Kenneth Clark: Looking for civilisation

Stunning exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the life, work and collecting of Kenneth Clark.

I may just be saying stunning as it included so many things that I love that it was like walking round my own head! Renaissance, Bloomsbury Group, early 20th art, the National Gallery on the Second World War and throughout the whole a real sense of friendship and a desire to support artists.

The show was beautifully arranged. I loved the way it set up the artists in a New Romantics gallery who were going to come to the fore during the war before the wonderful room of the war art. It gave you a real sense of why Clark picked particular artists for different types of picture. I will admit to shedding a tear in that room! The mix of fantastic art, the tableaux at the far end almost reproducing one of the first photographs you’d seen in the show, realising the music represented the Myra Hess concerts in the National Gallery and one mention of Raviolious was enough to send me over the edge!

There was a nice Bloomsbury section. It was nice to see some of the famous women dinner service with the sketches for it. I agreed with Clark’s comments that the drawings often worked better than the plates. I felt they needed to have the same border or something to pull them together. My only criticism of the show was why they hung the self-portrait of Vanessa Bell so far from that of Duncan Grant.

I now need to watch “Civilisation”!

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