The Art Exhibitions Blog

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 , "...

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...

As you might expect, there's a fair bit of both Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon in All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life at Tate Britain in London. But we've had quite a lot of both these big names on show recently, so you might get more out of it discovering something different from other artists in this exhibition. The premise, according to the Tate, is that the show "celebrates the painters in Britain who strove to represent human figures, their relationships and surroundings in the most intimate of ways." There's a certain feeling, though, that this show is made up of a number of disparate bits that don't quite hang together. And you wonder how David Hockney doesn't get a look-in in a survey of the last century of British figurative painting. The period before 1945 gets fairly short shrift as well, knocked off quickly in the first of 11 rooms. There are two Stanley Spencers on each side of the entrance door, both of his second ...

Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon are the stars of Tate Britain's big overview of British 20th-century figurative painting, All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life , which starts on February 28 and runs until August 27. It promises about 100 works, with Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and Frank Auerbach among the other artists featured.  Over at the National Gallery, a small free display in Room 1 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Bartolome Esteban Murillo by showcasing his only two known self-portraits. They can be seen from February 28 to May 21. Dulwich Picture Gallery's new exhibition is devoted to the Canadian artist David Milne, a contemporary of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, the subjects of an enlightening Dulwich show a few years ago. David Milne: Modern Painting  opens February 14 and is on until May 7. The Victoria & Albert Museum has a new show looking at the golden age of luxury sea travel: Ocean Liners: Speed & ...