International Art News

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 'Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Night', 1835. Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Widener Collection 1942.9.86

From March 14 to June 5, 2012 – The National Gallery
The National Gallery’s spring exhibition, Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, is the first major presentation of Claude’s influence on Turner. Turner’s daring free painting technique and radical approach created a revolution in painting at the beginning of the 19th century. The inspiration for these dramatic developments was the 17th-century artist Claude’s mastery of light on canvas. This exhibition tells the story behind Turner’s inspiration and the revolutionary works that went on to inspire future generations of artists.

The show reveals how Turner’s life-long desire to absorb all he could from the Old Master lay at the heart of his work. From the Roman Campagna-inspired views of the Thames Valley to paintings of the emerging industrial landscape, ‘Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Night’ (1835, National Gallery of Art, Washington), the exhibition demonstrates Turner’s skill at recreating gleaming light and atmosphere.

Turner’s first experience of the work of Claude had an immediate and lasting impact on the artist. A contemporary remarked that, ‘Turner was awkward, agitated and burst into tears’ on seeing Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648, The National Gallery). The combination of natural detail and ethereal effect in masterpieces such as ‘Landscape with the Arrival of Aeneas before the City of Pallenteum’ (1675, National Trust’s Anglesey Abbey) proved irresistible. He was captivated with Claude’s ability to depict light in landscape and praised his work as ‘pure as Italian air’.

The exhibition focuses on the major Claude-inspired themes that run through Turner’s career and that on occasion shocked and dazzled audiences of his day: the evocation of light and air in landscape, the effect of light upon water and his often radical reworking of contemporary scenes. The exhibition brings together a rich variety of media such as large majestic oils on canvas, mezzotints, etchings, watercolours and works in gouache, and displays of leaves from Turner’s pocket sketchbooks that show intimate drawings in pen, pencil and ink on paper, rarely on public display.

Joseph Mallord William Turner - Venice: The Giudecca Canal, Looking towards Fusina at Sunset 1840 - Pencil, watercolour and crayon on paper support: 221 x 323 mm - Tate 2012 - Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856.

The importance of the sea to Britain’s identity is another crucial theme of Turner’s work and Claude’s harbour scenes exerted a powerful hold on his imagination, as shown in works including ‘Le Havre: Sunset in the Port’, (about 1832, Tate) and East Cowes, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq. (about 1827–30, Victoria and Albert Museum). The exhibition includes a selection of Turner’s most spectacular watercolours from the 1840s which depict the unique character of Venetian light.

On his death – and linking himself to Claude for posterity – Turner left the National Gallery Dido building Carthage (1815) and Sun rising through Vapour: Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish (before 1807) on condition that they were hung between two pictures by Claude, which he named as ‘The Seaport’ (Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648) and ‘The Mill’ (Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, 1648). The exhibition sheds light on this relationship through photographs, letters and works that tell the story behind the Turner Bequest and its importance in the history of the National Gallery.

‘Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude’ unites works from Tate, The Holkham Estate and art galleries and museums around the United Kingdom including Glasgow Museums, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool and Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, as well as works from the United States. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with Tate Britain. It has been conceived, and works have been selected, by Ian Warrell, Curator of 18th- and 19th-Century British Art at Tate Britain and known internationally as a leading expert on the subject. The National Gallery curator is Susan Foister.

Gallery Hours

Pablo Picasso The Three Dancers 1925 Tate © Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

From February 15 to July 15, 2012 – Tate Britain
Picasso remains the twentieth century’s single most important artistic figure, a towering genius who changed the face of modern art.

In a major new exhibition at Tate Britain, Picasso and Modern British Art explores his extensive legacy and influence on British art, how this played a role in the acceptance of modern art in Britain, alongside the fascinating story of Picasso’s lifelong connections to and affection for this country.

It brings together over 150 spectacular artworks, with over 60 stunning Picassos including sublime paintings from the most remarkable moments in his career, such as Weeping Woman 1937 and The Three Dancers 1925.

It offers the rare opportunity to see these celebrated artworks alongside seven of Picasso’s most brilliant British admirers, exploring the huge impact he had on their art: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney.

Picasso and Modern British Art is the first exhibition to trace Picasso’s rise in Britain as a figure of both controversy and celebrity. From his London visit in 1919, working on the scenery and costumes for Diaghilev’s ballet The Three Cornered Hat; to his post-war reputation and political appearances; leading up to the phenomenally successful 1960 Tate exhibition.

Full of beautiful and inspirational artworks, this exhibition is an unmissable treat and a fascinating insight into how British art became modern.

Museum Hours

John Martin (1789–1854) - The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, 1852 - Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

From 21 September 2011 to 15 January 2012 – Tate Britain
John Martin (1789–1854) was a key figure in the nineteenth-century art world, renowned for his dramatic scenes of apocalyptic destruction and biblical disaster. While he was hugely popular, he remained something of an outsider, scorned by the art critics of his time.

Organised in partnership with the Laing, Newcastle, this major exhibition will be the first show dedicated to his paintings for over 30 years, and the largest display of his works seen in public since his death. Bringing together his most famous paintings from collections around the world, as well as previously unseen and newly-restored works, the exhibition will reassess this singular figure in art history, and reflect on the enduring influence of his apocalyptic art on painting, cinema and popular spectacle. The show will also examine how Martin’s populism fits into the story of British art, and how his work connects with the culture of today.

Museum Hours

Museo del Prado
22 June – 19 September 2010
Jerónimos Building

Organised by Tate Britain, in collaboration with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais and the Museo Nacional del Prado.

On 22 June 2010 the Prado will inaugurate the major exhibition Turner and the Masters, from London (Tate Britain, 23 September 2009 to 31 January 2010), and Paris (Grand Palais, 22 February to 24 May). The exhibition looks at the way that Turner produced his work in full awareness of the art of the great Old Masters, whom he studied in depth, while simultaneously paying attention to the artistic activity of a number of his contemporaries.

For the first time, the exhibition establishes a dialogue between Turner’s most important paintings, works by masters of other periods and those contemporary with his own time. The version of the exhibition to be seen at the Museo del Prado, which will comprise 80 paintings loaned from European and American institutions and collections, will include various works not shown in London and Paris. These include Shade and Darkness. The Eve of the Flood, Light and Colour. The Morning after the Flood, and Peace. Burial at Sea, three masterpieces from the end of Turner’s career.

Turner and the Masters aims to offer a complete overview of the artist’s oeuvre in order to reveal his connections with other painters of the stature of Rembrandt, Rubens and Claude Lorraine, among others, as well as the profoundly original way in which he absorbed their influence from the outset of his career to his final compositions.

FROM MAY 1 TO JULY 25 2010
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION Palazzo Venier dei Leoni 701 Dorsoduro 30125 VENEZIA

The evolution of utopian ideas in modern Western art analyzed through more than 70 works of art,

Encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing, decorative art, design, photography, and printed matter, the exhibition takes an international sequence of case studies that reveals some of the faces that utopia can assume when embraced by artistic movements—from the brotherhoods of the 19th century to the avant-gardes of the period immediately following World War I. The exhibition includes loans from some of the most important museums in the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Tate Britain, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Fostering the ideal of a pure life

The exhibition opens in the late 18th century, when artistic groups with articulated utopian goals sprang up as self-proclaimed brotherhoods, with conscious efforts to fashion model communities. They aspired to live a pure and sometimes monastic life and to remain untouched by outside ills. In instances, this retreat was prompted by religious sentiments in reaction to the increasing secularization of the Christian Church. At times, this withdrawal was also predicated as a return to an untainted harmonious state of being. The French Primitifs (Primitives) looked to the primitivism of archaic Greek and Etruscan art and the Italian Quattrocento (15th-century). The German Nazarenes, such as Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr (The Count of Hapsburg and the Priest, 1809-1810), referenced the Early and High Renaissance and painted religious scenes in an attempt to restore faith through art. The Pre-Raphaelites also quoted the past, announcing their allegiance to the art and philosophy of the time before Raphael, when guilds reigned. Among them, artists such as William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti privileged clear pictorial narratives and an artistic style inspired by the Italian fifteenth century.

A criticism of capitalism

As 19th-century progress marched forth, there was a return to craft in response to increased mechanization and to the dehumanization caused by industrial labor. This return was accompanied by the concomitant recognition that art, architecture, and design could have a role in reformulating how people lived and could serve to ameliorate society. Key proponents of this philosophy were artists connected to the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones (Elaine, 1870). Inspired largely by Ruskin’s theories, Morris was a progenitor of the Arts and Crafts movement, and advocated a system that would follow the model of collective production demonstrated by medieval guilds. In the last quarter of the century, with the momentum gained by left-wing groups, some artistic movements, such as the Neo-Impressionists, developed utopian ambitions with politicized intent, championing workers’ rights and critiquing capitalism in the very content of their art. The Neo-Impressionists saw their optical painting technique, based loosely on scientific tenets, as the vehicle to present scenes of progressive thought, uniting contemporary methods with idealistic narratives.

New aims for the 20th century

Following the advent of abstraction and the graphic horrors of World War I, artists turned toward the notion of truth as embodied in pure, abstract forms, which were equated with harmony. The founders of De Stijl, a small group of Dutch artists and architects led by Theo Van Doesburg (Counter-Composition XIII, 1925–26), believed that the formal properties of architecture, art, and design could foster harmony. The Bauhaus, a state-sponsored school of art, architecture, and design, founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919, by architect Walter Gropius, assembled leading artists and designers of the avant-garde into a working community that could help reconstruct post-war society through art and design. The Bolshevik Revolution also pursued a utopian vision, centered on restructuring class relations. The avant-garde artists utilized the radical poetics of non-objective art. Malevich and Lissitzky were idealists who believed that form could represent grand, if vaguely expressed visions, while Tatlin, Rodchenko, and others who all called themselves Constructivists were more interested in concrete materials as bearers of value. The exhibition concludes in the early 1930s, when the ascendancy of fascism brought about the close of the Bauhaus in Berlin in 1933 and when Stalinism reframed Russian Constructivist projects. Nonetheless, up to our day, experiments persist, from artists’ colonies to ecologically self-sustaining communities: utopian ideals still matter.