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Showing posts from September, 2018

The Artists Are in Revolt

The revolution won't happen overnight, but it's coming. And it will take place in 1874, when the rebels who'll become known as the Impressionists hold their first exhibition in Paris.  To see how the Impressionists got there, and what they were rebelling against, we've come to Cologne, and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, for an utterly enjoyable exhibition about the art of the 1860s and 70s that found official approval from the French state and from the traditionalist critics -- and the art that didn't. The show is entitled  1863 Paris 1874: Revolution in Art -- From the Salon to Impressionism , and this is the striking image that greets you as you enter, a painting that we've never seen before (it belongs to the Spanish central bank ) but which seems to sum up the entire topic for you in one go.  The Catalan artist Pere Borrell del Caso actually created this trompe l'oeil in 1874, completely independently of the Impressionists. It wasn't originally called

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Now or Never: Opening in October

October sees the start of a series of exhibitions that promise to be exceptional, bringing together works of art that may never again be viewable in the same place at the same time. Museums and galleries across Europe aren't stinting on the superlatives. Two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance come together at London's National Gallery for a show its director describes as "unprecedented and probably unrepeatable". Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini were brothers-in-law, and Mantegna's compositional innovations and Bellini's natural landscapes play a pivotal role in art history. With pictures loaned from around Europe and beyond, it runs from October 1 to January 27. Mantegna inspired Edward  Burne-Jones ,   and Tate Britain is giving   the late Pre-Raphaelite  his first major retrospective in London for more than 40 years. Over 150 works aim to show how Burne-Jones developed into one of the leading European, and not just British, artists

Come to the Cabaret: Magic Realism at Tate Modern

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