On the whole, the curators have given the works the space they need and brought a coherent approach to displaying them in relation to each other, which provides the viewer with a largely satisfying experience.
exhibitions
It was the Kingdom of Naples that gave Emma the chance to transform herself into an artist, society lady and skilled operator at the court of Queen Maria Carolina, wife of King Ferdinand IV, its reigning monarch.
Jenny Vuglar visits the Winifred Nicholson exhibition Liberation of Colour currently at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham (4 March – 4 June 2017)
Posterity remembers Emma Hamilton as the mistress of Nelson. The reality is her achievements in the society salon were in their way as brave and out of the ordinary as his naval exploits.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) were both sons of artists, both mastered realism at an early age, both left their native countries and both turned up in Paris, where they met for the first time in 1931 and enjoyed a working friendship that flourished until the 1950s.
Anyone seeking to be reminded of how we used to work not so very long ago should take the 10-minute tram journey from Birmingham’s newly revamped Grand Central Station to the city’s Jewellery Quarter, where every other shop is a jeweller and the close-knit atmosphere of a neighbourhood once closed to the wider city lingers on.
Established in 2007, the Aimia AGO photography prize, Canada’s optimum award for contemporary photography, was the first major art accolade to hand the general public the responsibility of choosing the winner – although an expert panel has already drawn up the list of contenders.
Born to a well-to-do Antwerp businessman and his aristocratic wife, Fritz Mayer was groomed to become a diplomat, but instead threw himself into collecting with a particular passion for Dutch art of the 14th-16th centuries.
Displayed are elaborate composites, built up from paintings and photographs that eventually result in portraits at once convincingly human, alien and heartless.
Bicycles are as close as it gets to the perfect blend of form and function — but that doesn’t stop designers seeking to make them sleeker, faster and funkier. As such, they are ideal subject-matter for the Design Museum in the Belgian city of Ghent, whose Bike to the Future, despite the corny title, is a wide and even subtle exploration of cycling design and its enormous impact.
Between 1560 and 1630, Europe experienced the worst of a Little Ice Age characterised by long, cold winters. The cruel weather coincided with the most intensive period of witch hunts in history. Bruegel the elder, is credited with leading the way as Flemish and Dutch artists developed what is now the popular image of a witch, flying on a broomstick with her ragged hair streaming in the wind.
“Matisse in the Studio” does not deliver the sensational overdoses of colour and the full-on confrontation with genius of the Tate blockbusters, but there is a place for this more digestible insight into the transformative way Matisse saw based on examining his use of “objets d’art” as inspiration.
By Barbara Lewis • exhibitions, painting, sculpture, year 2017 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, painting, sculpture