RA Magazine Winter 2013

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS MAGAZINE NUMBER 121 WINTER 2013 SENSING SPACES BILL WOODROW RA AUSTRALIA

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS MAGAZINE NO. 121 / WINTER 2013 / £4.95

Sensing Spaces Encounters with architecture

Bill Woodrow RA A to Z of sculpture Ancestral meditations Australian Aboriginal art

ANN Christopher rA to KNow without rememberiNg

Pangolin london Kings Place, 90 York Way, N1 9AG Tel: 020 7520 1480 www.pangolinlondon.com Image: Held Memory, Stainless steel Scan page for artist’s interview (see page 16)

7 November - 7 December

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Christmas Cracker!

2nd - 20th December

GALLERY PANGOLIN

Our popular annual show returns with an exciting mix of Sculpture, Prints & Drawings

CHALFORD - GLOS - GL6 8NT 01453 889765 gallery@pangolin-editions.com www.gallery-pangolin.com

Spiral Form Charlotte Mayer, Jazz for the Eyes detail Peter Randall-Page, Flashback Jon Buck

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— Andrew Gifford Two Cities: Paintings from Jerusalem and Ramallah Scan page for artist’s interview (see page 16)

John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4 JG

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Tel 020 7499 1314 www.jmlondon.com

27 November – 20 December, London Touring to Jerusalem and Ramallah in 2014

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HOST

14 February – 7 March 2014

A major exhibition of 99 works across two London Galleries

Browse & Darby

Grosvenor Gallery

19 Cork Street London W1S 3LP

21 Ryder Street London SW1Y 6PX

Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 7984 www.browseanddarby.co.uk

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C o r k

Grosvenor Gallery

Tel: +44 (0)20 7484 7979 www.grosvenorgallery.com

Browse & Darby

g a l l e r y

S t r e e t

L o n d o n

contact@alphagalleryuk.com www.alphagalleryuk.com

until W 1 S

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3 N J

December

020 7494 9272

Monday - Friday 11am - 6pm Saturday 11am - 4pm

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Jacques Henri Lartigue, Bibi, Freddy et Margot, Aix-les-Bains, 1928 © Ministère de la Culture-France/AAJHL, courtesy of Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue

RICHARD CARTWRIGHT

19th November - 5th December 7th - 20th December

LONDON

BATH

Catalogue available g a l l e r y

24 CORK STREET London 13 JOHN STREET Bath

t: 0207 439 6633 t: 0225 480406

e: info@adamgallery.com www.adamgallery.com

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Contents

Cover

Review & Comment

Alvaro Siza, one of the architects participating in the RA’s ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition, recently designed the Mimesis Museum in Paju Book City, South Korea.

This interior photograph of the museum by Fernando Guerra, printed in silver on RA Magazine’s cover, has ‘a dream-like quality of space’, says the RA show’s curator Kate Goodwin. ‘It invites us to imagine not the function of the space but its atmosphere, and it is thus more true to our actual experience of architecture.’

53 Edmund Fawcett on ways of

seeing; some of the best books to give as presents this Christmas

Listings 57 A guide to exhibitions around

London and the UK this season

66 READERS’ OFFERS

Academy 68 IN THE STUDIO

Martin Herbert visits the sculptor Richard Deacon RA

9 RA EXHIBITION DIARY

70 ACADEMICIANS’ NEWS

13 SUMMER EXHIBITION 2014: DIGITAL SUBMISSIONS

Tom Phillips RA’s coin; Alison Wilding RA at Tate; Ann Christopher RA at small scale

14 EDITORIAL

73 OUT TO LUNCH

16 CONTRIBUTORS AND RA MAGAZINE APP INSTRUCTIONS

Emma Stibbon RA tells Eleanor Mills stories from her travels

75 IN MEMORIAM

Joan Bakewell remembers her friend John Bellany RA

Preview

F ER N A N D O GU ER R A | F G+S G A R CH I T ECT U R A L P H OTO GR A P H Y

20 LONDON

Stephen Farthing RA selects the best shows to see in 2014; Simon Wilson on Father of Pop Richard Hamilton; Turner rocks Admiral Lord West’s boat; London’s Georgian art lovers; Hannah Höch’s Dada collages; Giorgio de Chirico’s sculpture; having a crack at contemporary glass

29 REGIONAL

Richard Cork on the value of war art; Sir Quentin Blake salutes Rowlandson’s satirical prints; Tracey Emin RA pays tribute to to the work of Louise Bourgeois

32 INTERNATIONAL

Jenny Saville RA on Willem de Kooning; the top shows in Paris

Features 34 DOORS OF PERCEPTION

As the RA’s ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition aims to redefine our understanding of architecture, Jay Merrick delves deep into the concepts behind the show

40 WHO’S WHO IN SENSING SPACES

Jay Merrick profiles each of the acclaimed international architects who are building immersive environments in the Academy’s galleries

44 FIRE AND WATER

Wally Caruana unravels the allegories behind Djambawa Marawili’s Aboriginal bark painting presented in the RA’s ‘Australia’ exhibition

46 B IS FOR BILL

Richard Cork travels to Bill Woodrow RA’s country home to discuss how the art of beekeeping informs his sculptural practice

Extra digital content is available via the RA Magazine App in these sections and articles – just scan the marked images with a smartphone or tablet. See page 16 for instructions

76 PRIDE OF PLACE

The new Keeper’s House spaces open to artists and art lovers

78 GIFTS THAT KEEP ON GIVING

Caroline Bugler on the Academy’s essential Legacies programme

80 EVENTS & LECTURES

The RA’s events this season

84 RESTAURANT AND SHOPPING GUIDE

Inside Story 90 Matt Wolf talks to actress

Emma West about playing the poet and painter Lizzie Siddal

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Sir Stirling and Lady Moss in the DBR1, Nurburgring 2013, acrylic on paper 30x40cm

JAMES HART DYKE ASTON MARTIN CENTENARY 22 - 29 November 2013 (excluding Sunday) 10.00 - 17.00 Monday to Friday 12.00 - 16.00 Saturday Aston Martin W-One Showroom Brook House, 113, Park Lane, Mayfair London W1K 7AJ For enquiries and sales james.hartdyke@btinternet.com 020 7127 0729 www.jameshartdyke.com @jameshartdyke #jameshartdyke All works for sale

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What’s on at the Royal Academy this winter

Exhibition Diary Australia

Daumier (1808-1879): Visions of Paris

Main Galleries Royal Academy of Arts Until 8 December

The Sackler Wing of Galleries Royal Academy of Arts Until 26 January, 2014

A R T G A L L ERY O F N E W S O U T H WA L ES , SY D N E Y/GI F T O F PAT R I CK W H I T E , 1975/ P H OTO AGNS W/© W EN DY W H I T EL E Y. © L I X I AO D O N G

Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the National Gallery of Australia.

Supported by Qantas Airways – The Spirit of Australia. Supported

by The Campaign for Wool This major survey of more than 200 years of Australian art charts the social and cultural evolution of a nation through its landscape art. The impact of colonisation on indigenous art and the urbanisation of the last century are among the themes explored through drawing, painting, photography and multimedia in over 200 works, the majority of which have never been seen before in the UK.

2009-2013 Season supported by JTI

Big Orange (Sunset), 1974, by Brett Whiteley, in ‘Australia’

Friends Extended Opening Wed 20 November, 8.30-10am

Friends Extended Opening Wed 20 November, 8.30-10am

Bill Woodrow RA Burlington Gardens Royal Academy of Arts Until 16 February, 2014

Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined

Lead Series Supporter JTI. Supported

by The Henry Moore Foundation

Main Galleries Royal Academy of Arts 25 January to 6 April, 2014

Bill Woodrow RA is one of the most respected sculptors working in Britain today. This survey show – the largest UK presentation of Woodrow’s work to date – contains more than 50 pieces, from his earliest sculptures as a student in the late 1960s to new works produced especially for this exhibition. Highlights in the exhibition include works from his witty ‘Fossil’ series (1979) – in which everyday objects such as telephones, toasters and hairdryers appear fossilised in stone – and the celebrated ‘Cut-out’ series, such as Spin Dryer with Bicycle Frame Including Handlebars (1981).

The Royal Academy has commissioned internationally renowned architects based outside of Britain to create new architectural works for visitors to explore in its neoclassical galleries.

Gone are the scale models and working drawings of conventional architecture shows. Instead this groundbreaking exhibition emphasises our human encounter with architecture, providing a unique and immersive experience of space through the senses of smell, sight and touch.

Friends Preview Days Wed 22 January, 10am-8.30pm Thur 23 January, 10am-6pm Fri 24 January, 10am-6pm

A staunch Republican and chronicler of everyday life in turbulent 19th-century Paris, Honoré Daumier lived during a pivotal time in France’s history.

This exhibition explores the wide range of Daumier’s output through 130 works, some on show for the first time in the UK, with a concentration on paintings, drawings, watercolours and sculptures, alongside a selection of his lithographs.

Friends Extended Opening Thur 23 January, 8.30-10am Concept image of an environment by Chinese architect Li Xiaodong commissioned for ‘Sensing Spaces’ this winter

Continued on page 11 WINTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 9

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Works on paper by John Carter RA reveal the thought processes behind his minimalist wall-based works.

NORMAN STEVENS ARA Tennant Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, 26 Feb to 25 May, 2014

Admired for his technical mastery, Norman Stevens ARA (1937-88) produced works in a wide variety of print media that are poetic evocations of landscape, buildings and other structures.

VISITOR INFORMATION Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

Christmas Opening times 20-23 Dec, 10am-6pm 24-26 Dec, closed 27 Dec, 10am-6pm The Restaurant is open Sun to

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have access to large-print labels in the galleries and on the RA website.

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Lunch in the Country (Un déjeuner à la campagne), c.1868, by Honoré Daumier, on show in ‘Daumier (1808-1879): Visions of Paris’ LEFT Ultramarine Navigator, 2005, by Bill Woodrow RA, on display at the RA’s Burlington Gardens galleries TOP

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Renaissance Impressions: Chiaroscuro Woodcuts from the Collections of Georg Baselitz and the Albertina, Vienna 15 March to 8 June Friends Preview Days Wed 12 March, 10am-8.30pm Thur 13 March, 10am-6pm Fri 14 March, 10am-6pm The London Original Print Fair 24 to 27 April Premiums 7 to 19 March Friends Preview Day Fri 7 March, 8.30-10am

A R F EN T H YGG A N / L EN T BY A M GU ED D FA CY M RU – N AT I O N A L M US EU M / WA L ES , I N V. N M WA 2449/ M I -221/ P H OTO P H OTO © A M GU ED F FA CY M RU – N AT I O N A L M US EU M O F WA L ES , CA R D I F F. CO L L ECT I O N O F T H E A R T IS T/ P H OTO P RU D EN CE CU M I N G AS S O CI AT ES

JOHN CARTER RA – BETWEEN DIMENSIONS Tennant Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, until 16 Feb, 2014

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Kurt Jackson ‘A Dusting of Snow. Clifden Reach’. November 2010 Mixed Media on Paper 56 x 61cm

Kurt Jackson The Thames Revisited 19 November 2013 – 23 January 2014

Scan page for artist’s interview (see page 16)

A fully illustrated catalogue will be available, with an introductory essay by Will Self The Redfern Gallery 20 Cork Street London W1S 3HL 020 7734 1732 www.redfern-gallery.com art@redfern-gallery.com

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THE QUEEN’S GALLERY BUCKINGHAM PALACE

#gifted

© ANISH KAPOOR

TWO EXHIBITIONS, ONE TICKET 1 NOVEMBER 2013 – 16 MARCH 2014

#lostgenius

Open daily 10:00 –17:30 (last admission 16:30) Closed 25 and 26 December www.royalcollection.org.uk 020 7766 7301

Enjoy free re-admission for a year if you buy your ticket directly from us.

Summer Exhibition 2014

The Royal Academy’s 2013 Summer Exhibition Selection Committee makes its final decisions on the show’s layout

Changes to the entry process

P H OTO © B EN ED I C T J O H NS O N

THE WORLD’S LARGEST OPEN SUBMISSION ART SHOW IS GOING DIGITAL. BELOW ARTISTS CAN FIND OUT ABOUT HOW TO ENTER THE SUMMER EXHIBITION What’s different? Artists will need to complete and submit their entry forms online via a dedicated website. During the online submission process, artists will be asked to upload digital photographs of their artworks.

The Royal Academicians on the Selection Committee will review all the images uploaded, from which they will choose up to 4,000 shortlisted works to be delivered to the RA for a second round of selection. All notifications will be sent by email and artists will be able to monitor the progress of their submissions by visiting their online account at any time.

What are the reasons behind the change? Up until now the delivery of artworks

to the Academy has posed practical and financial challenges for many artists, especially those living outside London and those whose works are large or fragile. In recent years sculpture and architecture entries have been shortlisted

from photographs. This system was well received by entrants, and painters and printmakers have often asked if they can submit photographs of their works. ‘The Academy is aware that this is a significant change for artists and the Summer Exhibition Selection Committee alike,’ explains Charles Saumarez Smith, the RA’s Secretary and Chief Executive. ‘The final system we are working to put in place was keenly debated by all the Royal Academicians, the majority of whom have had first-hand experience of serving on the Selection Committee.’

How will the new system affect the judging process? The judging process will

be more intensive. The Academicians will meet in early March to judge the digital images, and select up to 4,000 artworks to be delivered to the Academy in April, when the Selection Committee will reconvene for a second judging session. Works selected at this stage will be taken to the galleries in May when they will be considered again for inclusion in the final hang.

Why is this a better system for artists?

Artists will find out whether they have been shortlisted as soon as the judges have reached their decisions around mid-March. They will only need to deliver their work to the Academy if it has been shortlisted. If it is not selected at the first stage, artists will be free to enter their work into other competitions and exhibitions, rather than waiting until the end of May before they can retrieve it from the RA.

How will digital images be viewed by the Selection Committee? Led by the President,

the committee will sit in formal sessions and view each work separately. Images will be shown on a large, high-definition screen, with medium and measurements given.

Will the new system mean that there will be more entries? The RA is capping

the number of entries at 12,000, which is well above what it has received in recent years.

Is there any change in the entry fee?

No, an artist will still be able to enter up to two works for a handling charge of £25 per work.

What is the schedule for entries? The entry period has been shortened to allow for the additional round of judging. Online entry will open on 6 January. Artists must submit their online form and upload images of their artworks before the closing date of 14 February. They will receive the results of the first round in midMarch and those who are shortlisted will be invited to deliver their work to the RA in midApril. Results of the second round will be given in early May and final notifications about whether an artist’s work has been included in the exhibition will be sent by email in late May. Those who are selected to exhibit will receive an information pack in the post, which will include an exhibitor’s card and an invitation to the artists’ preview.

How do I find out more?

Please visit our website at www.royalacademy. org.uk/summerexhibition WINTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 13

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Editorial EDITORIAL

Publisher Nick Tite Editor Sam Phillips Assistant Editor Eleanor Mills Art Direction Design by St Sub-Editor Gill Crabbe Proofreader Vicky Wilson Editorial Intern Daisy Taylor Editorial Advisers Jerry Brotton,

Richard Cork, Liz Horne, Fiona Maddocks, Chris Orr RA, Eric Parry RA, Charles Saumarez Smith, Mark Seaman, Giles Waterfield and Sarah Whitfield Special thanks Hazel Bryant, Gilles Louis Digital Content Kate Huckle, Amy Macpherson. The RA Magazine App is made by iBiblios and powered by Vstory Editorial enquiries 020 7300 5820; ramagazine@royalacademy.org.uk To comment on RA Magazine

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Great (Bamboo) Wall, 2004, by Kengo Kuma, which is part of the Commune by the Great Wall hotel complex near Beijing

Making space

SUBSCRIPTIONS

audience a panoply of perspectives on the country. The Aboriginal works on view function in different ways to those of the Western art tradition. By focusing on a bark painting by Djambawa Marawili, Wally Caruana explains how a single contemporary work can engage with subjects as wide as ancient events, age-old ritual, past and present topography, slash-and-burn land management, self-portraiture and current threats to Aboriginal culture (page 44).

The art of Bill Woodrow RA has a similarly omnivorous attitude, touching upon themes including environmentalism, war and commerce.

As a survey of Woodrow’s career goes on show in the Academy’s Burlington Gardens galleries, Richard Cork visits the celebrated sculptor at his Hampshire home and reveals the relationship that beekeeping has to his practice (page 46).

Cork also considers war art old and new, to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (page 29), while the artists Sir Quentin Blake, Tracey Emin RA and Jenny Saville RA respectively respond to the works of Thomas Rowlandson (page 31), Louise Bourgeois (page 31) and Willem de Kooning (page 32).

This edition marks the 30th anniversary of RA Magazine and it is a pleasure for me to join the team as the new Editor. The art and opinions within the publication’s pages will continue to be as wonderfully diverse as the RA’s exhibitions and the work of Royal Academicians.

— SAM PHILLIPS, EDITOR

RA Magazine is published quarterly in March, May, September and November and mailed to Friends of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of their Friends membership.

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Colour reproduction by Wings and PH Media. Printed by Wyndeham Group Published 15 November 2013 © 2013 Royal Academy of Arts ISSN 0956-9332 The opinions in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Royal Academy of Arts. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication

P H OTO © S ATOS H I AS A K AWA

What is architecture? This is the question at the core of the Academy’s ambitious show Sensing Spaces. Although we may ponder the nature of art, the definition of architecture – as the built environment – is often taken as read. By commissioning architects to create site-specific structures in its galleries, the RA is asking visitors to think again.

Before you come to the show, strip away your preconceived ideas of what architecture is and does, and get ready to engage your senses afresh. The RA’s neoclassical galleries will be seen as they never have before: the exhibition will transform the galleries’ elegant interiors into immersive architectural environments.

Your encounters with the works may surprise you. For example, early in his career the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma says he ‘discovered the potential of architecture to act as an experience or a phenomenon rather than an object.’ His architecture has since been defined by what he calls ‘the void’, the space between materials – the result has been otherworldly works such as his Great (Bamboo) Wall building by the Great Wall of China (above). Kuma is one of the seven celebrated architects participating in the exhibition, all of whom are based outside of Britain. As well as profiling these exceptional international designers in this issue (page 40), Jay Merrick argues for how rich and complex our perceptions of spaces can be (page 34).

Before ‘Sensing Spaces’ begins, the Academy’s survey Australia offers a British

Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658; kim.jenner@royalacademy.org.uk Listings Editor Sarah Bolwell Advertising Production Catherine Cartwright 020 7300 5657; catherine. cartwright@royalacademy.org.uk Classifieds Janet Durbin 01625 583 180

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sir eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) Horse’s Head bronze with a black patina 69.2 cm. (27 1/4 in.) high £40,000 - 60,000

ContaCt +44 (0) 20 7468 8366 penny.day@bonhams.com

Modern british and irish art New Bond Street Wednesday 20 November 2013 bonhams.com/modernbritish

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Contributors JOAN BAKEWELL has been a journalist and broadcaster since the 1960s and became a Labour peer in 2011. She co-presents Portrait Artist of the Year, on Sky Arts on Tuesdays at 8pm until 10 Dec. NICK BALLON is a London-based

portrait photographer.

SIR QUENTIN BLAKE is an artist and illustrator. His artistic memoirs Words and Pictures and Beyond the Page have recently been published

by Tate.

CAROLINE BUGLER is a writer and editor who specialises in art.

Her latest book is The Bird in Art (Merrell, 2012).

WILLIAM BURLINGTON is

a photographer and the founder of Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland.

WALLY CARUANA is an independent curator. He was formerly Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

RICHARD CORK is an art critic, curator and broadcaster. His most recent book is The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals (Yale, 2012).

1999) and his new book, The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History, is published by Thames & Hudson in spring 2014.

TRACEY EMIN RA is an artist.

She shows work alongside Louise Bourgeois and others in ‘Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors’ at the Freud Museum, London (until 2 Feb, 2014).

and contributor to Artforum and Frieze. He is also Associate Editor of ArtReview. His new book, The Uncertainty Principle, is published

by Sternberg Press (2013).

STEPHEN FARTHING RA

Contemporary Art Critic for the London Evening Standard.

is a painter and Chairman of the RA’s Exhibition Committee.

He is co-editor of Derek Jarman’s Sketchbooks, published recently

by Thames & Hudson.

EDMUND FAWCETT was the Economist’s bureau chief in Washington, Paris and Berlin, as well as its books and arts editor.

His history of liberalism will be published in spring 2014 (Princeton University Press).

JAMES HALL is an art critic and

historian. He is author of The World as Sculpture (Chatto & Windus,

London. His latest book is What Matters in Jane Austen?

(Bloomsbury, 2012).

JENNY SAVILLE RA is a painter. Her work will be presented alongside that of Egon Schiele in a major show, ‘Egon Schiele – Jenny Saville’ at the Kunsthaus Zürich (10 Oct, 2014-18 Jan, 2015).

MARTIN HERBERT is an art critic

BEN LUKE is a writer and

MARIA SPANN is a portrait photographer based in London.

EAMONN MCCABE is a photographer and former Picture Editor of the Guardian. He has work in the National Portrait Gallery collection and has produced several books on photography.

ADMIRAL LORD WEST was First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff from 2002 to 2006. His new book Britain at Sea: The Royal Navy Since 1900 is published in May, 2014 (Profile Books), to coincide with a BBC Radio 4 series of the same name, broadcast in June, 2014.

JAY MERRICK is Architecture Critic for the Independent and writes for the Architects’ Journal.

His novel, Horse Latitudes, was published in 2000 (Fourth Estate).

SIMON WILSON is an art historian and a columnist for this magazine.

MATT WOLF is London Theatre Critic of the International New York Times and Theatre Editor at www.theartsdesk.com.

JOHN MULLAN is Professor of English at University College

The free RA Magazine App makes your pages come alive to install for this issue. If you haven’t yet installed the App, please follow the easy steps below.

If you have any questions about the App or would like to send feedback, email webmaster@royalacademy.org.uk If you don’t have a smartphone, you can still view the extra content by visiting www.royalacademy.org.uk/magazineapp

Inside Story Emma West cools off at the spot on the Hogsmill River in Surrey where Millais painted Ophelia in 1851-52

Inside Stor y

Emma West

achieve the level of detail he required. Lizzie herself never actually visited that spot because she posed in a bath set up in Millais’ studio.

The actress who plays Lizzie Siddal in a new London production talks to Matt Wolf about the enduring allure of the Victorian art icon. Photograph by William Burlington You have the same cascading red hair as Lizzie Siddal, the painter and poet who modelled for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Does playing her feel like a date with destiny? Absolutely. It’s

You can access this extra content by following these easy steps:

incredibly rare as an actor that you read a script and think, ‘Yes, I am the person for this role – I even look like her.’

It must be slightly daunting as well, because she’s become an iconic figure.

I have played her in a short film before, but it’s still terrifying because I feel such a huge responsibility. There are so many devoted Lizzie fans who blog about her life, poetry and paintings. I really do want to do her justice.

I made a trip to Highgate Cemetery to see her grave, as I felt I needed to pay my respects The to her, and show that this wasn’t just some about actress the en who pla frivolous jaunt on stage. ys du

Emm a We st

Liz What most attracts you to Lizzie’s ring allure zie Sidda

Do you recall the first time you saw

Millais’ painting? Yes, vividly. I must have been 12 or 13, and I remember walking around a corner at the Tate and seeing it. So many things struck me, not least Lizzie’s resemblance everyone else, and it never seemed to bother her. offEm tomame, We which was unnerving because it is a at the st coo Hopainting ls someone dying. It was the first Lizzie died from a laudanum overdose gsm spo of where ill Riv t on the MillaisIerhad time when she was 31. You’re 33, about the in Suran emotional reaction to art.

Ophel rey pai ia in 185 nte d same age. Does that feel odd? Although she Have ever thought of playing 1-52 you was younger than I am now, she was essentially Ophelia yourself? Yes, particularly as I feel considered past-it by her age, and I certainly there are so many parallels between her and don’t feel that. It’s extraordinary to think about Lizzie, but I think I would need a certain everything that Lizzie had gone through during amount of de-Lizzification first. her very short life. As well as having success Has anyone ever painted you? Yes, I sat as an artist, she had given her best years to a for a portrait by Olivia Thomas a few years tempestuous relationship with Dante Gabriel ago. I wish I could say I suffered for her art, Rossetti, who wouldn’t marry her for a decade. just like Lizzie, who caught pneumonia in She had become very ill and addicted to the Millais’ cold bath, but my sitting wasn’t in any laudanum the doctor prescribed, and then way arduous. Sitting for a portrait is a strange after they wed her daughter was stillborn. thing: you feel self-conscious because someone is scrutinising you, but it is also incredibly free For our photo shoot you went to the because your only task is to sit. scene for Millais’ Ophelia Ophelia, for which Lizzie was famously the model. Visiting the original setting for Ophelia has given me more Lizzie Siddal Arcola Theatre, London, 020 7503 1646, www.arcolatheatre.com, 20 Nov–21 Dec confidence in bringing the Pre-Raphaelite world to life. I find it amazing that Millais sat Scan the image above to see a clip from the under a makeshift shelter on the riverbank, and film Ophelia starring Emma West. See page 16 for full instructions painstakingly painted throughout the seasons to

You of the l character? like the fact that she didn’t seem Victoin aI ne as Li have the w riapeople zzie same to care what thought of her. She would n art Lond who m Sid icon. on produ Broth odell dal, the cascad make and dress ctiondifferently from ing her own clothesPh otogra pa a da erhoo ed for red achiev ph by talks to the inter incredte with d. Does Pre-R and pohair Willia Matt hersel e the lev Wo m a scr ibly rar destiny playing aphaeli et eve she po f never el of det 2013 Burlingtolf for thiipt and thie as an ? Absoluteher feeRAte MAGAZINEryo|neWINTER sed in actual ail he else, n actor Liz l ly Do s nk requir a when zie die and it that ly. It’s like It murole – I , ‘Yes, Milla you rec bath set visited never you eve I that ed. Liz beca st be am same she wa d from rea n been is’ paint all the up in Mi see zie spot I hav use sh slightlylook like the persond becaus was age. Do s 31. Yoa lauda med to bot a cor 12 or 13, ing? Ye first tim llais’ stu young e it’s stile played e’s beco daun her.’ es tha u’re num ov her s, viv and e con thi ner at er her 33 sid I idly. you sa dio. respo l terrif her in a me an ting as we don’t ered pasthan I amt feel od , abou erdose . to ngs struckthe Tate remember I mu w iconic t me, ll, Lizzie nsibility ying bec short film everyt feel tha t-it by now, shed? Alt the which me, notand seeing walki st have pai fig aus . nti ng before ure. painti fans wh There e wa hough she her ver hing that. It’s ext her age, time ng of somwas un least Liz it. So aroun are I feel , ng o and s ess

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Dunamis “Achieving the Impossible” Bushra Fakhoury My heartfelt gratitude to Westminster City Council for the opportunity to participate in the “City of Sculpture”. In support of “Tusk Trust”. www.bfakhoury.com

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17/10/2013 10:26

Pym Wheatley 2014 RA Mag:Layout 1

16/09/2013

18:29

Page 1

Mary Pym 14 January to 5 February 2014

Jenny Wheatley RWS NEAC 11 February to 12 March 2014

Jenny Wheatley “Townhouse Salon” Oil on Canvas 28 x 36 ins 711 x 914 mm Mary Pym “March, Kerry” Oil on Board 27.75 x 30.75 ins 705 x 782 mm

For more pictures and prices please see

LLEWELLYN ALEXANDER

www.LlewellynAlexander.com

124 – 126 The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 8LN (Opposite the Old Vic Theatre)

Open on Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 7.30pm.

Open on Monday by appointment only.

t: 020 7620 1322/1324 e: gallery@LlewellynAlexander.com Catto Gallery - RA Magazine 01/10/2013 19:04 Page 1 Half Page Landscape.indd 1

27/09/2013 10:46

CATTO GALLERY

presents A Major Retrospective of Paintings by

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London 20 / Regional 29 / International 32

Preview

LONDON PLAYS HOST TO SOME GIANTS OF THE ART WORLD OVER THE NEXT YEAR. THE CHAIRMAN OF THE RA’S EXHIBITION COMMITTEE, STEPHEN FARTHING RA, PICKS HIS TOP FIVE UPCOMING SHOWS AND CELEBRATES INNOVATIONS BORN OF GREAT SKILL AND MATURITY The artists, architects, curators and historians who are the Royal Academy’s Exhibitions Committee meet about eight times a year to discuss and build a programme that they hope will challenge, inform and ultimately not only please but grow our audience. Not surprisingly, beyond taste, emergent themes and financial prudence, one recurrent issue in our discussions is what other galleries are planning. Which is why, I suspect, I have been asked to share with you my view of the top five shows opening in London next year.

I started by making a shortlist: Rembrandt, Matisse, Jarman, Kiefer – the first three of whose late works are the subject of exhibitions in 2014 (Kiefer has a major retrospective).

Then, picking up Edward Said’s last book On Late Style (1999), I re-read the writer Steven Poole’s blurb on the back cover: ‘An easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties.’ Having reflected that Poole’s words were as much about late style itself as about the author, I decided upon late style as my theme.

I prefixed the first three names with ‘late’ and then thought about what would be my fifth show.

I circled Matisse and Jarman, drew a line from each to the bottom of the page and wrote ‘pure

colour’, which is the theme of another exhibition next year. And so I had my London 2014, a trail of exhibitions that celebrate the kind of invention that grows out of deep knowledge, skill and maturity, with colour as the subplot.

The year starts on the Thames at Millbank in Chelsea Space with ‘Almost Bliss: Notes on Derek Jarman’s Blue’ (020 7514 6983, 29 Jan–15 March), an installation curated by Donald Smith that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the death of the Turner Prize-shortlisted painter, film-maker, gardener, writer and activist.

Saturated in blue light, the show presents the notebooks (5) that were the footings for Jarman’s last film, Blue (1993). The subject of this show is more than any other this year dear to my heart.

For the past three years, Ed Webb-Ingall and I have been building a picture of Jarman through the notebooks he systematically kept throughout his life, and the result, Derek Jarman’s Sketchbooks, was published recently by Thames & Hudson.

In April I will head to Tate Modern, where ‘Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs’ (020 7887 8888, 17 April–7 Sep) will reunite three of the French artist’s last and largest cut-outs: The Snail (2), Memory of Oceania and Large Composition with Masks (all 1953). In each of the 120 works

included in this show, Matisse reduces painting to a beautiful balancing act – on one side pure colour, on the other just shape.

In June the National Gallery presents ‘Colour’ (020 7747 2885, 18 June–7 Sep), another balancing act, this time with beauty and art weighed against earth, minerals and paint technology.

‘Colour’ takes us from the early Renaissance to Impressionists such as Degas (4), leading us, I hope, to reflect not simply on the role of paint technologies in shaping art, but also on the importance of colour more generally.

In the autumn the Royal Academy (020 7300 8000, 27 Sep–14 Dec) celebrates four decades of spectacular tertiary colour in the work of painter, sculptor and Honorary Academician Anselm Kiefer, whose For Paul Celan, Ash Flowers (2006) (1), featuring burnt books piercing the canvas, is one of a series dedicated to the Jewish Romanian poet. The show starts with 20th-century postwar trauma and I believe will leave us wondering whether expressionist artists such as Kiefer are blessed from birth with the kind of gravitas we normally expect to see only in ‘late style’.

Lastly, it’s back to the National Gallery and ‘Rembrandt: The Final Years’ (020 7747 2885, 15 Oct–18 Jan, 2015), the first comprehensive exploration of the last 20 years of the artist’s life. Rembrandt’s late work (3) chases the intangibility of the visible through the effects of light, moisture and the emotions on matter and, like each of my chosen shows, epitomises both a ‘mastery of material’ and an ‘unquenched desire to preserve difficulties’.

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TAT E /© S U CCES S I O N H EN R I M AT IS S E / DAC S 2013 . © T H E N AT I O N A L G A L L ERY. CO U R T ESY T H E ES TAT E O F D ER EK JA R M A N . © T H E N AT I O N A L G A L L ERY, LO N D O N

The hottest tickets for 2014

P R I VAT E CO L L ECT I O N , PA R IS/© A NS EL M K I EF ER

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Preview London

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TAT E /© S U CCES S I O N H EN R I M AT IS S E / DAC S 2013 . © T H E N AT I O N A L G A L L ERY. CO U R T ESY T H E ES TAT E O F D ER EK JA R M A N . © T H E N AT I O N A L G A L L ERY, LO N D O N

P R I VAT E CO L L ECT I O N , PA R IS/© A NS EL M K I EF ER

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OPPOSITE PAGE For Paul

Celan, Ash Flowers, 2006,

by Anselm Kiefer Hon RA, on show at the Royal Academy

THIS PAGE , CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT The Snail, 1953,

by Henri Matisse, at Tate Modern; Self-Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669, by Rembrandt, at the National Gallery; detail of title page

from Derek Jarman’s sketchbook for Bliss, 1989, on show at Chelsea Space; Combing the Hair, c.1896,

by Edgar Degas, on show in ‘Colour’ at the National Gallery

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Paul Klee Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms 1920 Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984 (1984.315.19) Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Source: Art Resource/Scala Photo Archives

TATE.ORG.UK #KLEE

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Book now 16 October 2013 – 9 March 2014 The EY Tate Arts Partnership

Supported by The Paul Klee Exhibition Supporters Group

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24/10/2013 10:42

Preview London

The Citizen, 1981-83, by Richard Hamilton

Homage to the Father of Pop

© T H E ES TAT E O F R I CH A R D H A M I LTO N

JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES RICHARD HAMILTON’S WORK SO ENDURING? SIMON WIL SON PAYS TRIBUTE AS THE ARTIST’S THIRD TATE RETROSPECTIVE APPROACHES Richard Hamilton is one of only two artists ever to have been given two full Tate retrospectives in their own lifetime, in 1970 and 1992. The other, significantly, was Francis Bacon. This pair, together with Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, makes up a quintet of British artists who in the mid-20th century played a key role in establishing modern British art as a serious player on the world art stage.

On their foundations was built the vibrant, highly international, as well as internationally acclaimed, art world of Britain today. None of them, incidentally, was ever elected RA, which says something about the changes that have taken place in the Academy since that era.

Tate is now mounting a third Hamilton retrospective which, following the artist’s death in 2011, will be able to draw on the full range of his work. Since planning for the exhibition began before he died, Hamilton could well have set a record by having three Tate retrospectives in his lifetime. This one, following so closely on from his death, is remarkable enough, and the fact that it is at Tate Modern rather than Tate Britain underlines Tate’s view of Hamilton’s international stature. Among much else he was an innovative creator of exhibitions and

in the 1950s at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London made two of his most radical installations, Man, Machine and Motion (1955) and An Exhibit (1957). To coincide with the Tate Modern show the ICA has recreated these works, and they are as relevant as ever.

So what is the nature of his achievement?

Most striking to me perhaps is his intense, questing intelligence, which stands out against the distinctively unintellectual, or even antiintellectual, character of much modern British art, not excluding that of his distinguished colleagues mentioned above. In this Hamilton was a true son of Marcel Duchamp, now seen, for better or for worse, as the key influence on the dominant art of today. It was Duchamp who famously remarked, ‘I was interested in ideas, not in visual products. I wanted to put painting again at the service of the mind.’

It was Hamilton who in Britain played John the Baptist to Duchamp’s messianic message.

His own work ranges freely across painting, collage, object-making, installation, innovative printmaking, and exhibition and product design.

In the 1980s he designed a computer for the Swedish company Diab and was a pioneer user of computers in making art.

Equally however, Hamilton, cerebral though he was, responded with relish to the vibrant and rich popular culture of the boom years that followed the Second World War in America and, a little later, in the 1960s, in Britain. It was his distinctive blend of the intellectual and the popular which led to the procession of highly original masterpieces of the late 1950s and early 1960s that earned him the title the Father of Pop Art. He might also be said to be grandfather to the later generation of YBAs. The visceral force of Damien Hirst may appear remote from the refined intelligence of Hamilton but sometimes there seems a striking similarity of attitude.

The title of Hamilton’s iconic 1956 Pop collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? finds a curious echo in that of Hirst’s equally iconic shark-in-formaldehyde from 1991, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.

Hamilton’s early Pop paintings were notably playful and witty as well as being further enlivened by a refined eroticism, but they also addressed serious social and political issues.

In $he (1958-61), based on a glossy magazine ad, the title, typically of Hamilton’s wit, signals the theme of the exploitation of women in advertising, and the painting comments on the industry’s reinforcement of the patriarchal image of woman in the home, here seen beside her cornucopian fridge that feeds the family.

Hamilton’s political engagement reached its height in what for me remains his greatest work, the triptych of large paintings with collage, each of them itself a diptych, on the subject of the conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, that raged in acute form from 1969 until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It is a cliché of art discourse that the more political a work of art is, the less effective it is as art. Hamilton’s achievement in his triptych, created over ten years, is to have produced a spectacular work of art that is equally a powerful political statement. In the central diptych, The Citizen (1981-83, above left), we see a Christ-like IRA prisoner engaged in the ‘dirty protest’ in which prisoners smeared the walls of their cells with their excrement. In the remaining panels, The Subject and The State, he is flanked by his opponent, the unbending Orangeman, and an image of a young British soldier caught in a pose that suggests the crippling ambiguity of the Army’s position between the warring factions.

The forces of consumerism, the role of women, social and political freedoms, and sectarian conflict remain themes as relevant as ever. So too does Hamilton’s other great underlying theme, the nature of art itself.

Engaging equally with art and life, multilayered, highly wrought, extraordinarily various, his art, now fully brought together for the first time, offers a richly rewarding experience.

Richard Hamilton Tate Modern, London, 020 7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk, 13 Feb–26 May, 2014 Hamilton at the ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk, 12 Feb–6 April, 2014

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Preview London

Turner’s sea changes ADMIR AL LORD WE ST HEADS FOR GREENWICH TO EXPLORE TURNER’S VIRTUOSITY THROUGH A SEAFARER’S EYES

The exhibition ‘Turner and the Sea’ at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has prompted me to revisit my decades of sea time.

Like J.M.W. Turner, I too have images in my

mind that are peaceful, exhilarating, unnerving and distressing: chasing flying fish across a glassy sea, ploughing through the peaks and troughs of the Roaring Forties, nearly capsizing on the hundred-fathom line of the Channel in a tiny frigate, and being sunk in Falkland Sound.

It is hardly surprising that I find Turner’s work entrancing. He captures the frailty of people against the power of the oceans and the drama and tension that ensue. We still cannot control the sea, and woe betide anyone who treats its capricious moods with insufficient respect.

Ships under sail were so much more vulnerable to wind and tide, and in the late 18th and early

Culture vultures

one of the products newly available to genteel consumers (it’s no accident that it was a favourite medium of the great satirist of 18th-century society, William Hogarth). The spending power of these new consumers had brought other skilled printmakers to London – such as John Raphael Smith, whose Spectators at a Print Shop in St Paul’s Churchyard (1774, left) is on show – as well as sculptors, painters, opera singers and anyone else who could make a living from culture.

The prints of the period often themselves depicted the consumption of culture. The Georgians liked to see themselves enjoying music, reading books, at pleasure gardens, dances and out shopping, at circuses, pantomimes and boxing matches, as well as engaging in the more improving business of visiting galleries and museums. Visitors to this exhibition see that they are participating in an activity that the culture-loving Georgians invented.

THE EXPLOSION OF POPULAR CULTURE IN GEORGIAN BRITAIN IS THE FOCUS OF A SHOW AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY. BY JOHN MULL AN In 1714, George I came to the throne and founded a dynasty that ran until the death of his greatgreat grandson, George IV, in 1830. To mark the tercentenary of George I’s accession, ‘Georgians Revealed’ at the British Library tries to do justice to an age of extraordinary cultural dynamism.

Above all, it was an age of commerce. Some bemoaned the apparent failure of the first two Georges to patronise the arts. ‘Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the First,’ mocked the poet Alexander Pope. The young George III would reassert royal support for the arts with his founding of the Royal Academy in 1768. But courtly patronage had become incidental in the thriving cultural marketplace of Georgian Britain.

The exhibition features more than 200 Georgian artefacts. It is particularly rich in prints,

Turner and the Sea National Maritime Museum, London, 020 8858 4422, www.nmm.co.uk, 22 Nov–21 April, 2014 Britain at Sea: The Royal Navy Since 1900 by Admiral Lord West, £20, Profile, 2014 Britain at Sea is presented

by Admiral Lord West on BBC Radio 4 in June, 2014

Spectators at a Print Shop in St Paul’s Churchyard , 1774,

by John Raphael Smith

Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain The British Library, London, 01937 546546, www.bl.uk, until 11 March, 2014

© T RUS T EES O F T H E CECI L H I GGI NS A R T G A L L ERY B ED F O R D. © B R I T IS H M US EU M

A First Rate Taking In Stores, 1818, by J.M.W. Turner

19th centuries many more warships were lost to shipwreck than to enemy action. Two thousand sailors perished, for example, when HMS Defence and HMS St George ran aground on treacherous sands off Jutland in 1811.

Turner’s many stomach-churning paintings and watercolour sketches of terror and tragedy at sea evoke and encompass the dangerous life of a seafarer. Much of that immediacy comes from his own experience. Besides being a keen observer of the elements, he also studied the architecture of naval ships and every aspect of the maritime. I am intrigued by his accurate portrayal of nautical life and the way he used artistic licence to ramp up the drama. His watercolour A First Rate Taking in Stores (1818, left) is a dizzying account of a mundane and routine operation. By taking a low viewpoint and exaggerating the immense ‘tumbledown’ of the ship’s side towering above the bumboats, Turner shows the scale and power of the Royal Navy’s war-winning battleships. We can see why they were dubbed the ‘wooden walls of England’.

Turner’s magisterial depiction of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, painted in 1822-24 after painstaking research, was greeted with acclaim.

For me it is somewhat theatrical, with less genuine drama than we have come to expect from him. He must have been overwhelmed by the royal commission and the need to create a national monument on canvas. Contrast this with The Fighting Temeraire (1839), which is loosely painted with great authority and poignancy. The symbolism is understated but powerful – the end of one of Britain’s greatest maritime eras.

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ZSUZSI ROBOZ 1929–2012

a visionary draughtsman R ET ROSPEC T I V E 27th November – 24th December 2013

Autumn, 2005

photo collage with mixed media

38 x 58 cms 15 x 227⁄8 ins

Annigoni’s early influence, her own determination to become a painter, her love of the arts and music and visionary perception have left a rich and fascinating seam of imagery to enjoy and appreciate.

We keep coming back to dreams. Therein lies the magic and mystery of Zsuzsi Roboz’s world. Even her staidest portraits are backed with symbols. Even her headiest inventions start from and go back to everyday reality. You may say, like the lady who took Turner to task for Rain, Steam and Speed, that you have never seen anything like that. But you would do well to recall Turner’s reply, which was: “No, madam, but don’t you wish you could!”

John Russell Taylor Exhibition Catalogue available on request

Messum's RA Mag. 13.11.2013 V5 (Roboz).indd 1

MessuM’s www.messums.com 8 Cork Street, London W1S 3LJ Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545

Author & Art Critic (The Times)

08/10/2013 11:53

Made for a Party, 1936, by Hannah Höch

Hannah and her sisters A MAJOR SHOW AT THE WHITECHAPEL REVEALS HANNAH HOCH AS AN UNSUNG HEROINE OF DADAISM, WRITES BEN LUKE One of the pioneers of photomontage – the strand of collage invented by Dadaists in Berlin in the 1910s – the German artist Hannah Höch

Time Tunnel, 2013, by Zak Ové

is not as well known as she should be. But that’s likely to change with the Whitechapel Gallery’s first major exhibition of her work in the UK. Though Höch painted and also made objects, including puppets, this show focuses on her collages, photomontages, watercolours and woodcuts, from the birth of Dada to the 1970s (she died in 1978). Her photomontages reflect a vision as original and dramatic as those of John Heartfield. ‘She didn’t make such directly pointed political photomontages as Heartfield did,’ says co-curator Dawn Ades. ‘But Höch’s images are extraordinary, and she made one of the greatest of all the photomontages of that early moment – probably of any moment – Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919-20). It is a snapshot of Weimar society, viewed from the perspective of a woman artist.’

A key theme in the show is Höch’s exploration of what Ades describes as ‘the problems of trying to work as a woman artist in a world still largely dominated by male artists’, a world in which ‘she was undoubtedly marginalised’ by the male Dadaists. Heartfield and George Grosz tried – albeit unsuccessfully – to stop Höch from exhibiting in the first Dada international exhibition in Berlin in 1920. She was left out of the early histories written about the movement.

As well as her seminal early Dada collages and characteristically playful later works, such as Made for a Party (1936, left), the exhibition features Höch’s stunning series ‘From an Ethnographic Museum’, made in the 1920s and ’30s, which fuses a political critique of colonialism with an aesthetic response to the freshness and imagination of non-Western art.

The series also relates to Höch’s interest in radical depictions of female identity, for example by splicing African masks with photographs of naked women. ‘If you look closely, you find, as well as the postcolonial or anti-colonial quality, there is a feminist sensibility that gives them an extra twist,’ Ades says. ‘Visually, they are extraordinarily contemporary.’

Hannah Höch Whitechapel Gallery, London, 020 7522 7888, www.whitechapelgallery.org, 15 Jan–23 March, 2014

Tunnel vision Zak Ové’s Time Tunnel (2013) – a cross between a clock, a corridor and a kaleidoscope – is one of over 50 inventive works that rethink an age-old medium in ‘White Light/White Heat: Contemporary Artists and Glass’ (27 Nov–26 Jan, 2014), at both the Wallace Collection and the London College of Fashion. Among the Academicians taking part are Ron Arad and Conrad Shawcross.

Castor, 1973, by Giorgio de Chirico

Last man standing DE CHIRICO’S ENIGMATIC FIGURES ARE THE FOCUS OF A RARE SHOW OF HIS SCULPTURE, SAYS JAMES HALL Giorgio de Chirico is the great master of enigma. His eerie arcaded piazzas, lacerated by afternoon shadows and populated with baffling assortments of statuary, faceless figures and mannequins, were an inspiration for Surrealism. The movement’s founder, André Breton, owned De Chirico’s painting The Enigma of a Day (1914), in which a statue of a frock-coated figure sandwiched between arcades and factory chimneys gestures grandly towards a shadowy void. De Chirico wanted to extricate objects from conventional contexts and place them in ‘plastic solitude’ which would reveal their true meaning – or lack of meaning.

A show at the Estorick Collection examines the little-known last phase of De Chirico’s search for ‘plastic solitude’ when, in the 1960s and ’70s, he made small bronze versions of the figures that populate his pictures, as well as silver gilt and gilded bronze editions (above).

Sculpture was a crucial component of De Chirico’s art. He was born in Greece and moved to Italy in 1909, but it was not Ancient Greek or Renaissance sculpture that most excited him. He was fascinated by 19th-century ‘statue mania’: the vast statues of worthies that appeared in busy squares around the world. For De Chirico, they epitomised the marvellous absurdity of modernity. His statuettes of the 1960s and ’70s have an equally strong Pop Art feel, however. Clive Barker’s chrome replicas of Van Gogh’s chair or Magritte’s hat come to mind, as do Magritte’s 1967 bronze versions of motifs from his own Surrealist paintings.

Giorgio de Chirico: Myth and Mystery Estorick Collection, London, 020 7704 9522, www.estorickcollection.com, 15 Jan–19 April, 2014

CO L L ECT I O N O F I FA , S T U T TG A R T. P R I VAT E CO L L ECT I O N /CO U R T ESY G A L L ER I A D ’A R T E M AGGI O R E , B O LO GN A , I TA LY. CO U R T ESY T H E A R T IS T, B ER EN GO S T U D I O A N D F R I T H S T R EE T G A L L ERY

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BENNT BENGTSSON

IN SEARCH OF A “ SOUL GALLERY ”

I am looking for a partner - a ”Soul Gallery” - in fact. For a longterm and fruitful relationship in art.

Did five years of Art School. St Martins in London and HDK in Gothenburg. One year Photography. Put off painting until four years ago. Instead spent fun years in advertising. As an Art Director, Creative Director and Copy Writer.

Spent last four years just painting. Catching up. Thirty odd years. I found the road on which I want to travel with my art.

In my studio are now some 200 oil paintings. And ever growing. Interested? Look at my work. Contact me; ( 0041-(0)788 20 40 69 ) ( bb.today@bluewin.ch ) ( www.stelle1313.com ) ( fb; bennt bengtsson )

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15 —19 JANUARY 2014 Business Design Centre Islington London N1 Book Tickets londonartfair.co.uk

Graeme Wilcox 21st November - 5th December

Michael Bennallack Hart 5th - 19th November

Michael Bennallack Hart, Fog, oil on canvas 30 x 28” / 76 x 71cm

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Graeme Wilcox, Strange Weather, oil on canvas 60 x 48” / 152 x 122cm

and Winter Exhibition from 10th December

5 Cork Street London W1S 3LQ 020 7495 2565 info@medicigallery.co.uk www.medicigallery.co.uk 24/10/2013 10:43

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Still from Will You Dance For Me, 2011, by Ori Gersht

Lest we forget TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS OF WAR ART PROVIDE GRAVE TESTAMENT TO THE EXTENT OF HUMAN TRAGEDY IN WORLD CONFLICT. R I C H A R D C O R K REPORTS

CO L L ECT I O N I W M /© ORI GERS HT. © N AT I O N A L T RUS T/J O H N H A M M O N D

Now that the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War is fast approaching, a major exhibition of Stanley Spencer’s response to he conflict has opened in London and will travel to Pallant House, Chichester. Having worked as a hospital orderly near Bristol and then served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Macedonia, Spencer became obsessed by the idea of creating a masterpiece based on his experiences.

His ambition was realised inside the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, Berkshire, completed in 1932 after six arduous years of work. Commissioned by John Louis and Mary Behrend, the chapel is dedicated to Mrs Behrend’s brother Lieutenant Harry Sandham, who died of an illness contracted during the war. Now the National Trust is lending many of Spencer’s paintings to the

exhibition at Somerset House, while important restoration work is carried out at the chapel.

Spencer’s vision was based on his love of Giotto, in particular the paintings for the Arena Chapel in Padua. But the Sandham paintings are rooted in his own memories of the war, from teatime in a hospital near Bristol (below), to soldiers map reading in Macedonia. The most monumental painting, a powerful resurrection scene above the altar at Sandham, cannot be moved. Instead it is being projected in the Terrace Rooms at Somerset House for the show.

Since Spencer completed his chapel paintings, nothing quite as ambitious or elaborate has been made in Britain by an artist focusing on war.

But it would be a mistake to imagine that contemporary practitioners have failed to produce memorable war art. ‘Catalyst’, at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester,

shows work executed by more than 40 artists since the first Gulf War over 20 years ago.

This is an impressive show, drawn entirely from the IWM’s collection. Before we enter, our attention is arrested by an enormous, mangled, bronze-coloured object that Jeremy Deller retrieved from Iraq. It is a car destroyed by a bomb in a Baghdad marketplace where book-lovers liked to congregate. The explosion occurred on 5 March, 2007, killing 36 people and injuring over 100 more. It is essentially a found object that Deller has not altered, and its relocation to an exhibition space testifies to the horrific brutality of the Iraq conflict.

Deller’s exhibit prepares us for a different yet equally disturbing work inside – an image of Tony Blair grinning with boyish delight as he takes a photograph of himself in front of an enormous explosion. The photomontage was made by Peter Kennard and Cat Picton-Phillipps, known as kennardphillipps. Like many people in Britain, they were angered by Blair’s insistence on defying public opinion and going to war in Iraq.

Commissioned by IWM in 2002 to respond to 9/11 and the Afghan War, artist duo Langlands & Bell were fascinated to hear about Osama bin Laden’s abandoned home in Daruntah, eastern Afghanistan. Having gone out to photograph the house, they made an interactive video-game animation that invites us to search the building and its surroundings. Our efforts to find the terrorist leader prove futile, highlighting the frustration experienced by those who struggled for several years to capture him. As we race through room after empty room, we feel giddy and almost nauseated, which makes us think about war in a suitably unnerving way.

As does Ori Gersht, whose twin-screen film, Will You Dance For Me (2011, top), is based on the memories of Yehudit Arnon. Imprisoned at Auschwitz during the Second World War, she was commanded to dance at an SS officers’ Christmas party. After refusing, she was ordered to stand barefoot outside in the snow for hours.

At first we only hear Arnon’s voice describing her ordeal. But then her 85-year-old face looms out of the darkness, looking haggard and determined. She recedes into the distance on er rocking chair, then both screens are filled with a snowy landscape. Gersht makes eloquent use of piano and violin music, but in the end we remember the defiant features of a woman who survived her torturers and devoted the rest of her life to dance. Here Gersht echoes Stanley Spencer’s emphasis on the integrity of individual memories and the way they can highlight the overwhelming extent of human tragedy in war.

Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War IWM North, Manchester, 0161 836 4000, www.iwm.org.uk, until 23 Feb, 2014 Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War Somerset House, London, 020 7845 4600, www.somersethouse.co.uk, until 26 Jan, 2014; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 01243 774557, www.pallant.org.uk, 15 Feb–15 June, 2014

Tea in the Hospital Ward, 1932, by Stanley Spencer

Scan the image, left, for a video about the Sandham Memorial Chapel. For full instructions see page 16

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A General Discharge, or the Darling Angel’s Finishing Stroke, 1809, by Thomas Rowlandson

Rowlandson’s ravishing ribaldry

R OYA L CO L L EC T I O N /© H ER M A J ES T Y Q U EEN EL IZ A B E T H I I . TAT E /© ESTATE OF LOUIS E BOURGEOIS

THOMAS ROWLANDSON’S FASCINATION FOR THE GROTESQUE WAS IDEALLY SUITED TO HIS CARICATURES OF GEORGIAN SOCIETY, WRITES RA HONORARY FELLOW SIR QUENTIN BL AKE We know that in 1774 the young Thomas Rowlandson went to Paris. Whether that experience gave him his characteristic élan, panache and insouciance, or merely enhanced what was already there, I don’t know – but he had those characteristics in a specially English way. He also had a prolific visual imagination and a line that was controlled as well as fluent, so that he was well qualified as a performer in both engraving and watercolour. Both these modes are

A woman of substance GIVES A PERSONAL VIEW OF LOUISE BOURGEOIS AS A SHOW OF HER LATE WORK OPENS IN EDINBURGH

TR ACEY EMIN R A

When I first met Louise I was impressed by how formidable she was as a woman. She had very strong hands and a face that I couldn’t stop looking at. We sat in her back parlour and almost everything surrounding us seemed to be in monochrome or grey, apart from six shockingly bright cerise-pink watercolours that lay on the floor. I think it was their vibrancy that distinguished all the other colours around us.

Louise was the living embodiment of her art. Some of her work has the ability to scare me, to make me afraid; there is a primal rawness that seems to live also in the deepest recesses

on show in all their diversity in a new exhibition at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Rowlandson’s sense of the grotesque was ideal for the no-holds-barred attack of the political and social caricature of the time, although outside the world of the commercial print he still seems to be fascinated by the extreme in feature and physique (no doubt he did not have to look far to find it).

At the same time he was equally fascinated by the personable young women who appear in his

drawings: as well as being attractive, they seem strong enough to cope with the attention of beaux, rakes, drunks and clergymen.

Rowlandson knew how to seize the scene in his mind’s eye with spontaneity and spirit. His hand-coloured etching A General Discharge, or the Darling Angel’s Finishing Stroke (1809, left) shows the Duke of York and his mistress Mrs Clarke.

As the well illustrated exhibition catalogue explains, ‘Mrs Clarke [is] clearly the dominant partner in the relationship’. She is rendering a phallic cannon unusable by hammering a peg into the touch hole, and what’s remarkable is the striking, expressive vigour in the drawing of her.

It’s more than is required by the caricature and gives her an independent life and strength.

As well as depicting a vast range of individuals, Rowlandson was happy to take on a rural view or a crowded urban scene without the flicker of an eyelid. In an envelope of watercolour atmosphere, the characters have almost the air of being drawn from life, even though, no doubt, they have just strolled on from Rowlandson’s imagination.

There is one engraving in the Royal Collection that uses these skills in what is, for me, an even more remarkable fashion. Rowlandson enjoyed nothing better than a coach accident, with passengers tumbling in all directions, but in Chaos is Come Again! (1791) he excels himself in depicting the collapse of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (apparently set off by the vocal powers of a female performer) – an event which he had not witnessed and indeed had not happened.

It’s beautifully seen and organised, with flying masonry and spectators and general panic. This is comedy with a dramatic power of its own. It holds out a hand in one direction to Pope’s The Dunciad (1743), and in the other to a later English genius, George Cruickshank. What a performance!

High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 0131 556 5100, www.royalcollection.org.uk, 22 Nov– 2 March, 2014

of my mind. Her work touches a nerve that I feel a lot of people relate to emotionally.

Many of the works in her ‘Cells’ series are like the settings of our dreams and with Louise these aren’t pictures – they are actually living life-size spaces that you can walk into, such as Cell (Eyes and Mirrors) (1989-93, right). One of the greatest aspects of Louise’s work was her use of scale, from the tiny hand-held sculptures, beautifully worked or small prints, to the giantscale marbles and bronzes. Louise worked with the highest materials that are often only used by men, yet she had the ability to use them in the strongest, most primal female way.

There are so many of Louise’s works that I really like and I respond to, and every day there seems to be more that I find out and more and more to see. Louise is forever unfolding.

Artists Rooms: Louise Bourgeois Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 0131 624 6200, www.nationalgalleries.org, until 18 May, 2014

Cell (Eyes and Mirrors), 1989-93, by Louise Bourgeois, from her ‘Cells’ series

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Painting haiku JENNY SAVILLE R A RESPONDS TO DE KOONING’S LATE WORKS, AS A SHOW OPENS IN NEW YORK

The Gagosian show in Chelsea during spring 2004 [‘Willem de Kooning: A Centennial Exhibition’] was what turned me onto De Kooning’s later works. I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the gallery alone, before the show opened. I’d move back and forth between the gallery rooms and through the journeys he had made in his life.

The limited palette in the earlyto mid-1980s was so liberating. It was like Japanese haiku poetry. Red, yellow, blue, white and black are the bare essentials for painting. They’re the bases you can potentially mix everything from. Then he limited the colours again to the elemental colours of fire/blood and water/sky.

I really like the freshness of the 198283 works, where he uses white paint

No Title, 1983, by Willem de Kooning

Gallic charms AS DAUMIER’S PAINTINGS OF PARIS COME TO THE RA, SAM PHILLIPS SELECTS THREE SUPERB SHOWS IN THE CITY Surrealism and the Object

Centre Pompidou Until 3 March, 2014 www.centrepompidou.fr The essential oddness of objects is the theme of a large-scale museum exhibition that focuses on Surrealist works in three dimensions. Over 200 objects range from Duchamp’s readymades – such as a bottle rack whose iron protrusions make it look like an instrument of torture – to uncanny and angstridden sculptures by artists such as Giacometti, Ernst and Dalí.

The Renaissance Dream

Musée du Luxembourg Until 26 Jan, 2014 www.museeduluxembourg.fr Following on from its opening in Florence, this show of around

80 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and poems is set to enlighten Parisians about the way Renaissance artists represented dreams. Masters whose works are on view include Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and Dürer, as well as that great hallucinatorin-chief Hieronymus Bosch, whose four-panelled Vision of the Afterlife (1505-10) includes chilling scenes of both the ascent to heaven and the descent to hell.

Georges Braque

Grand Palais Until 6 Jan, 2014 www.grandpalais.fr Braque famously recalled that he and Picasso were ‘like mountainclimbers roped together’ as they ascended the giddy heights of Cubism. But if the Spaniard’s fame helped position him at the summit in the minds of the public, this major Braque retrospective – the first in Paris for nearly 30 years – reminds us that the French artist could achieve similarly dazzling results with his pictures, which ranged from incandescent Fauvist landscapes to atmospheric late still lifes.

The Viaduct at L’Estaque, c.1908,

by Georges Braque

and a scraper like it’s erasing in drawing. Through the scraper he can bleed the pigmented ribbons, cut them off, bury them under white, or almost erase them to a whisper. It’s the most satisfying sensation to paint fluid white paint into a stronger pigment or vice versa with a soft house-painter’s brush.

He had the knowledge to get the consistency of paint just right so he could nudge the brush into the colour and accent the tone.

White paint becomes the carrier of space. He tries to give form to nothingness. Are you looking at form or space? Everything’s flowing and on the move. You can never quite fix your coordinates. It’s like he’s painting the offcuts or the space around Matisse’s cut-outs.

After 1983 he doesn’t seem to paint through forms so much, but around them, and the lines are the natural arc of his arm across the surface.

This is an excerpt from On de Kooning: Five Painters Reflect on de Kooning’s Late Work, published to accompany Willem de Kooning, Ten Paintings, 1983-1985 Gagosian Gallery, New York, www.gagosian.com, until 21 Dec

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How do buildings make us feel? In the RA’s ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition, leading international architects build extraordinary new structures in the Academy’s galleries for visitors to explore. Jay Merrick responds to the ideas behind this groundbreaking project and on page 40 introduces the architects taking part

You may remember the final scene in Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. A very old man lies in bed, dry-lipped, his eyes deeply sunken. The headboard is padded with buttoned segments of dark green velour. The pillowcase and blanket are also green. His hands lie on the turned-back sheet, and we see that he’s wearing an immaculate white nightshirt with a mandarin collar. He seems to be dying.

Beyond him, tightly framed and slightly out of focus, the bedroom is in pale shades of grey; on the walls there are ornate white mouldings and a gilded candelabra. There is no sound, and the stillness seems almost like the meniscus of the surface of a liquid – invisible but tense.

And then, very slowly, the old man raises his left hand, points towards the foot of his bed and, with difficulty, lifts his head slightly.

We cut to an elevated view of the room, as if seen from above the headboard (page 36).

We note the ornate faux-historic furniture, and classical statues in the wall niches. Oddly, the floor seems to be made of white glass and glows

with light. But our attention immediately locks onto what the old man is pointing at: a black obelisk, about 10ft by 3ft, which stands a few feet from the foot of the bed. Suddenly, every object in the room seems simultaneously banal and acutely surreal; so do the room’s dimensions; as does the very meaning of the room’s space – and the old man’s existence in it.

When the film was released in 1968, many wondered if the obelisk signified God, or an extraterrestrial being, or the symbolised moment before a new Big Bang – or even, perhaps, Mies van der Rohe’s coffin. Today, we can apply the haunting image of the room and the obelisk to the questions and possibilities raised by the Royal Academy’s ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition.

Rory Olcayto, Deputy Editor of the Architects’ Journal, predicts that this will be a seminal, ‘oncein-a-generation show’. The strategy of its curator Kate Goodwin, supported by the RA’s Director of Exhibitions Kathleen Soriano, is certainly a radical departure from the usual format and vibe of the Academy’s architecture shows, which have WINTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 35

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Concept image of an environment by Diébédo Francis Kéré commissioned for ‘Sensing Spaces’ THIS PAGE , ABOVE Still from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey RIGHT Western Motel, 1957, by Edward Hopper

criticism when applied to buildings like the artificially ‘civic’ plaza-and-tower ensembles of the late 20th century.

Judd said art had to have immediate, unclassifiable qualities – something like the shock of the unknowable. Our sense of the qualities of objects in space is less acute if they, or their settings, seem too familiar. We know Cézanne, until we encounter paintings such as his lusciously crude La Montagne Sainte Victoire vue des Lauves (1904-06). The abstracted female figures in Matisse’s massive reliefs in the RA’s ‘Bronze’ exhibition in 2012 prompted this same surprise.

In Porto, the starkly specific architecture of Souto de Moura’s slab-block Burgo Tower (2007, opposite top) manages to be both Juddian and atmospherically reminiscent of the surreal façades in De Chirico’s 1915 painting Piazza d’Italia con Statua, Treno et Torre (opposite centre).

The sensual provocations of space and form can be encountered in even the flattest of compositions – Edward Hopper’s painting

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unexpected ways, heightening the sense of architectural encounter and erasing any vestige of art-show gravitas. The Academy has deliberately avoided publishing detailed descriptions and images of the interventions to minimise visitors’ preconceptions.

But what is space? And how do we sense it? It’s hard to have a tangible awareness of space unless it’s defined by movement or objects, and by the consequent play of memory, emotion and imagination. Oddly significant riffles of sand in an otherwise empty landscape, perhaps; a particular face that defines its setting in a busy café; a room whose proportions and contents induce a profound feeling of uncertainty.

Or think of Donald Judd’s laconic concrete boxes in the seared Texan landscape around Marfa (opposite bottom). His 1964 essay ‘Specific Objects’ dismissed the established idea of art as the illusion of represented space; and that illusion in architecture also deserves

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tended to celebrate architects and architecture in terms of legacy, virtuosity or wow-factor.

Goodwin has introduced an element of creative and experiential hazard via seven outstanding architects, all of whom are based outside Britain: Eduardo Souto de Moura and Alvaro Siza from Portugal, who are working together; Kengo Kuma from Japan; Grafton Architects from Dublin; Li Xiaodong from China; Pezo von Ellrichshausen from Chile; and Burkinese architect Diébédo Francis Kéré whose office is in Berlin. They will create original architectural installations in the Academy’s Main Galleries that will respond to and react with the neoclassical spaces designed

by Sydney Smirke in 1866-67. Unlike typical architecture shows, visitors will encounter actual works of architecture rather than their representation in models, drawings and videos.

The interventions are designed to stimulate vision, movement, touch, memory, smell, perception of light and spatial awareness in

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Western Motel (1957, opposite), for example.

We see a woman sitting on a large bed. In the foreground, there is a chair and a battered leather suitcase; behind her, through a picture window, the bonnet of a car, and dark hills beyond. All of these forms seem to be collaged onto a single plane; the perspective effect stops dead.

Furthermore, everything in Hopper’s tableau radiates precisely the same quality of stillness and surface texture. And this falsified sensuality and spatiality give the composition a powerful and uncomfortable allure: here is a woman sitting passively, in a space designed as a fantasy waiting to be acted out. By whom? The viewer, of course.

A more obvious connection with the curatorial ideas that inform ‘Sensing Spaces’ was seen at the Gagosian Gallery, London, in its 2012 exhibition of big pieces by Henry Moore, such as Large Two Forms (1966, page 38). The fact that these sculptures were shown indoors (something Moore would not have allowed in his lifetime) made the pieces startlingly ‘other’.

But there was another, more telling, effect.

The relationship between the sculptures and the gallery spaces was peculiarly charged. There was nothing illusory or representative going on: this was a starkly confrontational, and faintly erotic, encounter with Moore’s abstracted bone-like forms and gnomic figures, and the space that contained them – something to do, perhaps, with the architect Aldo van Eyck’s alchemical mantra: ‘Space becomes place and time becomes occasion.’

For the 19th-century stage designer Adolphe Appia, space had to become two kinds of place.

His stage designs for Wagner, such as the backlit, shadowy forest glade in the opening scene of Parsifal in 1896, took the idea of theatrical three-dimensionality into a realm of dédoublement – spaces, forms and effects that appear objectively obvious, but also act as more subtle revelations of symbolic truth. Without giving anything away, it’s safe to say that the installation for ‘Sensing Spaces’ by Grafton Architects will have Appian qualities.

The range of sensual confrontations that I anticipate in ‘Sensing Spaces’ reminds me of a conversation I had with Eric Parry RA in 2008, FROM TOP The Burgo Tower in Porto, 2007, by Eduardo Souto de Moura; Piazza d’Italia con Statua, Treno et Torre, 1915, by Giorgio de Chirico; detail from 15 untitled works in concrete, 1980-84, by Donald Judd, installed at Marfa, Texas

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OPPOSITE PAGE A photograph

of Broad Street Station, Richmond, Virginia, in the 1950s, which appeared in Peter Zumthor’s book Atmospheres (2006)

when he confessed to a fascination with the miseen-scène of polar explorers: ‘Nothingness and hallucination, the recurring dream. No horizons in a white-out. What does it do to you?’

And what might the opposite of nothingness do to you? Consider the black and white marble of the upper façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, designed by Alberti in the late 15th century. This architecture radiates a peculiar tension: its powerful graphic quality threatens to overwhelm its three-dimensional reality; our sense of architecture and space is challenged.

Parry said something else on that occasion that situates this challenge in the 21st century: ‘If I’m thinking about a building in a square, I’m also thinking about the street and what the street needs, and what a wall is to a square... the different lines that make up a civilised city.

Metaphor, narrative and juxtapositions.

And one other thing: the surrealism of cities.’

We can see this approach to objects and space in very different kinds of modern architecture.

Take the strong but mysterious concrete forms in Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery (1968-78, right), near Treviso in Italy, which jut, step, slope and curve through space. The meticulously arranged indoor and outdoor spaces of Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum (2007) in Cologne are utterly different, with their subtle shifts in volume and light. Yet both architects are striving to achieve the same goal: more engrossing communions between people, architecture and place.

Zumthor’s small but potent book Atmospheres (2006) has a wonderful monochrome photograph portraying the reception hall of Broad Street Station in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1950s (opposite). At first glance, everything in the photograph seems knowable and unremarkable: the island-seating surmounted by a row of lamps, the polished floor, the precise perspectives, the 60ft-high columns and the human figures in the middle distance of this grand space designed by John Russell Pope in 1919.

But the 21st-century eye snags on the tiny figure in the middle of the shot: a businessman in a dark suit and white, knee-length raincoat, carrying a large briefcase. And, suddenly, we are no longer simply encountering a charming image of the station; that small figure has confused the issue, rather like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s MacGuffins acting as a red herring.

In a world after the onset of conceptual art, our anonymous businessman could easily be an exhibit; at the very least, his precisely attired

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F R O M G . E . K I D D ER S M I T H , A R CH I T ECT U R E I N A M ER I CA , A M ER I CA N H ER I TAGE P U B L IS H I N G CO. I N C . N E W YO R K 1976

Large Two Forms, 1966,

by Henry Moore, installed at the Gagosian Gallery, London, in 2012; the Brion Cemetery, near Treviso, Italy, 1968-78, by Carlo Scarpa

P H OTO M I K E B RU CE /CO U R T ESY G AGOS I A N G A L L ERY/ R EP R O D U CED BY P ER M IS S I O N O F T H E H EN RY M O O R E F O U N DAT I O N . © 2013 . M A R K E . S M I T H /S CA L A , F LO R EN CE

THIS PAGE , FROM TOP

F R O M G . E . K I D D ER S M I T H , A R CH I T ECT U R E I N A M ER I CA , A M ER I CA N H ER I TAGE P U B L IS H I N G CO. I N C . N E W YO R K 1976

P H OTO M I K E B RU CE /CO U R T ESY G AGOS I A N G A L L ERY/ R EP R O D U CED BY P ER M IS S I O N O F T H E H EN RY M O O R E F O U N DAT I O N . © 2013 . M A R K E . S M I T H /S CA L A , F LO R EN CE

‘Sensing Spaces is a bold attempt to challenge familiar sensual relationships between people and architecture’ insignificance produces an accentuated sense of space and, decades after the picture was taken, a bittersweet aura of loss. Gazing at that photograph, we experience the sensualities of both physical and memorial space.

What will you experience in Li Xiaodong’s Zen-like labyrinth (page 9) in ‘Sensing Spaces’, or as you pause in Diébédo Francis Kéré’s delicately formed passage (pages 34-35)? Will you find Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s structure an affront to the architecture of the gallery, or will you find the room engaging in an entirely new way? When you encounter Kengo Kuma’s installation, how will it affect your sense of space and experience of form?

In the 21st century, architecture has become increasingly subservient to a world in which new buildings are designed to serve zoned, CCTVnetworked urban spaces, and this has the effect of zoning human behaviour. These insidiously banal settings are then sprinkled with glinting droplets from a Niagara of so-called architectural ‘icons’ – symbols, as the architect Peter Eisenman puts it, for a generation that can no longer see; or for whom, according to the eminent architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, the retina has become a point of sale. Perhaps our other senses are being consumerised, too.

‘Sensing Spaces’ is not conceived as a therapeutic antidote to this pervasive situation.

It is a bold and timely attempt to challenge familiar sensual relationships between people and architecture. And one hopes, like the old man in the bed, to experience the equivalent of at least one riveting ‘obelisk’ moment in Sydney Smirke’s galleries.

Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, 020 7300 8000, www.royalacademy.org.uk/sensingspaces, 25 Jan–6 April, 2014. See Events and Lectures, page 80 Scan the image on this page to visit the behindthe-scenes blog for the ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition. See page 16 for full instructions

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Who’s who in Sensing Spaces

The combination of these two legendary Portuguese architects has already worked its magic in London, with their co-design of the 2005 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (page 81), a structure based on a distorted interlocking timber grid. Yet they take very individual approaches.

Alvaro Siza says architects don’t invent anything – they just transform reality. There is an artistic aspect to his practice, which many regard as a benchmark of the Critical Regionalist strand of architecture – an evolved modernism, infused with, or abstracted by, place-specific expressions of form, materials and history. Siza’s 1997 Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto is a fine example: his manipulations of white walls, space and moments of asymmetry produce artful spatial and perspectival tensions.

‘Nothing is planned in and of itself, but always in relation to belonging,’ says architectural academic Vittorio Gregotti of Siza’s work. Siza comes from northern Portugal, notes Gregotti,

‘where the light of the Atlantic is long and illuminates poverty in an abstract way, reveals all the harshness of surfaces, each change in the road around homes, every scrap, in a grandiose, dry and bittersweet manner.’ The way Siza designs – slowly, with pen and sketchbook, and often in a café in Porto – is about as far away from 21stcentury computer-aided design as you can get.

Eduardo Souto de Moura designs by instinct.

‘If people ask why I have made two doors, then I can only say I don’t know. Part of the answer is that, for me, architecture requires continuity: we have to continue what others have done before us but using different methods of construction and materials.’ In his 2004 Braga Stadium we encounter an almost delicate-looking cross-section; at the Paula Rego Museum (2008, above) in Cascais, he created a surreal landscape of chunky red buildings with pyramidal upper sections.

His use of materials is often surprising, giving his buildings a depth of character that cannot be absorbed rapidly. Ultimately, he believes architecture is ‘not about communication, but about your obligation to the requirements of the brief. If you want to express yourself, paint a picture, make a piece of sculpture, or write a book.’

GRAFTON ARCHITECTS Based in Dublin

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, directors of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, flared onto the architectural radar in 2008 with the completion of their building for the School of Economics at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. Their biggest project before that had been an innovative 10,000sq m extension to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin. The 65,000sq m Via Roentgen building at the Bocconi University, (above) not only demonstrated that Grafton could design major international projects, but that they could do so with great formal and spatial boldness.

It has been onwards and upwards from that point and their design for the Medical School and student housing at the University of Limerick was shortlisted for the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize.

Farrell and McNamara have also developed a substantial academic reputation, notably at University College, Dublin, and in their sharing of the Louis Kahn Chair at Yale University.

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ALVARO SIZA AND EDUARDO SOUTO DE MOURA Both based in Porto

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The Bocconi building signalled their design confidence unequivocally. It effectively covers a city block with an architecture that is like a vast urban sculpture whose internal arrangements produce an unusual realm of solids, voids and falls of light. And it’s not just a formal exercise – they like the idea that form can absorb emotion or passion.

The language Grafton use to describe key features is revealing. Farrell and McNamara speak of buildings inhaling and exhaling, and quote Louis Kahn’s remark: ‘To hear a sound is to see its space.’ They describe the undercroft at the Bocconi University building as an ‘erupting landscape’, and the great hall, or aula magna, as an ‘embedded boulder’.

‘Farrell and McNamara like the idea that form can absorb emotion or passion’

KENGO KUMA Based in Tokyo, with another office in Paris

How can the historical traditions of Japanese architecture be reinvented in 21st-century architecture? No designer has delved into the possibilities more than Kengo Kuma, who approaches this challenge as both a practising architect and as one of the profession’s most respected academics.

There is never a hint of pastiche. Instead, in extraordinary buildings such as the Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre (2012), a loosely skewed pile of eight timber ‘houses’, we find innovative translations of traditional forms and materials. The Café Kureon (2011, above) in Toyama re-expresses aspects of traditional Japanese timber structures with its cascades of beams.

Another characteristic of Kuma’s work concerns the way he deals with linking spaces, and this was heralded in the name of his first practice, Spatial Design Studio, set up in 1987. We can pick up another important clue to Kuma’s design philosophy from the

title of a 2008 exhibition at the University of Illinois in Chicago: ‘Material Immaterial’. This dualism, in which the solid is juxtaposed with the transparent or the ephemeral, can be seen in Kuma’s Xinjin Zhi Museum, completed in 2011 in Chengdu, China, where the pavilion’s glass walls are overlaid by a gapped screen of stone tiles.

‘Architecture cannot resist the strength of nature,’ says Kuma, ‘so it needs to find ways of coexisting with it. Ma – which means space or sense of place in Japanese – is very important to me. It’s more about the experience of space than the building as a physical entity and it’s something I always want to pay attention to.’

FROM OPPOSITE, FAR LEFT

The Paula Rego Museum in Cascais, Portugal, 2008,

by Eduardo Souto de Moura; the School of Economics Ceppo façade on Via Roentgen, Luigi Bocconi University, Milan, 2008, by Grafton Architects; Café Kureon, Toyama, Japan, 2011, by Kengo Kuma

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The Liyuan Library in Huairou near Beijing, 2011, by Li Xiaodong; Poli House on the Coliumo peninsula, Chile, 2005, by Pezo von Ellrichshausen; Diébédo Francis Kéré in 2012 in the public library added to the Gando School in Burkina Faso FROM LEFT

PEZO VON ELLRICHSHAUSEN Based in Concepción, Chile

Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen describe their Chilean architectural practice as an ‘art and architecture studio’. The precedence of art in that description is provocative, but not unexpected given their ideas about architecture.

In particular, they are not seduced by the currently prevailing idea of designing modern buildings that defer to their context. So their Poli House (2005, above) is a concrete block perched high above the coastline in Chile’s Coliumo peninsula, alone in a vast natural landscape.

They are also interested in triggering unexpected relationships with existing buildings or the spaces around them. The search to articulate these tensions is evident in their domestic architecture, and particularly in the way they compose interiors. Gago House in San

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Li Xiaodong works in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. China is set to become the biggest single production and consumer society the world has ever seen. Li’s architecture is a counterweight to this condition, a reminder of simpler values and experiences.

At the heart of his work is not the ideal of modernism as such, but a spiritual exploration of ideas that uses rational thinking, technical knowledge and artistry to produce what he calls ‘rich’ design. He has a deep concern about environmental issues, and is on record as saying that sustainable design is of critical importance in China: ‘We really need to reconsider the way we construct, and the way we think about society.’

Li designs buildings of calm gravitas using simple materials in often unexpected

combinations that reflect cultural and climatic relationships. There is a definite search for the spiritual essence of place, and a striving to create conditions of tranquillity and harmony derived from qualities of space, light and structure.

‘The Western tendency,’ he says, ‘is to look at the world as a series of objects, while in China and the East we tend not to differentiate between subject and object. So Western architecture develops from perspective, with the building as an object to be looked at from without; while Chinese architecture develops from the idea that the building is something to be experienced from within.’ An example of the latter is his design for the Liyuan Library (above) near Beijing, completed in 2011, with its cladding sourced from locally collected firewood visible through the windows. ‘For the Chinese,’ he continues, ‘an artificially created space is first of all cosmological and should be in harmony with the order of nature.’

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LI XIAODONG Based in Beijing

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Pedro, Chile, is rectilinear and has asymmetrically positioned windows – some flush with the façade, others deeply punched.

The house stands next to a large, old-fashioned, heavily gabled villa. Fosc House (2009), also in San Pedro, is even more startling, with an angular plan and stained-concrete façades.

However, ‘the emphasis is on the proportion of the rooms, their sequence, the way they open – simple things, but which taken together suggest something more complex,’ says Pezo.

‘For us, beauty resides in the simple and the unpretentious’, says Von Ellrichshausen.

‘We like the idea that there are essential ways of understanding spatial relationships, a universal language, and so we have been investigating spatial structures in a primitive sense. We don’t ever start with a “design”, because we don’t design.

We think not of details but of the structure and bones of the piece, the elements that will survive the process.’

DIEBEDO FRANCIS KERE Based in Berlin

In 2004, while still a student in Berlin, Diébédo Francis Kéré won the prestigious Aga Khan Award for his design for a primary school at Gando (above), in his native Burkina Faso. It put the international architectural spotlight not only on him, but on Burkina Faso, where people have often lived in harsh physical conditions, and where the words ‘education’ and ‘architecture’ have been estranged.

Kéré’s design for the school library uses very limited raw materials such as earthenware pots to form lightwells. He introduced a bold new fusion of modern and traditional architecture that set an immediate benchmark for the country’s schools: simple to build, durable, and providing much improved learning and community environments through better

shading, airflow and protection from heavy rain. Kéré has gone on to develop a series of building types – again using simple materials – that have introduced new architectural forms to many African settings.

While Kéré’s studio is in Berlin, the ethos of his designs is rooted in his Burkinese culture.

‘Every night when I was a child,’ he recalls, ‘my family gathered together. We would sit close to each other in a sort of circle and listen to the adults telling stories; there was no light so we couldn’t see each other. It was an intense feeling of being in a safe, protective space that had been created through our presence, along with the lone voice of the storyteller in the darkness.

‘In African tradition, building a house involves the whole community, with everyone participating,’ he continues. ‘Architecture is defined through the construction process, and I try to take advantage of this collective way of working within my own architecture.’

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The RA’s ‘Australia’ show has three rooms dedicated to Aboriginal art. Wally Caruana celebrates this rich vein of indigenous culture by exploring a key work in the show that evokes the ancestral origins of the great bush fire

At the opening of the exhibition of his work at the Annandale Galleries in Sydney in 2003, Djambawa Marawili described looking at his bark paintings as though he was ‘looking into a body of water’. Those who know the water can see the currents and read the winds, the geography of the seabed, and even the sea creatures that swim within it. Those who do not know the water are simply dazzled by sunlight reflecting off its surface.

Source of Fire (2005, opposite), a bark painting

by Marawili in the RA’s ‘Australia’ exhibition, is an allegorical painting. In the words of the anthropologist and Aboriginal art historian Howard Morphy, it is ‘a meditation on ancestral events’ – a meditation on the activities of the original creator beings and the genesis of the world.

The narrative dimension of the painting describes the creation of the ancestral great bush fire as a consequence of conflict between a man called Baru and his wife Dhamalingu, who belong to the Madarrpa clan in Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory. As the fight rages at Yathikpa, a promontory on Blue Mud Bay on the eastern Arnhem Land coast, a domestic camp fire flares up, burning the skin of Baru, who becomes the ancestral crocodile and immerses himself in the waters of the bay to quench the flames, leaving diamond-shaped scars on his back. Baru’s wife is metamorphosed into the blue-tongued lizard. In the climax of the cataclysm, Baru throws the fire out to sea to a place called Dhakalmayi, which becomes a sacred site.

Source of Fire reflects knowledge of a vast span of history, going back to a time towards the end of the last Ice Age when the sacred fire site at Dhakalmayi existed above what is now the sea level. It is said that the fire burns there to this day.

The interpretations of Marawili’s painting are multivalent and layered. On one level, the painting may be read as a map of the coastal

region of Yathikpa. Reading the picture at the very top, the semi-circle of the crocodile’s nest is surrounded by swathes of linked diamonds, the Madarrpa clan’s pattern for freshwater. This is inland from the scene of the domestic drama at Yathikpa, depicted in the centre left. Images of quails that spread the fire inland are buried within the clan design in the upper corners.

From Yathikpa, the diamond pattern is extruded to indicate the churning of freshwater meeting salt water and the surge of the waves bearing fire to Dhakalmayi, encircled in the lower left of the picture. A partly submerged dugong (sea cow) in the lower right alludes to the alliance between Marawili’s Madarrpa clan and the Gumatj clan, who share the ancestral fire story as well as an associated dugong hunting story.

The subject of the painting also relates to the practice of land management through the use of fire: the regular burning off of tracts of country to encourage regrowth or corral game. Source of Fire functions too as a statement of the law and culture of the Yolngu, the Aboriginal people of eastern Arnhem Land to whom the Madarrpa and Gumatj clans belong. The metaphor of the meeting of inland freshwater and the sea is potent and loaded: it encompasses the exchange of ideas, gender politics, sexual relationships, fecundity and more besides. And through the optical shimmer of the cross-hatched clan patterns or miny’tji – the equivalent of gold leaf for bark painting – the work radiates the ancestral powers present in the earth and sea.

The painting also carries an autobiographical dimension, being a self-portrait of the artist’s identity rather than of his physical features.

It declares Marawili as a descendant of his ancestors and the embodiment of Baru, and his ritual authority through the symbol of spiritual revelation – fire. Marawili has painted the Madarrpa clan patterns onto eucalyptus bark

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A R T G A L L ERY O F N E W S O U T H WA L ES , SY D N E Y. P U R CH AS ED W I T H F U N DS P R OV I D ED BY T H E A B O R I GI N A L CO L L ECT I O N B EN EFACTO RS ’ GR O U P, 20 05/ P H OTO AGNS W/© D JA M B AWA M A R AW I L I , B U KU - L A R R N GG AY M U L K A A R T CEN T R E Y I R R K A L A

Fire and water

A R T G A L L ERY O F N E W S O U T H WA L ES , SY D N E Y. P U R CH AS ED W I T H F U N DS P R OV I D ED BY T H E A B O R I GI N A L CO L L ECT I O N B EN EFACTO RS ’ GR O U P, 20 05/ P H OTO AGNS W/© D JA M B AWA M A R AW I L I , B U KU - L A R R N GG AY M U L K A A R T CEN T R E Y I R R K A L A

Source of Fire, 2005,

by Djambawa Marawili Scan the image, left, to view the latest ‘Australia’ exhibition videos. See page 16 for instructions

with earth pigments in the same way as they might be painted onto his body in ceremonies.

Moreover, the painting is emblematic of a sense of renewed confidence in the viability of Yolngu culture. Djambawa’s father and mentor, Wakuthi Marawili (1921-2005), had experienced the trauma of European ideals invading Yolngu life. From the mid-1930s, Christianity posed a threat to Yolngu systems of belief, official government policies impacted on their daily lives, and by the 1960s largescale mining interests were desecrating the land itself.

Faced with an uncertain future, Djambawa’s father’s generation turned to art as a powerful and eloquent means to bridge the yawning gap between cultures. Bark paintings became political tools as much as artistic expressions of Yolngu culture and aspirations.

Djambawa’s generation has continued to engage directly with broader society.

Among his peers are politicians, rock musicians, academics and cultural advocates. They have met white society face to face. Their confidence in the maintenance of cultural practice in the contemporary world continues to find its expression in art: Djambawa pushes the boundaries of artistic tradition – never a static entity anyway – to create a new vision.

In Source of Fire, he has opened a window onto the Yolngu’s ancient past, their modern history and their contemporary world. And he invites us to bask in the dazzle of the sacred ancestral forces that imbue his land, and emanate from his painting.

Australia Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 020 7300 8000, www.royalacademy.org.uk/australia, until 8 Dec. Organised with the National Gallery of Australia.

Supported by Qantas Airways – The Spirit of Australia.

Supported by The Campaign for Wool

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As Bill Woodrow RA prepares for his major retrospective at the Academy, Richard Cork talks to him about the extraordinary range of his sculpture and how one recurring theme has grown into a love of beekeeping. Portrait photograph by Nick Ballon

B is for Bill Bill Woodrow RA in his beekeeping suit at his home near Salisbury

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OPPOSITE PAGE

Scan the image to see a video of Bill Woodrow discussing the theme of the beekeeper in his work.

See page 16 for full instructions

Soon after glimpsing the sublime spire of Salisbury Cathedral through the train window, I find Bill Woodrow RA waiting to collect me at the station. We drive down the peaceful Avon Valley to the edge of the New Forest, where thatched roofs proliferate and cart-horses can be glimpsed in a field. But the remarkable and elegant house where Woodrow and his wife Pauline have lived for nearly six years is uncompromisingly modernist.

It was built in 1933 as a studio for Augustus John. The Welsh painter was a friend of William Nicholson, whose son Christopher (‘Kit’) was an ambitious young architect. So John asked Kit to design the studio, and the result is an admirable early example of British architecture influenced

by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus (page 48).

‘The site was surrounded by tall trees and the studio needed to be raised into the light,’ Woodrow explains. ‘So Nicholson and his pupil, the young Hugh Casson, built it on stilts.’

I climb up the outer spiral staircase to reach an immense and spectacular room. With windows facing in all directions and a skylight, it offers luminous views over fields where horses graze. You can even see the hives sheltering Woodrow’s family of bees. ‘About three years ago I joined the local Beekeepers Association and some of the people I met are really experienced,’ says Woodrow. ‘I got a hive, bought some bees and it’s fascinating – I love it.’

Over lunch at a long wooden table, he invites me to sample the delicious contents of a jar

labelled ‘Honey from the hives at Studio North’.

I ask him when his involvement with bees began.

‘After my Tate show in 1996 I wanted to work from a theme, which I hadn’t done before,’ he recalls. ‘One day, the words “The Beekeeper” popped into my head. They stuck around, and I realised the theme was visually and conceptually very rich – the structure of the hive, equipment and protective clothing, as well as the symbiotic relationship between bees and humans. Bees get shelter and nurture and humans get honey in exchange. But humans are also frightened of them: I got stung once on my forehead, and my whole face came up like a balloon!’

Now Woodrow is preparing for his largest exhibition so far: a major survey of his career at the RA’s Burlington Gardens galleries. How does he feel about the prospect of such exposure?

‘I’m excited about it, but not without a slight degree of nervousness,’ he says. ‘It’s the first time I’ve brought all the different elements together, so I’m really interested to see how it works. I’m getting stuff out of storage that I haven’t seen for a long time. I haven’t unwrapped everything yet, so there’s still the potential to be surprised.’

Woodrow has long been regarded as one of the outstanding British sculptors of his generation and he is restlessly experimental.

A comprehensive book on his career, published by Lund Humphries to coincide with the RA show, reveals just how various and inventive his output really is. It embraces drawing as well as sculpture.

‘Right through my school days drawing was the WINTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 47

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OPPOSITE PAGE , CLOCKWISE

Hoover Breakdown, 1979; Standing Stones, 1979; Beekeeper and Four Hives, 1997, all by Bill Woodrow RA

thing I really enjoyed,’ he recalls. ‘And it’s still important. I draw all the time.’ A new book Alphabet (RA Publications) is based on his fascinating sketchbook from 1986. ‘I had just made a sculpture called A is for Atom (1986), which has a robotic hand,’ he explains. ‘The work references modern technology, the nuclear age and indirectly the subsequent effects of radiation. Then I thought, “If A is for Atom, what’s B for?” Well, thinking about the effects of radiation, B, as in ABC, became B is for Mutant [page 50]. Then, in the drawing, B became Bee, as in insect. Interestingly, I’ve just realised it’s the first bee, the first time I made a reference to bees in any of my work.’ Humour plays a subversive role throughout the Alphabet drawings. ‘Looking back at them now, I realise they’re quite a personal reflection of my state at the time. But I never showed them, and put them in a drawer. I do like that about drawings – you don’t know where they’re going to end up.’

The same could be said of the earliest sculpture in Woodrow’s RA show. Called EarRing for Ablah, it was made in 1969 while he was a student at St Martin’s School of Art, London.

Woodrow explains how his friend and fellow artist Roger Ackling ‘knew this student called Ablah and we used to knock about a bit in a group. We were walking along the street one day and I found this ear-ring on the pavement.

So I said to Ablah: “Oh, here’s an ear-ring for you”.’ Woodrow made a simplified sculpture of an ear, hung the found object from its lobe, and gave it to Ablah. He had no idea what happened to the piece. ‘Then,’ he continues, ‘about two or three years ago, I got a letter from her saying: “Dear Bill, do you remember making this for me? I wonder if you could authenticate it?”

I was delighted that it had resurfaced.’

Woodrow enjoyed his time at St Martin’s, studying sculpture, between 1968 and 1971. ‘It was a fantastic experiment. Sculpture was wider

than painting – you could try all kinds of new things. I had been a country boy, escaping from the house at eight in the morning and coming back at eight in the evening after cycling all day in the New Forest. Nobody had a clue where I was, but my mother was very supportive.’

Woodrow’s father Geoffrey had served with the Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War: ‘He flew fighters off an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.’ But after his parents split up, the young Woodrow saw little of his father.

Growing up in Hampshire, he didn’t visit London until he was 17. And although he says his tutors at St Martin’s tended to be ‘severe about anything rustic’, he nevertheless made works like Untitled (1971), where two large photographs of branches in landscape settings are joined, surprisingly, by a real branch.

When the Whitechapel Art Gallery gave him an exhibition in 1972, Woodrow was only 24. He was delighted to be acknowledged so soon by a prominent London institution. He was now anchored in the metropolis, living in

‘In 1979, Woodrow covered a carpet sweeper and a vacuum cleaner in concrete and called them Standing Stones’

Brixton off Acre Lane. ‘It was lively and violent in different ways. But I learned to be streetsavvy, and you think you’re immortal at that age. I was becoming more urban, and starting to use the material that was available. Stuff I found on the street became my natural material.’

He started encasing found objects – such as telephones and hairdryers – in plaster, so that they looked like ‘contemporary fossils’.

In 1979, Woodrow covered a carpet sweeper and a vacuum cleaner in concrete and called them Standing Stones (opposite, far right).

‘Washing machines and spin dryers were so easy to find on the street,’ he recalls. ‘People didn’t repair them – they were put out for ragand-bone men, and washing machines had a huge surface area of material for me to work with.’ One of the most dramatic results of Woodrow’s obsession with street junk was Hoover Breakdown (1979, opposite top), where the vacuum cleaner appears to have erupted and spilled its contents right across the floor.

Two years later, in Spin Dryer with Bicycle Frame Including Handlebars, he decided to cut metal out of the discarded machine and make a skeletal bicycle that was still joined to the spin dryer in an unpredictable marriage of parts.

By this time Woodrow was exhibiting at the Lisson Gallery in London along with other leading sculptors of his generation such as Tony Cragg RA and Richard Deacon RA. They were soon hailed as the proponents of so-called New Sculpture, and Woodrow welcomed the label.

‘It was very positive in the beginning because it was saying this is something new and different.

There was no manifesto or organised group.

We were individuals and that was our strength.’

Only Woodrow could have made Self-Portrait in the Nuclear Age (1986), where he used items as disparate as a shelving unit, a wall map, a coat and a globe to express his unease at the precarious state of the world. This sculpture also conveys

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A L L I M AGES: CO L L ECT I O N O F T H E A R T IS T

FROM TOP

P H OTO © N I CK B A L LO N

Bill Woodrow RA’s modernist house, originally commissioned as a studio

by Augustus John, and built

by Christopher Nicholson in 1933

THIS PAGE

A L L I M AGES: CO L L ECT I O N O F T H E A R T IS T

P H OTO © N I CK B A L LO N

Woodrow’s growing restlessness about his work as an artist. His 1987 Lisson show turned out to be his last with the gallery. ‘I was wanting to change because I had marked out that particular scene. I knew what I was doing, and when you know what you’re doing it’s not interesting any more. That state of mind coincided with the collapse of the economy and the art market in the late 1980s.’

Woodrow finally parted company with the Lisson at the beginning of the 1990s, but in 1989 he had been given a show at the Imperial War Museum in London. Now using bronze – formerly a heretical medium for his generation of sculptors – he displayed new works as anguished as For Queen and Country (1989, page 50). Here a wounded soldier, without hands or feet, and with a blood-red gash on his face, struggles on crutches. Letters in gold leaf beside a discarded sword spell out the word ‘reminder’. Next to this, a crown contains more letters and if you add the ‘A’ and the ‘L’ formed by the crutches you see the words ‘Royal remainder’. Another bronze from the same year, Un Till The Land, is about ‘how war rapes the landscape’.

This change in direction was remarkable.

‘I’m not interested in developing a brand,’ says

WINTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 49

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‘I’m not interested in developing a brand...

I’m interested in doing something entirely different the next day’

Woodrow, ‘I’m interested in doing something entirely different the next day. For a time in the 1980s I did the cut-out work, but I don’t like being tied to one thing. This is why I was independent for 15 years after I left the Lisson Gallery. So my status, market-wise, could be better.’

By 1997 Woodrow was using glass, urethane foam, wood, steel, wax, rope and gold leaf to make a major piece called Beekeeper and Four Hives (page 49). ‘I didn’t want a figurative representation of a beekeeper. The beekeeper becomes a marionette. I was excited by its dependence on gravity, as opposed to the fact that bees defy gravity by flying, and also by the fact that the marionette is controlled by someone else.’

Since 2000 Woodrow’s art – which he still makes in his London studio – has thrived on incessant change. He has recently been preoccupied with images of skulls, after finding a deer skull. ‘Then I went to the Horniman Museum in London and made lots of drawings of skulls there. I came back to the studio and tried to make a skull, without reference to the drawings. I made hybrids, not one particular animal, and the whole thing evolved out of that.’

At this year’s RA Summer Show Woodrow displayed his daring Self-Portrait in the Year 2086 (Trophy) (2010), where bronze lines grow like plants from a linear form based on his own skull. Woodrow tells me that he is currently making Self-Portrait in the Year 2089 for his new exhibition. ‘But,’ he emphasises, ‘I’m not haunted by mortality. We come and we go, it’s as simple as that. Bees only live for six weeks.

But I certainly don’t see my retrospective show in terms of signing off. It’s to do with fighting and trying, and I look forward, rather than back.

I make the work for myself. People are always telling me things about it and I think: “Oh, really?” But I would never close the door on what the work means, and that’s what makes it fascinating.’

Bill Woodrow RA Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington Gardens, London, 020 7300 8000, www.royalacademy. org.uk/woodrow, until 16 Feb, 2014. Lead Series Supporter JTI. Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.

The Sculpture of Bill Woodrow by Julia Kelly and Jon Wood, £40, Lund Humphries Alphabet by Bill Woodrow, £16.95, RA Publications. See Readers’ Offers page 66

© 2013 B I L L WO O D R OW/ P H OTO DAW K I NS CO LO U R /J O H N B O D K I N . CO L L EC T I O N O F T H E A R T IS T

BELOW B is for Mutant, a drawing from Woodrow’s 1986 sketchbook, now published in Alphabet, 2013 RIGHT For Queen and Country, 1989

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M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L

Music Festivals in 2014

‘It was a wonderful journey great music, terrific talks and splendidly organised.’

Quote from a Martin Randall music festival participant in 2013.

There can be few greater musical pleasures than listening to a first-rate performance in a place associated with the composer, especially when relaxed, attuned and in good company.

The Rhine Valley Festival of Song

Seeing Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, or hearing a Beethoven symphony in the place where it was first performed, or listening to Lieder in a contemporaneous saloon beside the Rhine – these are the memorable and moving experiences you can expect if you join a Martin Randall music festival.

Music in the Veneto

These festivals are exclusive to those who take a package which includes between six and twelve concerts, a choice of accommodation, flights from the UK, meals and wine, talks and much else besides.

Illustration: the Rhine, oliograph c. 1870.

29 May–5 June 2014

Monteverdi R Vivaldi R Palladio 23–28 June 2014

The Danube Music Festival 21–28 August 2014

A Festival of Music in Bologna 27 September–4 October 2014

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Friday 22 November 2013 The Art of Repair: Conservator’s talk and private view 18.30–20.30 Clore Auditorium and in the exhibition £20 (£15)

Join anthropologist Christopher Pinney for an insight into the different motivations for destroying art, the evolution of iconoclasm in British society, and how these troubled objects enter museum collections.

Join Conservator Lindsay Morgan for an in-depth look at the science and specialist techniques behind repairing works of art damaged by acts of iconoclasm for the exhibition Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm.

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Anon Christ before Pilate (detail) c1400–25 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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Review & Comment

From the Back Window, 291, 1915, by Alfred Stieglitz

Lofty thoughts In a world awash with imagery, art historian Svetlana Alpers’ new book considers the art of looking from the vantage point of her rooftop apartment in New York. By Edmund Fawcett

There is much to be seen from a ninth-storey loft in the West Village of New York, especially through the practised eyes of Svetlana Alpers.

In her remarkable new memoir Roof Life, the American art historian describes water-towers, outside staircases and odd architectural

features with the same care for visual particulars shown in The Art of Describing (1983), the study of Dutch 17th-century painting that made her name.

Through binoculars, Alpers observes the daily hazards, big and small, of a high-rise city. She

watches workmen repair a giant white inflatable space frame on a neighbouring roof that has collapsed under snow. She sees a policeman on a tall ledge distract a would-be suicide by proferring a cup of coffee. She studies the wreck of an SUV, driven by mistake off a high floor of a multi-storey car park into the street below.

Alert to the hows of seeing as well as its whats, Alpers watches the rising sun by looking west from her loft into a wall of window glass.

She confirms that we are better at gauging distances on the flat than at heights or depths. Without ‘isms’ or adjectival gush, Roof Life bears out Alpers’ conviction that ‘looking is a delight’. It reminds us that looking is also a craft. The more you put in, she implies, the more you get out. In epigrams and asides, she offers the fruits of a career spent thinking about art and its purposes.

Each of her book’s five parts loosely pursues a theme. The first pictures a gone world. It describes her family, the Leontiefs, who came to the United States in the 1920s after the Russian Revolution. Her grandfather was a socialist and Treasury official who fell foul of the Bolsheviks. Her grandmother was from the cultivated Jewish elite of Odessa. Their son – Alpers’ father – was Wassily Leontief, a Harvard pioneer of modern macroeconomics and Nobel prizewinner.

Into this intellectual aristocracy Alpers was born in 1936. She taught art history at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1962 for close on 40 years. On retirement to New York, she bought the apartment whose views on three sides introduce her second theme, the various ways in which we learn from observation.

Though looking is always from a changeable point of view, Roof Life reminds us not to think that what we see is therefore private, fleeting or somehow constructed by us. Looking tells us about the enduring, publicly observable properties of what we see. Looking informs.

Looking also delights, and among the most reliable sources of visual delight is art. Alpers’ third part muses on what distinguishes possessions we cherish that are not art from possessions we cherish that are. It plays on the tensions in our view of art as something public and universal but also privately owned and marketable. By way of illustration, she describes inheriting, prizing and later selling a small Rothko painting on paper left to her from her parents’ estate. She details the trials of selling her house in the Berkeley hills, designed by the inand-out-of-fashion early 20thcentury Californian architect Julia Morgan.

Alpers brings the same descriptive intensity to her fourth part on the daily aesthetics of shopping for food and cooking.

She concludes in the fifth part, ‘Self Seen’, with thoughts about how we picture ourselves, as well as those we love. This section serves as a farewell to her late partner, Michael Baxandall, a fellow art historian. He too paid scrupulous attention to close looking and wrote a memoir, Episodes (2010), blending erudition and imagination.

Roof Life might sound impersonal and over-detached.

In fact, with family, friends, dealers or artists, Alpers is always committed and up for a good argument. Much present-day art suffers for her from ‘skilful jokiness’ or ‘PC seriousness about the woes of the world’. Too much is written.

Pictures do not need words, she tells us: ‘If pictures need anything, it is eyes.’

In a world ‘awash in imagery’, Roof Life celebrates the joys and responsibilities of careful looking.

In its dry way, it is also fun. Alpers has the best of critical gifts. She makes you feel you are standing by her in that West Village loft seeing what she sees, whether the city out of her windows or the art on her walls.

Roof Life by Svetlana Alpers, £18.99, Yale University Press

WINNTER 2013 | RA MAGAZINE 53

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Review & Comment Christmas Books

The art of giving The annual Christmas flood of art books means art lovers are spoilt for choice. RA Magazine selects six of the best to give this season

ART DECO

MICHELANGELO: HIS EPIC LIFE

by Norbert Wolf, £60, Prestel This lavishly produced walk-through of Art Deco is a gem. It covers all aspects of the era, starting with its stylistic origins and ending on its successors, and in the middle the author sets the style against the complex political backdrop of the age. Pictorially it presents paintings from Otto Dix’s twisted cabaret figures to Tamara de Lempicka’s smouldering women, architecture such as London’s iconic Hoover Building, and even a car designed by Walter Gropius. Eleanor Mills

by Martin Gayford, £30, Fig Tree Michelangelo is indisputably the greatest artist in the entire Western canon. At the age of 26 he had already created the deathless masterpiece of the Rome Pietà and he was only 37 when he completed the Sistine ceiling. The literature on him is vast, but mostly specialised. Martin Gayford has now given us an accessible but scrupulously factual biography, which sets out the drama of Michelangelo’s life against the political turbulence of his time. Simon Wilson

PIRATES AND FARMERS

ART AND PLACE: SITE-SPECIFIC ART OF THE AMERICAS £49.95, Phaidon

by Dave Hickey, £15.95, Ridinghouse A year on from announcing his retirement from the art world (‘It’s nasty and it’s stupid’), the influential American critic Dave Hickey returns with essays that muse on assorted subjects such as the nature of taste, Ghanaian painting, Beethoven, curating biennales, Minimalism and writing when high on hard drugs. Hickey is an intellectual who eschews theoretical claptrap for highly original opinions that draw on a dizzying array of cultural references. Sam Phillips

This coffee-table tome makes you dream about spending months visiting the spectacular works contained in its pages. These range from Mayan sculptures and 2,000-year-old Navajo motifs that cover canyons to Houston’s Rothko chapel and contemporary-art laden gardens in Brazil. Instead of the use of white space that has become standard for art books, the publication spreads images dramatically across every inch of paper, and is all the better for it. Sam Phillips

100 WORKS OF ART THAT WILL DEFINE OUR AGE

by Kelly Grovier, £35, Thames & Hudson Although the concept of this book might seem just another excuse for a richly illustrated compilation of contemporary art, the reasoning in Kelly Grovier’s writing makes it a valuable read. There will be choices you don’t agree with, but more often than not he makes an unexpectedly compelling case for his inclusions. Sean Scully, Grayson Perry and Cornelia Parker are among the 10 Academicians who feature. Sam Phillips

THE FAIRY VISIONS OF RICHARD DADD

by Miranda Miller, £10.99, Peter Owen Publishers Described by his physician as a ‘sensitive person in brutal surroundings’, Richard Dadd, the Victorian painter who studied at the RA, was incarcerated in Bedlam for patricide at the height of his career. Haunted by childhood fairies and Shakespeare’s sprites, Dadd painted fantastical otherworlds that transported him beyond the hospital’s walls. Miller illuminates Dadd’s plight through a first-person narrative, and brings his paintings to life with vivid ekphrasis. Daisy Taylor

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New publications from the Royal Academy Craigie Aitchison Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné £35 hardback Beautifully produced, this authoritative publication brings together all of Craigie Aitchison’s prints for the first time. Full-colour plates reveal these luminous and touching images, which are introduced by an illuminating text by Andrew Lambirth.

47

Still-life with Bird Vase Screenprint EDITION SIZE: 300, plus 50 artist’s proofs and 5 printer’s proofs IMAGE AND PAPER SIZE: 28 × 22 cm PUBLISHER: Advanced Graphics London, Timothy Taylor Gallery and Waddington Galleries, 2004, issued with the exhibition catalogue Pictures PRINTER: Advanced Graphics London

98

Signed, numbered and dated in pencil on the verso

Alphabet: Bill Woodrow £16.95 hardback This unique alphabet offers a glimpse into a brilliantly playful and endlessly inventive artistic mind. Part sketchbook, part riddle, Woodrow’s sideways look at letters turns the ordinary on its head.

Published to coincide with the artist’s show at the RA (see page 46).

Matisse: The Chapel at Vence £60 hardback With its stunning new photography and insightful text by Marie-Thérèse Pulvenis de Séligny, this volume – the definitive exploration of Matisse’s masterpiece – provides an unparalleled view of an iconic sacred space. The book heralds the Tate’s show Matisse: The Cut-Outs in 2014 (see page 20).

See page 66 for Readers’ offers on these and other exciting RA books Available from the RA Shops and online by visiting www.royalacademy.org.uk/shop Mail order call freephone 0800 634 6341 (9.30 am – 5.00 pm Mon – Fri)

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London Public Galleries 57 / London Commercial Galleries 58 Rest of UK 60 / Artists’ Websites 64

Listings

020 8858 4422 www.rmg.co.uk Turner and the Sea The first major exhibition of Turner’s seascapes, in the heart of Greenwich 22/11/13–21/4/14 NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY St Martin’s Place WC2, 020 7306 0055 www.npg.org.uk Elizabeth I and Her People This exhibition explores the achievements of the Elizabethan period through portraits of the monarch, the nobility and the rising middle classes, until 5/1/14; Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013 Sixty new portraits by some

Kate Moss, 2013, by David Bailey, at the National Portrait Gallery

of the most exciting contemporary photographers from around the world 14/11/13–9/2/14; Bailey’s Stardust Landmark exhibition of portraits by one of the world’s most distinguished photographers, David Bailey 6/2–1/6/14 ROYAL COLLECTION The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace SW1, 020 7766 7300 www.royalcollection.org.uk

© THE WALLACE COLLECTION. © THE ROYAL COLLECTION. © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. © DAVID BAILEY / COURTESY THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Gifted: From the Royal Academy to the Queen Over 100 works on paper

London Public

Looking beneath the decorative surface of David Hockney’s prints 5/2–11/5/14

BARBICAN ART GALLERY Silk Street EC2, 020 7638 8891 www.barbican.org.uk Ayşe Erkmen: Intervals An ambitious new work of scenic mobile backdrops for the Curve, until 5/1/14; Pop Art Design Bringing together more than 150 works, this exhibition paints a new picture of Pop Art, exploring its relationship with design, until 9/2/14

THE ESTORICK COLLECTION OF MODERN ITALIAN ART Canonbury Square N1, 020 7704 9522 www.estorickcollection.com

THE BRITISH MUSEUM Great Russell Street WC1, 020 7323 8299 www.britishmuseum.org Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art Until 5/1/14; Beyond El Dorado: Power and Gold in Ancient Colombia Until 23/3/14

COURTAULD GALLERY Somerset House, Strand WC2, 020 7848 2526 www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery The Young Dürer: Drawing the Figure

Examining the figure drawings of the young Albrecht Dürer and in particular those of his ‘Wanderjahre’ or journeyman years, until 12/1/14; Richard Serra: Drawings for the Courtauld Until 19/1/14 DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY Gallery Road SE21, 020 8693 5254 www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk An American in London: Whistler and the Thames Paintings, prints, rarely seen

drawings, watercolours and pastels, until 12/1/14; Margaret Desenfans (1731– 1813): The Woman Behind the Gallery Until 12/1/14; Hockney, Printmaker

Emilio Greco: Sacred and Profane

Sculptures, drawings and etchings, displaying Greco’s Etruscan, Greek and Roman art influences, until 22/12/13 GEFFRYE MUSEUM 136 Kingsland Road E2, 020 7739 9893 www.geffrye-museum.org.uk Christmas Past: 400 Years of Seasonal Traditions in English Homes Each year,

authentic festive decorations transform the Geffrye Museum’s period rooms, offering an evocative glimpse into how Christmas has been celebrated in English middle-class homes over the past 400 years 26/11/13–5/1/14 NATIONAL GALLERY Trafalgar Square WC2, 020 7747 2885 www.nationalgallery.org.uk Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 Exploring the central

role played by portraiture in Viennese painting during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 12/1/14; Strange Beauty: Masters of the German Renaissance

This show investigates changing attitudes towards German Renaissance art and includes works by Holbein, Dürer and Cranach 19/2–11/5/14 NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM Park Row (Greenwich) SE10,

by Royal Academicians presented to the Queen in 2012, until 16/3/14; Castiglione: Lost Genius The UK’s first major exhibition about Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, until 16/3/14

Utamakura (Poem of the Pillow) (detail), 1788, by Kitagawa Utamaro at the British Museum

TATE BRITAIN Millbank SW1, 020 7887 8888 www.tate.org.uk Art Under Attack: Histories of Iconoclasm in Britain Examining the

movements and causes which have led to assaults on art through objects, paintings, sculpture and archival material from the 16th century to the present day, until 5/1/14; Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists This exhibition focuses on artists Tomma Abts, Gillian Carnegie, Simon Ling, Lucy McKenzie and Catherine Story, until 9/2/14; Richard Deacon Consisting of around 40 works, this chronological survey includes large, mid-scale and small sculptures shown alongside a series of important drawings 5/2–27/4/14

Omnia vanitas, c.1645–55, by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione at the Royal Collection

TATE MODERN Bankside SE1, 020 7887 8888 www.tate.org.uk Mira Schendel The first international, full-scale survey of Schendel’s work, until 19/1/14; Paul Klee: Making Visible Until 9/3/14; Richard Hamilton 13/2–26/5/14

Man viewed from behind, leaning to the left, 1982, by Ferdinand Nicolas Godefroid, at The Wallace Collection

V&A Cromwell Road SW7, 020 7942 2000 www.vam.ac.uk Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s Until 16/2/14; Pearls The

history of pearls from the early Roman Empire through to the present day, until 19/1/14; Masterpieces of Chinese Painting 700–1900 Over 70 of the

HOW TO BOOK For inclusion in RA Magazine’s paid Listings section for public and commercial galleries in the UK call 020 7300 5657 or email catherine.cartwright@royalacademy.org.uk. Readers should contact galleries directly for opening times and ticketing queries

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Listings

Towards Damascus Gate, 2013,

by Andrew Gifford at John Martin Gallery

THE WALLACE COLLECTION Manchester Square W1, 020 7563 9500 www.wallacecollection.org The Male Nude 18th-century drawings from the Paris Academy, until 19/1/14

London Commercial ADAM GALLERY 24 Cork Street W1, 020 7439 6633 www.adamgallery.com Richard Cartwright 19/11–5/12/13 The Other Side of Town, 2013,

by Richard Cartwright at Adam Gallery

Sir Stirling Moss in DBR1, Nürburgring, 2013, by James Hart Dyke at Aston Martin W-One Showroom

ADVANCED GRAPHICS LONDON Ground Floor, 32 Long Lane SE1, 020 7407 2055 www.advancedgraphics.co.uk Craigie Aitchison: Prints Opening December 2013 ALAN CRISTEA 31 & 34 Cork Street W1, 020 7439 1866 www.alancristea.com Tom Wesselmann First solo exhibition.

His iconic and often provocative work had a profound impact on the development of American Pop Art 14/11–21/12/13; Editions and Acquisitions 2013 Highlights from the past 12 months of the gallery’s publishing programme 6/1–8/2/14; Richard Hamilton A retrospective highlighting the most significant works from the artist’s career 14/2–22/3/14 THE ALPHA GALLERY 23 Cork Street W1, 020 7494 9272 www.alphagalleryuk.com PJ Crook Until 16/12/13

Dunamis (detail), 2013, by Bushra Fakhoury

ART SPACE GALLERY – MICHAEL RICHARDSON CONTEMPORARY ART 84 St Peter’s Street N1, 020 7359 7002 www.artspacegallery.co.uk Winter Sun Group exhibition of paintings by Ann Dowker, Derek Hyatt, John Kiki and Nick Miller 29/11/13–4/1/14; John Kiki: Myths and Goddesses New paintings that reinvent the classical themes 7/2–7/3/14 ASTON MARTIN W-ONE SHOWROOM Brook House, 113 Park Lane W1, 020 7127 0729 www.jameshartdyke.com James Hart Dyke: Aston Martin Centenary New paintings 22–29/11/13

BANKSIDE GALLERY 48 Hopton Street SE1, 020 7928 7521 www.banksidegallery.com The Group of Ten Ten highly

accomplished and experienced RE artists 20/11–1/12/13; Mini Picture Show Contemporary watercolours and original prints, both framed and unframed (prices starting from just £50) 6/12/13–26/1/14; The Society of Wood Engravers 76th Annual Exhibition 140 original prints from the

UK and around the world, all available for sale 5–23/2/14 BEAUX ARTS LONDON 22 Cork Street W1, 020 7437 5799 www.beauxartslondon.co.uk New Acquisitions Celebrating two decades in Cork Street, until 15/12/13 BROWSE & DARBY 19 Cork Street W1, 020 7734 7984 www.browseanddarby.co.uk Renewal: Endellion Lycett Green

Intensely detailed nature paintings and Derivations and New Directions: Duncan Wood Still life and landscape paintings, until 5/12/13; Christmas Exhibition Late 19th- and 20thcentury British and French paintings and works on paper, and contemporary British figurative art 10–23/12/13; Host: Mark Shields Major body of recent works by the Irish artist (also at Grosvenor Gallery) 14/2–7/3/14 BUSHRA FAKHOURY 07754 488 748 www.bfakhoury.com Dunamis by Bushra Fakhoury, sitespecific sculpture in Westminster, ongoing (see website for further details) CONNAUGHT BROWN 2 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7408 0362 www.connaughtbrown.co.uk Post-Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Works of Art Please contact the gallery for details; Post War British Sculpture 9/1–15/2/14; London Art Fair Business Design

Centre N1, 15–19/1/14 THE CYNTHIA CORBETT GALLERY 15 Claremont Lodge, 15 The Downs, Wimbledon SW20, 020 8947 6782 www.thecynthiacorbettgallery.com Art Miami The Art Miami Pavilion, Midtown, Wynwood Arts District, Miami, FL 3–8/12/13; London Art Fair Business Design Centre N1, 15–19/1/14; Palm Springs Fine Art Fair Palm Springs Convention Center, Palm Springs, CA 13–16/2/14; Art Wynwood The Art Miami Pavilion, Midtown, Wynwood Arts District, Miami, FL 13–17/2/14 FEDERATION OF BRITISH ARTISTS Mall Galleries, The Mall SW1, 020 7930 6844 www.mallgalleries.org.uk Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 2013 11–21/12/13

FINE ART COMMISSIONS 34 Duke Street St James’s SW1, 020 7839 2792 www.fineartcommissions.com

Contemporary Portraits Showcasing

the styles available to commission, from 26/11/13; Susie Philipps: Flowers and Still Life 27/11–10/12/13; Past Portrait Commissions

Showcasing the styles available to commission, from 11/12/13 THE HELLENIC CENTRE 16–18 Paddington Street W1, 020 7487 5060 www.helleniccentre.org Patterns of Magnificence: Tradition and Reinvention in Greek Women’s Costume 4/2–2/3/14

HIGHGATE CONTEMPORARY ART 26 Highgate High Street N6, 020 8340 7564 www.highgateart.com Tim Benson VPROI Landscapes, still life, figures and portraits. An absorbing exhibition by this young and dynamic artist, until 1/12/13; Piers Browne Solo exhibition of etchings and new oil paintings 15/1–8/2/14; Scottish Artists A small selection of artists including Euan McGregor, Belinda Bullen and Sian McQueen 12/2–8/3/14 THE ILLUSTRATION CUPBOARD 22 Bury Street SW1, 020 7976 1727 www.illustrationcupboard.com 18th Annual Winter Exhibition 20/11/13–31/1/14; Winter Illustration Festival from 2pm on 30/11/13

JOHN MARTIN GALLERY 38 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7499 1314 www.jmlondon.com Andrew Gifford – Two Cities: Paintings from Jerusalem and Ramallah 27/11–20/12/13

KINGS PLACE GALLERY 90 York Way N1, 020 7520 1490 www.kingsplace.co.uk Ørnulf Opdahl Paintings and prints 15/11/13–24/1/14; Lucy Jones: Looking Out, Looking In Provocatively disquieting self-portraits and unpeopled landscapes of flaring colours and raw, wild beauty 31/1–21/3/14 LLEWELLYN ALEXANDER 124–126 The Cut SE1, 020 7620 1322/1324 www.llewellynalexander.com Mary Pym New paintings 14/1–5/2/14; Jenny Wheatley RWS NEAC New paintings 11/2–12/3/14 LONDON ART FAIR The Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street N1, 020 7288 6736 www.londonartfair.co.uk London Art Fair 15–19/1/14 LONG & RYLE GALLERY 4 John Islip Street SW1, 020 7834 1434 www.longandryle.com Shifting Perspective: Katharine Morling

Morling’s sketches are innovatively reworked into wall sculptures 28/11– 20/12/13; London Art Fair Business Design Centre N1, 15–19/1/14; Capturing

© BUSHRA FAKHOURY. © RICHARD CARTWRIGHT / COURTESY THE ADAM GALLERY. © JAMES HART DYKE. © ANDREW GIFFORD / COURTESY JOHN MARTIN GALLERY

finest examples of Chinese painting, until 19/1/14; Tomorrow – Elmgreen & Dragset A site-specific installation, creating a stage set for an unrealised drama which explores the relationship between sculpture, architecture and design, until 2/1/14; Jameel Prize 3 11/12/13–21/4/14

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TERRA INFIRMA drawings & prints of ICELAND Publication available

EMMA STIBBON RA 17 NOVEMBER - 20 DECEMBER

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8TH NOV - 20TH DEC 2013 2 December 2013 - 21 April 2014 FREE ADMISSION www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk John Craxton, Red and Yellow Landscape, 1945 (detail) © Estate of John Craxton

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11 Princelet Street w Spitalfields w E1 6QH w w w .e l e v e n s p i t a l f i e l d s .c o m w 0 2 0 7 2 4 7 1 8 1 6

24/10/2013 10:45

the Brontës: Charlotte Cory’s Visitoriana

Cory’s photographic collages rework Victorian cartes-de-visite with her own portraits of stuffed animals from museums and her own collection 5–28/2/14

Silver and green, the young Thames, 2013, by Kurt Jackson at Redfern Gallery

MANYA IGEL FINE ARTS 21–22 Peters Court, Porchester Road W2, 020 7229 1669 www.manyaigelfinearts.com By appointment only. Works by RAs past and present, members of the NEAC and other well-known artists MARLBOROUGH FINE ART 6 Albemarle Street W1, 020 7629 5161 www.marlboroughfineart.com Sarah Raphael: Paintings and Works on Paper from the 1980s–2000 Until 30/11/13; Matisse Graphics 3–23/12/13; Pamela Golden (Marlborough Contemporary) 12/12/13–11/1/14; Juan Onofre (Marlborough Contemporary)

16/1–15/2/14 MEDICI GALLERY 5 Cork Street W1, 020 7495 2565 www.medicigallery.co.uk Michael Bennallack Hart Until 19/11/13; Graeme Wilcox 21/11–5/12/13; Winter Exhibition from 10/12/13 I Come and Stand at Every Door, 2013, by Diarmuid Kelley at Offer Waterman & Co

Voyage de noces à l’Hotel des Alpes, 1920, by Jacques Henri Lartigue at The Photographers’ Gallery

THE MILLINERY WORKS GALLERY 87 Southgate Road N1, 020 7359 2019 www.millineryworks.co.uk In Situ and a Christmas Box Fine artsand-crafts furniture and modern British paintings together with glass, ceramics and wood-turnings by contemporary makers 19/11–22/12/13; 40 x 40 Small paintings and sculptures by 40 contemporary British artists 4/2–2/3/14 OFFER WATERMAN & CO 11 Langton Street SW10, 020 7351 0068 www.waterman.co.uk Diarmuid Kelley: All Cats Are Grey Selected Works 2011–2013 Portrait

and still life paintings by gallery artist Diarmuid Kelley 24/1–28/2/14 OSBORNE SAMUEL 23a Bruton Street W1, 020 7493 7939 www.osbornesamuel.com Modern British Art Until 16/11/13; With a Conscious Eye Three photographers: Nick Danziger, David Constantine and Justin Partyka 4–26/12/13 PANGOLIN LONDON 90 York Way N1, 020 7520 1480 www.pangolinlondon.com Floating Red, 1967, by Stanley William Hayter at Waterhouse & Dodd, London Art Fair

Ann Christopher RA: To Know Without Remembering Until 7/12/13; Christmas Show 13–23/12/13; Pangolin London Showcase 9/1–15/2/14; Ralph Brown Memorial Exhibition 21/2–29/3/14

PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY 475 Fulham Road SW6, 020 7381 3031 www.piersfeethamgallery.com Alice Mumford: Silver Light

22/11–21/12/13

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’ GALLERY 16–18 Ramillies Street W1, 020 7087 9331 www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk Jacques Henri Lartigue: Bibi

Until 5/1/14 REDFERN GALLERY 20 Cork Street W1, 020 7734 1732 www.redfern-gallery.com Kurt Jackson: The Thames Revisited

New paintings 19/11/13–23/1/14 RICHMOND HILL GALLERY 26 Richmond Hill TW10, 020 8940 5152 www.therichmondhillgallery.com Barbara Rae CBE RA Until 1/12/13 THACKERAY GALLERY 18 Thackeray Street W8, 020 7937 5883 www.thackeraygallery.com Ethel Walker New work bringing Scottish sea and skyscapes to central London until 22/11/13; Anthony Garratt 3–20/12/13; Mixed Show of Gallery Artists 11–21/2/14 THOMAS AND PAUL CONTEMPORARY ART 20 Bristol Gardens W9, 020 7289 6200 www.thomasandpaul.com Paper Celebrating the use of paper in art, whether as the surface the work is created on or the use of paper collage within a piece. Highlights include work

by Sarah Lee, François Réau and Lance Hewison 26/11–10/12/13; The Big One 2013 Works from new artists from the Art Collective initiative including Bethany Gray and Catriona Gray 12/12/13–31/1/14; David Storey Solo Show New body of work, March–April 2014 WADDINGTON CUSTOT GALLERIES 11 Cork Street W1, 020 7851 2200 www.waddingtoncustot.com When Britain Went Pop! British Pop Art: The Early Years This exhibition

is the first at Christie’s Mayfair (103 Bond St W1). Features work by British artists Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield, until 23/11/13; Fausto Melotti Solo exhibition 20/11– 20/12/13 WHITFORD FINE ART 6 Duke Street St James’s SW1, 020 7930 9332 www.whitfordfineart.com Australian Landscape Australian and contemporary Aboriginal paintings.

Artists include Bessie Davidson, Sidney Nolan, John Peter Russell, Kudditji Kngwarreye, Helicopter Tjungurrayi and Tommy Watson, until 20/12/13 WORKS ON PAPER FAIR Science Museum SW7, 01798 861815 www.worksonpaperfair.com Works on Paper Fair Original art on paper including watercolours, drawings, prints, photographs and posters 6–9/2/14

Rest of UK ADAM GALLERY 13 John Street, Bath BA1, 01225 480406 www.adamgallery.com Richard Cartwright 7–20/12/13 THE ART ROOM 8a The Strand, Topsham, Devon EX3, 07718 480 604 www.theartroomtopsham.co.uk Valerie Barden: Compositions

Works in oil paint and pastel and Tessa Rubbra: Ceramics 24/11/13– 19/1/14; Robert Manners Seascape Refits 15/2–16/3/14 ASCOT STUDIOS Bee Mill, Ribchester, Lancashire PR3, 01254 878100 www.ascotstudios.com Angela Wakefield: Americana

October–December 2013; Angela Wakefield: London Collection

January–March 2014 BEAUX ARTS BATH 12–13 York Street, Bath BA1, 01225 464850 www.beauxartsbath.co.uk Joy Wolfenden Brown, Sarah Gillespie, John Maltby 18/11–24/12/13; London Art Fair Business Design Centre N1. 15– 19/1/14; New works by Chuck Elliott and new porcelain ceramics by Pennsylvaniabased potter Olen Hsu 3/2–1/3/14 BOHUN GALLERY 15 Reading Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9, 01491 576228 www.bohungallery.co.uk 40 Years of Fine Art, Part II Hoyland, Rimmington, Jacklin, Frost, Hambling, Barns-Graham, Irvin, Rego and others 16/11/13–25/1/14; Joe Tilson RA A selection of original work, screenprints and wood reliefs 1–22/2/14 BRIGHTON MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton BN1, 030 0029 0900 www.brighton-hove-museums.org.uk Subversive Design Alexander McQueen, David Shrigley, Studio Job, Philippe Starck, Grayson Perry RA, Richard Slee, Campana Brothers, Vivienne Westwood and Leigh Bowery, until 9/3/14 BROOK GALLERY Fore Street, Budleigh Salterton, Devon EX9, 01395 443003 www.brookgallery.co.uk The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Brad Faine’s first solo show at the gallery, until 17/11/13; Strangest Dream…

Approaching the 100th anniversary of WW1, Brook Gallery turns its attention to the art created for and about human conflict 11/12/13–9/1/14; Marc Chagall A selection of beautiful historic original hand-coloured etchings from the Fables of La Fontaine 8/2–9/3/14 CAROLINE WISEMAN AT THE ALDEBURGH BEACH LOOKOUT AND ART HOUSE

© THE ARTIST. COURTESY WATERHOUSE & DODD. © MINISTÈRE DE LA CULTURE-FRANCE / AAJHL. COURTESY OF DONATION JACQUES HENRI LARTIGUE. © DIARMUID KELLEY / COURTESY OFFER WATERMAN & CO. © KURT JACKSON / COURTESY REDFERN GALLERY

Listings

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Andras Kaldor Iconic London Buildings

DEBORAH STERN ARBS

19th_ 30th November 2013

“Primavera”. Bronze. Edition of 9.

11” x 13” x 11½” (28cm x 33cm x 29cm)

Telephone: 020 7262 7104 Viewing by appointment in central London

1 9 k e n si n gto n c ourt p lace l o n do n w 8 5 bj t e l e pho n e : 020 7937 7222 e m a i l : inf o@g a ll er y19. c om w e b : g a lle r y19.c om

François-Guillaume Ménagéot, Hercules resting, c.1781–7© École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

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Email: info@deborah-stern.com Website: www.deborah-stern.com

Deborah Stern_Aut10.indd 1 16/10/2013 12:37

ROI THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF OIL PAINTERS

Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 2013 11 to 21 December The Mall, London SW1 www.mallgalleries.org.uk

Free entry with this voucher

FREE ADMISSION O P E N D A I LY 10am –5pm

9/8/10 15:57:51

Eighteenth-century drawings from the Paris Academy 24 OC TO B ER 201 3 – 1 9 J A N UA RY 2014

Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN www.wallacecollection.org

Image: Ian Cryer PROI, Snowscene with Birdtable, Exford,

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Listings Benjamin Britten: Centenary Weekend

The Stour Estuary, 2013, by Norman Ackroyd RA at Zillah Bell Gallery

Meet Chris Orr RA and other artists who have been inspired by Benjamin Britten during their residencies at the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, 23/11/13; The Christmas Show Including Peter Blake RA, Eileen Cooper RA, Anne Desmet RA, Anthony Green RA, Nigel Hall RA, Phillip King PPRA, Christopher Le Brun PRA, Chris Orr RA and Alison Wilding RA 7/12/13– 4/1/14; The London Art Fair Business Design Centre N1, 15–19/1/14 CHRIST CHURCH PICTURE GALLERY Christ Church, Oxford OX1, 01865 276172 www.chch.ox.ac.uk/gallery Beauty, Grace and Power The horse in drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, until 23/12/13; The Florentine Innocenti: Vincenzo Borghini and the Artists of the Foundling Hospital in Florence Until 24/2/14

Eldfell Heimaey, 2013, by Emma Stibbon RA at Rabley Drawing Centre

THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2, 01223 332900 www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk A World of Private Mystery: John Craxton RA (1922–2009) From his

beginnings as a young hope of post-war British art, creating dark, meditative images of the natural world, to works of incredible vibrancy, light and colour from his later life in Crete 2/12/13– 21/4/14

Portrait of Sonia, 1948–57, by John Craxton RA at The Fitzwilliam Museum

THE GALLERY AT 41 41 East Street, Corfe Castle, Dorset BH20, 01929 480095 www.galleryat41.com Spice of Life Featuring contemporary Dorset painters including Richard Price ROI, Felicity House PS, David Atkins, Mike Jeffries, Judy Tate, Vicky Finding, Lucy Best and Edward Vine with sculptors Moira Purver ASWA, Sue Lansbury and visiting sculptor Carol Orwin SWA 4–22/12/13 (also selected days in January and February 2014) GALLERY PANGOLIN 9 Chalford Industrial Estate, Chalford, Gloucs GL6, 01453 889765 www.gallery-pangolin.com Charlotte Mayer: In Essence

Saduman, 2007, by John Hoyland RA at Bohun Gallery

First major review of the artist’s work, until 22/11/13; Christmas Cracker!

Sculpture, prints and drawings by regular gallery artists 30/11–20/12/13; Sculptors’ Prints and Drawings

Including work by Jon Buck, Lynn Chadwick, Terence Coventry and Jonathan Kingdon 24/2–4/4/14 GRAY MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 01935 881696 www.graymca.co.uk London Art Fair Business Design Centre N1, 15–19/1/14; The Decorative Antiques and Textile Fair Battersea Park SW11, 21–26/1/14; Works on Paper Fair Science Museum SW7, 6–9/2/14

HAYLETTS GALLERY Oakwood House, 2 High Street, Maldon, Essex CM9, 01621 851669 www.haylettsgallery.com Etchings by Elizabeth Morris

Capturing the mood and texture of our ever-changing sea shores, she illustrates our continuous relationship with the water 16/11–24/12/13; Paintings by Dione Page Magical atmospheric gouache paintings, encompassing found objects into her compositions, successfully mixing still life with landscapes and seascapes 1/2–1/3/14 THE HOLBURNE MUSEUM Great Pulteney Street, Bath BA2, 01225 388569 www.holburne.org Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond It is little known that Joseph

Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–1797) lived and worked in Bath for two years between 1775 and 1777. This exhibition places Wright in the context of the many artists, musicians, writers, business people and scientists living and working in the Georgian spa and will also go ‘beyond’ to examine the effect of his time in Bath and his travels in Italy on his later work 25/1–5/5/14 JENNA BURLINGHAM FINE ART 2a George Street, Kingsclere, Nr Newbury, Hants RG20, 01635 298855/07970 057789 www.jennaburlingham.com Contemporary Classics Peter Joyce, Ffiona Lewis, Keith Purser, Daisy Cook, Adam Milford and Jane Skingley, until 30/11/13 JOSIE EASTWOOD FINE ART Lower Balldown, Northwood Park, Sparsholt, Hampshire SO21, 01962 776677 www.josieeastwood.com Please visit the website to join the invitation mailing list. Open during exhibition dates and by appointment. The Autumn Collection Oils and sculptures by 25 artists to include work by Arabella Johnsen, Cornelia O’Donovan, Judy Buxton, Pamela Scott-McBride, Kate Corbett-Winder, Chloe Lamb and Tessa Campbell Fraser; The Little Picture Show Paintings for Christmas by gallery favourites under £1,500. Open weekends 30/11–1/12/13 and 7–8/12/13 LINTON COURT GALLERY (GAVAGAN ART) Duke Street, Settle, North Yorks BD24, 07799 797961 www.gavaganart.com Temporary exhibition programme from April to December 2014. Exhibitions include The Northern Landscape Paintings and prints. A large range of prints, paintings, sculpture and ceramics are always available. Join the mailing list via the website for invitations to exhibitions in 2014 MARINE HOUSE AT BEER Fore Street, Beer, Devon EX12, 01297 625257 www.marinehouseatbeer.co.uk Affordable Art Fair Singapore 20–24/11/13; Mixed Show Work by

artists including Mike Bernard, Charlie O’Sullivan, John Hammond, Tina Stokes, Peter Barker and Helen Tabor, December (contact gallery for details) MOMA WALES Heol Penrallt, Machynlleth, Powys SY20, 01654 703355 www.momawales.org.uk Ian Jacob – Work in progress: 1973 to 2013 Until 4/1/14; Ian Phillips and Linda Caswell Until 4/1/14; Clyde Holmes: Studio Works 11/1–8/3/14

NORTH HOUSE GALLERY The Walls, Manningtree, Essex CO11, 01206 392717 www.northhousegallery.co.uk Kate Boxer: Hello, This Is Caesar

Portraits and other new prints 15/11/13– 11/1/14; Felix Sefton Delmer: Paint Monochrome paintings heavy with rich pigment 25/1–22/2/14 RABLEY DRAWING CENTRE Rabley Barn, Midenhall, Marlborough, Wilts SN8, 01672 511999 www.rableydrawingcentre.com Emma Stibbon RA: Terra Infirma

Drawings and prints of Iceland (Artist talk on 29/11/13) 17/11–20/12/13 ROYAL BIRMINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTISTS 4 Brook Street, St Paul’s, Birmingham B3, 0121 236 4353 www.rbsa.org.uk Kaleidoscope Contemporary jewellery, ceramics and textiles. Designs by Melanie Tomlinson, Miranda Sharpe and Louise Miller, alongside work by makers new to Birmingham including Emma Calvert, until 18/1/14; Open all Media Jewellery, ceramics, textiles, drawing, painting and printmaking 27/11–24/12/13; Birmingham Today Competition Open exhibition launching the celebrations for 2014, marking 200 years since the first exhibition by the Birmingham Academy of Arts, the forerunner of the RBSA 6/2–1/3/14 ROYAL PAVILION Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton BN1, 030 0029 0900 www.brighton-hove-pavilion.org.uk Turner in Brighton Celebrating the recent acquisition of J.M.W. Turner’s watercolour Brighthelmston, Sussex (1824), the display will feature works by his contemporaries including John Constable, until 2/3/14 SLADERS YARD West Bay, Bridport, Dorset DT6, 01308 459511 www.sladersyard.co.uk David Inshaw: Recent Paintings

English landscapes, the nude and atmospheric dream-like figures within the landscape, until 17/11/13; Winter Show Recent paintings by David Atkins, Angela Charles, Tim Cummings, Simon Garden RWA, Janette Kerr PRWA Hon RA, James Meiklejohn and Alfred Stockham RWA with furniture by Petter Southall and craft by leading British designer craftspeople 23/11/13–23/2/14

© JOHN HOYLAND RA / COURTESY BOHUN GALLERY. © JOHN CRAXTON RA / COURTESY THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM. © EMMA STIBBON RA / COURTESY RABLEY DRAWING CENTRE. © NORMAN ACKROYD RA / COURTESY ZILLAH BELL GALLERY.

31 Crag Path, Aldeburgh, Suffolk IP15, 01728 452754/020 7622 2500 www.carolinewiseman.com

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Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (detail), 1917-18 © Belvedere, Vienna. Donated by Vita and Gustav Künstler.

9 October 2013– 12 January 2014 Sponsored by

Book now: 0844 847 2409

Constable at Petworth 11 January—14 March 2014

An exhibition at Petworth House, West Sussex Booking essential on 0844 249 1895 Adults £12, child £6 to include National Trust members www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth-house

www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Image: Petworth Church and Windmill, with Petworth House beyond 1834 © Trustees of the British Museum

Quarter Page Portrait.indd 1 dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk @dulwichgallery

The Making of

Mary Seton Watts

08/10/2013 11:21

12 November 2013 - 19 January 2014

Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey GU3 1DQ 01483 810235 info@wattsgallery.org.uk The exhibition has been organised by Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution.

Supported by:

American Art Supporters’ Group

Michael Marks Charitable Trust

Image Credit: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne – Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, c.1872–75, oil on canvas, 68.26 x 51.2 cm, © Tate London, 2012, presented by the Art Fund, 1905

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www.wattsgallery.org.uk

24/10/2013 10:51

Listings

EXHIBITION 8 FEB to 9 MAR 2014

The Women and the Secret

Marc Chagall

THE STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY High Street, Cookham, Berkshire SL6, 01628 471885 www.stanleyspencer.org.uk Stanley Spencer in Cookham

Spencer’s name is synonymous with picturesque Thames-side Cookham, termed by him his ‘earthly paradise’.

This exhibition celebrates his response to Cookham, whether in figure paintings, drawings or landscapes, until 30/3/14 THE SUNBURY EMBROIDERY GALLERY The Walled Garden, Sunbury-on-Thames TW16, 01932 788101 www.sunburyembroidery.org.uk The Millennium Embroidery Celebrates the Village of Sunbury Permanent exhibition; Moods of the South Downs Jessica Coote’s intricate

A selection of beautiful historic original hand coloured etchings from The Fables of La Fontaine

brookgallery .co.uk

and visually stunning textile landscapes exude the passion she feels for the South Downs 19/11–15/12/13; Evelyn Jennings A well-known and much admired local artist displays her latest collection of unique pieces of embroidery 4–30/3/14 TATE ST IVES Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, Cornwall TR26, 01736 796226 www.tate.org.uk/stives The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep

Fore St | Budleigh Salterton | Devon | EX9 6NH | 01395 443003 | art@brookgallery.co.uk

Major exhibition brings together over 150 contemporary and historic artworks that explore how the deep has been imagined by artists, writers and poets through time. Featuring work by artists including J.M.W. Turner, Marcel Broodthaers, Oskar Kokoshka, Barbara Hepworth, Odilon Redon, Lucian Freud and Hokusai, among others, until 26/1/14 UNIVERSITY GALLERY & BARING WING Northumbria University, Sandyford Road, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne NE1, 0191 227 4424 www.northumbria.ac.uk/universitygallery The Lost World of Norman Cornish

Paintings, drawings, watercolours and pastels, until 31/1/14; Ørnulf Opdahl Paintings and prints 7/2–28/3/14 WATTS GALLERY Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey GU3, 01483 810235 www.wattsgallery.org.uk The Making of Mary Seton Watts

Until 19/1/14

Contemporary Figurative and Abstract Art Located centrally in Little Venice and set over three rooms, Thomas and Paul gallery provides a relaxed and contemplative environment including a reading room of art books and magazines. We have a schedule of solo and themed exhibitions with regular late openings.

20 Bristol Gardens, London W9 2JQ Nearest tube: Warwick Avenue Phone 020 7289 6200 www.thomasandpaul.com

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YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK West Bretton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF4, 01924 832631 www.ysp.co.uk Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest and Other Stories until 2/2/14; Tom Price Exhibition of sculptures and

animations to accompany the open-air premiere of Network, the largest bronze to date by Tom Price 4/1–27/4/14;

Oppenheim’s work, the complete set of 100 related drawings from the same period are displayed 21/11/13–16/2/14 ZILLAH BELL GALLERY Kirgate, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7, 01845 522 479 www.zillahbellgallery.co.uk Norman Ackroyd CBE RA: On Donegal Bay Launch of a suite of ten

new Irish etchings, from 30/11/13; R.A.S.A An exhibition by alumni of the RA Schools, from 8/2/14; SWE 76th Annual Exhibition International exhibition by members of The Society of Wood Engravers, from 1/3/14

Artists’ Websites LOUISE DIGGLE Pastels of London life and light www.louisediggle.co.uk JOAN DOERR Paintings inspired by the elemental impact on the environment www.joandoerr.com MICHAEL FAIRCLOUGH Textured oil paintings of vast skies above reflecting seas and brooding landscapes www.michaelfairclough.co.uk JACQUIE GULLIVER THOMPSON Memories in oil paintings of Mexico, Byzantine Greece, Yemen & the Sahara www.jacquiegulliverthompson.com OLIVER NEEDS Contemporary artist. Surreal, symbolic and meaningful paintings www.oliverneedsart.co.uk OWL ART STUDIO Woodcarvings and printworks.

A mythology of one’s own www.owlartstudio.net ULLA PLOUGHMAND Paintings. Colourful female forms, landscapes, flowers and the cosmos www.ulla-art.com NICOLA SLATTERY Thoughtful, peaceful art from the imagination www.nicolaslattery.com ELINOR TOLLEY Oils, watercolours, paper mosaics www.elinortolleygallery.co.uk ANGELA WAKEFIELD Contemporary urban landscapes of New York, London and Europe www.angelawakefield.co.uk

Dennis Oppenheim: Alternative Landscape Components YSP re-

JO WHITNEY Oil paintings; sea, sand, city life.

Venice; Nice; Cornwall; Plymouth www.jo-whitney.co.uk

presents Fixture Trees (2005) and Trees: From Alternative Landscape Components (2006) by Dennis Oppenheim.

To accompany this celebration of

MARJANA WJASNOVA Symbolic, abstract, spiritual artist www.wjasnova.com

26/09/2013 17:28

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Published by Lund Humphries to coincide with a new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts Special exhibition price of £35 (RRP £40) at RA bookshops ISBN: 978-1-84822-060-7 www.lundhumphries.com or call Bookpoint on 01235 827730

THE GREAT SPANISH MASTERS: FROM EL GRECO TO SOROLLA With art historian Colin Bailey. September 22–28, 2014

SHORT COURSES AT CHRISTIE’S EDUCATION

Wine Masterclass: Champagne – the Magnum Effect 21 November 2013 A Closer Look at Baroque 2–4 December 2013

Contact shortcourses@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7665 4350 christies.edu

Exploring Prints & Multiples 2–4 December 2013

Christie’s Education London 153 Great Titchfield Street London W1W 5BD

The Christie’s Collecting Course: Post-War & Contemporary Art 2–16 December 2013

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The Christie’s Art Business Course: Collecting, Dealing & Fairs 3–17 December 2013 Vienna 1900 Experience 9–11 December 2013

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Christie’s Mayfair is offering readers a 15% discount on the catalogue for ‘When Britain Went Pop! British Pop Art – The Early Years’ (at 103 New Bond Street until 24 November).

The show features work by Royal Academicians including David Hockney, Allen Jones, Joe Tilson and Patrick Caulfield. Please quote RAOFFER2013. Visit christies.com or telephone 020 7389 2253 for more details.

Isabella Blow, 2002, by Diego Uchitel at Somerset House

The RA Shops are offering a 10% discount on the following titles: Daumier: Art and Life in Nineteenthcentury Paris Use online code

RAMAG71 for the softback £19.50 (rrp £21.95) and RAMAG72 for the hardback £36 (rrp £40); Matisse: The Chapel at Vence Use online code RAMAG73 for the hardback £54 (rrp £60); Want 100 postcards featuring photographs of beggars from the art dealer John Kasmin’s collection. Use online code RAMAG74 £8.95 (rrp £9.95); Craigie Aitchison: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints Use online code RAMAG75 £31.50 (rrp £35).

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In the Studio 68 / Academicians’ News 70 / Out to Lunch 73 / In Memoriam 75 / The Keeper’s House 76 / Legacies 78 / Events & Lectures 80

Academy

Object lessons A few months before Richard Deacon RA’s huge, serpentine, bentwood and steel sculpture After (1998) slots into place in his Tate Britain retrospective, the 64-year-old artist is showing me the work’s modest beginnings. In a shelfcrammed anteroom on the upper floor of his duplex industrial unit in Herne Hill, south London (opposite), he points to a small maquette assembled from glued-together curves of burnished wood. After, he says, came from ‘being interested in circular forms... and having a lot of curtain rings around’. The matter-offactness is very Deacon, as is the chasm between an everyday starting point and a sculptural endpoint that is driven by material processes yet rippling with allusions.

Deacon was the first occupant on the estate, at a recession-struck moment in 1991 when the units were hard to shift. He had been sharing a leaky Acme studio in Brixton with other artists since 1978, the year he had his first solo show.

In 1987 Deacon won the Turner Prize, having become grouped with the New British Sculptors, along with Bill Woodrow RA (page 46), Tony Cragg RA, Richard Wentworth and Anish Kapoor RA (page 71).

Since Deacon famously refers to himself as a ‘fabricator’, naturally this is not his only working space. ‘I have quite a dispersed operation,’ he explains. He can be found creating his signature steamed-wood sculptures with his long-term collaborator Matthew Perry in nearby West Norwood; his metal works are made in Bletchley and his ceramic sculptures in Cologne (he teaches in nearby Düsseldorf). But the Herne Hill studio is the nerve centre, what Deacon calls his ‘generating space’. ‘I do a bit of making up here – but I don’t want it to get too dusty – and also a bit of drawing, but it’s actually rather full,’ he says, gazing at the multiplicity of

paper-strewn tables, map-covered walls, shelves of archives and aides-mémoire, and big green plants rising ever closer to wide skylights.

Over the years Deacon has found all kinds of ways of getting started. One example in the Tate show is a series of drawings, ‘It’s Orpheus When There’s Singing’ (1978-79). Inspired by the writings of Rilke, these drawings used geometric processes to construct shapes in a way that often prefigured forms in his sculpture over the next decade. But most often, says Deacon, his ideas ‘come from how objects are put together’, and a brimming set of metal shelves at one end of the studio testifies to that.

Here are ropes, minerals and crystals, toys that Deacon has borrowed back from his children, a Marge Simpson head (‘I find her hair quite an interesting shape: all those bubbles’), ethnographic objects, teapots, binoculars, skulls, bones, nests.

Some of this accumulation, Deacon says, is ‘post hoc’: artefacts that reaffirm formal intuitions. For example, the pair of crushed rolls of grey tape that he bought from Bell Street market – near the Lisson Gallery, which represents him

‘Here are ropes, minerals and crystals, toys that Deacon has borrowed back from his children, a Marge Simpson head...’

– echoes the bent tubular forms and laminating processes he was pursuing in his own work.

Sometimes inspiration flows contrariwise.

Deacon picks up a small rubbery relief of a princess’s head wearing a crown with bobbles on the tips. ‘I made a sculpture called Fruit in 1985, based on these bits,’ he says, pointing at the crown’s extremities, ‘which sit on the ground and support something in the middle.’

Next, he holds up a pressed-plywood takeaway box, ‘an example of a material process that I thought was really quite interesting; it’s not even glued, it’s just the pressure that’s been given to the form’. And then a bunch of ringpulls, strung together by a bored stranger and harvested by the pavement-browsing artist.

For such an established artist, the studio seems very quiet. Deacon says he works better without other people around, feeling guilty if he isn’t finding something for them to do.

Sometimes there is an archivist who sits at an iMac, organising Deacon’s vast database, including thousands of his drawings. Deacon is also curating a group show, ‘Abstract Drawing’, for the Drawing Room in London in 2014.

Mostly, though, you suspect that Deacon is happiest when solitary in this studio, figuring out how best to approach a milestone show like the Tate retrospective, or how to wrest sculptural substance from a garland of ancient ring-pulls, or glancing with amusement across at his noticeboard, where a yellowed newspaper clipping – a rugby report – bears the headline: ‘Deacon signs off with significant victory’. Sign off?

From here, it doesn’t look likely.

Richard Deacon Tate Britain, 020 7887 8888, www.tate. org.uk, 5 Feb–27 April, 2014 Abstract Drawing Drawing Room, London, 020 7394 5657, www.drawingroom.org.uk, 20 Feb–12 April, 2014

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P H OTO © E A M O N N M CCA B E

AS RICHARD DEACON RA PREPARES FOR A MAJOR TATE SURVEY SHOW, MARTIN HERBERT MEETS THE SCULPTOR IN HIS SOUTH LONDON STUDIO SURROUNDED BY THE EVERYDAY OBJECTS THAT INFORM AND ECHO HIS WORK. PHOTOGRAPH BY EAMONN MCCABE

P H OTO © E A M O N N M CCA B E

In the Studio

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Academy Academicians’ News

To coin a phrase TOM PHILLIPS RA TELLS GILL CR ABBE HOW HE IS BRINGING ART TO THE MASSES WITH HIS LATEST DESIGN FOR THE ROYAL MINT

House Gallery, Chichester (until 26 Jan, 2014) ● Anthony Whishaw contributes to the Royal West of England Academy autumn/winter show (24 Nov–26 Jan, 2014) ● David Hockney, Allen Jones and Joe Tilson show in ‘When Britain Went Pop! British Pop Art: the Early Years’ at Christie’s Mayfair, London (until 23 Nov) ● Albert Irvin, Bill Jacklin, Barbara Rae and Joe Tilson take part in ‘40 Years of Fine Art’ at the Bohun Gallery, Henley-onThames, (16 Nov–25 Jan, 2014) ● Diana Armfield, Elizabeth Blackadder and Anthony Eyton take part in a Christmas show at Browse & Darby, London (10–23 Dec).

OUR GUIDE TO WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF ROYAL ACADEMICIANS THIS SEASON

Painters/ Printers ● Basil Beattie’s solo show ‘Promises, Promises’ is at Jerwood Hastings (until 8 Jan, 2014) ● Frank Bowling’s solo show ‘The Map Paintings 19671971’ is at Hales Gallery, London (until 23 Nov) ● Michael CraigMartin’s sculpture Gate in Hanover Square, London, is on show until mid-December ● Maurice Cockrill has a solo show at Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery, Aykley Heads (right; 18 Jan–30 March, 2014). A catalogue accompanies the show ● Anne Desmet takes part in ‘Sense of Soane’ at Aberystwyth School of Art Gallery and Museum (25 Nov–14 Feb, 2014) ● Blue Figure III, a limited-edition print by Tracey Emin, is available through Scream Editions in aid of the charity Drop4Drop ● Anthony Green, Diana Armfield, Bernard Dunstan and Ken Howard take part in the

NEAC Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London (29 Nov– 8 Dec) ● Prints by David Hockney go on show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (5 Feb–11 May,

2014). ‘David Hockney: Early Reflections’ is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (until 16 March, 2014), and ‘David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition’ is at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (until 20 Jan, 2014) ● Gary Hume’s new ‘outdoor painting’ Pecking Bird has been installed on the façade of the Triton Building in Regent’s Place, London ● ‘Landscapes of Space: Paintings and Prints by Tess Jaray’ is at Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham (21 Feb–27 April, 2014).

A monograph published by Ridinghouse accompanies the show. Jaray curates ‘The Edge of Painting’ at the Piper Gallery, London, in which Cornelia Parker takes part (29 Nov–10 Jan, 2014) ● Allen Jones shows new work in his solo exhibition ‘Melody Maker’ at Galerie Hilger, Vienna (until 23 Nov) ● Mick Moon and Anthony Whishaw participate in ‘Under the Greenwood: Picturing British Trees’ at St Barbe Museum, Lymington, Hants (until 23 Nov) ● Mali Morris shows in ‘Painting Past Present: A Painter's Craft’ at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-uponTyne (until 9 Feb, 2014); ‘Small is Beautiful’ at Flowers Kingsland Road, London (23 Nov–5 Jan, 2014); and ‘Colour/Boundary’ at Gallery North,

Tom Phillips RA www.tomphillips.co.uk

Wheat Three Parts, 1992, by Maurice Cockrill, on show in Durham this winter

Newcastle-upon-Tyne (20 Jan–21 Feb, 2014). Morris and Lisa Milroy are selectors for the 2014 John Moores Painting Prize China, in Shanghai ● Grayson Perry’s tapestry series ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’ is at Manchester Art Gallery (until 2 Feb, 2014), then at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (14 Feb–14 May, 2014) ● Tom Phillips shows in ‘Life’s Work: Tom Phillips and Johnny Carrera’ at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts (until 19 Jan, 2014) ● Barbara Rae has solo shows at Richmond Hill Gallery, London (until 12 Jan, 2014), and at the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow (until 8 Dec) ● Sean Scully’s exhibition ‘Triptychs’ is at Pallant

Sculptors ● Phyllida Barlow’s solo show ‘Hoard’

is at the Norton Museum of Art, Florida (3 Dec–23 Feb, 2014). She takes part in Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (until 16 March, 2014) ● James Butler’s new sculpture Colossus, which marks the anniversary of Tommy Flowers’ invention of the first electronic computer, is being unveiled by HRH Prince of Wales at BT’s Research and Development Centre, Martlesham, Suffolk (12 Dec) ● Antony Gormley’s work Present Time (2001) is on loan to Mansfield College, Oxford, until 2018 ● A major exhibition of work by Anish Kapoor (opposite) is at Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul (until 5 Jan, 2014)

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CO U R T ESY O F PA N GO L I N LO N D O N / P H OTO S T E V E RUS S EL L . TATE © ALISON W ILDING . © A N IS H K A P O O R A N D L IS S O N G A L L ERY

Now showing

Blow, set the wild echoes flying’ in a lilting, freehand lettering that echoes their celebratory sentiment. ‘It is a coin for the digital age,’ says Phillips.

‘Just Google the words and you can hear Britten’s lifelong companion Peter Pears singing them in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.’

The Royal Mint’s commission follows Phillips’ 50p coin marking 250 years of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, and a commemorative £5 coin for the London Olympics.

His final drawing for the new coin (left) now resides at the Britten-Pears Foundation in Aldeburgh. He is delighted that millions of copies of his image are reaching the public. ‘Now you can get hold of a work of art for just 50p.’

© TO M P H I L L I P S 2013 . BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY

Study for the Benjamin Britten memorial coin, 2013, by Tom Phillips RA

Flip one of the new 50 pence coins and if it comes up tails you will find the name ‘Benjamin Britten’ framed on two musical staves blazoned across its face. It is the central motif in the new design to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth in 1913.

The new coin was designed by Tom Phillips RA, a composer as well as visual artist. ‘What I wanted it to speak of was music,’ he says. ‘The stave soon entered the design, in this case the double stave of piano scores, as Britten was an eloquent pianist.’

The integration of text and image is a central part of Phillips’ oeuvre – he is best known for his artist’s book A Humument (1973), a Victorian novel in which each page became an artwork. The new coin bears Alfred Tennyson’s words, ‘Blow Bugle

CO U R T ESY O F PA N GO L I N LO N D O N / P H OTO S T E V E RUS S EL L . TATE © ALISON W ILDING . © A N IS H K A P O O R A N D L IS S O N G A L L ERY

© TO M P H I L L I P S 2013 . BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY

Shadow play

Material world

The title of Ann Christopher RA’s new exhibition at Pangolin London (until 7 Dec; 020 7520 1480) ‘To Know Without Remembering’ captures the spirit of her creative process. ‘It describes beautifully how intuitively and instinctively I, and a lot of other artists, work,’ she says. The show focuses on her recent sculpture and marks a change of tack – following a shoulder injury last year, she has adapted to create smaller sculptures that echo the strength and elegance of her previous large-scale work. With its pitted and incised surface and metallic shine, the bronze Light Shadow (2012; right) considers ‘physical lightness, lightness of colour and shadow, which are key elements in the show,’ Christopher says. Pangolin’s natural light intensifies the relationship in the work between what she describes as her two loves: ‘bright lights and mysterious darks’. Daisy Taylor

Five abstract sculptures by Alison Wilding RA greet visitors to Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries (until 9 March, 2014; 020 7887 8888) in a show that represents a significant stretch of the artist’s career and is testament to her range of materials and techniques. Works include Assembly (1991), in which two large

polyhedrons in PVC and steel sit side by side, and Tate’s new acquisition Vanish and Detail (2004, below). Featuring two cylindrical concrete forms topped by steel discs, this sculpture, in Wilding’s words, conveys ‘something simultaneously disappearing and arriving’.

Sarah Bolwell

● Conrad Shawcross has been commissioned to make a sculpture for Dulwich Park, London. The new work, Three Perpetual Chords, will be installed in summer 2014 ● Yinka Shonibare’s show ‘Making Eden’ takes place at BlainSouthern, Berlin (15 Feb–19 April, 2014). Shonibare’s first show to be eld in Hong Kong, ‘Dreaming Rich’, takes place at Pearl Lam Galleries (19 Nov–9 Jan, 2014) ● Richard Wilson takes part in ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ at the Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (until 14 Dec). Wilson also shows work in ‘Bunny Smash: Design to Touch the World’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (until 19 Jan, 2014) ● Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley and Richard Long contribute to ‘Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain’ at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (until 5 Jan, 2014), which travels to the Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (18 Jan–8 March, 2014) ● Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor and Richard Long show in ‘Nostalgic for the Future’ at the Lisson Gallery, London (until 11 Jan, 2014) ● Ron Arad and Anish Kapoor have work on show in ‘Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital’ at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (until 6 July, 2014) ● Antony Gormley and David Chipperfield have been awarded the Japan Art Association’s prestigious Praemium Imperiale prizes in the categories of Sculpture and Architecture respectively.

Architects

Yellow, 1999, by Anish Kapoor, on show in Istanbul

● David Chipperfield Architects has laid the foundation stone for the new James Simon Gallery on Museum Island in Berlin, and has also been selected to renovate the House of Art in Munich. The firm will design the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Art, a major new museum opening in 2016 ● Norman Foster’s firm has completed a major refurbishment of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts galleries, in Norwich. The SSE Hydro in Glasgow, a new entertainment venue designed

by Foster + Partners, is now open ● Zaha Hadid Architects are designing the new National Stadium of Japan which will host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as athletics events, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Hadid has also designed five 90m super-yachts for engineering company Blohm+Voss ● Ian Ritchie Architects have won the commission to refurbish the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London ● Chris Wilkinson’s firm WilkinsonEyre has won the competition to build the tallest tower, at 265m, in Sydney, to be completed in 2016.

The 66-storey building on the Barangaroo site at Sydney Harbour will stand alongside Richard Rogers’ development there.

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Academy Out to Lunch

Art in a cold climate

P H OTO © M A R I A S PA N N

ON HER ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS, EMMA STIBBON RA FACED ALL KINDS OF HAZARDS, FROM THE THREAT OF POLAR BEARS TO HER PAINT FREEZING AS SHE WORKED. ELE ANOR MILL S MEETS HER FOR A NORDIC-STYLE LUNCH. PHOTOGRAPH BY MARIA SPANN

‘Don’t tell the chef, but when I was last in Iceland we mainly ate hotdogs and liquorice,’ Emma Stibbon RA whispers as we arrive at the Scandinavian-inspired restaurant Texture, near Bond Street Tube. The artist travelled to the frozen north in October 2012, and the work she made from her trip goes on show at Rabley Drawing Centre, near Marlborough, in November.

‘I’ve been incorporating found materials like volcanic ash and geothermal mud into my drawings for the first time,’ she says. ‘I want to create a sense of fragility in the fabric of my work and for that to act as a metaphor for the subjects I depict. Both the materials I use and the icy landscapes I draw are temporary.’

Stibbon is known for her portrayals of the most remote environments in the world, including the outer reaches of the Arctic and Antarctic. But she also draws stark urban vistas, many of Berlin. She grew up in Germany, as her father was in the British Army, and she feels close to the history and architecture of the city. She sees the two sides of her practice as intimately linked: ‘Underlying all my work is the experience of change and trying to read a landscape through its history, whether it’s geological shifts across millennia in the natural world, or shifts of ideology and political systems in the built environment.

I’m compelled to look at a place and try to unpick that.’

Founded by Icelandic chef Agnar Sverrisson, Texture is adorned with paintings of erupting volcanoes and crockery glazed to appear like ruptured tectonic plates. On seeing the decor, Stibbon is instantly reminded of ‘walking through lava fields bursting with smoke, covered with snow and ice.’ She has travelled in Iceland extensively and finds

herself deeply fascinated by the transformation of landscape through geological forces. ‘I’ve always found the shifting terrain compelling – it looks so permanent but actually it’s dynamic and changing all the time.’

Just like the rocks shifting over time, Stibbon’s vision of these places alters as she gathers experiences, photographs, personal accounts and scientific research about the places she visits. But although the vast landscapes she draws are unpopulated, nevertheless Stibbon says her trips are by nature collaborative due to their remoteness: ‘In the High Arctic we were protected by armed guides at all times because of the threat of polar bears,’ she explains. And on her most recent trip to the Antarctic in 2013, she travelled with the Royal Navy.

‘I wasn’t allowed to go walking on my own in case I wandered off into a crevasse.’

One of her most vivid memories of the Antarctic is navigating through sea ice at night. ‘It was mesmerising and profoundly awesome, in the true sense of the word,’ says Stibbon.

‘Glacier ice is extremely old and can be as hard as concrete, so the ice-breaker can’t cut through it, whereas sea ice, which is only a year old, is easier to break.’

Incredibly, despite all the technology on board, it is still necessary for skilled lookouts to judge the ice conditions by eye, Stibbon tells me. ‘I remember being surrounded by monolithic bergs and the ship was just picking its way through. As we sailed through, I heard ice cracking with pockets of air escaping. It was a very, very sensory experience.’

Stibbon’s bracing experience of Antarctic temperatures is a far cry from our warming main dish of skate. ‘As I was drawing glaciers, ice shelves and icebergs, my usual

Emma Stibbon RA at Texture, in Portman Street, London

water-based media were freezing on my palette,’ she continues.

‘It was like painting with crystals.

I had to sort of throw the paint off the brush onto the paper. It was frustrating, but now I am really attached to those images because I can see where the paint has dried in crystal form.’ Our dessert appears, and Stibbon’s stories of frozen paint crystals toppling onto paper evoke the refreshing, granulated sorrel-sorbet before us remarkably well.

The day she arrived back from the Antarctic in March, Stibbon was greeted by a telephone call inviting her to become an Academician: she felt very humbled to join the company of Basil Beattie RA, Leonard McComb RA and Michael Craig-

Martin RA, who all taught her as an art student at Goldsmiths in the 1980s. Stibbon herself teaches at the University of Brighton.

As our culinary experience comes to an end, the maître d’ brings us a selection of confectionery, including Sverrisson’s take on that famous lozenge, the Fisherman’s Friend. Stibbon smiles as she takes one. ‘I love them. They give you a bit of a kick when you’re out in the ocean.’

Emma Stibbon RA: Terra Infirma Rabley Drawing Centre, Marlborough, 01672 511999, www.rableydrawingcentre. com, 18 Nov–20 Dec Scan the image above to see a video of Emma Stibbon’s trip to Antarctica, including images of her sketchbook. See page 16 for instructions

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, as m t s ri y Ch er b r o d y f or 3 er our 201 v eli e y er e d plac emb r su e ec en leas 3 D o p 1 T

Give the gift of Friends membership Free entry to all exhibitions Bring guests for free* Friends Previews All day access to the Keeper’s House Receive the RA Magazine quarterly Inspiring talks and events Standard Friends membership starts from £90 a year Young Friends membership (16-25 years) is £45 a year Go to www.royalacademy.org.uk/friends Call us on 020 7300 5664 Visit the Friends Desk in the Front Hall

*one family adult and up to four family children (under 16) Image © Royal Academy of Arts. Photo: Mark Blower

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Academy

News in brief SIR ANTHONY CARO RA, 1924-2013 As we were going to press on this issue of RA Magazine we heard the sad news of the death of Sir Anthony Caro RA, one of the greatest British sculptors of the postwar period.

A full obituary will appear in the next issue, published on 3 March, 2014.

NEW ACADEMICIANS Neil Jeffries, Tim Shaw and Yinka Shonibare have been elected Royal Academicians in the Sculpture category.

NEW ROYAL ACADEMY TRUSTEES The Royal Academy Trust Board has elected a number of new trustees. The new members are Sir David Cannadine, Adrian Cheng, Sir Keith Mills, Sir Stuart Rose and Iwan Wirth. Susan Ho has joined as an Honorary Trustee.

John Bellany RA preparing for his 60th birthday exhibition at Beaux Arts, London, in 2002

In memoriam: John Bellany RA

ES TAT E O F J O H N B EL L A N Y

JOHN BELLANY’S ART WAS IRREPRESSIBLY LIFE-AFFIRMING, WHETHER EVOKING THE SCOTTISH FISHING VILLAGE OF HIS BIRTH OR HIS TIME IN HOSPITAL. BY JOAN BAKEWELL John Bellany (1942-2013) was a life force. All those who knew him, even those who had a mere fleeting contact with him, will have recognised the life-affirming spirit in all John did. His was a vigorous and turbulent ego, stirred to delight and enthusiasm by the world about him, and driven to instant fury when he perceived injustice and cruelty. All of this was rooted in a Scottish background strong in moral values that John both inherited and at times defied.

His art sings with the resonance of those values.

I came to know John in the 1980s when his health was damaged and he was waiting for a kidney transplant. By the time we met, the paintings were echoing his health, still vigorous of intent and line, but pale in colour. As he endured the marathon operation John painted his way through the pain, and I as a broadcaster recorded his journey. The walls of his hospital room filled up with watercolours and drawings.

Nurses and doctors were enlisted as subjects.

And he drew the harrowing features of his own suffering with courageous honesty.

A favourite work of mine, The Presentation of Time (1987), pays tribute to the new lease of life the operation gave him. His work blossomed again into bold strokes and vivid colours. He once took me to Port Seton where he had grown up: we visited Eyemouth along the Scottish coast. We walked among boats with their rigging and fishing tackle – the world he knew and never left behind. He was the son and grandson of

fishermen, and the nature of the sea, its riches and its hazards, were a constant inspiration. His range broadened as he travelled: to China in 2003, bringing with him his own huge canvases, and to Tuscany where he found friends in the expatriate Scottish community of Barga.

Always the sureness of his brush and his delight in colour created large and vivid canvases. The complexity of human desire and longing finds its place there, too. The beauty of his beloved wife Helen runs like a golden thread through his most joyous work.

I once asked John – as interviewers will – the significance of the oft repeated and haunting images he returned to over and over: different fish, different birds, sturdy but vulnerable boats.

He refused to elucidate. The wellspring of his moral life and feelings ran deep and remained private. His artistic roots took him to the nature of existence, its purpose and its destiny. In this he felt at one with the great tradition of Western painting. He was in awe of Goya, Rembrandt and Velázquez, loving their work and aspiring daily to meet the challenge of their example.

John has left an outstanding body of work behind him. His legacy is the integrity of an independent spirit who pursued his vision with unblinking clarity. His paintings light up any room in which they hang.

RA SCHOOLS AUCTION The annual Schools auction of works

by Academicians and RA Schools Alumni takes place on 25 March, 2014, with all proceeds going towards the running of the RA Schools. For tickets and information, call 020 7300 5762 or 020 7300 5702 or email fundraising. events@royalacademy.org.uk A BETTER PLACE TO SHOW ART To protect the invaluable works of art on show at the RA and reduce the Academy’s carbon footprint, the RA has been replacing its humidity control systems. The newly installed system provides state-of-the-art conditions within which to display works of art.

CHRISTMAS OPENING TIMES The Royal Academy is open 10am6pm, 20-23 Dec, closed 24-26 Dec and reopens on 27 Dec, 10am-6pm. Usual opening hours resume from then on.

NEW ONLINE SHOP The RA’s new online shop has an exclusive range of Christmas cards, as well as gifts to complement the ‘Australia’ show, including this blownglass vase by glass artist Peter Layton (below). Visit the shop at shop.royalacademy.org.uk

John Bellany’s work is on show at Beaux Arts, London, 020 7437 5799, www.beauxartslondon.co.uk, until 24 Dec

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Academy

Pride of place WITH THE OPENING OF THE ACADEMY’S KEEPER’S HOUSE, A HAVEN FOR ARTISTS AND ART LOVERS HAS BEEN CREATED IN THE HEART OF LONDON. SAM PHILLIPS REPORTS

Recently elected Academicians Conrad Shawcross, Chantal Joffe and Mike Nelson meet in the new Shenkman Bar BELOW Architectural casts adorn the new Keeper’s House Restaurant LEFT

September saw the opening of the Keeper’s House, a suite of rooms in Burlington House in which Friends can eat, drink, relax and socialise alongside the many artists and architects who call the Academy home, from the art students in the RA Schools to Royal Academicians.

Academicians have been among the first to enjoy the spaces, which downstairs include a new restaurant, where architectural casts adorn the walls; the vibrant red Shenkman Bar with its walls of contemporary art; and the Academy’s garden, designed by Tom StuartSmith – ‘a wonderful secret garden’, says sculptor Conrad Shawcross RA. On the ground floor the refurbished Sir Hugh Casson Room and Belle Shenkman Room are elegant and comfortable places for Friends to while away an afternoon.

The Keeper’s House once provided a home for the Keeper of the RA – the artist responsible for the Schools – and current Keeper Eileen Cooper RA is enthusiastic about its redevelopment. ‘It’s fantastic – and with its extended opening hours it’s great for Friends and other visitors.’ Nicholas Grimshaw PPRA praised the restoration work by architects Long & Kentish and the interior design by David Chipperfield RA. ‘The Keeper’s House has been done to the most extraordinary high quality. All the finishes, the brass handrails and oak floors... it’s going to wear beautifully for Friends.’

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P H OTOS R I CH A R D B RYA N T A N D T I M M I TCH EL L /A R CA I D I M AGES

P H OTOS T I M P. W H I T BY/GE T T Y I M AGES A N D T I M M I TCH EL L /A R CA I D I M AGES

For full details on the Keeper’s House visit www. keepershouse.org.uk. To book a table, call 020 7300 5881

The Keeper’s House Scan the image at the bottom of the page to see a video of the Keeper’s House garden and an interview with its designer Tom Stuart-Smith. See page 16 for instructions

P H OTOS R I CH A R D B RYA N T A N D T I M M I TCH EL L /A R CA I D I M AGES

P H OTOS T I M P. W H I T BY/GE T T Y I M AGES A N D T I M M I TCH EL L /A R CA I D I M AGES

LEFT Photographs of Royal Academcians line the walls in the stairwell of the Keeper’s House BELOW The refurbished Sir Hugh Casson Room BOTTOM A detail of Michael Craig-Martin RA’s sculpture, Garden Fork (Red), 2008/2013, installed in the Keeper’s House garden

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Academy

Gifts that keep on giving

of the few in the world. We want our students to come here and transform and develop, not just carry on making the same work and polishing it.’ Most postgraduate courses run for two years, but the extra year allows students time to be bold, to experiment and to make mistakes.

One of the second-year students is Josie Cockram, whose studio is tucked away at the top of Burlington House. While her studio mate quietly applies paint to canvas, Josie sits in front of her computer editing a series of short video pieces that will eventually form part of an installation. She is the first person to benefit

from a new bursary, which has been set up to give one student each year some extra help.

Like most people on the MA course, Josie works part-time to fund her living expenses. ‘I had just completed the first year and I was struggling a bit with working,’ she explains. ‘It’s a really exciting, absorbing full-time course, and I had some health problems. This bursary has made an enormous difference, because it means I won’t have to work so much, and I can concentrate more on time in the studio.’

Pauline Sitwell, whose legacy funds Josie’s bursary, was herself a student at the RA Schools

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DA I LY M A I L /S O LO SY N D I CAT I O N

In May 1822, Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy, received a letter at his Bedford Square home. ‘I have been fortunate enough to gain possession of an undoubted work of M. Angelo,’ it began, a row of exclamation marks conveying breathless enthusiasm.

Sir George Beaumont, the writer, had certainly staged a coup. The bas-relief of Jesus, St John and the Virgin was a rare and beautiful work with an impeccable provenance. Six years later, Lawrence received another letter. Sir George had died, and his executor wished to fulfil the intentions of his ‘late lamented Relation, in presenting this unique specimen of art by that great Master Michael Angelo, for the acceptance of the Royal Academy’. As a result of Beaumont’s extraordinary act of generosity, the Taddei Tondo, the only Michelangelo sculpture in the UK, is now on permanent display outside the Academy’s Sackler Wing.

Throughout its history the Royal Academy has received legacies – large and small gifts of money, as well as works of art – that have helped it to survive without any income from the government. At a time when the Academy is embarking on the redevelopment of 6 Burlington Gardens, it’s amazing to think that the sculptor John Gibson’s substantial legacy of £32,000 funded the addition of a top floor to Burlington House in the 1860s. Gibson also bequeathed his sculptures in the hope that they ‘would be of use to the Young sculptors as to style’, and they are still displayed in the RA Schools Cast Corridor and Library in fulfilment of his wishes.

Of course, it’s not just Academicians like Gibson or wealthy collectors like Beaumont who leave bequests these days: the RA receives legacies from all kinds of people. Although some legators have specified that their bequest be used for a specific purpose, most are happy for their money to go into the Royal Academy Trust, which supports all the Academy’s work. Every small gift invested in the trust provides a crucial source of income for many years to come.

The 17 students who are admitted to the RA Schools every year certainly benefit from that kindness, as they are not charged tuition fees – although it costs the Schools around £15,000 a year for each student. As Eileen Cooper RA, who is responsible for the RA Schools as Keeper of the Royal Academy, explains: ‘Legacies help enormously because we provide free education for our students. We’re the only three-year fine art postgraduate course in the country, and one

P H OTO © B EN ED I C T J O H NS O N

CAROLINE BUGLER MEETS AN RA SCHOOLS STUDENT WHO IS A BENEFICIARY OF A BURSARY SET UP BY AN ALUMNUS FROM THE 1930S, AND EXPLAINS THE VITAL ROLE THAT LEGACIES CONTINUE TO PLAY IN THE LIFE OF THE RA

Legacies THIS PAGE Pauline Sitwell, who gained a place at the RA Schools in the early 1930s OPPOSITE PAGE Josie Cockram, the first recipient of the Pauline Sitwell Bursary, filming silk in her studio at the RA Schools

DA I LY M A I L /S O LO SY N D I CAT I O N

P H OTO © B EN ED I C T J O H NS O N

‘Pauline Sitwell, whose legacy funds Josie’s bursary, was herself a student at the RA Schools in the 1930s’

in the early 1930s. When she enrolled at the tender age of 17, every student received money to study. Like Josie, Pauline was given the freedom to experiment with different types of work. After she left the Schools she stayed in touch, helping to found the alumni association, and she left her entire estate to the Royal Academy Schools.

Other artists have also been keen to help those who follow in their footsteps: a decade ago, James and Patricia Turner, who both trained as sculptors at Goldsmiths College in the late 1940s, set up an award to help a graduating

RA Schools sculpture student at the beginning of their professional career.

The financial crash of 2008 inevitably had an adverse effect on legacies in the entire charity sector, and the RA was no exception.

Lord Mervyn Davies, Chairman of the Royal Academy Trustees, explains that while the last few decades have seen a ‘magical’ development of social responsibility in large corporations, there is now a need for more personal giving.

‘Legacies come in lots of different forms. They could be works of art, money, or support for an event for 10 years.’ Last year, the Government

launched a new initiative that offers a reduced rate of inheritance tax to those who leave 10 per cent or more of their taxable estate to charity.

‘Our message is that, as you make out your Will, don’t forget to put aside that 10 per cent for charitable causes that are dear to your heart.

You can make a huge difference.’

That difference can also be seen in how the Schools students fare beyond their time at the Academy. It has been a successful year for current students and alumni, many of whom have had work selected for major exhibitions and have been awarded prizes and commissions, among them Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who was shortlisted for the 2013 Turner Prize.

So what motivates individuals, as opposed to corporations, to leave a legacy? The wish to give something back is a key factor, according to Davies: ‘People can say that when we’re gone we will have made a difference to an institution.’

Emma Warren-Thomas, the RA’s Legacy Manager, appreciates that each legator has an individual story. ‘One legator remained a Friend into her nineties,’ she says, ‘and she left twice her annual membership fee in her Will.’

Some may have been students at the RA, others may be art-lovers in the broadest sense, some support the academic rigour that underpins the institution, and others admire its education and events programmes.

But perhaps most of the people who make bequests simply have vivid and happy memories of the shows. All share a keen desire to see the achievements and enjoyment passed on to future generations. The reasons given by one Friend for her decision echo the feelings of many more: ‘First, to provide support for the Academy’s work. Secondly, as a thank you for the joy I have had from seeing exhibitions at the RA.’ To find out more about how your legacy could help the RA continue its work for future generations, contact Emma Warren-Thomas, Legacy Manager, on 020 7300 5677, or emma.warren-thomas@royalacademy.org.uk, or visit www.royalacademy.org.uk/legacy

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Academy Public Events & Lectures

Winter Events at the Royal Academy FURTHER INFORMATION ON OUR EVENTS CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.ROYALACADEMY.ORG.UK/EVENTS

How to book Public Events and Lectures

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November BILL WOODROW ACCESS EVENT

FOUND AT THE R A An Evening Curated by Students from the University of the Arts London

Fri 15 Nov Edward Richards delivers a slideassisted BSL talk about the ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ exhibition.

British Academy Room in Burlington Gardens; 6–7pm; £3

Fri 22 Nov Students take over the galleries, using themes and ideas from the ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ exhibition to create interventions, sculptures and displays throughout the evening.

Burlington Gardens; 6.30–9.30pm; free; admission to exhibition ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ requires a ticket

ACCESS EVENT

BILL WOODROW ACCESS EVENT

InMind at the RA

InTouch at the RA: for Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors

InteRAct at the RA – BSL: for Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing Visitors

Mons 18 Nov, 16 Dec, 20 Jan, 17 Feb Artist and gallery educators facilitate these sessions for individuals living with dementia and their carers, friends and family members. Join us for coffee to discuss artworks from the RA’s permanent collection.

Fine Rooms; 11am–12.30pm; £3

Mon 25 Nov Bridget Crowley gives an audiodescribed tour of the ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ exhibition in front of selected artworks, followed by a multi-sensory handling session led by Harry Baxter.

Burlington Gardens; 9–11am; £3

ACCESS EVENT

BILL WOODROW ACCESS EVENT

Fri 13 Dec John Wilson delivers a slide-assisted BSL talk on the ‘Daumier’ exhibition.

Reynolds Room; 6–7pm; £3

InPractice at the RA

InteRAct at the RA – Lipspeaking: for Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing Visitors

January

Fri 22 Nov A space for artists to share and celebrate their art practice. If you are an artist and would like to share your work or are someone who would like to support and appreciate others, then come along!

Contact the Access Officer for details.

Learning Studio; 6–8pm; free DAUMIER EVENING EVENT The Satirical Image: From Daumier to Private Eye

Fri 22 Nov What is the role of political satire in contemporary Britain? Tony Rushton (former Art Director, Private Eye) and exhibition curators Ann Dumas and Catherine Lampert explore satirical imagery from 19th-century France to 21st-century Britain.

Reynolds Room; 6.30–7.30pm; £16/£7 reductions (incl. exhibition entry) £12 (event only)

Fri 29 Nov Richard Thomas delivers a slideassisted talk about the ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ exhibition with lipspeaking support

by Jeanette Burton.

British Academy Room in Burlington Gardens; 6–7pm; £3

Clown Playing a Drum, c.1865–67, by Honoré Daumier

DAUMIER ACCESS EVENT

ARCHITECTURE EVENING EVENTS

InteRAct at the RA – BSL: for Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing Visitors

Snapshots: Emerging Responses to Contemporary Challenges

DAUMIER ACCESS EVENT InteRAct at the RA – Lipspeaking: for Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing Visitors

December

Fri 10 Jan Jennifer Little delivers a slide-assisted talk about the ‘Daumier’ exhibition with lipspeaking support by Maggie Short.

Reynolds Room; 6–7pm; £3

DAUMIER ACCESS EVENT

DAUMIER ACCESS EVENT

InTouch at the RA: for Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors

Mon 9 Dec Bridget Crowley gives an audiodescribed tour of the ‘Daumier’ exhibition in front of selected artworks, followed by a multi-sensory handling session led by Harry Baxter.

The Sackler Galleries; 9–11am; £3

InMotion at the RA: for Wheelchair Users and Mobility Impaired Visitors

Mon 13 Jan An introductory tour of the ‘Daumier’ exhibition, followed by coffee and conversation in the Saloon.

The Sackler Galleries; 9–11am; £3; volunteers support this event

Mons 13 Jan and 20 Jan The RA has once again teamed up with Building Design magazine and the Architect of the Year Awards to invite some of the award winners to discuss emerging trends in contemporary architecture. The awards ceremony takes place on 3 December, after which more details of these events will be announced.

Geological Society, Piccadilly, W1; 6.30–8pm; £12/£6 reductions BILL WOODROW TOUR Bill Woodrow RA: The Curator’s View

Mon 20 Jan ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ curator Edith Devaney leads an introductory tour of the work of one of Britain’s most prolific and influential sculptors.

Burlington Gardens; meet in the first gallery; 1–2pm; free with an exhibition ticket; no booking required JOHN CARTER EVENT John Carter RA: Artist Talk

Sat 25 Jan John Carter RA, one of Britain’s most respected abstract sculptors, discusses

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To book please visit our website, call 020 7300 5839, visit the RA ticket office, or complete the booking form overleaf and post to ‘Events and Lectures’ or fax 020 7300 8013.

Booking is advised for lunchtime lectures. Unclaimed seats will be released at 12.50pm that day, with no admittance after 1pm.

Reductions, where listed, are available for students, jobseekers and people with disabilities with recognised proof of status.

RA Friends and carers go free to Access events. Disabled parking spaces and wheelchairs can be reserved on 020 7300 8028.

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his work from the 1960s to today, focusing on the role played by drawing.

Reynolds Room; 3–4pm; free (seats must be reserved; unclaimed seats will be released at 2.50pm; no admittance after 3pm) SENSING SPACES LUNCHTIME LECTURE Creating ‘Sensing Spaces’

Mon 27 Jan Kate Goodwin, exhibition curator.

Reynolds Room; 1–2pm; free (seats must be reserved online or by telephone) EVENING EVENT Arts, Society and Medicine

Wed 29 Jan Sunand Prasad, Senior Partner of architectural firm Penoyre and Prasad, explores the theme of ‘Arts, Society and Medicine’ in the Royal Academy’s first ever collaboration with the Royal Society of Medicine.

Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole St, W1; 6pm registration, lecture at 6.30pm; free; pre-booking essential at www.rsm.ac.uk/royalacademy2014 SENSING SPACES EVENING EVENTS Fris 31 Jan, 7 Feb & 7, 14 and 28 Mar The immersive and provocative installations of ‘Sensing Spaces’ provide the context for fresh and passionate talks by key figures from the worlds of art, architecture, design and literature, exploring how our experience of spaces informs the way we think about and relate to architecture and cities. These imaginative and lively talks encourage audience participation.

Main Galleries; 7–7.30pm; free with an exhibition ticket (no booking required)

February BILL WOODROW ACCESS EVENT InMotion at the RA: for Wheelchair Users and Mobility Impaired Visitors

Mon 3 Feb An introductory tour of the ‘Bill Woodrow RA’ exhibition, followed by

SENSING SPACES ACCESS EVENT InteRAct at the RA – BSL: for Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing Visitors

Fri 7 Feb An interactive BSL talk about the ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition.

Learning Studio; 6–7pm; £3; deaf hosts support this event SENSING SPACES ACCESS EVENT InTouch at the RA: for Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors

Mon 10 Feb Artist educators lead an audio-described multi-sensory tour of the ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition.

Main Galleries; 9–11am; £3 (incl. refreshments); volunteer support provided SENSING SPACES EVENING EVENT

Family Fun

Royal Academy Talks

FAMILY STUDIO SERIES These free drop-in family workshops are supported by Jeanne and William Callanan. Pop in anytime and get creative!

New Friends Welcome Tours

2pm first Sunday of the month.

Curators’ Gallery Talks on collection displays are at 3.30pm on the first Tuesday of every month.

Royal Academy Tours

Colour in the Desert

Sun 24 Nov Winter Wonderland

Sun 8 Dec

1pm Tue to Fri; 3pm Wed to Fri; 11.30am Sat. Tours are free and last one hour; meet in the Entrance Hall. There will be no tours 2–6 December

Funny Faces

Sun 9 Feb

EXHIBITION TOURS 45-minute introductory tours, free with an exhibition ticket:

Little Prints

Australia

Sun 16 March 11am–2pm; free; no booking required; suitable for all ages

2.30pm Wed, 7pm Fri (until 29 Nov)

Sun 19 Jan Lego Reimagined

Daumier: Visions of Paris

2.30pm Tue, 7pm Fri (until 17 Jan) Bill Woodrow RA

Speed Conversations

Sensing Spaces Family Workshops

2.30pm Thur (7 Nov–6 Feb)

Mon 10 Feb Take part in an evening of ‘speed conversations’, offering you the chance to speak one-to-one with the people behind ‘Sensing Spaces’ within the exhibition itself. Brief but intense, your conversations with the architects, curators and those involved in the huge logistical operation that has made the show possible will give you unique insights into the exhibition and the ideas that underpin it.

Main Galleries; 6.30–8pm; £18/£9 reductions

Tue 18 Feb and Thur 20 Feb Inspired by the extraordinary exhibition ‘Sensing Spaces’, which looks at how we experience architecture, this workshop comprises an introductory slide presentation followed by an interactive discussion, a gallery visit and a hands-on session.

Learning Studio: 10.15am–1pm: £10 adults/£5 RA Friends/£3 children 6+ yrs; booking essential on 020 7300 5995 or online

Sensing Spaces

BILL WOODROW EVENING EVENT

SENSING SPACES EVENING EVENT

In Conversation: Bill Woodrow RA and Richard Deacon RA

Short Stories with William Boyd and Sandi Toksvig

Fri 14 Feb On the occasion of their major shows in London, at the Royal Academy and Tate respectively, sculptors Bill Woodrow and Richard Deacon discuss their longterm friendship dating back to their college years, as well as their careers and recent projects.

Reynolds Room; 6.30–7.30pm; £16/£7 reductions (incl. exhibition entry) £12 (event only)

Mon 17 Feb An opportunity to enjoy exclusive access to the ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition, combined with short-story readings by internationally acclaimed author William Boyd and writer, comedian and actress Sandi Toksvig. The Royal Academy presents this event in partnership with Pin Drop, a unique initiative that communicates the power of storytelling in inspiring settings.

Main Galleries; 6.30–8.30pm; £24/£12 reductions SENSING SPACES EVENING EVENT Friday Night Late

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Soapbox Talks

coffee in the British Academy Room.

Burlington Gardens; 9–11am; £3

Fri 21 Feb Join us for this special Friday Night Late for ‘Sensing Spaces’. Explore the exhibition over the course of an evening and experience a range of multi-sensory activities and performances, including a live DJ, that enrich and challenge our understanding of architecture.

Main Galleries; 7–10pm; free with an exhibition ticket (no booking required) SENSING SPACES EVENING EVENT Staging Sensory Experiences The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2005, designed by Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura

Fri 28 Feb Increasingly restaurants, shops and

2.30pm Wed, 7pm Fri (29 Jan–28 Mar) EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT TALKS 10-minute talks at 3pm on Thursdays.

Free with an exhibition ticket ONE-TO-ONE ACCESS TOURS Tours for wheelchair users and audiodescriptive talks about our exhibitions and the permanent collection.

Call 020 7300 5732 for details

perfumeries strive to create environments that stimulate the senses, transforming dining or shopping into a multi-sensory experience. A panel, which includes Chandler Burr, curator of ‘Art and Scent’ at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, discusses the production, consumption and trend for sensory experiences in the marketplace.

Reynolds Room; 6.30–7.30pm; £16/£7 reductions (incl. exhibition entry) £12 (event only); more speaker info on our website

March SENSING SPACES LUNCHTIME LECTURE Experimental Art, Beautiful Science: Olafur Eliasson

Mon 31 March Professor Dr Philip Ursprung, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zürich.

Reynolds Room; 1–2pm; free (seats must be reserved online or by telephone) Look out for events associated with the exhibition ‘Renaissance Impressions’, including an introductory lunchtime lecture by the curator Arturo Galansino (17 March) and a book club event featuring author Sarah Dunant (21 March). Check our website for details.

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Academy Friends Events & Excursions How to book Friends Events and Excursions ●

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These events are generally very popular. We recommend you post your booking form in as soon as you receive the magazine. Remaining tickets will be sold online and over the phone from 5 December.

Postal bookings open now. Post your booking form to ‘Events & Lectures’, or fax 020 7300 8013.

Friends may purchase a guest ticket to Friends Events.

Friends Events booking forms are balloted. Please list your choices in order of preference.

When an event is running on more than one day and/or time and you forget to choose a time, we will select one for you.

Excursion coach leaves from Piccadilly and return times are approximate. There is no discount if you choose to drive instead of travelling by coach.

For Friends membership enquiries, call 020 7300 5664 or visit www.royalacademy.org.uk/friends For other queries please call 020 7300 5839.

Friends Christmas Carol Concert

Simmons & Simmons Art Collection

Tue 10 Dec Friends are invited to join our Christmas celebrations with a reception in the John Madejski Fine Rooms, followed by a candlelit carol service in the church of St James’s Piccadilly. We are delighted once again to have the chamber choir Vivamus perform for us. The programme also includes traditional carols and festive readings by Royal Academicians and special guests.

Reception 6.30–7.30pm, service 7.45– 8.45pm; £25 (incl. drinks reception and mince pies) or £15 (concert only)

Mon 20 Jan The international law firm Simmons & Simmons has been collecting contemporary art for more than 25 years. Originally focusing on supporting up-and-coming British artists, the collection has expanded and become increasingly international to reflect the firm’s global position. Our private tour includes works by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin RA. 6–7.30pm; £20 (incl. glass of wine); CityPoint, One Ropemaker Street, EC2

Trinity House

Mons 13 Jan and 10 Feb We return to this elegant neoclassical building, home to the Corporation of Trinity House. We learn about its architect Samuel Wyatt and visit the principal rooms, including the dining room with portraits of former Masters.

3–4.15pm; £23 (incl. tea); meet at Trinity House, Tower Hill, EC3

Lord’s Cricket Ground

Tues 21 Jan and 11 Feb Lord’s is renowned as the home of cricket. On our tour of the grounds with Curator of Collections Adam Chadwick, we visit the famous Long Room and learn about the historical portraits of some of the game’s best-known figures.

Our tour also includes the players’ dressing rooms and the media centre.

10.30am–12.30pm; £22 (incl. coffee); meet at Lord’s Tavern Bar, St John’s Road, NW8

Hoare’s Bank

British Library

Thur 23 Jan By special arrangement, the Hoare Family generously welcome Friends to visit this historic private bank, the oldest in the UK and fourth-oldest bank in the world. Founded in 1672 by Sir Richard Hoare, it served famous customers such as Samuel Pepys and John Dryden.

Archivist Pamela Hunter leads our tour as we learn more about the history and architecture of the bank and private house (added in 1829). Limited places available.

10.30am–12pm; £28 (incl. coffee); meet at 37 Fleet Street, EC4

Wed 5 Feb and Thur 6 March The British Library, completed in 1973, is one of the world’s largest research libraries. We tour this iconic building and discover the architectural inspiration behind its design, and learn about how the ever-expanding collection is managed. We also tour the Treasures Gallery, which contains over 200 fascinating items, including the Magna Carta, Henry VIII’s prayer roll and original scores by Handel.

2.30–4.15pm; £16; meet at the Main Entrance Hall, 96 Euston Road, NW1

Southwark Cathedral

Thur 6 Feb Friends tour this iconic building in the heart of London’s theatre district.

We visit the huge backstage area, the historic Front of House and the stunning Paul Hamlyn Hall as we receive a fascinating insight into the history of the theatre. Our tour also includes aspects of current productions.

2.30–3.30pm; £17; directions on ticket

Fri 31 Jan and Thur 20 Feb We visit Southwark Cathedral, thought to be London’s oldest Gothic church.

On our guided tour, we explore the cathedral’s unique architecture and interiors, which have developed over its 1,000-year history, and learn about its connection to Shakespeare, Dickens and John Harvard, the benefactor of America’s oldest university.

2–4pm; £20 (incl. cream tea); meet at north (riverside) entrance, Millennium Courtyard, SE1 St Bartholomew the Great

Tue 4 Feb and Fri 21 March St Bartholomew the Great was founded as an Augustinian Priory in 1123.

Having escaped the Great Fire of 1666, it is one of London’s few examples of Norman architecture. Our tour with the Revd Dr Martin Dudley includes the 13th-century doorways, Tudor and Stuart monuments and a medieval font dating from 1405. We also learn about the 19th-century restoration carried out under Sir Aston Webb.

2.30–4.30pm; £20 (incl. tea); West Smithfield, EC1

Royal Opera House

UCL Art Museum

Mons 17 Feb and 24 March More than 10,000 works of art make up the collections of UCL Art Museum, dating from the 1500s to the present day, and including art by Turner, Constable and Spencer. We learn about the collection from its curator and explore a selection of works on paper. We also tour the Flaxman Gallery and Members Room.

10.30am–12.30pm; £22; South Cloisters, UCL, Gower Street, WC1 Canterbury Cathedral, Kent

Tue 18 Feb Canterbury Cathedral’s history dates from 597 when St Augustine established his seat. In 1170, Archbishop M EN EL AUS , LO GGI A D EL L A S I GN O R I A , F LO R EN CE , I TA LY, CO U R T ESY S H U T T ERS TO CK

Harold Samuel Collection, Mansion House

Tue 14 Jan Mansion House is one of the grandest surviving Georgian town palaces in London, and home to the magnificent Harold Samuel Collection. Bequeathed to the City of London in 1987, this remarkable collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings includes works by Hals, Maes and Van Ruisdael.

11am–12.30pm; £23; meet outside Walbrook entrance, Bank tube, EC4 Lambeth Palace

Fris 17 Jan and 28 Feb We visit Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with its 13th-century vaulted crypt and Tudor gatehouse. It was restored in the 1820s by Edward Blore, and our private tour includes the state rooms, the Great Hall and the chapel featuring paintings by the late Leonard Rosoman RA. 2–4pm; £25 (incl. tea); Lambeth Palace Road, SE1

Corsham Court, Corsham, Wiltshire, the venue for an excursion on 12 March (opposite)

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Friends Worldwide Art Tours

Events booking form For Friends Events & Excursions, please list your event choices in preference order.

Number Event Date of Tickets Cost

RA Travel partners Cox & Kings have released their 2014 Art Tours Worldwide brochure. The programme includes a range of tours focusing on the art and architectural treasures of countries such as Italy, Tunisia, Oman, Burma and China. All tours have been designed with expert lecturers who, in many cases, have secured access to sites not open to the public, as well as talks by curators and gallery directors.

For a brochure, visit www.coxandkings. co.uk/ra or call 0844 576 5518 quoting reference RAFRIEND Thomas Becket was murdered in the cathedral and ever since it has become a place of pilgrimage. Our visit begins with a presentation about the stained glass in the cathedral’s exquisite windows and the on-going programme of restoration. In the afternoon, we learn about the building’s stunning Gothic features and examine why it holds such a significant place within architectural history.

9am–7pm; £76 (incl. coach, coffee, lunch, tea)

M EN EL AUS , LO GGI A D EL L A S I GN O R I A , F LO R EN CE , I TA LY, CO U R T ESY S H U T T ERS TO CK

Cutlers’ Company

Fri 21 Feb The Cutlers’ Company is one of the most ancient of the City of London livery companies, receiving its first Royal Charter in 1416. Originally established to manage the production and trade of knives and swords, the company shifted its focus to domestic wares such as razors, scissors and cutlery. The current hall was designed

by T. Tayler Smith in 1888 with the façade decorated by Benjamin Creswick.

Our tour includes 17th- and 18th-century stained glass; Jacobean oak panelling; the Victorian hammer-beam roof; and a collection ranging from Stone Age tools to today’s cutlery.

10.45am–12.30pm; £25 (incl. coffee); meet at main entrance, Warwick Lane, EC4 Red House, Bexley

Wed 5 March By popular demand, we return to Red House, the only building commissioned, created and lived in by William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Morris lived in the house between 1860 and 1865 and regular visitors included Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Madox Brown. Friends are invited to explore the collection of Morris designs and decorative schemes. We also see a recently discovered wall painting, which had been hidden for years behind a fitted wardrobe and was uncovered and restored in 2013.

10am–1.30pm; £40 (incl. coach, coffee)

Total Cost £

Reductions are available for students, jobseekers and people with disabilities with recognised proof of status. Please indicate your status if relevant Corsham Court, Wilts

Wed 12 March We visit St John’s Church, Devizes, built in 1130 by Roger le Poer, Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor to Henry I. We then privately tour Corsham Court (opposite), based on an Elizabethan house dating from 1582. Housing an exquisite collection of 16th- and 17thcentury Italian and Flemish Master paintings, the gallery has masterpieces

by Caravaggio, Rubens and Van Dyck.

9am–7pm; £76 (coach, coffee, lunch, tea) The Hospital of St Cross and Winchester College, Hants

Tue 18 March Founded in 1132, the Hospital of St Cross is England’s oldest operational almshouse. The Brothers lead our tour of the medieval and Tudor buildings, including the Brethren’s Hall, Tudor ambulatory and Norman church. In the afternoon Laurence Wolff, Head of Art History at Winchester College, leads a tour around the college’s historic buildings and collections. We visit rooms not usually accessible to the public, some of which have remained unchanged for 600 years. Please note this excursion includes a significant amount of walking and steep stairs.

9am–7pm; £76 (incl. coach, coffee, set lunch/glass of wine, tea) The Sphinx House and The River & Rowing Museum, Oxfordshire

Wed 26 March The architect and owners of the ‘Sphinx’ house introduce us to this extraordinary home, set on the banks of the Isis in Oxfordshire. It was built in 1994 as a modern interpretation of an Egyptian house, and a central watercourse outside runs down towards the river through four ‘Sphinx Pools’. We also tour the River & Rowing Museum in Henleyon-Thames, and see highlights from its collection.

10.15am–5.30pm; £80; (incl. coach, lunch, tea); meet at Reading railway station; numbers very limited

Student

Jobseeker

Disabled

Please note that reductions are not available for Friends Events & Excursions Please indicate any dietary requirements where relevant Please debit my credit/charge card number (we no longer accept cheques) Expiry date

Issue number/start date (Switch only)

Signature

First name Surname Address

Postcode Daytime telephone Friends Membership no.

Email address

Please indicate if you would like to receive event and lecture information (Your details will not be passed on to a third party) by post or by email The Royal Academy reserves the right to refuse admission to any event

● Some of the venues we visit occasionally offer general public tours. By purchasing a ticket through the RA, you are supporting the Friends’ Events programme and other Learning initiatives and we are grateful for your patronage. ● There is a handling charge of £5 for all refunds. We regret that refunds cannot be made less than 14 days before an event.

● All events are correct at time of publication but are subject to change without notice. ● Send or fax your completed form to the booking address: Events & Lectures Learning Department Royal Academy of Arts Piccadilly London W1J 0BD Fax booking line: 020 7300 8013

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Restaurant & Shopping Guide The RA Magazine’s directory of places to eat and shop around the Academy. This is an advertisement feature.

To advertise please call Janet Durbin on 01625 583180 or email classified@royalacademy.org.uk 2

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6 BUTLERS RESTAURANT Butlers home of “the best Dover Sole in London”. A warm and intimate restaurant offering elegant dining, delicious food and impeccable service. Located in the heart of London’s most exclusive district, Mayfair, near the Royal Academy it is as popular with local residents as it is with hotel guests. Offering British cuisine tempered with international touches of chef Ben Kelliher, to include a pre-theatre menu and traditional afternoon tea served daily.

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7 CORRIGAN’S MAYFAIR Corrigan’s Mayfair offers the quintessential lunch time experience, spend the day in elegance and style; all for a mere £25 for 2 courses on our market menu. Nip in before an exhibition or even better, join us afterwards for a long and well deserved lunch. Available Monday to Friday, 12-3pm.

Restaurants 1 AL DUCA Serving modern Italian cuisine, Al Duca focuses heavily on bringing out the very best elements of what is one of the most acclaimed gastronomic regions of the world. The menu at Al Duca emphasises the use of simple fresh ingredients skilfully combined to bring out the best of a wide range of traditional dishes offered both in classic style and with a new twist, all following Pulze’s ethos to offer reasonably priced good Italian food.

Now serving breakfast.

4-5 Duke of York Street SW1 020 7839 3090 www.alduca-restaurant.co.uk

28 Upper Grosvenor Street W1, 020 7499 9943 www.corrigansmayfair.com 3 BENTLEY’S OYSTER BAR AND GRILL Hidden just around the corner from the RA, a local resting place for weary art lovers and gourmands for over 97 years. Trading from Midday to Midnight, Champagne and native oysters, traditional fish and chips or for those who care not for the mollusc beautiful lamb or a simple slab of steak.

A best of British menu, designed by the incorrigible, controversial and twice Michelin awarded Chef Richard Corrigan.

11-15 Swallow Street W1 020 7734 4756 www.bentleys.org

BELLAMY’S RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR Situated in central Mayfair next to Bond Street, Bellamy’s offers a classic French brasserie menu with an affordable famous name wine list.

Patron mange ici. Open for Lunch Mon to Fri. Open for Dinner Mon to Sat.

1 Suffolk Place SW1 020 7470 4007 www.brumus.co.uk 5 BUSABA EATHAI Busaba Eathai, conceived by acclaimed restaurateur Alan Yau, is a casual dining venue offering a single course eating experience devised to feed you with minimum fuss.The diverse yet simple menu offers a selection of authentic Thai salads, noodles, curries and stir-fries. Renowned for its core cult following, stylish interiors, chattering atmosphere and mouth watering food, Busaba provides London with a youthful yet sophisticated venue and one of the city’s hottest tables.

35 Panton Street SW1 020 7930 0088 www.busaba.com

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18/18a Bruton Place W1 020 7491 2727 www.bellamysrestaurant.co.uk

Afternoon Tea reservation and receive a complimentary glass of Champagne.

Valid until 1st March 2013

4 BRUMUS AT THE HAYMARKET HOTEL Brumus is a modern brasserie situated inside the Haymarket Hotel open all-day from 7am - 11pm serving breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. There is a seasonal a la carte and set menu and an extensive wine and cocktail list. Mention RA when making a Traditional

8 CRITERION RESTAURANT Our breathtaking ceiling, professionalism, modern European menu and most central location make the Criterion restaurant the perfect address to enjoy a delicious late lunch, an amazing champagne afternoon tea, a romantic dinner, or just a relaxed drink after work. Head Chef Matthew Foxon only uses the finest and freshest ingredients and loves creating alchemy in the kitchen, where everything is homemade – from smoked fish to butter, not forgetting ice cream.

224 Piccadilly W1, 020 7930 0488 www.criterionrestaurant.com

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CUT AT 45 PARK LANE CUT at 45 Park Lane is internationallyacclaimed chef Wolfgang Puck’s first restaurant in Europe, a modern American steak restaurant serving exceptional food in a contemporary interior with impeccable service.

Delectable dishes range from prime dry and wet aged beef to succulent pan-roasted lobster, sautéed whole fresh fish and salads. The superb wine list features 600 wines including the largest selection of American wines in the UK. Breakfasts are another highlight or relax at weekends with brunch and custom-made Bloody Marys as you listen to live jazz.

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pretentious. The modern Eurpean menu changes on a weekly basis.

The Fox Club now offers a delightful afternoon tea from 3-5pm. To avoid disappointment it is best to make a reservation.

46 Clarges Street W1, 020 7495 3656 www.foxclublondon.co.uk

61 Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7499 2211 www.francoslondon.com

45 Park Lane, Mayfair W1, 020 7493 4554 www.45parklane.com/CUTat45ParkLane

FRANCO’S Open all day the personality of Franco’s evolves and provides a menu for all occasions. The restaurant has been serving the residents and visitors to St James’s for over 60 years.

The day starts with full English and continental breakfast on offer. The à la carte lunch and dinner menus offer both classic and modern 11

10 THE FOX CLUB Our Dining Room is one of London’s best-kept secrets and for those in the know, a lunchtime essential. Our menus offer refined excellence without being

dishes from the north to south of Italy. The afternoon menu offers a full afternoon tea as well as salads and more hearty dishes for those that like a late lunch, while the pre-and post theatre menu offers exceptional value. Above all our relaxed and friendly service ensures there is always somebody to greet you with a smile.

12 GETTI A modern Italian restaurant at the fast-paced heart of London’s West End, Getti Jermyn Street is an authentic Italian dining venue in London’s historic tailoring district, dedicated to offering a traditional and memorable Italian dining experience.

A splendid destination for London locals and tourists alike, Getti Jermyn Street focuses on serving simple, regional dishes from mainland Italy.

Private dining available.

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THE GREENHOUSE The Greenhouse’ Executive Chef, Arnaud Bignon combines his traditional French training with contemporary techniques. He applies a philosophy of perfect harmony and balance to all his dishes, often playing with fresh and original flavour combinations. This is accompanied by an exceptional wine list of approximately 3,300 bins, which has won the Wine Spectator Grand Award every year since 2005, one of only three restaurants in the world to have achieved this. Special offer: 3-course set lunch and coffee, £25. Quote Royal Academy of Arts when booking. Open for lunch noon-2.30pm, Mon-Fri; dinner 6.30-11pm Mon-Sat. 13

27a Hay’s Mews W1, 020 7499 3331 www.greenhouserestaurant.co.uk

16/17 Jermyn Street SW1 020 7734 7334 www.getti.co

14 GUSTOSO RISTORANTE & ENOTECA Home-style Italian dining room Ristorante Gustoso is found moments from Westminster Cathedral and Victoria Station. Quietly situated, pleasingly intimate, Gustoso is the ideal

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place to unwind after work, with friends or to enjoy a little romance. Cocktails are professionally served from the well stocked bar and the menu is based around the Italian classics, cooked using authentic ingredients to recipes passed down through the generations of Italians. There is an extensive wine list and an unrivalled collection of grappas.

Opening times : Mon-Thu: 12–3pm, 6.30–10.30pm Friday/Sat: 12–3pm, 6.30–11pm Sun: 12.30–9.30pm 35 Willow place SW1, 020 7834 5778 www.ristorantegustoso.co.uk

17 MAHARANI SOHO Open all day and situated in the heart of Soho this family run restaurant established 42 years ago offers the best cuisine that the north and south of India has to offer, with our own little twist. All our dishes are cooked fresh to order, using free-range meat and locally sourced vegetables. We offer a special set lunch menu at £6.95 which runs to 5pm, or you can choose from our mouth watering à la carte menu which offers excellence without pretension, leading us to be counted as one of the best Indian restaurants in London. To avoid disappointment it is best to make a reservation. Last order 11.30pm.

77 Berwick Street, W1 020 7437 8568 www.maharanisoho.com

15 HIX MAYFAIR Situated close to the Royal Academy, this fashionable restaurant offers an outstanding menu of classic British dishes, using local seasonal ingredients. Mark Hix and Lee Streeton offer a full a la carte menu alongside a special set lunch, pre-theatre and dinner menu of £27.50 for 2 courses and £32.50 for 3 courses.

HIX Mayfair is also home to an amazing collection of British art including pieces

by Tracey Emin RA and Bridget Riley.

Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street W1 020 7518 4004 www.hixmayfair.co.uk

HIX SOHO HIX Soho opened its doors to critical acclaim in 2009 and soon after won London’s Time Out Award for Best New Restaurant in 2010. The restaurant boasts Mark Hix’s signature dailychanging menu of seasonal British food, and an eclectic collection of mobiles and neons from celebrated British artists. HIX Soho would like to offer RA Magazine readers a complimentary ‘Quick Fix’ cocktail on arrival when dining before 6.30pm. Quote ‘RA’ when booking.

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66-70 Brewer St W1, 020 7292 3518 www.hixsoho.co.uk

20 SARTORIA Sartoria is an elegant Milanese-style Italian restaurant located on the corner of Savile Row and New Burlington Street, behind the Royal Academy of Arts. Head Chef Lukas Pfaff creates refined yet uncomplicated Italian food and showcases a different regional special menu each month, and Head Sommelier Michael Simms is on hand to recommend the perfect Italian wine.

Quiet confidence in the kitchen is complimented by warm, friendly and attentive service, whilst the stylish bar is a fashionable spot for a light lunch, an espresso or classic Negroni. Sartoria is open for lunch Monday to Friday and for dinner Monday to Saturday.

20 Savile Row W1, 020 7534 7000 4 www.sartoria-restaurant.co.uk

18 MATSURI ST JAMES Matsuri St James’s was opened in 1993 and it will celebrate its 20th Anniversary in March 2013. When the restaurant opened in the heart of Mayfair, Matsuri St James’s introduced not only traditional Japanese food, such as Sushi and tempura, but also a new style of Japanese cuisine - Teppan-yaki and the art of “live cooking”.

Food and wines or sake tasting courses bring together the best possible ingredients that we select from the market, with a well-balanced list of wines, champagnes and sakes in order to maximise your dining experience, from aperitifs to starters to dessert.

15 Bury Street SW1 020 7839 1101 www.matsuri-restaurant.com

21 UMU Umu prides itself on the provenance and integrity of ingredients, serving timeless Japanese cuisine in the heart of Mayfair. Michelin-starred Chef, Yoshinori Ishii, has designed an innovative menu with both the traditional Japanese restaurant goer and the contemporary Japanese food lover in mind. The wine list consists of over 500 references, and there are also 150 different types of sake available. Enjoy a Michelin-starred lunch from £25 with a selection of seasonal shokado bento boxes. Lunch 12–2.30pm (Mon-Fri) Dinner 6–11pm (Mon-Sat)

14-16 Bruton Place W1 020 7499 8881 www.umurestaurant.com

22 THE WOLSELEY A café-restaurant in the grand European tradition and located just a few minutes’ walk from The Royal Academy, The Wolseley is open all day from 7am for breakfast right through until midnight.

Its all-day menu means it is possible to eat formally or casually at any time, whether a full three course meal or just a coffee and cake. Whilst booking in advance is advised, tables are always held back for walk-ins on the day.

160 Piccadilly W1 020 7499 6996 www.thewolseley.com

23 WILTONS Established in 1742, Wiltons enjoys a reputation as the epitome of fine English dining in London. The atmosphere is perfectly matched with immaculately prepared fish, shellfish, game and meat. Choose from an exclusive wine list. Open for lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday. To secure your reservation please quote RA Magazine.

55 Jermyn Street SW1 020 7629 9955 www.wiltons.co.uk 24 YOSHINO Restaurant Yoshino is serving Healthy, Beautiful, Original authentic and innovative Japanese food. Situated at 3 Piccadilly Place where it is the only restaurant on this alleyway and close to the RA. There is no surprise that Yoshino continues to receive the highest accolades for its products and standards and our reputation for fresh, quality food is second to none. Open from 12–21:30 (Last order) Mon to Sat.

3 Piccadilly Place W1 020 7287 6622 www.yoshino.net

19 RICHOUX A unique traditional restaurant open all day, serving coffee, all day breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, supper and dinner from 8am to 11pm daily.

172 Piccadilly W1 020 7493 2204 www.richoux.co.uk

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Shopping 1 DAKS Established in 1894, DAKS is a British Heritage brand specialising in fine tailoring and accessories for both men and women. DAKS is very proud to hold Royal Warrants granted from three members of the Royal Family ,only one of 15 firms (out of a total of 820) to do so.

10 Old Bond Street W1, 020 7409 4040 101 Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7839 9980 www.daks.com

4 FLORIS Floris is delighted to announce the launch of their brand new fragrance line ‘Soulle Ámbar’. A warm sensual fragrance with jasmine and geranium, warmed by soft vanilla and amber, and lifted by a modern green accord.

To receive a complimentary sample of ‘Soulle Ámbar’ please visit the Floris Perfumery at 89 Jermyn Street or the new Perfumery Boutique at 147 Ebury Street, Belgravia

89 Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7930 2885 147 Ebury Street SW1 , 020 7730 0304 Mail Order: 0845 702 3239 www.florislondon.com

7 GIEVES & HAWKES Gieves & Hawkes has been located at No. 1 Savile Row, a short stroll from Burlington House, for over 100 years.

With a tradition of military and fine bespoke handwork, the firm has enjoyed the continuous patronage of royal families both at home and abroad over three centuries. Today No 1 Savile Row houses the company’s bespoke workshops, Private Tailoring suites and flagship ‘ready to wear’ store selling stylish British menswear. Do pay us a visit.

No.1 Savile Row W1, 020 7432 6403 www.gievesandhawkes.com

10 LONDON GLASSBLOWING STUDIO AND GALLERY Peter Layton’s London Glassblowing is one of Europe’s leading hot-glass studios, and is focussed on the creation and display of beautiful individual pieces of contemporary decorative and sculptural glass art. Renowned for their painterly use of vibrant colour, form and texture each freeblown object is unique and is signed by the artist/maker. Visitors are welcome and will experience the magic of glassblowing, both as an ancient and contemporary artform. ‘Mirage’, which can also be found in the Royal Academy shop, is a design inspired by the Australian landscape, as is Peter’s ever popular ‘Reef’ series.

62–66 Bermondsey Street, SE1 020 7403 2800 www.londonglassblowing.co.uk

2 DR HARRIS Situated in St. James’s Street for over two hundred years, our family owned business holds the warrant to HRH The Prince of Wales and Her Majesty The Queen. We are renowned for our range of quality products for men and women including soaps, colognes, bath and shaving preparations.

The majority of products are still produced by traditional methods, being hand-made and packed in our own premises in London.

35 BURY STREET, LONDON, SW1Y 6AY

35 Bury Street SW1 Now open also at 52 Piccadilly W1 020 7930 3915 www.drharris.co.uk 3 EMMETT SHIRTS Founded in 1992 by tailor Robert Emmett, some say Emmett Shirts are one of London’s best kept secrets - with only twenty – five shirts made in any one material and over four hundred designs to choose from each season, there is a shirt to suit all tastes.

Both ready to wear and a made to measure service are available. If you appreciate superior quality and are looking for a degree of exclusivity then visit Emmett Shirts at Jermyn Street, near Piccadilly. Shops also situated on the Kings Road and Eldon Street.

112A Jermyn Street SW1, 020 7925 1299 www.emmettlondon.com

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5 FOSTER & SON Founded in 1840, Foster & Son is the oldest established London bespoke shoemaker, with its workshop in Jermyn Street .Renowned for exquisite bespoke and ready-to-wear boots, shoes and slippers, Foster & Son also has a longstanding reputation for handcrafted English leather goods, including custom made luggage, cases, portfolios, backgammon boards and small leather accessories such as wallets, belts and cardholders. Each item can either be bought in store, or commissioned to meet an individual’s specifications, and all Foster leather goods are supported by a top quality repair service.

8 HILDITCH & KEY 100 Years of Excellence. Hilditch & Key has long been recognised as London’s leading Jermyn Street shirt maker with a reputation, among the discerning, for the finest gentlemens’ shirts, knitwear and clothing as well as an increasingly popular ladies shirt and knitwear collection.

37 & 73 Jermyn Street SW1 020 7734 4707 & 020 7930 5336 www.hilditchandkey.co.uk

83 Jermyn Street SW1 020 7930 5385 www.foster.co.uk

11 MATTHEW FOSTER Established in Mayfair since 1987, in addition to our collection of Art Deco and period jewellery we now offer a selection of Art Deco period Objets d’Art, sculpture, mirrors and Art Deco Period “Tiger” lighting.

By C. Charles “Bronze d’art” Alloy Website to Portor Marble Base. be launched French Circa 1920s in May 2012.

Our jewellery and Objets d’Art collection covers a wide price range suitable for all occasions, each piece carefully selected for its quality and style.

25 Burlington Arcade W1, 020 7629 4977 www.matthew-foster.com

GRANTA It’s the time of year when you’ll be thinking about which gifts to buy your friends and family. When you buy a gift subscription to Granta your friend will receive not one, but four issues over the course of the year, with new writing from prizewinning authors and the upcoming bright new stars. Buy a gift subscription for just £24 (a saving of 25% on our usual subscription price). Visit granta.com/ RAgift for more details.

6

www.granta.com/RAgift

9 LOCK & CO. Supplies a wide range of exceptional quality ladies’ and gentlemen’s headwear, expert hat advice and fitting service.

New winter styles are now available. For those unable to visit our shop, we provide a mail order service visit www.lockhatters. co.uk or ask for our new catalogue .

12 N. PEAL CASHMERE Modern contemporary design in cashmere knitwear. N.Peal is well known for the best quality cashmere, its beautifully crafted garments, use of texture and contemporary designs for men and women. N.Peal is available from No.37 The Burlington Arcade and 149A Sloane Street. We welcome you to come and discover the difference.

37 Burlington Arcade W1 / 149A Sloane Sreet SW1, 020 7499 6485 www.npeal.com

29/07/2013 11:43

6 St James’s Street SW1 020 7930 8874 www.lockhatters.co.uk

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Classified The RA Magazine is published quarterly and has a circulation of 100,000 making it the most widely read art magazine in the country. To advertise in this section please contact Janet Durbin on 01625 583180

Art Services

GREAT COURSES IN SOMERSET Discover an amazing range of residential courses in a fabulous and glorious setting. Five Star rated! www.dillington.com

Bespoke Artists Canvases

Canvases & Stretcher Bars Made to Measure Professional Quality Hardwood Stretchers 10oz, 12oz, Superfine and Claessens Linen Fabrics Online Ordering & National Delivery

PORTRAIT SCULPTURE COURSES

www.harrismoorecanvases.co.uk

Near Alton, Hampshire

Artefact Picture Framers Bespoke &

Conservation Framing, Art & Frame Restoration, Canvas Stretching, Bespoke Mirrors, Framing of Tapestries & 3D objects (medals, football shirts etc.) Installation and Hanging, 36 Windmill Street. London

Susan Bates Little 01420 561034 www.susanbateslittle.com Small Art Classes in Chiswick All abilities welcome Exercises and projects suggested to enhance creativity 020 8995 5771 07906 020357

W1T 2JT email: artefact@xln.co.uk www.artefactlondon.co.uk T: 020 7580 4878.

WE PAY YOU INSTANTLY FOR YOUR ANTIQUES Why wait many months and lose money in high auction commision and charges?

Works of Art, Sculpture, Silver, Jewellery, Tribal and Scientific objects,Walking sticks, Historical Medals, Portrait miniatures particularly sought.

Auction Reserves Matched

Phone 07751 790646 Straiton Taylor Fine Art 8 Duke Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6BL

By Appointment

Established 37 years

Fine Artist Seeks Agent

to promote figurative mixed media work.

Tel: 020 7604 3061 www.rosalindbieber.zenfolio.com

Books

Fine Art Courses & Private Tuition for 9 yrs to Adults Scholarship preparation, GCSE & A Level booster tuition Located on idyllic farm in North Oxon Accommodation available

www.buttermilkartschool.co.uk Tel: 07549 157855

We are always pleased to buy

L Learn th the AArtt off Fine Art Printmaking curwenprintstudy.co.uk 01223 892380 enquiries@curwenprintstudy.co.uk

Saturday Life Classes All Media, all levels with professional tutoring Long and short poses Experienced portfolio advice for students Elianor Jonzen tel: 020 7221 4525

Exhibitions

good quality second-hand & older books for our shop. Aardvark Books Manor Farm, Brampton Bryan, Shropshire, SY7 0DH Tel: 01547 530888 Email: aardvaark@btconnect.com

Commission Art Portraits, house portraits and animals

Galerie du Siècle à Paris 1973 Lilford Gallery Canterbury 2003

by experienced artist, reasonable fees.

John Wilkinson. R.A.S., R.B.A. Tel: 01425 656048

Courses

Half Day Art History Courses special themes followed on Mondays am/pm in informal atmosphere in south west London. Lectures with slides by highly qualified speakers and guided visits.

Tel: 020 8788 6910.

Draw Cartoons and Caricatures!

CD-ROM and downloadable course by top professional. www.cartoonworld.org/courses

An exciting range of art courses for all abilities in relaxed surroundings.

See our website for more details or contact us to receive a brochure.

New House Farm Barns, Ford Road, Arundel BN18 0EF. Tel: 01243 558880 office@themillstudio.com www.themillstudio.com

Weekend Art Courses with Nicola Slattery

learn to paint with acrylic, discover printmaking, create art from imagination.

Telephone: 01986 788853 www.nicolaslattery.com

Black Mountains Wales Nr Hay-on-Wye Painting, drawing, life classes, landscape, 2-3 day courses. Beautiful surroundings, very spacious studio. Excellent food www.artcourseswales.com tel 01874 711 212

F m-Hirshfield ARBS magnus.h@sfr.fr

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Classified For Sale

VENICE CENTRE s/c apts in charming

TUSCANY 17thC stone house 1hr

www.valleycastle.com

Florence fully renovated £90,000 sparkergore@icloud.com

BENCH ETCHING PRESS H. Rochat Ltd. Fine condition 30 x 12 in. bed. 13 x 5 in. rollers

15th C palazzetto, sleep 2/5.

PROVENCE LUBERON Vineyard

cottages 2-4 pers. Pool. Also off season long lets at discounted prices.

Tel 00334 90 76 65 16 or www.cottagesfaverot.com VENICE heart of the city. Pretty apt newly restored in small courtyard 1 dble bedrm. Sleeps 2 Reasonable rates 3nts+ Tel 07796 957579 patricianolan@btopenworld.com

£1,975 (Current price new £4,094) Phone 01225 863859

For Sale

Excellent Studio

+ large 2 storey workshop + 5 bed family house ½ acre garden

£330k

www.newhamdesign.co.uk

Foundries FINE ART FOUNDRY LTD

Fine Art Bronze Casting Welding – Patina Specialists Ceramic Shell Contact: AB or Jerry 1 Fawe Street, London E14 6PD Tel 020 7515 8052 Fax 020 7987 7339

Galleries for Hire The Framers Gallery Unique Space,

Great Location, No Commission, Fully Staffed; 36 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JT email: artefact@xln.co.uk www.theframersgallery.co.uk T: 020 7580 4878 BANKSIDE GALLERY 48 Hopton

Street, London SE1 9JH Airy & welllit. Beside Tate Modern. 200m sq space.

Competitive rates. t 020 7928 7521 e-m info@banksidegallery.com www.banksidegallery.com Asia House 100 sq m gallery in the

heart of central London. Full technical support available. For further info. contact Philip Woodford-Smith Tel 020 7307 5454 or email philip.woodfordsmith@asiahouse.co.uk Gallery 8 Splendidly maintained gallery

in prime location – helpful, experienced management and full facility support – 8 Duke Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6BN e: gallery@8dukestreet. co.uk web: www.8dukestreet.co.uk t: 020 7930 0375 and 07973 292958

Holidays Marrakech. Chic, elegantly restored

18th century riad in Medina. 4 dbl. bedrooms, seductive baths, cook & housekeeper. Tel: 07770 431 194. www.riadhayati.com

Riviera: French/Italian coast. Breathtaking, uninterrupted views. Romantic, spacious 2/3 bedroom flat with own large garden, in 18thC stone villa.

Parking. Menton 5 mins, Ventimiglia 10. email: vitosmi@gmail.com www.ilvalico.eu FRANCE: NICE. Stunning view over roofs of old town. Quiet sunny 2 room balcony flat. Sleeps 2/3. 30 mins bus to airport. £485 p.w. Tel: 020 7720 7519 or 01736 762013.

Menton town centre, sleeps 12. Enjoy the eclectic art collection and interior design in this restored 1860’s villa and separate guest house situated just above town centre, 5 mins walk to shops and beaches. Beautiful garden with panoramic views across the bay and over old town. Lovely pool area with shower and shady places to sit and read.

Secluded dining area on front terrace or in shady citrus tree courtyard. Enjoy versatility of 2 houses on one site.

Ideal for 2 families. Off street parking for 2 cars. Small speed boat for rent.

Now booking summer 2014. tel: 07900 916729 pattiebarwick@gmail.com www.mentonsejour.com FRANCE: MENTON 2 bedroom house

in grounds of 1860’s town villa; pool Beautiful views of sea and old town charming courtyard with lemon trees; Easy walk to covered market, sea, train and bus station. Off street parking available. tel: 07900 916729 pattiebarwick@gmail.com www.mentonsejour.com ARLES. EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2013. and home to Van Gogh. Central town house with large roof terrace, sleeps 2/6. £600 per week.

ITALY Tuscany/Umbria Farmhouse

and barn: pool, panorama, gardens, terraces, books, art, walks, medieval towns. Sleeps 2-16+ (sliding scale), all ensuite, central heating. Winter rates.

Also booking spring/summer 2014 now: lafoce.co.uk Tel: 020 7059 0278 ROME CENTRE s/c apts in royal villa, sleep 2/5 garden, parking. Children most welcome. www.valleycastle.com VIENNA CENTRE country style apartment in peaceful cloister. Sleeps 2/3. www.valleycastlevienna.com PAINTING & SKETCHING SAFARI

Create your own Workshop-on-Safari or join a scheduled group in Tanzania.

With an artist to guide you, sketch big game and tribes people. Luxury in the wilderness www.paintingsafari.com

Tel 01308 456288.

Holidays UK

Andalucia. Elegant and comfortable

Branscombe, Devon – The Retreat:

apartment. Spacious, bright, newly furnished. Large private terrace. Pool and gardens. Quiet and relaxing. Year round sun. Mediterranean views.

Sleeps 2-4. Ideal base for Seville, Cordoba, Granada. 07775 657 333 www.andalucia-apartment.com

Accessible Eco-home in beautiful coastal Devon, sleeps 4. Area of outstanding natural beauty appealing to artists and environmentalists alike.

Pets welcome. 07949 593463 www.homeaway.co.uk/p1115058 Discount for RA friends.

Peralta – Tuscany near Lucca

SEE NEW WEBSITE: St Ives, 2nd floor flat. Views, sleeps 2, stylish, light,spacious open plan living. www. fifteenthedigey.co.uk 01223 295264 Scottish Borders – magical, spacious,

secluded farmhouse & garden, stunning hill views. Sleeps 10. Large kitchen with Aga. Games barn. Wood-burning stoves.

Barn owls. Fabulous walking. 07957 396 232 www.middleholms.com

Personal

Singles Lunches

Enjoy good food and wine in convivial company. Widen your social circle, meet new friends, perhaps find romance.

Venues in London, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire (est 11 years ) For further details Tel 07718 155146 or email singlesdining@hotmail.co.uk

Rental

Studio/Workshop TO RENT

on farm with stunning views of the Wiltshire Downs. 750 sq ft workshop available for £350 per month.

Botleys Farm, Downton, Salisbury, SP5 3NW Tel: 07970 655240 hugo@botleysfarm.co.uk www.botleysfarm.co.uk

Sculpture

STONE SCULPTURE from

ZIMBABWE

Beautiful, inspiring, secluded hamlet in the hills restored by a sculptor.

Sea views, pool. Ideal for painting, writing, walking, exploring the region or simply relaxing.

Various s/c accomm. sleeps from 2 to 8.

Also ideal for a catered celebration, workshop, seminar. Up to 18 bedrooms.

Portrait Sculpture Course with Mark Richards FRBS from 25th April to 4th May 2014

The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery (Eton) 31 High Street, Eton, Near Windsor, Berkshire.

www.peraltatuscany.com www.portraitsculptureatperalta.com Tel: 0039 0584 951 230 E-Mail: peraltatuscany@gmail.com

7 days a week 10.30-5.30 p.m.

all important artists represented.

Tel. 01753 854315

The Mercury Journal, USPS 009/065, is published quarterly, March, May, September and November. Periodicals Postage Paid at Rahway, NJ. US agent: Mercury International, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, NJ 07001 POSTMASTER: Address change to THE MERCURY JOURNAL, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, NJ 07001

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Inside Story Emma West cools off at the spot on the Hogsmill River in Surrey where Millais painted Ophelia in 1851-52

Emma West

herself never actually visited that spot because she posed in a bath set up in Millais’ studio.

You have the same cascading red hair as Lizzie Siddal, the painter and poet who modelled for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Does playing her feel like a date with destiny? Absolutely. It’s

incredibly rare as an actor that you read a script and think, ‘Yes, I am the person for this role – I even look like her.’

It must be slightly daunting as well, because she’s become an iconic figure.

I have played her in a short film before, but it’s still terrifying because I feel such a huge responsibility. There are so many devoted Lizzie fans who blog about her life, poetry and paintings.

I really want to do her justice. I made a trip to Highgate Cemetery to see her grave, as I felt I needed to pay my respects to her, and show that this wasn’t just some frivolous jaunt on stage.

What most attracts you to Lizzie’s character? I like the fact that she didn’t seem

to care what people thought of her. She would make her own clothes and dress differently from everyone else, and it never seemed to bother her.

Lizzie died from a laudanum overdose when she was 31. You’re 33, about the same age. Does that feel odd? Although she

was younger than I am now, she was essentially considered past-it by her age, and I certainly don’t feel that. It’s extraordinary to think about everything that Lizzie had gone through during her very short life. As well as having success as an artist, she had given her best years to a tempestuous relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who wouldn’t marry her for a decade.

She had become very ill and addicted to the laudanum the doctor prescribed, and then after they wed her daughter was stillborn.

For our photo shoot you went to the scene for Millais’ Ophelia, for which Lizzie was famously the model. Visiting the

original setting for Ophelia has given me more confidence in bringing the Pre-Raphaelite world to life. I find it amazing that Millais sat under a makeshift shelter on the riverbank, and painstakingly painted throughout the seasons to achieve the level of detail he required. Lizzie

been 12 or 13, and I remember walking around a corner at the Tate and seeing it. So many things struck me, not least Lizzie’s resemblance to me, which was unnerving because it is a painting of someone dying. It was the first time I had an emotional reaction to art.

Have you ever thought of playing Ophelia yourself? Yes, particularly as I feel

there are so many parallels between her and Lizzie, but I think I would need a certain amount of de-Lizzification first.

Has anyone ever painted you? Yes, I sat for a portrait by Olivia Thomas a few years ago. I wish I could say I suffered for her art, just like Lizzie, who caught pneumonia in Millais’ cold bath, but my sitting wasn’t in any way arduous. Sitting for a portrait is a strange thing: you feel self-conscious because someone is scrutinising you, but it is also incredibly free because your only task is to sit.

Lizzie Siddal Arcola Theatre, London, 020 7503 1646, www.arcolatheatre.com, 20 Nov–21 Dec Scan the image above to see a clip from the film Ophelia starring Emma West. See page 16 for full instructions

P H OTO © W I L L I A M B U R L I N GTO N

The actress who plays Lizzie Siddal in a new London production talks to Matt Wolf about the enduring allure of the Victorian art icon. Photograph by William Burlington

Do you recall the first time you saw Millais’ painting? Yes, vividly. I must have

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Art Tours Worldwide Art • Archaeology • Architecture 2014

Cox & Kings is the travel partner for the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) and our programme of small-group tours has been specially created with the Friends of the RA in mind. The 2014 collection focuses on the art, architecture and archaeology of many of the world’s most culturally-rich destinations.

The tours are accompanied by expert lecturers who help to design the itineraries, give talks along the way and, in many cases, open doors that would normally be closed to the general public.

2014 Highlights St Petersburg: Pictures & Palaces

21 Feb – 5 nights from £1,370

Italy: Connoisseurs Venice 22 Mar – 4 nights from £1,325

Istanbul: Byzantine & Ottoman Treasures

31 Mar – 5 nights from £1,295

Bay of Naples: Pompeii & Herculaneum

15 Mar – 6 nights from £1,345

For reservations, please call 0845 564 1606 For detailed itineraries and prices, please request a copy of the 2014 RA Worldwide Art Tours brochure by calling 0844 576 5518 quoting reference RAARTS, or visit www.coxandkings.co.uk/ra ATOL 2815 ABTA V2999

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