Andrew Lambirth

There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession. There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession. Whichever, there’s plenty to see, and a good place to start is with Browse & Darby’s 33rd annual exhibition (19 Cork Street, W1, until 24 July), a mixed summer show guaranteed to spring some surprises among the expected masters.

Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops 1913–19 Courtauld Institute, until 20 September ‘It is time that the spirit of fun was introduced into furniture and into fabrics,’ proclaimed Roger Fry in 1913. ‘We have suffered too long from the dull and the stupidly serious.’ To this end he led a band of like-minded artists in the hand-production of decorative items for the home, operating from a three-storey townhouse at 33 Fitzroy Square that was both workshop and showroom. Among the clients were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and W.B. Yeats. Among the artists working for Fry were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis and Frederick Etchells, Gaudier-Brzeska and Winifred Gill.

It’s a rewarding moment for a stroll round the London galleries. Good art is still being made and exhibited (some of it even selling), while more historical figures such as Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) and Robert Motherwell (1915–91) are being accorded the benefit of monographs and mini-retrospectives. Winifred Nicholson is often overshadowed by the ambitious and radical modernism of her husband Ben, and, although they split up in 1931 (he went off with Barbara Hepworth), they remained lifelong friends and artistic allies. Ben acknowledged Winifred’s inspiration and influence, particularly in the realm of colour, but her work still gets sidelined in the histories.

Futurism Tate Modern, until 20 September The centenary of Marinetti’s ‘First Manifesto of Futurism’ is a wonderful excuse, if excuse be needed, for a celebration and perhaps re-assessment of a movement that attacked the past in the name of all that was modern. Today, Futurists would be execrating any movement as old and as passé as themselves, but we may look more calmly at their frenetic attempts to capture in paint and sculpture the dynamism of modern life. The large show at the Tate aims to do two things: to gather together as many as possible of the works that were shown in the first Futurist exhibition in London, at the Sackville Gallery in 1912, and to demonstrate how Futurism related to (and influenced) the other radical art movements of the time.

Summer Exhibition Royal Academy, until 16 August Every year the Summer Exhibition arrives with promises of innovation and difference, every year it’s much the same. People gamely ask ‘what’s it like this year?’, and the imaginative struggle for a novel way to describe it. Yet its great strength is its unchangeability — the extraordinary (occasionally preposterous) juxtaposition of the international avant-garde, establishment figures and amateurs from the Home Counties and beyond. Nowhere else can such diversity and potential richness be found. The Academy continues to try to tame this leviathan, to modify its rules, or to dedicate a whole gallery to some lately trendy off-shoot of art such as film and video.

Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur British Museum, until 23 August Part of the Indian Summer season of events sponsored by HSBC I don’t know when I last enjoyed an exhibition more. I had an idea from the publicity material what I might be seeing, but the reality of it is a thousand times lovelier. Many of us are familiar with Indian miniatures, but this exhibition consists mostly of large paintings done between the 17th and 19th centuries. Made for the northern Indian court of Jodhpur (the royal capital of Marwar), none of the 54 paintings on show has ever been seen before in Europe.

Andrew Lambirth talks to Douglas Dunn and Norman Ackroyd about their latest collaboration Illustrated books are one of the glories of a library. Looking over my own shelves I find assorted delights ranging from The Story of My Heart, the unorthodox vision of the naturalist Richard Jefferies fittingly partnered with woodcuts by Ethelbert White, to David Gascoyne’s poems decorated rather sombrely by Graham Sutherland, and ‘The Traveller’ by Walter de la Mare, accompanied by colourful landscapes by John Piper. The pairings of writer and artist are often intriguing: Wyndham Lewis and Naomi Mitchison, William Beckford and Marion Dorn, Samuel Johnson and Edward Bawden.

The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence British Museum, until 31 May In Room 90 at the BM is one of the free exhibitions the Department of Prints and Drawings do so well. This one has been organised in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland and was first seen at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery at the end of last year. It focuses on informal portraits made between the 1730s and the 1830s, the period often thought of as the heyday of British portraiture. There are no grand public statements: the emphasis is on private images.

Framing Modernism: Architecture and Photography in Italy 1926-65 Estorick Collection, until 21 June Adrian Berg: Panoramic Watercolours Friends Room, Royal Academy, until 11 June Architecture exhibitions, as I’ve had occasion to note before, are not always the most visually exciting of events, principally because the experience of a building can only really be conveyed in front of it or inside it. Architectural models can be aesthetically pleasing quasi-sculptures, and plans or elevations can be beautiful drawings in their own right, but they are no substitute for the actual thing. The great stand-by in architectural exhibitions is the photograph, often a cunning shot of an interesting detail blown up to gigantic proportions to give a simulacrum of experiencing the building itself.

Isa Genzken: Open, Sesame! Whitechapel Gallery, until 21 June Passports: Great Early Buys from the British Council Collection Whitechapel Gallery, until 14 June The Whitechapel has just re-opened after a major renovation and expansion, increasing gallery space by 78 per cent, incorporating and transforming the old library next door as part of a Heritage Lottery Fund assisted project. The results are spectacular: the original exhibition spaces which have beguiled generations of gallery-goers are still there, looking better than ever, with the addition of several new areas to discover. As a result, the Whitechapel can offer a range of exhibitions at any one time and will no longer need to be shut for lengthy periods to rehang.

Mark Wallinger Curates the Russian Linesman Hayward Gallery, until 4 May Annette Messager: The Messengers Hayward Gallery, until 25 May For many people, Mark Wallinger (born 1959) is the man who likes horses. He is the artist with a passionate interest in racing and thoroughbreds, the successful competitor for the Ebbsfleet Landmark commission, in which he will place a vast sculpture of a horse in the heartlands of Kent to greet visitors to our green and pleasant racing stable. Now he has been invited to curate an exhibition for the upper floor of the Hayward Gallery. Its odd title will be familiar to football fans, referring to an infamous and still-debated decision in the 1966 World Cup.

Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence V&A, until 19 July The Baroque is a style of drama, movement and opulence. Until the 19th century it was a term for the grotesque or absurd; then it was taken over by those who sought to categorise the mainstream developments of European culture. As an adjective, Baroque still means florid or overblown, but if the age it adorned was devoted to spectacle, it was also dedicated to unity and balance, unlike the sensationalism of today. I had misgivings about this exhibition.

Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism Tate Modern, until 17 May Art is always at its most dangerous — but perhaps also its most endearing — when it approaches the idealistic. In the wake of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, the group of artists who called themselves Constructivists came to believe that abstraction could transform everyday life. But, unlike many theorists, they weren’t content simply with the idea of art’s revolutionary potential, they longed to put it into practice, and this they proceeded to do. Abstraction is a great tool in applied art, and the Constructivists used it to good effect in posters, books, textiles and furniture. For once, art had a use.

Constable Portraits: The Painter & His Circle National Portrait Gallery until 14 June Sponsored by British Land The portrait was the dominant form in British painting up to the end of the 18th century, principally because this was what patrons wanted. Landscape painting was really the invention of Richard Wilson (1713–82), who inaugurated this particular branch of nature-worship. Constable, with his great gift for naturalness and observation, developed it further than any artist, except Turner. And it is as a landscape painter that we think of Constable, though he also painted about 100 portraits. These have tended to be overshadowed by his nature studies, and the current show at the NPG is the first to concentrate on his portraits. It is something of a revelation.