Visual Arts Reviews
Birth of a Collection: The Barber Institute, National GalleryFriday, 31 May 2013
Lady Barber (1869-1933) née Hattie Onions, had her portrait painted in sumptuous style about 30 times, mostly in a sub-Orpen vein, and almost all by the unknown Belgian Nestor Cambier. But that was the very least of her occupations. Her husband, the lawyer Sir Henry Barber (1860-1927), had made a fortune in Birmingham property, and became quite the gentleman. Read more... |
Master Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, OxfordSunday, 26 May 2013
Michelangelo evidently regarded drawing as the foundation of not only painting and sculpture but of “architecture and of every other kind of painting and the root of all science”. His all-encompassing claim is subtly demonstrated in this captivating exhibition of five centuries of western European drawing. The anthology sweeps through the years from the old masters to 20th-century stars, concentrating indeed on mastery. Read more... |
Helen Chadwick, Richard SaltounTuesday, 21 May 2013
It's 17 years since Helen Chadwick died without warning of heart failure at the tragically early age of 42 and nine years since the Barbican staged a retrospective of her work. Time, then, for a reappraisal and this small but beautifully presented exhibition at Richard Saltoun’s gallery contains enough gems to remind us of the beauty, wit, intelligence and originality that made the artist and her work so very inspiring. Read more... |
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC FourMonday, 20 May 2013
You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the years following his death in 1969. Read more... |
Mariele Neudecker, Regency Town House, BrightonSunday, 19 May 2013
Mariele Neudecker is the lead artist of this year’s HOUSE, a festival for the visual arts which is now in its sixth year and which runs parallel with the Brighton Festival. She's a fitting choice: an immersive exhibition in a beautiful wreck of a Regency house by the sea complements her long-held fascination with the watery sublime. Read more... |
Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, British LibraryFriday, 17 May 2013
Every time you turn a corner, he’s there, on yet another monitor. Either the exhibition curators have a sense of humour, or Alastair Campbell really is the last word on propaganda, a subject about which the British Library has mounted an excellent and occasionally provocative exhibition. Read more... |
Leon Kossoff: London Landscapes, Annely Juda Fine ArtFriday, 10 May 2013
Sixty years of hard work, encapsulated in 90 drawings and a handful of thickly encrusted paintings, by the distinguished, obsessive, single-minded octagenerian artist Leon Kossoff (b 1926) vividly set out a passionate attachment to a simultaneously immutable and ever changing London. An East Ender, Kossoff has had several subjects: he has painted people, and has continually drawn after the Old Masters, first visiting the National Gallery as a schoolchild. Read more... |
Great Artists: In Their Own Words, BBC FourThursday, 09 May 2013
After the marvellous Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words, the BBC has once again rummaged through its documentary archives, this time to see what artists have to say for themselves. Artists are often not the most loquacious breed, which is why they communicate best in the language of images and objects. But it can certainly be instructive to get the lowdown straight from the horse’s mouth, even if it ends up being all performance and no insight. Read more... |
Mamma Andersson / Andreas Eriksson, Stephen Friedman GalleryMonday, 06 May 2013
With their curious juxtapositions and scrambling of pictorial space a dream-like atmosphere is conjured in Mamma Andersson’s paintings. Her scenes are often confined to the domestic or everyday realm, but, even when peopled, suggest something closer to still life than real life. Or perhaps stilled-life. The Swedish painter (Mamma is a nickname), now in her 50s, received welcome exposure in the UK with her Camden Arts Centre retrospective in 2007. Read more... |
William Scott: Divided Figure, Jerwood Gallery, HastingsThursday, 02 May 2013
Down by the seaside, an array of rather lumpen large naked women are marching, posing, reclining, and even rolling over along the walls of the new Jerwood Gallery, delineated by William Scott (1913-1989). Scott’s centenary is being commemorated with an array of exhibitions and publications in Britain and America, and the market too is revving up with the publication of a four-volume catalogue of his oil paintings. Read more... |
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