Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at Adel Assanti of new work by Noémie Goudal. The work was a series of installations and videos which reflect the environment and climate issues. I finished a course on the sublime today and I think the works would fit with that definition. The main work, shown here, is a sculptural work which at first appears as a flat image, however you can walk around and through it and it changes as you do. Downstairs was a mesmeric video of a pool of water from which other photographic images of a similar environment rise and fell. Each image disrupted the reality you were seeing and you stayed to watch the effect of them coming and going. My favourite piece was a triptych video of waves hitting rocks which was layered and seemed to be a film over a statistic image. At times it stopped showing the image below which then made you try to look for the image beneath. It reminded me of one of my favourite places in the world, North Point in Barbados where you can stand and wa...

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at the evolution of the Judge Dredd character. OK I admit I come to this with zero knowledge but, you know me, I’ll give anything a go! Evidently the character has been going for 45 years and as artwork and technology has evolved so has how he has been shown. The display looked at how eight artists had depicted him. There was a rich variety of images and they were explained well. The one I show is by Tom Foster from 2016 for a film. The show included three steps in the developing the image, a photo of a friend posing, a digital recreation with added elements and this final finished image. I loved a funny video about a day in the life of the current artist, sorry I forgot to note their name, and I did laugh out loud at it’s dry humour. Closes 24 April 2022  

Fun exhibition at the Cartoon Museum investigating the psychology behind cartoon humour This mass public experiment led by Robert Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford, took the form of pairs of cartoons from which you were invited to pick the one you found funniest and record this on a questionnaire. I had recently done a talk on humour in art at which the curator of this show spoke so I was interested to see how it worked in practice. If nothing else it was a chance to see some interesting examples from their collection and I have registered to see the results when they are released. It was hard to know from the combinations what factors were being investigated so it will be fascinating to see the results. I had not visited the museum since it moved and I must say it is looking good in its new venue. There seems to be more room for the permanent collection which was set out well. There was a friendly welcome which was appreciated. Closes 5 ...

Lovely exhibition at the Gillian Jason Gallery of work by five Black contemporary female artists. These were large bold works. Upstairs were works by Alanis Forde which set female figures against exotic botanic backgrounds. I loved their vibrancy and they did remind me of her home of Barbados which I know well. Alongside these were interesting works by Miranda Forrester which were painted in monochrome oil on PVC so the image appeared to float on the picture plain. Downstairs I loved Cece Philips cool images of women in peach pyjamas against grey backgrounds which looked impressive as a set. I also liked Emma Prempeh’s images incorporating gold leaf which I am always a sucker for in a picture. Sahara Longe’s image “The Date” a bold image of a woman in red was impressive and I would like to have seen more by her. Closed 30 January 2020 Review Evening Standard  

Fabulous online course from ARTscapades looking at Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts. Lead by Sally Dormer, Director of the early years V&A course, over two weeks we covered over 1000 years from the 4th to the 15th century however this was cleverly broken up to give an overview plus a rough chronological structure. Week one started with an excellent look at how a medieval book was made from making the manuscript or writing surface, through the covers and the production process. We discussed who the makers were and the whole thing was illustrated with some wonderful contemporary images where possible. We then moved onto early books made for the Carolingian and Ottonian Holy Roman Emperors in the 9th and 10th centuries. I didn’t know these works and the talk introduced me to a wealth of new images and ideas such as the attached image of Charles the Bald. In week two we turned to the look specifically at monastic books which allowed us to focus on English production in the 1...

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum looking at what design can do to reduce waste in what we produce and consume. You enter the show through some shocking statistics some too huge to take in, such as the world produces 2bn tonnes of rubbish a year, seven times the weight of the world’s population, and others more personal such as a T shirt is worn an average of seven times in its life. There were some good installations/art works to bring these figures to life such as a large handing made of plastic bottle tops which was just one winter’s worth from the beaches of Cornwall. There was a fascinating section on how we got to this place with a timeline on the invention of plastics and the introduction of convenience goods. I could see how, unwittingly, we were all involved in this. It looked at how we planned obsolescence into the life spam of a product to boost the economy after the Depression and the Second World War. The show became more positive when it began to look at ...

Fascinating exhibition at the Design Museum looking at the career of the singer Amy Winehouse. The show looked at the influences for her music and style describing it as an “innovative, post-modern mix of references”. It opened with a room on her childhood with wonderful family photos and early recordings of her auditioning. This was followed by a room set up like a recording studio looking at her musical influences and charting the progress of her first album. I was most interested in the sections on her style from her early purchasing in Camden market to getting a stylist at the time of the second album. I loved the way she maintained her iconic look although you could see it becoming more designer orientated. The last room was like a catwalk of her looks often accompanied by photographs of her wearing them. The show ended with a video installation using the soundtrack of her singing with images based on the styling of her concert sets. A joyful end to a show which could have ...

Wonderful online study morning from the Wallace Collection to mark the end of their exhibition of Male portraits by Frans Hals. I loved this exhibition, went twice and had already done three talks from the gallery on the show, but I still found more to learn in this study morning. We started by looking at some of the female pendant portraits of the men in the show. They hadn’t been included as the plan was to use the Laughing Cavalier and his friends to explore masculinity. A talk on a new identification of a picture by Pieter Biesboer was fascinating but I must admit I got a bit lost in a family tree of Dutch names. An amazing piece of research though. The last talk of the day looked at whether the purchase of the Laughing Cavalier led to the rediscovery of Hals but argued that this had already started with the publication of various books in the proceeding few years which in fact boosted the bidding war. Oddly two independent talks linked. One looked at the Mennonites that H...

Stylish exhibition at the Royal Academy of the architectural work of Swiss photographer Hélène Binet. I loved these large almost abstract pictures, observing he way light works with buildings. The show was arranged by architect. There was a useful leaflet explaining the buildings but I found there was too much reading which stopped you looking. I’d rather have had a bit more commentary on the walls. Most of the buildings were modern ones but there were some lovely images of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church Spitalfields and it was interesting to compare he approach to the different styles. Closed 23 January 2022 Review Guardian

Fun small exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by 2nd year students at the schools. T his was just one room but had the work of five artists. There was a handout identifying the works but I’d have liked to know a bit more about the ideas behind the pieces. I liked Oliver Tirre’s Perspex pieces and assumed they are saying something about transparency but it would have been interesting to know more. The same goes for Max Boyla’s canvas with a light bulb going on and off. My favourite was Rachel Hobkirk’s giant picture of a baby doll. I think it was a Tiny Tears which made me very nostalgic. I was amused by the titles of Daniel Davies’s interior scenes “Untitled”, “Unfinished” and “Unsure”. The room was dominated by Motunrayo Akinola’s installation which I took to be a take on a still life. It would have been good to know if I was in the right ballpark! Closed 13 February 2022  

Interesting small exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at how artists experiment and explore with paint. It takes as its starting point that that the first president of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds, was a fascinated by the physical properties of paint and often experimented, often not successfully, with different mixtures and colours. The picture shown here isn’t a modern abstract but a canvas from his studio with over 160 colour samples with written notations. This work was shown with works by current academicians which explore the material possibilities of paint. I liked Basil Beatie’s “Never Before” from 2001 of what looked like a pile of books in thick paint which dripped down. There was also a striking work as you came in by Fiona Rae and a work by Frank Bowling mixing acrylic, liquified ammonia, water and acrylic gel which were poured over the canvas. Closes 31 December 2022. I think.  

Charming exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the later works of John Constable and how his style changed in his later years. The show started with the exhibition at the annual Royal Academy show of the last of his great six-footer paintings, “The Leaping Horse” and they had the finished work from their own collection hung next to the full-sized sketch from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was fascinating to look at the difference in composition and painting style. There were other good examples of the sketch and finished work hung together throughout the show. I think my favourites were the small sketches, often done en plein air, which were full of life and observation. It was a nice touch to have a room of watercolours, drawings and prints at the heart of the show and a to include a sketch Constable made of the Royal Academy’s Tondo by Michelangelo. The last room talked about the lectures he gave at the Royal Academy to raise the status of landscape painting with some...

Excellent online lecture from National Gallery introducing their current exhibition showing Gainsborough’s Blue Boy on his return on loan to England from the Huntingdon Museum in America. Christine Riding, Head of Curatorial at the gallery, took us through the history of the picture and how it went to the US in 1922. She talked about whether the sitter was the artist’s nephew, Dupont, and whether is should be considered as a portrait or a genre work. She then outlined why is being shown with two Van Dyck’s and two other works by Gainsborough leading us though why artists from the 18th century chose to show people in the earlier fashion of the Stuart era. She also talked about how Van Dyck not only represented a great painter, but also the idea of connoisseurship as he himself was a collector. I hadn’t realise that Gainsborough had been part of the circle of artists around the Foundling Museum along with Hogarth and how this influenced his painting of children as well as how he s...

Fun online discussion from the Art Fund looking at the role of humour in art. The event brought together a good panel chaired by Annie McGrath, a comedian and podcast host. She interviewed Emma Stirling-Middleton from the Cartoon Museum, artists Reuben Dangoor and David Shrigley, and Simon Minty, producer and member of Abnormally Funny People. They started by discussing how we don’t associate laughing with galleries and museums and why that might be. They talked about how humour can make art more approachable and that comedy is not the opposite of seriousness. The two artists discussed their work and talked about how it had been affected by Covid. I loved the image I use here by Dangoor. Both artists had turned to social media to share their work during lockdowns. Minty talked about how new ways of sharing art over the pandemic has made it more accessible to disabled people including talks like this one. Stirling-Middleton talked about the current show at the Cartoon Museum wh...

Comprehensive online course from the Wallace Collection examining their miniatures collection. Stephen Duffy, a retired senior curator from the museum, took us though the history of the art form and the collection o the first day. There are 334 miniatures in the collection from the 16th to the 19th century. He talked about the different technical styles from watercolour on vellum or card through to enameling then moved onto the collecting style of the various Marquises of Herford.   On the second day he divided the French from the British and other miniatures in the collection and led us through the main artists of both and how the collection reflected these. He looked at the French first as the Wallace Collection is one of the best collections outside of France for these. In both cases he had wonderful illustrations which allowed you to better detail than even seeing them in person. It certainly made me want to revisit the museum and lift up more of those mysterious le...

Fascinating online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at the effect of a wedding in 1566 on the cultural exchanges between Florence and the Holy Roman Empire. Adriana Concin led us through some of the themes of the Phd she is working on which looked at the wedding of Francesco de Medici and Johanna of Austria, how Florence   used its cultural capital to raise it’s status in the negotiations, how those negotiations led to an exchange of ideas and artistic practice and how the event introduced the courtiers of the Holy Roman Empire to Florentine art leading to them starting to collect it. I had not known anything about this and was entranced. It’s so logical that if two courts and mixing in this was that they would exchanges ideas and, just like any of us going on a holiday, how the Austrians would want to take things they had seen back home with them. Most intriguing was the idea that the artists of the day, including Vasari and Bronzino, built and decorated arc...

New display at the Wallace Collection of “The Swing” by Fragonard which has been rehung after being cleaned. I did a wonderful series of talks on this picture recently to mark this rehang so was very excited to go and see it. It looks a lot brighter and clearer. The pink is much more distinct and I love the detail, shown here, of the roses in the foreground. I’d never really looked at the picture properly before, as it seems such a cliché, but it’s much interesting than at first glance. It does make you want to rush to a playground and have a go! There is a playfulness in it, even if we are also meant to be thinking about grown up philosophical subjects too. No closing date but recently redisplayed

Interesting display at the Wallace Collection looking at the relationship between he 4th Marquis of Hertford and the artist Horace Vernet. Both the Marquis and Vernet admired Napoleon. Vernet’s work reflected this admiration both in his early work when Napoleon was in power and later during the Bourbon Restoration. He created a nostalgic image of Napoleon and of the generals and troops who had served under him. Richard Seymour, the 4th Marquis of Hertford, loved near Vernet’s studio in Paris and bought 46 paintings and 8 watercolours. He had been just 15 at the time of Waterloo. 25 of the pictures the Marquis bought were auctioned in1913 and didn’t make it into the collection and in this show one of these, on loan, was shown alongside seven belonging to the gallery. I’d read up on the show before I went and the paintings were smaller than I’m imagined despite their epic subjects. The pictures ranged from the overblown such as a picture of the death of Napoleon with the generals wa...