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First
and Last Loves: John Betjeman and Architecture
Sir John Soane's Museum, London
It's difficult not to feel that Betjeman is regarded by the arts and
architecture establishments as a threat. He doubtless doesn't tick the
right boxes for either the DCMS or the Commission for Architecture and
the Built Environment. His geniality is dangerous, the smile of the
assassin before the knife goes in.
Nicky Charlish
Holbein
in England
Tate Britain, London
Henry VIII is assertively defensive, his empty expression - indeed,
his inner emptiness - emphasised by the padded shoulders of his robes.
Behind him - almost as if he's being edged-out of historical memory
and significance - stands his father.
Nicky Charlish
Modigliani
and his Models
Royal Academy, London
These pictures have an elegant and refined sexuality, different from
the raw sex of Schiele's watercolours, or Picasso's erotic (to be honest,
pornographic) sketches. And if Tracy Emin's bed deserves a place anywhere,
it is here. Modigliani's nudes cry out for the detritus of the boudoir.
Michael Savage
Angus
McBean Portraits
National Portrait Gallery, London
Nancy Spain's expression is one of boyish good humour, and, as she wore
male clothing and wrote camp crime novels set in a girls' school called
Radcliff Hall, that isn't really surprising.
Nicky Charlish
Constable:
the Great Landscapes
Tate Britain, London
The East Anglian motto 'do different' arguably finds an exemplar in
Constable's work, which is shot through with tough, threatening beauty.
For some, Constable's work has died the death of a thousand post-cards.
In this exhibition, it lives again.
Nicky Charlish
Rebels
and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the Nineteenth Century
National Gallery, London
By the late 19th century, the artist was also the flaneur, a man about
the town who could observe the bourgeoisie without detection. And he
was the dandy and aesthete who, by his dress and aristocratic pose,
symbolised rejection of bourgeois vulgarity and mediocrity.
Nicky Charlish
Seeing
Velazquez
National Gallery, London
I love Velazquez, but I won't be going to the Big Shiny Blockbuster.
Critical plaudits are guaranteed. But the critics see a different show
from the rest of us. They get a private view, where they are given a
free view of things that won't properly be seen by the hoi polloi for
months afterwards.
Michael Savage
Re-hanging
Tate Modern
UBS Openings: Tate Modern Collection at Tate Modern, London;
Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, by Hal
Foster et al
A gallery can sometimes tell a good story, but its main role is to show
the art it owns to best effect. The cacophony of styles and periods
and formats in the previous hang made it hard to appreciate anything;
the new hang is generally rewarding and enriching.
Michael Savage
Modernism:
Designing a New World 1914-1939
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Modernists are treated here with the same sense of detachment usually
reserved for ancient civilisations and obscure cults, people who inhabited
their own universe and followed a line of reasoning that is alien to
our contemporary sensibility.
Karl Sharro
Barbarians
in Antwerp
Jan Fabre at the Koninklijk, Antwerp
It looks like a brave and forward-looking gesture on the part of the
curators, bringing the old into dialogue with the new. But it smacks
of pitiful timidity, a lack of confidence in presenting the past in
its own terms, as if it cannot speak to us today without the interpellation
of a contemporary artistic vision.
Michael Savage
The
Wallace Collection
Manchester Square, London
The Wallace is really inspiring. Sadly, inspiring is no longer enough.
It's now trying to serve lots of new purposes, most of which are tragically
subversive of its unique contributions. I know it sounds curmudgeonly,
but I'm not sure what getting six year olds to wear a hat like the one
in the painting actually achieves.
Michael Savage
Americans
in Paris 1860-1900
National Gallery, London
Just two of the 87 paintings are from British public collections with
a further four from other European galleries. The vast majority are
from American collections. This is an excellent chance for European
gallery goers to see works by artists nearly unknown outside the US.
Rachel Greenstein Savage
Gothic
Nightmares
Tate Britain, London
An idea encapsulating much of what these artists stood for is the sublime,
a sense of awe and wonder, which was sometimes opposed to ideas of beauty
that were merely pretty. Today's more modest approach is perhaps the
triumph of the beautiful over the sublime.
Michael Savage
Jacob
van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape
Royal Academy, London
The parts rise to great heights, but the whole is actually less than
those parts; comparing paintings of different scenes are periods is
not rewarding as it is for, say, Rembrandt. There are plenty of the
'greatest hits' on show, which gives a one-sided picture of his art.
The more pedestrian are often most satisfying.
Michael Savage
Reunions
National Gallery, London
This exhibitions brings together just six thirteenth and fourteenth
century Italian panels, each panel a part of a larger work of art that
was separated in the past. Briefly, we are able to see these works as
they should be seen. The scandal is the brevity; these loans should
not be returned.
Michael Savage
Unconventional,
varied, and undidactic
The Frick Collection, New York
Rembrandt's 'Nicholas Ruts', where he first moves ahead of his rival
Jan Lievens, is next to the 'Polish Rider', also claimed as a Rembrandt,
a later work, which also holds its own against paintings not directly
related. We are free to focus on the individual works without a thought
for context or story.
Michael Savage
Memling's
Portraits
The Frick Collection, New York
Of course, I loved it. But I am a pretentious geek with a penchant for
the Northern Renaissance. This show isn't meant for everyone.
Michael Savage
The
Arts of France
Wildenstein & Company, New York
It's a great place for people watching - the curious, cowed before the
conspicuous wealth, the wealthy shopping for something to go with the
wallpaper, the salesman flattering the philistine rich, and the scholarly
connoisseurs assessing the wares. It demands a Daumier to capture it
all.
Michael Savage
RUSSIA!
Guggenheim Museum, New York
As the viewer walks up through the gallery, following the chronological
layout, it becomes apparent that the exhibition has achieved a kind
of brief history of the development of human subjectivity, and its expression
in art.
Tara McCormack
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