Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum on the peoples of Peru from about 25000 BC to the coming of the Europeans in the 16th century.   OK I admit I did not give this show enough time. I had already done Stonehenge that day which had blown my mind. This show was closing the next day so I went round like a whirl wind, didn’t read much commentary and didn’t make notes. Over a month later, I can’t remember much! Evidently if I’d concentrated I might have “discovered how they developed unique approaches to time, agriculture, economy and power, some of which endure today” but sadly I didn’t. I do remember some lovely objects including this cow (?) drinking vessel. As I look back at my photographs, I seem to have been most drawn to the ceramics which reminded me of studio pottery. Apologies to the British Museum for not giving this show more time and more brain space, it wasn’t the show’s fault. Closed 20 February 2022 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard  

Unusual and interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the Durer’s relationship with the world outside of Europe. Jago Cooper, Director of Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, set the scene by looking at how Durer embraced new technology and ideas. He talked about how he exchanged ideas and gained knowledge leading to the print of the Rhinoceros based on first-hand accounts of them when he developed into an image of an animal he hadn’t actually seen. He moved on to look at the effect of seeing treasures from the America’s on display in the Netherlands in Durer and his descriptions of them. He did acknowledge that this wasn’t reflected in his art as it didn’t necessarily fit the religious art he was commissioned to paint. We then moved on the to art produced when the Europeans met the indigenous people in the Americas focusing on research he had done on Isla de Mona. This was fascinating. I loved the images of the galleons arriving...

Interesting exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery looking at work by South American and African contemporary artists. I went the Pangea I last year and it was interesting to see new work by artists in that show. However it is a few weeks since I went and I didn’t take notes so it’s interesting to see from checking through the website what has stuck in my mind and what’s moved on! I thought the room putting Jorge Mayet’s small tree sculptures showing both the branches and the roots with Diego Mendoza Imbachi’s huge paintings looking up in to the branches of tress was a clever hang. Both focused on the structure of trees but one in a very small format and one in a large one. I loved Eddy Ilunga Kamuanga’s large colourful pictures of women which brought a real zest and life to the show. However my favourite piece was a room full of blue carried bags in a neat rectangular shape by Jean-Francois Bocie called “Everything must go”. According to the girl on the desk the artists h...

A surprisingly good exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at abstract art in South America in the early 20th century. If you read me a lot (I’ll be amazed if anyone does!) you’ll know I’m not keen on abstract art so I came to this because I go to everything and you can always learn, but found I really liked it! I think it was because it was all logical and geometric so the pieces often had a calm simplicity. It made me start to understand how abstract art is partly about show colour and space work together. I would recommend the tape tour as the commentaries on the pictures were quite short and learned a lot more from listening to the tape. The leaflet was very extensive but actually too dense to read as you went round. The two artists who came out of it best for me where both women. I liked the work of Lygia Clark from Brazil starting with a lovely painting of multi-coloured squares and rectangles which my eye seemed to see as a green picture. She also did sculptures ma...