‘Not that again’ with Manuel Álvarez Bravo
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)
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?
The Lazy Painter?
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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…
Waking Up to Woking
Woking may not be trendy… but it’s only 19 train minutes from Clapham Junction and has a new shopping centre! What do you mean, you still don’t want to go? It also has plenty of art at the moment:
Better Photographs?
Like almost everyone, I guess, I take lots of photos with my phone without worrying too much about how I do so. Might I benefit from a book of photographic instruction? David Yarrow, known for his stunning black and white wildlife shots, has just published ‘How I Make Photographs’*, so here was a chance.
Seeing Through Glass
Now the show in Leeds presents a 50-50 mixture of glass specialists and wider-ranging artists working in the material, all illuminatingly categorised by the material property foregrounded in the processes used. ‘SOLID’ features cast or moulded glass; ‘GAS’, sculptures made by blowing into the glass; ‘LIQUID’ the results of manipulating molten glass. Here’s one of each that order:
Too Many Surrealists?
Now ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ repeats the approach, but with 160 artists from around the world rather than concentrate on Surrealism’s Paris-based tradition.
Time for One’s Selfie
Want an art selfie? The most obvious chances are currently provided by the two mirror rooms in Tate Modern‘s Yayoi… Read More
In the Shadows of Bacon
The Royal Academy’s ‘Man and Beast’ offers the chance to see many prime paintings by Bacon
The Variety in Van Gogh
It’s no surprise that sixteen self-portraits by Van Gogh make a great show: with all due respect to Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman, I guess it’s a face-off between Van Gogh and Rembrandt for GOAT status in the genre.
What to See in February
What to see in London in February? Here’s my pick of ten shows which are (a) free and (b) open… Read More
The New Courtauld
Some galleries – the Hayward is exemplary in this regard – close for years to refurbish, only to leave re-visitors… Read More
Art at UCL, Japanese special
I hadn’t clocked University College London as much of an art destination until recently: sure, the campus between Euston and Warren Street boasts the agreeably off-beat Grant Museum of Zoology and Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, but art?
Paintings on the Radio
It may not sound logical, but not only are there many interesting podcasts that talk to artists, but radio can… Read More
Obsessions, Old and New
I’m not sure you have to be obsessive to be an artist, but plenty of artists have made bodies of work that are naturally described that way. The best-known examples tend to be individually produced:
On with the Not-So New
It’s not entirely out with the old in the gallery world. Here’s a choice of ten free-to-visit London shows which… Read More
Art of Glass
The old distinctions between ‘art’ and ‘craft’ have reduced sufficiently in recent years that ceramics and textiles can now be… Read More
Art for Christmas?
A seasonal tradition has developed of showing works small and affordable enough that they could plausibly make gifts. Flowers Gallery have the longest-running current exhibition with such a premise: this is the 39th year of ‘Small is Beautiful’