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Showing posts from December, 2020

New Exhibitions in February

Georges Seurat devised the Neo-Impressionist painting technique popularly known as Pointillism. He didn't live long and left only a small body of work, of which seascapes were a recurring motif; a couple of dozen paintings and drawings from summers spent on the northern coast of France will be brought together for  Seurat and the Sea   at the Courtauld Gallery in London from February 13 to May 17. Lucian Freud gained recognition as one of the greatest of British portrait painters for his intensely observed works, often of nudes. From February 12 to May 4, the National Portrait Gallery is putting on  Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting , which will be the first exhibition in Britain to focus on his creations on paper, some of which have never been on public display before.   Ramses and the Pharaoh's Gold  is a travelling exhibition of treasures from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities: 180 of them, with the coffin of the long-lived Ramses II among highlig...

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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...