Cathy's Art Diary

Intriguing exhibition at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert of recent self-portraits by Frank Auerbach. The show included 9 paintings and 11 drawings which were full of character. The commentary included a wonderful quote from Auerbach that “Now that I’ve got bags under my eyes, things are sagging and so on, there’s more material to work with”. I preferred the drawings which were finer but the paintings were full of life and colour. They showed his distinct style of building up layers of paint in slabs but were less thick that some of his early work which is almost sculptural. Closed 14 July 2023 Review Guardian    

Insightful little exhibition at the Royal Academy of self-portraits by academicians from the last fifty years. There were just eight works but there were some lovely examples and they were well written up. My favourite was off Paula Rego which appeared sketch like with just the face and hands completed, the source of artistic vision and creation. I was interested to see one of Hew Locke’s “How Do You Want Me” series in which he was photographed in various identities as I had heard him talk about them recently. Closes 31 December 2023    

Interesting exhibition at the Centre for British Photography of self-portraits by contemporary female photographers. Curated by Fast Forward: Women in Photography the show presented a selection of series of pictures which look at how the photographs feel they are represented, what they are dealing with in their everyday lives and what it means to embrace diversities. The commentaries on the work were a bit long and worthy. I do like some explanation but at times I found the words stopped the images speaking for themselves. I liked a series by a group called Rainbow Sisters, a group of LGBTQ+ women, who had each taken three Polaroids labelled “What I was”, “What I am” and “What I will be”, a clever simple idea. I favoured works which had a dialogue with the past mainly the artists’ mothers. There was a lovely set by Maryam Wahid of her dressed in her mother’s saris in places that were important to her mother. They felt like recreating old snapshots. Closes 23 April 2023 Rev...

Stunning exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of 16 self-portraits by Van Gogh. This show was a delight as it kept things simple. The pictures were hung at head height so you could look the artist directly in the eye and really study the detail in the brush work. The commentaries were clear and informative and it was well spaced out so the works were easy to view without too much queuing up. All Van Gogh’s self-portraits were painted in the last four years of his life and half the pictures in this show were from 1887 when he was in Paris and it was remarkable how his style developed in that one year. The first pictures were fairly conventional but the brush work gradually got looser and more expressive. I loved one picture which seemed to be painted in spirals radiating from his nose and forming circles around his head. There were some lovely light touches in the show such as reuniting two pictures painted a week apart in the Saint-Remy hospital. It was the first time they had be...

Fabulous exhibition at the Royal Academy focusing on Lucian Freuds self-portraits. This show not only examined how Freud viewed himself but also, as it was arranged chronologically, was a great way to show how his style and technique changed over the years. His pictures began as smooth, finely drawn works and end as the wonderful impasto studies with which we now associate him. It was curated by David Dawson, Freud’s last studio assistant, and felt comprehensive as it even included letters with sketched self-portraits and lots of pictures from private collections. The pictures were, of course, wonderful. I don’t know his earlier work that well but loved the rather flat style. I loved a detailed drawing of a street scene with a beautifully drawn wall and lamp with just the top of his head sneaking into the scene. It was nice to see a sketch of “Hotel Bedroom” from 1954 as well as the picture itself. Also to see three pictures from 1963 reunited for the first time since then...

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...

Nice exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on two self-portraits of Murillo and putting them into context. The show marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Murillo and is probably the first time the two self-portraits have been together since they were sold by his son in 1709 as they had remained in the studio. Murillo was best known in his own life time for his portraits of which only 16 have been identified and 6 of them are in this show along with examples of his genre work which is better known now. In the earlier self-portrait he shows himself as a gentleman rather than an artist. He has a handsome with long dark hair. In the later one he does show himself as an artist with the tools of his trade on the faux plinth outside the stone frame with his hand protruding over the edge of that frame. I loved the baroque stone frames which he paints around the portraits often chipped to show the passage of time. The two genre pictures were lovely especially the o...

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of self-portraits by Cameroon born photographer Samuel Fosso. The first gallery showed his more recent work where he has taken 666 large format polaroid pictures of himself on an hourly basis. They did all look quite similar and it was a relief when one looked to one side. I’d have liked to see times on the pictures to think about whether he looked slightly different at different times of day. The second room was his earlier work from the 1970s when he has set up a studio aged 13. He dressed up and posed in the evenings to use up spare film. He looks at post-colonial African identity. There are some great 1970s trousers and I like the fact you can see the mechanics of the studio. Closes on 24 September 2017  

Surprisingly good exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery looking at the growth of the selfie and how that sits in the tradition of self-portraiture in art. I was surprised as some of the press I had read leading up to this felt a bit cheesy including a selfie competition.   I’ve never bought into the great selfie craze so I was prepared to be annoyed by this show but I really enjoyed it! I liked the fact it started with two rooms of self-portraits one looking at the old masters, including Rembrandt and Durer, and one of modern masters such as Freud and Spencer. These were shown on super large, mobile phone shaped, back lit screens with smaller phones next to them for you to show loves and likes like a Facebook photo. There was then a room of famous or unusual selfies. It made you realise how they are finding their way into the zeitgeist! The Ellen DeGeneres Oscar selfie was there, a picture of Mr Bean taking his own photo with a Polaroid, the Benedict Cumberbatch photo...

Fantastic exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery looking at pictures of artists from the Royal Collection. This was a nicely curated show setting up interesting themes such as nice contrast between introspective self-portraits and those painted for self-promotion, pictures of artists by their friends, artists in their studios and pictures of earlier artists to promote your role in the history of art. However the well set up theme was knocked for six by the quality of the pictures on show! It included some of my favourite pictures such as the Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait and I was lucky enough to be there in time for a nice talk about the picture by one of the attendants. It was also lovely to see the two Zoffanys of artists at the Royal Academy and connoisseurs at the Uffizi. The later was quoted a lot in the recent course I did on classism so it was great to see it in the flash again. I had been wondering for a while why the National Gallery had taken down the huge...

Contemplative exhibition at the Courtauld of self-portraits by John Richardson, the 18th century artist. Richardson was a portrait painter and art theorist who had a huge collection of drawings. He began making self-portraits at the age of 61 drawing himself every few days so that they became a record not just of how he looked, but also of his mood changes. In some he goes back and reimagines his younger self. He based some of the pictures on drawings he owned such as one of him in a hat based on a Rembrandt and one based on a Bernini drawing. It was interesting to walk round and thing about what they said about age but also to think of them as one man’s intellectual exercise so you get glimpses of him working through ideas.

Very small display at the National Portrait Gallery of three self-portraits by Henry Tonks. I know I am stretching a point to cover this as it’s just 3 pictures in a case but as Tonks taught so many of the 20th century artists I love then I thought it deserved a mention! It is thought that these pictures may be studies for his self-portrait in the Tate. There was a beautiful head study which did remind me of a Stanley Spencer picture, who he taught. Also two full length picture of him sitting in a church very obviously looking in a mirror and studying his pose.

Interesting exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art which commission 14 artists from around the city to respond to a work of their choice in the National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland. On the whole the original self-portraits came across as more interesting than the responses for example Robert Ballagh’s picture realistic picture showing himself moles and all or Vera Klute’s picture of herself in a stripped jumper with an electric switch. However some of the responses were lovely particularly Anne Maire Morrin’s “Cradle to Cradle” which was a set of hanging bells but shaped as little dresses. Really beautiful.