The Courtauld Gallery currently has a small but perfectly formed exhibition of medieval ivories.
I do love me some medieval art. And I can really see why someone would collect ivories: they are small but full of character, and I imagine they are beautifully tactile although obviously I didn’t get my hands on the ones in [...]
Posts tagged with ‘museums and galleries’
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Medieval ivory at the Courtauld
30 January 2008 – 12:20 pm
Terracotta warriors at the BM
17 January 2008 – 4:12 pm
I went to see the terracotta warriors at the British Museum. It’s unusual for them to be on show outside China, so it’s a big event; they have about a dozen terracotta figures and lots of associated material.
It’s certainly worth going to, but the warriors themselves didn’t have the wow factor you might hope for. [...]
Millais at the Tate
13 January 2008 – 12:15 am
I went to see the Millais at the Tate today. After my scathing comments about the Pre-Raphs last year, it may not surprise you that I was a bit half-hearted about visiting this. But I’ve got a Tate membership, so I didn’t have to pay, and the exhibition is about to close; so I thought [...]
What a Walrus
9 December 2007 – 2:30 pm
Found while browsing the British Museum archive of 2D art, a walrus head drawn by Albrecht Dürer:
It looks even better viewed large. I think that deserves to be as famous as his equally marvellous rhinoceros.
All Persons Visiting the Whale
5 December 2007 – 10:32 am
More from the ephemera collection at the British Library. You might also want to look at the Wonder of the Sea and American Jack, the Frog Man. Not to mention A.H. Minting, the Marvellous Spiral Ascensionist.
The Mammoth Brigade of Black Comedians
5 December 2007 – 10:25 am
More fascinating stuff from the British Library collection; this poster is from 1892.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition
1 December 2007 – 11:23 am
I went to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum yesterday, which is always worth a look.
Apart from the fact that there are loads of great photos, there’s the fun of deciding whether the judges have made the right decisions. I’m always a bit disappointed when they choose a portrait [...]
Renaissance Siena at the National Gallery
13 November 2007 – 10:23 pm
I went to the Renaissance Siena: Art for a City exhibition today. It’s late C15th and early C16th art. I gathered from the audio-guide that by then, Siena had already had its golden age, and was dropping behind places like Florence and Rome as an artistic centre.
So the artists in the show—Matteo di Giovanni, Francesco [...]
Georg Baselitz at the Royal Academy
6 November 2007 – 4:36 pm
Baselitz is a German painter and sculptor. I thought that I knew nothing about him at all, but when I got to the exhibition several of the paintings turned out to be familiar.
Baselitz was born in East Germany, his father had been a member of the Nazi party, and he was studying at an art [...]
Visiting the crack
21 October 2007 – 9:08 am
Last week I went to see the crack at Tate Modern, which is the latest big artwork in the Turbine Hall. You can read what the Tate thinks it’s about here. I found it less impressive in reality than I expected. I’d heard about it before I went, and it looked exactly as I expected [...]
‘Sacred’ at the British Library
19 September 2007 – 4:03 pm
I went yesterday to see Sacred at the British Library. I nearly missed it; the exhibition closes at the weekend. I’m glad I didn’t, as it was extraordinary.
It’s an exhibition of sacred texts from Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and the selection is seriously impressive. For example, the show includes the Lindisfarne Gospels and a bit [...]
‘Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan’ at the BM
29 July 2007 – 4:08 pm
I went to see Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan at the British Museum last week.
The exhibition presents works by members of the Japan Art Crafts Association (Nihon Kōgeikai), many of them designated ‘Living National Treasures’ in Japan, a title conferred by the Japanese government on exemplary individuals who carry on Japanese traditions.
In other words, it [...]
Dutch Portraits at the National Gallery
20 July 2007 – 10:46 pm
I went to see Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals yesterday. It was pleasantly quiet; I guess the prospect of lots and lots of paintings of men in black suits with white ruffs and little pointy beards doesn’t produce a frisson of excitement in your average Londoner.
And from that point of view, [...]
More ephemera
14 July 2007 – 1:28 pm
More from the British Library’s Evanion Collection of Ephemera.
The British Library online collections
13 July 2007 – 10:46 am
The BL’s online collections are very pleasing, because there’s such a mix of stuff: English accent samples, Victorian newspapers, illuminated manuscripts, sheet music, photographs, watercolours, maps, wildlife recordings.
So when you put something into the search box, you never know what might turn up in the results.
Anthony Gormley at the Hayward
11 July 2007 – 2:48 pm
Last week I went to Blind Light, the Gormley show at the Hayward. Gormley must be the third most famous artist in Britain, I should think*, particularly on the back of two spectacular public works: Angel of the North and Another Place.
For those of you who don’t know his work—foreigners and the like—he has [...]
‘Surreal Things’ at the V&A
10 June 2007 – 10:17 pm
Last week I went to ‘Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design‘ at the V&A. It explores the influence of Surrealist art on design, and demonstrates how quickly surrealist imagery was recycled as a design style; initially in very chic and expensive contexts and then in mass-market commercial design. And demonstrated in the process that it’s a [...]
Self-Portraits from the Uffizi
30 May 2007 – 5:21 pm
The full title of this exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is Artists’ Self-Portraits from the Uffizi. But I don’t think it’s overly pedantic to point out that self-portraits are pretty much always by and of artists. The Uffizi has a collection of 1600 self-portraits, apparently; 50 of them are currently in Dulwich, arranged in [...]
‘Canaletto in England’ at Dulwich Picture Gallery
12 March 2007 – 11:31 am
I almost forgot to blog about the Canaletto exhibition at DPG which I went to on Friday. As the title suggests, it focusses on Canaletto’s time in England. I knew he’d painted a few paintings of London, but I was surprised to learn that he lived here for nine years.
Not surprisingly, the show has been [...]
Gilbert and George at Tate Modern
2 March 2007 – 5:08 pm
I went yesterday to see the big Gilbert and George retrospective at Tate Modern. The Tate have done their usual thorough job of putting the exhibition online, so that link will give you a fair idea of what the exhibition’s like.
I enjoyed it more than I expected. Not that I expected to hate it, but [...]