Visual Arts Reviews
Paul Nash, Tate BritainMonday, 31 October 2016
In Monster Field, 1938, fallen trees appear like the fossilised remains of giant creatures from prehistory. With great horse-like heads, and branches like a tangle of tentacles and legs, Paul Nash’s series of paintings and photographs serve as documents, bearing witness to the malevolent lifeforce that, unleashed by their undignified end, has taken hold of these apparently dead trees. Read more... |
Adriaen van de Velde, Dulwich Picture GalleryWednesday, 26 October 2016
Oh, those dogs: just a flick of the brush, and there they are, bursting with life. Pets, hunting dogs, companions, strays: romping on beaches, or in Dutch forests, living on farms and in imagined arcadias. Adriaen van de Velde was a 17th century master of canine depiction. His frisky creatures were bit players in hunting scenes filled with horses, carriages, people and birds ready to be let loose, all set in the verdant Dutch landscape, or by the North Sea. Read more... |
Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement, Courtauld GalleryThursday, 20 October 2016
This is an inspired and beautifully curated exhibition. It is subtitled The Essence of Movement, but it could equally be called The Essence of Art. What marks it out is not only the sensitively selected and tightly focused content, but also its close exploration of Rodin’s artistic process. Read more... |
The Vulgar, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 14 October 2016
In this autumn’s Vagabonds Collection, Viktor and Rolf showed a pink top covered in hundreds of buttons and framed with elaborate furls of pale pink and blue tulle; did they intend the model to look as if she was wearing a giant vulva across her chest? For me, this is the most vulgar garment (pictured below right) in an exhibition that supposedly explores the concept of vulgarity, yet is full of extremely tasteful designs. Read more... |
Beyond Caravaggio, National GalleryWednesday, 12 October 2016
Cheekily bottom-like, their downy skin blushing enticingly, these must be the sexiest apricots ever painted. If you held out your hand, you might just be able to touch them, there in the foreground of what is thought to be Caravaggio’s earliest surviving painting. Echoing the skin tones of a boy absorbed in the act of peeling fruit, the light highlights his hands and his downcast eyes make us voyeurs in a scene of unexpected sensuality. Read more... |
The Best of Frieze Masters 2016Saturday, 08 October 2016
The fifth edition of the highly popular Frieze Masters – the quieter sibling of the boisterous contemporary Frieze Art Fair London – is underway in Regent's Park, London. This year, the fair features 133 leading galleries from around the world. Read more... |
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 Picasso so well, but we don’t. Read more... |
David Shrigley: Really Good, Fourth PlinthThursday, 29 September 2016
It was inevitable that David Shrigley's breezy new sculpture for Trafalgar Square – part of the popular Fourth Plinth Programme – would be appropriated for political purposes. As the giant seven-metre-high thumbs-up Really Good was unveiled by Mayor Sadiq Khan it was greeted with a sudden downpour, but exuded a defiant post-Brexit cheery optimism. Read more... |
Turner Prize 2016, Tate BritainThursday, 29 September 2016
While the Turner Prize shortlist can reasonably be expected to provide some sense of British art now, the extent to which British art can or should attempt to reflect a view of British life is surely a moot point. Art that is socially or politically engaged can all too easily tend towards the artless, its functionality placing it uncomfortably close to pamphleteering, with the certainties of propaganda drowning out the possibilities of art. 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 relax and enjoy this total immersion, for colour and gesture can never have been combined to such memorable effect. Read more... |
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