Zurberan

                                             Zurberan 

Spanish Catholic iconography has always fascinated me, in a mostly horrific way. Writhing martyrs, vivid crucifixions, pious sugary virgins- to visit museums and churches is to run a private league table of the most grotesquely spectacular images. The Counter- Reformation Catholic Church demanded of its artists the utmost realism, actual or imagined, to intimidate and inspire the faithful with the reality of the holy supernatural according to Rome.

Timed Entry to Exhibitions: Welcome to Your Special Crowd

 Welcome to Your Special Crowd:

Timed Entry in Exhibitions

 

What is the point of timed entry to exhibitions? It cannot be to lessen crowds: experience all to clearly gives the lie to that hypothesis.

Good at Hands: Hans Hals

 Good at Hands: Frans Hals

 

The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals (1582-1666) is a paradigm of the immediately approachable in classical painting: the Mona Lisa of the unsubtle chuckle.

The Hals exhibition at the National Gallery confirms his talent for smiling faces. They are everywhere: exuberant, tender, confident, self-satisfied. 

Sorolla and Vallotton

Sorolla and Vallotton

A couple of London exhibitions (overlapping in just the first week of July) have brought merited recognition to two largely overlooked artists (overlooked in Britain). Sorolla and Vallotton were contemporaries, living and working in the late C19 and early C20, both dying aged 60 within 2 years of one another. Sorolla was Spanish; Vallotton Swiss-French. Both enjoyed success in their lifetime, Sorolla the more conventionally (he sold well in the US).

Astonished by Goya; Creeped out by Goya

Astonished by Goya; Creeped out by Goya

The excellent catalogue that accompanies the excellent exhibition, Goya: the Portraits, at the National Gallery contains a passage that is key to understanding Goya’s power as a portraitist.

The catalogue refers to the series of etchings that Goya published at the end of the C18, Los Caprichos (not included in the Exhibition). In Goya’s own words (promoting the collection commercially): “He [Goya] has selected from among the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilised society … those subjects he feels to be most suitable materials for satire…”. One of the etchings shows a monkey painting the portrait of an ass.