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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 December

The Dutch Golden Age wasn't just Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer. A little further inland from the North Sea, the painters of Utrecht -- Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerard van Honthorst -- pursued a very different course, echoing the drama and light effects pioneered in the far south of Europe by Caravaggio. That's the theme of Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht from December 16 to March 24, with 60 loans from across Europe and the US. Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ from the Vatican can be seen for the first four weeks of the exhibition.
At the Petit Palais in Paris, there are two shows that are a little out of the ordinary. The strange dream-like images of late 19th-century Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff are the subject of a major retrospective in an exhibition subtitled The Master of Enigma. Even odder are the drawings of Jean Jacques Lequeu, who died in poverty in 1826 having created his own architectural fantasy world. Both shows start on December 11 and run to March 17.

Vienna's Leopold Museum reopens on December 6 after a month of rebuilding with the excellent Egon Schiele show still on and a couple of new exhibitions starting that day as well. Most notably, Gustav Klimt and the other great Viennese Jugendstil exponent Koloman Moser feature along with pioneering Expressionist Richard Gerstl in Klimt Moser Gerstl until March 10.

Meanwhile, another Austrian Expressionist, Oskar Kokoschka, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, gets a retrospective at Zurich's Kunsthaus. This show, which is being staged in collaboration with the Leopold in Vienna, runs from December 14 to March 10 and will have some 200 exhibits, covering every stage of Kokoschka's long career.
Not many openings in December; normal service resumes in the New Year.

Images

Caravaggio, The Entombment of Christ, 1602-03. © Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City
Oskar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait with Crossed Arms, 1923, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Photo: © Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz/PUNCTUM /Bertram Kober © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/2018 ProLitteris, Zurich
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