Visual Arts Reviews
Vanessa Bell, Dulwich Picture GalleryTuesday, 28 February 2017
The Other Room, dating from the late 1930s, is the largest painting in Dulwich Picture Gallery's landmark retrospective, the first show to be dedicated to Vanessa Bell since a posthumous Arts Council show in 1964. Read more... |
America After the Fall, Royal AcademyThursday, 23 February 2017
It may be a cliché to say that this is a “timely” exhibition, but America After the Fall invites irresistible parallels with Trump’s America of today. Read more... |
Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932, Royal AcademyMonday, 13 February 2017
This must be the most depressing exhibition I have ever seen. Dedicated to the leaders of the Russian Revolution, the first room features official portraits by Isaak Brodsky of Lenin and Stalin plus drawings and models of Lenin’s vast mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square. Read more... |
Sunday Book: Philip Hook - Rogues' GallerySunday, 12 February 2017
The art dealers of today must be thanking their lucky stars that Philip Hook’s remarkable history of their trade stops where it does. For while it serves as an eminently useful if rather specialised reference book, it’s a history pushed along by a ferocious analysis of the art dealing fraternity, the general thrust of which is encapsulated in its no-nonsense title. Read more... |
David Hockney, Tate BritainWednesday, 08 February 2017
As the UK prepares for a particularly severe cold snap, the opening of David Hockney’s major retrospective at Tate Britain brings a welcome burst of Los Angeles light and colour and Yorkshire wit and warmth. The exhibition, which opens in the lead-up to Hockney’s 80th birthday, will be deservedly popular... Read more... |
Michael Andrews, Gagosian GalleryTuesday, 31 January 2017
Drifting, floating, running, crowding: all these feelings of movement and stasis apply in a mesmerising selection of scenes, imagined and observed over 40 years by a true original. Michael Andrews (1928-1995), born and brought up in Norwich, studied at the Slade School during a golden period. Read more... |
Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence, BBC TwoSunday, 29 January 2017
Francis Bacon died in April 1992, aged 82, but heaven knows how he managed to live that long. Read more... |
Lubaina Himid, Modern Art Oxford and Spike Island, BristolFriday, 27 January 2017
Modern Art Oxford and Spike Island, Bristol have joined forces to create a retrospective of Lubaina Himid’s work that spans some 30 years, includes paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and assemblages and proves what a highly original and complex artist she is. Read more... |
Terrains of the Body, Whitechapel GalleryMonday, 23 January 2017
An exhibition of this calibre deserves to be in the main gallery rather than tucked away in a side room; but these photographs and videos are by women artists, and with Donald Trump entering the White House, it looks as if treating women as second class citizens may become the norm once more. Read more... |
Lockwood Kipling, Victoria & Albert MuseumSaturday, 21 January 2017
From India, here is a hoard of what really looks like treasure, much of it emerging into the light of day after decades, if not a century. Read more... |
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