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Showing posts with the label MIchael Craig-Martin

New Exhibitions in September

The Bayeux Tapestry  exhibition at the British Museum starts on September 10; it's already sold out for this year but booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, will open on October 21. If you've never seen this most breathtaking of historical artefacts, you may want to seize the chance before it leaves London next year for its permanent home in Normandy, which will have been renovated during its absence. At Southampton City Art Gallery, we're promised an extensive exhibition of British art from the first half of the 20th century, drawing on the museum's own substantial holdings and those of the Ingram Collection . Running from September 26 to February 21,  Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960  will feature artists including Barbara Hepworth, Gwen John , Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious.   There might not be much new on in London this month, but we'll always have Paris. Starting at the Musée Jacquemart-André with Time...

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Ways of Seeing

It's bright, it's bold and it's big; everyday items in garish colours and impossible proportions. It's unmistakably a Michael Craig-Martin.   There's plenty of this in  Michael Craig-Martin  at the Royal Academy in London, the images you're possibly accustomed to. But there's more as well, some of it very intriguing, some of it a bit over the top.   And if you don't know much about the history of this Irish-born artist, it's the very first room that you'll find most surprising. We did. Because before Craig-Martin started on all this, he was a conceptual artist. Or should that be a Conceptual Artist? Either way, no need to shudder in horror. This early work is thought-provoking. And quite humorous.   The first exhibit is Craig-Martin's most famous from his conceptual period. Or perhaps most notorious.  An Oak Tree from 1973 is a glass of water on a shelf, accompanied by a Q&A. Craig-Martin tells his questioner that "I've changed ...

William Stott: The Oldham Artist Who Impressed the French

A couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves getting increasingly exasperated by a late Victorian painting superstar, Edward Burne-Jones , in a show at Tate Britain that was full of knights in shining armour and damsels in distress. But British art was getting more modern. In the 1870s, James McNeill Whistler was already "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." And then a couple of years later, William Stott of Oldham came along. William Stott? Not exactly a household name, but he did paint one rather influential picture that's seen as key in the move to Impressionism and naturalism in British art in the 1880s. It's called Le Passeur (The Ferryman) , and it was bought by the Tate last year for £1.5 million. This beautiful work is now touring the country, and it's currently at Southampton City Art Gallery in a small but very well done (and free) exhibition called Beneath the Surface . It's well worth seeing. Confusingly, there seem to have been th...

Summer in the City: 250 Years of Art at the RA

It's not just about the art, it's about the event, the occasion. Seeing, yes, but being seen is perhaps for some just as important. That's clear right from the start of  The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. There are lots of reasons for visiting this show: It's an enlightening history of a great British institution; it offers a potted run-through of 2 1/2 centuries of British art (admittedly, minus a couple of big names); and astonishingly, while the 250th Summer Exhibition itself elsewhere in the RA was drawing big crowds, this 10-room display was surprisingly empty, at least when we went, giving plenty of space for contemplation and enjoyment. And what you see first is the Summer Exhibition summed up by William Powell Frith, that great Victorian painter of crowd scenes, in  A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 . What a line-up of distinguished gallery-goers: William Gladstone, Anthony Trollope, Lillie Langtry, Ellen ...