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Showing posts from September, 2018

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Self-portraits; now, we've seen quite a lot of exhibitions of those over the years. You know how Rembrandt or Vincent van Gogh saw themselves. But how do artists depict other artists? What happens when Peter Blake meets David Hockney, when Eric Ravilious takes on Edward Bawden? Answers can be found at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in a very interesting and illuminating exhibition entitled  Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists .  And sometimes the artist you see is a different artist from the one you might be expecting. When Mary McCartney photographed Tracey Emin in 2000, what came out was Frida Kahlo. McCartney felt a close affinity with the Mexican artist, and so did Emin, whose controversial My Bed had just been shortlisted for the Turner Prize. McCartney said she'd had a daydream of Emin as Kahlo, who spent a lot of time in bed herself as a result of her disabling injuries.  Emin was made up and dressed for the shoot, and then, according to McCartney , "...

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Now or Never: Opening in October

October sees the start of a series of exhibitions that promise to be exceptional, bringing together works of art that may never again be viewable in the same place at the same time. Museums and galleries across Europe aren't stinting on the superlatives. Two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance come together at London's National Gallery for a show its director describes as "unprecedented and probably unrepeatable". Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini were brothers-in-law, and Mantegna's compositional innovations and Bellini's natural landscapes play a pivotal role in art history. With pictures loaned from around Europe and beyond, it runs from October 1 to January 27. Mantegna inspired Edward  Burne-Jones ,   and Tate Britain is giving   the late Pre-Raphaelite  his first major retrospective in London for more than 40 years. Over 150 works aim to show how Burne-Jones developed into one of the leading European, and not just British, artists...

Come to the Cabaret: Magic Realism at Tate Modern

The Weimar Republic: Germany in the 1920s. Berlin's clubs and cabarets are teeming with life amid a remarkable cultural upsurge that sees the birth of the Bauhaus and masterpieces in the new medium of film like Metropolis and The Blue Angel . But as the nation struggles to pay reparations for World War I, hyperinflation renders millions penniless and violent extremism stalks a splintered democratic system, paving the way for the Nazis to seize power in 1933. This, then, is the backdrop to Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33  at Tate Modern in London. Drawn largely from the George Economou Collection in Athens, this is a sweep through a swathe of German figurative painting and graphic works, featuring big names like Otto Dix and George Grosz but also plenty of artists you may scarcely have heard of. If you've seen Aftermath , the show at Tate Britain about British, French and German art in the wake of World War I, this exhibition will take you deeper into some of t...