The Art Exhibitions Blog

Georges Seurat was on to something when he moved on from Impressionism to develop the radically different painting technique popularly known as Pointillism. He and his followers applied unmixed dots of pure colour to their canvases, separate little spots of paint that, the theory went, would come together in the eye of the viewer to create glowing, luminous pictures.  Seurat died young, and Pointillism didn't really hang around for very long either. But it produced some gorgeous art, and 50 or so of its finest creations are gathered at the National Gallery in London in  Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists . It's a glorious, light-filled, uplifting exhibition, and the most enjoyable show we've been to all year. "Art is harmony," Seurat said, and it's hard to argue with that in this show. These pictures are Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists, by the way, because more than half of them come from the Kröller-Müller Museum i...

Ever played the parlour game in which you have to name 10 famous Belgians? Art lovers shouldn't have too much trouble, as long as we're counting Flemish painters from the days before Belgium actually became a country in its own right in 1830. And there are dozens of artists on show in  Rare and Indispensable: Masterpieces from Flemish Collections at the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp. (There are some pieces by non-Belgians as well!) This exhibition brings together around 100 objects out of more than 1,000 designated by the Flemish regional government as being of major cultural significance -- snappily referred to as  topstukken in Dutch. Such works -- in museums in Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and locations right across Flanders -- enjoy official protection as being "indispensable" and consequently can't be taken outside the region without permission. They started the list 20 years ago, hence this anniversary show in a modern museum that's assumed a certain cache...

The pace at which art developed at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century was astonishing.  After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art at the National Gallery in London provides a crash course in the new paths painters and sculptors across Europe were taking over the three decades from the final Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886 to the start of World War I. It's an absolutely absorbing, hugely enjoyable show. Much of what was new and shocking then is now very familiar, but this exhibition also manages to surprise at times; we certainly saw quite a bit of work we hadn't seen before.  If there was a father of modern art, it was perhaps Paul Cezanne. His Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)  confronts you as you enter the show, its monumental figures flanked by an equally monumental plaster cast by Auguste Rodin for his Monument to Balzac , the great French novelist. But to appreciate just how different Cezanne was from what went before, look at this portrait ...