Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition focusing on Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando”. The co-curators Anne Robbins from the Muse D’Orsay and Chiara Di Stephano from National Gallery took us through the themes of the show and introduced us to new material which had been found. They looked at the life of Miss La La (Anna Albertine Olga Brown) using newly discovered photographs of her then moved on to discuss the circus itself and how it became an inspiration for artists. They then took us through the studies for the painting and talked about how he developed the image. These included sketches made at the circus as well as drawings of Miss La La in his studio. Some time was spent on the time Degas spent with family in New Orleans and the influence of seeing black people there and the effect of figures silhouetted against the bright light had on his art. Finally they outlined the ownership of the work until it came into the Nation...

Small art fair held at the Garrison Church at Chelsea Barracks. It’s always nice to get to events at this converted church and the work looked good in the space. There was a nice selection of work and it went for quality rather than quantity. I spotted a nice Auberbach drawing, a Bridget Riley print, Picasso prints, a Tracey Emin and more. There was an interesting balance of paintings and sculpture. Pieces that caught my eye included this fun sculpture made of bone china cups and saucers and the portrait by Waldemar Lorentzon who I’d not come across before. Closed 29 June 2024    

Disappointing e xhibition  at the National Army Museum looking at Shakespeare and war. I say disappointing because, although the narrative was set out clearly, the vast majority of items on the show were reproductions and photographs of works. The show looked not only at how Shakespeare wrote about war but how it has been used in times of conflict from the English Civil War to contemporary readings. I was fascinated to read that Charles I had a copy of the folio which he was reading as he waited trial which he annotated. The Napoleonic wars were mainly represented by satirical prints often using Shakespearean quotes and the First World War section included a copy of the complete works which were given to wounded and sick soldiers. It was an interesting idea to add contemporary productions which included a video of the National Theatre Othello which had had a military adviser who had been head of the armed forces in Iraq. Closed 1 September 2024

Beautiful small exhibition at the Garden Museum looking at the role of garden to the women of the Bloomsbury Group. If you read this blog you’ll know I’m a great Bloomsbury fan so I was excited to see this show and it delivered. It’s only a small exhibition space but it was used well to look at Ottoline Morrell, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. It made good use of paintings, particularly in the section on Ottoline where it featured many of the artists who had stayed with her at Garsington. There was also lots of archive material and good use made of books and book covers in Virginia’s section. It would have been nice to have had a small section on the gardens as they are today as at least three of them can still be visited however I think they may have videos online to cover this. If you don’t know the group this would be a nice gentle introduction. Closes 29 September 2024 Review Telegraph

Moving exhibition at the Imperial War Museum on the work and career of war photographer Tim Hetherington. Hetherington, who was killed on assignment in 2011, would not have liked to be described as a war photographer. The show started with a wonderful quote by him “I do not set out to make a work of journalism, but rather a visual novel that draws upon real people and places.” The show used a selection of his projects to explain his working methods, using a vintage camera which meant that he didn’t cover his face when taking pictures but instead engaged with his sitters. It also looked at his films which he made at the same time as taking the photographs. I found the most moving pictures were from when he was embedded with the US army in Afghanistan mainly talking photographs of the soldiers off duty and using them partly as a study in masculinity.   Closes 29 September 2024 Review Times    

Enlightening online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the life of Lady Eastlake, wife of the first director of the gallery, who worked closely with him. This was the annual Anna Jameson Lecture which came from the Society of Antiquaries and was given by Julie Sheldon from Liverpool John Moores University and the co-author of a book on the Eastlakes. She outlined Lady Eastlake’s career covering her publishing as well as how closely she worked with her husband in buying art for the gallery in its early years. As Sheldon concluded she was a significant figure in the history of the gallery even if it was soft power. Sheldon made excellent use of archive material showing us sections from Lady Eastlake’s letters and number of her beautiful sketches particularly of Old Masters they saw and bought on their travels. She outlined Lady Eastlake’s publishing including her work to finish Anna Jameson’s “The History of Our Land as Exemplified in Art” after whom this annual lecture ...

Useful if disjointed online lecture from ARTscapades giving an overview of portraiture from Roman times to now. Kathryn Galitz from the Metropolitan Museum Art took the starting point of how important portraits still our to us from major exhibitions in the last few years to the controversy over the debate over the altered image circulated by the Princess of Wales earlier this year. We expect a portrait to be a visual truth but it is multi-faceted. She talked about different uses of portraits over the year from the promotion of an image in the Roman world, through Renaissance wedding portrait to discuss how deception was often an accepted practice. She moved on to how the merchant classes often wanted to show a sense of self and their wealth and then looked at how portraits became more symbolic such as Van Gogh’s painting of his chair. Galitz finished by looking at how artists have portrayed themselves from Rembrandt to Cindy Sherman, often playing with identity via their own ima...

Stunning exhibition at Tate Britain looking at professional women artists in Britain from the 16th to 20th centuries. The show told the story simply and clearly letting the artists’ work and stories speak for themselves without being too preachy. I have done lots of courses reinstating women artists in the canon of art history but there were lots of people mentioned in this show who I didn’t know. Around every corner seemed to be an extraordinary new fact such as that Reynolds had a sister who was an artist, Elizabeth, who kept house for him and copied his work. There were familiar faces too and I did a little dance in front of the Vanessa Bell and it is always good to see the Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait from the Royal Collection. Talking Royal Collection they also have the newly identified picture by her of “Susanna and the Elders” which I’d been wanting to see. The new names are too numerous to mention and I have a lot of Googling to do. I’ll just mention one. The man ...

Interesting installation at Tate Britain by Alvaro Barrington. The display mirrored Barrington’s life experience in the sections, his Trinidad upbringing, Nottinghill Carnival and a street corner in New York. Each section was quite distinct but they worked well together. The cavernous shape of the first section was changed by hanging a low, corrugated iron false ceiling. The middle represented the vibrancy of Carnival and the last was a caged, shuttered shop where the shutters in each side opened and closes alternatively. My favourite aspect was incidental. I loved the shadows off the cafe on the gallery walls and the use he made of the lunettes which all other artists in that space have ignored. However on the whole I wasn’t convinced. I feel I’ve done the Black/Gay thing enough, could we look at something else now please. I’m not sure this particular display added anything more. Closes 26 January 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph  

Excellent online study morning from Paula and Geoff Nuttall looking at the history and art of Naples from the 13th to 15th century. Geoff started the morning by looking at the Angevin’s who ruled the city from 1266 to 1435 guiding us through the complicated order of succession covering both the early French Angevins and the later Durazzo branch of the family from Hungary and Croatia. He outlined their building work in the city and looked in particular at the patronage of the civil servants around King Ladislav. I was delighted that he spent quite a lot of time talking about the tomb shown here for Admiral Antonio Baboccio de Piperno which I had discovered a few years ago and loved but I didn’t know a lot about it. He talked us through the imagery in some detail. Paula then took over looking at the Aragonese rulers of the city from 1442 to about 1504 focusing on Alfonso I including his work to rebuild the Castel Nuovo, his commissioned of medals from Pisanello, his interest in Nor...

Moving exhibition at the National Archives looking at prisoners of war and internees in the Second World War. OK I admit I cried three times in this show and I’m not a crier! It gave a good overview of the history from military prisoners of war and civil internees on all sides but the guts of the show were the short biographies with artefacts which brought to life the voices from the past. I’d come partly because Airey Neave, who escaped from Colditz, was my MP as a child and his was the first biography I read in the show so I was hooked from the start. Also a friend of my mother’s lived with Mum’s family after the war when her parents returned to Singapore to pick up the pieces of their pre-war life there. They had escaped on one of the last boats out of the city. OK tears no 1 was the story of Gladys Skillet who was deported from Guernsey to Germany and gave birth in a German hospital next to a German lady, Maria Koch, who befriended her and they remained friends throughout th...

Delightful exhibition at Ordovas of a project by Colombian artist Jose Antonio Suarez Londono also known as JASL. In 2014 Londono structured his year and daily drawing practice in a series of weekly themes. Each day he dedicated his daily drawing to that weekly theme on such diverse subjects as dogs and shipping. He then collected the drawings in envelopes for each week. The show included all the envelopes, each with a small drawing on them, and a selection of the delicate and exquisite drawings with annotations. As a blogger and diarist this calm, methodical approach really appealed to me. If only I could draw! Closed 26 July 2024  

Confusing exhibition at Hauser and Wirth of paintings by film maker Harmony Korine. These neon paintings were evidently based on Korine’s film ‘Aggro Dr1ft’, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2023 which was shot using infrared cameras. I think there were also sections of the film shown on screens in the show. I liked the effect of the paintings but, as the title suggests, I found them quite aggressive in subject and colour palette. Closed 27 July 2024

Strange exhibition at Hauser and Wirth of an installation by Isa Genzken. Evidently it was a reshowing of an installation at the gallery’s previous space in 2004 which confronts “sociopolitical themes that are still relevant today”. I’m sorry but I didn’t get it! I might have seen too much already that day but the explanation that the ideas from the artist’s fascination with the ‘Wasserspeier’ (gargoyles) on Cologne Cathedral didn’t help me. I’m afraid I had a moment where I thought it resembled a curated version of the rubbish in a friend’s garage. Closed   27   July 2024  

Clever exhibition at the Nahmad Projects pairing works by 20th century artist Giorgio Morandi and contemporary artist Alexis Ralaivao. I’ve loved Morandi’s pale, repetitive still-lives since seeing a show of them at the Metropolitan Museum a number of years ago. They worked well with the detailed, concentrated work by Ralaivao. I particularly liked a picture of lemons and a knife by the latter artist which included the reflection of the yellow in the metal. Closed 26 July 2024  

Lovely exhibition at the Stephen Friedman Gallery of three series of drawings by Kenturah Davis. These were exquisite drawings on paper embossed with text from various books and essays as well as comments on the process of the work. I loved the texture this gave to the work. Two series were portrait based, one shown in groups and the other in a bespoke frame with mini sculptures built in made by the artist’s partner. I loved the movement in these pictures and the detail in them. The third series showed clouds based on snap shots and were displayed in one room like an installation. Closed 20 July 2024

Stunning exhibition at Messum’s London of new small sculptures by Laurence Edwards. I’d not come across Edwards work before but really loved it. There was a mix of small figurative works like this one of running figures and broken up head studies. I love the fact you could see the hand of the sculptor in the finished castings. Closed 29 June 2024  

Beautiful exhibition at Flowers Gallery of new work by Tai Shan Schierenberg. I loved this large colourful works exploring Schierenberg’s German and Chinese Malaysian heritage via portraits and landscapes. I know him best as a judge on Sky Arts annual paintings completions but had seen and liked his work in this gallery before. My favourite was this church interior with a boat. It reminded me of Italian church interiors which I Iove but also the last room of the recent Yoko Ono exhibition. I also liked this beautiful big portrait of a woman and dog. I can always be won over by a good dog portrait! Closed 22 June 2024

Interesting exhibition at the Redfern Gallery of work by three artists who have drawn from their experiences of Armenia to explore the role of landscape in cultural memory. I didn’t really understand the link in the show but I did like the work. My favourites were Eleanor Ekserdjian’s landscapes particularly the painted less abstract ones although I also like her vibrant black and white works which felt more like drawings. Sam Chatto did lovely ceramics which, like Ekserdjian’s work, there was conventional small pots and more sculptural work. Nouneh Sarkissian work was the most colourful with small vibrant pieces called Windows which I took to represented views through windows. Closed 12 July 2024  

Thin exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at new ideas for housing design in London and Paris. I say thin as it was rather complicated but badly described. Evidently it showed completed and live projects by architect Nichola Barrington-Leach reflecting on the Parisian housing projects designed from the 1960s to 1980s by pioneering French architect Renée Gailhoustet. There were models and drawings but I wasn’t sure what any of them were. The show was in a newly designed space called The Architecture Window consisting of a large black box with doors which could be opened onto the interior space. It could work well but it needs better explanations. Closes 22 September 2024    

Eclectic exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by final year students in their schools. I always like to try to get to this show as it’s an idea of what might be appearing in galleries soon. It was also good this year to see the refurbished schools space. It’s always quite a mix but this year there seemed to be more painting than usual which was refreshing. I loved Norberto Spina’s wide landscape which had a slight Anselm Keifer feel and Fleur Dempsey’s geometric abstracts. The best conceptual art was two small rooms you looked into by Massimiliano Gottardi but I also liked Lize Aulmane, “Mood Board of my Garbage”, partly for the title, a room of what looked like unfinished work. I think Tanoa Sasraku’s installation “A Tower to Say Goodbye” deserves a prize for the longest description of the media used ever “Newsprint, foraged English and Ghanaian earth pigments, digital print, UV-print produced using a sunbed, tailor's chalk, fixative spray, thread, tap water from the R...

Interesting group exhibition at The Crypt in Seaford to mark World Ocean Day by examining the beauty and importance of the sea in art. The main artist involved was Laura Callaghan with beautiful paintings of the sea with texture added with sand and shells. She also had some more conceptual work including small sea pictures that she paints every time there is a sewer leak into the sea using untreated sewage and wastewater entitled 'Shit Happens Seas'. Alongside was work by textile artist Lucy Morrison using patchwork mirroring the colours of local natural sites, lovely ceramics by Jenny Morrish and tempting jewellery by Claudia Weatherley. I succumbed to temptation and bought a necklace and a small painting. Closed 16 June 2024

Small exhibition at Glyndebourne Opera House highlighting posters from the companies 90-year history. Over the years there has been a tradition of commissioning contemporary artists to design the posters and there was a good blend of the old and new ones commissioned to mark the anniversary. Of the new ones I l loved a shadowy Antony Gormley and works by Conrad Shawcross and Edmund Du Waal using old techniques. Closed 8 September 2024    

Clever display at Sissinghurst Castle Garden looking at how the previous owners of the house Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson’s circle defied societal norms of gender and sexuality. This show was cleverly arranged in the library using the books on the shelves to highlight the lives of the couple’s friends and lovers, explaining who they were and what they did. There were also displays on various literary legal cases with a focus on the Radcliffe Hall case. It was a good way of telling quite a complicated story in a simple and engaging way.   Closes 30 March 2025  

Interesting exhibition at Charleston in Lewes looking at collaboration in art from the Bloomsbury Group to contemporary artists. There was an interesting blend of work with good explanations of it. From the Bloomsbury Group they talked about Vanessa Bell creating dust jackets for her sister, Virginia Woolf’s novels and the unattributed production of the Omega workshop. Contemporary work included work by a number of artists I didn’t know, such as Boyd and Evans’s interesting paintings, Irina Melsom and Hans Askheim’s exquisite portraits and the locally based Rottingdean Bazaar. I loved the statements on the art world by The White Pube including a piece that has reproduced for you to take away. I always love a show where you come away with a piece of free art. Closed 8 September 2024

Fascinating exhibition at Charleston in Lewes looking at the collaborative art of Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece. I have known this story for a while plus I own some drawings by them. Hepworth and Preece were a couple and artists in the early 20th century. Hepworth was the better artist but Preece was the more outgoing character so the former produced work under the latter’s name and Preece promoted it. They fooled a number of art establishment figures including the Bloomsbury Group who helped to promote the work. Preece is also known for being a muse and later wife of the artist Stanley Spencer although she continued to live with Hepworth. The show was beautifully narrated and wove together paintings and archive material well. Most intriguing was that Preece photographed Hepworth with all her finished works obviously intending the story to be known at some point. I loved the still-lives in the show often documenting their house in Cookham but was less impressed by the p...

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapades introducing a Degas exhibition at the Burrell Collection. Frances Fowle from the National Galleries of Scotland outlined the themes in William Burrell’s own collection covering the ballet, jockeys and modern life. She talked about how he had acquired these works and showed us excellent illustrations of them. However the most interesting section was when she looked at how Degas work was collected in Britain in general telling us about the main collectors and their collections. She introduced us to some wonderful characters and gave an overview of the art market at the time. She also looked at where some of these works can now be seen which shows a tradition of donating art and of the patterns of buying of public collections.

Disappointing exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of work by Vanessa Bell. I only say disappointing as I wanted more! As anyone who reads me will know I love the work of the Bloomsbury Group so of course I would want more than a small show could offer. The works were drawn from the gallery’s own collection mainly from the donations by Roger Fry and his daughter but it also included a work bought by Samuel Courtauld. There was a nice selection of still-lives and designs for rugs and a screen alongside her early cutting-edge work “The Conversation”. I loved this early still life of the view from Bell’s Paris studio. Closes 6 October 2024  

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery exploring indoor nightlife from the 19th century to today. Curated from the galleries own collection and the David and Indre Roberts Collection by students on The Courtauld Institute of Art's 2023-24 MA Curating the Art Museum course, the show draws interesting parallels between the Paris of the 1890s and now. The labels were simply and clearly written to convey the ideas. It was lovely to see a nice range of Toulouse Lautec lithographs of theatre scenes and I loved this picture by Jean-Louis Forain who I’d not come across before. Interesting modern works included this beautiful portrait of Arthur Russell, the 'disco cellist', by Anthony Cudahy from 2023 and a pointillist style work by Pádraig Timoney. Closed 7 July 2024

Lovely selling exhibition at Abbott and Holder of a set of prints commissioned in 1917. The prints were commissioned by the British Government from 18 artists and are made up of two series depicting Britain’s efforts in the first Word War and its ideals. The works have been stored at the Imperial War Museum awaiting sale. They are now being sold in aid of the museum. The prints included works by some of my favourite artists of the period including Eric Kennington, Christopher Nevinson and William Nicholson. I thought the Efforts were more successful while the Ideals now felt overly symbolic. Closed 6 July 2024      

Fabulous exhibition at the British Museum focusing on the last three decades of Michelangelo’s life and career. The show was beautifully arranged with a clear narrative for a complicated subject. The labels not only told you about the image but also told you where it fitted into the story with some charming details such as the fact one picture was painted for the children of his servant, Urbino, who died. The show covered major projects, such as the Sistine Chapel “Last Judgement”, but also looked at his architectural projects and private drawings. There were sections of his friendships with Tommaso de'Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna including a clear description of the latter’s poetry and religious beliefs. There was a good analysis of his collaboration with other artists including Marcello Venusti and Daniele da Volterra outlining how he produced drawings for them to work from. Most moving was the last section of drawings which were probably made as part of his meditative p...