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Monday, October 07, 2019

Video Introduction to Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery


The Credit Suisse Exhibition:Gauguin Portraits opened today at the National Gallery in London.  

A lecture introducing the exhibition was streamed live this morning and is now available on YouTube. Guest curator Cornelia Homburg from the National Gallery of Canada introduces the new exhibition in a video below. It lasts for 48 minutes - which is unusual for exhibition videos.

  • I'd very much RECOMMEND that all those planning to see the exhibition should view this video first.
  • If you click in the lower right corner you can view in whatever size you prefer on the YouTube website.




Reviews of Gauguin Portraits Exhibition


Usually, when a gallery devotes an exhibition to a single artist, it builds upon a core of key works from its own holdings. Not this time.

Mounted in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the exhibition contains 56 stunning works of art, on loan from as far afield as Moscow, Los Angeles, and Tokyo.
In a gallery that is elsewhere stuffed with naked white women, this exhibition’s avoidance of Gauguin’s unclothed Tahitians feels like an act of prudery – and even censorship

Gauguin would have got short shrift in our times, but no matter: the works here, early to late, are unsettling, strange and beautiful. This exhibition doesn’t pretend he was a good man; it makes the case for a great artist.
The next two reviews relate to the exhibition - of the same exhibition - at the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, Canada (hence the curator introducing the exhibition in the video)


More about Gauguin Exhibitions