It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
The Weimar Republic: Germany in the 1920s. Berlin's clubs and cabarets are teeming with life amid a remarkable cultural upsurge that sees the birth of the Bauhaus and masterpieces in the new medium of film like Metropolis and The Blue Angel . But as the nation struggles to pay reparations for World War I, hyperinflation renders millions penniless and violent extremism stalks a splintered democratic system, paving the way for the Nazis to seize power in 1933. This, then, is the backdrop to Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33 at Tate Modern in London. Drawn largely from the George Economou Collection in Athens, this is a sweep through a swathe of German figurative painting and graphic works, featuring big names like Otto Dix and George Grosz but also plenty of artists you may scarcely have heard of. If you've seen Aftermath , the show at Tate Britain about British, French and German art in the wake of World War I, this exhibition will take you deeper into some of t...