Skip to main content

Rembrandt & van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion

It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola. But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of  Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion , one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show wi...
Post a Comment

Subscribe to updates

Picasso: Twice as Pricey at the Tate as in Paris

It's getting more expensive to visit London's big art exhibitions, with prices in 2018 crossing the £20 mark. The Picasso 1932 show at Tate Modern starting in early March looks to be setting a new benchmark.

The headline price for tickets to Picasso, described by the Tate as "one of the most significant shows the gallery has ever staged", will be £22, or £25 including a Gift Aid donation. The exhibition is a joint effort with the Musée Picasso in Paris, where it's just finished its run. In Paris, though, full-price tickets cost just 12.50 euros, or £11, half the London level.
Exhibition prices at the Tate have been hovering just under the £20 mark recently. The Modigliani show on Bankside and the Impressionists on Millbank both cost a headline £19.70 (£17.70 without a Gift Aid donation), while the Bacon and Freud show starting at Tate Britain on February 28 is £19.50 (though it's £17 if you book in advance).

Both the recent Cezanne show at the National Portrait Gallery and the outstanding Charles I exhibition at the Royal Academy have cost £18 without a Gift Aid donation, £20 with.

The National Gallery is adopting a similar trend. You'll pay £20 during the week and £22 at weekends to see Monet & Architecture starting there in April, though tickets are £2 cheaper if booked online.
Consumer prices in Britain have risen about 7% in the past five years. By comparison, tickets for Tate Modern's big spring show appear to have more than doubled. The Roy Lichtenstein retrospective in 2013 cost £14.

We asked the Tate to comment on the pricing for Picasso, but so far it hasn't responded.

How do the big shows on the Continent compare? The Louvre is doing Delacroix starting next month and is charging 15 euros, while you can get into the Rubens exhibition at the Städel in Frankfurt for 14 euros during the week.

Is more than £20 for an art show expensive? Not necessarily. Compared with a couple of hours spent at a top sporting event or the theatre, it's good value. And West End cinema tickets are not far off £20 these days either. The big question is whether these £20 blockbusters will live up to their billing....

Images

Pablo Picasso, Nude in a Black Armchair (Nu au fauteuil noir), 1932, Private collection, USA. (c) Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017
Claude Monet, The Water-Lily Pond (Le Bassin aux nymphéas), 1899. (c) The National Gallery, London

Pablo Picasso
Nude in a Black Armchair (Nu au fauteuil noir)
1932
Oil paint on canvas
1613 x 1295 mm
Private Collection, USA
© Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Opening and Closing in October

There's been a spate of exhibitions over the past few years aimed at redressing centuries of neglect of the work of women artists, and the Italian Baroque painter  Artemisia Gentileschi is the latest to come into focus, at the National Gallery in London, starting on October 3. Most of the works have never been seen in Britain before, and they cover a lengthy career that features strong female figures in Biblical and classical scenes, as well as self-portraits. Until January 24.  Also starting at the National on October 7 is a free exhibition that looks at Sin , as depicted by artists from Diego Velázquez and William Hogarth through to Tracey Emin, blurring the boundaries between the religious and the secular. This one runs until January 3.   Tate Britain shows this winter how JMW Turner embraced the rapid industrial and technological advances at the start of the 19th century and recorded them in his work. Turner's Modern World , starting on October 28, will inclu...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Thrill of Pleasure: Bridget Riley

Prepare yourself for some sensory overload. Curves, stripes, zig-zags, wavy lines, dots, in black and white or colour. Look at many of the paintings of Bridget Riley and you're unable to escape the eerie sensation that the picture in front of you is in motion, has its own inner three-dimensional life, is not just inert paint on flat canvas, panel or plaster. It's by no means unusual to see selections of Riley's paintings on display, but a blockbuster exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh brings together 70 years of her pictures in a dazzling extravaganza of abstraction, including a recreation of her only actual 3D work, which you walk into for a perspectival sensurround experience. It's "that thrill of pleasure which sight itself reveals," as Riley once said. It's a really terrific show, and the thrill of pleasure in the Scottish capital was enhanced by the unexpected lack of visitors on the day we went to see it, with huge empty sp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Angelica Kauffman: Breaking Through the 18th-Century Glass Ceiling

In the late 18th century, Angelica Kauffman was famous throughout Europe, one of the leading international painters of the day. A success in London, Venice and Rome, she attracted commissions from Catherine the Great, the Emperor of Austria and the Pope. She was a close friend of Goethe, a founding member of Britain's Royal Academy. When she died in 1807, her lavish funeral in Rome drew enormous crowds. A far from ordinary life, then. And for an 18th-century woman in the male-dominated world of art, an utterly extraordinary one. She achieved equal pay, got women wearing trousers, drew male nudes and even had a pre-nup. It's a story that's arrestingly told in  Angelica Kauffman: Artist, Superwoman, Influencer , a fine exhibition now on at the Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf that will be heading to London, and naturally the  Royal Academy , this summer. Kauffman was born in Chur in eastern Switzerland in 1741 and was a child prodigy, not just as a painter but also as a singer...
Post a Comment
Read more