We've got rather more modern and contemporary art than usual in our preview this month, starting with the first ever museum show in the UK of Wayne Thiebaud, the US artist who died in 2021 at the age of 101. Thiebaud made his name in the 1960s painting quintessentially American subjects -- pinball machines, hot dogs, deli counters and cakes -- in vibrant colours. Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life is on at London's Courtauld Gallery from October 10 to January 18. Those sweet treats should provide enough sustenance for the short walk across Waterloo Bridge to the Hayward Gallery for Gilbert & George: 21st-Century Pictures . This show highlights work the besuited pair have created since the start of the millennium, tackling themes such as sex, corruption, religion and death. On from October 7 to January 11, and it's perhaps one to miss if you're likely to be easily offended. A rather different experience awaits at the British Library, in the form of...
The highest-profile opening in London this January? It might well be Francis Bacon: Man and Beast at the Royal Academy. Starting on January 29, this exhibition will focus on Bacon's fascination with animals, featuring pictures in which the boundaries between humans and animals are constantly blurred. Spanning his entire career, the show will include a trio of bullfight paintings never before exhibited together. If your New Year's resolution is to go vegetarian, this one may be a bit on the fleshy side. Until April 17. For something perhaps a bit less unsettling, head to Room 1 at the National Gallery to see Gainsborough's Blue Boy . Thomas Gainsborough's full-length canvas of a child was exhibited at the National for three weeks in 1922 before sailing across the Atlantic to the Huntington Library in California. It's a painting that's long had a hold on the imagination; it's been frequently referenced in Hollywood movies, and now it's being loaned out b...