Cathy's Art Diary

Stunning exhibition at the Royal Academy focusing on how bronze has been used over the centuries. The exhibition almost peaked too early as the star of the show, the Dancing Satyr, was in the first room. A stunning life sized figure recently rescued from the sea of Sicily which moves gives an amazing sense of movement and life. However instead this gave a wonderful view of what bronze could do and lead you into the rest of the show with a real sense of anticipation. I liked the way the exhibition was themed with items from different ages and countries together. It made you look at the material and the objects in their own right rather than placing them in art historic context.   For items I knew well such as the works from Florence you could add your own knowledge to put them in an artistic tradition and for new objects it gave you a sense of wanting to find out more. The revelation for me was the Nigerian bronzes. I had not come across that tradition and the work...

Annual exhibition for the Landscape photographer of the year Award held at the National Theatre. There were over 100 photographs of landscapes in the UK and many of them were stunning.   They all made you realise how breath takingly beautiful areas of the UK can be and, much as though I am a city girl at heart, it did make we want to get out into the countryside more.   I particularly like photographs with height that fill the frame with the landscape and reduce the sky. There was a lovely one of very green fields stretching as far as you could see with one farm building illuminated in the middle.

Nice little exhibition at Brighton Pavilion looking at the life of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent, whose sudden death in 1817 saw a public outpouring of grief. The exhibition told her story well. From how she was removed from her mother and her parents separated almost as soon as she was born, though her upbringing a heir to the thrown to her tragic death in child birth following a romantic wedding the previous year. The Queen had lent Charlottes wedding dress for the exhibition which was a beautiful silver empire line gown.   I did however prefer the recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at Charlotte and Victorian and comparing their lives and how they were portrayed as it had a bit more depth.  

Installation by Geraldine Pilgrim at Brighton Pavilion as the first of their new annual contemporary art commission. This installation consisted by 4 pagodas in different areas of the Pavilion to recall the six porcelain pagodas commissioned by the Prince Regent for the music room. “Reflection” in the kitchen mirrored the shiny copper pans around it and contained cutlery. Upstairs “Translucent” was made of Cluny lace and lit with blue light.   I found them a welcome addition to a trip round the Pavilion.

A retrospective of artist and film-maker Jeff Keen who died earlier this year held at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery . I am going to have to have another moment where I admit I just didn’t get this work. I don’t like modern surrealism and I just did not understand this. I am sure if this is a genre you like this would be fabulous but I struggled. It did give me an understanding of who Jeff Keen was and his important role in this genre but that didn’t mean I understood. Sorry but I was willing to try!

Fantastic exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery examining the work of the designer Barbara Hulanicki who created and ran Biba. The exhibition was beautifully arranged with commentary round the edges of the galleries and a wonderful concentration of clothes in the middle. It was like walking a Jacky magazine! There was a good balance between a design and a business history of the company and it really emphasised why the shop was so revolutionary at the time and how it changed the outlook of the retail trade. The best element was the bit that was out of the curator’s hands and that was listening to the women who were going round the exhibition pointing out to friends and daughters pieces that had owned. It became a living piece of social history. I am a bit too young for Biba but could see how the pieces there had influences the clothes I bought as   teenager!  

Exhibition at St Margaret’s Church Westminster to mark the Remembrance season of works by Arabella Dorman . These works commemorated the work of the British military in Iraq and Afghanistan where the artist has worked with the military to produce pictures. I have a fascination with the work of war artists in the First World War so it is fascinating that this work continues. The pictures were very moving often showing everyday military life not just times of action. In particular the title piece of the show was a painting based on a beautiful portrait drawing of a soldier who was later killed in action. In the final picture the portrait is overlaid with words from his last letter home.

A lecture at the Courtauld given by Ayla Lepine to compliment the current Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain. I am going to honest and say I did get a bit lost! It is only now reading the introduction to it again that I realise it was about linking the Pre-Raphaelites and the Gothic revival and seeing how they influenced each other, I know it should have been obvious from the title! However this did not really come across clearly in the lecture. The speaker launched straight in and the introduction on the night was more about the current exhibition buy how she was going to take an imaginative view of it an include some works which were not in it. She had a tendency to rush through a series of names and links between them in an amazed fashion. I did start to think that surely as all the names lived about the same time and were operating in artistic circles in London then of course there were connections as there would be now. I think I will chalk this one up to m...

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery to complement their current main exhibition on the artist, looking at drawings by Lely and his substantial collection of drawings.   Lely had one of the great collections of drawings and prints in England in the 17 th century. At a sale on his death there were 10,000 works, each of which was market PL before the sale so they can now be traced in museums throughout the world. There is an emphasis in the collection on figures and drapery and many works were used as inspiration for his own work. The exhibition shone a spot light on collections of this period and how an artist used the work of others as models. I loved an ornamental head by Giulio Romano as I had seen a recent exhibition of his drawings in Paris, also a St Mark by Fra Bartolmmeo for San Marco in Florence.  

Lovely small exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of nine etchings recently presented to them by Frank Auerbach plus a portrait of Auerbach by Freud donated by another foundation to compliment the etchings. Freud worked directly onto copper plate and there was a wonderful quote about how he considered the work “What’s black is white. What’s left is right”. There were some stunning works really showing off Freud’s skills as a draughtsman from the fineness of thistle to the expression of a man. I loved a reclining study of Leigh Bowery looking end on from the top of his head, a touching and unusual view of a figure.

Small exhibition at the Courtauld gallery looking at the early work of Peter Lely, the 17 th century painter. These early works were mainly pictures of love, music and mythology rather than the portraits he is better known. I must admit I found the works rather insipid if not verging on the bad in the case of “Reuben presenting mandrakes to Leah” which seemed to be a study in chubbiness! Other were almost 17 th soft porn such as one of voyeuristic nymphs by a fountain. This was still a good exhibition as it gave a view of the artist’s work I didn’t know before but thank goodness the Windsor Beauties came along and saved his career! Reviews Times Telegraph Independent Evening Standard  

Artistically displayed exhibition of the work of fashion photographer Tim Walker at Somerset House. These were very imaginative photographs placing the clothes and models in a fantasy world. They were displayed with the props used by the photographer in a fantasy space so there was giant skeleton, a snail climbing up the wall and a large swan shaped boat. I did sometimes feel however that the clothes were not that well shown. It was selling a dream and an image rather than the garment. I preferred Tim Walkers wonderful portraits work particularly a Vivienne Westwood with a coral tiara and orange roses and a large picture of Alexander McQueen with a skull and cigarettes. There was also a lovely picture of the Monty Python team in exploding hats giving an air of nostalgic comedy.

Small exhibition in new galleries at Somerset House of drawings of London by various artists which were to be sold at Sotheby’s to raise money for Article 25 , a development and disaster relief charity. The premise of the exhibition was that a square mile of the West End had been divided into 100 squares and each artist was allocated a square to create an art work inspired by it.   It was a mix of standard views and new takes on subjects such as Mary Bowman’s overlaying of a map of her square on a photograph of barrels. I loved a picture of the old War Office on Whitehall by Joseph Robson done in sections of photographs, drawing and   watercolour and pieced together to form a picture of the whole building.   Also Richard Portchmouth’s view of the corner of Sir John Soane’s house with a reflection of Lincoln’s Inn outside in a convex mirror. Another interesting picture by Michelle Mossessian showed the view up through buildings shown as the space they made agai...

Small exhibition at Somerset House of works by Paul Benney, a resident artist there. This series of pictures called Night Paintings were displayed in the hidden passageways underneath the fountain courtyard, a space which had not been used before for displays. I must admit that the space was so interesting that it rather over shadowed the pictures. The display began by showing individual works in very small store rooms off the passage ways then the main section was in a cellar called the Deadhouse as it had been built on a cemetery and still had a few of the gravestones in the walls, a really wonderful and evocative space. I liked some of the works which seemed hazy from a distance but as you came closer a figure appeared. They worked well in the space. Other of outdoor scenes were good and colourful but did not work so well in that environment.  

Interesting exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris looking at the work of this early photographer and those he taught. The first room cleverly used eight images to sum up Gustav Le Gray’s achievement and covered a huge range of work. He started teaching photography just ten years after its invention. Le Gray quickly got away from the idea of putting his subject in the centre of the frame and did not use the new genre to imitate paintings. He often chose humble subjects and even by 1857 photography was being used to document war. The last few rooms focused on the work of five key students of which I liked the portraits by Adrien Tournachon best as they showed real depth of character.

Really innovative exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris looking at the tradition of Bohemians in art in all their forms. The first half of the exhibition on the ground floor looked at the history of gypsies and arts image of them. The first non-literary record is from 1421 and the name Bohemians was given to them as a king of Bohemia gave them free passage through the country. One angel of the way gypsies were portrayed was as chaste and angelic and often the Holy Family on the flight from Pilot were seen as like gypsies on the road. However in contrast to this they were also seen as sensual and tempting with their role as fortune tellers being increasingly depicted in the 17 th century. There were wonderful pictures of gypsies as entertainers including the craze for gypsy orchestras in the 19 th century. All ground floor had a brown carpet with the dusty footprints of travellers on it. The second floor looked at how young people in the arts and politic in th...

Nice exhibition at the Louvre in Paris of drawings by Giulio Romano to compliment the Late Raphael exhibition which had featured at lot of his work.   There were some exquisite drawings and in fact they were better than the paintings which seemed to lack life and spontaneity. There were wonderful designs of the Palazzo Te in Mantua for Frederico II Gonzaga including lovely signs of the zodiac.   There was also a wonderful scene of the Gods called “Divinities in Olympia ”

Outdoor exhibition of photographs of brain scans matching them to similar outside the side entrance to the Louvre in Paris. It was organized by the University of Jerusalem and AFIRNe (Franco-Israeli Association for Research in Neuroscience), and translates as "The Colour of Thought". There were some wonderful images and the match to paintings made you look at both the scan and the painting in a different light.