Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum contrasting the way women saw themselves through their art from the beginning of the twentieth century to today with their representation by male artists. The show drew on the galleries own collections one side looked at men using women as their muse and it was good to see one of the Stanley Spencer self-portraits with his second wife Patricia Preece in this context as the Epstein sculpture of Hélène Yellin. There was also a Glyn Philpott I didn’t know. The other side looked at female artists and included a nice Gwen John and a lovely picture by Marie Louis von Motesiczky “At the Dressmaker’s” from 1930 showing herself as the lady being fitted for a dress. It was good to see contemporary art represented with a Bridget Riley. Closes 1 March 2022

Creepy but effective pairing of two sculptures at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Both works were made of wood and show tortured and emasculated young men made 500 years apart. The hyper-real one shown here “Action 125” was made by Irian born artist Reza Aramesh in 2011 and shows an anonymous Iraqi prisoner of war who was subjugated by American forces in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War.   This was paired with a St Sebastian from about 1525 by Spanish artist Alonso Berruguete which uses takes a similar heightened naturalist approach. I love these 16th century Spanish sculptures. Bringing these figures together made interesting parallels about how times don’t change from the idea that young men still become victims of war to how artists influence each other over the centuries. It was a good example where just two pieces in a display enhance and inform each other. Closes 31 December 2021

Interesting display at the Fitzwilliam Museum highlighting the acquisition of a set of etchings by contemporary artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. This set of prints “First Flight” are delicate imagined portraits of black sitters which were displayed here with prints and drawings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck. I loved the exhibition of her work earlier in the year at Tate Britain which I believe is going to be repeated as it was disrupted by Covid. Her work stood up well to the two earlier iconic artists but in technique and composition. It was a good way for the museum to show some of their works on paper in a different context and to draw contemporary parallels. Closes 20 February 2022

Interesting display and trail at the V&A Wedgwood Collection at the World of Wedgwood examining Josiah Wedgwood’s anti-slavery medallion designed to promote and bring about the abolition of the Slave Trade. The display combined archive material from the collection with modern ceramic medallions by students from Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College reacting to the original. It’s a piece I fond of and I would love to own one. I am fascinating by how quickly the image spread and its impact. A trail round the main displays provided the context for the medallion and the wider history of the abolition and anti-racism. This trail was subtle giving insights without feeling too preaching. It led your eye from an object to a commentary which you might not have thought was relevant to the narrative. Closes January 2022  

Innovative exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery by Neil Brownswood exploring early ceramic industrialisation through contemporary art. Using a timeline of objects and archaeology Brownswood examined the early technologies and thirst for experimentation and reacts to them with a series of finished and on-going new works disrupting traditional ceramic skills with digital technology reflecting the fact we are in the midst of our own industrial revolution. Unfortunately when I was there no-one was working but I guess from the section in one corner that sometimes there were live demonstrations and the commentary said that the artist is working on projects with digital experts and former ceramic industry workers. A lot of the work investigated experimentation and failure. I loved a long installations of waste ceramic flowers in white piles and 3D printed objects the one shown here blending scans of ceramic objects and disrupting them in the print process, I think. I am...

Imaginative exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery using items from their collection to illuminate the story of Alice in Wonderland.   The show was beautifully designed and the objects displayed to illustrate specific sections of the narrative in a delightful way. Of course, being Stoke it was heavy on ceramics, but there is nothing wrong with that and the range of wares was fascinating. I loved the combination of pieces from stuffed animals, through playing cards, ceramic cakes and paintings. I could have lived with the creaking clock at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party which became quite irritating after a while. It didn’t help that it combined with building noise while we were there.   Closed 7 November 2021    

Interesting and beautiful exhibition at York Art Gallery looking at Japanese prints and how they influenced European artists. The show looked at how prints were produced cheaply in large numbers in Japan from the late 17th century making them affordable and popular in a time of peace when the economy prospered and the arts flourished. There were some good examples from all the major artists including some by Hiroshige and Hokusai and an early example by Suzuki Harunobu. There were some lovely examples of European works influenced by the prints but here I must confess I didn’t make notes and now I can’t remember who was featured. I loved the two pictures shown here but I have no idea who they are by. Answers on a postcard please! If only I lived closer and could go and have another look! Closes 29 Mar 2022

Charming exhibition at York Art examining at a set of drawings by Thomas Gainsborough and using them to discuss his early influences. The 25 newly attributed Thomas Gainsborough drawings were on loan from the Royal Collection are on public display for the first time. The show included a good video on how the drawings were found and attributed and analysed links to some of his completed paintings. One of Gainsborough's early jobs was for an art dealer in London for whom he added figures to fashionable Dutch landscapes. He was heavily influenced by those works particularly because of the similarities between the landscapes of the Dutch Republic and Suffolk. The show analysed this influence with lovely examples of Dutch work. He also worked in ‘plaister’ shops making models for decorating interiors and the show points out how he owned a model of a woodman carrying sticks which appears in a number of the drawings as well as Conrad Wood on loan from the National Gallery. The show...

Excellent three-part online course from Paula Nuttall looking at the main three Leonardo de Vinci portraits of women. Paula spent a session on each of the ladies, Ginevra de’Benci (shown here), Cecilia Gallerani, usually called The Lady with the Ermine and the Mona Lisa. In each case she placed the portrait within Leonardo’s career and explained how it showed artistic techniques he was exploring at the time. She also told us about the ladies themselves and discussed why the pictures were commissioned and by who. In each case she also talked about the condition of the works and recent scientific studies of them. We looked at what the Ginerva de’Benci might have looked like before it was cut down, how 19th century conservation work has damaged Cecilia Gallerani particulary adding the dark background and weird chin strap and finally what the Mona Lisa might look like without the layers of dark varnish and why is in unlikely anyone would dare to clean it.  

Excellent online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at the reputation of Frans Hals. Marrigje Rikken, Head of the Collections at the Frans Hals Museum, was interviewed by Lelia Packer, curator of the current exhibition of the artists work at the Wallace Collection. They talked about how Hals had gained a reputation for drunkenness and profligate living shortly after his death which was partly based on the ruddy complexions of his genre figures and recorded incidences of him being in debt. However further research shows that he was supporting 13 children including two who seem to have been admitted to an asylum. The other side of his reputation is how his art was viewed and again his work fell out of fashion shortly after he died but was later ‘rediscovered’ by the Impressionists and gained notoriety with the purchase by Richard Wallace of “The Laughing Cavalier”. However in his own time he was obviously highly thought of by his clientele, despite his loose brushwork, as t...

Fourth show in a series of exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery to mark their 50th anniversary. I looked at this show thinking how interesting it was and how I would try to go to the subsequent shows only to look it up now and fins this was the last in the series and I’d missed the others as this was the first time I’d got to the gallery this year! Oh well you can’t do it all! This show looked at exhibitions at the gallery using posters and archive material. It focused on four shows including Martin Parr’s “The Cost of Living” from 1989. How I wish I’d discovered this gallery a bit earlier. I came to it about 10 years ago. Closes 1 February 2022

Insightful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work over six decades by street photographer Helen Levitt. I loved the early black and white pieces taken in East Harlem and the Bronx which often focused on the natural humour and uncanniness of the streets. I loved the monumental style of the picture shown and a lovely picture of a young boy with a bucket on his head. She was particularly interested in the strange things children do when they play. In the late 1940s Levitt moved into film and they were showing her work “In the Street” from 1953 which was like an animated version of the photographs. In the 1970s she moved into colour photography having tried in it 1959 only to have her work stolen, and of those I loved her pictures taken on the subway with a candid camera. Lovely glimpses of everyday life. Closes 13 February   2022 Review Telegraph

Interesting video and installation at the Photographers’ Gallery by Helen Cammock. Cammock worked with the people of Rochdale to explore ideas of community and the principles of the Cooperative Movement which were laid down in 1844. She used the collection at the Touchstones Museum in the city to talk people about these ideas and recorded them in a video in which she also showed the people around the city with he objects. As often the case with a video it was too long. I liked its slow pace but just didn’t have the time to watch the whole thing which I think from memory came in at well over an hour. Alongside the video the objects the people had chosen to talk about from the museum were shown in the adjoining room with stills from the video. Sadly I was more taken by this eclectic mix of objects than the video and loved this picture by Tristram Hillier from 1865. Closes 13 February 2022

Small exhibition for a landmark project at the Foundling Museum to commission portraits of some of the last children to pass though the hospital’s care. The Museum realised that they had not portraits of any of the 25,000 children to pass through their doors since 1739. To fill this gap they have commissioned five major artists to create portraits of five former pupils of the Foundling Hospital – to hang alongside the grand paintings of the Hospital’s Governors and benefactors, giving care-experienced children visibility and voice within the story of British art and culture. The prestigious artists chosen , Jillian Edelstein, Mahtab Hussain, David Moore, Ingrid Pollard and Wolfgang Tillmans, reflect the support of Hogarth one of the leading artists of the 18th century for the hospital when it was founded. These were lovely images hung up the main staircase and I hope the plans are to commission more. Wouldn’t it be lovely if they could record all the people still alive who the h...

Clever exhibition at the Foundling Museum by Ingrid Pollard in response to their current exhibition on George King, a foundling who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar. I would loved to have seen more of this work as it felt a bit sparce. There were nice ceramic models of paper boats which were originally created as part of “Trade Winds/Landfall”, a body of work investigating the importance of winds and sea currents in the historic commerce that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It would have been nice to have a full flotilla of these. More moving were sections of King’s handwritten autobiography printed onto voile curtains and hung amongst the large portraits in the Picture Gallery. She had chosen sections where he mentions the names of friends or places that had meant a lot to him. Closes 27 February 2022

Fascinating exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at the life of George King, a foundling at the hospital who fought at Trafalgar. I love the way the Foundling Museum approach exhibitions, they are rich in research without being heavy and use a few key loans to illustrate the story they are telling well. In this case it was exciting to find the figure head of King’s ship, the Polyphemus alongside a wonderful painting of the Battle of Trafalgar. Obviously, the research was helped by the fact King wrote an autobiography and it was lovely that the handwritten copy was in the show. The commentary told King’s story like a novel and, although the title gives away the two key facts about him, there was a lot more to learn from his apprenticeship to a confectioner where he was bullied by his fellow apprentices, to deliberately looking to be press ganged, though a spell in America, which was told via an excellent video, to his retirement at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich an...

Interesting  online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at the meaning of the sea in paintings by Winslow Homer. Maggie Cao from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, took the picture “The Gulf Stream” from 1899 and used it to explore various social and political issues which Homer may have been alluding to. She referenced writing on the nature of the phenomena of the Gulf Stream and how it bought economic benefits to America, opening up trade from South America, but also conflict with the fishing disputes off Canada with the British. She also noted that it was shown shortly after the Spanish-American War. She also said the work may reference, the by then illegal, Slave Trade as it shows a black figure fighting the elements with sugar cane on the desk of the boat and sharks circling the boat. It makes the figure heroic but vulnerable. She introduced me to some beautiful pictures of sponge divers in the Bahamas and I was interest in the idea that most s...

Lovely new public sculpture on the upper level of London Bridge station by Jaume Plensa. I found this by chance when catching a train. I was drawn towards it to find out what it was. It is outside the station and is in two parts. The main figure is outside in the Shards Piazza and it speaks to a head and shoulders version hanging over the escalators down to the lower level. The figures seem to be made up of a filigree of letters and checking the website I learn they are from seven different alphabets. I like the way they look solid and yet you can see the urban environment around them through the work. As you can see the photo when I was there a small child was enjoying playing inside the main figure.

Fun and thought provoking evening at the Royal Festival Hall seeing Grayson Perry’s latest one man show. It’s quite hard to describe the show as it’s party stand up comedy, part social commentary and, this time, with singing thrown in. I love the way he uses audience participation in a series of survey questions to establish what ‘normal’ is for that audience and shares comparisons from previous shows from around the country. I would say though that in the section I was sitting in the wifi didn’t work well enough for us to take part. It wasn’t just me being dense I heard muttering from around me too! I saw Perry’s previous show at the London Palladium and I think this one wasn’t as tight. That one, which was quite soon after Brexit, had a better arch to it and lead you down a garden path then twisted what you might have been thinking. I suspect this was a collection of lockdown musings which did make you think about how we end up as ‘normal’ however hard we may try to be differen...

Fun exhibition at Somerset House looking at the history of the comic the Beano and its influence on British culture. This was a beautifully laid out show and had much more in it than I’d imagined. It started by outlining the origins in 1938 and the early editions then went on to look at some of the themes of the strips, food, discipline and punishment and rule breaking. It was all done using great graphics to guide you around. There was a good section on the different characters and the artists who had created them with lots of original drawings. This continued upstairs with some of the later characters often using the characters to examine social themes such as using Lord Snotty to look at class. Throughout the show there were art works, some commissioned for the exhibition, inspired by the comic and its ethos and themes. It included a room of art works by contemporary artists who break the rules which had a fun video game in which you could throw imaginary paint balls at famou...

Joyous exhibition   at the National Gallery examining Poussin’s portrayal of dance in his early work.   Based around the loan of “The Dance to the Music of Time” from the Wallace Collection the show looked at how Poussin often painted dance and movement in work, what the influences for this were and how he achieved it. The pictures and objects were delightful and full of life and colour. The show not only made you smile but gave lots of depth on the works. They had managed to borrow two major influences of the work which Poussin saw in Rome, the Borghese dancers and wonderful huge Roman vase also from the Borghese. I was fascinated to learn that Poussin was instrumental in getting a cast of the dancers for the King of France which was reworked and recast after it was damaged in transit. That version was also on loan from the Wallace Collection. I loved the hanging of four pictures commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 which include figures from the vase around it. T...

Interesting online conversation from London Art Week looking at the use of stone in painting. The talk chaired by   Emanuela Tarizzo from the Board of London Art Week split into two parts. Fabio Barry from the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington talked how stone has been used over thousands of years to decorate buildings, in essence to paint them. I was fascinated by the Byzantine idea of creating thin tile veneers of marble to set in repeat patterns called book-matching. Judith W. Mann from St Louis Museum of Art then talked about her current exhibition on painting on stone comparing artists who covered the whole stone and those who left some of it exposed to incorporate into the composition. I loved the attached image by Giuseppe Cesari of Perseus Rescuing Andromeda from 1593-4 painted on Lapis Lazuli which works the composition around the flaws in the stone. I didn’t know that painters sometimes worked on stone or ever thought...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the influence of classical sculpture in some of its paintings. Catherine Heath took three paintings, Uccello’s “Battle of San Romano” (1438-40), Botticelli’s “Venus and Mars” (about 1485) and Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne” (1520-3) and used them to look at how Renaissance artists referenced classical art. She gave examples of when they used actual sculptures as their models as in Titian’s figure with snakes based on the Laocoon in the Vatican which had been discovered just 14 years earlier. She included some examples of troupes which they might have been inspired by on Roman sarcophagi such as Botticelli’s use of one again in the Vatican collection. She also talked about where the inspiration had possibly come from descriptions of lost classical art such as San Romano having links to a painting of a battle of Alexander the Great, much described but now only know from a Roman mosaic version in Naples. She also talked about wh...

Fascinating online lecture from the Wallace Collection on the gallery’s current Frans Hals exhibition. I’d been to the exhibition so it was brilliant to be talked through it by the curator Lelia Packer. She outlined the ideas behind the show then talked us through the 13 pictures in it explained why they were chosen and what stories they tell us about Hals work and Haarlem at the time. I loved the idea that she had arranged the pictures as if they were at a dinner party with the Laughing Cavalier at the head of the table. I loved the affection with which she talked about the pictures as if they were friends she had got to know as she organised the show. It really made me want to go back and see the show again now I know more. In particular I didn’t do the audio tour, as I often find them distracting, but I learnt that Greyson Perry comments on the works and I’d love to hear his views on them as well as those of experts on the period. The talk is available to watch on YouTube ....

Bright exhibition at Eames Fine Art of prints by John Hoyland. These were large, abstract works created in the 1980s and 1990s shown with sketchbooks and the Poloid photos from which he took inspiration. I loved the way the prints were overpainted with swirls giving them texture and a sense of the artists hand. Closes 14 November 2021  

Interesting new public sculpture in Tanner Street Park, off Bermondsey Street led by Austin Emery, a local stonemason. This new work is made of Portland, Bath and other limestones as well as marble, brick and bones from the River Thames and crafted in free public stone carving workshops which were then assembled into this single artwork. It matches a sister piece on Tyers Estate. It includes fragments from St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey and the recently demolished arches at nearby London Bridge. It struck me as being like a Eduardo Paolozzi in style from a distance and I liked the detail as you looked closer like a skull, a handprint and various faces. A nice addiction to the park.

Beautiful exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey of new work by Ibrahim Mahama. Most of the work in the show were collages using archive material, colonial maps, bank notes, pages from ledgers and pictures of bats to reflect the layered history of the artists home country, Ghana. I loved the repletion of the bat motif which was also reflected in an installation of large bats hanging from the ceiling in one of the 9x9x9 gallery. Most magical however was the installation in the largest room. I was reflectively looking at the collages when I was surprised by a loud noise almost like a low helicopter! As I turned the corner into the back part of the room, I found a space full of old sewing machines on desks which were wired up to start working at regular intervals. The noise swept towards you as they started to work. The press release says “the works come together to address the passage of time, the notion of obsolescence and the potential for regeneration”. I’m not sure I got all of t...

Visually stunning but dense exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum on the role of the independent boutique in 1960s fashion and culture. There were some wonderful clothes in this show, reminding me of things I wore in the early 70s, albeit the Ladybird version not the cutting edge one. The downstairs was organised like a shopping street with a display for each boutique and the upstairs looked at some of the themes of the era. I say dense because there was a lot to read. You know I like a lot of narrative in exhibitions and don’t like dumbing down but each section and item seemed to have a small novel written about them. I’m afraid I glazed over quite quickly and just enjoyed the clothes. When you did read the labels there were some great stories. The shirt pictures here was worn by Peter Daltry on the cover of Tangerine Dream’s album “Kaleidoscope” which was shown with it. At the end there was a small display of album and magazine covers which gave a good idea of how influ...

Thoughtful online discussion from London Art Week on black figures in portraits. Samuel Reilly of Apollo Magazine chaired the event with Aloyo Akinkughe, Founder of @ablackhistory of art; Michael Ohajuni, Cultural Historian, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Arthur Timothy, artist and architect and Will Elliott, Elliott Fine Art. The talk started with each speaker picking two or three pictures to illustrate their thoughts and I was introduced to several works I didn’t know plus it placed others in a new context. I must admit I had never thought about the black boy in Rosetti’s “The Beloved” who evidently cried while posing but in a letter mentions how his tears made his cheeks shine. The artists, Timothy, had been invited to show a couple of his own works showing himself and his brother when they were still in Sierra Leonne. The discussion talked about how we look differently at a picture when we know the names of the sitters and more about them. One speaker took John Martin’s ...

Interesting online lecture from London Art Week looking at the Bloomsbury Group and the importance of Charleston Farmhouse to them. This talk brought together Darren Clarke from Charleston Trust and Lawrence Hendra, head of research at Philip Mould & Co to talk about the art of Bloomsbury and the current exhibitions at their respective galleries and was ably chaired by Janet Hardie of Bonhams.  Clarke outlined who the group were and the role of Charleston in their work while Hendra took us through some of the works in his exhibition and their role in the story. As you’ll know if you read my blog I am a huge Bloomsbury fan and had already done both these super shows so I didn’t learn a lot from the talk however it was nice to hear the work discussed but two such knowledgeable speakers. One idea which came up in the Q&A was the idea that Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were working on the murals for Berwick church which resemble a pageant as Virginia Woolf was writing he...