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...
Have you ever thought that an Edward Hopper painting is like a scene from a classic Hollywood movie? Take Gas , for example: a lonely gas station on the edge of the woods at dusk, with a balding man tending to the pumps in the harsh glare of the electric light. What's going to happen next, when a car pulls in to fill up? Hopper's intimate relationship with the cinema is a central theme of an absolutely excellent new exhibition about the painter at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of the Swiss city of Basel. Don't take our word for it; the man who knows all about it is the great German director, Wim Wenders . Hopper's "affinity with film is unparalleled, both in his themes -- American landscape or the existential exposedness of man in the 20th century -- and in his lighting and framing," Wenders says. "Hopper was also a frequent moviegoer, often going to the cinema every day for weeks on end, especially when he didn't know what to pain...