Side Tracks
Bob Dylan: Mood Swings Halcyon Gallery, London, November 16th to January 25th “Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn’t work.” – Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One The Drawn Blank Series is Dylan’s most comprehensive and familiar body of visual work […]
From the Hague – 15 treats
Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces from the Mauritshuis Frick Collection, New York, October 22nd to January 19th The Frick loves to home in on a distant museum and bring its treasures over to be enjoyed by busy New Yorkers. Its next target is the Mauritshuis in The Hague, which has some of the best pictures […]
A burqa’s eye view
She Who Tells a Story Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, August 27th to January 12th Contemporary art from the Middle East has been steadily building interest ever since 9/11, and the photography scene in particular is booming. For the first time ever, it is the women who are shouting loudest. “She Who Tells a Story”, […]
Pissarro the pathfinder
Pissarro Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, June 4th to September 15th He was calm and clear-eyed, with a rabbinical beard and a humble smile. Cézanne called him a “master” and “a father for me”; Renoir said he was a “revolutionary”. He was the only artist to exhibit at all eight Impressionist shows between 1874 and 1886, and […]
7,999 works on the move
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam reopens April 13th It has been buried under scaffolding and dustsheets for almost a decade, shielded from the 21st century. Now, €375m later, with 12,000 square metres of airy exhibition space, 52,000 new bricks, a spectacular entrance and a fresh lease of life, the Rijksmuseum is back. Never has a national museum undergone such a […]
Detox with Kurt Schwitters
Schwitters in Britain Tate Britain, London, January 30th to May 12th Things—a piece of string, corrugated card, a used envelope, nails, a grubby bus ticket, sackcloth, a yellow dot—have been attached to a wooden board. Fragmented words from bits of coffee-stained newsprint poke through the gaps, teasingly. Splurges of paint sweep across the pitted surface. […]
Dali the iceberg
Salvidor Dali Pompidou Centre, Paris, November 21st to March 25th The Surrealists were wacky but Dalí was wackier. His paintings of wobbly clocks, oversized limbs, waiflike figures—half human, half chest of drawers—reveal less than a snippet of his imagination. “My painting is like an iceberg,” he once said, “which shows only a tenth of its […]
Top hat and tales
Santu Mofokeng and A.M. Duggan-Cronin Walther Collection, New York, September 13th to November 17th The Walther Collection Project Space in New York sits smugly in a heap of arty spaces in a former factory in Chelsea. The premise: “to help foster an international dialogue about global contemporary photography.” Here’s how. “Distance and Desire: Encounters with […]
A tabernacle with a twist
Lindsay Sears: Nowhere Less Now The Tin Tabernacle, London, September 8th to October 21st Lindsay Seers is one of the most exciting artists to have emerged in Britain over the last 10 years. Preoccupied with big philosophical questions, her work explores notions of truth, memory, imagination and history. Nowhere Less Now, commissioned by Artangel, is her first […]
Titian – the festival
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 National Gallery, London, July 11th to Sept 23rd The National Gallery in London is having a Titian-fest and the Royal Opera House is joining in. So are three youngish British artists, seven choreographers, three composers, 14 poets and a fleet of dancers. When he died, in 1576, Titian was the most famous […]
Cowley Manor, Coutts & the RCA
Coutts Cowley Manor Arts Award Cowley Manor, the Cotswolds, May 3rd to September 30th If you want to escape from the city, Cowley Manor near Cheltenham is the place to stay, just a 70-mile, easy, scenic drive from London. With 30 modern rooms set in 55 acres of land, it is more a funky, contemporary stately […]
The third Renaissance man
Late Raphael Museo del Prado, Madrid, June 12th to September 16th; Musée du Louvre, Paris, October 8th to January 2013. Raphael’s final years were so good that the Prado and the Louvre have dedicated a whole exhibition to them. He died at 37, still in his prime (Vasari reports that he overexerted himself with his mistress, […]
A ferry from 35th Street
Frieze Art Fair, New York May 4th to 7th 2012 Over the last ten years the Frieze Art Fair has become a major fixture in London. This May it makes its debut in Manhattan, but not in a part of Manhattan that many contemporary art lovers will know. The fair will be on Randall’s Island, an area […]
Florence with an American accent
Americans in Florence: Sargent and the American Impressionists Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, March 3rd to July 15th. As with all long-term relationships, Florence and the Americans have history. They have been through the good times and the bad, the break-ups and the make-ups. Now they are back holding hands and exchanging flirty glances with an exhibition […]
Hockney thinks big
David Hockney: A Bigger Picture Royal Academy of Arts, London, January 21st to April 9th. The sumptuous, well-groomed galleries of the Royal Academy are about to get grassy. A whiff of Bridlington is coming to Burlington House, with those plush crimson walls soon to be covered in a thick layer of foliage. David Hockney […]
A man in love with walls
Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art MoMA, New York, November 13th to May 14th. Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was several people in one. A political partisan and rebellious spirit, he was also a painter, illustrator, architect, draughtsman, costume designer and sculptor. His private life was a whirlwind: Frida Kahlo was wife No 3, […]