A very different view of Tate Modern’s show. Bonnard’s multiple portraits of his wife show that he constantly fiddled and changed his mind. Picasso diagnosed indecision. “Wrong … Bonnard, like many artists, was working to find himself and sort through his past … a form of therapy. [His wife] was Bonnard’s shifting projection of himself [and] color was Bonnard’s arbitrator of emotion.”
How timely – a show about Britishness, just as the Brexit debate peaks. The linked piece airs criticisms of Parr; a lover of kitch, satire lacking in compassion. Fellow artist Grayson Perry disagrees: this work “hovers uncomfortably between comedy and tragedy … humour bleeds through all these photographs, but also compassion … one of the foremost chroniclers of our times.”
An excoriating review. Moore’s fascination with armour led to a decades-long series of modernist heads. “The Helmet Heads are Moore’s answer to Bacon’s screaming popes. The trouble is, they have none of Bacon’s cruel genius. [They have] neither the immediacy of a photograph nor the imaginative impact of truly original art. Moore is always a few miles from life.”
Nudes in the early Renaissance were most common in religious art, their realism serving to portray Christ’s sacrifice. New humanist ideas about beauty led to a sly eroticism. Male nudes particularly showed this, reflecting a society where same sex male relationships were common. The Reformation tried to re-establish modesty but “after the Sistine Chapel, “everyone wanted their artists to paint nudes.”