Andrew Lambirth

‘Picasso, Miró, Masson and the vision of Georges Bataille’ is the subtitle of the latest extravaganza at the Hayward Gallery. Georges Bataille (1897–1962) is one of those buzz figures, beloved of the moment, without a quote from whom no contemporary art-speak catalogue introduction is complete. He has been influential as a philosopher as well as a writer (he penned a minor cult classic called Story of the Eye), and as a worthy opponent of André Breton, the self-styled Pope of Surrealism. Between 1929 and 1930 Bataille edited a radical surrealist magazine called Documents, which offered a heady mix of art and archaeology, ethnography and popular culture.

Here in London are two historical exhibitions which treat more of human identity, national and individual, than they do of pure painting. Each one showcases art, but in the wider context of the artefacts of a particular period. For a nation which loves to visit country houses (courtesy of that great institution, the National Trust), both exhibitions should prove reassuringly familiar in format and content. Searching for Shakespeare, at the National Portrait Gallery (until 29 May, sponsored by Credit Suisse), celebrates the 150th anniversary of the NPG appropriately, given that the very first painting presented to the gallery in 1856 was the famous ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare.

The pre-eminent Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) is frequently called an artists’ artist, which is usually taken to indicate that his extreme formality or painterliness (depending on who is arguing the case) appeals more to those in the know than to the man in the street. Morandi undoubtedly does have a deep and lasting appeal to artists, as this exhibition reminds us, but his profoundly unassuming and contemplative pictures also speak directly to a wider public, if the context is congenial. Morandi’s work is quiet, concentrating on groups of jars and bottles or odd corners of landscape, and in the bustle and cacophony of a mixed exhibition they can be overlooked.

Lately I have adopted Word from Wormingford by Ronald Blythe as a bedside book. Composed of weekly bulletins from a Suffolk village, it combines observations on the countryside with reports on the spiritual welfare of Blythe’s parish. In its gentleness and generosity, it is the perfect antidote to the strain of London life, and cools the mind after anxiety-ridden days. (In this, it has the same welcome effect as the glorious novels of Alexander McCall Smith.) Cools the mind but doesn’t dim it, for Blythe mixes in comments from his wide reading with a deft hand, and leavens the brew with the wisdom garnered from a long life devoted to looking and pondering.

The classic Modernist interior familiar to us all is a white cube, minimally furnished and adorned, the clean geometric lines of the architecture given prominence at the expense of fittings and fixtures. As the visitor steps into the V&A’s homage to Modernism, it’s at once clear that the design of the show will not mirror that aesthetic. This is a busy, multicoloured display, crammed with pictures and artefacts, full of red or blue arrows linking labels to exhibits, and vamped up with variant wall patterns. It’s big on visual excitement, not restraint. There are over 300 exhibits and more than 50 film clips to be seen, and at times it’s difficult to make sense of the rich array.

The Serpentine Gallery is a pleasure to visit, which makes it all the more frustrating that its exhibition programme in recent years has been so dominated by the modish and ephemeral. Thankfully, from time to time, an exhibition of real worth manages to squeeze past the art censors. American painters seem to have fared better recently than the British, with memorable shows by Brice Marden (2000), Dan Flavin (2001), Cy Twombly (2004) and now Ellsworth Kelly. Kelly is billed as one of the greatest living artists, and was last shown in this country in any depth when his 1997 retrospective came to the Tate. This show features just 18 new works, all made since 2002 and personally selected by the artist.

There has been a certain amount of controversy about this exhibition, the first Michelangelo show at the British Museum for 30 years. The exhibits are drawn almost entirely from the collections of three museums — the Teylers in Haarlem (where the exhibition was shown last year), the Ashmolean in Oxford and the BM itself. These are three of the greatest repositories of Michelangelo’s drawings, but over-reliance on them does exclude, for instance, the remarkable presentation drawings from the Royal Collection at Windsor. The exhibition has also been attacked on the grounds of authenticity.

Three fine exhibitions are currently gracing the public galleries of Bath, and even though the new spa is shamefully late in opening, art-lovers are spoilt for choice. In fact, these shows are well worth a day trip from London if you live in town. Bath is a relatively easy hour-and-a-half’s journey from Paddington, and the rewards are considerable. Apart from the distinguished beauty of the city itself, all mellow Bath stone rising in proud tiers on the surrounding hills, this trio of shows provides an uncommon range of visual stimulation and entertainment.

Forget for a moment the importation of ‘Gothic’, a term more usually confined to architecture or the novel, and consider the main protagonists. Blake will be familiar to most art-lovers, but what about Fuseli?

The Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy is currently in deep-green livery to conjure up a rus in urbe setting for the grandest of the Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century — Jacob van Ruisdael. The first impression is a dark one — storm-tossed seas and forests, cloud-filled skies: the untamed might of nature and plenty of lush verdure. The painted green of the gallery walls is here and there relieved by pale-grey partitions, like silver birches in a conifer wood, upon which smaller works can be hung. (There’s an excellent sampling of Ruisdael’s powerful black chalk drawings made from direct observation.

When a Bostonian wit remarked, ‘Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris’, he was merely expressing the secure place the French capital occupied in the nation’s heart. Paris represented a dream (or reality for the increasing number who travelled there) of happiness, a spiritual or physical home, the premier destination for thousands of American artists and art students. Many who went, perhaps as many as a third, were women. As one of their number, the little-known painter Cecilia Beaux, remarked, ‘Everything is there.’ Three of her paintings are included here, among a glittering list of 87 exhibits by more than 30 artists. This is not just another exhibition tagging on the shirt-tails of the Impressionists.

Right from the start of this retrospective exhibition, the complications set in. In Room 1 are four paintings from the 1981 series ‘Dear painter, paint for me’. One of them strikingly depicts a figure (presumably the artist?) seated on a black sofa placed out in the street and surrounded by black plastic rubbish bags. The painting has the air of a snapshot, and you begin to think, so Kippenberger was into photorealism? But, no, we soon learn from a handy wall panel that Kippenberger didn’t paint these pictures himself, but hired a Berlin sign painter, Mr Werner, to do them for him. Does this make them less/more/just as interesting?

Andrew Lambirth on Maggi Hambling’s forceful seascapes and Rose Wylie’s quirky art Let me at once state an interest: I have just written a book with Maggi Hambling about her life and works, currently available from all good booksellers. But long and intimate knowledge of an artist’s oeuvre should not disqualify the critic from writing more; in fact, it’s to be hoped that experience may bring with it increased insight and understanding. So let me say at the outset that, in her new paintings at the Marlborough, Hambling (born 1945) has produced something remarkable — an extension of her territory as an artist and a great leap forward in terms of her mastery of paint.

Andrew Lambirth is entranced by the central purity of Dan Flavin’s installations Many artists are involved to a greater or lesser degree with the depiction of light, but Dan Flavin (1933–96) made it his exclusive subject, and in the process was responsible for the apotheosis of the humble fluorescent tube. As an artist, Flavin was largely untaught, though he attended art history classes at Columbia University and drew passionately from an early age. He made his first light piece from a ready-made yellow fluorescent tube, entitled ‘The Diagonal of May 25, 1963’ and dedicated to Brancusi.

Edwina Leapman (born 1934) is an abstract painter and colourist of beguiling subtlety. Her current show at Annely Juda Fine Art (until 25 February) is a mini-retrospective of 30 years’ work, and a celebration of 30 years of exhibiting with the same gallery. (This continuity is to be applauded in an age when artists swap galleries on a whim or because of a better offer.) Ascending to the top floor of number 23 Dering Street, W1, go through to the rear gallery for the beginning of the exhibition and the earliest works. The first painting dates from 1976 and was shown that year by Annely Juda. It’s a large pearlescent canvas of great subtlety, ruled with equally spaced horizontal lines, and painted sparely in white.

Is London a model city or a sink of iniquity? Defining things in terms of extremes is of course a typical dialectical strategy intended to stimulate discussion. London is a melting-pot, a vast stew of energies and lassitudes, of good and evil. In this exhibition we are offered a taste of how artists respond to its present-day reality: ten contemporary painters and one sculptor interpret London as she lives and breathes. Subtitled ‘A Provocative Exhibition’, this display has been put together by Mireille Galinou of the London Arts Café.

The name of Bacon in the 17th century inevitably suggests Sir Francis, first baron Verulam and viscount of St Albans, Lord Chancellor and natural scientist, philosopher and writer. Of an acutely inquiring mind, Sir Francis died of a chill caught trying to deep-freeze chickens. Nathaniel Bacon (1585–1627) was his nephew, and showed some of the same characteristics, being not only devoted to horticulture but also, more surprisingly, a painter of considerable talent and distinction, who experimented with new colours and varnishes.