Category: Exhibitions
"All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally."
January 3 2012
In a riposte to those artists who rely on others to make their work for them (Koons, Hirst et al), David Hockney has ensured that his forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy is preceded by the above statement. He also said, in The Guardian;
"I used to point out, at art school you can teach the craft; it's the poetry you can't teach. But now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft."
Sounds like a pretty accurate summary of what's wrong with art schools these days.
The Leonardo queue...
December 22 2011
Picture: BG
...gets longer and longer. This morning it started in Trafalgar Square, then snaked up behind the Sainsbury Wing, before coming back on itself and then continuing inside. If you're having to queue to for tickets, follow my earlier advice and buy the catalogue first; by the time you get to front you'll be fully prepared for the exhibition. It's either that or at least two chapters of War & Peace...
The Vermeer effect
December 22 2011
Picture: Louvre
In case you haven't seen it yet, Vermeer's Women at the Fitzwilliam Museum closes on 15th January. The exhibition has drawn record crowds, with 130,000 people filing past the Louvre's Lacemaker since October. It has been so popular that the opening times have been extended for the last two weeks of the show.
Coming soon at Dulwich - Van Dyck in Sicily
December 19 2011
Video: Dulwich Picture Gallery
An exhibition bringing together all the works by Van Dyck from his time in Palermo. I literally cannot wait. Here's Xavier Solomon giving a sneak preview. Opens 15th February 2012.
Winter exhibition in Zurich
December 14 2011
Picture: Musee d'Orsay (C) RMN
Here's an enjoyable idea for an exhibition, 'Winter Tales', which will look at winter landscapes in art. The exhibition will take place at the Kunsthaus Zurich from 10th February to 29th April 2012. Monet's The Magpie (1868/9) will be one of the loans. To see others, there's an excellent preview website here.
Monet's water lilies go to Liverpool
December 14 2011
Picture: Fondation Beyeler
A new exhibition next year at Tate Liverpool will bring together five Monet water lily paintings for the first time in the UK. The show will open 22nd June till 28th October. From the Tate's press release:
The Water-Lily Pond c1917-19 lent by the Albertina, Vienna, and Water Lilies 1916-19, lent by Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Basel are the works which will go on show for the first time in the UK. They will join three other Monet water-lily paintings in the exhibition: Water Lilies 1916 from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Water Lilies 1907 from Göteborgs Konstmuseum; and Water Lilies after 1916, on loan from the National Gallery to the Tate Collection. This will be the first time that five of Monet’s water lilies have been brought together in the UK for over a decade.
Tate Liverpool has gone for a blockbuster here, for the exhibition will be called Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings. The justification for assembling three fairly randomly connected big names runs thus:
Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings will examine the art historical links and affinities between three artists who were all considered radical painters in their time, suggesting common characteristics and motivations underlying their late style. The exhibition will explore their shared fascination with light, landscape, the sublime and mythology as well as the painterly qualities of their work, whether as makers of figurative or abstract images. Displaying over sixty works, the exhibition will treat each artist in considerable depth, with rooms juxtaposing the works of two, or all three, of the artists. Works by Monet and Twombly will be drawn from museums and private collections across the world, while works from Tate’s Turner Bequest will be supplemented by loans from American museums.
New Raphael acquisition at Staedel
December 13 2011
Picture: Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, [called] Raphael & Workshop, 'Portrait of Pope Julius II', 1511/12, Oil on poplar panel, 105.6 x 78.5cm.
The Staedel Museum in Frankfurt has acquired what it says is a newly discovered version of Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II. The original is in the National Gallery, London. The Staedel says their new version is painted by Raphael and his workshop. Full details available in the press release here.
Key to their conclusions are the apparent changes visible in the picture, as revealed in the x-rays and infra-red photographs: [more below]
Damien Hirst - there's much, much more to come
December 13 2011
Picture: Prudence Cuming Associates
Artinfo has an amusing article about Damien Hirst's forthcoming 'Spot' exhibitions. In it, Hirst is quoted on the subject of how many works he produces:
[Hirst] gave a bizarre but intriguing anecdote to the L.A. Times about working with Larry [Gagosian]: “I remember Larry once phoned me up, and he said he was worried about my production,” Hirst told the paper. “He said: You are making too many paintings. And then, at the end of the conversation, he said: We need more paintings.”
Hirst's tale does touch on an important question about the upcoming show: what effect will this flood of spot paintings have on Hirst’s market? The artist doesn’t seem too concerned. “I've looked at the amount of artworks I've made in my life: 4,800, not including prints,” he told the Times. “I know Warhol did 10,000 not including prints, and Picasso did 40,000. So I have a way to go.”
Yikes.
What's going on at Tate Britain?
December 12 2011
Picture: BG
I don't usually like to start Monday with a rant, but yesterday I went to Tate Britain - and left scratching my art historical head. What a curious hang. Acres of wall space devoted to 20th Century works, and precious little to anything pre-1800. Tate Britain is meant to be the home of British art from 1500 onwards. But at the moment it feels more like Tate Modern Lite. To take two random artists; there are 3 works by Hogarth on display (out of 20 paintings in the collection), but 8 by Graham Sutherland.
Of 29 rooms open for viewing, only 3 can meaningfully be said to focus on works from pre-1800. Of these three, one room is a sparsely hung 'theme' room on 'Atlantic Britain', one is split into two small temporary exhibitions (good ones, on Rubens & Britain and the Protestant Church post 1660), while the final room, admittedly the largest in the gallery, also includes works up to 1850 and is so badly lit you can't see many of the pictures. (As you can see from the photo above, it's a bad idea to hang glazed works up high...)
It is true that a number of rooms at Tate Britain are closed for renovation, and this has led to the current re-hang. But the new spaces won't be open till 2013, and the current marginalisation of British art from pre-1800 may be seen as a worrying indicator of the direction of travel. In the meantime, it might be an idea to hang some works in the central Duveen galleries (above), currently empty. To see how such a space might work, the best example is the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (below).
New Scottish National Portrait Gallery
November 30 2011
Video: SNPG
Kenneth Clark once said:
The faces which look out at us from the past are the surest indication we have of the meaning of an epoch.
I wonder, can you say the same for ‘a nation’? It was a question I thought of going round the newly renovated Scottish National Portrait Gallery on Monday. Did the ranks of Scottish faces, from 1500 to the present day, tell me anything about the meaning of the Scots? Not really.
Still, the new portrait gallery is one of the most impressive galleries I’ve ever been to. The video above gives you a good glimpse of what treats await the first visitors tomorrow. There are of course all the benefits of a new gallery you could wish for, zippy cafes, clever architecture, new lighting, clear labels, display cases in which you can actually see and get close to the contents, and a well-stocked shop.
But the gallery is impressive not just because of the £17m they’ve just spent rebuilding the place, and the 60% increase in works on display. It works well because the staff have used the recent closure to think cohesively about their collection, and how best to use it to tell the story of Scotland’s history. Each of the galleries now has a clearly defined narrative, so that, for example, the story of the Jacobites is well told in a single space, with all the relevant sitters you could wish for. Perhaps most importantly, they have managed to do this without resorting to an over-cluttered hang. Where the Portrait Gallery’s own collection has a gap, the curators have gone out and secured loans.
What I liked most was the inventiveness of the presentation. For example, there is a death mask of Dolly the Sheep, the world’s first cloned animal (who was born at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh). The traditional approach might have been to hang a portrait of Dolly’s scientific creators. But having a cast of Dolly’s own head tells that part of the story of Scotland’s scientific history far more effectively. And in a room in which you can look out over the Firth of Forth, there is a display of Scotland’s role in the Naval battles of the Great War, supplemented with an important series of loans from the Imperial War Museum of naval scenes by John Lavery, including dreadnoughts in the Firth of Forth. This creative approach to telling Sotland’s story means, I suspect, that most visitors will find the new gallery a much more refreshing and enjoyable place than a traditional portrait gallery.
Highlights include: the cleaned murals in the entrance hall by William Hole; a room devoted to George Jameson, Scotland’s first eminent (and alas not always very good) portraitist; one of the best portraits Allan Ramsay ever painted; a ditto by John Michael Wright; the definitive portrait of Walter Scott by Raeburn; a photograph of ‘Subo’ (yes, she’s in); an intimadating portrait miniature of Mary Queen of Scots' husband, James Bothwell; an unusually accomplished self-portrait by Jack Vettriano (proving my theory that artists are usually at their best when they paint themselves); one of the most original medical portraits you'll ever see (by Ken Currie); one of Van Dyck's finest portraits, the study for two of Charles I's daughters; and too many others to list here…
So, go and see the new gallery soon. I went up to Edinburgh for the day, which you can do in quite a civilised way on the train (4.5 hrs), giving enough time for tours round the Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. Stay the night and you can fit in Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.
'The man who didn't like the Leonardo exhibition'
November 29 2011
Picture: H M Bateman
A curious review of the Leonardo exhibition from Theodore K. Rabb in The Art Newspaper. He says the exhibition 'falls short'. Gripe no. 1, the Sainsbury Wing is a poor exhibition space:
Many words have been written about the gloom of the basement galleries in the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery. This is not the place to repeat them, save to say that it is especially hard on a master of delicate light and shade.
Gripe no. 2, it's better to see the drawings in the catalogue than in the flesh (no, he really says this):
By their very nature, they require close attention, which is notoriously difficult in the crowds at a large exhibition. Framed and hung on walls, they are certainly easier to see than in horizontal cases, where the viewer’s shadow tends to obscure the object. But it remains impossible at the exhibition to emulate the experience offered by the catalogue, where one can flip back and forth in intimate connection between a drawing and its application in a painting. This may well be an insuperable problem, especially with an artist like Leonardo, who liked to jot down his perceptions all over a sheet, but the advantage of the catalogue in this case is notable.
And Gripe no. 3 (with which I have some sympathy), the two Madonnas of the Rocks should have been hung side by side:
Especially when the room is full of people, it becomes impossible to get more than the vaguest idea of how Leonardo changed his mind over the years. An explanation that has been reported is that the Louvre picture, dark and unrestored, would have suffered from too close a comparison with the more vivid, recently cleaned National Gallery panel. That such considerations (or any other that might be put forward) should have been allowed to rob viewers of an unrepeatable opportunity to look at two related masterpieces side by side prompts the profoundest of regrets.
Another British masterpiece ends up at the Getty
November 29 2011
Picture: Getty
This time not as a purchase, but as a loan. George Stubbs' Brood Mares and Foals sold at Sotheby's in 2010 for £10.1m. More details of the loan over at the Getty's blog.
Scotland awaits...
November 26 2011
Picture: Scottish National Portrait Gallery
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is to reopen next week after a £17.6 million renovation. The gallery officially opens on 1st December - but as ever Art History News readers will get a sneak preview! I've been lucky enough to secure a guided tour on Monday, and I will report back to you on Tuesday.
In the meantime, over in The Scotsman Tim Cornwell has the full and fascinating story on the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's battle for survival some twenty years ago, when there was a dastardly plan to close the gallery, and move the collection to Glasgow. The trustees of the Scottish National Galleries wanted to create a seperate gallery of Scottish art. I wasn't aware just how close it came, but in the end the day was won by the Portrait Gallery's supporters, and the gallery's then director, Dr. Duncan Thomson. And now Duncan, one of the great figures in Scottish art history, has published a new history of the Portrait Gallery, which you can buy here.
Anyway, here's a little Scottish history for you: the portrait above shows a tartan-clad Bonnie Prince Charlie by William Mosman. On this day in 1745 Charles entered Preston, in Lancashire, at the head of his Scottish army, and pronouced his father, James III, King, apparently to 'the loudest acclamation of the people you can imagine'. Sadly for some, Charles ended his invasion when he turned back from Derby, and was eventually defeated at the Battle of Culloden. His portrait now will be one of the stars of the new Scottish National Portrait Gallery - and let's hope that next week it is once again greeted with the loudest acclamation of the people you can imagine.
What might have been...
November 25 2011
Picture: Forte di Bard
An exhibition of 80 works from the Prince of Liechtenstein's art collection will open on December 9th at the Forte di Bard near Turin. There's a little video of some of the highlights here: Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Cranach, Canaletto, Brueghel etc. etc. Looks pretty amazing. This is presumably the show that we were due to get at the Royal Academy at the end of 2010 - but which the Prince cancelled after HM Customs seized a Sanchez Coello he had bought. Swizz...
What those Leonardo queues mean
November 24 2011
Picture: BG
A reader writes:
The National Gallery could insist you bring the credit card you paid for the tickets with, like music venues are supposed to (but never do). Has there ever been art ticket-touting like this? You could see it as a culturally healthy sign. People being mugged for tickets would be even better.
I'm sure it's only a matter of time...
If you like Artemisia Gentileschi, and speak Italian...
November 24 2011
Then you'll love this video from the new Artemisia exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Read a review of the exhibition here.
Things you can't quite believe they meant
November 23 2011
You will be able to see the skull in a completely different context, without the hype and speculation. We all think we know this work through the media. But if you are actually with the work, and can experience it, smell it, and I shouldn’t say this, but touch it – it will be very different.
Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern, speaking as part of the hype and speculation over the forthcoming Hirst retrospective.
National Gallery - ban resale of Leonardo tickets
November 23 2011
Picture: BG
Following reports that tickets for the Leonardo exhibition are trading on Ebay for hundreds of pounds, the National Gallery has announced that resold tickets will be cancelled, and entry refused. From BBC News:
"We are obviously very disappointed at the resale of these tickets for profit," a spokeswoman said. "The resale of tickets for the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is against the terms and conditions of their sale and this information is printed on the tickets.
"Our website clearly states: 'Tickets that have been resold will be cancelled without refund and admission will be refused to the bearer.'"
The spokeswoman said the gallery is contacting companies and websites that are accommodating ticket resales, requesting that they "stop immediately".
But she declined to comment on which methods are being used to identify resold tickets.
The last paragraph here is obviously rather important: the sad fact is, there is no conclusive way of detecting who has bought a resold ticket. So there's very little the Gallery can do...
Complaint of the day
November 22 2011
A reader has tipped me off about a letter in yesterday's Daily Mail. A Mr Powell, of Frimley, Surrey, was complaining about the cost of entry to the Uffizi gallery, and the queues. He then added:
"We thought the Uffizi gallery overrated. More than half the paintings were of the Crucifixion or the Adoration of the Magi. It was like reading the same story in several different newspapers. We won't be returning."
I think this must be the best art historical whinge I've ever read. And exactly what you might expect to find in the Wail...
Leonardo didn't paint 'Lady With an Ermine'!
November 22 2011
Picture: Princess Czartoryski Foundation
I'm indebted to a reader for alerting me to another piece of incisive art history in the letters pages of our national press. This is from Pauline Wood, of Ibstone, Buckinghamshire, in today's Daily Telegraph:
Sir,
In the painting Lady with an Ermine, currently on display at the National Gallery’s Leonardo exhibition, the lady’s right hand is out of proportion with the rest of her body (detail, below). If you measure from her wrist to the tip of her longest finger and transfer that measurement to her face, it reaches from her chin almost to the top of her head. My hand only reaches from my chin to the middle of my forehead.
Given Leonardo’s knowledge of anatomy, I find it difficult to believe that he would have made this error. I am not an expert or even an artist, but dare I suggest that this painting may be by one of his students?
In case you too are doubting the picture, go see the Leonardo exhibition, where you will not only understand all about foreshortening, but also see countless preparatory drawings. In fact, Leonardo liked the hand so much he used it twice; it appears in The Last Supper. And before you try putting your hand on your face to see if the Telegraph writer's theory is correct, and that a human hand cannot be larger than a human head, remember that her measurement has been taken from the back of Leonardo's sitter's hand, at the base of the bent wrist. This gives a measurement of at least an inch longer than if you measure from the base of your palm to your fingertip.
Anyway, I feel an Art History News prize coming on - for the most bonkers art historical theory of the year. Any suggestions for the title, or indeed the prize?
