Visual Arts Reviews
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, Royal Academy review – strange and intriguingSaturday, 29 June 2019
Félix Vallotton is best known for his satirical woodcuts, printed in the radical newspapers and journals of turn-of-the-century Paris. He earned a steady income, for instance, as chief illustrator for La Revue blanche, which carried articles and reviews by leading lights such as Marcel Proust, Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie. You can see the influence of Japanese prints in the flattened spaces, simplified shapes and unusual viewpoints that give a comic slant to scenes of Parisian life. Read more... |
Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - a cut aboveWednesday, 19 June 2019
Under a turbulent sky racked with jagged clouds suggesting bolts of lightning, pale figures hurl themselves into a spitting expanse of water. Swathed in white towels, other figures mingle with the pink bodies, seeming to process along the pier as if towards a baptism. Swimmers’ vigorous arms overtop their submerged heads; on land, no individual face is distinguished. As if exuberance could tip at any time into anarchy, a sense of threat pervades the depiction of communal leisure. Read more... |
Francis Bacon: Couplings, Gagosian Gallery review - sex and power in double figuresFriday, 14 June 2019
Forthright and often disturbing, Francis Bacon’s “male couplings” are also ambiguous, and it is this disjunction that gives them their power.
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Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery review – a shamblesThursday, 13 June 2019
Kiss My Genders may not claim to be a survey, yet it seems perverse to mount an exhibition of work by LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender identity without including some of the best known names. Read more... |
Edouard Vuillard: The Poetry of the Everyday, Holburne Museum, Bath review - dizzying pattern and colourTuesday, 11 June 2019
A beguiling collection of small paintings by Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) forms an exhibition from his early career. It is a vanished world of domesticity in a Parisian flat, where Vuillard lived with his mother, a seamstress, for almost all his life. In his fifties, he told a friend that his mother was his muse. Read more... |
Frank Bowling, Tate Britain review - a marvelWednesday, 05 June 2019
In a photograph taken in 1962, Frank Bowling leans against a fireplace in his studio. His right hand rests on the mantlepiece which bears books, fixative and spirit bottles, his left rests out of sight on the small of his back. His attire is somewhat formal but decidedly casual — trousers loose enough to bend in, a striped jumper with the sleeves rolled up, workman-like, and a shirt which looks like it has several top buttons undone. Read more... |
Natalia Goncharova, Tate Modern review - a prodigious talentWednesday, 05 June 2019
The times they are a-changin’. On show at the Barbican is a retrospective of Lee Krasner’s stunning paintings and, for the first time ever, Tate Modern is hosting two major shows of women artists. At last, the achievements of great women are being acknowledged and celebrated. Read more... |
Lee Krasner: Living Colour, Barbican review - jaw-droppingly goodMonday, 03 June 2019
If you know of any chauvinists who dare to maintain that women can’t paint, take them to this astounding retrospective. Lee Krasner faced patronising dismissal at practically every turn in her career yet she persisted and went on to produce some of the most magnificent paintings of the late 20th century. Read more... |
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, The Queen's Gallery review - peerless drawings, rarely seenWednesday, 29 May 2019
It is a commonplace to describe Leonardo as an enigma whose genius, and perhaps even something of his character, is revealed through his works. But as his works survive only in incomplete and fragmented form, it is drawing, the practice common to all his various endeavours, that brings coherence and perhaps even a comprehensive view of a lifetime’s labours. Read more... |
Manga, British Museum review - stories for outsidersThursday, 23 May 2019
Manga, the Japanese art of the graphic novel, took its modern form in the 1800s. Illustrated stories already had a long heritage in Japan — encompassing woodblock prints and illustrated scrolls and novels — but the introduction of the printing press by foreign visitors changed the rate at which works could be made and the extent of their distribution. Read more... |
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