The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
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
The current exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing claims to be a portrait of Vienna in 1900, but in fact offers rather an interesting survey of portraits made there from the 1830s to 1918. The gallery layout has been usefully adapted to display the work thematically rather than chronologically, which is more dynamic but stylistically confusing.
Pop Art Design, curated by the Vitra Design Museum and currently at the Barbican, opens with Richard Hamilton’s 1956 ‘Just what makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’. Made as a poster for the Whitechapel show This is Tomorrow, it’s a witty collage of consumer fantasies scissored out of magazines, reminding us that interest in
The title of the Lisson Gallery’s new show, Nostalgic for the Future, could sum up the gallery’s whole raison d’être. From its inception in 1967, the Lisson has championed the cutting edge, providing a British and European platform for the major conceptual and minimal artists from the States — Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre and Dan
One of the more exotic attractions at the 1939–40 World’s Fair in New York was Salvador Dalí’s ‘Dream of Venus Pavilion’, which behind its surreal façade — an architectural marriage between Antoni Gaudí and a coral reef — catered to the public’s aquatic fantasies of spume-born goddesses and topless sirens. Something similar is going on
The famous court case in which Ruskin accused Whistler of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’ continues to rumble through the public response to art in this country. The man in the street, the man on the Clapham Omnibus and most of the men who drive black cabs all like their art
The V&A’s remarkable survey of Chinese painting begins quietly with a beautiful scroll depicting ‘Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk’, from the early 12th century, which, with its bright colours, shallow space and lack of setting, invites comparison with a western masterpiece of a similar date, the Bayeux Tapestry. The crowded urgencies and narrative drive
My addiction to Chinese landscape painting began in 1965 at the V&A, in a travelling exhibition of the Crawford Collection from America. The catalogue entries were supplied by the doyen of Chinese art historians in Britain, Michael Sullivan, who died aged 97 just a month before the opening of this latest exhibition of Chinese painting
There is a school of thought that sees Paul Klee (1879–1940) as more of a Swiss watchmaker than an artist, his paintings and drawings too perfect, too contrived. Viewing this new exhibition at Tate Modern, one might add that they are also too mannered and precious. I had been looking forward to this show, but
One sometimes forgets when looking at French 19th-century art that the painting revolution that produced Impressionism coincided with a political one. This is because most French painters, Delacroix and Manet excepted, chose to ignore it — none more completely than Camille Corot, who, as a travelling view painter, had every excuse to get out of
Towards the end of his life, Georges Braque described his vision in the following terms: ‘No object can be tied down to any one sort of reality; a stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach… Everything is subject to metamorphoses.’ Since then, set
Perhaps the greatest irony of many in this first solo London show of Sarah Lucas is that it is sponsored by Louis Vuitton. ‘Symbolising French elegance and joie de vivre, the Maison LV has always collaborated with the best engineers, decorators and artists,’ it claims. Well, welcome to a new world. Soiled mattresses provocatively pierced
Emilio Greco (1913–95) is considered to be one of Italy’s most important modern sculptors, and certainly he was a successful one, enjoying considerable popularity and renown with his deliberately mannered re-interpretations of classical subjects. A figurative sculptor, Greco went in for elongated limbs and awkward yet dynamic poses that often have a surprising elegance and
The Watts Gallery, just outside Guildford off the Hog’s Back, is a delightful place to visit at any season, with its permanent collection of work by G.F. Watts, whose studio it once was, and an ambitious programme of exhibitions on related subjects. But as autumn reaches over the hills a sense of the Victorian past
Astonishingly, the last major survey show of Australian art in this country was mounted more than half-a-century ago. Then it was the innovative writer, critic and museum director Bryan Robertson who staged Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1961, a show he consolidated by monographic exhibitions of Sidney Nolan, Roy de Maistre
In the Musée du Cinquantenaire, a grand gallery on the green edge of Brussels, those bureaucratic Belgians are welcoming home a prodigal son. Henry van de Velde — Passion, Function, Beauty is a celebration of the 150th birthday of Belgium’s most prolific polymath, yet a lot of people here in Brussels scarcely seem to know
Like all artists of independent spirit, David Tress (born 1955) resists categorisation. He has been called a Romantic and a Neo-Romantic, a mixture of Impressionist and Expressionist, a traditionalist and a modernist, yet not one of these labels quite fits. He is all and none, drawing his inspiration from the great traditions of western art
A mixed exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints devoted to the subject of the tree might sound an unexciting event, filled with what Johnny Cash memorably described as ‘hopeful stars of flickering magnitude’, but actually in this case the reverse is true. The show has been divided into two halves, the first of which deals
The popular conception of Dame Laura Knight is of an energetic woman piling on the paint in the back of a huge and antiquated Rolls-Royce at Epsom Derby, the door propped open to the view, or charging off in pursuit of gypsies, clowns or ballerinas. A widely popular and successful artist, she painted people in
Sir Alfred Munnings (1878–1959) did himself a grave and lasting disservice when he publicly attacked modern art in a bibulous after-dinner speech at the Royal Academy in 1949. He had been president of the RA for five years, pipping Augustus John to the post, but the controversy he stirred up (he called Picasso and Matisse
‘Professor’ Bruce Lacey (born 1927) is one of those figures who has existed effectively on the periphery of the art world for more than half a century. Part licensed jester, part society’s conscience, Lacey operates best on the fringes, stirring things up, provoking thought and challenging preconceptions, a lightning conductor for comment and criticism. Before
My wife says you can always tell a self-portrait by the quality of its self-regard. There’s something about the eyes and mouth (though not invariably flattering or admiring) or the set of the chin that give the artist away. Perhaps it’s simply that the artist is more interested in depicting the self than anyone else;
Revolution shook Mexico between 1910 and 1920, but radical political change was not mirrored in the art of the period. In this exhibition, we do not see avant-garde extremes, but witness instead a deepening humanism, as if for once art was interlocking with human need. The cultural renaissance that followed was state-sponsored, and artists were
In 1929, Samuel Courtauld owned the most important collection of works by Paul Gauguin in England: five paintings, ten woodcuts and a sculpture. He subsequently sold two of the paintings, but for this show the gallery that bears Courtauld’s name has borrowed them back. One of them is the very beautiful ‘Martinique Landscape’ (1887), now
One generation is usually so busy reacting against its predecessors that it can take years for a balanced appreciation of real and relative merits to emerge. Henry Moore was born in 1898, and Rodin didn’t die until 1917, but they never met. All his life Moore was aware of Rodin’s work, and although early on
There has been much positive comment about the rehang of the Tate’s permanent collection, which sees a welcome return to the great tradition of the chronological hang and thus gives the visitor a chance to see the development of British art from 1545 to today. At last we are permitted a rest from themed displays
