Cathy's Art Diary

Charming exhibition at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill of photographs by Bruce Bernard of artists who appear in the other exhibition in the gallery, Freud, Auberbach, Bacon and Andrews.   These were gentle and often funny photographs of the artists in their studios. It was fascinating to see them against paintings that you know well such as Bacon with “Street Scene (With Car in the Distance)”. The Freud pictures were most telling as they showed him larking around with his daughter Bella and Celia Paul, not a view we often have of him. I spotted in these light hearted works that he has on the boots he wears in the later naked self-portrait. I’d missed the note to say there were no photos in the gallery and a nice guard came up to tell me and watch me delete the two I’d taken (not this one it’s from the web). He then had to come back to ask me to delete them from the recycle bin and he had to show me how to do it! All fine very nicely and politely but it was a first for me in my wande...

Stunning exhibition at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill looking at the work of Lucien Freud and his Soho artist friends. The show told the story of the links between four artists, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, with a fabulous selection of works by them. With this year being the centenary of Freud’s birth there are a lot of shows on but this one has a number of works I’d not seen before. The pictures were hung well to set up a gentle dialogue between them. My favourite hang was a row of pictures by Auerbach, Bacon and Andrews which all included steps. Upstairs was a room of portraits of and by the artists as well as. Closes 28 January 2023 Review Times  

Wonderful exhibition at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill of new work by Rachel Whiteread. Whiteread normally makes casts of the insides of objects such as chairs on in one case a whole house but for this show, made during Covid restrictions, she has turned to creating new structures made from found metal and wood. The main pieces were two sheds constructed in this way and painted white to give a cohesion. I loved the way you could walk round the objects looking in and see how she had built in tree branches to look as if nature was taking over these dilapidated buildings. Dilapidated but in fact newly made. Shown with these works around the walls were new works on paper and flat, relief like resin casts including one of a notice board.     Closes 6 June 2021 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard

Fabulous exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Grosvenor Hill of self-portraits by 20th century artists hung with a Rembrandt self-portrait from Kenwood House. You name the artist and there was a picture of them here! Picasso, Freud, Bacon, Ego Schiele, Robert Mapplethrope, Jeff Koons and I could go on! There was also a new Jenny Saville painted in direct response to begin hung with the Rembrandt. My favourite piece though was by an artist I’d not heard of before, Urs Fischer, who had produced the sculpture shown here made of paraffin wax, pigment, steel and wicks! It was really strikingly realistic as you looked into the gallery. The biggest crowd though was around the Rembrant and it was interesting to see it hung in a contemporary setting. It coped with it very well. It’s one of my favourites, the late one with two circles in the background. I always feel it’s referring to the legend of Giotto that says that great artists can paint a perfect circle freehand. Closed o...