Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2023

Opening and Closing in May

Which Japanese artist had the greatest influence on the West at the end of the 19th century? Perhaps not so much Katsushika Hokusai , despite The Great Wave ; maybe more Utagawa Hiroshige, four decades younger and the last great exponent of the ukiyo-e tradition, with his stunningly framed landscapes. From May 1, you have the chance at the British Museum in London to experience Horoshige's world, which ended just as Japan started to open up to the outside. Featuring a large body of work from a major US collection,  Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road  is on until September 7. And also at the British Museum, a second new exhibition explores the origins of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist sacred art, going back at least 2,000 years. More than 180 objects from the museum's collection as well as items on loan will be on display.  Ancient India: Living Traditions  runs from May 22 to October 19.  If you enjoyed the colour and swagger of the John Singer Sargent show at Tate ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Subscribe to updates

Opening and Closing in January

Let's start the New Year in Edinburgh, with two of the biggest names in Pop Art.  Eduardo Paolozzi, perhaps the pioneer of the genre with his collages from the late 1940s, was born in the Scottish capital a century ago, and you can see a retrospective of his varied work from January 27 in National Galleries Scotland's Modern Two building. Paolozzi at 100 is on until April 21.  Meanwhile, in Edinburgh's Old Town, Dovecot Studios will be presenting an exhibition of Andy Warhol's colourful commercial textile designs, dating back to the 1950s, before he found fame in New York. Andy Warhol: The Textiles is on from January 26 to May 18, when it might just be warm enough for you to enjoy an ice-cream sundae, if your tastebuds have been tickled by Warhol's fabric.  Rembrandt's earliest known works from the time when he was starting out as a painter in Leiden are pictures depicting four of the senses, and they're brought together at the city's Lakenhal museum f...
Post a Comment
Read more

What's On in 2024: Surreal Impressions

In 2024, we'll be marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition and the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. There'll be lots more shows focused on women artists. It's 250 years since the birth of the great German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, and Roy Lichtenstein was born 100 years ago. We've picked out some of the exhibitions coming up over the next 12 months that have caught our eye, and here they are, in more or less chronological order.  February Let's start at Ordrupgaard on the outskirts of Copenhagen with Impressionism and Its Overlooked Women , described by the gallery as a "magnificent exhibition featuring works from across the world". The show focuses on five female artists, including Berthe Morisot , Mary Cassatt and Eva Gonzalès , as well as some of the models who featured in the most iconic Impressionist paintings. The exhibition is on in Denmark from February 9 to May 20, after which it transfers to the Na...
Post a Comment
Read more

Henry VIII's Incomparable Artist

In the eyes of the French poet Nicholas Bourbon, a visitor to England in the mid-1530s during the reign of Henry VIII, Hans Holbein was an "incomparable painter". There's another splendid chance to appreciate the German's unparalleled skill as a portraitist in  Holbein at the Tudor Court at the Queen's Gallery in London, though this exhibition is less a celebration of Holbein the painter -- there are only half a dozen or so large-scale paintings by him in this show -- than of Holbein the draughtsman.  It's these astonishing works that down nearly five centuries have brought to life the characters who were making history during the great upheaval of Henry's reign.  Nicholas Bourbon is there in front of you. As is Thomas More, the hint of stubble on his cheeks picked out in black chalk, the sheen on his fur collar highlighted by leaving the paper blank. We've seen these portraits before, of course, but they never fail to amaze. Henry's reign is whe...
Post a Comment
Read more