Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating series from BBC4 exploring national museum collections at a time of enforced closure. I thought these were wonderfully produced programmes with a real sense of capturing a moment when two exhibitions I had hoped to visit went into lockdown. I believe the next two episodes will look at aspects of particular galleries and museums collections rather than specific shows and I’ll return to review those once they are shown later this week. Episode 1 looked at the Andy Warhol show at Tate Modern introduced by Alastair Sooke. I found the eerie shots at the start of the empty turbine hall and static escalators moving and melancholy and liked Sooke’s spin on the show as Warhol as a commented on the 21 st century even though he worked in the 20 th and parallels he drew to these strange times. I like the fact he was in the gallery walking around it as we would have done and there was a good mix of close up images and of him interacting with the work. It is interesting

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery curated by Simon Schama looking at how portraiture reflects the history of Britain and it’s people. I liked the themes of the show, power, love, fame, self and people, and the fact it was shown in rooms scattered around the gallery which made you look at the other works in the rooms around it. However in the end I’m not sure it said anything new. I’d   had seen most of the works before so there were few surprises. Maybe if I’d watched the TV series which goes with I’d have got more from it. It felt like a show with a celebrity name to entice in people who wouldn’t normally come to the gallery. For that reason I applaud it but it didn’t have the same kick as the Greyson Perry show earlier in the year which did a similar thing. Pictures which did stand out for me included the Annie Leibovitz of John Lennon just hours before his death, a portrait by an unknown artist of the Hobson of Hobson’s Choice and the John Kay