The Art Exhibitions Blog

There's so much Surrealist art in the sprawling  Surrealism  show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris that you're unable to take it all in. When you reel back out into the daylight of the tubular walkway on level 6, high above the square below, you'll struggle to recall everything you've seen. Like a half-remembered dream....  Yes, dreams, forests, monsters, alchemy, the occult, genesis, Alice in Wonderland, all those stimuli on which the Surrealists drew are examined in detail, in a show marking the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. It's overwhelming, an assault on the senses, right from the start. And it's crowded, even more so than the Caillebotte exhibition just across the Seine at the Musée d'Orsay, and that's saying something. We really can't pretend that we took in more than a fraction of the explanations as to why the Surrealists were moved to produce what they did, but what we do recollect are some astonishing works of art. Because...

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 ...

Leonora Carrington was always a rebel. The potted biography at the start of  Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth tells how she was "asked to leave" not just one but two convent boarding schools and then ran off at the age of 20 with the much older Surrealist painter Max Ernst.  She was still rebelling in her 90s, but as so often happens, the rebels see themselves vindicated, even if only posthumously. A Carrington painting made in 1945, Les Distractions de Dagobert , sold for $28.5 million earlier this year, the highest amount ever paid for a work by a female British artist. Now, to be honest, we've never been huge fans of the paintings of Carrington, probably Britain's leading Surrealist, finding them a bit ethereal and wispy. But this show in West Sussex has a strong focus on her late work, particularly sculpture, and these creations, merging influences from myriad religions, mythologies and cultures, prove to have real heft. W...

Some of Britain's most prestigious museums and art galleries will be open again within weeks, although the visitor experience looks set to be very different. In London, the National Gallery and the Tate have just announced their plans, and it's the National Gallery that will be back in action first, on July 8. There will be timed tickets, limited visitor numbers, initially shorter opening hours, specific routes through the galleries, more efficient air-conditioning, and they'd like you to wear a face covering. Titian: Love, Desire, Death , the show of the reunited Titian series depicting classical myths that was open for just three days before lockdown, is now back on, extended until January 17. And continuing until September 20 is the free show about Rembrandt's pupil  Nicolaes Maes , the painter whose most memorable contribution to the Dutch Golden Age is the witty sub-genre depicting mistresses eavesdropping on their servants. We saw it last year in The Hague. ...

If surrealist art is all about exploring the subconscious, well then, Dorothea Tanning seems to have had quite a lot of subconscious to explore. An exhibition looking back on her 70-year career at Tate Modern in London reveals an artist who came late to surrealism but who probably created more memorable and disturbing images than any other of the rare women who were able to gain a foothold in what was a rather male-dominated movement. Tanning was born in 1910 in Galesburg, a small town in Illinois, where, she said, "nothing happened but the wallpaper." She went to Chicago and New York in search of a career as an artist and came across surrealism in a New York exhibition in 1936. Just before World War II she travelled to Paris, but the outbreak of war forced her back across the Atlantic. In 1942, she met the German surrealist artist, Max Ernst , her future husband, who saw this picture on her easel on their first encounter. Ernst suggested the title, Birthday , to ma...

The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition  this year is a little bit special: It's the 250th, and Grayson Perry heads the committee that's picked the 1,200 or so art works on show from June 12 to August 19. Concurrently, the RA is putting on The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition telling the story from Joshua Reynolds to the present day. There are two linked shows at the National Gallery as well, running from June 11 to October 7. Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire  is the first exhibition in the UK devoted to the British-born American landscape artist inspired by Turner and Constable (tickets can be had for less than £10 on weekdays, so the National is clearly not expecting Monet-size crowds.) At the same time, there's a free display with Ed Ruscha 's modern take on Thomas Cole's work in Room 1. Tate Britain marks the centenary of the end of World War I by examining the immediate impact on British, French and German art.  Aftermath , running from ...