Visual arts
BP Portrait Award 2019, National Portrait Gallery review - a story for everyoneWednesday, 10 July 2019
Once a year, the National Portrait Gallery gives us a slice of immediate social history presented in an array of contemporary painted portraits of the young, the old, and the inbetween. In its 40th iteration the international competition 44... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Treviso - cultural patronage, Italian styleFriday, 05 July 2019
Fortunate those Italian towns and cities whose Renaissance rulers looked to the arts to enrich their domain. Now neglect of cultural heritage can be laid at the doors of successive governments, but regional enlightenment can make a difference even... Read more... |
Never Look Away review - the healing potential of artWednesday, 03 July 2019
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who made his reputation as a leading German film-maker with The Lives of Others (2006), told the New Yorker that his latest film sprang out of a desire to explore the relationship between making art and healing.... Read more... |
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, Royal Academy review – strange and intriguingSaturday, 29 June 2019
Félix Vallotton is best known for his satirical woodcuts, printed in the radical newspapers and journals of turn-of-the-century Paris. He earned a steady income, for instance, as chief illustrator for La Revue blanche, which carried articles and... Read more... |
Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - a cut aboveWednesday, 19 June 2019
Under a turbulent sky racked with jagged clouds suggesting bolts of lightning, pale figures hurl themselves into a spitting expanse of water. Swathed in white towels, other figures mingle with the pink bodies, seeming to process along the pier as if... Read more... |
Francis Bacon: Couplings, Gagosian Gallery review - sex and power in double figuresFriday, 14 June 2019
Forthright and often disturbing, Francis Bacon’s “male couplings” are also ambiguous, and it is this disjunction that gives them their power. Erotic, violent and yet so often tender, these 14 works from the 1950s to the 1970s restate Bacon's pre-... Read more... |
Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery review – a shamblesThursday, 13 June 2019
Kiss My Genders may not claim to be a survey, yet it seems perverse to mount an exhibition of work by LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender identity without including some of the best known names. Particular emphasis is placed, says the press... Read more... |
Edouard Vuillard: The Poetry of the Everyday, Holburne Museum, Bath review - dizzying pattern and colourTuesday, 11 June 2019
A beguiling collection of small paintings by Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) forms an exhibition from his early career. It is a vanished world of domesticity in a Parisian flat, where Vuillard lived with his mother, a seamstress, for almost all his... Read more... |
Frank Bowling, Tate Britain review - a marvelWednesday, 05 June 2019
In a photograph taken in 1962, Frank Bowling leans against a fireplace in his studio. His right hand rests on the mantlepiece which bears books, fixative and spirit bottles, his left rests out of sight on the small of his back. His attire is... Read more... |
Natalia Goncharova, Tate Modern review - a prodigious talentWednesday, 05 June 2019
The times they are a-changin’. On show at the Barbican is a retrospective of Lee Krasner’s stunning paintings and, for the first time ever, Tate Modern is hosting two major shows of women artists. At last, the achievements of great women are... Read more... |
Lee Krasner: Living Colour, Barbican review - jaw-droppingly goodMonday, 03 June 2019
If you know of any chauvinists who dare to maintain that women can’t paint, take them to this astounding retrospective. Lee Krasner faced patronising dismissal at practically every turn in her career yet she persisted and went on to produce some of... Read more... |
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, The Queen's Gallery review - peerless drawings, rarely seenWednesday, 29 May 2019
It is a commonplace to describe Leonardo as an enigma whose genius, and perhaps even something of his character, is revealed through his works. But as his works survive only in incomplete and fragmented form, it is drawing, the practice common to... Read more... |
