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Fire and Water, Sun and Sky

"Fire and water.... the one all heat, the other all humidity -- who will deny that they both exhibit, each in its own way, some of the highest qualities of Art?" That was the Literary Gazette 's verdict in 1831 on JMW Turner and John Constable, probably the most admired of all British landscape artists. Almost exact contemporaries whose work is being celebrated at Tate Britain in  Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals , a thoroughly engrossing exhibition that bathes you in the drama of Turner's golden sunlight, contrasted with perhaps the more understated charms of Constable's cloud-filled skies.  "The Sun is God" are supposed to have been Turner's last words, and throughout this show you can't get away from his solar worship -- one striking watercolour records The Sun Rising over Water . And that's it, that's all there is, but to be frank, you don't really notice the water. It's the bright yellow Sun that holds your eye,...
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Opening in March

The blockbuster is Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy at Tate Modern, which runs from March 8 to September 9. It's the first ever solo Picasso show there, and the Tate is calling it one of the most significant it's ever staged. More than 100 works will take the visitor on a month-by-month journey through a pivotal year in Picasso's life. When it was on at the Musee Picasso in Paris, this exhibition was called 1932: Année Erotique, but you can imagine the Tate might have had trouble with that for its posters on the Tube... Be warned, this show appears to set a new standard for London ticket prices at £22 (they cost half that -- 12.50 euros -- in Paris).
The National Portrait Gallery offers Victorian Giants: the Birth of Art Photography from March 1 to May 20, featuring pictures by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron. There's more camerawork at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in The Great British Seaside, including new material by Martin Parr.

Tacita Dean, who works mainly in film, will be ubiquitous this spring, with shows exploring the Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery and Still Life at the National Gallery, both on from March 15 to May 28. A third exhibition looking at Landscape opens at the Royal Academy in May.

An intriguing-sounding show at the Whitechapel Gallery promises a first view of the public artworks commissioned for London's Crossrail project. Art for the Elizabeth Line opens March 13 and runs through to May 6.

Moving outside the capital, the Ashmolean in Oxford is highlighting American art from the 1920s and 30s, with major loans from the Metropolitan Museum in New York and many works on view in the UK for the first time. Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper are among the big names in America's Cool Modernism from March 23 to July 22.
The Louvre is devoting a huge-sounding exhibition to Delacroix, with some 180 works by the French Romantic. It's the first full Delacroix retrospective in Paris since 1963 and can be seen from March 29 to July 23.

Finally, if you're in the National Gallery over the next few months and are wondering where one of the country's most iconic pictures has gone... Mr and Mrs Andrews have headed off to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg for Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape, which starts March 2 and continues to May 27.

Images

Cecil Beaton, Pablo Picasso, rue la Boétie, 1933, Paris. (c) The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's
Georgia O'Keeffe, East River from the Shelton Hotel, 1928, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (c) 2017 Artists Rights Society, New York
Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs Andrews, c. 1750. (c) The National Gallery, London

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887
–
1986)
East River from the Shelton Hotel,
1928
Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 81.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
© 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Yor
Cecil Beaton
Pablo Picas
so, rue La Boétie, 19
33, Paris
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