Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr is currently telling the stories behind some of the world's greatest paintings by famous painters on Channel 5. 

works made with almost supernatural skills, fierce passion and extraordinary brainpower
Andrew Marr

The World's Greatest Paintings with Andrew Marr (on Channel 5)

I'd have missed it altogether if "he who must not be bored" hadn't spotted it and asked me if I was watching the series. On which basis I'm assuming a few other people may also not be aware that this series is currently available to view.

I very much recommend the series. Andrew Marr (who describes himself on Twitter as elderly amateur painter and presenter of the BBC1 Andrew Marr Show) is surprisingly good at both telling both the story and indicating his appreciation of the artwork. You also get to find out all sorts of details you never knew before.

How much of it is Marr and how much of it is research by art history experts is unclear - but the programmes certainly have a distinct Marr flavour to them. He's no stooge for the words of others.

It's also great for all those who will never ever get to the Museums in which you can find these paintings on view 

Great Paintings of the World

You can watch on Channel 5 at 6.15pm - 7.05pm on Saturday evening. If using on demand some are different timings e.g. 8.15pm

Paintings covered to date (plus the link to the episode on Channel 5 on Demand) are:

• Episode 1: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (The Louvre) - The story of the portrait that attracts eight million onlookers every year, Da Vinci's the Mona Lisa - which didn't become famous until it was stolen in 1911

It’s hard to imagine Simon Schama devoting a programme to the Mona Lisa. Come on, she’s art’s queen of clichés, a tourist magnet drawing crowds to grab selfies. But snobbery be damned, because Andrew Marr opens his series on great paintings by properly examining why this modest portrait – not even his favourite work by Leonardo da Vinci, he says – has become the most recognisable work of art there is.

He does a good job, too, taking us back to the “culturally swaggering” world of Renaissance Florence, where Leonardo was in his 50s by the time he set about painting the young wife of one of his father’s clients. That sideways pose and direct gaze were revolutionary, we gather; the use of “sfumato” blurring around her mouth was the special effect that brought the about-to-smile half-smile to life; and it wasn’t until 1911 that the painting became a global celebrity – by being stolen. (Radio Times)

• Episode 2: Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh (National Gallery) 

Screen capture from Radio Times which is devoting an article to each episode (so far)

• Episode 3: The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner (National Gallery) - the story behind The Fighting Temeraire, JMW Turner's masterpiece, once voted to be the nation's favourite painting.

With the last one I loved the fact he pointed out all the things wrong with the painting! For example - being painted the wrong way round - because the setting sun should have been on the other side of the painting if it was being towed up the River Thames to Rotherhithe (speaks woman who worked this out a long time ago given the fact she is regularly blinded by sun setting in the west at her home in Bow immediately north of Rotherhithe!)

UPDATE: MY APOLOGIES

Below is what I wrote when I thought the series was 10 programmes - but looking back now at Radio Times they've got it listed as a series of 3 programmes.

I'm now wondering if the discontinuity between the press release material I found (see below) and the reality is down to the Pandemic - and the rest will come later?

A new TV series is set to tell the story behind ten of the greatest painting in the world - but according to a new study, only six per cent of adults can correctly identify them. article about the new series (my bold)

PS They definitely had a trailer for the next episode re Picasso at the end of Episode 3 when I watched!!  Plus as you will realise the opening shots all involve the paintings listed below - strongly suggesting more episodes to come

I'll update again if I find out more.

Next week's episode is going to focus on The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso (Tate Britain) - which is, of course all about Guernica and the model for the painting was Dora Maar who was his mistress between 1938 and 1944.

I'm speculating what the remaining seven "iconic paintings" will be. If the introduction to the series is anything to go by I'm expecting

• Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (Le Galerie degli Uffizi, Florence)
• Rembrandt van Rijn's The Night Watch (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Diego Velázquez's The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) (National Gallery)
• John Constable's The Hay Wain (National Gallery)
• John Millais's Ophelia (Tate Britain)
• Claud Monet's Water Lilies - the murals (Musée de l'Orangerie)

Andrew Marr sat in the basement of L'Orangerie - viewing one of Monet's great paintings of water lilies

I'm absolutely certain one of the future programmes is going to be about Monet's Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris (because of the pics for the series). These paintings absolutely overwhelmed me and filled my eyes with tears the first time I saw them. I was incredibly lucky to see them for the very first time incredibly early one Saturday morning in the late 80s with nobody else in the room. I'd arrived in Paris on the Motorail from Provence (a service which is no longer available!). My visit to the water lilies was followed by a very nice lunch near the L'Orangerie and my driving out to Giverny to visit Monet's garden - and then to Calais for the ferry and back home to London.

A day I will never ever forget - I've got a very clear visual memory of it even now!

Anyway - back to the topic - I very much recommend this series of programmes and suggest you catch up with the first three episodes and then watch the rest. You won't regret it.

Art from the BBC Archives - a retrospective

The BBC has been having a rush of art to the BBC4 programme controller's brain. Moreover it is raiding the BBC Archives as a way of making television programmes about art while spending very little. Or as the programme makers put it

Delving into the BBC Archives to reveal a colourful, surprising and rounded portrait of how television has chosen to portray the world’s most famous artists and artistic movements over the last 60 years.

This post is about:

• another new series of programmes about art - on Sunday night (which started last night)
• a BBC Archives website Collection of various Art Programmes

Art on the BBC

The series or four programmes (4 x 60 minutes) about "Art on the BBC" comprise:

• 2nd February 2020: The Story of the Nude (now available on iPlayer)

Humans have been drawing nudes for almost 30,000 years. Kate Bryan explores six decades of BBC archive to discover how television has influenced our understanding of the nude.

• 9nd February 2020: The Many Faces of Picasso - a television history of Picasso who the BBC term "the controversial godfather of modern art" - curated by David Dibosa (pictured) 
• 16th February 2020: The personality of Michelangelo - curated by Sona Datta
• 23rd February 2020: Constable - pushing the boundaries of landscape painting - with Rose Balston

It follows on from a programme in 2018 (repeated in 2019) about The Genius of Leonardo. The video below gives you a sense of the approach of these programmes.

ART ON THE BBC_THE GENIUS OF LEONARDO_CLIP1 from Alleycats Films on Vimeo.

Art from the Archives - The Art Collection

You can also go direct to a BBC Archives website Collection of various Art Programmes and view the various programmes from the Archives which are available to view on iPlayer.

These include:

• Omnibus: Lucian Freud (1988)  - I've watched this one and will no doubt view it again (Available for over a year)

For over 40 years, the artist Lucian Freud has allowed his paintings to speak for themselves, but in this week's Omnibus he talks for the first time about his work and ambitions.

'The greatest living realist painter' is critic Robert Hughes' description of Lucian Freud, whose major retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery earlier this year, brought together the paintings of a lifetime. The exhibition was seen as a revelation, just as it had been in Washington and Paris. 

• LS Lowry at work (17 July 1957 short 3 minute extract) - The artist LS Lowry discusses his painting technique, in a documentary about his work. Originally broadcast 17 July 1957 . I don't think I've ever heard his voice before

"The buildings always come before the figures"

• Rossetti - Sex, Drugs and Oil Paint (2003) - Andrew Graham-Dixon considers the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter and poet who reinvented the Victorian ideal of female beauty... and who dug up his wife's coffin to retrieve poems he had buried with her. 

available on iPlayer

• Release: Pop Goes To The Hayward (5th July 1969) 

On July 9 London's Hayward Gallery becomes host to one of the largest exhibitions of Pop Art to be seen in this country. In the words of one of its exponents, Pop Art is ‘young, witty, sexy, glamorous, and big business’. It is an instant art form and has had instant success. Robert Hughes talks to leading pop artists in New York amid the ad-mass living that inspires their art. Artists featured include Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, George Segal and Andy Warhol. 

RA Friends Annual Subscription vs. Paying for Exhibitions you want to see

Every year, round about this time, I ponder on my continued Friends Subscription to the Royal Academy of Arts.

When I retired I made a point of taking out the annual subscriptions to various art galleries and museums - the Royal Academy of Arts (which I was already a Friend of) plus the National Portrait Gallery, The Tate and the National Art Fund (along with various ones associated with Heritage and Gardens!) . I do so in part to show support for these institutions not because I expect to exploit my membership / Friends status for every organisation.

However I have begun to feel in recent years that I have been financing the build of the RA development for its 250th anniversary.

The Entrance to Burlington House - home of the RA

Let's look at the numbers - which is interesting of itself - because I don;t recall receiving clear reminders about how much the subscription goes up by every year - and what the new direct debit figure is.  I think there are rules above changes to direct debits and I'm not sure the RA is compliant.

All I can say that the RA Friends Subscription has way outstripped inflation - and every other indicator going - re the increase in the subscription fee since I retired.

So the options for me are as follows

OPTION 1: PAY £130 per year 

For that I get

• Free entry to exhibitions for you and a family guest
• Previews to our exhibitions before they open to the public
• Exclusive extended hours to select exhibitions
• Priority booking to all RA events, including in our new Lecture Theatre
• Private views and exclusive Friends events
• All-day access to the Keeper's House
• RA Magazine and a weekly email newsletter
• 10% discount in the RA shop

Burlington House Courtyard - Summer Exhibition 2019

The reality in recent years is that 

• I simply haven't been to every exhibition - and wouldn't want to go to some.  They've been making some very curious choices in recent years
• For very popular exhibitions Friends now need to book in advance to get their free admission and that for me loses the crucial point of being a Friend - of being able to turn up when you felt like it
• The Summer Exhibition was awful this year and I feel less and less like going. Indeed I only go because I can for free. (Although I would have cheerfully paid for Grayson Perry's curation last year)
• Previews are nice - but they are now so very crowded. There's a point when promoting Friends can work against the Scheme!
• Plus many of the activities are of no interest to me. Of those Friends Events that are, the members who seem to know when the new events are publicised have already booked all the tickets and the events are already sold out.  I was absolutely amazed that I got in to a talk about the RA Library recently
• All day access to the Keeper's House is of no consequence since I don't use it.

However

• It is nice to be able to go to the good exhibitions more than once - but the number that tempt me to do so are few and far between (I went to the Hockney Landscapes 4 times - including the very last night - see Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture)
• The RA Magazine is good - but I can read it online without being a member - if I could just remember how!

RA Friends in April 2010

I always used to say that the reason I was a Friend were the black leather Chesterfields in the Friends Room which were a wonderful way to relax after a long time spent viewing an exhibition. Plus I used to sketch in there all the time.

RA Friends September 2011

However the powers that be decided that Friends need to sit on hard chairs and the Chesterfields had to go. Plus the Friends Room got busier and busier to the point where I now take myself over the road to Fortnum & Mason for tea or lunch or gossip with friends who I've not seen for ages - as it so much more relaxed, civilised and comfortable!  Plus I now arrange to meet Friends in the National Dining Rooms which are much more civilised in terms of being able to stay sitting at your table for ages if you time it right!

The RA also upgraded the Members Room and made it into the clubbable bit - for which you now need to spend an extra £400 to get access. 

No way!

Plus I haven't sketched in the Friends Room for ages. Indeed I can't remember the last time I had a cup of tea in there.

It basically feels that the Friends Membership has been downgraded - and what I used to be getting for being a Friend now comes with a huge price tag attached.

Option 2: Pay for art exhibitions as and when 

This is the considerably cheaper option. It means 

• I lose out on previews (no big deal since I stopped covering exhibitions religiously)
• I can't have a Pimms at the Summer Exhibition Preview - but then I went this year and the Pimms Bar had disappeared in any case to be replaced somewhere else by a botanicals gin thingie.
• I can't use the Friends Room - but as explained I've already switched to Fortnum & Mason for better food and more comfort!
• I don't get the Magazine - which is not a big deal for me
• I can still book for events which are not exclusive to Friends 

Plus I have to pay (say) £18-20 admission for some of the exhibitions (i.e. the ones I want to see such as - in 2019-20

• Lucian Freud Self Portraits (Sackler Galleries - 27 October 2019 — 26 January 2020) - cost £18 - but since Friends have to book a timed ticket as well there is no bonus to being a Friend other than saving the cost of the ticket.  (Besides which I saw the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2012 and I doubt I'm going to see anything new - see Review: Lucian Freud Portraits at National Portrait Gallery
• Picasso on Paper (Main Galleries 25 January — 13 April 2020) - cost £18-22 - no current proposals to require bookings by members presumably because it will be in the Main Galleries which are much bigger

MUST BOOK A TIMED TICKET TO GO FREE!!!

I can go to both exhibitions twice and still be "quids in" compared to the cost of a Friends Membership.

Writing this out has been very therapeutic. I'm now off to cancel my direct debit!

Rockefeller Collection on public show at Christies London

Once in a while, a really significant collection of art and artifacts rolls into town - and it's possible to see the works on exhibition prior to a grand auction - and bid on them if you feel so inclined!

The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller is being auctioned in New York in at Christie’s Rockefeller Center in New York in late spring. Prior to this auction, the most valuable collection ever previously offered at auction was the Collection Yves Saint Laurent et Pierre Bergé in 2009 at Christie’s Paris which achieved more than US$400 million / € 373,935,500

CLAUDE MONET (1840–1926)
Nymphéas en fleur
© Christie’s Images Ltd
oil on canvas 63 in. x 71 in. (160 x 178 cm.)
Painted circa 1914-1917

This is the largest auction ever entirely dedicated to raising funds for philanthropic causes. (see note at end)

“Eventually all these objects which have brought so much pleasure to Peggy and me will go out into the world and will again be available to other caretakers who, hopefully, will derive the same satisfaction and joy from them as we have over these past several decades.” David Rockefeller

Prior to this it is touring the world and the preview dates for the exhibition of works from the collection at Christies Galleries are as follows:

• London 21 February – 8 March 2018
• Beijing 6 – 7 April 2018
• Paris 16 – 21 April 2018
• Los Angeles 6 – 12 April 2018, and 
• Shanghai 10 – 11 April 2018

The auction sale will take place in the Spring (dates to be announced) at 20 Rockefella Plaza in New York.  It's expected that the sale will offer 1500 works overall split across auctions taking place in New York during the week of May 7.

Important pieces include:

• Claude Monet's Nympheas en fleur (c.1914-1917) - see above
• what will be the most valuable Matisse painting ever offered at auction to date
• a rather lovely Rose Period Picasso which originally came from the Gertrude Stein Collection

The extended public exhibition will feature significant works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, Juan Gris, Paul Signac, Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and Edward Hopper, among others

Below you can see the images in different contexts and learn something of how they were acquired.

Picasso Portraits exhibition at NPG to highlight his approach to portraiture

An exhibition of Picasso Portraits will open at the National Portrait Gallery on 6 October (until 5th February 2017). It will include over 75 portraits by the artist in all media, ranging from well-known masterpieces to works that have never been shown in Britain before. The exhibition has been developed in association with the Museu Picasso, Barcelona.

The exhibition will surprise and confront one’s preconceived ideas of what a portrait should be and how a portrait by Picasso ought to look like.’Bernardo Laniado-Romero, Director, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

This will be the first major exhibition in the world of Picasso portraits in 20 years - since the 1996 Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation show, curated by William Rubin, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Grand Palais, Paris. That exhibition focused on the biographical and on the people in Picasso's life. As such it drew no distinction between proper portraits and drawings and paintings (eg reclining nudes) which happened to involve one of his muses. It was a much bigger exhibition as a result.

This new exhibition - of some 75 works - will be much more interesting in that it addresses the question not asked or answered by the New York exhibition - "what is Picasso's approach to portraiture?".  The curator is Elizabeth Cowling, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

Picasso never painted on commission and hence his portraits were never required to flatter or tell a story of a life. There was no requirement for interesting backgrounds!  Instead he painted only those people he knew well and over time as his relationships developed - and waxed and waned - his approach to his portrayal of each individual changed.

Instead of a biographical focus, it will focus on the shift in styles and the type of approaches used by Picasso when creating portraits over time.

• Portraits within this context will be ones which are supposed to be about the people who are the subject of the drawing or painting. 
• It will exclude paintings which are paintings of people but occur within the context of paintings which are not portraits e.g. they are a symbolic response or bigger idea such as in Picasso's Weeping Woman which like Guernica is a response to an atrocity.

All phases of the artist’s career will be represented, from the realist portraits of his boyhood to the more gestural canvases of his old age. Indeed the exhibition will demonstrate the complete portfolio of his skills, methods and techniques in relation to the development of a portrait. 

Who knew he was skilled at caricature - or that he did several naturalistic drawings of the individuals he caricatured in advance of the caricature?

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (autumn 1910)
Oil on canvas, 39 9/16 x 28 9/16 in. (100.4 x 72.4 cm)

Pablo Picasso, 1910;

Art Institute of Chicago

Drawings and paintings to be included in the exhibition include:

• the extraordinary cubist portrait from 1910 of the German art dealer and early champion of Picasso’s work, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago (see above); 
• a 1938 portrait of Nusch Eluard, acrobat, artist and wife of the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard
• a group of revealing self-portraits 
• portraits and caricatures of Picasso’s intimate friends, lovers, wives and children - including Guillaume Apollinaire, Carles Casagemas, Santiago Rusiñol, Jaume Sabartés, Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, Fernande Olivier, Olga Picasso, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Picasso
• Portraits and caricatures inspired by artists of the past – Velázquez and Rembrandt among them – with whom he identified most closely.

The exhibition has important loans from the artist’s heirs, private collectors and various important galleries in Europe and the USA. Those institutions which are lending paintings include:

• The Museu Picasso, Barcelona is lending most generously to the National Portrait Gallery. 
• the British Museum; 
• Tate; 
•  Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; 
• Musée national Picasso, Paris; 
• Centre Pompidou, Paris; 
•  Musée national d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; 
• Museum Berggruen, Berlin; 
• Fondation Hubert Looser, Zurich; 
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; 
• Art Institute of Chicago; 
• Philadelphia Museum of Art and 
• the National Gallery of Iceland. 

Innovation on ticketing - £5 Fridays

A new special ticket offer and learning events will will be introduced as a result of funds from the exhibition’s sponsor Goldman Sachs.

• every Friday morning throughout the run of Picasso Portraits, the first 100 tickets will be £5. 
• a wide ranging Learning programme linked to the exhibition is also supported by the sponsor

PICASSO PORTRAITS at the National Portrait Gallery: 6 October 2016 -5 February 2017
Sponsored by Goldman Sachs
Tickets with donation: Full price £19 / Concessions £17.50
Tickets without donation Full price £17 / Concessions £15.50 (Free for Members and Patrons)
www.npg.org.uk/picasso or 020 7321 6600
£5 Fridays with Goldman Sachs: The first 100 tickets for every Friday morning during the exhibition are just £5
PICASSO PORTRAITS ON TOUR
Museu Picasso, Barcelona (17 March–25 June 2017)