Art Galleries

[Smeraldina Rima]

Following conversation about galleries and paintings in the thread about things that surpassed expectations, I thought people might have more to say about the galleries and exhibitions they've been to or are planning to go to and responses to paintings they saw.

There are rarely any major exhibitions in Birmingham, but the BMAG collection is pretty good, especially for the locally connected art by Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites, and the later Birmingham Group whose pictures are displayed in the room next door (I'm particularly keen on the Arthur Gaskin paintings from the Brothers Grimm story "The Twelve Brothers" below). You can also go round the corner from the museum to see the Burne-Jones stained glass windows in the cathedral.





A while ago I saw Adrian Chiles getting into a tram. Then very soon after read an article by him (which married a serious enthusiasm for art with a man of the people tone and local spririt) about the Birmingham Surrealists and how he'd visited a pub where they used to get together to drink according to this lecture that had inspired him. I've also been there, but only to meet friends before going to see the football, because it's a shit pub (now). Given the location of the pub and direction of Chiles travel when I saw him I'm pretty sure I saw him after his pilgrimage and before riding the tram to The Hawthorns football stadium.

[Shit Good Nose]

Immediate caveat - I think most modern art is absolute bollocks, so I am admittedly starting from a negative bias, and this is my own subjective and personal opinion - one person's shit, etc...

I went to the Tate modern once and hated almost every second of it.  They had a Rothko exhibition on at the time and one of the pieces was called "Blue" followed by whichever number in the series it was.  Loads of people flocking around it and fawning over it because it was "unusually" one single uniform shade of blue, and it literally was like a Dulux swatch.  And some of the installations, fucking hell.

On the installations note, a few years ago I was dragged along the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and there were a few separate installations on with the central piece being a load of cut up foam suspended by wire from the ceiling.  There were genuinely people taking photos of a fire extinguisher fixed on the wall next to a door with no handle in one corner.  That fire extinguisher was real and the door was for a cleaning cupboard.  I saw that with my own eyes and for me it sums up most modern art and the people who wax lyrical about it.

SUBJECTIVE PERSONAL OPINION!!!!!

[cosmic-hearse]

There are loads - hitting up London galleries is a hobby of mine.

I'll start with the Estorick in Islington, as it saw it mentioned in another thread. Housed in a tasteful, large Georgian building typical of the area, this used to be Basil Spence's offices before becoming a gallery specialising in Futurism & other modern Italian art. The recent MITA textiles exhibition was glorious:

https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/italian-threads-mita-textile-design-1926-1976

It's worth becoming a member as you get free admission & invites to openings which generally have an unlimited free bar (the Campari exibition https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/the-art-of-campari was basically force feeding us negronis all night).

[Kankurette]

Grayson Perry's got an exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery and I must say I'm tempted. My mum is an artist and I got dragged round art galleries loads as a kid by her. When we went the Netherlands in 1999 I think about half of the places we went were galleries, though tbf the sculpture park was boss. I forget which one. And when Mum and I were in Munich, we saw a Cy Twombly exhibition at one of the galleries there, and the Whitworth had a Warhol exhibition a while back that I quite liked. I also saw an exhibition of disabled people's art in Blackpool when I last went Rebellion, that was cool. The Tate in Liverpool is my favourite. One of the most memorable pieces was a treacle fountain, fuck knows what the point of it was.

Immediate caveat - I think most modern art is absolute bollocks, so I am admittedly starting from a negative bias, and this is my own subjective and personal opinion - one person's shit, etc...

I went to the Tate modern once and hated almost every second of it.  They had a Rothko exhibition on at the time and one of the pieces was called "Blue" followed by whichever number in the series it was.  Loads of people flocking around it and fawning over it because it was "unusually" one single uniform shade of blue, and it literally was like a Dulux swatch.  And some of the installations, fucking hell.

On the installations note, a few years ago I was dragged along the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and there were a few separate installations on with the central piece being a load of cut up foam suspended by wire from the ceiling.  There were genuinely people taking photos of a fire extinguisher fixed on the wall next to a door with no handle in one corner.  That fire extinguisher was real and the door was for a cleaning cupboard.  I saw that with my own eyes and for me it sums up most modern art and the people who wax lyrical about it.

SUBJECTIVE PERSONAL OPINION!!!!!

Heh, I like modern art but I can't disagree with this. Some artists do take the piss (especially Marcel Duchamp, ha ha ha). I went the Tate in Liverpool a few times when the YBAs were big and they had some Damien Hirst stuff there, which was pretty but sometimes you think 'why'.

[Neomod]

Love Museums and Galleries.

Favourites:
National Portrait Gallery
Tate Modern (for the space) I hate Rothko too.
Loved the Museum of Everything (mostly art) when it was in Hampstead. They also had Peter Blake's Walter Potter collection of Taxidermy.
Musee d'Orsay
Bratislava City Gallery
Any Art Brut exhibitions (seen em' in London, Paris and Trnava)
Saatchi Gallery (Chelsea)
V & A
Birmingham and The Tate's pre-Raphaelite collections
Royal Academy (Saw the Sensation exhibition there) Great stuff and yeah the YBA's did take the piss.

[cosmic-hearse]

I would also add - MAYFAIR. Historically the site of scores of small galleries (especially Cork St., Which has had something of a revival recently), these are all commercial so don't really advertise themselves like the Tate et al. Some seem a bit intimidating (you have to buzz yourself into an anonymous building full of hedge fund s & find a gallery behind one of many doors), but you can have an easy cheap day out in one of the most expensive districts in London. Also worth signing up to their mailing lists so you can find out when their openings are (nine times out of ten there's free drinks). Again, they don't give a fuck if you won't buy anything & your just on the blag.

Some highlights:

Mayor Gallery (Cork St.) - been there about 100 years, one of the first places to exhibit Calder, Hepworth & other interwar Modernists.

Tournaborni Fine Art  (Albermarle St.) - mainly postwar Italian art, Fontana & the like. Housed in a magnificent Erno Goldfinger infill, though it looked closed last time I passed it (hopefully temporarily).

[cosmic-hearse]

Dulwich Picture Gallery - it's permanent exhibition is dull (a load of cherubs & landscapes & whatnot) but it's a pleasant space & has had some temporary exhibitions on Ravilious, Bowden & other Modern printmakers.

[Neomod]

One of my favourite things is the John Martin Triptych at Tate Britain. Completed a year before his death.







Now off to get a pencil and rubber from the gift shop.[nb]do kids still do this on school trips to museums[/nb]

[Smeraldina Rima]

There are loads - hitting up London galleries is a hobby of mine.

I'll start with the Estorick in Islington, as it saw it mentioned in another thread. Housed in a tasteful, large Georgian building typical of the area, this used to be Basil Spence's offices before becoming a gallery specialising in Futurism & other modern Italian art. The recent MITA textiles exhibition was glorious:

https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/italian-threads-mita-textile-design-1926-1976

It's worth becoming a member as you get free admission & invites to openings which generally have an unlimited free bar (the Campari exibition https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/the-art-of-campari was basically force feeding us negronis all night).

I had a good time at this exhibition there: A New Figurative Art 1920-1945: Works from the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection, which included paintings like this one by Ottone Rosai:



It was on at the same time as the Tate Modern had an exhibition called "Magic Realism Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33" with the more famous comparable painters from Germany.

I remember the purple horses arse paintings by Zoran Music in the permanent collection:





and looking at "The Boulevard" by Gino Severini for a long time:

[idunnosomename]

I would also add - MAYFAIR. Historically the site of scores of small galleries (especially Cork St., Which has had something of a revival recently), these are all commercial so don't really advertise themselves like the Tate et al. Some seem a bit intimidating (you have to buzz yourself into an anonymous building full of hedge fund s & find a gallery behind one of many doors), but you can have an easy cheap day out in one of the most expensive districts in London. Also worth signing up to their mailing lists so you can find out when their openings are (nine times out of ten there's free drinks). Again, they don't give a fuck if you won't buy anything & your just on the blag.

if you go in Sothebys and Christies you can just wander around and take paintings off the wall to look at the backs by yourself, ask the handlers to take objets d'art out of cases so you can have a close look at it, and ask to look through 1000-year old manuscripts. it's great fun if you have the balls to do it. best time to go is London Art Week (Early July) where there's certain to be a few big national museum-level old master things that you'll probably never see again, and a good variety of art. any other time depends what sales are on.

and yeah if you don't end up in a wine reception by about six, you've been very unlucky.

[cosmic-hearse]

Hayward Gallery – a space where the architecture is often more sublime than the exhibits within. Sitting between the Scandi-modern Royal Festival Hall & the more classically defined Brutalism of Lasdun's National Theatre, it (along with the Lloyd's Building) is one of the few genuinely avant-garde buildings in the capital, & the closest thing to an actual Archigram structure ever built (the fact that it upsets Prince Charles, Roger Scruton & other trad cunts is an added bonus). It does have many decent exhibitions (Bridget Riley a couple of years ago was a highlight), but whenever I go I spend as much time looking at the pine surfaces of the concrete staircases than I do at the Yayoi Kusama dots or whatever.



Barbican Gallery – as above, but a better curated space. The gallery is a really, under-rated, versatile space – recent Jean Dubuffet & Lee Krasner shows were amazing (as an aside, the Barbican has the greatest, well-resourced public library in the country – it's like a phantasmagorical vision of a Britain that chose Eurocommunism over Thatcherism, an amply funded resource situated within well-maintained public housing (I know the Barbican is not & never was council housing, but still)).



Chris Beetles Gallery – a much smaller space near the Economist Building in St. James, this has a fairly idiosyncratic selection (illustrations, newspaper cartoonists, watercolours of London) but it's main appeal to me is its yearly Louis Wain show (Beetles is Wain's biographer & has been dealing his work for years).



Bethlem Museum of the Mind – continuing the Wain theme, this is not a gallery but has had many Wain exhibitions (Wain would convalesce at the Bethlem Hospital & drew many of his non-commercial work there, the sort you might see on a Current 93 album). The hospital is on the outskirts of London (as was the way of such institutions), so not that easy to get to unless you live in Bromley or Croydon.

[cosmic-hearse]

It was on at the same time as the Tate Modern had an exhibition called "Magic Realism Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33" with the more famous comparable painters from Germany.

I really enjoyed this also - the Tate is good for these small free exhibitions (it helps when you have thousands of paintings in storage do dip into)

[All Surrogate]

In a post in an old thread on art, I mentioned being enchanted by The Bridesmaid by Millais in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.




And in Birmingham Art Gallery, I really like An Audience in Athens during the Representation of Agamemnon by Aeschylus by William Blake Richmond, though I think for the best effect effect you have to be stood in front of it.




I've been a fairly regular visitor to The New Art Gallery Walsall, which has some really quite beautiful sculptural items in the permanent collection. The exhibitions are of course variable, but few years back, I really enjoyed the Rachel Goodyear exhibition, Catching Sight.


^{Rachel Goodyear, Dance.}

[flotemysost]

I'll start with the Estorick in Islington, as it saw it mentioned in another thread. Housed in a tasteful, large Georgian building typical of the area, this used to be Basil Spence's offices before becoming a gallery specialising in Futurism & other modern Italian art. The recent MITA textiles exhibition was glorious:

https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/italian-threads-mita-textile-design-1926-1976

It's worth becoming a member as you get free admission & invites to openings which generally have an unlimited free bar (the Campari exibition https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/the-art-of-campari was basically force feeding us negronis all night).

Immediately thought of this one when I saw the thread title, used to go there a fair bit when I lived in North London. Didn't know about the Campari exhibition though, that sounds great.

The Saatchi Gallery definitely requires quite a high tolerance for what might be seen as the worst excesses of "Brit art" (I'm really really no expert on art so I don't have any strong opinions either way - some of it I enjoy, some of it less so), but I used to go along sometimes just to see this:



(20:50 by Richard Wilson - it's a room filled with sump oil, with a sort of gangway cut into it, so the surface acts as a perfect mirror. Not sure where it's on display now but I wouldn't recommend visiting when you're taking codeine painkillers for a wisdom tooth, as I once did - the smell of all that oil is quite overwhelming).

I also really like the House of Illustration near Kings Cross, founded by certified good egg Quentin Blake (at least I think so - please tell me he's not been #cancelled, apart from erstwhile association with Roald Dahl of course). I really like children's book illustration and they've had some great exhibitions there, as well as an exhaustive Graham Scarfe one a few years ago.

Outside the UK (are we doing that?) the Cartoon Museum in Brussels is fab, could spend all day there. And it's a bit of a tourist cliche perhaps, but the China Through the Looking Glass exhibition at the Met in New York a few years ago was probably one of the most beautiful and informative exhibitions I've ever been to.

Edit: probably loads of others which I can't think of right now (and if we're doing museums as well as strictly art galleries then definitely plenty)

[Gurke and Hare]

The Oldmasters Museum in Brussels

The Historisches KunstMuseum in Vienna

are both very good, and that they both have a lot of the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is no coincidence.

The Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven is a good modern art museum.

The Riijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are both good. I want to go back to Amsterdam to go to the other half of the Riijksmuseum (it's far too big to do in one visit) and the Stedelijk Museum.

[Captain Z]

20:50 by Richard Wilson - it's a room filled with sump oil, with a sort of gangway cut into it, so the surface acts as a perfect mirror.

I don't believe it!

[Tony Tony Tony]

You could do worse than the Lowry in Salford (deffo not Manchester) which is full of stuff by, well, LS Lowry.

On top of a fine gallery you can shop till you drop in the outlet centre and take in a show at the Lowry theatre.

In the space outside the Michael Wilford designed building there are frequent markets selling locally made products.

All whilst you hum Matchstick Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs.

[ProvanFan]

The Historisches KunstMuseum in Vienna...

...Pieter Bruegel the Elder...

I'm a big fan of this lad:

[An tSaoi]

One of the exhibits in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin is Francis Bacon's actual studio. They got everything from his room in London and painstakingly transplanted it all into the gallery bit by bit. You look in through the window.



I wonder how accurate it is. I assume the various bits and pieces are real, and probably the door, but what about all those paint daubs on the walls; did they cut the actual walls out and bring them over, or did they get an intern to recreate them from a photo? If those are the real walls and ceiling then it's pretty impressive.

[An tSaoi]

Just found this page: https://www.francis-bacon.com/removal-7-reece-mews

In 1998, a team of art historians, conservators and archaeologists started to carefully dismantle the room in London. The endeavour was treated like an archaeological excavation; scientists executed meticulous survey plans of the space, determining the exact position of each item, assigned every crumpled newspaper cutting and paint brush an archive number, and removed every layer of the fragile material until they reached the floor.

Over 7000 items, including discarded canvases, painting materials, printed matter, and the old corduroy trousers Bacon had pressed into wet paint to create texture, along with the paint-splattered walls and the steep staircase leading to the first floor, were carefully wrapped and shipped to Dublin. In September of the same year, the material arrived at The Hugh Lane, and over the following five years, the working documents were photographed, researched and recorded in a computer database. Since May 2001, the reconstructed room has been on public display in a purpose-built compound within the museum, containing the reassembled studio itself, an audiovisual room, a micro-gallery and an exhibition space.

Sounds like it really is the actual entire room.

20:50 by Richard Wilson - it's a room filled with sump oil, with a sort of gangway cut into it, so the surface acts as a perfect mirror.

One for Peter's Mad Thoughts. I'd love to throw an apple or something right into it and make ripples. The oil seems almost flush with the rim of the walkway. I reckon some of it would splash over the edge.

[flotemysost]

Just found this page: https://www.francis-bacon.com/removal-7-reece-mews

Sounds like it really is the actual entire room.

I've been there once but never knew that, thanks!

One for Peter's Mad Thoughts. I'd love to throw an apple or something right into it and make ripples. The oil seems almost flush with the rim of the walkway. I reckon some of it would splash over the edge.

Oh absolutely, part of the appeal is fighting the urge to disrupt it. It is filled right to the top - the first time I visited I had waist-length hair and the gallery staff made me tie it back before I went in, in case I accidentally swished it.

[Mr_Simnock]

Immediate caveat - I think most modern art is absolute bollocks, so I am admittedly starting from a negative bias, and this is my own subjective and personal opinion - one person's shit, etc...

I went to the Tate modern once and hated almost every second of it.  They had a Rothko exhibition on at the time and one of the pieces was called "Blue" followed by whichever number in the series it was.  Loads of people flocking around it and fawning over it because it was "unusually" one single uniform shade of blue, and it literally was like a Dulux swatch.  And some of the installations, fucking hell.

On the installations note, a few years ago I was dragged along the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and there were a few separate installations on with the central piece being a load of cut up foam suspended by wire from the ceiling.  There were genuinely people taking photos of a fire extinguisher fixed on the wall next to a door with no handle in one corner.  That fire extinguisher was real and the door was for a cleaning cupboard.  I saw that with my own eyes and for me it sums up most modern art and the people who wax lyrical about it.

SUBJECTIVE PERSONAL OPINION!!!!!

[idunnosomename]

The Walker in Liverpool is at least as good as the Fitzwilliam or the Ashmolean. They have just about the best copy of the Holbein Henry VIII Whitehall mural. There were some pretty avant-garde collectors in Liverpool who donated a bunch of significant medieval stuff they scored in Italy too, medieval to renaissance. They have a big Titian on long-term loan too.

I think BMAG's collection is better than Manchester, which really lacks any great pre 19th century stuff.

god how long is it since I've seen a painting? fucking ages

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

At the Prado in Madrid they let the proles in for free in the final hour, there's often a long queue so in reality you get to be in there for about 40 minutes max. Still worth doing so long as you are laser focused on what bits you want to see most.

The Uffizi in Florence has a characterful layout and great views. There's a room you aren't allowed in, only to peek at, which is ipad corner. But the exhibits are a combination of Greco-Roman sculpture, portraits of Medieval Dukes in the lovely long room/corridors and Christ child depictions by literally every Italian to ever lift a brush. There is almost nothing in-between. It becomes quite cloying.

As for my local gallery, Leeds, it is a classic example of tired looking permanent gallery and jarring mediocre temporary one. In some ways appropriate because the building itself is two quite different buildings bodged together.

[thugler]

Immediate caveat - I think most modern art is absolute bollocks, so I am admittedly starting from a negative bias, and this is my own subjective and personal opinion - one person's shit, etc...

I went to the Tate modern once and hated almost every second of it.  They had a Rothko exhibition on at the time and one of the pieces was called "Blue" followed by whichever number in the series it was.  Loads of people flocking around it and fawning over it because it was "unusually" one single uniform shade of blue, and it literally was like a Dulux swatch.  And some of the installations, fucking hell.

On the installations note, a few years ago I was dragged along the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and there were a few separate installations on with the central piece being a load of cut up foam suspended by wire from the ceiling.  There were genuinely people taking photos of a fire extinguisher fixed on the wall next to a door with no handle in one corner.  That fire extinguisher was real and the door was for a cleaning cupboard.  I saw that with my own eyes and for me it sums up most modern art and the people who wax lyrical about it.

SUBJECTIVE PERSONAL OPINION!!!!!

I used to feel somewhat this way when I was a teenager, but my views have pretty much changed 180 over time. Including on Rothko who I once hated quite specifically. Since seeing some of his work in person and up close I was staggered by how affecting I found it. 

My main issue was one of questioning the sincerity and cynicism I saw in some of the work, but in reality a lot of it was a lack of understanding on my part and reacting in a dumb way to challenging or strange work and it's purpose. Not every piece of art is going to be a nice pretty picture for you to enjoy, it's designed to make you think and often to mess with you and the way you think. There is also a tendency to write off 'modern art' which is a ridiculously broad term, as being rubbish due to a few examples of stuff you consider crap or meaningless. In reality there is a very wide spectrum of work contained in that term, much of which is perfectly accessible to those who would not consider themselves interested in modern art. Personally I tend to get more out of art produced after the invention of the camera since I find attempts to produce perfect representations of reality in painting to be a bit boring. There will always be stuff you don't like and that's fine, it doesn't necessarily indicate that the artist involved is some cynical charlatan taking the piss out of you either.  Think about how you would react to someone dismissing 'modern music' and give it another go I would suggest, also I find reading about the process and thinking of the artists involved to be pretty enlightening and interesting even If I don't end up liking the resulting work.

[Smeraldina Rima]

One of the exhibits in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin is Francis Bacon's actual studio. They got everything from his room in London and painstakingly transplanted it all into the gallery bit by bit. You look in through the window.



I wonder how accurate it is. I assume the various bits and pieces are real, and probably the door, but what about all those paint daubs on the walls; did they cut the actual walls out and bring them over, or did they get an intern to recreate them from a photo? If those are the real walls and ceiling then it's pretty impressive.

Just found this page: https://www.francis-bacon.com/removal-7-reece-mews

Sounds like it really is the actual entire room.

There are a couple of short videos about the reconstruction of the Reece Mews studio:

Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty

Reece Mews - the reconstruction of a Painter's Studio

The second one is an extra on the Arena documentary DVD which shows Bacon in his studio:

Bacon's Arena: documentary and extras


The Hugh Lane gallery is good at showing similarities between "pre-impressionist" realist French painting and "post-impressionist" modern Irish landscape painting:



"The Diligence[nb]public stage-coach[/nb] in the Snow" or "Le naufrage dans la neige" Gustave Courbet (1860)



"There is no night" Jack B. Yeats (1949)



"The Punt" Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1870)



"Waiting to go on the Canal" Camille Souter (1968)

[thugler]

Those are really stunning!

[kalowski]

Grayson Perry's got an exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery and I must say I'm tempted.

Ooh, I'd forgotten about that. I might go this weekend.