Exhibitions

There are so many good exhibitions at the moment in the commercial sector that the dedicated gallery-goer can easily spend a day viewing top-quality work without paying a single museum admission fee. The following shows nicely complement some of the current or recent displays in public galleries — such as Mondrian||Nicholson at the Courtauld and the Tate’s Picasso and Modern British Art. Despite the financial squeeze and such new burdens as the bureaucratic nightmare of Artists’ Resale Right, commercial galleries continue to play an extremely important role in the nation’s artistic life, though they are not given much credit for it. Typical of the museum-quality exhibitions now mounted with increasing

Bridget Riley turns 80 this year, a fact easy to forget when looking at the surging energy and contemporaneity of her pictures. She is a remarkable artist who, although imposing severe formal restraints on her work, manages continually to surprise us with the richness of her invention. Perhaps it is because of the self-limitations she endures that her imagination is compelled to delve so deeply in the narrow field she has made her own. And its very modernity is an aspect of the way her vision is directly and inspirationally linked to the art of the past. The free display in the Sunley Room at the NG, sponsored by Bloomberg,

Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, talks to Ariane Bankes about the planned revamp of the museum and 100 different ways of showing sculpture The evening after first meeting Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, I bumped into a mutual friend who told me, only half-joking, that she could be frightening. Fair enough, I thought: to become the first woman director of one of Britain’s pre-eminent public galleries you have to frighten a few people along the way. As it happened, I hadn’t found her alarming at all at the press briefing that morning: direct, brisk, purposeful — she was, after all, embarking on a wholesale top-to-toe redesign and rehang

Although I stopped watching TV some years ago, films are a continuing solace and pleasure. Among the Christmas treats was a previously unseen Jack Nicholson movie, entitled The Bucket List. The plot revolves around two very different Americans, Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, both of whom are suffering from cancer and are given a mere matter of months to live. The Bucket List is their wish list of things to do before they die, some of the more exotic of which the wealthy Nicholson enables them to achieve. The excellent Freeman, a poorer man but the greater philosopher, reminds Nicholson of a more important consideration: the two questions asked of Ancient

The trend of fewer temporary exhibitions in our museums is becoming established, as the cost of mounting blockbusters escalates beyond even the generous reach of sponsorship. This is in sharp contrast to the commercial galleries, which still put on as many as 10 or 15 different shows a year in the hope of tempting clients to part with their cash. Taking a keen look at forthcoming exhibitions is always a mixed pleasure: the expected counterpointed with the novel, the obvious with the obscure. Thankfully, there are still enough exciting prospects in the public sector to raise the spirits and move us to make a note in the diary. At the

The run-up to Christmas is the perfect season for an exhibition of Andrew Logan’s joyful and extravagant art. The run-up to Christmas is the perfect season for an exhibition of Andrew Logan’s joyful and extravagant art. At Flowers (82 Kingsland Road, E2, until 31 December) is an installation of glittering sculptures which lightens the spirit and brings a song to the lips. Fashion meets fantasy in Logan’s signature mirror sculptures, his unique blend of resin, glass, fibreglass, paint and glitter. For the past 40 years, Logan (born 1945) has brought colour and light into people’s lives. He was a pioneer of the sensational long before the YBAs toddled into view;

The so-called Glasgow Boys had no manifesto, common background or style, apart from working in and around the city of Glasgow and sharing a belief in the importance of painting from direct observation and experience. They acknowledged the influence of the naturalism practised by the Barbizon and Hague schools in the later 19th century, and rejected narrative in painting and especially the sickly sentimentalism that bedevilled so much Victorian art. They were a loosely associated group of painters, sometimes called the Glasgow School but preferring to be known by the slightly more raffish title of the Glasgow Boys, who banded together principally to exhibit. This ploy worked and they achieved

The historic centre of Bruges has 16 museums, enough to cater for every touristic taste. There’s a Diamond Museum, a Lace Centre, a Choco-Story (the narrative element distinguishes it from the 50 chocolate shops) and a Friet Museum — or ‘Belgian Fries Museum’, for English-speakers under the misapprehension that fries are French. But the main focus of the city’s five-yearly festival, now in full swing, is on a local product the French cannot lay claim to: the Flemish painting tradition founded by Jan van Eyck, who died in Bruges in 1441. The historic centre of Bruges has 16 museums, enough to cater for every touristic taste. There’s a Diamond Museum,

As I pointed out last week, one of the chief attractions of the Treasures from Budapest show at the Royal Academy is the inclusion of two rooms of Old Master drawings. For those of us who find large exhibitions overwhelming, there is a refreshingly modest display of French drawings (admission free) at the Wallace Collection, which makes a good companion to the RA’s blockbuster. The earliest work is a fanciful, somehow ethereal, black-chalk and brown-wash 16th-century drawing of a water festival at Fontainebleau, by Antoine Caron. Much tougher is a neighbouring red-chalk study by Jacques Callot, ‘Ecce Homo’. Despite a certain vulgarity of pose and gesture, it has a brash

Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period. Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period. He is most widely known for his illustrations to Adrian Bell’s celebrated Suffolk trilogy — Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree — and it is worth noting that Becker’s pictures were matched to Bell’s prose after the artist’s death, though they seem to be made for each other in their near-perfect fit. Becker

Sometimes an exhibition does what it says on the tin. The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, the Ashmolean’s first major show post-revamp, is such an exhibition. Sometimes an exhibition does what it says on the tin. The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, the Ashmolean’s first major show post-revamp, is such an exhibition. This fidelity is simultaneously its strength and its weakness. In a dazzling and far-reaching show, the exhibition organisers ultimately leave us questioning the nature and meaning not only of Pre-Raphaelitism but also of 19th-century concepts of Italy. This may be part of the exhibition’s achievement. It does not make for the easy ride exhibition-goers have come to expect from the Pre-Raphaelites. In

Andrew Lambirth finds the National Gallery’s new exhibition on Canaletto and his contemporaries both illuminating and enjoyable Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), better known as Canaletto, is a safe bet and a crowd-pleaser, and the weary critic is entitled to ask — not another Canaletto show? What can there be left to say? But note the exhibition title — Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals. Venice comes first, the great tourist trap herself, kingdom of the sea and romance-magnet, and in the placing of the words the unashamed popularism of the show emerges. Or so the cynic might think. In fact, this exhibition is not simply a celebration of Venice, but a

In the first retrospective of his work for nearly 40 years, Peter Lanyon (1918–64) is given the kind of recognition long his due. In the first retrospective of his work for nearly 40 years, Peter Lanyon (1918–64) is given the kind of recognition long his due. A major figure in the St Ives group, his work holds its own on an international stage even though it remains rooted in his native Cornwall. He was an inventive and innovative painter who conjured up the sensation of being in certain places and experiencing particular weather conditions. This was not an art bound to the earth’s surface, and it began by delving beneath

As regular readers of this column will know, I am not an admirer of large exhibitions. The exhaustive is exhausting, and I refuse to believe that the general visitor can absorb the contents of a blockbuster show on a single viewing. Of course in these days of enforced leisure, more and more viewers are able to return to exhibitions (particularly if mounted by institutions of which they are members), though the time and expense involved deters those with jobs from making repeated visits. Vast exhibitions are designed to bring glory on the host museum and garner headlines as well as visitor numbers. The sheer size of them is supposed to