Visual Arts Reviews
William Scott, Hepworth WakefieldFriday, 07 June 2013
It’s the centenary of the birth of William Scott, once considered to be in the pantheon of British postwar artists. But where’s the hoopla and fanfare? Like so many British painters who had their glory years in the Fifties – before the explosion of Pop art and all that – his name no longer carries much weight. Read more... |
Patrick Caulfield/Gary Hume, Tate BritainWednesday, 05 June 2013
Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005) is the greatest late 20th-century British painter the international art world has never heard of. This quietly magnificent exhibition of about 35 paintings, most of them very large, may at last bring about a satisfactory reversal of fortune. Although some of the paintings are 50 years old, they could have been painted tomorrow. Their style, wit, irony and melancholy, tempered by contradictory moods of quiet cynicism and sensual pleasure in the observed world,... Read more... |
Birth of a Collection: The Barber Institute, National GalleryFriday, 31 May 2013
Lady Barber (1869-1933) née Hattie Onions, had her portrait painted in sumptuous style about 30 times, mostly in a sub-Orpen vein, and almost all by the unknown Belgian Nestor Cambier. But that was the very least of her occupations. Her husband, the lawyer Sir Henry Barber (1860-1927), had made a fortune in Birmingham property, and became quite the gentleman. Read more... |
Master Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, OxfordSunday, 26 May 2013
Michelangelo evidently regarded drawing as the foundation of not only painting and sculpture but of “architecture and of every other kind of painting and the root of all science”. His all-encompassing claim is subtly demonstrated in this captivating exhibition of five centuries of western European drawing. The anthology sweeps through the years from the old masters to 20th-century stars, concentrating indeed on mastery. Read more... |
Helen Chadwick, Richard SaltounTuesday, 21 May 2013
It's 17 years since Helen Chadwick died without warning of heart failure at the tragically early age of 42 and nine years since the Barbican staged a retrospective of her work. Time, then, for a reappraisal and this small but beautifully presented exhibition at Richard Saltoun’s gallery contains enough gems to remind us of the beauty, wit, intelligence and originality that made the artist and her work so very inspiring. Read more... |
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC FourMonday, 20 May 2013
You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the years following his death in 1969. Read more... |
Mariele Neudecker, Regency Town House, BrightonSunday, 19 May 2013
Mariele Neudecker is the lead artist of this year’s HOUSE, a festival for the visual arts which is now in its sixth year and which runs parallel with the Brighton Festival. She's a fitting choice: an immersive exhibition in a beautiful wreck of a Regency house by the sea complements her long-held fascination with the watery sublime. Read more... |
Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, British LibraryFriday, 17 May 2013
Every time you turn a corner, he’s there, on yet another monitor. Either the exhibition curators have a sense of humour, or Alastair Campbell really is the last word on propaganda, a subject about which the British Library has mounted an excellent and occasionally provocative exhibition. Read more... |
Leon Kossoff: London Landscapes, Annely Juda Fine ArtFriday, 10 May 2013
Sixty years of hard work, encapsulated in 90 drawings and a handful of thickly encrusted paintings, by the distinguished, obsessive, single-minded octagenerian artist Leon Kossoff (b 1926) vividly set out a passionate attachment to a simultaneously immutable and ever changing London. An East Ender, Kossoff has had several subjects: he has painted people, and has continually drawn after the Old Masters, first visiting the National Gallery as a schoolchild. Read more... |
Great Artists: In Their Own Words, BBC FourThursday, 09 May 2013
After the marvellous Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words, the BBC has once again rummaged through its documentary archives, this time to see what artists have to say for themselves. Artists are often not the most loquacious breed, which is why they communicate best in the language of images and objects. But it can certainly be instructive to get the lowdown straight from the horse’s mouth, even if it ends up being all performance and no insight. Read more... |
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