Tag: painting

Glenys Cour: can mlynedd o liw

January 12, 2024 1 Comment
Glenys Cour: can mlynedd o liw

Ar 6 Ionawr 2024 ymgasglodd cryn nifer o gyfeillion a chyd-artistiaid yn ei thŷ yn y Mwmbwls i ddathlu pen-blwydd Glenys Cour yn 100 mlwydd oed.  Eisteddai Glenys yn ei chadair arferol yn y lolfa, gyda’i golygfa wych dros Fae Abertawe, wrth i gyfeillion ddod ati fesul un, plygu drosodd neu benlinio, a dymuno’n dda […]

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‘Exhabiting that corricatore of a harss’: Anselm Kiefer and James Joyce

July 14, 2023 2 Comments
‘Exhabiting that corricatore of a harss’: Anselm Kiefer and James Joyce

No one could accuse Anselm Kiefer of being a miniaturist.  The White Cube in Bermondsey is a large space and it’s packed full with the huge displays of his new exhibition, a response to his long-time admiration for James Joyce’s unreadable masterwork, Finnegans wake. The Cube isn’t a cube at all, but an oblong.  When […]

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Prussian Blue

March 26, 2021 0 Comments
Prussian Blue

Like a teenager, C. has fallen hopelessly in love, with a visitor from the Continent.  I didn’t see it coming.  And the worst thing is that I’m not sure it’s a temporary infatuation that will soon pass.  It’s taken a firm hold on her affections.  Only time will tell whether everything will end in tears. […]

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The Last Bard: loops of an invented tradition

December 26, 2020 5 Comments
The Last Bard: loops of an invented tradition

By now the ‘invented tradition’ is itself a tradition.  Since Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger published their edited collection The invention of tradition in 1983, we’ve become familiar with the idea that rituals, histories and beliefs that seem age-old were actually recent fictions devised with specific purposes in mind. One of the chapters in The […]

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The Black Flag

October 30, 2020 1 Comment
The Black Flag

The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is closed for ‘firewall’ fortnight, but when it reopens you could do worse than pay it a visit.  There are several excellent temporary exhibitions, as well as some seldom-seen items from the permanent collection, including a small display of art on the theme of protest.  Its centrepiece is a striking […]

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One hill, two painters

April 10, 2020 1 Comment
One hill, two painters

Peter Wakelin’s book Refuge and renewal: migration and British art, written to accompany his exhibition of the same name – its run in MOMA Machynlleth was sadly curtailed by coronavirus – is a rich source of information about artists who fled to Britain to escape the Nazis.  A name he mentions in passing on three […]

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Lucian Freud and Celia Paul

January 25, 2020 0 Comments
Lucian Freud and Celia Paul

Lucian Freud isn’t one of those big artists whose star quickly fades after death.  To judge by a visit to the Royal Academy exhibition of his self-portraits (it finishes tomorrow), his work still attracts plenty of public interest. The paintings were arranged chronologically, so you could follow easily the track of Freud’s development, and how […]

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The portraits of Kyffin Williams

September 14, 2018 0 Comments
The portraits of Kyffin Williams

This article is based on a talk given to The Arts Society: Brecknock in Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon on 11 September 2018 to mark the centenary of Kyffin Williams’s birth. Introduction My starting point is a talk given by Peter Lord as the Kyffin Williams lecture for 2018 at Oriel Môn, entitled ‘The portraits of Kyffin […]

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In Bruges, with Gerard David and friends

July 1, 2018 0 Comments
In Bruges, with Gerard David and friends

There are many good reasons for going to Brugge (why do we say Bruges, when it’s a mainly Flemish-speaking city?): the townscape and amazingly preserved buildings, the canals and windmills, the beer and chocolates, the football and the multilingualism. But for me a visit was a chance to renew my long friendship with Gerard David. […]

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Men come together to make a man

March 30, 2018 2 Comments
Men come together to make a man

I was wandering absently through the galleries of the Glynn Vivian the other day, trying, unsuccessfully, to remember what the Welsh word for ‘unflattering’ might be, when I stopped suddenly in front of a Japanese print. It was in one of the rooms devoted to the gallery’s founding collection, which once belonged to Richard Glynn […]

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