Cathy's Art Diary

Exhibition for this photographic portrait competition at the National Portrait Gallery . There were some wonderful images in this show but I’d argue that a staged scene with an actress is not a portrait but this photographic equivalent of a history painting. The image advertising the show by Hendrick Kerstens is probably the best. It looks like a Dutch C17th picture but when you look closely the wonderful headdress is a plastic carrier bag! Other stunning images include Leon Greeman, an Auschwitz survivor by Joel Redman, a Swedish fighter caught in mid air by Keith Price and two men dressed as Klingons by Steve Schofield. Reviews Times Evening Standard

Wonderful exhibition of photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz at the National Portrait Gallery . The exhibition focuses on pictures taken since 1990 and blends her commercial, journalistic and personal work. I loved the way many of the enlargements were still shown almost as contact prints. This gave then a false frame and therefore gave them a real Renaissance feeling. The pictures documenting the deaths of her father and her friend Susan Sontag were heart rending. I couldn’t decide is she used the camera to involve herself or detract herself but there was a sense of a writer compulsion to experience these events creatively. I loved the pictures of her mother with her leg in the air! There was a real sense of vibrancy. Almost side many of the classic celebrity portraits was a pair of boards of contact prints in chronological order matching the commercial and personal work. These showed two linked artistic and emotional journeys. Reviews Evening Standard

Small but beautiful photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of iconic nude studies of leading international athletes. Taken by the photographic partnership of Anderson and Low these are classically posed black and white photographs which make the sitters look monumental, sexy and vulnerable at the same time. Favorites were a British swimmer who looked like a classic Italian Renaissance portrait, two Ukrainian gymnasts on a trapeze showing all their muscles groups and the studies of Venus Williams.

Surprisingly large exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery of the work of G. F. Watts made possible by the closure of the Watts Gallery for a restoration and development project. The exhibition is set out chronologically and takes you through Watts’s life and work in a very logical fashion. The detail on his life was done well covering the relationship with Little Holland House and the Pattle family. This link interests me for its Bloomsbury links. On the whole the work is a little chocolate boxy but it provides a link between the Pre-Raphaelites and the more conventional Victorian world. I had partly gone because I bought a G.F. Watts drawing about a year ago and I wanted to see if I could find a link with a finished work. My picture is sketches from his honeymoon in Egypt and I did see a glimpse of it in “For he had great possessions” a biblical study so I was delighted. Reviews Times Daily Telegraph

Exhibition at Tate Modern focusing on the later works of Mark Rothko. It starts with the murals for the Seagram Building in New York bringing together eight of the pictures from Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura and the National Gallery of Art, Washington for the first time. This is a wonderfully peaceful room which really makes you stand back and experience the images. They need to be experiences rather than just looked at. The tape tour, one of the new style PDA devices, was well worth taking as it slowed you down and made you think about what you were looking at and how they affected you. In particularly the piece on how to look at black on black made you do exactly that. I enjoyed this exhibition far more than I expected and I think I may be a convert to Rothko! Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

Installation piece at Tate Modern by Dominique Gonzales-Foerster which combines sound, video, lighting, beds and sculpture to give a sense of a post-apocalyptic world. It creates a world where it has rained constantly for years which has changed the way that people live and react with each other. The sculptures are all huge based on the idea that they have grown like thirsty tropical plants. I liked the way it combined new pieces such as the beds with known sculptures. I’d not seen a Louise Bourgeois spider before and found it worked beautifully with Calder piece “Flamingo”. Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Independent Evening Standard

Nice little exhibition at the Wallace Collection to mark the centenary of the birth of Osbert Lancaster the cartoonist. Although it was only 3 rooms big the exhibition was packed with cartoons and other items by Osbert Lancaster. Starting with his work for the Architectural Review and books such as “Homes sweet home” it also looked at his travel writing and work for the theatre. There was an excellent display of works for “The Littlehampton Bequest” a book based on an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of spoof portraits of a family over the centuries. Each was done in the style of a painter of the time such as Holbein or Stubbs. Many of these made me laugh out loud! A shade embarrassing! There was also a section on his cartoons for the Daily Mail. He brought the idea of the pocket cartoon (a one column width cartoon) to Britain and worked for the Mail for 40 years. Many of these seemed so fresh an relevant event today. Reviews Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

Charming exhibition at the V&A of the ceremonia clothes of the Tsars. Held in the fashion gallery this is a small exhibition but has some amazing clothes to see. Most of it is taken up by coronation clothes of the Tsars and their entourage. It shows how they change of using Western style uniforms to moving back to more peasant style garb. Most stunning was a mantle from the Coronation of Nicholas II with the freshest ermine. However most exciting was the clothes of Peter the Great’s grandson Peter II, who dies aged 14 after ruling for 3 years. These were the clothes of a teenage boy and having spent New Year with friends teenage boys I can’t imagine them in anything like this. There were wonderful sets of coats ad waistcoats with deep gold embroidery. Some, which he wore more often, had had the seams let out as he grew. These items were so poignant. Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard

Exhibition at the V&A looking at how sport and fashion have influenced each other. In four sections the exhibition looked as how sports clothes have become more fashionable and how fashion designers have used ideas from sport. It also looked at the technology of sports clothing and I loved the item which was basically a rugby players vest. Made of IonX fabric the label said it gave “ionic energy to the body through a negatively charged electromagnetic field, improving the flow of energy enriched blood to bring more energy to the muscles”. Rubbish or truth I have no idea but it sounds good! There was also a section on how designers have used sports to advertise their products. As these often involved quite sexy images these were displayed as a “What the butler saw”! Reviews Daily Telegraph