Paul’s Shows: ING Discerning Eye
6 November 2024 • Paul Carey-Kent
I’m one of the six selectors for this year’s ING Discerning Eye show
Paul’s Art Stuff
Most days Art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in London. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?
A Trip to TEFAF
13 March 2023 • Paul Carey-Kent
A Trip to TEFAF – the world’s premier wide-ranging art fair – design, jewellery, clocks, books etc, across 270 stands
Navigating Venice
14 September 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Autumn is a good time to visit the Venice Biennale, it being cooler and less crowded than earlier in the year. Moreover, the 2022 edition is considered one of the best and the central exhibition, ‘The Milk of Dreams’, has been particularly widely praised. So here are my tips for the first time visitor:
Artists not making art
7 September 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Artists are, logically enough, the centre of the art world. And that needn’t be simply for making art. They might… Read More
A very Nice Combination
24 August 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s a seamless art transition and only a hundred yards to move from the solo shows of Milton Avery (1885-1965) to that of his daughter March Avery (born 1932, and still painting six days a week in her New York studio).
When The Heat is On…
17 August 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Hiraki Sawa: installation view of the Attic Shed in flown, 2022 Fancy a quiet stroll around some shows? It’s tricky… Read More
An unusual documenta
10 August 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Every five years the massive documenta show in Kassel, Germany, looks to anticipate the art world’s curatorial trends. documenta fifteen (to Sept 25) has been curated by Indonesian artist collective Lumbung inviting other collectives to issue invites.
Art in Bloom
3 August 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Perhaps it is to be expected that plenty of flowers featured in London galleries at the height of an over-hot summer. For example:
Where to Go to Find Out Where We Came From: The Artists Self-Publishers’ Fair
27 July 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
The Seventh Artists Self-Publishers’ Fair takes place this Saturday 30 July 2022 at Conway Hall in London WC1. Free to… Read More
Fontana’s Cuts
20 July 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s easy to think Fontana’s ‘cut’ works are all the same, aside from the number of slashes and the colour…. Read More
Animal Parade at the Royal Academy
13 July 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
There are 1,465 works in this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, a third of them in the two galleries curated by Grayson Perry, who declares his approach ‘democratic’. So there’s no lack of options for making a selection of, say, six.
Edvard Munch, Rock Star
29 June 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
I’ve seen a lot of Edvard Munch lately: in Oslo’s new 13-floor ‘Munch’ and even newer National Museum (both of which have versions of ‘The Scream’ and plenty else) and at the Courtauld in London. ‘Masterpieces from Bergen’ (to 3 Sept) has a comparatively modest but high standard 18 canvasses.
Everybody’s Doing It: Painting at Art Basel
22 June 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Art Basel and it’s satellite fair seem to be back to normal this year. There’s plenty of variety – more so than at Frize London last year –
Not So Grey
15 June 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Is grey a colour? Some claim so because it contains every other colour. The tradition of grisaille paintings suggests otherwise, given it is set up as a contrast with painting in colour.
Christmas Already?
8 June 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
What makes art so inexhaustible? Not only does it responds to a vast and ever-changing world, but the artist chooses… Read More
Plenty of Pissarro
1 June 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Camille Pissarro in 1900 Do you fancy owning a Pissarro? Perhaps you’ve been to his most substantial UK show in… Read More
‘Not that again’ with Manuel Álvarez Bravo
25 May 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
When you’ve often seen an image, it can become easy to ignore it. The Photographers Gallery’s sales department currently features the great Mexican Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002)
The Lazy Painter?
18 May 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Painting sounds like a nice easy job: roll into the studio when your hangover allows, slosh a few colours around until you see something you like, then celebrate with another drink. Beats the project management required to make films; or the material sourcing, labour and heft of sculpture; let alone the disciplines of a real job…
Oslo, City of Sculpture
11 May 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Edward Munch, very much a painter, is easily Norway’s most famous artist, and a new 13-floor building – ‘Munch’ as it is styled – was recently opened in his honour. Walking around Oslo, though, it would be easy to think that sculpture is the national preference: statues dot the streets and I visited four sculpture parks. For example:
Taking Sickert Seriously
4 May 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Who was the greatest British painter of the 20th century? Plenty, I suppose would make a case for David Hockney, Lucien Freud, Howard Hodgkin and Stanley Spencer. I’d rank Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson, Patrick Caulfield and Frank Auerbach higher, but I suspect few would share my view. Perhaps that leaves the most plausible candidates as Francis Bacon, Bridget Riley and Walter Sickert – and Sickert (1860-1942) gets by far the least attention these days.
Transported
27 April 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s pretty easy to get between Thomas Dane’s two galleries on Duke Street – where you can currently see two shows linked by the unusual topic of transporting art.
Parallel strategies: Barbara Walker and Lubaina Himid
20 April 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Lubaina Himid: from ‘Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service’, 2007 Two current shows mine parallel strategies with effect to foreground… Read More
Still Working in the Studio?
13 April 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
Perhaps, then, the studio is slipping towards historic status. Not that there’s anything wrong with a historic survey (‘A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920 – 2020’ to 5 June)
So This Is Permanent
6 April 2022 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s easy to find that, because there’s a time limit on changing exhibitions, you concentrate on those becasue you might miss them and never quite get round to looking at institutions’ permanent holdings, deep in the memory as they may be. So on visiting major new shows recently, I’ve also thought: let’s take a ride out, see what we can find…