Category: art
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Jasper Johns at the Royal Academy review ***
Jasper Johns “Something Resembling Truth” Royal Academy of Arts. 10th November 2017 So here’s my theory. Sometime in the mid 1970s the real Jasper Johns was kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a cloned doppelganger. All the AI software was packed in but they forgot to prevent him from clicking…
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Designs of the Year 2017 at the Design Museum review ****
Beazley Designs of the Year 2017 The Design Museum, 8th November 2017 If you have any interest in design you are probably on to this but, if not, you should be. This is the tenth year of the exhibition, now held in the basement of the Design Museum’s plush new…
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Soutine’s Portraits at the Courtauld Gallery review ****
Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters and Bellboys Courtauld Gallery, 31st October 2017 I am afraid that the joys of Soutine’s paintings have passed me by in the past. I could see the vibrant colours and intense animation but all that skew-whiffedness left me a bit bewildered. On my last visit to…
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Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain review *****
Rachel Whiteread Tate Britain, 25th September 2017 If you take even a passing interest in contemporary British art you are probably aware of Rachel Whiteread, and you may well have seen some of her work. Even if you are not interested, or are firmly in the nihilistic, hater camp that…
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Encounter drawings at the National Portrait Gallery review ***
The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt National Portrait Gallery, 7th September 2017 Short, sweet and eclectic. The exhibition of 50 or so portrait drawings at the NPG contains works by some of the greatest draughtsmen revered by art history from the Renaissance and Baroque, but blink and you might…
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Sargent Watercolours at Dulwich Picture Gallery review *****
Sargent: The Watercolours Dulwich Picture Gallery, 5th September 2017 There have been some top drawer exhibitions already this year. The comprehensive survey of American painting in the 1930s at the Orangerie and Royal Academy, the joyous Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern, the astonishing survey of Michael Andrews’s spray painted landscapes…
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From Selfie to Self-Expression at the Saatchi Gallery review ****
From Selfie to Self-Expression Saatchi Gallery, 20th August 2017 I hadn’t really intended to seek out this exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. I had forgotten it was on but realised I would be passing when engaged on another mission (taking a twirl around the relatively newly opened National Army Museum,…
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 