'Francis Bacon'
Tate Britain
Until 4 January 2009
How good was Bacon? This shrewd selection gives him every chance to shine and there are undoubted masterpieces, such as the Crucifixion triptych of 1962 and the 1965 Study from portrait of Pope Innocent X. Room 7 has portraits of lyricism and wit amid all the blood and guts.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 19 September 2008
And another thing:
One of the finest paintings on view is the Study for Crouching Nude of 1952. It is at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a gift from its former director William Valentiner because (wait for it) the museum of which he was currently director, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, turned it down… ouch.
There is a brief but enjoyable interview with Bacon online:
BBC interview
Monday, 22 September 2008
Monday, 15 September 2008
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
Crikey, get this price:
Lifeguards on the Mall, 66 x 91cm, oil on canvas. Yours for £125,000…
‘Edward Seago: the Artist’s Artist’
Colnaghi, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1, until 19 September (closed Sunday)
Free
Seago was not so much the artist’s artist as the people’s artist. Until his death in 1974, Seago defied the trendy art establishment to become the most popular of ‘traditional’ painters, loved by high and low alike. Splendid show filled out with loans from Prince Philip, his admirer and painting companion.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 12 September 2008
Lifeguards on the Mall, 66 x 91cm, oil on canvas. Yours for £125,000…
‘Edward Seago: the Artist’s Artist’
Colnaghi, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1, until 19 September (closed Sunday)
Free
Seago was not so much the artist’s artist as the people’s artist. Until his death in 1974, Seago defied the trendy art establishment to become the most popular of ‘traditional’ painters, loved by high and low alike. Splendid show filled out with loans from Prince Philip, his admirer and painting companion.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 12 September 2008
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
Lucian Freud, Girl with White Dog, 1950-1, oil on canvas ©Tate, London 2008
‘The Naked and the Nude’
Mima, Middlesborough
Lucian Freud’s 1951 Girl with white dog features in a fine selection of paintings from Tate Britain at the swish new Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art. The building is fun and holds an impressive permanent collection of 20th-century British works, with plenty of contemporary ‘cutting edge’ art on view. 'The Vulture', Daily Mail, 5 September 2008
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
'BP Exhibition: Drawn from the Collection'
Tate Britain
Until 1 March 2009
Free admission
Selection of rarely seen treasures from the Tate's drawings collection. Superb draughtsmanship from the likes of Cozens, Cotman, Turner and Burne-Jones, a tradition continued in the twentieth century by such as Nevinson, Kennington and Spencer. The Tate's insistence upon displaying stuff by Tracey Emin and chums amid such skill is self-defeating.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 29 August 2008
PS what I did not mention in the paper is that the efforts of Tracey Emin and David Shrigley are so poor that, to quote Shrigley, 'You've got to laugh.'
Or weep, for British art…
What Shrigley actually said, with unconscious irony, was: 'It’s a matter of making fun of the things you could get depressed about. You've got to laugh.'
See for yourselves on this link: feeble stuff
Tate Britain
Until 1 March 2009
Free admission
Selection of rarely seen treasures from the Tate's drawings collection. Superb draughtsmanship from the likes of Cozens, Cotman, Turner and Burne-Jones, a tradition continued in the twentieth century by such as Nevinson, Kennington and Spencer. The Tate's insistence upon displaying stuff by Tracey Emin and chums amid such skill is self-defeating.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 29 August 2008
PS what I did not mention in the paper is that the efforts of Tracey Emin and David Shrigley are so poor that, to quote Shrigley, 'You've got to laugh.'
Or weep, for British art…
What Shrigley actually said, with unconscious irony, was: 'It’s a matter of making fun of the things you could get depressed about. You've got to laugh.'
See for yourselves on this link: feeble stuff
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
'Reunited. Gwen John, Mere Poussepin and the Catholic Church'
Barber Institute, Birmingham
Until 21 September
If you like Gwen John, you will like this lugubrious display of nuns. After her disastrous love affair with the sculptor Rodin, John converted to Roman Catholicism. The six portraits of the local Mother Superior were commissioned, one for each room in the convent. It suited the artist's repetitious nature.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 22 August 2008
The Nun (Late 1910s). Oil on board.
Tate
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
Wyndham Lewis Portraits
National Portrait Gallery
National Portrait GalleryLondon. Until 19 October
Admission charge
Admission charge
Wyndham Lewis seemed the epitome of ‘modern art’ after World War I. Now his portraits looks like charming pastiches. The RA turned down his portrait of TS Eliot in 1938, although Sickert called him ‘the greatest portraitist of this or any other time’. A baffling episode in the history of taste.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 8 August 2008
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 8 August 2008
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice
Edgar Degas, l'Absinthe
'Impressionism & Scotland'
National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh
Until 12 October
Admission charge
Magnificent display of over 100 masterpieces telling the story of the powerful relationship between the French Impressionists and Scotland. The Glasgow draper Arthur Kay bought Degas’s great l’Absinthe (see illustration) as early as 1892, while Scotland boasted its own ‘Glasgow Boys’ and ‘Scottish Colourists’. Knockout works by Van Gogh, Monet (Poplars on the Epte illustrated here), … the lot.
The Vulture, Daily Mail, 1 August 2008
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