Cathy's Art Diary

Charming talk at the fashion and Textile Museum looking at the life of the Dolly Sisters to compliment its current Jazz Age exhibition. The talk was given by the engaging Gary Chapman who has written a book about the sisters. I guess a lot of the audience, like me, had discovered them through the TV series Mr Selfridge but he was quite disparaging about how they were shown in it. He told their story very clearly illustrating it with some wonderful pictures. Because of the venue he said a lot about their designers they used and included fashion designs as well as photographs. A good talk and another chance to look round the excellent exhibition with a glass of wine.    

Fantastic exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery which looked at our relationship with animals. This show combined contemporary art with older examples under some loose themes. I loved the links it made and the great use of illustration. There were 70 contributors. It won me over straight away as the first thing I looked at was the Durer print of a rhinoceros! I loved the animal and bird feet prints which took you round the show and the clever use of the old cartoon of Animal Farm alongside various editions of the book. It was all so well thought out and presented. There were some wonderful things. I liked Stephen Balkenhol’s figures carved from one block of wood particularly a man with a birds head. Also Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs wildlife photographs which turned out to be of museum panoramas with taxidermy animals. Other nice older pieces were some of Maria Sibylla Merian’s illustrations as they’d recently been featured in a show at the Queen’s Gallery. Also...

Disappointing exhibition at Liberty of costumes from the new TV series “The Crown” on the life of the Queen. I say disappointing because Facebook had kept advertising this to me and made it sound really good. They pointed you to an interview with the designer surrounded by various outfits. I thought it looked just up my street however when I got there there were only four outfits on display with one more in the window! I went all round the second floor assuming they’d be spread out round the department but no! What was there was lovely. Two outfits for the Queen and two for Princess Margaret which had been used to point out the difference between them and their lives. Really interesting but I wanted a lot more! A good example of over raising expectations! Closed on 13 November 2016.

Interesting exhibition in the lobby of One Canada Square, Canary Wharf featuring sculptures by Nigel Hall. Hall has made many works which use the idea of elliptical form and orbital paths combining them into very simple looking forms which are however based on detailed mathematics. I liked the smaller versions best. Shown on masse they seemed repetitive but when you looked in detail each was slightly different with subtle changes in combination of circles and ovals. My favourite piece was called “Desert Rose” and was about 18 inches high with ovals set into a frame forming layers but set in opposite directions to each other. I have no idea how this was achieved to keep the same diameter all the way up. It was topped with two figures of eight shapes. Closes 18 November 2016  

Beautiful art trail around Canary Wharf by Mark Humphrey to mark Remembrance weekend. It consisted of seven sculptural installations around the site. Each one was dedicated to a different a charity set up to help x-service men. I suspect at peak times each was manned by a representative of the charities but I went mid-morning on a weekday and only one was represented. However each had a security man attached to it who were really enthusiastic and informative. My favourite piece was “Lost Soldiers” over by the new Crossrail station which had helmets on poles from different campaigns with the name of the campaign on the pole. All the helmets were contemporary with the campaign. The remains of a Battle of the Somme helmet were very poignant. This was a simple but effective idea. Another clever one   was “Point of Everyman’s Land” in the Jubilee Place shopping centre which consisted of Perspex cubes with different types of ground in the bottom and a poppy shape made b...

Fascinating exhibition at Pallant House looking at how modernist artists used the idea of the antique in their work. I am currently doing a course at the V&A on classicism and I like modernist art so inevitably I loved this show! It pointed out how classicism had a revival after the horrors of the First World War being seen as a return to order and reviving ideas of idealism. The show had a good mix of mediums with great pictures but also good use of posters, books and photographs. There were some wonderful pictures which I’d not seen before including one of the Toilet of Venus by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell done as part of a decorative scheme for Dorothy Wellesley’s dining room. It was three statuesque full female figures in great shades of yellow and orange. There were also some old friends such as Meredith Frampton’s portrait of Marguerite Kelsey from the Tate. I loved a room dedicated to the 1935 Olympian Party held at Claridges with costumes designed by Oli...

Fabulous installation at Pallant House in Chichester by Pablo Bronstein. To complement their current exhibition on classicism in modernist art (which I’ll review in a minute) the gallery had commissioned Bronstein, known for taking inspiration from classical architecture, to create this installation for the downstairs hall, one room and the main staircase. It’s a fabulous use of wall paper with huge classical designs in fabulous colours. My favourite was the downstairs room in a wonderful dark turquoise with large imagined classical structures seen from different angels with a large key design border and big Roman rosette motifs. The whole thing was wonderfully over the top and yet it worked so well. I wanted it as a dining room! Closes on 19 February 2016

Small exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester of work by sculptor Laura Ford. Ford creates fantasy figures often morphing people and animals. There were a series of large bronze figures in the courtyard including a wonderful childlike figure with a birds head and a part woman, part tree. However I preferred the ceramic figures in the gallery and fell for a lovely green donkey, however my friend had to point out to me that it had three back legs! All the figures had the interesting sense of on your first look seeing a conventional figure but on second look you spot the strange. Closes on 19 February 2016.  

Lovely exhibition at the Corridor Gallery in Brighton of new work by the sculptor, Eve Shepherd. Most of the works were in porcelain and explored ideas of femininity and motherhood. I liked the works which seemed to grow out of the earth with figures apparently in great skirts of mud and foliage. My favourite though was a pregnant, nude, female, minotaur poised on a small podium with wonderful, big grounded feet. Closes on 4 December 2016  

Disappointing installation at Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall by Philippe Parreno. I’ve given this installation two chances so far but I’m not getting it! OK the first time it turned out it was broken but I’m not sure much more was happening the next time I went. There are large white screens which move occasionally and a very naturalistic soundtrack. People were lying on the carpeted floor with slightly mystical expressions and a look of concentration. All the publicity shots had had wonderful floating fish balloons but on both occasions I was there there was just one floating aimlessly. I did later spot a lot of ‘dead’ ones up in the roof beams! I’m afraid it reminded me of the song about the emperor’s new clothes! There had been lots of hype and talk about it but it seemed like a lot of hot air. I just didn’t understand it! When I was there the soundtrack was street noise and I wanted to shout “Go outside and here it there, plus you can have a coffee”! I will go ba...

Useful but slightly dull exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at Dutch and Flemish drawings from the 17th and 18th century. The show provided a good overview of styles and themes in this period with good commentaries on each piece but it felt slightly fragmented. That said there were some amazing works. I’ve used a picture of a Ruben’s study of Marie de Medici for the mural cycle in the Louvre. I’d not seen any drawings before for this wonderful over the top work. I have a certain sympathy for her double chin! There was also a wonderful Ruben’s drawing of a descending male figure, a great study in foreshortening. I liked a sketch by Van Dyck for the clothing of Lady Anne Wentwoth for a portrait, an interesting insight into how he worked. My favourite picture was a panorama of the city of Jaen by Van Der Wyngaerde, a wonderful detailed cityscape with a figure of a man sketching in the foreground. Closes on 13 November 2016. Reviews Guardian...

Surprisingly interesting exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the life and work of Ove Nyquist Arup including his companies and his philosophy of design. I expected this to be a rather dry exhibition about building but it focused on Arups ideas about total design and the engineer as a creative force. Arup trained as a philosopher and was as interested in the rational of design as in the actual designs themselves. I loved a wall of doodles by him on various agenda’s and sets of minutes. They gave a view of an active creative mind which never seemed to stop. I loved the section on one of his first projects in England, the penguin pool at London Zoo with its wonderful sweeping ramps. The largest section was on the Sydney Opera House where his company was brought it to work out how to build the iconic roof. This fed into Arup’s ideas that engineers should be included from the design stage of projects to work with architects on how to realise their ideas. ...

Fascinating exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the most personal garments we own, underwear. The show was themed to look at cleanliness, comfort and shape. It was interesting to see how demand pushed changes in technology and vice versa. It also looked at the social changes brought about by underwear such as the fall in the need for servants as synthetic fabrics which were easier to wash came in plus the growing freedoms for women as corsets became softer or disappeared. However the best thing about the exhibition was some of the fabulous items. The first object I looked at was a man’s shirt from the early 19th with pleated sleeves so they would fit down the fashionable narrow sleeves of the jackets of the time. Mr Darcy eat your heart out! It was a nice touch to include the fig leaf with was made for the museum’s statue of David. Most horrific were the various designs which had been used to change people shape. We always think of the corsets whic...

Excellent days’ workshop at the National Gallery looking at the work of Caravaggio and how other artists were influenced by it led by Sian Walters. In the morning we looked at the life and work of Caravaggio and how innovative it was in its own day. We looked at the main works and talked about how his circumstances at any given time may have affected them. We then looked at his influence on others both in his own life time and in the years soon after his death using works in the current “Beyond Caravaggio” exhibition at this gallery. In the afternoon we looked at a group of Dutch artists called the Utrecht Caravaggisti who visited Rome in the early 17th century and saw Caravaggio works. They took the ideas back to the Netherlands and how they are also responsible from the idea   of showing a candle as the source of light which Caravaggio did not do. We talked about their work and their patrons. We finished the day with the wonderful story of how the “Taking of Chr...

Delightful exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the life and work of Paul Nash. I was already a big Nash fan and this show confirmed this for me. It also became a fascinating study in the effect of war on a person and their recovery. It was so clever that there was one room of his early work, placing him as an Edwardian artist with Blake overtones. You then passed into the next room of his war art and your world, like his, explodes. I hadn’t realised that while he was convalescing from a wound at home a large number of his regiment were killed in action. In his war work we see horror and guilt. As we progress to the post war work we see a mind trying to recover. He reverts to his older subject of landscape but he can’t help but see the war in these familiar worlds, gravitating to land which is like Flanders or scenes like the front at Dymchurch with great diagonals like trenches cutting across it. He also starts to abstract landscape as if having seen it damaged he can n...

Thought provoking small exhibition at Tate Britain for the winner of the IK Prize 2016, a prize for digital innovation. This project compares current photo journalism and British art from the Tate’s collection and trains an artificial intelligence tool to find similarities between them. It invites you to make these comparisons and uses those results to train the AI tool. The tool uses object recognition, facial recognition, composition analysis and context analysis. A display shows pictures that the tool has matched and rates them on this basis as a percentage score. I’m not sure what the use of this is but it was an interesting way of looking at a new technology in an understandable way. Closes on 27 November 2016  

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain looking at how Walter Sickert was inspired by photography in his later years.   Sickert was interested in how photographs froze a dramatic moment, took unusual viewpoints and eliminated detail in poor focus.   The paintings explored their flattened perspective and tonal contrasts. He was working with black and white photos but added his own ideas of colour.   He was also commenting on the growing ideas about celebrity and topicality.   There was an interesting group of portraits of Sir Alex Martin and his wife and son but I must admit I didn’t like them. I did however like a strange picture of Peggy Ashcroft in Venice inspired by a photograph in the Daily Sketch. Sickert added strange but effective salmon pink colours giving it sunset quality. I also always love the picture, again based on a newspaper photograph, of Emelia Earhart landing in Britain where in Sickert version you can’t really see the plain or M...

Eclectic exhibition at Tate Britain of the shortlisted nominations for this year’s Turner Prize for contemporary art. Helen Marten’s work consisted of sculptures based on collage like collections of found objects. The blurb said the three works suggested work stations but I must admit I didn’t get that. I’m afraid they gave me an urge to tidy up! I did like the unfired classic tea pots though! Josephine Pryde presented a series of photographs of hands emphasising the point at which hands and objects meeting, a rather interesting concentrated study. However I preferred the fun “New Media Express on a Temporary Siding”, a model train which has been in various shows and has been tagged by graffiti artists in each city it has been shown in. Michael Dean’s work was strange sculptures based on writing. He makes casts of words and then distorts them. I must admit it was lost on me! I did like his installation “United Kingdom Poverty Line for Tow Adults and Two Children” whic...

Interesting exhibition at Somerset House looking at the career of photographer, Malick Sidibé, who died earlier this year. Sidibé documented youth culture in his country as it was shaking off colonialism. He had an ability to feel like a person involved in the events he was photographing while remaining detached. I found the pictures really joyful, recording moments of happiness and showing people as they wished to be seen. I loved a picture of a couple dancing. She has kicked her shoes off and they have their heads together, engrossed in the music. Also a picture of three men in trench coats humorously called “The Agents of the FBI”. There was a great set of pictures partying by and chilling by the Niger River. Some of these pictured people from a low angle and gave them a sense of grandeur. The last room were pictures from his studio showing people as they wished to be seen. I loved a cowboy with wooden guns. Closes on 15 January 2017 Review Guardian ...