I saw the London exhibition a couple of weeks ago and, although it is relatively small, it is well worth the trip out to Camden to see work by a man who attended art school alongside Caulfield, Hockney and Blake, and was friends with Bacon, Auerbach and Freud. The museum has prepared a Kitaj Trail leaflet which contains informative links between the Kitaj works and other exhibits in the museum.
Teignmouth Folk Festival
The good weather has come just in time for the Teignmouth Folk Festival which runs from 21st to 23rd June. The programme of over a dozen performers is now available on the Festival website and tickets can also be obtained in advance from there.
The sun shining on the Teignmouth Folk Festival 2006
The Festival is in its 15th year and usually has something for everyone, with Morris dancers and a number of free events, in addition to the the bigger acts in the main venues.
He enlisted with the merchant navy during the Second World War but was discharged after illness. After the war it was a trio of paintings of his first wife Kitty Garman that first established him.
Kitty Garman
The early paintings see Freud developing his style and the subjects seem to have larger-than-life eyes (rather like those stylised large-eyed portraits of children in the 1960s and those by Margaret Keane).
'Small naked portrait' at the Ashmolean
Remarkably quickly, however, Freud found his realist style and subsequent pictures appear stylistically very consistent, with their trademark reds and greens giving a livid appearance to the flesh. Freud spent hundreds of hours on each of his pictures and photos of his studio show it quite spartan apart from the splodges of paint where he removed the excess from his brushes and the sheets that he used to wipe them.
The Freud studio with model, picture and dog
Painting Leigh Bowery
The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was being planned
when he died at the age of 88 in July 2011 and is essential viewing for
anyone interested in figurative portraiture in the late 20th century.
After painting David Hockney
The gallery space at the NPG is bit cramped, especially given the number of
people trying to see the works, and it does not flow particularly well,
but the works themselves are a revelation for anyone who has only seen
reproductions or the occasional Freud elsewhere (such as that at the Ashmolean).
I still haven't really got very far updating the blog - so here instead is a short list of exhibitions that I hope to get to, and which you might like, in the next few weeks (update 26/2/12: have now been to all of these - all well worth seeing - will post more shortly)
1. At the British Museum Grayson Perry: the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman is extended to 26 February 2012. Perry has curated a unique show of his own work and selected material from the British Museum, as this short video explains.
If you want to see more, Tim Marlow has done one of his 30 minute programmes discussing the aims of the exhibition with Perry. The programme is showing from 11 February on Sky Arts 1.
Lucian Freud's first wife, Kitty
2. Lucian Freud Portraits is on at the National Portrait Gallery 9 Feb – 27 May 2012. See a short video here on YouTube. As it says on the NPG website: "Lucian Freud was one of the most important and influential artists of his generation ... and this major exhibition, spanning over seventy years, is the first to focus on his portraiture." See my previous post re Lucian Freudand my follow-up post. Tim Marlow has also reviewed this show on Sky Arts.
3. At the Royal Academy of Arts: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture is showing from 21 January to 9 April 2012. Now in his 70s, Hockney, along with Peter Blake, is a survivor from the 1960s - but one who has continued to explore new avenues throughout his career and who enjoys widespread popularity. The following video by the curator Marco Livingstone explains how the exhibition was put together:
Further related Hockney videos can be viewed here. Also Sky Arts is showing a Tim Marlow programme about the exhibit and on 27/2/12 Andrew Marr is doing an hour long programme. According to the website this exhibition "spans a 50 year period to demonstrate Hockney’s long exploration and fascination with the depiction of landscape." However, Hockney is adamant that it is not a retrospective but focuses mainly on work produced during the past 3-4 years (confirmed by visiting the exhibition - only one gallery was devoted to Hockney's previous landscape work).
4. At Tate Britain there is a Picasso exhibition. Picasso and Modern British Art focuses on how Picasso was influenced by the English and how, in turn, English painters - from Ben Nicholson to David Hockney - were influenced by him. “The exhibition will show how Picasso evolved from an artist championed by a courageous minority in Britain, to become the figurehead of modern art both here and around the world.” according to the curator. It looks as though it will be a fascinating exploration, and it runs from 15 February to 15 July 2012. Tim Marlow is doing a 30 min programme on the exhibition that will be showing in March on Sky Arts.
5. Finally, if you are in Cornwall you should take the opportunity to see the exhibition of Breon O'Casey's work at the Newlyn Gallery 14th January - 28th April 2012. This is a major show of paintings, prints, sculptures, weavings and jewellery by Breon selected by his daughter, Duibhne Gough, and covers his output from the 1950s to 2011. It includes notebooks, photographs and other artefacts. Prints & works on paper will be available for sale in the Picture Room. See my previous post about O'Casey and Barbara Hepworth.
We did quite a bit of eating & drinking and spent some time rowing and punting on the Isis. Towards the end of the day we managed to fit in a brief visit to the Ashmolean Museum.
This was my first visit and I wasn't disappointed. While outside it retains its traditional classical look, inside the museum has been extensively renovated in recent years. The museum's full name is the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeaology and its contents are wide-ranging. As we had less than an hour we focused on only a small part - the museum's collection of 19th to 21st century art.
Brazen Nose College - JMW Turner
This includes a couple of galleries devoted to Sickert and Pisarro, a 19th century gallery - which includes several Turners - and a Pre-Raphaelite gallery. Each of these has some fine examples and they are displayed in a relaxed user-friendly way (no trip wires to prevent you getting a good look at the paintings).
Cows at Cookham - Stanley Spencer
There is also a lone Modern Art gallery. Inevitably this is pretty selective but it includes good things, including a picture by Roger Hilton, a large piece of sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, a typical Cookham pastoral by Stanley Spencer and a perfect small nude by Lucian Freud.
Small naked portrait - Lucian Freud
Which gives me an excuse to write about Freud's recent death at the age of 88 ... Freud was described succinctly by the BBC as one of Britain's most distinguished and highly regarded artists - However, he was more than that.
As a refugee from the Nazis, his framework of experience is unimaginable for us baby-boomers and later generations, and this inevitably influenced his work. He was intensely private, eccentric and charismatic. His nude portraits, for which he was famous, were detailed and unforgiving. His best known paintings have been auctioned for serious money, rivalling the likes of Damien Hirst.
The following clip from ITN gives a flavour of his life and his art:
