Real Venice (2011-12)

November 19, 2011April 29, 20211 Comment

(Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, until 11 December)

I’ve already mentioned this exhibition in the context of the wonderful portraits of Pierre Gonnord, who is one of the photographers who’s donated his work to be sold in aid of Venice in Peril. When I wrote about Pierre Gonnord, I hadn’t actually been to see the show and had fallen in love with his photographs via the rather less imposing medium of the internet. However, last Saturday, after visiting the Leonardo exhibition and then managing to get caught up in the Lord Mayor’s Show (which was great!), I finally made it to Somerset House.

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Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan (2011-12)

November 13, 2011April 29, 20217 Comments

Yesterday morning, at 8:30am, a full hour and a half before the gallery opened, I joined the queue which was already snaking around the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing. The hype in the press about this exhibition has been cranked up to fever-pitch and all advance tickets have now been sold. The only way to get in to see it is to queue on a morning in the hope of getting one of 500 tickets released every day. The anticipation and excitement in the queue were electric, and it was wonderful to be there with people who had gone to such great extremes to get tickets. One woman had come down from Nottingham and had got up at 3:30am in order to get to London on time to queue.

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Artists in Focus: Pierre Gonnord

October 17, 2011August 16, 20161 Comment

I’ve just discovered the most wonderful photographer. It was one of those wonderful moments in which, browsing on the internet, you stumble across something and follow a thread which leads you to an entirely new talent. This photographer’s name is Pierre Gonnord: born in France, he now lives and works in Spain. Choosing people with striking or interesting faces, he takes portrait photographs which, from a distance, could easily be paintings by Caravaggesque old masters. It’s no wonder they captivate me.

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Glamour of the Gods (2011)

August 6, 2011April 29, 2021Leave a comment

(National Portrait Gallery, London, 7 July – 23 October 2011)

There’s something about the golden age of Hollywood that still captures the attention today: an era when men were men, women were women and everything was screened by a veil of cigarette smoke. This wonderful exhibition brings together a selection of photographs of the biggest film stars from the 1920s to the 1950s. Most are silvery black-and-white prints, luminous visions of another age, with the odd colour interloper feeling oddly out of place.

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Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape (2011-12)

July 31, 2011April 29, 2021Leave a comment

(Tate Modern, 14 April – 11 September 2011)

I left it late to come to this exhibition, the first major retrospective of Miró’s work in the UK for 50 years, but I’m glad I caught it. I don’t often venture to Tate Modern, but this is an unconscious prejudice that I’ll have to change in the future. What struck me most about the exhibition was how completely ill-equipped I was to understand what Miró was trying to achieve in his work.

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BP Portrait Award 2011

July 29, 2011August 6, 20162 Comments

National Portrait Gallery, London (16 June – 18 September 2011)

The first thing to say about this year’s Portrait Award is that the standard is very high. There are a few weaker pictures but generally the portraits are arresting and technically very impressive. I confess that I’m always drawn to intense close-ups of faces, which I feel really bring out a personality, and there were a couple of particularly striking ones in the show. One was Jakub by Jan Mikulka, which from a distance looks exactly like a photograph. Only at close range can you distinguish the brushstrokes and see the image dissolve into careful arcs of paint. It’s remarkable; and I was also touched by the sitter’s haunted, slightly sulky expression, which makes him look very young.

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