During a recent and brief trip to Paris, I took in two exhibitions on artists I was not at all familiar with. The first was on František Kupka, and the second, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, was a retrospective of the work of Jean Fautrier. Whereas, if you go to a […]
Let me save you the trouble of reading reviews when deciding whether to go and see this small exhibition at the National Gallery. Critics don’t like it. This review in the Guardian is particularly entertaining, and likens Pre-Raphaelite art in the UK’s regional gallery collections to a fatberg (I love a vicious review, don’t you?). […]
Unlike the Late Turner exhibition which I reviewed recently, the National Gallery didn’t create this exhibition on late works by Rembrandt from a position of reeducation or reinterpretation. The works on display are firmly within the Dutch Golden Age and have always been respected as masterful works (and quite a high number of them as […]
What to say about Allen Jones? Well, if you’re pretty much any critic who reviewed this exhibition, most of the discussion should be about his representation of women. You’ve likely all seen his sculptures of women as furniture, produced in the 1960s for the most part. Most famously there is ‘Chair’, in which a woman […]
Late works seem to be quite fashionable at the moment: late Turner, late Rembrandt, late Matisse, probably late other people as well. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it is interesting to explore whether an artist’s output changes towards the end of their life and what the contributing factors are, but in the case […]
Tate Modern’s exhibition Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider is a great opportunity to see a significant part of the Lenbachhaus collection on loan from Munich. But as an exhibition it only really gets going towards the end. Let’s Start at the Beginning: Expressionism Unless you’re new here you know the Salterton Arts Review […]
An exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery allows a showcase of Shonibare’s distinctive style, if not any new artistic approaches. Yinka Shonibare CBE at the Serpentine Gallery It has really been a long time since I was at the Serpentine Gallery. So long, in fact, that it was part of my Covid Diaries series. And actually, […]
A long weekend in Stockholm is a perfect opportunity to learn about this archipelago capital’s history, experience some culture, and balance out all that activity with the local traditions of fika and sauna. A Long Weekend in Stockholm I don’t know why I hadn’t been to Sweden before. Too many places to go and too […]
Soulscapes promises “a contemporary retelling of landscape by artists from the African Diaspora.“ What precisely does that mean? Let’s find out! Soulscapes One thing I definitely appreciate about the Dulwich Picture Gallery is the variety of their exhibitions. The last time we were there it was for Rubens and Women. The time before that it […]
Samuel Takes a Break… is a challenging, funny, thoughtful, ambiguous new work on now at Hackney Wick’s Yard Theatre. Samuel Takes a Break… I have a feeling it is a good year for the Yard Theatre. The last two things I’ve seen there (this and this) have been fab. And now Samuel Takes a Break… […]
