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Showing posts from December, 2020

New Exhibitions in October

We've got rather more modern and contemporary art than usual in our preview this month, starting with the first ever museum show in the UK of Wayne Thiebaud, the US artist who died in 2021 at the age of 101. Thiebaud made his name in the 1960s painting quintessentially American subjects -- pinball machines, hot dogs, deli counters and cakes -- in vibrant colours.  Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life  is on at London's Courtauld Gallery from October 10 to January 18.  Those sweet treats should provide enough sustenance for the short walk across Waterloo Bridge to the Hayward Gallery for  Gilbert & George: 21st-Century Pictures . This show highlights work the besuited pair have created since the start of the millennium, tackling themes such as sex, corruption, religion and death. On from October 7 to January 11, and it's perhaps one to miss if you're likely to be easily offended.  A rather different experience awaits at the British Library, in the form of...

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Opening in January, with Any Luck

Got any plans for the first month of 2021? Zoom call? Vaccination? An exhibition? Well, here's a few that are scheduled to open, if the authorities allow.  London's first big-name show of the year is at the Royal Academy. Francis Bacon: Man and Beast  looks at how the boundaries between humans and animals are so often distorted in Bacon's violent pictures. Bacon was fascinated by the subject of animal movement throughout his career. This exhibition is scheduled from January 30 to April 18.  The previous lockdown meant the curtain failed to go up in November on  Noël Coward: Art & Style  at the Guildhall Art Gallery, but the show is now slated to begin its run on January 14. The exhibition, including previously undisplayed material, is being staged to commemorate the centenary of Coward's West End debut as a 19-year-old playwright. The writer of  Brief Encounter  and  Mad Dogs and Englishmen  had a huge impact on fashion and culture in the...

What's On in 2021, Assuming Galleries Reopen....

So, 2021. What will we be able to see, where will be able to go? We're making no plans, but we're nevertheless looking forward to some interesting exhibitions across Britain and Europe in the coming 12 months. There are plenty of big names -- Botticelli, Rembrandt, Titian and Vermeer among them -- though with galleries closed yet again across much of the continent as 2020 ends and lockdowns tighten, we're only too aware of the huge coronavirus-shaped cloud of uncertainty hanging over the calendar.  Just under half of the 30 or so exhibitions we highlighted in our 2020 preview were either postponed till this year or later, if not cancelled altogether. In a spirit of vaccine-fuelled optimism and with fingers firmly crossed, here's a selection of key shows for your diary, in more or less chronological order. January  What more hopeful way to start the year than with a picture of a summer evening by the sea? It's by Peder Severin Krøyer, one of the leaders of the artist...