painting
Vanessa Bell, MK Gallery review - diving into and out of abstractionTuesday, 22 October 2024
The Bloomsbury group’s habit of non-binary bed-hopping has frequently attracted more attention than the artworks they produced. But in their Vanessa Bell retrospective, the MK Gallery has steered blissfully clear of salacious tittle tattle.... Read more... |
Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review - utterly sublime smogFriday, 04 October 2024
In September 1899, Claude Monet booked into a room at the Savoy Hotel. From there he had a good view of Waterloo Bridge and the south bank beyond. Setting up his easel on a balcony, he began a series of paintings of the river and the buildings on... Read more... |
Art, Theatre Royal Bath review - Yasmina Reza's smash hit back on tour 30 years after Paris premiereFriday, 06 September 2024
For men, navigating through life whilst maintaining strong friendships is not easy (I’m sure the same can be said for women, but Yasmina Reza’s multi-award winning play, revived on its 30th anniversary, is most definitely about men). What brings... Read more... |
Modest, Kiln Theatre review - tale of Victorian would-be trailblazer fails and succeedsThursday, 06 July 2023
Whether you believe that Ellen Brammar’s play, Modest, newly arrived in London from Hull Truck Theatre, succeeds or not, rather depends on your criteria for evaluating theatre. On storytelling, character development and nuance, it is two and a half... Read more... |
Donna Fleming: Apocalypse, The Pie Factory, Margate review - personal passions and intense feelingsMonday, 14 November 2022
Donna Fleming’s exhibition at the Pie Factory Gallery in Margate is called Apocalypse, which is confusing because it has nothing to do with the end of the world. Fleming does not even watch the news because she “does not want to think about... Read more... |
Hopper: An American Love Story review - a dry view of a much richer subjectTuesday, 18 October 2022
This rather disappointing documentary about the great American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) has such a dry parade of experts and such a slow linear narrative that it leaves plenty of time to be frustrated by all that’s been left out.Made by the... Read more... |
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives, National Gallery review - a powerful punch in the gutWednesday, 05 October 2022
There stands Lucian Freud in Reflection with Two Children (Self-portrait), 1965 (main picture) towering over you, peering mercilessly down. Is that a look of scorn on his face or merely one of detachment? His two kids seem to be squirming and... Read more... |
Winslow Homer: Force of Nature, National Gallery review - dump the symbolism and enjoy the dramaTuesday, 20 September 2022
Across the pond Winslow Homer is a household name; in his day, he was regarded as the greatest living American painter. He was renowned especially for his seascapes and his most famous painting, The Gulf Stream, 1899/1906 (main picture) features in... Read more... |
10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë AshbySaturday, 11 June 2022
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she... Read more... |
Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, Royal Academy review – a life lived in extremisThursday, 27 January 2022
Francis Bacon Man and Beast fills most of the main galleries at the Royal Academy. Thankfully, five of the rooms are empty. The exhibition is such a dispiriting experience, I’d have been hollering like a howler monkey if there’d been any more. And... Read more... |
The Lost Leonardo review - an incredible tale as gripping as any thrillerTuesday, 14 September 2021
It’s been described as “the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art market”, and The Lost Leonardo reveals every twist and turn of this extraordinary tale. In New Orleans in 2005, a badly-damaged painting (pictured below left)... Read more... |
Maylis de Kerangal: Painting Time review - safer in simulationTuesday, 11 May 2021
"Trompe-l’œil," explains the director of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, “is the meeting of a painting and a gaze, conceived for a particular point of view, and defined by the effect it is supposed to produce”. In layman’s terms, it is the art... Read more... |
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