Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at Somerset House of work by contemporary artists looking at the utopian nature of graffiti. I must admit I didn’t make very good notes on this show and I have now forgotten much of it. There was literal street art by Mike Bradford trying to represent the actual road surface using oil, spray paint and chewing gum! My favourite was a series of high viz jackets with funny slogans on the back such as Insecurity, Tour Guard and Law Abiding Citizen. I did notice in my notes I’ve written mess next to a number of the items! Closes 2 May 2016  

Thought provoking exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at what consciousness is from a medical and a philosophical point of view. The show tackled this difficult topic by looking at a range of experiences on the edge of consciousness. The first looked at the difference between the body and the soul by investigating neuroscience. This included one man who pressed unexposed photo plates onto people’s foreheads to see if he could capture thought!   The section on sleep and awake included a creepy sculpture by Goshka Macuga called “Somnambulist” of a very realistic sleeping man in the middle of the floor. It also looked as mesmerism and how other generations have tried to explain dreams. The final section looked as disorders of consciousness either through brain injury or trauma. This includes the idea of false memories which was fascinating. Closes 16 October 2016 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard        

Small exhibition at the British Library to mark 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes the author of Don Quixote. I hadn’t realised before that Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare! Also that he fought at the Battle of Lepanto! I must read more! The book is said to me the second most illustrated book after the bible and this exhibition took four key episodes from the book and looked at how different illustrators at the time and since had approached it. The Gustave Dore illustrations from 1863 are the most famous but the earliest picture in the show was form 1669. There was a fascinating graphic novel by Rob Davis and I was particularly drawn to the illustrations by Salvador Dali in 1946. Closes 22 May 2016

Charming exhibition at the British Library looking at the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland. The whole display was beautiful with a good introduction to the story told via a maze of display with “Eat me” signs and quotes and illustrations from the book. The first main section then looked at how the book was written and published. It started with the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground” as it was first called, given to Alice Liddell following the story being made up for her and her sisters on a picnic. Next to it was Carroll’s diary entry for the day which he later went back an annotated to point of the story mentioned was Alice. It was so moving to see these two pieces together. It also talked about how out vision of Alice was created by Tenniel and the show included some of the original wood blocks found by the published MacMillan in 1985. The other section looked at how each generation had adopted the story and in particul

Fascinating exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of pictures of writers, actors, musicians and art patrons from Russia at the end of the 19th century. The portraits were collected and commissioned by Pavel Tretakov for the state gallery he set up. This proved to be a golden age for Russian portraiture and the arts there. The pictures were really well hung with interesting dialogues being set up. I loved the wall with Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in a line. I also discovered lots of interesting new people I want to investigate further such as the patron Savva Mamontov who founded an artists’ colony and financed an opera company and yet he looks like a very serious railway magnate in his picture. My two favourite pictures were both of women. I loved the poster girl Baroness Varvara Ikskill von Holdenbandt in a wonderful red dress with the finest black veil on her hat which seemed to split her face in half. I also liked a full length picture of the actress Maria Er

Lovely exhibition at Canada House of wonderful large figurative pictures by Marion Wagschal These works had a Paula Rego fell about them. I loved one of a large lady in a Greek style muslin dress called “Caryatid Portrait” she was slumped on a chair with a ghostly city behind her. I’m not sure I understood “Sing for a Dead Coyote” of a woman in evening dress carrying a dead coyote but I did like it! There were also some lovely smaller head studies in more muted colours such as a picture of an old lady asleep. Closed 15 April 2016  

Confusing exhibition at the RIBA of the ten final proposals for designs to rebuild areas in the North West of the USA following Hurricane Sandy. I say confused because I thought at first it was just about the organisation which held the completion. Rebuild by Design was formed as a way to bring governments and communities together with designers to imagine innovative ways to help safeguard the area against the consequences of climate change. However I then couldn’t work out what the photos were of. Eventually I got that they were competition finalists! The show was displayed via a series of large banners with a description on one size and a large photo on the other. They fitted the space well but each one had a lot of information and I found them quite difficult to read and follow. However I did find some of them interesting, particularly those based near Asbury Park. I know the area from Springsteen trips and it’s great to see more redevelopment work being done there.

Intriguing exhibition at the RIBA looking at how major disasters in a city can present a radical opportunity to rethink the townscape. The exhibition was divided into two sections one on historical examples and one on contemporary.   The historical ones began with London after the Great Fire in 1666 and showed five alternative plans for its redevelopment. There was also a good section on the rebuilding of Chicago after their 1871 fire which although the main plans were not developed saw the start of steel frame building and the birth of the sky scraper. I did not know about an earthquake which hit Lisbon in 1755 which created a tsunami across Southern Spain! This led to   the world’s first seismic protected buildings in Europe. The show included a lovely large model of one of these Pombalino buildings. The modern section looked at events in Nepal, Nigeria, Japan , Chile and Pakistan. These focused more on quick rebuilding after the event, as a guess the longer term wo

Interesting exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians looking the life of John Dee through his books. The books came to the college via a legacy from the Marquis of Dorchester in 1680 and it is a great idea to tell a life through books. It was delightful that many of them had annotations and doodles by Dee including a lovely sketch of a ship. I’d heard of John Dee as a magician and in fact had seen The Tempest the night before. It is said that Prospero is based on him. However he was so much more a scholar, a courtier, a doctor and alchemist. The exhibition also gave the impression that he only turned to his stranger studies such as listening to angels, when he felt already discovered and recorded science was not answering all the questions he had. It was nice to see object owned by Dee displayed beside the books including a crystal and his mirror. They had also borrowed a large Victorian history picture of him from the Wellcome which gave a flavour of his at the

Vibrant exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the relationship between modern art and gardens. I liked the variety of themes and ways of presenting the work in this exhibition however after a while it all became a bit too much! It was just too big a show on one topic. The central room which looked at international gardens   became too chocolate boxlike and I felt like I was drowning in orange chocolate truffles! The stories of each of the gardens was fascinating but even for me there were too many images There was a great sense of visual relief when you hit the wittily titled Avant-Garden room and found works by Van Gogh, Kandinsky and got a different view of the world. However the star of the show was the Monet lilies triptych brought back together from three galleries and shown in the lovely round room, a perfect end to the show. I loved the fact there was no sense of the bank of the pool and they become pictures of infinity. Closes on 20 April 2016.

Fabulous exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the work of Giorgione and his contemporaries in Venice. I am a great Giorgione fan already and was aware that there aren’t many that still exist and that there is often a lot of controversy over their attribution. However this show had some which I had not come across before so I had a real sense of discovery. The first room looked at the art world in Venice which would have influenced him and included a lovely portrait of a German merchant by Durer. My favourite room was the room of portraits with the walls hung with either beautiful languid poets with beautifully coiffured bobbed hair or more robust solders. There was a marked absence of women but they turned up in the last room which looked at allegorical portraits. Obviously the Uffizi was not going to let The Tempest travel but there was a picture called The Sunrise which I’d not come across before but from shape, style and strange subject matter I felt cou

Interesting display at the Wallace Collection looking at their recent project to conserve and reframe this portrait by Thomas Lawrence. The Countess of Blessington also the Irish novelist Mary Power and the picture had been bought by the Marquis of Hertford for the collection as he had met her at the saloons she held at Gore House. The section on the picture restoration but more fascinating was the section on the frame. When the collection opened it was decided to glaze all the picture and in doing so many of the inner frames had be removed. With air conditioning the glass can now be removed but this picture therefore needed a new inner frame. This was based on the frame on Lawrence’s picture of George Vi in the National Portrait Gallery made by the same maker. A company in Tunbridge Wells hold a collection of historic compo (linseed oil, rosin, hide glue and chalk) moulds and one of these was used. They showed sections of the frame at different stages. Closed on 3 Ap

Lovely exhibition at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre of new work my Karen Bunting. I loved a dark blue glaze that she used on large platters with lines etched into them. Her cases were in lovely pure shapes with contrasted some irregular shaped plates. I loved a line of similar shaped bowls in slightly different colours. My favourite piece was a tea bowl sent with three tea bowls fitted perfectly into a small tray. Closed on 2 April 2016.

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum explaining a 17th century textile from North East India decorated with scenes from the life of Krishna. The explanation had said this was the largest surviving example of this type of work called Vrindavani Vastra, but I was still surprised when I went round the corner and found it was 8ft by 20ft and took up a whole wall! It was made of silk and put together in panels of repeated patterns with each section telling a different story from the life. It was shown with a film of a play which is still being put on in the area which had a feel of a medieval mystery play and looked great fun. There were also examples of masks used in the play/ It was also shown with other examples of this type of textile most of which had been made into other things such as one used as the lining for a Banyan gown, a dressing gown made for a European in about 1700. Closes on 15 August 2016

Dull exhibition at the British Museum of watercolours based on Francis Towne’s year in Rome from 1780-81. There were some lovely pictures but the commentary concentrated on how they were painted, the techniques and materials used. This was interesting but It became overdone and I’d have liked a bit more about Rome, what it was like then and pictures of the views now. That could be because I am about to go on holiday there so I was hoping to use the exhibition as homework! I loved the fact Towne numbered the works and noted the weather conditions at the time, it oddly reminded me of the property notes which get attached to a digital photo! I was also interested in the idea that he used these watercolours as a base for pictures through his life and patrons would use them to commission an oil painting. There was an interesting section on the other painters he met and worked with in Rome but in a strange way showing these diminished his work as it showed they were all wor

Excellent workshop at the National Gallery looking in detail at Diana and Actaeon by Titian as part of a new series on pictures whose subject is myths and legends. We began by looking at the source of the story, Ovid, and how the poem was reflected in the picture. We also looked at the fact it was part of a commission from Philip II of Spain for a series of myth pictures or Poesies and how these were late paintings by Titian which gave him a lot of freedom in their composition. We spent a lot of time at the painting itself discussing the composition and listening to reading of the section from Ovid and discussing what was included and left out. Finally we returned to the seminar room to talk about the greater meaning of the story and larger themes in in such as the difference between about sight and the act of looking, a popular theme with artists. I came away with a much greater understanding of the work and felt I had looked at it in much more detail than befor