Kiefer – Van Gogh. Review by Graham Buchan. If you see here echoes of Van Gogh’s last acknowledged, doom-laden masterpiece Wheatfield with Crows (1890), then you will likely find this exhibition at the Royal Academy highly satisfying.
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The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. Review by Barbara Lewis. The dazzling Gothic beauty of these miniatures and calendars foreshadowed the work of Jan van Eyck and other outstanding 15th-century Flemish painters.
Hiroshige, artist of the open road. Review by Barbara Lewis. Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) lived as Japan shifted from the isolationism that characterised the shogun-dominated Edo period towards opening up to the world.
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur. Review by Barbara Lewis. One of the joys of Grayson Perry’s exhibition is that it is he who provides the explanatory notes. A standout peg is: “An artist’s job is to bite the hand that feeds him, but not too hard”
Impressionist Paris. Review by Barbara Lewis. Impressionist Paris, A Panoramic View of Paris in French Impressionism. Published by Hannibal Books to coincide with the exhibition New Paris: From Monet to Morisot at the Kunstmuseum in the Hague until June 9
Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour. Review by Jenny Vuglar. To be a woman artist in the mid twentieth century was not uncommon but to be one that was taken seriously was. The question for women artists was: how did you step out of the strait jacket of ‘lady artist’ into the world of serious collectors, galleries; out of the here and now into eternity?
Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300?1350. Review by Graham Buchan. This, quite simply, is a stunning exhibition. It asserts that the first half of the fourteenth century is when painting came into its own. It was now that painting, as an art form, first became something to be commissioned and acquired.
Georgian art. Review by Barbara Lewis. Georgia is a country of less than 4 million inhabitants with a language its guides will tell you is unique. They might also mention that the word for hello “gamarjoba” comes from the word for victory.
The Rubens Garden. Review by Barbara Lewis. The Italianate palazzo in Antwerp where the great artist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens lived and worked is closed for restoration until 2030. At the end of August, however, the newly restored garden of the Rubenshuis reopened to the public.
The Shape Of Things. Review by Barbara Lewis. Damien Hirst is famously fascinated by death and decay. For him, they are inseparable from an affirmation of life, we understand in the Pallant’s major exhibition, the first of its kind, of more than 100 practitioners of British still life – or, as the French would say, “la nature morte”.
Gavin Jantjes: To Be Free! Review by Graham Buchan. Jantjes earliest work on show here is a range of screenprints where he expresses his rage, not just at the oppression in his own country, but in other colonial territories such as Algeria, Ghana and Mozambique.
Millet: Life on the Land. Review by Graham Buchan. If you have read the classic book on English rural life, Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield, you will know that such a life, particularly before farming was mechanised, was one of unremitting hardship and poverty, and definitely not to be romanticised. The French painter Jean-François Millet rendered that sort of life in paint.
By Graham Buchan • art, drawing, exhibitions, painting, year 2025 • Tags: art, drawing, exhibitions, Graham Buchan, painting