Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent three-week course from the National Gallery looking at the Greek and Roman myths and how they inspired the artists of the Renaissance. Led by Richard Stemp the sessions were wonderful story-telling sessions illustrated by wonderful pictures. The first session focused on the gods and goddesses which a good romp through them based on Raphael’s “The Council of the Gods” 1518 for the Villa Fernesina.   It was a clever idea to take one picture as a guide which he kept returning to. Week two looked at heroes and humans, often the children of illicit relationships between a god and a human. We worked through Hercules and his labours as well as Perseus and Odysseus and their journeys. We spent some time looking at Luca Giordano’s “Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone” from the 1680s and how it fits into the story of Perseus. Finally in week three we pulled the previous two sessions together to look at why the stories appealed in the Renaissance and they often...

Fun sculpture trail round the City of London of large and small sculptures of the Aardman character Morph. Morph is a fun reminder of my childhood and a good simple shape to take decoration. Organised by Whizz-Kidz, the UK’s leading charity for young wheelchair users, and put on by Wild in Art, the trail of 79 large and small pieces has step- free access throughout. There is an excellent app which is easy to use and includes a map and the ability to log the Morphs you find via a code number. The figures look particularly good against London landmarks. As I write this I’ve see 43 around London Bridge, the Guildhall and St Paul’s but I’ll certainly be looking for more.   STOP PRESS: My final total was 51 of 79. Closed 20 August 2023  

Delightful installation at London Mithraeum, Bloomberg Space by Oliver Beer. The piece was responding to the Roman artefacts found on the site and consisted of 28 suspended historic British vessels, mainly ceramic, each with a microphone inside it which amplified its acoustic resonance and was triggered by the people moving around the exhibit. I am a sucker for any contemporary art involving old ceramics and this worked beautifully. I was pleased to see a chart on the walk to tell you what the pieces were so they felt like they were there in their own right, with their own histories, not just as this installation. Closed 15 July 2023 Review Evening Standard    

Interesting re-creation at the Guildhall Art Gallery of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s working ‘office’. This exhibition is part of the Wren300 celebrations and was a fun idea but I didn’t think it quite came off. I will admit I missed the section on the upper level which looked dull but may have given more information than was in the room itself. The room has been decorated in Jacobean colours and the walls were covered in facsimiles of Wrens drawings and drawings by modern architects of St Paul’s and other city buildings. There was also a table of modern and Wren-era tools. There was a fun model of a cross section of the dome centring the room which was effective.   It was nice to see a new ‘map’ by Adam Dant describing Wren’s life and times in the City. His work keeps popping up. Closes 15 October 2023

Interesting exhibition at Tate Britain bringing together five large works which invite you to participate. The works were in the large gallery upstairs and looked great in the space and some of them were of a temporary nature. My favourite was Vong Phaophanit's "Neon Rice Field" from 1993. On first glance I liked the way you couldn't see all the neon stripes until you walked around it but I was then fascinated to read how it is made of rice as a symbol for Asia and that the rice is collected, processed and given to food banks after the showing. Lydia Ourahmane's "The Third Choir" from 2014 placed mobile phones in empty oil barrels playing different FM radio channels with the signal improving as you lent over them. I also liked Anya Gallaccio's "reserve beauty" from 1991-2003 which consists of 2000 mass-produced red gerbera flowers installed in full bloom which die and decay during the show. Each time it is shown it is reinstated wi...

Exquisite exhibition at Tate Britain of videos by Isaac Julien. As some of you may know I'm not very keen on video art but I loved these and they were cleverly shown. At first the display felt a bit confusing as you walked into one multiscreen piece without explanation but if you made you way to the centre of the show there was an entrance to each screening which you could watch in any order and a useful indicator showing how long the piece was and how far through it was. I dipped into all the works and spent a bit more time in some of them but I want to try to go back and watch a few of them in full. On the whole there weren't too long but I did hear someone say if you wanted to see all of them it would take 4 hours! The works were beautiful filmed and had a gentle narrative arch while being packed with ideas. The ones I watched for longer were centred on race, history and art. It’s well worth a trip but give yourself time to relax and enjoy it. STOP PRESS: I’ve bee...

Clever exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the work of the Rosettis, Dante Gabrielle, Christina and Elizabeth ne Siddal. It was nice to see three protagonists given almost equal billing and to have poems presented like paintings on the walls with spots to stand on to hear them read. It was an excellent way to blend the visual arts and poetry. The show concentrated on their art more than their lives which was refreshing but to such an extent that I wasn't sure when in the narrative Gabrielle and Elizabeth married. It was also good to see so much of Elizabeth's work. She seemed to work on quite a small scale and a lot of the work was not as fine as her husband's but she was very good at composing an image and I was amused to see that he photographed all her drawings when she died and continued to base work on them. I was interested to see Gabriele's work divided into his work with the Pre-Raphaelites and the later aesthetic work with a beautiful room devoted to t...

Enlightening public conversation at the National Portrait Gallery between the director of the gallery and the architecture of the recent refurbishment. If you follow my blog you might remember that I was a bit sniffy about the reopening of the gallery so it was really helpful to hear this conversation between the director, Nicholas Cullinan, and the architect, Jamie Forbert. They highlighted some changes which I hadn’t noticed but which might have added to by feeling of confusion, such as the removal of the mezzanine level which used to have a bookshop on it, as well as mentioning some areas I had missed on my first couple of visits and I have subsequently been back to look at. They talked about how helpful it was to have the original drawings for the design of the building and the thinking behind the new entrance and why it wasn’t on that aspect originally, basically because it would have looked out onto slum housing. They also highlighted some things I’d not realise about th...

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades on the 16th century artist, Lavinia Fontana. The curator of the current exhibition on the artist at the National Gallery Ireland, Aoife Brady, explained how the show had been inspired by the conservation of their own picture “Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” from 1599. She also took us though a long list of firsts for Fontana from being the first female professional artists to work outside a convent or court to being the fist female artist to paint female nudes. She then led us through the five rooms of the show explaining the themes and introducing us to some of the main paintings that had been used.   I had been lucky enough to go to the show when I was in Dublin recently and this talk was a lovely reminder of what I had seen and a good way to learn a bit more about the artist.

Charming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of photographs by Paul McCartney taken at the height of Beatlemania. The photographs captured a moment in time and showed what it was like to be a young men in the midst of this fame. They documented the time from a concert in Cheltenham to a few days break in Miami. The pictures were of mixed quality but reflect a young man trying out his first camera and looking at the world in a new way. I loved the fact the images were shown as taken and not cropped for effect. When the pictures were good they were astonishing. I thought this picture of the beach in Miami, presumably from a hotel window, was fantastic and some of the portraits captured the Fab Four and those around them as the young men they were not the phenomenon we now view them as. Closes 1 October 2023 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum by their current designers in residence. I wasn’t sure how all the work fitted the theme they had been asked to respond to of Islands but there were some interesting ideas. I liked Marianna Janowicz’s investigation into how we dry clothes now. As people no longer use laundries clothes are washed and dried at home often leading to condensation and damp issues. It was interesting to think about how we think we’ve improved things but may in fact have created other problems. My favourite idea was the creation of pigeon lofts to hang along railway lines in London by James Perlow Powell. The pigeon poo or guano would be collected for fertiliser. Closes 24 September 2023  

Luxurious exhibition at the Design Museum Looking at contemporary saris. The concentration was on trends in saris from street wear to designer pieces. I would have liked a bit more on the basics but there was a good video on just how many different ways there are to drape one and the commentary says there were over 100 ways in India. I loved some of the simpler takes on the garment but the embellished pieces were fun to. They were so elegant. The street pieces were interesting particularly the pieces worn by protestors and as cross-gender wear. The last room looked at the hand-woven material that is used looking at different techniques and sustainable materials. Closes 17 September 2023 Review Times  

Calming yet thought-provoking exhibition at the Design Museum of Design by Ai Weiwei which focuses on his work looking at design and what it reveals about our changing values. The whole gallery space was opened up and was dominated by five ‘fields’ of repetitive objects laid out on the floor from Stone Age tools at one end to Lego at the other. I love this sort of approach and found them very beautiful particularly the field of teapot spouts but as you read more you found out they were deeper than at first view. For example the Lego had been sent to him by members of the public when the company stopped supplying him after he used it for portraits of political prisoners. Around the walls were then pieces either made from ordinary objects or imitating them. One wall had two snakes, one made of children’s rucksacks to reference the children killed in the Sichuan earthquake and the other of life vests too represent the European migrant crisis. There were also pieces like three coat ha...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the architecture of Venice as represented by the paintings of Canaletto. I must admit from the title and description I thought the talk was going to be wider ranging and look at how artists had used a variety of cities whereas in fact it just looked at Venice. That being said, Oliver Garland took us on tour of the city via the paintings of Canaletto describing the buildings and their structure. I thought I knew a lot about the city but learnt a lot from this talk particularly about the materials that were used and why they were used. I had never realised before that all the palaces where built around four principle spine walls and that facades had no load bearing function to keep the weight spread over the foundations. This meant the façade could have lots of windows and could be adapted and updated easily. This was a nice nostalgic hour imagining a walk round the city and learning a bit more about the place.

Fabulous online conversation from the National Portrait Gallery to complement their current exhibition of photographs from 1963-4 by Paul McCartney. The event was live streamed from the gallery with tickets for the auditorium given to photography students and brought together Paul McCartney and Stanley Tucci. Tucci had to do very little but just ask a few questions to prompt McCartney and draw a few of the answers out. From the outset it was a lively event with the opener of “You are 21 and about to be famous. Why take photos?”. I’ve been to see the show since and will blog it soon but the talk was a great introduction and made you think more about the experiences the pictures were recording rather than just looking as art works. They talked about how the photographs were discovered by his photo archivist and were offered to the gallery as a possible exhibition during lockdown. McCartney remembered taking them but thought they had been lost. He also talked about how they selecte...

Lively online lecture from ARTscapades looking at life and art of Leonora Carrington through the places where she lived. I had heard the speaker, Joanna Moorhead, before about her first book, a biography of Carrington, at the Charleston Festival, but it was well worth hearing the story again of how she discovered the artist who was a long lost cousin of Moorhead’s father having been been disowned by the family and how they built a relationship when Carrington was in her 90s. This second book looked at houses which were important to Carrington from her childhood home the Gothic Crooky Hall   but concentrating on the house in Mexico City where Moorhead met and spent time with her and the house at Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche which she lived in and decorated with Max Ernst. I was particularly interested in the latter which reminded me of Charleston as a lot of the original art remains.

Ambitious and fascinating exhibition at the British Museum looking at China from 1796 to 1912. The premise was that we think of that time as a period of decline but it was also a time of great creativity and social, political and technological change. Again this show had beautiful objects but there was almost too much story to tell in one show, considering the military section listed seven wars and up uprisings in the century there was a lot to understand about a subject I knew very little about at the start. I loved the use of clothing in the show which felt quite unusual for the British Museum and I am increasingly fascinated by Chinese painting. I think my favourite pieces were the volumes of an illustrated journal of stories from around the world. I loved the New York firemen shown here. Closes 8 October 2023 Review Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Stunning exhibition at the British Museum examining the relationship between Ancient Persia and Greece and their attitude to luxury.   The show was divided into three. It explained how the Greeks condemned Persia for their love of luxury but how Persia were using it to assert power. It then looked at the effect of the Greco-Persian Wars and how, although Persia were defeated the effect they had on Greek style and fashion. Finally it looked at Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia again leading to a blending of aesthetics. The story was explained well but the best thing was the amazing objects. I think it included some of the most beautiful things I had ever seen and I see a lot! They cleverly used drinking vessels as the main example of cross over in the centre of each display from early Persian silver, through fabulous Greek ceramics to a hoard of nine exquisite pieces. I love the ornate, rich pieces but I think my favourite might have been this perfect ceramic head whic...

Interesting small exhibition at the British Museum centred on a model of a Japanese Festival float. In just a few pieces the show looks at what the floats are and do, mainly using some beautiful prints of festivals and a video of a contemporary one. It then looked at Yamanaka and Company who made this piece as well as furniture for the European market. The float was given to the museum in 1908 to mark the London Olympics that year. I wonder if they got anything for 2012.   Closed 2 July 2023

Interesting exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery of new work by Andrew Millar. I’m not sure I understood how the works were made but I loved their delicate finish and reputation of images which   the commentary said reflected the rhythms of nature.   They used a gilded technique developed by Millar over the last 20 years. They are created using a combination of Polaroid instant film, precious metal leaf and other materials. There were also two interactive works which were fun. I loved the video one which was made up of a kaleidoscope of lights which reacted to you moving in front of it. I told a gentleman next to me it was interactive and he looked dubious but I looked back to see him doing a selfie video and smiling. Closed 16 July 2023

Stunning exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery of photographs on the theme of what defines civilisation today. Based around eight broad themes the commentaries were simple and clear. It presented lots of ideas with some amazing images. There were so many great pictures it’s hard to pick favourites. In particular there were amazing aerial shots which made you look at scenes in a different way including this one by Jeffrey Milstein of a terminal of Newark airport. Shout outs to Dona Schwarz two series of parents in children’s bedrooms one called “Expectant Parents” and the other “Empty Nesters”, Shigeru Takato’s pictures of empty news studios and a moving one of a shirt shop after 9/11 with the debris showing through the shop window but Sean Hemerle. I think my favourite was this one of the crowd and video screens at the pope’s funeral by Mark Power. It took me ages to get my head round it. Closes 17 September 2023    

Delicate exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery for this year’s Royal Horticultural Society prizes for botanical art and photography. The show followed a strict judging policy and prize structure very similar to the Chelsea Flower Show. In each category people were invited to submit six pieces which were judged as a set. The artwork was mainly highly detailed watercolours of a stunning quality. I preferred the ones which seemed to fill the plain with an image rather than the barer ones arranged in a pattern. The works were from around the world. I think my favourites were pictures of Scottish lichen by Liz Campbell. I was less impressed by the photographs. The ones that focused on detail were actually very like the watercolours and I’m not sure I’d have been able to tell them apart. My favourites were flower arrangements like Dutch still lives by T.M.Glass which paired flowers from renowned gardens in vases from museum collections.   Closed 9 July 2023

Fun and informative online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at dogs in art. The talk complimented the galleries current show of portraits of dogs. Edgar Peters Bowron formally of the Museum of Fine Art Houston , who had written a book with the same title as this talk, took us though the subject via ten amusing statements about dogs. These ranged from “It started with a Saluki” to “Before dogs played poker they played the piano”. He had some great illustrations which included many pictures I’d not seen plus a number of images from the excellent exhibition.   I could have one without him showing the end of “Lassie Come Home” at the end which had me sobbing but a great idea to bring film into the discussion.    

Lovely loan exhibition at Sotheby’s of portraits from Chatsworth House. In a beautifully designed display just seven pictures told the story of a family and their collecting from the 17th century to 2009. There was also an excellent booklet with good commentaries on the works. The first family picture was a delightful painting of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and her daughter by Joshua Reynolds and the latter ones were by Lucien Freud who became a friend of the family. Throw in a Rembrandt and a Canova bust and you have a tight, quality show. Closed 3 July 2023

Stunning exhibition at Sotheby’s of lots for a sale on 28 June 2023 of British art from the 20th century. I have strolled in to use the cafe and to see another small show which I’ll blog in the next post but was bowled over by the work for this sale. It’s one of my favourite genres of art and it was packed with works by old friends. There was a splattering of Bloomsbury Group including this girl reading by Duncan Grant and a lady in an interior by Roger Fry.  Add in a lovely Paul Nash surreal landscape, quite a few Sickerts, a beautiful Francis Cadell still-life and a marquette for a Charles Jagger war memorial. I was in heaven!   Closes 28 June 2023

Lovely revamp of the café at Sotheby’s in homage to the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by the photographer Yevonde. Photographed by Luc Braquet and styled by Hannah Teare for the Tatler this show features today's society ladies as a reference to an exhibition done by Yevonde in 1935. Having seen the Yevonde exhibition the day before this pit stop was very timely. No closing date given

Interesting selling exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by eight artists born or based within eight miles of the RA. The show was curated by HOME by Ronan McKenzie which creates more space for BIPOC artists based in the UK. I admit BIPOC is a new term to me and it stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. You learn something new every day. The standout piece for me was this lovely portrait by Tonique Sewell which was the most conventional work. I also liked an abstract with surveillance cameras by Tasneem Elnayal. Another new idea for me was the crocheted painting by Emily Moore, maybe I should have redirected my Nan to this rather than the endless blankets. Closed 25 June 2023

Eclectic exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by graduating students. I try to go each year and this year was as incomprehensible as ever, although I think there was more painting than some years. The schools proper are being refurbished so the show was in what was the Pace Gallery on the Burlington Gardens side and the 2nd floor gallery in the original bit. All the work would benefit from a bit of explanation but without understanding I was drawn to Thirza Smith’s fountain made of an old RSPCA collection box, a room installation by Daria Blum and some delicate abstract paintings on silk and satin by Max Boyla. I think my favourite individual piece was this sculpture of found items also by Smith. Closed 25 June 2023

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in the life and work of Yevonde, a female photographer from the early 20th century. The show was in a new exhibition space which was quite long and thin. I was glad I’d listened to an online lecture about it so I felt I had a grounding before I arrived. The commentaries were quite wordy with long biographies of the sitters. I do like shows like this that give a cross section of a society at a point in time but I felt I came out knowing more about the sitters than about her. I did like the variety and innovation in the work from early use of colour, through rayogram portraits and her work for the emerging women’s magazines. Closes 15 October 2023 Review Evening Standard  

Exciting reopening of the National Portrait Gallery after a major refurbishment and rehang. I have really missed the Gallery and was excited to get back! There is a new entrance with doors designed by Tracey Emin. I’m not sure they’ve gained much useable space behind it. There is room for a new shop but other than that it feels under used. I got very grumpy early on. There is a new mural I wanted to see but, at the moment, it’s basically in a corridor with the most current pictures in the other side so it’s very popular and you can’t really see the mural. There is an extra cafe but both are table service which wasn’t clear as one is also a thoroughfare! There is no way of getting a quick coffee! I will say though that the coffee and cake I had was delicious if a bit dear.   I found old friends and made some new ones. There is a heavy emphasis on women which is fine and interesting but feel it does lead to some men going missing eg John Donne. I wasn’t convinced by a couple...