Hockney, Yoko Ono, Tom Climent: 10 art exhibitions to see in Europe this spring
L-R: Thomas Climent, Yoko Ono, David Hockney
Tom Climent is a master of colour. The Cork painter has long been acclaimed in Ireland for his semi-abstract landscapes and more organic bloom-like forms, rendered in a brilliant palette of glowing reds and yellows, and sublime blues and green. This exhibition, at one of the most prestigious venues in Paris, is inspired by Climent’s faith in “transformation through evolution and regrowth.” Gandon Editions have launched a new book on Climent’s work to coincide with the show, which should do much to promote him on the continent.
Leigh Bowery grew up in Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, but found fame in London, where he arrived, aged nineteen, in 1980. He helped found the infamous Taboo club in Leicester Square, where his home-made costumes established him as one of the most colourful and outlandish characters of that era. Bowery worked as a designer, artist and presenter, and also modelled for Lucien Freud, who paid for his body to be flown back to Australia after his death from Aids on New Year’s Eve 1994. This exhibition will celebrate Bowery’s myriad looks and artistic collaborations. The exclamation mark in its title is richly deserved.
For the first time ever, the Stedelijk Museum and the Van Gogh Museum are joining forces to present a major exhibition by Anselm Kiefer, one of the most celebrated European artists of the past 50 years. The Stedelijk has built up an enviable collection of his monumental paintings, many inspired by the horrors of World War II, and will now show them all together for the first time. At the Van Gogh Museum, Kiefer’s work will be shown alongside that of Vincent Van Gogh, one of his key influences as an artist. Both venues will also feature new works by Kiefer that have not been shown before.
Mention Edvard Munch and one will invariably think of his painting The Scream, surely one of the most desolate - and parodied - artworks of the 20th century. But Munch was far more than a one-hit wonder, as will be confirmed by this, the first exhibition in the UK to focus on his portraits. Throughout his life, the Norwegian painted family, friends, artists, writers and collectors, all of whom will be represented in this show, along with a long lost portrait of a lawyer friend, Thor Luthen, that turned up not long ago in Spain.
Tracey Emin was arguably the most provocative of the Young British Artists, no mean achievement when one considers that her peers included Damien Hirst and Gavin Turk. Emin has survived critical maulings, her self-destructive impulses, and an aggressive bout of cancer to establish herself as a major force in the international art world, working in painting, sculpture and installation. This major exhibition will feature new and historical work, including many of the visceral large scale paintings that have occupied her in recent years.
To celebrate its first twenty years in existence, Lismore Castle Arts has invited the art historian Robert O’Bryne to curate an exhibition based on the European tradition of the Kunstkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities, in which strange or rare manmade and natural objects are shown side by side. The Irish artists Alice Maher and Dorothy Cross should fit the bill nicely; Maher has made work from dead bees, rose hips and thorns, while Cross’s sculptures have incorporated taxidermied sharks and seabirds. The exhibition will also feature the work of international artists such as Sarah Lucas, Monster Chetwynd and Jonathan Lyndon Chase.
Thomas Schutte’s Model for a Hotel, a glass reproduction of a 21-storey hotel complex, graced the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London in 2007/8. The German artist has made other architectural pieces, but he is probably better known for his figurative sculptures, often of grotesque characters rendered in materials as varied as Fimo clay, silicone and steel. Schutte is also a gifted draughtsman, and this, the largest exhibition of his work in Italy to date, will feature hundreds of his drawings as well as sculptures from the Pinault Collection and others loaned by the artist himself.
Now aged 87, the veteran painter continues to work and exhibit with the zeal of one half his age, and this despite his life-long love of cigarettes. The Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton, at 8 Avenue Mahatma-Gandhi in west Paris, presents the largest ever exhibition of his ouevre, 400 works from the past 70 years spread over eleven rooms. Along with his drawings, and paintings in oils and acrylics, there will be many examples of his digital art; these days, it seems, Hockney has as much enthusiasm for the iPad as for his paintbrush.
Cy Twombly is perhaps best known for his elegant red ‘scribbles’ paintings, which cemented his reputation as one of the greatest abstract artists of the 20th century. His work is at the centre of this exhibition, which also features contributions by the visual artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, along with scores, stage props, costumes and photographs associated with the composer John Cage and the choreographer Merce Cunningham. One might quibble at yet another exhibition about white middle-class males, but the five close friends shared a wonderful sense of subversion and helped liberate American culture from the stuffiness of the post-war era.
Many blamed Yoko Ono for the break-up of the Beatles in 1970. There were other factors, of course, but her relationship with John Lennon may well have hastened their demise. Her own career suffered too; her musical collaborations with Lennon soon came to eclipse her achievements as a ground-breaking conceptual artist. Recent years have seen a reassessment of her work. Music of the Mind presents a huge selection of pieces in various media from the past 70 years, including the white ladder Lennon climbed in the Indica Gallery in London in 1966 to reach a magnifying glass through which he read the simple affirmation, ‘Yes.’
