Cathy's Art Diary

Magical performance lecture at the National Gallery on the life of Jacques Louis David. Written and performed by David McAlmont there was a trio of musicians, a soundscape and film with the performer imagining incidents from David’s life in different voices. He played both David and characters from his life bobbing around in time. It’s hard to explain but I found it captivating! I came away knowing a lot more about the artist and did a lot of Googling.

Repetitive exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey Street of work by the abstract artist, Howardena Pindell. As her work was mainly made up of dots either of paint or small coloured pieces of paper it suffered from the fact I’d done the exhibition of the work of the Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray and this was a remarkably similar aesthetic even if it came from a very different place. I liked the idea of the work but found it decorative rather than artistic and when you’ve seen one dotty picture you’ve seen enough. Closed 18 January 2027

Fabulous exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum of pieces from the costumiers Cosprop. I’d heard a talk by the founder of the company John Bright a while ago. They specialise in historic drama from the iconic tv series of the 1970s like “War and Peace” and “House of Elliott” through Merchant Ivory films to “Peaky Blinders”. The show was beautifully arranged with the pieces thickly displayed in tableaux. Instead of intrusive labelling you were given a leaflet of decorations and each work was numbered. It was wonderful to see iconic costumes such as two from “A Room with a View” and I felt very nostalgic for the television of my childhood, as it seemed to do for all the ladies around me. Closes 8 March 2026 Reviews Times Guardian

Interesting exhibition at Eames Fine Art featuring Pop art collages mainly by Eduardo Paulozzi. There was a lovely selection of work with some original maquettes as well as prints by the artist many from the archives of his printer Kip Gresham. In addition, there were some works by Peter Blake and Joe Tilson. Closed 30 November 2025

Excellent online course from Paula Nuttall on the 15 th century Florentine artist Fra Angelico. Week one Paula introduced to the artist and placed him in the of the city at the time discussing his influences from Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio and Gilberti. She also looked at the impact of the theorist Alberti on his work. We looked at Fra Angelico’s early altarpieces. Week two we concentrated on his work for the monastery of San Marco discussing how the commission came about through Cosimo de Medici’s worries about his immortal soul and his friendship with Pope Eugenius IV who was living in Florence at the time. We started by looking at the altarpiece for the then moving in the dormitories looking in detail at the fresco’s in the cells there. Most fascinating was hearing about the different style of designs for the novices, clerics and lay brothers. In the final week we looked at commissions outside of San Marco and covered in some detail Fra Angelico’s years in Rome. I hadn’t know a...

Novel exhibition at the National Gallery featuring studies by Edwin Austin Abbey for the decoration of the state house in Pennsylvania. I’d heard a slightly confused talk on the show the day before but the show was more succinct. (Stop press : I said the opposite in my blog post for the talk! I my defence it’s been a while since I saw the show.) Abbey had designed the scheme but then sent the designs to the US for the final work to be done by other artists. He never saw the finished work and died before it was completed. The centrepiece was his design for the dome called “The Hours” which dominated the space and pinged off the wall. It shows one woman for every hour of the day who gradually put on a cloak as night came. It had a sense of a circle of angels on a Renaissance work. I think my favourite piece was this study for steel workers for “The Spirit of Vulcan”. Closed 15 February 2026 Reviews Guardian