Category: Exhibition Reviews
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An Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahnik at The Wallace Collection, London, 10 June-1 September 2019.
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In their search for larger, and different types of, audiences galleries around the world have been exploring fashion (especially of the haute couture variety) for a long time, often with a remarkable degree of success. The idea is far from new. One of the first significant shows in the UK in this genre was “Fashion:…
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Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, Compton Verney/Exhibition at Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, edited by Steven Parissien, London, 2011. ISBN 978-1-907372 12 4. (First published in conjunction with an exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 25 June-2 October 2011).Exhibition of Stanley Spencer at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, 17 September 2011-15 January 2012. Compton Verney is really to be congratulated for putting on such…
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John Aldridge RA at The Fry Art Gallery Saffron Walden
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The show at the Fry – that most wonderful of small galleries – was too small to make many substantive points in any debate as to Aldridge’s proper status. Whilst ahead of most artists of his time, he was nowhere near the top group, and as such, is likely to remain amongst the footsoldiers of…
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Welsh Art patrons: Winifred Coombe Tennant and Gwendoline and Margaret Davies
Books such as these start to give us an opportunity to see the Welsh art world of the mid-century in greater detail. This is important – not, I hasten to add, because it will suddenly make us all think that the Welsh art scene was more ‘important’ than we had ever realised – but because…
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Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959. A Survey of his life and work, drawn from the artist’s studio collection.
Exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery, London, 4 November 2009-31 January 2010.Matthew Smith. Catalogue Raisonée of the Oil Paintingsby John Gledhill. Farnham, 2009, ISBN 978-0-85331-998-6. Leafing through the details of the catalogue section of the Matthew Smith book – and one has to do this manually because there is no index – reveals that most of…
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Review of 2009/10 Auerbach and Bacon exhibitions/books
Catalogue for Frank Auerbach London Building Sites‘Frank Auerbach. London Building Sites 1952-1962’Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, 16 October 2009-17 January 2010. Accompanying catalogue with essays by Barnaby Wright, Margaret Garlake and Paul Moorhouse, London 2009 ISBN 978-1-90347-094-7Frank AuerbachWilliam Feaver, New York 2009 ISBN 978-0-8478-3058-9‘Francis Bacon. A terrible beauty’The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 28 October 2009-7 March…
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John Piper in Kent and Sussex – Exhibition at the Towner Gallery, Eastbourne
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Curated by Nathaniel Hepburn. Catalogue with contributions from various authors: ISBN 978-0-9567676-0-8, Paddock Wood, 2011Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 Reviewing Frances Spalding’s biography of John and Myfanwy Piper in these pages I commented upon the extraordinary range of Piper’s achievements. This excellent exhibition provoked the same thought. The…
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The Face of Courage. Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the Second World War
by Jonathan Black, London, 2011, ISBN 978-0-85667-705-2 (and exhibition at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon June 2011 – June 2012)Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 The title of the book must, I think, represent Eric Kennington’s ambition in many of these portraits – to display the physical attributes…
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John Piper in the 1930s. ‘Abstraction on the Beach’.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London,1 April to 22 June 2003; the Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, July to 7 September 2003.Catalogue edited by David Fraser Jenkins and Frances Spalding, 192pp, published by Merrell Publishers in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery, London £29.95, ISBN 1 85894 223 3Published in the British Art Journal, IV, 2, Summer 2003 John Piper…
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Exhibitions of Neglected British Century Painters: Prunella Clough and Gerald Wilde
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March Fine Art Fair, Olympia and Millinery Works Gallery, 2004Review published in the British Art Journal, V, 2, Autumn 2004 Many British artists of the 20th Century did not fit into any of the ‘categories’ which art-world shorthand uses. Or if they did, it was briefly and often coincidentally. Perhaps there is something wrong with…
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Alan Reynolds at Kettle’s Yard
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Exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 9 August-21 September 2003Review published in the British Art Journal, IV, 3, 2003 The work represented in this exhibition covers the period 1951 (when the artist was 25) to 1953. For a brief period during the 1950s Reynolds produced the work for which he is known – to the extent…
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Ivon Hitchens, Unseen paintings from the 30’s
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Exhibition at Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, 2009 A small exhibition of previously unseen paintings by Ivon Hitchens has been on display at Jonathan Clark Fine Art in London. These were gorgeous, fresh images (the paintings had been rolled up and stored by the artist 70 years ago), very much more varied than the sort…