Oscar Wollheim curates a sumptuous suite of five great abstract masters – Bowling, Gilliam, Golding, Hoyland and Sylvester II – in his imaginative and vibrant exhibition, Modal Painting, at Maximillian William.
After seeing artist Charlotte Salomon’s work in an exhibition before the first lockdown, So Mayer started to reflect on the evolution of Salomon’s innovative, word-strewn paintings. Here, they consider how Salomon’s work conjures and embodies a unique voice, a bold assertion of self that defies curatorial and art historical prejudices.
Before the second lockdown Toni Roberts saw Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s show Fly in League with the Night at Tate Britain. Here, she recalls vibrant paintings alive with stories, brilliant studies of people, and human relationships that transcend the canvas’ edges.
Millais’ painting, Ophelia, continues to inspire viewers and critics alike, but what if the heroine came back from the watery grave she was condemned to? Here, Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou considers the return of Ophelia in the artwork of Jada Bruney and Rolake Osabia, and the music visuals of Christine and the Queens.
The National Gallery’s blockbuster exhibition celebrates the professional ingenuity, self-confidence and skilful proto-feminist paintings of one of Italy’s best Early Modern women artists, Artemisia Gentileschi.
In this beautiful creative non-fiction piece, ‘Gold Top’, Rym Kechacha uses Remedios Varo’s painting, Celestial Pablum, to explore her own experiences of breastfeeding her baby daughter through the night.
In Edward Burne-Jones’ Love Among the Ruins, 1870-73, Christina Makri sees human love and nature survive the collapse of the world, and argues that we, too, will find comfort in the chaos of the pandemic.
During lockdown, Julia Bagguley found solace and hope in her garden. Here, in the twenty-fifth postcard of the series, she reflects on another gardener, Gertrude Jekyll, as captured in William Nicholson’s portrait.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow, c.1923, is a painting full of movement that captures the New Mexican skyscape and reminds us, as we adjust after lockdown, that we’ll be moving again soon too.
In Luchita Hurtado’s paintings, the nude female body is an affirmation of the self, a locus of solitude and personal care that reminds us to slow down and appreciate ourselves and others, writes Jennifer Brough.
Delving into the rich traditions of gothic literature, sentimental fiction and old folk tales, Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1782, appears from another world. But not so, says Miriam Al Jamil, who recognises in the painting an awareness of human psychology foreshadowing that found in modern psycho-analysis, dream theory and psychiatry.
Looking at the New Mexico desert, Georgia O’Keeffe found a new home. In the thirteenth Postcard piece, Emily Garbutt considers O’Keeffe’s vivid, evocative painting, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/ Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930, and asks when she will have the opportunity, post-lockdown, to survey a foreign landscape.
