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Knowing Me, Knowing You

Self-portraits; now, we've seen quite a lot of exhibitions of those over the years. You know how Rembrandt or Vincent van Gogh saw themselves. But how do artists depict other artists? What happens when Peter Blake meets David Hockney, when Eric Ravilious takes on Edward Bawden? Answers can be found at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in a very interesting and illuminating exhibition entitled  Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists .  And sometimes the artist you see is a different artist from the one you might be expecting. When Mary McCartney photographed Tracey Emin in 2000, what came out was Frida Kahlo. McCartney felt a close affinity with the Mexican artist, and so did Emin, whose controversial My Bed had just been shortlisted for the Turner Prize. McCartney said she'd had a daydream of Emin as Kahlo, who spent a lot of time in bed herself as a result of her disabling injuries.  Emin was made up and dressed for the shoot, and then, according to McCartney , "...
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Opening and Closing in August

With the summer holidays in full swing, August is almost inevitably the quietest month of the year for new art shows, but we do have to highlight one absolutely superb exhibition that's opening, as well as another stunning show that's coming to an end.

It's the 250th anniversary in 2024 of the birth of the great German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich, and the next in a series of commemorative retrospectives gets under way at the Kunst Museum in the Swiss city of Winterthur on August 26. Caspar David Friedrich and the Harbingers of Romance features some of the artist's most iconic pictures, including the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, as well as taking a look at the landscape painters who went before him, such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain. We got to see this show in Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria in the spring and absolutely lapped it up. It's on in Winterthur until November 19.  

You only have until August 13 to get to the National Gallery in London to see After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, which provides a crash course in developments in art from the late 19th century up to the start of World War I. Cezanne, Rodin, Gauguin, van Gogh, Klimt, Munch, Pointillists, German Expressionists, Braque, Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian are all highlighted, as well as some more surprising artists, particularly from Barcelona. A really satisfying exhibition, with much we hadn't seen before. 

Images

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, c. 1824, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, June 1888, Private collection
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