to the mast to
There hasn’t been a decent Daumier exhibition in this country for more than half a century, so art lovers have had to be content with the handful of pictures in national collections and books of reproductions. This works all right for the lithographs, which were after all made to be reproduced, and it is on
