Frans Hals Exhibition. Review by Barbara Lewis. Frans Hals (1582-1666) painted portraits, “nothing, nothing, nothing but that,” wrote van Gogh to fellow painter Emile Bernard, but that they were “worth Dante’s Paradise and the Michelangelos and Raphaels and even the Greeks”.
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CONFESSIONS OF A HIGHLAND ART DEALER: Kate Ashton reviews a memoir full of hope and persistence by Tony Davidson
Sarah Webb: A Contemporary Realist Abroad. Review by Barbara Lewis. Nashville, birthplace of bluegrass and a Mecca for country music-lovers, is also a city with 18 colleges and universities, some of which are known for their strong views on art. These have included, we’re told, an opposition to the figurative that frustrated Nashville-born contemporary realist Sarah Webb.
Claudette Johnson’s exhibition Presence. Review by Jenny Vuglar. Johnson first came to attention in 1982 while a student at The Polytechnic Wolverhampton. Britain’s ‘black cultural renaissance’ began, not in the famous institutions of London but in the Polytechs of the north: Wolverhampton, Trent, Sunderland.
Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas. Review by Graham Buchan. It is clear from this retrospective of Sarah Lucas’s thirty-five year career that an obsession with tits, toilets, cigarettes, shoes and chairs informs much of her work.
Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris. Review by Barbara Lewis. As curators and art historians work to redistribute glory that men historically monopolised, Pallant House Gallery’s latest major exhibition devotes itself to extracting Welsh-born artist Gwen John from beneath the shadow of her more worldly brother Augustus John.
TEXTUS: Nancy Mattson visits a richly rewarding exhibition of text and textiles at the Torriano Meeting House
Poetry review – GRACE NOTES: Nancy Charley‘s new collection is wide-ranging and sometimes surprising but is built round a strong central theme
HOLDING A POSE: John Lucas comments on an intriguing essay by Anthony Rudolf on the role of the artist’s model
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden. Review by Graham Buchan. Two years ago Tate Britain mounted a major retrospective of Paula Rego’s work and it was a great exhibition. Now the National Gallery shows a single piece of Rego’s work, albeit a big one: Crivelli’s Garden is nearly ten metres wide and two metres high.
![Piet Mondrian, Composition in colour B, 1917. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 45 cm. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum[48965]](https://londongrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Piet-Mondrian-Composition-in-colour-B-1917.-Oil-on-canvas-50.5-x-45-cm.-Collection-Kroller-Muller-Museum48965-180x200.jpg "Piet Mondrian, Composition in colour B, 1917. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 45 cm. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum[48965]")
Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life. Review by Graham Buchan. I recommend this show because any exhibition which redresses the balance in favour of a neglected artist is to be commended even if, as I think, af Klint’s work is not altogether good.
ReClaim. Review by Barbara Lewis. A thought-provoking display of jewellery-cum-art that leaves us with a renewed awareness that recycling cannot reverse the harm we cause.
By Barbara Lewis • art, ecology, exhibitions, year 2023 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, ecology, exhibitions