What a clever, understated way to expose the arms trade.
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What a clever, understated way to expose the arms trade.
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Bit of a mish mash at Margate Contemporary. Poor signage, tricky catalogue. Why make life so difficult? Still, there were some highlights
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One of the shows of the year (any year). How the new nations used art to express their identity after World War One
Exhibition at the Army Museum in Paris gets us in the mood for the agony and ecstasy of the Olympic Games which the city is staging this year.
An insight into a brief, charming interlude in the lives of Van Gogh, Seurat, Signac and co.
Read more: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/in-full-flow-by-the-river/
I come across the most eccentric, most brilliant people in the art world. Here’s another. What could be more remarkable than saying you would have wanted to be taken to a concentration camp to learn how better to help others?
Brilliant small show at the Courtauld (that brilliant small gallery) about the arts and craftiness of the fakes and forgers over the centuries.
Dramatic images expose the perils and privations facing the people of the Arctic region as global warming takes a grip.
There are many brave, inventive, photographers of war. But few capture the pathos, the suffering and the quiet dignity of the victims as well as Ivor Prickett.
Read more: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/no-home-from-war-images-of-conflict-survival-and-loss/
This exhibition at the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, was not at all what I expected.
I first came across the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi in a gallery on an island near Stockholm, artfully called the Artepeligo. He was teamed with actual potteries by Edmund de Waal and the result was quietly breathtaking. Here he is by himself.
I meet many impressive people in the world of arts but Anne de Henning is right up there for sheer bravado - not to mention talent. Read all about her: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-woman-who-shot-war/
I had never been to Lithuania and knew little about its art scene. It ranges from the ethereal to the decidedly gritty via the bold and radical Henrikas Natalevičius, MK Čiurlionis, Dorothy Bohm, Rimaldas Vikšraitis. And much, much more.
Read:
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/revealing-the-lost-art-of-lithuania/
The terrific Newlands Gallery in Petworth, Sussex, has a collection of photographs and paintings tracing the relationship of the incomparable Lee miller and the nonpareil that was Picasso. Were they lovers? We’ll never know.
I sit next to Paul Raftery at Fratton Park, home to the ever-disappointing Portsmouth FC. In the many longueurs of a game we talk photography. This is his latest very classy exhibition.
See more: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/behind-the-curtain-a-new-dawn/
My view of the artist Turner’s love life was clouded by his unlovely portrayal in the Mike Leigh film, Mr Turner. The truth is more nuanced and harder to identify.
Visited Bruges in Belgium a few years ago. Delightful. But surprised to find a museum dedicated to Frank Brangwyn - a man of parts if ever there there was. Doesn’t get the approbation he deserves but does have an exhibition of one of his major projects at the Ditching Gallery in deepest Sussex.
Few cartoonists are more English than Heath Robinson. So very Dads Army, so PG Wodehouse. Yet unlike them his gentle satire had a sting. A sting which more aggressive cartoonists would recognise as being on the side of finding the truth. Read more:
Procida, an island in the Bay of Naples is a joy. Spared the worst of the crowds which flock to Ischia, Capri and Sorrento it has a clear sense of its identity. It relies on fishing - as the fabulous sea food testifies - and maritime work for its income and on tourism. Actually, the people there told me on a number of occasions that they don’t want too many tourists which makes their bid to become Italy’s Capital of Culture hard to understand. Anyway, the headline in The New European says it all.
The picture shows the view from the old prison high on a bluff above the two main ports. I wondered if the blue skies and inviting seas cheered the inmates or made them even more frustrated and depressed.
PS I don’t write the headlines!