The Art Exhibitions Blog

The camera takes centre stage in London this month, starting at Tate Modern on June 13 with Capturing the Moment , a show that aims to explore the relationship between painting and photography through work by artists including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Gerhard Richter. No rush: It's on until January 28.  Missed the National Portrait Gallery? It reopens after refurbishment on June 22 with Yevonde: Life and Colour , exploring the career of the pioneering London woman photographer who was an early user of colour film in the 1930s. "Be original or die," she said, and you can see just how original she was until September 15. Despite Yevonde, the early 60s in Britain still seemed to happen in black-and-white, and here's the chance to view the biggest cultural phenomenon of the decade through the lens of one of the four young Liverpudlians who were conquering the world. Paul McCartney, Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm  is on at the NPG from June 28 ...

April, and the weather is slowly getting warmer. The delights of the garden beckon. Perfect, then, for an exhibition such as  Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden  at the Garden Museum in London. We found quite a lot to like, much of it from artists we didn't know. Though strangely, a lot of the paintings that made the biggest impression didn't seem to have a massive amount to do with gardens, or gardening.  The premise of this show is to look at how British artists in the period between the two World Wars depicted private and public spaces, but those places seem to be pretty loosely defined. There's also quite a bit of work from the 1940s and 50s. The exhibition area at the Garden Museum isn't that big, but they've crammed a lot in, and if you really take a shine to a picture, it may still be for sale, as this show is put on together with the dealers Liss Llewellyn .  One of the largest and most strikingly attractive paintings hangs right opposit...

When we think of the Royal Parks today, we think of vast breathing spaces in London for pleasure.... for picnicking, pop concerts, promenading, but Play, Protest and Pelicans: A People's History of the Royal Parks at the Garden Museum in Lambeth shows that these green spaces were not used just for popular pastimes in times past. The provision of produce, privacy, policing, pets and of course the pelicans are all touched on in this small exhibition that also throws a sliver of light on the parks' role in both world wars. It's a show that dips its toe into the pool of some interesting stories but, alas, never really wades in. The parks started out as royal hunting grounds and were only gradually opened up to the public. It's interesting to learn about 18th- and 19th-century battles for popular access to Richmond Park, and about the private gates that allowed wealthy local residents privileged access to Hyde Park (a selection of keys are on display). For many years, ...

A couple of weeks ago, we saw how Vincent van Gogh 's Sunflowers were enormously influential on the work of 20th-century British artists. In works by Frank Brangwyn, Jacob Epstein and Christopher Wood on display at Tate Britain, there was daring colour and brushwork, and yet their sunflowers and chrysanthemums were instantly recognisable. But we've just been to see a show featuring another British flower painter whose work is really quite different. Ivon Hitchens painted landscapes and plants inside and outside his secluded West Sussex studio with vibrant use of colour, but over a long career his canvases became increasingly abstract. Ivon Hitchens: The Painter in the Woods at the Garden Museum in London tells part of his story. Hitchens was at one stage a pretty big name: In the 1950s he had regular major exhibitions in London, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale  in 1956 and had no difficulty in finding buyers for his works. And he's right back in the spotl...

Spring came late to Britain this year, but there are plenty of flowers to be seen in Cedric Morris's garden. This rather forgotten artist, who died in 1982, has two main claims to fame: firstly, as a botanist who developed nearly 100 irises, and secondly, as a teacher of Lucian Freud. Now he's being brought back to the public eye with two concurrent exhibitions in London: Artist Plantsman  at the Garden Museum in Lambeth and Beyond the Garden Wall at Philip Mould in Pall Mall. Morris was born in Swansea in 1889, the son of an industrialist, and his story really begins after World War I, when he met and fell in love with fellow artist Arthur Lett-Haines, known as Lett. They went off to Paris and got to know a circle that included Gris, Léger, Duchamp, Man Ray and Hemingway, as well as travelling extensively. As you enter the Garden Museum exhibition, one of the first pictures you see is a 1919 portrait of Lett, looking louche in slouch hat and bow tie. We see Morris next...

If you enjoyed Claude Monet's views of Westminster in Impressionists in London  at Tate Britain, your next destination is clear: Monet and Architecture  just up the road at the National Gallery from April 9 to July 29. It's a new way of seeing Monet's work, the National says: the first exhibition looking at the great Impressionist's career through the buildings he painted, with more than 75 pictures together for the very first time. There's another blockbuster of a French-themed show coming at the British Museum: Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece  opens on April 26 and can be seen until July 29. Rodin was captivated by the Parthenon sculptures when he saw them in 1881, and 100 years after his death, his work including The Thinker and The Kiss can be seen alongside them in a new light, the museum says. It's the season to get into the garden. So it's the perfect time to be inspired by the paintings of Cedric Morris, not only a botanist who cultivated ...