The Bayeux Tapestry, one of the great works of romanesque art was due to come to the UK in 2022 as reported on this blog in January. It now looks like the loan will not take place as a condition survey revealed the extent of its damage is greater than believed. The original plan was…
Dante: The Invention of Celebrity at Oxford.
The Ashmolean occasionally stages a small specialised exhibition in its Gallery 8. I was drawn to this as it focussed on Dante Alighieri (c1265-1321), the great politician, philosopher and, of course, poet of early Renaissance Florence. I do like these one room exhibitions where one can enjoy and appreciate the work of the curator without…
Manifesting the Unseen. Contemporary Islamic Art.
Southampton is a City I have not visited for a while – June 2018 in fact when The City Gallery was recommended to me by a friend. Looking through the ‘Whats On’ guide I saw Manifesting the Unseen, a celebration of Islamic Art, which I noticed finishes this weekend so I had to make haste….
John Piper, Venice, October Painting of the Month
John Piper (1903-1992) has works gracing many art galleries and museums. The Tate alone holds no less than 180 of his works. He was a painter, printer and designer of stained glass and most of his works are representative of the British landscape or churches. Southampton City Art Gallery holds a truly exquisite painting of…
John Piper, Venice, October Painting of the Month
John Piper (1903-1992) has works gracing many art galleries and museums. The Tate alone holds no less than 180 of his works. He was a painter, printer and designer of stained glass and most of his works are representative of the British landscape or churches. Southampton City Art Gallery holds a truly exquisite painting of…
The Fovant Badges, Chalk Land Art in Britain.
Land Art, is a genre which focuses on the land and Earth as a fragile ecology, and is aimed at raising our conscience in our nature and surroundings. It is mainly a genre of the United States but there are also European exponents. Perhaps the most well known of the installations are Robert Smithson’s Spiral…
Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life at Wakefield
Wakefield is the location for this exhibition, the largest retrospective of Hepworth’s work since her untimely death in 1975. It seems months since I went to this exhibition with my ardent technophile brother, who by his own admission, finds culture presented like this quite difficult. This was probably not a good introduction to the newcomer…
Jeremy Barlow and his Contemporary Landscapes
Les Deux Garçons features in my current header painting. The painting has special memories of our time in Provence eating in this very fine restaurant in Aix. But also of meeting the artist at an exhibition at Broadway. He was also a regular exhibitor at The Llewelyn Alexander Gallery in London. Jeremy Barlow was a…
Gold Hill and The Boy on the Bike. When does a TV Commercial become Art?
Shaftesbury in Dorset is our latest location on our summer motorhome tour. Shaftesbury – famous for the much photographed Gold Hill. Probably remembered for the scene in the 1967 Far From The Madding Crowd where numerous terrified actors trotted down the wet cobbles on horseback. Ridley Scott’s iconic 1973 TV commercial for Hovis, though, known…
School Prints and my September Painting of the Month
School Prints was a scheme stated in the middle of the twentieth century whereby artists were commissioned for works from which prints were subsequently given to schools. The scheme fell out of favour with the changes in education policy in the seventies. However the Hepworth Wakefield revived the idea in 2018 with a five year…
