It might seem a bit odd travelling to Madrid to see an exhibition by a Scandinavian artist.... but the Swede Anders Zorn made the journey to Spain nine times in his career. He wasn't a painter we'd been familiar with, the Swedes lagging some way behind their Nordic neighbours in our art explorations; we'd been intrigued by the idea of seeing a retrospective of his work in Hamburg late last year but didn't make it, so we seized the chance to view the same show at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid under the title Anders Zorn: Travelling the World, Remembering the Land . Zorn, who lived from 1860 to 1920, was a big name in his day, and it's easy to appreciate why from this exhibition. He had fantastic technique and worked in a broad range of genres, famed particularly for his portraiture. But he's quite difficult to pigeonhole, and as for some of his early subject matter, it really is rather sickly sweet. As the exhibition title spells out, Zorn explored the worl...
Newly knighted Grayson Perry has one of the highest profiles in the art world, not just as a creator of pottery and tapestries, but as an author and television presenter, commenting on the big issues of our time. So no wonder the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh is staging the biggest ever exhibition of Perry's work over the summer, looking back at a 40-year career. Grayson Perry: Smash Hits is on from July 22 to November 12. On a distinctly smaller scale, you can explore Victorian Virtual Reality at the Watts Gallery in Compton, near Guildford. It's a look at the 19th-century craze for stereoscopic photographs that allowed images to be viewed as if in three dimensions, and it contains more than 150 pictures from a collection built up over the decades by the Queen guitarist Brian May. This one runs from July 4 right through to February 25 next year. Our next couple of shows are all about travels by the Impressionists, and our first stop is at the Musée des impressionism...