Clik here to view.
Kathe Kollwitz in Berlin: the moral conscience of Germany
Did any German artist confront the suffering of the first half of the twentieth century as directly as Käthe Kollwitz did? Through the years of war, political turbulence and social strife that defined...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Richter/Pärt at the Whitworth, Manchester: no broken hallelujah
Just as the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass asks, ‘What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning?’ so the question might arise, ‘What is the use of art without meaning?’ Should a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ravilious at Dulwich: dot and speck and dash and dab
One morning in 1934, Eric Ravilious set off with a sketch pad from his home in Brick House, Great Bardfield, Essex. He didn’t go far – just around the corner, in fact, to where a repair yard for steam...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Expressionists in Berlin (Impressionists, too)
Impressionism is usually seen as the antithesis of Expressionism, but while we were in Berlin we queued for over an hour to see a stunning exhibition at the the Alte Nationalgalerie, on Museum Island –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brief glimpses of art and music in Berlin
Guide books aren’t much use in Berlin at the moment if you’re trying to work out where to see what in the city’s main museums and art galleries. Everything is being reorganised: some galleries like the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In pursuit of Bruegel: Berlin and Two Monkeys in chains
It’s only a small painting – barely seven inches by nine – yet (though I know such comparisons are invidious) if I were asked to list my ten favourite artworks this would be one of them. Pieter...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In pursuit of Breugel: Madrid and The Triumph of Death
Don DeLillo’s massive novel Underworld opens with a prologue called ‘The Triumph of Death’. The title comes from the Bruegel painting that hangs in the Prado in Madrid – the first Bruguel we ever saw...
View ArticleClik here to view.
York Art Gallery: a bit potty
I went over to York last week to visit my sister, and while I was there we popped into York Art Gallery which recently reopened to the public after an £8 million revamp. However, my sister and a good...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jackson Pollock at Tate Liverpool: wrestling with a blind spot
Well I tried, didn’t I? I have to admit, I’ve always had a blind spot where Jackson Pollock’s concerned. So I was not that keen on seeing Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots at Tate Liverpool. But I was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bruegel in Vienna, part 1: through the seasons
For true believers, the Bruegel room in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum must be the holy grail. Though paintings by the artist occupy two rooms in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, they are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bruegel in Vienna, part 2: Religion, politics and war
In the first part of this appreciation of the Bruegel room in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, I looked at Bruegel’s paintings of the seasons. This time I want to explore a group of paintings...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bruegel in Vienna, part 3: ‘Peasant’ Bruegel
So far this in this series of posts celebrating the Bruegel room in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, I have looked at Bruegel’s paintings of the seasons and the works which share a preoccupation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Antony Gormley: Being Human
Alan Yentob’s film for the BBC’s Imagine strand last week made a powerful case for Anthony Gormley being one of the most original and profound of British artists at work today. In Antony Gormley: Being...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peter Lanyon: Soaring Flight
During the 1950s, the small harbour town of St Ives in Cornwall played host to an astonishing group of painters that included some of the leading modern artists of the time. Among them were Alan Davie,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Celts: Art and Identity
The other day I received an email advising me of the line-up for the next Celtic Connections in Glasgow. But who were the Celts – these people who now lend their name to a festival that ‘celebrates...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ai Weiwei at the RA: Everything is art. Everything is politics
Ai Weiwei’s work is not unusual in drawing upon the artist’s own life experience for inspiration, but there is none of the solipsism of Tracey Emin’s Bed in his art. Ai Weiwei’s installations,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
David Jones: Vision and Memory at Pallant House
There’s a self-portrait David Jones painted in 1931 when he was in his mid-thirties. In Human Being he depicts himself almost as a boy, an unworldly youth with a thoughtful, quizzical look in his eyes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Matisse in Focus at Tate Liverpool: The Snail’s last outing
Matisse in Focus at Tate Liverpool brings together fifteen paintings from the Tate collection to provide an overview of the artist’s work across five decades. Its centrepiece is The Snail, the largest...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hieronymus Bosch back in his old home town
After dark in the old town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, it’s easy to imagine that I am walking in the footsteps of Hieronymus Bosch. For even though he died 500 years ago, the street plan is unchanged from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hieronymus Bosch: visions of Hell and earthly delights in an astonishing...
The first picture that you see when you enter the exhibition, Hieronymus Bosch: Visions of Genius, at Noordbrabants Museum in the painter’s home town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch depicts a careworn traveller...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vermeer’s ‘Little Street’ Discovered!
It’s one of my favourite paintings. A view of ordinary houses in an ordinary street, the weathered brickwork, window leads and wooden shutters finely detailed, and a few incidental details of everyday...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Out and about with the Hague School
I guess we’re all familiar with the way in which the French Impressionists shook up the art world in the 1870s by depicting landscapes and scenes from modern everyday life often painted outdoors using...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Van Gogh: from the dark into the light
After encountering the artists of the Hague School in the Rijksmuseum, I walked across Museumplein to the Van Gogh Museum where I found further evidence of the connections between these painters. There...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature
We approached Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature, last night’s documentary on BBC Four presented by Dr James Fox, with great anticipation since its subject was a form of art that has inspired...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Paul Nash at Tate Britain: searching for a different angle of vision
Paul Nash first discovered Wittenham Clumps, two ‘dome-like hills’ in Oxfordshire with a ‘curiously symmetrical sculptural form’ in 1911. Between 1912 and 1946 he would paint them repeatedly as he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
John Berger: 90 years of looking, listening and seeing (re-post)
Until I have time to gather my thoughts in response to the death of John Berger – here is a re-post of my appreciation to mark his 90th birthday in November. (Avoid at all costs the mean-spirited...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Adrian Henri mini-exhibition: ‘The poet in him wrote poems containing...
I received an email from the Victoria Gallery & Museum alerting me to the fact that an exhibition of work by Adrian Henri was ending that day. Henri has a special place in my heart because I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yves Klein at Liverpool Tate: vision of cosmic infinity – or a crock of shit?
In 1961, Piero Manzoni filled ninety tin cans with his own excrement. A label on each can identified the contents as ‘Artist’s Shit’, contents 30gr net freshly preserved, produced and tinned in May...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Public View: celebrating 300 years of the Bluecoat
The Bluecoat is 300 years old. Miraculously, the oldest building in Liverpool city centre has twice survived the threat of destruction (post-war city planners thought it would be a great idea to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
To plant a tree: a love song to a magnolia planted thirty years ago
Sitting in a darkening room yesterday as evening came on, I sensed snowflakes falling beyond the window. Torn by a western wind and rain that had fallen throughout the day, the falling shards of...
View Article