Review of Patrick Heron at Tate St Ives

16/07/18

Patrick Heron 

Tate St Ives

19 May – 30 September 2018

and

Turner Contemporary, Margate

19 October 2018 – 6 January 2019

It has been a momentous 12 months for Tate St Ives – reopening in October 2017 following a four-year building project, led by Jamie Fobert Architects, to add nearly 600sq metres of gallery space, doubling the existing area – and, in recognition of this, achieving the accolade, worth £100,000, of Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. The new four-storey extension, with its tall, sky-lit exhibition space, is currently host to the first major exhibition in two decades of works by the local – and hugely significant postwar British abstract artist – Patrick Heron (1920-99), who always wanted his paintings to be seen at different times of day, in different light, just as they can be here.

Read the full review here

Review of Bonnard: En toute intimité at the Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, France

13/01/17

Bonnard: En toute intimité

Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, France

26 November 2016 – 23 April 2017

With the title Bonnard: En toute intimité, one might well expect an exhibition focusing on the artist’s nudes, or more erotic elements of his work, but, just as Tracey Emin’s tent, Everyone I Have Every Slept With 1963-1995, includes those with whom she simply enjoyed (or otherwise) the intimacy of a shared bed – or womb – so this beautifully curated show at the Musée Bonnard, in the artist’s ultimate hometown of Le Cannet, on the Côte d’Azur, looks at those people, places and things to which the artist was especially close at different points throughout his life. Arranged largely chronologically, it comprises about 60 works from the museum’s collection, alongside a handful of loans, and a number of new acquisitions from the Musée d’Orsay.

Read the rest of this review here

Image:

Pierre Bonnard

Paysage, soleil couchant (Landscape at sunset), c1923. 

Oil on canvas, 59 x 72.5 cm. 

Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, gift from the Fondation Meyer pour le développement culturel et artistique, permanent loan from the musée d’Orsay, Paris. 

© Adagp, Paris 2016. © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski.

Interview with Bernard Jacobson

08/04/16

Interview with Bernard Jacobson

Bonheur de Vivre
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
17 March – 27 May 2016

Art dealer Bernard Jacobson has been looking at art for 60 years and selling it for 45. But he is becoming increasingly disillusioned. “I think it’s the end of an era,” he says, going on to lament the loss of generous spirit and increase in megalomania and consumerist drive amongst contemporary artists. In fact, he doesn’t call them artists; “I call them businessmen”, he laughs wryly.

As an antidote to this despair, Jacobson has mounted a splendidly colourful and vibrant exhibition, featuring works by Matisse, Miró, Calder, Motherwell and Sam Francis, who, to him, epitomise the “bonheur de vivre” of the 20th century.  Matisse is quoted as saying: “Colour above all, and perhaps even more than drawing, is a means of liberation,” and it is certainly the key element in this joyous show.

Although never having worked with Matisse or Miró before, Jacobson is a staunch supporter of Motherwell, was a close friend of Francis, and met and was befriended by Calder as a young man. He spoke to Studio International about some of his memories, as well as some of his opinions on the state of the art world and his hopes for the future.

Watch this interview here