What a lot of new exhibitions this October! We list well over 20 across Europe below -- many more than usual -- and have still had to leave out quite a few that we'd mention in most other months in order to keep this post to a reasonable length. Let's start at the Royal Academy in London with deep blue seas, cloudless skies, intense light and the heat of the sun. From October 2 to January 31, you can experience the excitement Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and many others felt while Painting the French Riviera . The exhibition features more than 160 exhibits from the 1870s to the 1960s, and a version of the show travels on to the Cleveland Museum of Art in March. Hmm, Renoir. Now perhaps seen as the most chocolate-boxy of the Impressionists, but without doubt the creator of some of the most recognisable images in French art of the late 19th century. Well worth stealing , and clearly the National Gallery is on to a winner with its Renoir and Love ex...
What seems to be the hottest exhibition ticket in the Netherlands at the moment? Rembrandt, Van Gogh? No, it's Design of the Third Reich at the Design Museum in Den Bosch. Surprised? Don't be. It's superbly done, well explained and really engrossing. The Nazis didn't achieve power in Germany without making themselves and their message attractive to millions of people, and the design of their emblems, electoral posters, the very styling of Adolf Hitler contributed to that. And those efforts didn't stop once they'd taken over. This show doesn't make any attempt to downplay the evils of Nazism, the horrors of the concentration camps and of World War II -- this is, after all, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of parts of the southern Netherlands, including Den Bosch, from German occupation -- but the aim is to try and understand the role design played in it all -- even if that role wasn't always a very coherent one. The decision to stage thi...