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Showing posts from October, 2024

New Exhibitions in June

Frida Kahlo: Now, there's a name to be reckoned with. More than just a painter, a global phenomenon, a superstar who died too young. And so coming to Tate Modern on June 25 we have  Frida: The Making of an Icon , surely set to be one of the most in-demand tickets in London this year. It's not so much a show about Frida, though, as about the cult of Frida: More than 30 of her works are accompanied by some 200 by contemporaries and those from later generations whom she inspired, and then there are over 200 objects exploring "Fridamania". The show had good reviews when it was on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and you've got until January 3 to catch it at the Tate.  While we're on the subject of mid 20th-century female icons whose candle burned out long before their legend ever did....  Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait  starts at the National Portrait Gallery on June 4. The Hollywood star would have been 100 years old this year, and this show, running until Sept...

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Opening and Closing in November

We're starting in London this month with a double helping of Renaissance Italy: From November 9, the Royal Academy has Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 , when the three briefly crossed paths in the Tuscan city. While sculpture and painting feature in this display of more than 40 works, the emphasis appears to be very much on creations on paper, as it is in Drawing   the Italian Renaissance at the King's Gallery, which opens on November 1. This show, which also includes Titian, promises the widest range of drawings dating from around 1450 to 1600 ever to be displayed in the UK, with about 160 by more than 80 artists. The RA exhibition closes February 16, that in the King's Gallery on March 9.  As the Renaissance in southern Europe was coming to an end, a new Golden Age was starting in India, that of the Mughal Emperors. The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at the Victoria and Albert Museum will display paintings, jewellery, clothing and more ...

Two Years in Provence

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery in London -- heavily hyped and certainly extremely popular. So is it worth the fairly hefty ticket price? Very much so. This is a beautifully put-together illustrated narrative of the two years Vincent spent in Provence, the peak period of his short career, from early 1888 to spring 1890. There are major paintings from galleries far and wide, and pictures you may never have seen before from private collections. It's not a big show -- only 61 works, just under a quarter of which are on paper -- but it is gorgeous.  From the National's description of the exhibition, with its reference to "bringing together your most loved of Van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe," you might be expecting an all-encompassing retrospective. But there are no pictures from the start of Vincent's artistic life in the Netherlands, from his time in Paris, or from his last few weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise before he died of self-inflicted g...