Everybody loves a bargain when they're out shopping, don't they? Here's a tip: Get over to Normandy this summer for a great-value exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen. And it's all about shopping: Merchandise as Spectacle: Art and Retailing 1860-1914 . Because even if you're not a fan of trailing round the shops, this is a fascinating slice of art and social history packed with paintings, posters and film. And they're practically giving it away! As cities took on a new shape in the 19th century, department stores were one of the modern wonders of the urban scene; along with railway stations they were the cathedrals of the Victorian age. And like cathedrals and railway stations, they were a motif that drew the modern artist. This is one of the great Parisian stores, Le Bon Marché, as seen by the Swiss-born Félix Vallotton . Obsequious mustachioed salesmen show off their fabrics to the choosy female customers. There's hardly room to squeeze your
In London, the Royal Academy gives a new lease of life to one show that was interrupted by the coronavirus lockdown and celebrates the delayed start of another.
The interrupted show looks at Léon Spilliaert, an artist whose finest work stems from his years at home in Ostend at the start of the 20th century, wandering the Belgian port city at night, haunted by insomnia and stomach troubles. It was the last exhibition we reviewed before lockdown, and Spilliaert really couldn't be a better symbol for social distancing, pictured alone in his studio or capturing the eeriness of deserted streets or beaches. August 5 to September 20.
Two days after the Spilliaert show restarts, the RA welcomes Gauguin and the Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Denmark, which is currently undergoing renovation. There are 60 works on show, with Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro and Morisot among the other artists represented. This exhibition runs until October 18. Royal Academy opening hours are currently severely restricted, and with the number of visitors allowed in per hour limited, tickets for both these shows will be scarce.
On August 10, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford will be reopening, with limited tickets available for Young Rembrandt, the story of how an initially not particularly brilliant young artist from Leiden worked his way to the very top. Seeing Rembrandt blossom into one of the greatest painters of all time makes for an absolutely absorbing exhibition; we thought it was the best thing we saw in all of 2019 when we caught it in Leiden in the autumn. The run in Oxford will continue until November 1.
At the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, the doors open to the public again on August 5, allowing for the resumption of Barnett Freedman: Designs for Modern Britain, a look at one of the most prominent commercial designers of the middle of the 20th century. Freedman worked on posters, stamps and book covers, and this is the first major retrospective for more than 60 years, running till November 1.
One of the most striking works of art produced in 1920s Germany is Ernst Barlach's Floating Angel, a mesmerising bronze sculpture that we were lucky enough to see in the Tate's show on the Aftermath of World War I a couple of years ago. Now the Albertinum in Dresden is staging the first ever comprehensive overview of Ernst Barlach on the 150th Anniversary of his Birth, with a focus on his wood carving. It's on from August 8 to January 10.
From the Albertinum in Dresden to the Albertina in Vienna, where the curtain goes up on August 27 on Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse: The Hahnloser Collection, featuring about 120 works from one of the most important private assemblies of late 19th- and early 20th-century French art. The renovation of the collection's normal home in Winterthur in Switzerland offers the Austrian capital a chance to admire paintings by the likes of Vuillard and Bonnard as well as outstanding Swiss painters such as Ferdinand Hodler and Félix Vallotton. The Vienna show runs until November 15.
Of course, you may be asking yourself, is it safe to actually go and see an exhibition? Maybe you're better off just going for a drive. The Dutch have the answer: a pop-up show in Rotterdam, the Boijmans Ahoy Drive-Thru Museum. The venue is the Ahoy conference and event centre (site of this year's cancelled Eurovision Song Contest), the art is from the Boijmans van Beuningen museum, currently undergoing a makeover. You book a timeslot in an electric car and drive at minimal speed round a vast exhibition hall to see around 50 artworks, with Oskar Kokoschka and Anselm Kiefer among those featuring. August 1-23.
Last chance to see....
Do check museum websites for booking details, opening times and conditions of entry, as these vary greatly.
Images
Léon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait, 1907, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed, 1630, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Félix Vallotton, The White and the Black, 1913. © Photo: Reto Pedrini, Zurich
George Stubbs, Whistlejacket, 1762. © National Gallery, London
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