The Easel

30th October 2018

Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde

So many reviews, and so many complaints!  The exhibition wants to debunk the cliché of the genius male artist attended by his muse. However, it is variously too big (40 couples!), poorly hung, or too coy about power imbalances (think Rodin). Still, as one critic notes “when a creative partnership was made up of equals, it tended to implode under its own intensity.”

What pain looks like: the visceral art of Jusepe de Ribera

Ribera lived much of his life in violent Naples. This seems relevant to his art which is terrifyingly and repeatedly violent. Was Ribera himself violent? Probably not. There is a “gentleness” with which he painted his ghastly scenes, implying a witness, not a participant. Still, his imagination was, according to one critic, “one of art history’s darkest alleys”.