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,…

Just add water: Monet and Architecture at the National Gallery

Monet was born a city-boy, in Paris, but grew up to be the great philosopher-artist of the rural (haystacks) and the bucolic (his lily-pond). Aside from his mirage-like studies of the front of Rouen cathedral, you don’t think of him in relation to architecture, or as having been inspired by the hustle and bustle of…

Iconoclassics with Anthony Hewitt – Classical music in an iconic jazz venue

The Jazz Room in Barnes, SW London, affectionately known as “the suburban Ronnie’s Scotts” (and almost as longstanding as the eponymous Soho jazz club), resonated to a different vibe on Sunday evening when internationally-renowned pianist Anthony Hewitt – an artist more used to playing in hallowed gilded spaces such as the Wigmore or Carnegie Halls…

Picasso’s ‘Year of Wonders’ at Tate Modern

Picasso’s output was so vast and so diverse that exhibition organizers tend to focus on just one aspect of his work. His portraits, for example, were covered in a show at the NPG in 2016 and  last year’s ‘Minotaurs and Matadors’ at Gagosian was about his fascination with bullfighting. Now Tate Modern – in what,…

All too human curating at Tate Britain

Tate Britain’s new exhibition ‘All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a century of painting life’ is about art based on everyday experience. A very British preoccupation, you might think, if the story of twentieth century painting in this country is anything to go by. Unfortunately, this interesting premise is marred by some very questionable curating decisions,…

ArtMuseLondon recommends…… ‘Phantom Thread’

Phantom Thread, the latest film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master) is an intense, beautifully-crafted meditation on creativity and obsession. Said to be Daniel Day-Lewis’s final film before he retires (he has stated this is the case and he’s not given to changing his mind),…

Lousy king, outstanding connoisseur of art: Charles I at the Royal Academy

  Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’, which last year smashed the record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, was not considered one of the jewels of Charles I’s art collection. During the Interregnum, when ‘the late king’s goods’ were disposed of by the republican government, it was sold to a mason –…

A feast of art in London in 2018

ArtMuseLondon is a tender one year old. We launched this site in 2017 as a place where we could write what we wanted to about the art and music we’re enjoying in London. Freed from an overseeing editor or a publication’s “house style”, we aim to write informed, intelligent and above all honest reviews. Last…