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Showing posts from October, 2024

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 ...
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Opening and Closing in November

We're starting in London this month with a double helping of Renaissance Italy: From November 9, the Royal Academy has Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 , when the three briefly crossed paths in the Tuscan city. While sculpture and painting feature in this display of more than 40 works, the emphasis appears to be very much on creations on paper, as it is in Drawing   the Italian Renaissance at the King's Gallery, which opens on November 1. This show, which also includes Titian, promises the widest range of drawings dating from around 1450 to 1600 ever to be displayed in the UK, with about 160 by more than 80 artists. The RA exhibition closes February 16, that in the King's Gallery on March 9.  As the Renaissance in southern Europe was coming to an end, a new Golden Age was starting in India, that of the Mughal Emperors. The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at the Victoria and Albert Museum will display paintings, jewellery, clothing and more ...
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Two Years in Provence

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery in London -- heavily hyped and certainly extremely popular. So is it worth the fairly hefty ticket price? Very much so. This is a beautifully put-together illustrated narrative of the two years Vincent spent in Provence, the peak period of his short career, from early 1888 to spring 1890. There are major paintings from galleries far and wide, and pictures you may never have seen before from private collections. It's not a big show -- only 61 works, just under a quarter of which are on paper -- but it is gorgeous.  From the National's description of the exhibition, with its reference to "bringing together your most loved of Van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe," you might be expecting an all-encompassing retrospective. But there are no pictures from the start of Vincent's artistic life in the Netherlands, from his time in Paris, or from his last few weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise before he died of self-inflicted g...
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