National Portrait Gallery
Picasso Portraits, National Portrait GalleryThursday, 06 October 2016
There’s something familiar about those dark, piercing eyes, but the impenetrable, mask-like countenance of Picasso’s Self-Portrait with Palette, 1906, is ultimately unknowable. In fact, the painting serves as something of a rebuke: we think we know... Read more... |
William Eggleston Portraits, National Portrait GallerySaturday, 23 July 2016
American photographer William Eggleston is famous for dedicating himself to colour photography at a time when it was still considered kitsch – acceptable for wedding and Christening photos, but not much else. The best known example of his embrace of... Read more... |
Russia and the Arts, National Portrait GalleryMonday, 21 March 2016
A good half of the portraits in Russia and the Arts are of figures without whom any conception of 19th century European culture would be incomplete. A felicitous subtitle, “The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky”, provides a natural, even easy point of... Read more... |
Vogue 100, National Portrait GalleryMonday, 15 February 2016
When it got too hard to ship the original American edition across the Atlantic during the Great War, British Vogue appeared as a sister publication in the Condé Nast empire. The first issue in September 1916 announced in its editorial: “The time has... Read more... |
Yolanda Sonnabend: designer of MacMillan's 'neurotic' balletsMonday, 16 November 2015
Ever since Diaghilev’s day the relationship of dance movement to its visual design has been a lively, sometimes combative affair. Sometimes people leave whistling the set, saying shame about the dance; other times they hate the set, love the dance.... Read more... |
Portraits from the 2015 Taylor Wessing PrizeSaturday, 14 November 2015
At first glance David Stewart’s Five Girls 2014, the winning entry in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, is a very ordinary scene. Five young women sit behind a table, obligatory mobile phones within reach and lying amongst the... Read more... |
The Face of Britain by Simon Schama, BBC TwoThursday, 29 October 2015
This was the fifth and last in a series of hour-long programmes amounting to a vivid, varied and extraordinarily lively history of Britain. Although ostensibly a history of portraiture, the images have been hooks for Simon Schama, that most... Read more... |
Giacometti, National Portrait GallerySunday, 18 October 2015
Any number of puzzling and fantastical stories were told by Alberto Giacometti in the construction of a personal mythology that helped secure his reputation as an archetypal artist of the avant-garde. Less heroic than the oft-quoted accounts of his... Read more... |
Cornelius Johnson, National Portrait GallerySaturday, 02 May 2015
It’s far too easy to think about the history of art as a series of class acts, with one superlative achievement following another. Exhibitions tend to encourage this view, and the notion of a superstar artist is key to persuading us that the latest... Read more... |
Wellington: Triumphs, Politics and Passions, National Portrait GallerySunday, 22 March 2015
One masterpiece and two superb portraits both dominate and sum up in vivid fashion the complex personality, long life and astonishing trajectory of the first Duke of WellingtonThere were something like 200 portraits done in his lifetime. The... Read more... |
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2014, National Portrait GallerySunday, 16 November 2014
It is hard to know whether the thematic and stylistic threads running through this year’s Taylor Wessing Prize are evidence of some general shift in approach, or simply reflect the judges’ tastes. In any case, where last year’s shortlist featured... Read more... |
Grayson Perry: Who Are You?, Channel 4Thursday, 23 October 2014
The night before he was locked up, Chris Huhne had that Grayson Perry round for tuna steaks. Who knew? Perry was embarking on a series of portraits about identity at a crossroads, and can there be a more public crisis of identity than a Cabinet... Read more... |
