Visual arts
Florence Hallett
“Gauguin was undoubtedly self-obsessed” begins the National Gallery’s latest dead cert blockbuster, as it cheerfully hijacks a de facto series begun next door at the National Portrait Gallery. Unlike Picasso and Cézanne, Gauguin is not known for his portraiture – all those young Polynesian girls are empty vessels, awaiting the thoughts and fantasies of the artist, the viewer, men, anyone but themselves.Still, only two female nudes are included in this exhibition, though the absence of clothes can hardly have been grounds for exclusion. Instead we have less familiar, but no less sensual works Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The Barbican’s latest offering – a look at the clubs and cabarets set up by artists mainly in the early years of the 20th century – is a brilliant theme for an exhibition. Established as alternatives to galleries and museums, places like the Chat Noir in Paris, Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich and Bal Tic Tac in Rome were hotbeds of creative exploration where members exhibited work, explored ideas and experimented with radical new art forms. If artist’s studios are spaces primarily for solo achievement, where great artworks are produced and reputations made, these clubs were social spaces Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Soaring some 40 feet up towards the ceiling of Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall, Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus looks ludicrously out of place – like a Victorian interloper within this cathedral to contemporary art. Resembling those monuments you walk past without giving a second’s thought to what they represent, this intruder isn’t just in the wrong place, it is broadcasting the wrong messages.If history is told by the victors and the function of public sculpture is to enshrine their version of events, the American artist turns the tradition on its head to expose some of the dirty dealings Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Poor Satan. Adam and Eve are loved-up, snogging on a flowery hillock and all he’s got for company is a snake — an extension of himself no less, and where’s the fun in monologues? Poor, poor Satan. He’s a hunk too, if you don’t mind blue. Coiffed hair and toned arms with a sexy sky slouch. Ever seen such a lovely lounger? Ever seen such a mournful moue? He’s angel worthy of our pity, even if he is fallen. But maybe Adam and Eve’s bliss isn’t all its cracked up to be. Isn’t Adam’s posture a touch douchy? Doesn’t Eve look a bit uncomfortable stretching up to meet his lips? Why are their eyes Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Vincent van Gogh (b. 1853) could be difficult, truculent and unconventional. He battled with mental illness and wrestled with questions of religion throughout his life. But on good form he was personable. He was said to be an excellent imitator with a wry sense of humour, and was a loyal (if often fierce) friend and family relation. The Noordbrabants Museum's new exhibition seeks to humanise the artist and people his world. It comprises paintings, drawings and personal documents spread across three main rooms that are either by van Gogh or people close to him, and shed light on his life. Here Read more ...
Katherine Waters
There are two moons in Night Bathers, 2019 (pictured below) One is set in the sky, a great soupy plate with a greenish fringe creating an ugly smear of white across the night. The other is a treacherously hazy rectangle, floating like a cloud above a reclining bather — so inexplicable it could double as a cataract. The latter is, perhaps, a reflection of the former, but at a surreal remove — no reflection looks like that, no reflected light would fall there. The twinned moons, however — real and oneiric — neatly explain the power of Doig’s paintings.Fourteen are now on show across two Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If leafing through the pages of Vogue is a soothing balm, Wonderful Things is a bracing full-body immersion. Though it builds on the V&A’s reputation for blockbuster fashion exhibitions, this show, dedicated to one of the most celebrated photographers of the day, follows no known formula, steering a course somewhere between retrospective and walk-in fashion magazine, without being either. At a time when curators’ voices have a tendency to be dominant to the point of intrusive, falling down the rabbit hole of Tim Walker’s fantasy world feels a bit like stepping inside the photographer’s Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Over the past four decades Martin Gayford, The Spectator’s art critic, has travelled the world, been published in an amazing range of print and digital publications and written more than 20 books, many of them involving his fascination not only with looking at art, but also its making.Several, including Looking at Pictures, have been collaborations with David Hockney. Man in a Blue Scarf, his account of sitting 250 hours for his portrait by Lucian Freud, is a classic. He has also published books on Michelangelo, Constable, and Van Gogh. His association with art is deeply personal. His Read more ...
Adrian Evans
Over the weekend, exhibitions and installations have started to bubble-up on the riverside walkway in London. Still-life photography of mudlark finds and a "scented history" of Barking Creek outside the National Theatre. Artwork from a dozen national and international river cities at the Royal Docks. An installation of 550 jerry cans at the Oxo Tower. A 60-foot wooden Ship of Tolerance on the Thames (main image) by Millennium Bridge. These, alongside an outpouring of races, regattas, swims, waterfront festivals, theatre, dance, music, film, talks and walks makes up this year’s Totally Thames Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Done well, a one-room exhibition can be the very best sort, a small selection of paintings allowing the focused exploration of a single topic without the diluting effect of multiple rooms and objects. In this respect, Artists in Amsterdam rather misses its mark, providing neither the detail nor the scholarly insight we have come to expect from the National Gallery’s Room One exhibitions.Even so, Dulwich Picture Gallery’s display is not without its merits, and it uses eight works from its extensive collection of Dutch paintings, plus one loan, to sketch an evocative, if slight impression of Read more ...
David Kettle
Below the Blanket ★★★★ There’s a deep vein of melancholy running through Glasgow producing house Cryptic’s promenade installation Below the Blanket, which currently occupies several sites across Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden. Bringing together the work of a clutch of artists, and blurring boundaries between the sonic and the visual (a fertile hinterland that Cryptic has made very much its own), Below the Blanket is inspired by northern Scotland’s Flow Country, a spellbinding and little-known landscape stretching across Caithness and Sutherland. Not only a vital environment Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The well-spring of certain musical genres and hometowns of certain influential musicians have long been a source of civic pride – and a boost to the tourist industry – in many clued-in parts of the world. One only has to think of the co-opting of Bob Marley’s life and influence in attracting tourist dollars to Jamaica or the raising of the Beatles to mythic status – bus tours and all – in Liverpool. Birmingham, arguably the birthplace of heavy metal through the music of the magnificent Black Sabbath, however, has been slow to give appropriate due to its own sons and rock’n’roll heroes. For, Read more ...