Royal Academy
Sarah Kent
David Hockney has a new toy, an app designed specially for him that allows him to work on an iPad with fine brushes. He spent the first five months of lockdown In Normandy making daily records of the coming of spring; the results are displayed in a large show at the Royal Academy (★★). Seamless animation turns his still images into a continuum. As you watch the gradual transition from bare branches to full flowering, it’s as if you were looking over the artist’s shoulder while he works, which is fascinating.Then come the inkjet prints of the iPad pictures; they have the uncanny luminosity of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Even before going to art school, Tracey Emin discovered the work of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. And even though he was born 100 years before her, she embraced him as a kindred spirit. One can see why. Whether painting figures, buildings or landscapes, Munch projects onto his subjects the intense feelings of desolation, loneliness and abandonment which haunted him most of his life.When he was just five, his mother died of TB, his favourite sister following nine years later. Brought up by a neurotic father obsessed with death, he recalled an unhappy childhood in which, “The angels Read more ...
Sarah Kent
What a spooky exhibition! Léon Spilliaert suffered from crippling insomnia and often spent the nocturnal hours in the conservatory of his parents’ house in Ostend drawing his haggard features (pictured below right: Self-portrait, 1907). His shock of blond hair catches the light as it billows in an agitated swirl above his head, as though expressing a turmoil of inner disquiet. Elsewhere, he stares down at us though dark rimmed eyes, his mouth drooping open like that of a corpse, as though he were an apparition come to visit this moonlit chamber. Echoes of Edvard Munch haunt these Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Notable anniversaries provided the ballast for this year’s raft of exhibitions; none was dead weight, though, with shows dedicated to Rembrandt, Leonardo and Ruskin among the most original and exhilarating of 2019’s offerings. Happily, a number of our favourites are still running, and there’s a month left to see Rembrandt’s Light at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The show skilfully eschews gimmickry in order to explore Rembrandt’s expert manipulation of light to aid storytelling and evoke nuances of mood and atmosphere (pictured below: Rembrandt, The Denial of St Peter, 1660). Rembrandt was an Read more ...
Sarah Kent
As I write, I’m listening to Clara Rockmore intoning The Swan by Saint-Saëns. Her melancholy humming also welcomes you to Eco-Visionaries along with a globe suspended in the cloudy waters of a polluted fish tank. This simple installation by artist duo HeHe neatly pinpoints our predicament; our planet is suffocating.In the Air by Nerea Calvillo reveals the pollution hovering over the rooftops of Madrid as a coloured veil, while cars cruise along the city streets below. Electric vehicles, we are told, will solve the problem of these dangerous emissions, yet they simply shift the pollution from Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Lucian Freud died in 2011 after a career spanning some 70 odd years. Over the decades, he painted and drew himself repeatedly, creating a fascinating portrait of a man who spent an inordinate amount of time scrutinising himself and others.One of the first images in the Royal Academy’s splendid exhibition is an ink drawing made in 1949 for a book on Greek myths. Freud casts himself as Actaeon who, according to the myth, accidentally came across Diana, goddess of the hunt, bathing naked. In punishment for the transgression, she turned him into a stag to be hunted down and torn apart by her Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Félix Vallotton is best known for his satirical woodcuts, printed in the radical newspapers and journals of turn-of-the-century Paris. He earned a steady income, for instance, as chief illustrator for La Revue blanche, which carried articles and reviews by leading lights such as Marcel Proust, Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie. You can see the influence of Japanese prints in the flattened spaces, simplified shapes and unusual viewpoints that give a comic slant to scenes of Parisian life. A sudden downpour sends people scurrying for cover, hats are blown off by gusts of wind and a street is filled Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It doesn’t get better than this! Phyllida Barlow has transformed the Royal Academy’s Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries into a euphoric delight. Entering the space, you have to turn right and process through the three galleries; but by closing the end door to create the cul-de-sac of the title, Barlow has turned this somewhat prescriptive lay-out into a theatrical experience. Obliged to retrace your steps, you are rewarded by long-distance views from one gallery to another of her flamboyant sculptures. Greeting you on arrival is a vast portal (pictured below right). Perched precariously Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Its a preposterous act of hubris, isn’t it? Pairing large scale video installations by American artist Bill Viola with drawings by Michelangelo can’t possibly illuminate our experience of either art form; or can it? Are we meant to conclude that Viola is the contemporary equivalent of the Renaissance master or, conversely, that Michelangelo would have embraced video had it been available to him some 500 years ago? Both propositions are stupid and unhelpful and the idea of trying to update Michelangelo or big up Viola is distasteful. Yet despite these reservations, the juxtaposition is Read more ...
Maev Kennedy
The most touching tribute to the relationship between two giants of early 20th century art, Gustav Klimt and the much younger Egon Schiele, hangs in the first room of this fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy – Schiele’s poster for the 49th Secessionist exhibition in 1918. It shows a group of artists around a table, an empty chair at one end – that of Klimt, who had died of pneumonia in February. Schiele has included his own ramshackle self seated at the opposite end, gazing at the place which should be occupied by his friend, mentor and inspiration, not knowing that within Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Architecture is notoriously difficult to present in an accessible way and this survey of Italian architect Renzo Piano, who gave London the Shard, does not solve the problem. With 16 tables arranged in rows over two rooms, the Royal Academy show looks more like a busy office or a reading room than an exhibition. Subtitled The Art of Making Buildings, it tells the story of 16 projects from the point of view of the design team. Drawings, photographs, models, letters and magazine articles provide insight into the unique challenges posed by each commission and the solutions arrived at to Read more ...
Sarah Kent
This weekend the Royal Academy (R.A) celebrates its 250th anniversary with the opening of 6 Burlington Gardens (main picture), duly refurbished for the occasion. When it was dirty the Palladian facade felt coldly overbearing, but cleaning it has highlighted the bands of sandstone and brown marble columns that lend warmth to the Portland stone. Originally built in the garden of Burlington House as the HQ for the University of London, this Victorian edifice turns out to be rather handsome. The R.A bought the building in 2001. It is separated from Burlington House by only a few feet and is Read more ...