Visual treats for 2007
Andrew Lambirth finds plenty of exhibitions to look forward to in the coming year
Although it must be a nightmare to administer a museum in these philistine and turnstile-obsessed times, the nation’s galleries are still doing their best to provide a service of sorts to the minds and hearts of the populace. If there is a perceptible drift towards dead-cert favourites, who can blame the institutions which now have vast bureaucracies to support, as well as lighting and heating bills to pay? So at the National Gallery, hard on the heels of the prestigious Velázquez exhibition, is a display of Renoir’s landscapes (21 February to 20 May). Well, that should keep the crowds happy, but it’s hardly nourishing fare spiritually, intellectually or aesthetically. More rewarding, I hope, will be the autumn show Renaissance Siena: Art for a City (24 October to 13 January 2008), with some of Leon Kossoff’s pictures in the Sunley Room (14 March to 1 July) offering a usefully contrasting contemporary take on the Old Masters.
The Whitechapel is enmeshed in empire-building, with a £10 million extension under way, which means it will be operating a reduced service of film and video for 18 months. I just hope that by the time it reopens, a sufficiently impressive and varied exhibition programme is in place that’s not ghettoised by political correctness and the fads of fashion. Too many London venues still show the same kind of ‘trendy’ art (some call it State Art), and there are inevitably no surprises at the once-wonderful Serpentine Gallery (where the showman and film-maker Matthew Barney is the star turn, from 14 September to 11 November), or at the Hayward Gallery. That rudderless flagship on the South Bank is pleased to announce another show of the Arts Council’s favourite son, Antony Gormley (17 May to 27 August), followed by an earth-shattering display about the importance of photography in art, misleadingly titled The Painting of Modern Life (4 October to 30 December).
The Tate can usually be relied on to come up with a couple of crackers, and this time the older masters are favoured, with major displays of Hogarth (7 February to 29 April) and Millais (26 September to 13 January 2008) at Tate Britain. Why does the prospect of yet another Gilbert & George show seem so much less stimulating? Tate Modern plays host to the terrible duo (15 February to 7 May) before offering a solo show to the grande dame of French–American art, Louise Bourgeois (11 October to 27 January 2008). Inbetween, we are offered Dalí and Film (1 June to 9 September), timed to coincide with the V&A’s annual ism-fest, this year attempting to encompass the ever-popular chic naughtinesses of Surrealism (29 March to 22 July). There’s a nice link here with Lee Miller, who was, of course, married to one of Britain’s leading surrealists, Roland Penrose, and the V&A devotes its autumn spot to a comprehensive show of Miller’s photographs (6 September to 6 January 2008.) I’m an admirer of her work, but surely we’ve seen enough of it recently? It seems only yesterday that the National Portrait Gallery put on a show, though it was actually back in spring 2005.
Talking of the NPG brings me to its highlight of the year, which is an exhibition of Pop Art portraits (11 October to 20 January 2008). If some of this seems a bit lightweight, be assured that there’s Canaletto in England at Dulwich (24 January to 15 April), which documents the Italian artist’s nine-year exile in this country and the magnificent panoramas he painted for the aristocracy. You might prepare for this by reading Janet Laurence’s entertaining novel Canaletto and the Case of Westminster Bridge. And there are a couple of serious shows coming up at the Courtauld: Guercino: Mind to Paper (22 February to 13 May), an in-depth investigation of the drawings of ‘the Rembrandt of the South’, as he was known; and Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes (25 October to 20 January 2008). The more one looks at Sickert, the more surprising he appears. Which is not necessarily the case with Monet, whose box-office attractions are being put to the test once more at the Royal Academy, with a show optimistically entitled The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings (17 March to 10 June). More chance of the unexpected with Georg Baselitz’s first retrospective in England, in the RA main galleries from 22 September to 9 December.
Going out of London in search of art for a day trip, or longer, should be a pleasure as well as a revelation, but that may depend upon the transport you use. At Pallant House in Chichester, fast usurping Tate Britain as the museum for Modern British art, there’s a solo show of the sometime Vorticist William Roberts (20 January to 18 March), whose monumental figure compositions of everyday life deserve another long look. Following that is a survey of the Romantic Spirit in British Art, from Blake to Craxton (31 March to 10 June), and then a study of the relationship between music and abstract art, bringing together in EyeMusic (30 June to 16 September) Kandinsky and Klee with Alan Davie and John Tunnard.
At the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich is Martin Bloch: A Painter’s Painter (30 January to 15 April), the first comprehensive showing of this German émigré’s little-known but powerful work. At the Liverpool Tate, there’s a Peter Blake retrospective (29 June to 23 September), which should be both intellectually rewarding and popular, while at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (31 March to 6 January 2008) is a major celebration of the indoor and outdoor natural interventions of Andy Goldsworthy. For a change of focus, Witness 2 at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester (3 February to 29 April) provides a useful reminder of the horrors of the second world war seen through the eyes of artists such as Paul Nash, Edward Burra and Leonard Rosoman.
Other visual treats in the provinces include an exhibition of Richard Deacon’s recent work at the Ikon in Birmingham (31 January to 18 March) and a Joseph Wright of Derby show at the Walker Art Gallery (17 November to 24 February 2008) focusing on the period 1768–71 when Wright worked in Liverpool. Since travelling around London can sometimes take as long as going out of it, allow plenty of time even for a visit to the West End. There is nothing less conducive to looking at art and absorbing its spirit than a state of rush. The major spring exhibition at the British Museum is A New World: England’s First View of America (15 March to 17 June) featuring the fascinating 16th-century watercolours of John White. At the Barbican is a celebration of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (22 February to 13 May) seen through the eyes of the leading Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Something different at the Queen’s Gallery: The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection, focusing on the Renaissance and Baroque (30 March to 20 January 2008). From Caravaggio to Gentileschi, via Tintoretto and Parmigianino, this exhibition should prove a feast. There’s plenty to see if you’re prepared to look for it.
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