THE LEMOND GALLERY
0141 942 4683
THE LEMOND GALLERY
0141 942 4683
GALLERY NEWS AND BLOG
A recommended visit to the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, on the banks of the Thames (Strand, London).
The Courtauld is not the biggest gallery, but it has many iconic works including Van Gogh's 'Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear' and Edouard Manet's 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergere'.
The gallery has many examples of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art together with an impressive collection of early Italian art, paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Sandro Botticelli, Peter Bruegel and a small collection of 20th Century art including Amadeo Modigliani and Oskar Kokoschka.
The RA Summer Exhibition 2024 is one of the important showcases for (what we would term) mainstream contemporary UK (predominantly English) art.
It is an OPEN Exhibition that was established in 1769 and the show has happened every year since.
While there is a large block of Royal Academicians, the exhibition is designed to show established artists alongside emerging talent and first-time exhibitors.
The RA quote that "Everything you'll see at the Summer Exhibition represents what is happening in the art world right now."
The show displays work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film.
The PURPOSE OF OUR VISIT is to survey and experience this important showpiece in order to understand and benchmark our own Scottish offering.
The foundations of the art (in terms of art education, progression and development) will be broadly similar but, the mix weight of the art is clearly more modern, which probably reflects the fact that the market it serves is a both a (cosmopolitan) capital and the largest city in the UK with a population of 8.8M and 14.9M in the wider metropolitan area.
This hugely successful show gives us a great opportunity to take a comprehensive look at an independent market, to learn from what we study and to feed our own strategies, adjustments and approach.
Marina Abramovic (b.1946) was at the forefront of the emerging discipline of performance art in the 1970's.
We were fortunate to be in London shortly after the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) re-opened in late June 2023 following a renovation project, which comprised a significant refurbishment of the building and entrance, together with new public spaces and a new Learning Centre.
A fabulous new brighter exhibition space that is filled with the people, portraits and life stories of a nation. The collection contains over 12000 portraits of the most famous people in British history and culture from the 8th century to the present day. Of these, 4108 are paintings, sculptures and miniatures. At any point in time there are around 1000 portraits on display in the gallery.
Much of the collection gives us our only visual insight into the period which pre-dated the invention of photography (early 1800s). Where would historical film and television have been without these vital insights ?
The NPG is a great place to kickstart your interest in art. It is an easy place to learn as it is laid out chronologically with recognisable characters from our history but it also alllows you to gain an understanding and follow how the art techniques changed from the formality (and realism) of early portraiture (when wealth-patronage was important) through the various stages of modernisation and art development (including impressionism, expressionism and even more modern collage techniques).
You can see that the portraiture went from royalty and key figures from the court, aristocracy and landowners to the less heirarchial modern day where sportspeople, polititians, media celebrities, scientists and business pioneers now feature.
The National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE (Beside Trafalgar Square).
The RA Summer Exhibition lists 1613 exhibits in its catalogue. If we take out (for comparative purposes) the architecture and video rooms (172) and the linocut, photoprint and screenprint entries (478) then the RA has a net of (963) painting and sculpture entries.
Our own summer exhibition had in excess of 700 entries this year, which might explain it's popularity within our own geography.
The foundations (the art schools that feed the artists within the show) and the quality of the output look very similar but the notable variations are -
1. Being based in a major international city, the RA has a much greater weighting of modern paintings and artwork.
2. The pricing of many of the artworks is significantly higher. I counted 79 entries over £20000 (11 of these over £90000).
3. Among the listed senior Academicians, I count 26 x CBE's, 18 x OBE's and 4 x MBE's. It is disappointing that these awards and recognitions do not seem to travel out of the London milieu. Our senior artists also deserve recognition for what they do to build and enrich Scottish culture and society.
It was great to see that the exhibition was so well attended and generally healthy.
I understand that the show actually grossed around £5M, which is remarkable. Oh, the benefits of what I term the overspill capital in London !