MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Exhibition
Social comment, allotment architecture and humour stand out in engaging show
OUTSTANDING: (L to R) Adam De Ville, Eighty Two Rounds, One Knock Out and Brian Smith’s (RI) Ernie's Beach
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
WATERCOLOURS, forever the poor relatives of oil painting, have been unjustly associated with “Sunday amateurs,” a stigma that the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours has fought against tooth and nail. To its credit, it’s done so with considerable success.
The institutes’s annual exhibition and awards for painters working in the medium has been the silver lining for artists tested by the pandemic and perhaps trying times have somewhat clipped the wings of the intrepid experimentation evidenced in shows over the last few years.
Yet the unexpected and intriguing is there in Brian Smith’s Ernie’s Beach — reminiscent of Abraham Hondius’s Frost Fairs — which celebrates a triumph over developers to keep a popular stretch of the Thames near the OXO Tower public.
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Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
