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Showing posts from November, 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 December

"Here she comes/You better watch your step/She's going to break your heart in two/It's true." Lou Reed wrote the song ; Now the Kunsthalle in Hamburg brings you the pictures. Femme Fatale: Gaze -- Power -- Gender  looks at how painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists and Impressionists among them -- developed the image, as well as how modern women artists have attempted to reinterpret it. With around 200 exhibits, it's on from December 9 to April 10.  Our preview this month is very much centred on Germany as that is where most of the openings are this December. In Berlin, the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg is looking back a full century to the premiere of the seminal horror movie with Phantoms of the Night: 100 Years of Nosferatu . The curators explore how FW Murnau's 1922 film drew on sources such as Goya and Caspar David Friedrich and how this silent movie went on to influence the Surrealists as well as popular culture d...
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Without Hands

It's a story of triumph over adversity.  And an amazing piece of social history too. This is the tale of a woman who overcame severe disability to make a career out of painting, and not in modern times, but two centuries ago. There's a free exhibition all about her at the Philip Mould gallery in central London. It's called  "Without Hands": The Art of Sarah Biffin , and it's fascinating. Sarah Biffin was born into a farming family in Somerset in 1784, with neither arms nor legs, according to baptism records. She suffered from the same condition as the contemporary artist Alison Lapper , famously immortalised by Marc Quinn on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. She was well known enough in Victorian times to have been mentioned on several occasions in the novels of Charles Dickens, but then she somehow faded from view.  Given the child mortality rates in the Georgian era, it would be wonder enough that a severely disabled baby like Sarah Biffin reached adul...
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They Came from the South

They left their troubled homeland to seek a new life in the North, refugees fleeing poverty, war and religious persecution. But unlike many modern asylum-seekers, they didn't actually travel that far, just from Flanders to Holland. And they spoke the same language, more or less.  Their destination was Haarlem, and the thousands who arrived there from the Spanish-ruled southern Netherlands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries would change the face of the city, its art and architecture for ever. They included its most famous painter, and their legacy is highlighted in an exhibition called  Newcomers  at the art gallery that bears his name, the Frans Hals Museum.   Not surprisingly, it's Hals himself who is the star turn in this exhibition that provides an intriguing lesson in art history and Dutch history. There are nine of his paintings on show here, seven of them loaned from elsewhere. This one -- Two Fisherboys -- is a picture that really makes an im...
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The Rhino that Made the Grand Tour -- Twice!

It's not easy being an international celebrity; you need a thick skin. Luckily, Clara was a rhinoceros.  But even though she was feted as she toured Europe, Clara lived a lonely life. Her mother was killed when she was captured by hunters in Assam at the age of just one month in 1738. For the next 20 years until her death, she never saw another rhino. She can't actually have known what she looked like.  The story of this 18th-century animal superstar is told at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in  Clara the Rhinoceros . It's an exhibition for art-lovers, animal-lovers and history-lovers, and it's absolutely fascinating and fun.  And let's introduce you to the star of the show: Clara herself. Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted her in Paris in 1749, life-size. She was 11 years old, 3.6 metres long and 1.7 metres tall; and she weighed more than 2 1/2 tonnes. Yes, that painting is life-size; just try to imagine it on your wall.  What made Clara so special? Well, hardly anyone ...
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Gustav Klimt, Borrower of Ideas

Gustav Klimt was not as original a painter as you might think. For the proof, head to  Golden Boy Gustav Klimt  at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It's a terrible title, but a really engrossing and eye-opening exhibition, showing you exactly how much Klimt's work was influenced not just by some of the other big names in late 19th- and early 20th-century art such as Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Rodin and Edvard Munch, but also by painters you tend not to mention in the same breath: Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Franz von Stuck and, er, Jan Toorop.  Jan Toorop? Yes, if you're looking for the inspiration for Klimt's dreamy, sensual  Water Serpents , with their flowing hair and accompaniments of golden stars, flowers and fish, look no further than along the wall, where The Dutchman's The Three Brides , created a decade earlier, hangs.  Toorop's Symbolist drawing is by no stretch of the imagination as seductive or memorable an image as Klimt's painting, but you only have ...
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Hockney Puts Things in Perspective

So, here's a weird thing:  Hockney's Eye at Teylers Museum in Haarlem isn't an easy exhibition. In fact, you have to think quite hard and look closely to get your head round David Hockney's exploration of different perspectives in art, alternative ways of seeing. But it is an extremely enjoyable and rewarding experience.  We didn't get to visit this show when it was on at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Heong Gallery in Cambridge earlier this year, but we jumped at the chance during an autumn visit to the Netherlands to explore what looks to be a rather smaller version. It was worth the wait.  If you're hoping for classic 1960s and 70s Hockney like A Bigger Splash or Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy , you've come to the wrong exhibition. To be sure, there's a very jolly Self-Portrait from last year of the artist in flat cap and garish check suit, poised with his brush, as you come in, but seeing becomes far less straightforward quite quickly.  Take  Viewers ...
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