How to typify the Wallace? Can you, indeed? In spirit it’s maybe close to the passion of a collector such as Sir John Soane, who also founded his own public museum (there is something very English about this kind of obsession – think of the Ashmolean in Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). It’s something like the Frick in New York, only bigger, better, wider-ranging. There’s not an item in it that doesn’t have some claim to be exceptional – rare beyond belief if not unique, superlatively made, exquisitely beautiful.
The Kahlo Cult: ‘Frida Kahlo – Making Herself Up’ at the V&A
That the V&A’s Frida Kahlo exhibition is fully booked until the end of August says a lot about her iconic status today – and it’s not her paintings that people flock to see but the “iconography” of Frida: her clothes, her painted plaster corsets, her jewellery and her ephemera. Her striking countenance with its distinctive…
LOST HISTORY RECLAIMED: William Kentridge’s ‘The Head and the Load’
‘…shadow-play, defunct documentation, African dance, early jazz, Dada-ist insanity and historical fact…’
MIXED MESSAGES IN MIXED MEDIA: MICHAEL JACKSON ON THE WALL National Portrait Gallery, London
In which your humble reviewer is left asking questions. When Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video launched in 1983 it was a major media moment at a time when media moments were still a rarity. David Dimbleby, no less, introduced it on British TV, and back then in the 80s it blew our little sparkly socks off….
EAST MEETS EAST END: A NEW DIVAN AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL
…the combination of music and poetry can be blissful, or it can be exhausting. On Thursday it was exhilarating, high-spirited, unexpected and delightful.
Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain
Tate’s survey of the impact of the First World War on art opens with a series of iconic images of conflict. There is Jacob Epstein’s Terminator-like torso in bronze from his ‘The Rock Drill’ of 1913-14, as unnerving as ever. There are photographs of shattered cathedrals, actual helmets dented by shrapnel, and post-war Illustrated Michelin…
A Great Spectacle: a revved up RA Summer Exhibition & opening of new gallery spaces
Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London W1 The RA Summer Exhibition, 250 years old this year, is as English as strawberries and cream, Wimbledon tennis, and wasps at a summer picnic. It’s a key part of the summer season and is the world’s most democratic art show: any one can submit work, from professional artists…
My Favourite Things: A Word in Your Shell-like
It is as perfect and organic a whole as a work of art can be.
Favourite things: Wigmore Hall, London
The first in an occasional series in which ArtMuseLondon reviewers select favourite art works, places, music……. Wigmore Hall, nestling unobtrusively just a stone’s throw from the bustle and litter of Oxford Street in a row of tall Edwardian façades, is London’s pre-eminent venue for chamber music, song recitals and solo piano concerts. It was built…
Tunnel Music – Eos Trio at Brunel Museum
The ArtMuseLondon team ventured to Rotherhithe Wednesday night for a fine concert in a most unusual venue – the massive iron shaft down to the Thames tunnel, the first road tunnel under the river, conceived and built by Marc Brunel, and his then unknown son, Isambard Kingdom. Known as the Eighth Wonder of the World,…
