London Review of Books
Gwen John at Pallant House
London Review of Books
Alice Spawls reviews Gwen John: Art and Life in Paris and London at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Spawls observes that: “The pictures themselves are not large or flamboyant, and some are almost austere. But they seem to vibrate. There are suggestions of movement in the cloth, in the stippling of paint (which sometimes looks like […]
Cézanne Portraits: Relentless Intimacy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark reviews Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London (through February 11) and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. from March 25 – July 1, 2018. Clark writes: “Certainly the idea that Cézanne’s approach to picture-making is essentially technical and ‘objective’, locked in a painter’s preserve … is useless. It offers […]
Raphael: The Drawings
London Review of Books
Charles Hope reviews Raphael: The Drawings at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on view through September 3, 2017. Hope writes: “One of the great strengths of the exhibition is the way it illustrates Raphael’s increasing mastery of and obvious pleasure in the medium of drawing during his years in Rome. This comes across most strongly in […]
Gillian Ayres @ National Museum of Wales
London Review of Books
Julian Bell reviews an exhibition of works by Gillian Ayres on view at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff through September 3, 2017. Bell writes: “The huge canvases Gillian Ayres painted during the 1980s rush at you like Atlantic breakers. Bursts of orange, viridian, scarlet, yellow and cyan tumble forward and engulf you; convulsions of oil […]
Vanessa Bell @ Dulwich Picture Gallery
London Review of Books
Alice Spawls reviews Vanessa Bell: 1879-1941 at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, on view through June 4, 2017. Spawls writes: “Despite the obvious influence of Matisse on her work, the artist Bell often seems closest to in spirit is Bonnard. There is an affinity in their domestic playfulness, in the shimmer of marks and diffusive pinks […]
Cy Twombly @ the Pompidou
London Review of Books
Alice Spawls reviews works by Cy Twombly at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on view through April 24, 2017. Spawls notes: “For all that his paintings groan under the weight of writing about them, and their own allusiveness (many feature lines of poetry or have ‘poetic’ titles), Twombly wasn’t an ideas artist. He disagreed with the […]
Max Beckmann @ The Met
London Review of Books
Michael Hofmann reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Hofmann writes: “One of the interesting things about Beckmann is how much the paintings moved and morphed under him. The form of the triptych was arrived at adventitiously; he simply had more material […]
Paul Nash @ Tate Britain
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark writes about works by Paul Nash at Tate Britain, London, on view through March 5, 2017. Clark begins: “Paul Nash is as close as we come, many think, to having a strong painter of the English landscape in the 20th century. The uncertainties built into the wording here are part of the point: […]
Beyond Caravaggio @ The National Gallery, London
London Review of Books
Julian Bell reviews Beyond Caravaggio at The National Gallery, London, on view through January 15, 2017. Describing Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (1602), Bell observes “This is beauty, Caravaggio-style. An object is illuminated and scrutinised until its textures sing out. Comparable pleasures are on offer when Caravaggio paints a glass vase in the National Gallery’s […]
James Ensor @ The Royal Academy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark writes about Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through January 29, 2017. Clark observes: “Perhaps it is true that an artist’s influences should not interest us much (Ensor’s wish to drop the subject has my sympathy) unless what they give rise to in the […]
The Chase: Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed
London Review of Books
Inigo Thomas reconsiders J.M.W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844). Thomas asks: “chasing after hares is as old as any ancient rite, but who or what is hunting the hare in Turner’s painting? Is it just a train, and how familiar, really, is that location? You can shut down the iconographical […]
Picasso and the Fall of Europe
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark reflects on Picasso's mural Fall of Icarus (1958). Clark writes: "My argument, then, is that it was only in the real-size, forty-piece Fall of Icarus that Picasso escaped from Cubism – from the studio, from ‘viewpoint,’ from proximity and tactility, from the whole spatial and figurative world of Guernica – and showed us […]
Constable @ the V&A
London Review of Books
Rosemary Hill reviews the exhibition Constable: The Making of a Master at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, on view through January 15, 2015. Hill writes: "The Hay Wain … recalls the pre-enclosure landscape of Constable’s childhood. Its setting, at noon, evokes a high point, a brief moment of stasis in the business of life or of […]