Exhibitions

Miracle of miracles, the Circle Line was running so I seized the opportunity to finally catch up with a couple of exhibitions. First up was Picasso : Challenging the Past at the National Gallery. I think it's fair to say that I am NOT a fan of Picasso. I find a lot of his paintings downright ugly and don't "get" them at all, apart from the Cubist works. What's intriguing about this exhibition is the way it highlights the way Picasso's art is in dialogue with the great works of the past. This is most obvious in the Variations, where Las meninas or Le dejeuner sur l'herbe are reinterpreted in true Picasso style but are still recognizable. It's also there in the way a portrait or a still life has absorbed the style of El Greco or Cezanne. The thing that impressed me most however was the vivacity of the colour, especially in the Women of Algiers variations, although the monochrome works are equally striking. Having said that, my favourite painting was the portrait of Fernande Olivier in a mantilla, all in shades of brown, with the background paint seeming to run down the canvas. It give a sense of spontaneity, while also being very much a likeness.
From one extreme to the other. Off to the Queen's Gallery for Breugel to Rubens, which is much more my sort of thing. The centerpiece is Breugel's Massacre of the Innocents, with it's multitude of events. The eye wanders across it, looking at small groups, or the distant buildings. You could spend hours picking up details. What I didn't realize was that many of the infants had been painted over on the order of Rudolph II, which is why a family seem so distressed at a farm animal being dragged away or why soldiers are gleefully stabbing at poultry. There are also some fine portraits: Erasmus, Joos van Cleve and his wife, Hans Memling's Portrait of a Man, a clutch of Van Dykes and Rubens' wonderful self-portrait. The landscapes are maybe less impressive though David Teniers the Younger's group all feature stunning still life observation: fish, armour, vegetables, while Jan Breughel the Elder populates one of his with a wonderful array of animals. defy anyone not to indulge in a game of spot-the-animal.