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Showing posts from October, 2018

A Queer Tale of Deception

Truth is often stranger than fiction, isn't it? Head to the newly opened venue of Charleston in Lewes for  Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story , an exhibition that relates a piece of art history that, you have to say, would make a good film.  And here are the two principal characters: Dorothy, on the left, a talented graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art , and her fellow student, friend, lover, partner and collaborator Patricia, perhaps not quite so talented, but both passionate about art.  The photograph seems to tell you a lot. Dorothy looks a little bit awkward and ill at ease, slightly frumpy, androgynous even. Patricia appears confident, glamorous, exuberant, perhaps a little.... possessive? But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to establish the plot....   The rather retiring Hepworth and the outgoing, gregarious Preece became inseparable as students, and they planned to set up a studio together after graduation. In 1922, Preece took exam
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Opening in November

This year marks the centenary of the deaths of both Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele , and Vienna has been celebrating both with exhibitions. Now, it's London's turn to get in on the act, and drawings from one of the Austrian capital's great museums, the Albertina, are heading to the Royal Academy. Klimt/Schiele  starts November 4 and runs through to February 3. At the National Gallery, there's a show devoted to one of the great portraitists of the Italian Renaissance, Lorenzo Lotto , known for his rich symbolism and psychological depth. This free exhibition is on from November 5 to February 10. Another free display at the National, starting November 29, centres on Edwin Landseer's Monarch of the Glen , that most romantic emblem of the Scottish Highlands (or a dreadful piece of Victorian kitsch?), which was bought for the nation from drinks giant Diageo last year. Other Landseer works and Peter Blake's version of the Monarch are also on show until February
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Marvellous Monet: Vienna's Autumn Surprise

What, another Claude Monet exhibition? It's true, the Monet market does seem a bit saturated at the moment, but this one, at Vienna's Albertina museum, is really very good. And, what's more, it's packed with paintings from galleries in places like Moscow, Boston, Cleveland, Gothenburg and Liege that you're not very likely to have just dropped in on recently. The show has been organised with the support of the  Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris and brings together 100 works for what is essentially a straightforward Monet retrospective. The idea is to demonstrate how he moved from realism to Impressionism and on to a way of painting that prefigured abstraction. So no big new idea, just an extremely enjoyable survey of his career. The first room illustrates how those early realistic works -- views of Harfleur in Normandy and of Paris -- gradually developed towards what we would recognise as an Impressionist style: Here's the Boulevard des Capucines in the capita
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Mantegna and Bellini: Brothers-in-Law, Rivals in Art

It's a great story. Two brothers-in-law, with two competing visions of art: one from Venice's greatest family of painters, the other the son of a carpenter. In their early years they found inspiration in each other's work; while Andrea Mantegna's is full of invention, theatre and painterly tricks, Giovanni Bellini's is less intricate but more emotionally charged. For decades afterwards, they worked apart, in different cities; then Giovanni was called on to complete Andrea's final commission, one he was unable to finish before he died. As you make your way through Mantegna and Bellini at London's National Gallery, you find yourself weighing up the respective merits of these early Renaissance painters. Mantegna perhaps shades it in the first few rooms, but Bellini puts in a strong finish. This is, it has to be said, quite an intense exhibition, not one in which you can drift through easy-on-the-eye landscapes, wonder at the realism of still lives or admir
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Klimt in Vienna: Skip the Show and Head for the Kiss

There are some outstanding exhibitions on in Vienna at the moment ( Bruegel and Schiele , to name but two). Unfortunately, Gustav Klimt: Artist of the Century at the Leopold Museum isn't up to the same standard. For a stunning Klimt experience, far better to head to the Belvedere, where you can see not just The Kiss , but a lot of other great paintings too. The Leopold is marking the 100th anniversary of the deaths of both Klimt and Schiele this year, but unlike the Schiele show in the basement, the Klimt retrospective is a bit muddled and not very well laid-out. If, like us, you know a bit but not a lot about Klimt, you'll find it somewhat confusing and irritating. And much of the really good stuff has stayed in the Belvedere, which has the biggest collection of Klimt works in oil. In the first room, the curators give you a detailed biography of the artist, a man who loved a lot of women and fathered quite a lot of children. It's a bit of a shock to learn that Consue
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Bruegel in Vienna: Life, Death, Snow and Leapfrog

All human life is here -- and death too. The reaper is coming to get you. In Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Triumph of Death , there is no hope. From the king in the bottom left-hand corner, to the mother and child, the pilgrim, the soldiers, even the lovers on the bottom right: They're all doomed. A man dressed in red, his mouth agape, tries to draw his sword to fight back, but it looks to be stuck in its scabbard. Armies of skeletons are on the march. Resistance is useless. There's so much detail in Bruegel's apocalyptic vision in paint that you could spend a long time trying to take it all in. And there are a couple of dozen paintings on this scale in the Bruegel exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, as well as intriguing drawings and engravings -- the first ever comprehensive show about the greatest Netherlandish painter of the 16th century, so give yourself a few hours; this is not a show to be rushed. The Triumph of Death has travelled from Madr
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Schiele in Vienna -- Still So Modern a Century On

A century after Egon Schiele's death, his art is still too shocking for some. Last year, the Vienna tourist board's posters advertising the centenary with images of his nudes were only allowed on the London Underground with the naughty bits covered up . And, as Egon Schiele: The Jubilee Show -- Reloaded at the Leopold Museum in Vienna shows in a thoroughly splendid exhibition, many of the Austrian Expressionist's works remain startlingly fresh. How far ahead of his time he must have seemed before World War I. Warning: There is no censorship in this show or in this blog post. Here he is, bequiffed and staring moodily out at you in this  Self-Portrait with Striped Shirt  made in 1910, the year he turned 20. You feel he could have just got off a tram at the Karlsplatz with a skateboard tucked under his arm. Or what about this? As if dancing to some throbbing beat under the influence of mind-altering substances, the artist portrayed himself in the same year as a  Kneel
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