A few Saturdays ago, I went to two photography exhibitions. When you see two shows more or less together like this – even though they are nothing to do with each other – it’s hard to stop unlooked-for, and occasionally revelatory, connections popping into your head and affecting how you perceive the work. Both the…
Category: Landscape
Spirit levels: ‘Unsettling Landscapes’, St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
How appropriate that on this occasion, during the walks between the car and St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, the chill in the coastal air was icy enough to penetrate my fleece, and the wind strong enough to bend the bare branches of the trees further in, over our heads. St Barbe has an admirable…
Concrete jungle: ‘Among the Trees’, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
At a time when the outside world desperately needs to recognise the importance of the arts, it’s fitting to see an entire exhibition of art on a mission to engage directly with the outside world. ‘Among the Trees’ includes pieces from 37 artists (based worldwide), working in a range of media: as we wander through…
Over the Top with Everything They’d Got: British Baroque at Tate Britain
The new show at Tate Britain, British Baroque: Power and Illusion starts in another epoch when our relationship with Europe was a tad strained, let us say, and ends at the point when a German prince who spoke not a word of English was invited – if not begged – to take over the English throne. You’d almost think Tate Britain had timed this show deliberately.
Pietà Premieres in London: Interview with composer Richard Blackford
In June 2019 Frances Wilson reviewed Pietà, a new choral work by Richard Blackford for The Cross-Eyed Pianist. Drawing on the theme of maternal grief and loss, Blackford took as his starting point the Stabat Mater. It is a hymn to Mary, and portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ’s mother at his crucifixion. In his exploration…
The Art of Recycling: THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION 2019
The RA Summer Exhibition, with its whiff of the London season, the cocktail party and the 19th-century Paris salon, is always a bit of an oddity, and all the better for it, IMHO.
Diane Arbus: In the Beginning
Diane Arbus in Washington Square Park, New York City, 1967. Photograph: John Gossage Diane Arbus remains a giant in the photography world. Her suicide at the age of 48 has contributed to her legendary status. Hailed as a tormented genius, much has been written about her psychological fragility and her obsession…
SCANDI-NOIR IN SE21: Harald Sohlberg the Dulwich Art Gallery
There is a sense in these works of the landscape giving form to thought, a quality that puts you in mind immediately of the similarly curious, almost uninhabited cityscapes of Atkinson Grimshaw.
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