Tacita Dean: Still Life and Portrait

Two contrasting exhibitions at the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery curated by and looking at work by Tacita Dean.

I would normally blog these as two separate shows but the reviewers have discussed them together and I did make a point of seeing them one after the other so I’m going to follow suit although they were quite different.

I loved the Still Life show at the National Gallery. It was curated by Dean although it included some of her work. She’s picked examples of still lives from the gallery’s collection although she took a broad dentition of still life including pictures of stillness such as the tiny Thomas Jones picture of Naples. The works were shown with minimal commentary just basic labels and you were left to make your own connections. I found this approach made me slow down and really look at the pictures. It also had a mindfulness effect. Delightful narratives were set  up such as showing the Barberi sparrow hawk with a Gwen John of a bird cage and a video of Dean’s shown high up in the room of a bird on a telegraph wire.

However I found the portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery annoying and too time consuming if you wanted to see the work properly. All the work was by Dean and tended to be slow, carefully observed video of studies of people. They were similar to Sam Taylor Wood’s David which I love but I found these on mass to be rather tedious. I also got annoyed that a lot of them were shown from projectors that were sited quite low so that anyone entering the room cast shadows across the screen. I loved the idea of the last room with six screens showing Merce Cunningham however the multiple shadows became very irritating. I suspect seeing yourself and others in the picture might have been part of the point but I didn’t like it.

I will find it interesting to see the third show in this series, landscape, which is due to open at the Royal Academy soon.

Closes on 28 May 2018

Reviews
Times
Guardian
Telegraph

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thomas Becket: Murder and Making of a Saint

Image
Stunning exhibition at the British Museum on the life and afterlife of Thomas Becket. I studied Becket both at A Level and at university so I was really looking forward to this show and it did not disappoint. From walking in to see an old friend, the early Limoges casket showing the murder from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was gripped. The show told the story well using fantastic objects and led you through his life, the murder, the political aftermath, his sainthood and miracles, and how Canterbury became a major pilgrimage site. It is hard to pick out the best objects as so many were wonderful. I loved that they had early copies of some of the five eyewitness accounts of the murder which made you fell you were almost touching the event. I liked the manuscript on his time in exile which was almost like a comic strip. How wonderful to get a 13th century font from Sweden which shows how far and how quickly the news that Henry II had integrated the murder spread. I think my...
Read more

Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Exhibition 2019

Image
Delightful exhibition at Clarendon Fine Art showing pictures from the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year TV series. I had loved the series which had set nine artists, both professional and amateur, to paint one of three celebrities. It then had a semi-final and final with them all looking at one sitter and in the final they also took on a commission. I loved the way you watched a picture build and how some were then made or spoiled by one stroke of paint.   Finding these pictures I knew so well in the flesh was therefore fascinating. None of them disappointed. My favourite artist from the final, Tom Mead, works looked just as good in real life if not better as you could see the detail. The show included his impressive self-portrait which he submitted to enter the competition, a wonderful fragmented picture of his reflection in a mirror giving a sense of movement. I loved that it included a large version of him and a miniature. His commission for the final of Jazzie B...
Read more

The Renaissance Nude

Image
Beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the nude in Renaissance art. The show was gently themed but mainly let the pictures speak for themselves. It began by looking at the subjects, both religious and secular, which include nude figures then examined techniques and models used in these works, finishing by looking at more personal pictures. This is a period I’ve studied a lot so there were a lot of old friends and it was quite fun predicting what might appear. There were a few surprises too such as the rather surprising drawing of the Ecstatic Christ. I liked the fact the show included lots of different art forms not just paintings including sculpture, etchings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. There were some fascinating hangs to draw comparisons particularly two sets of pictures by Giovanni Bellini and Hand Memling from almost exactly the same date. These were shown back to back in a display cabinet down the middle of one room. My favourite work was ...
Read more