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Showing posts from July, 2022

The Fabric of Faith

We must confess that religious paintings are not our favourite subject, and we've tended to regard Spanish Catholic art as being, well, just a little too religious to cope with. So we approached the Francisco de  Zurbarán  exhibition at the National Gallery in London with a certain amount of trepidation. A degree of contrition is due.... Yes, there were monks, altarpieces and lots of saints, but we were blown away by Zurbarán's ability to depict textures and fabrics and to convey an intensity of feeling.  It's an absolutely excellent exhibition, full of truly beautiful paintings. Such religious art was intended to bring the faithful closer to God, to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth, in an age when many could not read. Zurbarán was a master at it. Let's start with a saint: Just take a look at the fabrics, trimmings and gems in this picture. And the garments are even more striking when you are stood in front of this nearly life-size figure.  This is Casild...
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Opening and Closing in August

One of the most stunning objects in the recently ended World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum was this exquisite Bronze Age golden sun pendant, uncovered in Shropshire only in 2018. The breathtaking piece is now embarking on a national tour , starting at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro from August 6 to November 5 and moving on to Lincoln, Sunderland and Stornoway over the course of the next 14 months.  August is generally a quiet period for exhibition openings, but there are two shows starting in Germany before the end of the month that are well worth highlighting. One is a treat for enthusiasts of German Expressionism: The Museum Folkwang is marking its 100th anniversary in Essen with a show examining the history of its extensive collection of Expressionist art -- very German but banned by the Nazis as degenerate. Expressionists at Folkwang features around 250 works, including loans from elsewhere, and runs from August 20 to January 8. It's only 40 minutes by tr...
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Sickert: From Music Hall to Pop Pioneer

Walter Sickert -- the gloomiest, murkiest of English artists? We've definitely been a little too harsh.  There's certainly a fair bit of gloom and murk in the big Walter Sickert exhibition at Tate Britain, but there's a lot that's much lighter and full of entertainment. From Sickert's inventive music-hall scenes, this fascinating show takes you through luminous townscapes and on to a revelatory final room that shows the painter in his later years as an unwitting pre-war pioneer of Pop Art.  And let's hear it for the Tate for once; we've sometimes found the way they curate their exhibitions infuriating -- the Hogarth and Europe show this past winter was in thrall to political correctness -- but this one is beautifully and logically put together; a straightforward retrospective, and all the better for it.  The first two rooms of the eight in the exhibition look at Sickert's self-portraits and his apprenticeship years in the 1880s (his early stuff, under ...
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