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Showing posts from May, 2019

Opening and Closing in June

The Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) is perhaps not very well known outside France and his homeland, but the Royal Academy in London is staging the first comprehensive exhibition in Britain, starting on June 30, of his quite varied work, which often conveys a sense of unease. Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet brings together more than 80 pictures, the majority of them loans from Switzerland. Fans of the Nabis and the German New Objectivity movement will find much to admire. Until September 29. And, of course, it's that time of year again at the Royal Academy: The Summer Exhibition , with well over 1,000 new works on show, starts on June 10 and runs until August 12. At the British Library, Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion provides an opportunity to explore the science, artistry and inventions of three of Leonardo's notebooks in another exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of his death. It brings together manuscripts owned by the library, the V&A

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall -- Anish Kapoor at Pitzhanger

Look into one of Anish Kapoor 's sculptures at Pitzhanger Manor and what do you see? Well, it definitely depends on where you're standing. Here we are in front of the two stainless-steel-and-lacquer concave circles of Glisten Eclipse in a corner of this brand new exhibition space in the west London suburb of Ealing and there's no real reflection, only the fuzziest of images in a glow of red and gold, like a couple of distant planets floating in white space. Take just half a step to the side, and you experience how the room behind you begins to be revealed. It's one of a number of disorientating, disarming moments in this hall of mirrors, displaying some of the most recent sculptures by Kapoor, known among other things for his gigantic Tate Modern installation a decade and a half ago and the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower in London's Olympic Park. This is an interactive exhibition, but there are no buttons to press or screens to swipe; this is you walking r

The Ultimate Garden Ornaments: Chihuly at Kew

Is there a more spectacular exhibition on in London at the moment than Dale Chihuly's breathtaking blown-glass creations at Kew Gardens? We doubt it. For Chihuly: Reflections on Nature , more than 30 works have been installed in the grounds and glasshouses at Kew, and the result is, for the most part, absolutely stunning. Summer Sun stands outside Kew's Palm House overlooking the lake, a huge and dazzling fire of red and orange flame that seems to writhe with its own inner life. And just inside the main gate, Sapphire Star , a shimmering modern explosion of blue and white, set in a landscape that evokes classical English parkland, recalls a globe thistle, Echinops ritro Veitch's Blue , to be precise, for the green-fingered among you. It's Kew's Temperate House, the world's largest Victorian glasshouse and a marvel of design and engineering, which reopened last year after a five-year renovation, that's the focus for much of the action, or should w

Ivon Hitchens: The Floral Becomes Abstract

A couple of weeks ago, we saw how Vincent van Gogh 's Sunflowers were enormously influential on the work of 20th-century British artists. In works by Frank Brangwyn, Jacob Epstein and Christopher Wood on display at Tate Britain, there was daring colour and brushwork, and yet their sunflowers and chrysanthemums were instantly recognisable. But we've just been to see a show featuring another British flower painter whose work is really quite different. Ivon Hitchens painted landscapes and plants inside and outside his secluded West Sussex studio with vibrant use of colour, but over a long career his canvases became increasingly abstract. Ivon Hitchens: The Painter in the Woods at the Garden Museum in London tells part of his story. Hitchens was at one stage a pretty big name: In the 1950s he had regular major exhibitions in London, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1956 and had no difficulty in finding buyers for his works. And he's right back in the spotlig

Meet the Talented Mrs Ravilious

You know Eric Ravilious , right? Those very English watercolour landscapes, understated and charming, that grace the covers of a surprising number of books. He's been the subject of a couple of exhibitions over the past few years, including one at Dulwich in 2015. But what about his wife? Bet you don't know a lot, if anything, about her. Her name was Tirzah Garwood, and as Mr and Mrs Ravilious , a quite splendid little show at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden in Essex, demonstrates, she turns out to have been a really talented artist in her own right, making wonderfully observed and often very witty drawings and wood engravings. Tirzah was a student of Eric at the Eastbourne School of Art in the late 1920s, and they married in 1930. Along with Edward Bawden and his wife Charlotte, the Raviliouses moved to Great Bardfield in Essex, not that far from Saffron Walden, in the early 1930s. And here she is, depicted by Eric in this very domestic scene from 1933, shellin

What the Dickens? Van Gogh at Tate Britain

If you were asked to name the influences on Vincent van Gogh, you'd undoubtedly mention Paul Gauguin, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and Japanese woodcuts and prints. But the novels of Charles Dickens and the foggy streets of Victorian London? Get along to the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition at Tate Britain and you will indeed find that the three years Vincent spent in England from 1873 had a big impact on his taste in art and the style and subject matter of his paintings and drawings, though maybe not quite as much as the curators seem to want you to think. Van Gogh developed those writhing brushstrokes and that hugely expressive use of colour in the south of France, not south of the Thames. Van Gogh was 20 when he arrived in London to work in an art dealer's office in Covent Garden, where he stayed for two years, crossing the river each day from lodgings in Stockwell and the Oval. He later tried to earn his living from teaching and preaching before leaving

What Colour Is That Tree? Sérusier's Talisman at the Musée d'Orsay

One of the most exciting exhibitions on in Paris at the moment is Les Nabis et le Décor at the Musée du Luxembourg, showing how Vuillard, Denis, Bonnard and others created truly stunning interior designs in the final decade of the 19th century. The Nabis took their name from the Hebrew word for prophet, and if you want to see how they were inspired, the place to go is the Musée d'Orsay, where there's a show centred on the painting that sparked an artistic revolution. It's called Sérusier's The Talisman , a Prophecy of Colour , and the picture is just 27 x 21 centimetres, painted in oil on wood by Paul Sérusier in October 1888. Sérusier was staying in Pont-Aven in Brittany with Paul Gauguin. Earlier that year, he'd been painting in a fairly conventional style, as we see elsewhere in this show, but now, as Maurice Denis related a decade and a half later, he listened to the guidance Gauguin gave him: "How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put

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