Royal Academy
From Life, Royal Academy review - perplexingly aimlessMonday, 11 December 2017
Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from... Read more... |
Matisse in the Studio, Royal Academy review - a fascinating compilationFriday, 04 August 2017
A 19th-century silver and wood pot in which to make chocolate, pertly graceful; 17th-century blue and white Delftware; a Chinese calligraphy panel; a 19th-century carved wooden god from the Ivory Coast; a bronze and gold earth goddess from South-... Read more... |
Michelangelo's Madonna and ChildSunday, 16 April 2017
Michelangelo's Taddei tondo, which depicts the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John in a rocky landscape, is the only Michelangelo marble in Britain. Currently one of the stars of the National Gallery's Michelangelo & Sebastiano show, it is... Read more... |
America After the Fall, Royal AcademyThursday, 23 February 2017
It may be a cliché to say that this is a “timely” exhibition, but America After the Fall invites irresistible parallels with Trump’s America of today. The exhibition showcases American painting of the 1930s, documenting the intense anxiety... Read more... |
Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932, Royal AcademyMonday, 13 February 2017
This must be the most depressing exhibition I have ever seen. Dedicated to the leaders of the Russian Revolution, the first room features official portraits by Isaak Brodsky of Lenin and Stalin plus drawings and models of Lenin’s vast mausoleum in... Read more... |
Best of 2016: ArtThursday, 29 December 2016
Before we consign this miserable year to history, there are a few good bits to be salvaged; in fact, for the visual arts 2016 has been marked by renewal and regeneration, with a clutch of newish museum directors getting into their stride, and... Read more... |
Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans, Royal AcademyTuesday, 08 November 2016
James Ensor? Who he? A marvellous Anglo-Belgian artist (1860-1949) little known outside Belgium, whose masterpiece, The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, 1888, is a trophy painting at the Getty, California. It is present here in his own print... Read more... |
Abstract Expressionism, Royal AcademySaturday, 24 September 2016
Gorgeous, sumptuous, thrilling: here comes Abstract Expressionism riding into town, the first major overview in London since its own contemporary heyday in the 1950s. A clunky, unappealing label for such fabulously appealing stuff, it's best just to... Read more... |
David Hockney RA: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life, Royal AcademyFriday, 01 July 2016
The opening image of this new David Hockney exhibition – a sketchily painted portrait of a seated man, slumping heavily forward, his head buried in his hands – could be a portrait of Brexit despair. In fact it is Hockney’s portrait of his close... Read more... |
Opinion: Paintings with nothing to lose but their framesFriday, 18 March 2016
The dazzling, controversial, fascinating exhibition In the Age of Giorgione at the Royal Academy inadvertently provides a striking example of an unavoidable and perhaps insoluble problem common to almost all exhibitions of painting – especially... Read more... |
In the Age of Giorgione, Royal AcademySaturday, 12 March 2016
Much is made of the mystery surrounding Giorgione, a painter of pivotal influence, about whom, paradoxically, we know almost nothing beyond the manner of his death. He died in a Venetian plague colony in 1510 aged about 33, and was as elusive in the... Read more... |
Painting the Modern Garden, Royal AcademySunday, 31 January 2016
Painting the Modern Garden explores the interstices between nature and ourselves as revealed in the cultivation of gardens, that most delightful and frustrating of occupations, and an almost obsessive subject for many artists. About 150 paintings... Read more... |
