It’s taken a couple of centuries but Angelica Kauffman has finally been given a solo show at the Royal Academy in London. She was an inaugural member of this illustrious group which was founded in 1768. She was renowned and admired across Europe as one of the most cultured, talented and influential artists of her generation. It’s wonderful to see so much of her work on these walls.
The Time Is Always Now – a really enjoyable and thought-provoking exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery has opened. Curated by Ekow Eshun, this show gathers together the work of contemporary Black artists who depict the Black experience from their perspective. All the work was made in the last 20 years and captures the essence of the time we live in now yet mindful of the Black experience as it has been recorded in history, but from a White perspective.
Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain – gorgeous girls in glorious clothes, fashionable young men, illustrious grandees in formal attire and charming children in pretty frocks. In the late 1800s and early 1900s John Singer Sargent cut a swathe through European and American high society immortalising the great and the good in luscious oil portraits. He used clothing and costume to convey the spirit and status of his sitters.
“Ideas came to me like I was tuning into some radio from the sky…” says Yoko Ono, and, having seen a press preview of Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, at Tate Modern, I’d say that the sound in her head was always turned up. The gallery has given this most enigmatic and influential of female artists a well-deserved retrospective.
Entangled Pasts 1768 – Now is a very thought-provoking show at the Royal Academy in London. In the late late 18th century many of the leading artists, and members of the new Royal Academy of Art, were instrumental in helping to change attitudes towards indigenous people and the abolition of slavery. There’s a very imaginative mingling of works from the late 19th century to pieces by artists working today, many of them contemporary members of the Royal Academy.
Pesellino. Every heard of him? No, I hadn’t either, but his work is amazing. In his short life, from 1422 – 1457, he produced the most fabulous narrative paintings along with epic commissions for the Pope and Medici family. We can now enjoy a glimpse of his genius at the National Gallery where there’s a wonderful jewel-box of an exhibition in Room 46.
I have glimpsed the future and it’s looking good. Last week I joined a press tour of East Bank, the new cultural quarter for London within the Olympic Park at Stratford and was blown away by all the new buildings and the spirit of collaboration with fellow cultural institutions which is alive in East London.
Ah, the power of the sketch, the immediacy of the scribble and the quick depiction. It’s something all artists do, have done, and continue to do. It’s really good to see so many of the works on paper which made by the impressionists gathered in one place. The Royal Academy in London has presented a very charming exhibition of works from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec and everyone in between, showing how versatile and useful paper, of all sizes, has been for capturing the moment in pencil, charcoal, paint or pastel.
Paper Places 