fri 20/09/2024

painters

Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World, Modern Art Oxford

Graham Sutherland and George Shaw have two things in common. They are both painters and both are associated with Coventry: Sutherland made his famous altarpiece work – a tapestry –  for the city’s rebuilt cathedral, while Shaw grew up in...

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The Mystery of Appearance, Haunch of Venison

Here be wonderful images, in an anthology of two score of paintings and drawings from the 1950s through the mid-Nineties by 10 artists whose shared interests only sharpen their individuality. Francis Bacon is the autodidact in the group, which...

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theartsdesk in Florence: The British Are Going

In the 1450s in Florence, Alberti was working on the facade of Santa Maria Novella, Donatello and Fra Filippo Lippi were active, while Leonardo was born in nearby village of Vinci. And the English established a diplomatic presence. It has continued...

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LS Lowry, Richard Green Gallery

How can you review LS Lowry? The Salford rent-collector-cum-painter simply did what he did: sending his bendy, pipe-cleaner people through white-floored industrial streets, in scenes that seemed hardly to change in decades. While Lowry fully...

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Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Arts

In his catalogue essay, Peter Osborne discusses the meaning of epithets such as “new” and “contemporary” when applied to current art, yet no one in this year’s New Contemporaries seems to be striving to make work that is “new”, “different”, “radical...

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Art of America, BBC Four

For dull reasons to do with a dodgy digital box and a very old analogue telly, I can’t tune in to BBC Four during live transmissions, so I either catch up on iPlayer, or (lucky me as a journalist) get to see programmes early. But I’m very glad I can...

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Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery

Leonardo da Vinci was not a prolific artist. In a career that lasted nearly half a century, he probably painted no more than 20 pictures, and only 15 surviving paintings are currently agreed to be entirely his. Of these, four are incomplete. Indeed...

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theartsdesk in Moscow: Nikolai Ge at the Tretyakov Gallery

The Nikolai Ge retrospective at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery marks the 180th anniversary of the artist’s birth – not the kind of round centenary or bicentenary landmark that often brings such projects to fruition. But the show is literally a...

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Alice in Wonderland: Through the Visual Arts, Tate Liverpool

What a curious curate’s egg Tate Liverpool has pulled out of its hat with Alice in Wonderland. And what a complete rag-bag of minor, uninteresting artists. It starts with a disparate mix of recent works by a few better-knowns – neatly beginning at...

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The First Actresses: Nell Gwynne to Sarah Siddons, National Portrait Gallery

What is it that makes an exhibition special, keeps you looking longer than you expected, ensures you think about it long after you’ve left? Obviously, the art, or in a history show, the subject, is the first thing. The installation sometimes (...

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George Condo: Mental States, Hayward Gallery/ Drawings, Sprüth Magers London

The easiest mistake to make in appreciating George Condo would be to assume that his manic style reflects a manic creation or a manic practice. Some of Condo's paintings and drawings, with their childlike loops and gurning, disfigured faces, look...

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Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

The home, and women’s place within it, gained considerable importance for artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Nicholaes Maes and Gerrit Dou are among those who placed women at the centre of the well-...

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