THE KEY ART EXHIBITIONS OF 2010
By Richard Dorment
Daily Telegraph
12:01PM GMT 29 Dec 2009
UK
>From Van Gogh at the Royal Academy to the British Museum’s West
African sculptures, a preview of the essential shows for 2010.
Detail from a self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh Next year begins with
a Royal Academy blockbuster, but this one with a difference. The Real
Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters (Jan 23-April 18) will put the
letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo (often illustrated with
quick sketches of the picture he is working on) next to the paintings
he discusses in them. It will be like listening to Van Gogh’s unguarded
thoughts about his own work.
The title of the show is significant: the artist we meet in these
letters isn’t the wild-eyed madman whose brush was somehow the
extension of his tormented soul, but a clear-eyed professional who
speaks and reads three languages fluently, and is as eloquent about
the works of other artists as he is about his own. Book now, and if
possible go early or late in the day: this is an intimate show and
queuing to read the letters will ruin the experience for you.
The National Gallery starts the year with an international loan
exhibition focusing on one of its most popular paintings – Paul
Delaroche’s monumental historical pastiche The Execution of Lady
Jane Grey (Feb 24-May 23). As a child I was told the following no
doubt apocryphal story: the picture looks the way it does because the
artist bet a friend that he could paint a grand salon machine with
five full-length figures, none of whom look out at the spectator. True
or not, I think of it every time I look at it.
Concurrently with the National Gallery show, the Wallace Collection
will be putting on a display of its outstanding collection of
small-scale paintings by Delaroche.
A month later in Trafalgar Square, we’ll see a gem of an exhibition
devoted to the Danish Golden Age painter Christen Kobke (1810-48),
a painter of crystalline landscapes, limpidly clear portraits and
intimate interiors. Over the summer there will be a hoot of a show
about the National Gallery’s fakes and forgeries and how they are
detected (June 30-Sept 12) . And then the year ends with Venice:
Canaletto and His Rivals. If you are anything like me, your heart
doesn’t leap at the thought of seeing a lot of Canalettos at the same
time, but every time you find yourself really looking at one, you are
seduced all over again by his treatment of light and colour and detail.
Tate Modern will wipe that smile right off your face with a show
devoted to the tragic – and wonderful – American painter Arshile Gorky
(Feb 10-May 3). Born in Armenia, as a child he survived the Turkish
genocide in which his mother died. He found happiness and success in
America, only to have it snatched from him again when ill health and
a failing marriage led him to take his own life. His unique, highly
autobiographical semi-abstract paintings of the Forties are the direct
predecessors of Jackson Pollock’s, and also a strong influence on
the work of Cy Twombly.
Next up is Henry Moore at Tate Britain, overdue for reassessment
(Feb 24-Aug 15), with Chris Ofili in tandem (Jan 27-May 16) in a
mid-career retrospective. Much as I love Ofili’s art, it will be
interesting to see whether he can sustain a show of any size without
becoming repetitive.
At Tate Modern, there is a show of an artist who means little to me,
the Dutch designer, architect and typographer Theo van Doesburg (Feb
4-May 16). His work is too boring to sustain a whole exhibition on its
own, and so will be shown alongside contemporaries including Hans Arp,
El Lissitzky, and Kurt Schwitters.
Potentially the exhibition of the year opens at the British Museum in
March with Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa (March 4-June
6), which highlights the culture of what is now Nigeria from the 12th
to 15th century, and its sculptures in stone, terracotta and copper.
It was a witty bit of scheduling, I thought, for the BM to run this
show concurrently with Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance
Drawings (April 22-July 25), which will chart the development of
drawing as an independent art form and means of preserving ideas,
as opposed to a tool in the creative process of making a painting.
Then, at the end of the year, the BM mounts a show that should pack
them in – Journey Through the Afterlife: The Ancient Egyptian Book
of the Dead includes coffins, masks, statues, amulets and papyrus
and jewellery (Nov 4-March 6, 2011).
It’s odd how venues you used to take for granted suddenly, and by some
mysterious alchemy, can’t seem to put on a dull show. For me, that’s
happened at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, which is always
enjoyable, but in the past couple of years has been nothing less than
sensational. I slightly wish their 2010 offering hadn’t been called
Victoria & Albert: Art & Love because the Queen and Prince Consort
were passionate collectors of contemporary artists such as Landseer,
Leighton and Frith, but also pioneering in the Prince’s taste for
gold-ground Italian panel paintings (March 19-Oct 31).
In recent years, I’ve been depressed to watch the Scottish National
Gallery cave in to what I assume is Scottish Nationalist pressure to
include works by Scottish artists in every show they do, whether that
means putting some awful daub by William McTaggart next to a Monet or
John "Spanish" Phillip near a Velazquez. This year, it is heartening
to see that they are putting on a show called Impressionist Gardens,
curated by Clare Wilsden, whose book of that title opened my eyes
to the importance that garden design played in the work of Monet,
Renoir, Manet and Sisley (July 31 July-Oct 17).
The Hayward Gallery will be closed for repairs during the first half
of 2010, but I really look forward to Move: Art and Dance Since the
Sixties (Oct 13-Jan 9, 2011), which will investigate the interaction
between the visual arts and dance, and will include work by Lygia
Clark, Robert Morris and Bruce Nauman.
The Serpentine Gallery kicks off with Richard Hamilton: Modern Moral
Matters (March 3-April 25), essentially a retrospective, and over the
summer will stage what should be a thrilling display of photos by
Turner Prize winner Wolfgang Tillmans (June 26-Oct 20). Judging by
the photos included in the press release, I expect to be delighted
by the Whitechapel’s show of 150 Years of Photography from India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh (Jan 21-April 11).
As the Serpentine proved early on, it is miraculous how smaller
museums, far from being overshadowed by Tate, the BM, V&A and National
Gallery, nimbly stage the kind of lively shows that fall under the big
guys’ radar. An example is the show the Courtauld Gallery will mount
over the winter around one of its greatest treasures – Michelangelo
Buonarroti’s complex allegorical drawing The Dream of Human Life,
presented to the young Roman nobleman Tommaso de Cavalieri (Oct
21-Jan 16, 2011). The masterpiece will be shown with letters and
poems addressed by the besotted sculptor to the young man.
Then in the autumn comes a major loan exhibition that looks in depth
at another masterpiece owned by the Courtauld, Cezanne’s Card Players,
including the oil sketches and pencil and watercolour studies (Oct
21-Jan 16, 2011).
In the spring, the Wallace Collection will be showing Renaissance and
Baroque bronzes from the collection of the American architect Peter
Marino (April 29-July 25). I’ve seen many of the works that will be
coming and can tell you that they are of the highest possible quality,
yet the collection has never been shown in public before.
Dulwich Picture Gallery continues its consistently surprising
exhibition programme in 2010 with a show that I think no other
institution in this country would have dared to do, least of all
Tate Britain: an exhibition about the Wyeth family of artists, whose
best-known member, Andrew, divides Americans equally between those
who think he is America’s finest artist and those who think he’s a
sentimental illustrator (June 9-Aug 22).
And then, following a show at the Wallace a few years ago, Dulwich
will introduce us to the strange, romantic art of the 17th century
Italian artist Salvator Rosa, emphasising his love of the occult,
bandits, wild places, magic and witches (Sept 15-Nov 28).