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…
Tag: Exhibition review
‘Rembrandt’s Light’ lights up Dulwich
A new show has opened for autumn at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It’s called Rembrandt’s Light. It’s intelligent, empathetic, surprising and at one point breathtaking, and I urge you all to go and see it as soon as possible. Dulwich, the UK’s earliest purpose-built public picture gallery (it was founded in 1811), was designed…
‘Mrs Pollock’ breaks free of her husband’s shadow in a vibrant burst of colour and energy
Lee Krasner: Living Colour so good you would not know it was done by a woman – Hans Hofman For too long the artist Lee Krasner (1908-1984) lived in the overbearing shadow of her alcoholic husband, Jackson Pollock, in both life and death. Yet when they met in 1941, she was already developing a significant…
Love In a Creative Climate
Artistic duos tend not to receive the attention they deserve in art history. We often read about the art movements and the artists who create them. The artist’s partner or lover meanwhile is often overlooked, or simply seen in terms of a muse. An ambitious exhibition at the Barbican, entitled Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy…
Edward Burne-Jones at Tate Britain
It feels like the right moment to reacquaint oneself with the work of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. In our uncertain times, escapism provides relief and comfort, and when you enter EBJ’s dreamscape world of myth and fantasy, you move beyond the petty preoccupations and ugly politics of our world now. This is the first large show…
Objects from the inside out: Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain
It’s not often that one gets to see the inside of a hot water bottle, but there are plenty of opportunities to do so at the major new exhibition of Rachel Whiteread’s work at Tate Britain. She calls these ‘Torsos’ and describes them as “headless, limbless babies”. Cast in a variety of materials – plaster,…
An added poignancy to Howard Hodgkin’s ‘Absent Friends’
Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends – National Portrait Gallery, London The title of the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition of portraits by British artist Howard Hodgkin has an added poignancy: called ‘Absent Friends’, the show opens just two weeks after the artist died at the age of 84, and thus Hodgkin himself is an absent friend…
Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts
The centenary of the Russian Revolution will be commemorated by a plethora of exhibitions large and small in London during 2017. Among them will be two undoubted blockbusters. In November Tate Modern will launch ‘Red Star over Russia’, a survey of over fifty years of Soviet visual culture; first off, though, is the Royal…
