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Tales of the Unexpected in Southampton

There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in  Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it's the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it's free!  Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent. So let's start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stoppe...
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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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