Jack Vettriano / Unreal Rooms

Jack Vettriano, Mad Dogs

Jack Vettriano

Unreal Rooms

1 JULY 2017, 

EMANUELA BORGATTA DUNNETT

Why are we able to feel nostalgia for a world we have never visited nor known, in front of Jack Vettriano’s paintings? Why do we feel as strangers - yet accomplices - in front of the men and women populating his works? These are key questions to understand the Scottish painter’s success, a painter who has managed to become one of the most followed artist of contemporary painting, all over the world. First, we need to focus our attention on the use of the light: unprecedented in the way he uses to play with the darkness which characterises all his works: faces in half light, thoughtful, facing a crossroad where they are asked to state their position. The bodies are captured at the beginning of an action, the consequences of which are unknown: deceitful gazes, arms meeting in secret relationships. 

Françoise Gilot y Pablo Picasso

 

Françoise Gilot y Picasso

Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso

Françoise Gilot y Picasso

 

Jack Vettriano: ‘His paintings are like a double cheeseburger in a greasy wrapper’

This article is more than 8 months old

The Scot painted singing butlers, ‘broads’ in bras and tough guys in suits, in works critics found lurid, chintzy, devoid of irony and often sexist. But they were also hugely popular – showing the power of ‘I get it’ art

Eddie Frankel

In 1992, Jack Vettriano’s painting The Singing Butler was rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Anyone who has seen some of the dross picked for display in the RA’s annual open submission collision of amateur artists and big stars in recent decades will be thinking: “Ouch, must’ve been a real dud.” But The Singing Butler not only wasn’t a dud, it went on to become one of the most ubiquitous and – whisper it – iconic British paintings since the second world war.

 

Andy Warhol created 16 works based on Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph.COLLECTION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyright on image of Prince, Supreme Court rules

The court sided 7-2 with photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The case involved images Warhol created of Prince as part of a 1984 commission for ‘Vanity 

Surrealism / Reality and imagination in art and poetry

Phillipe Halsman's photograph "Dalí Atomicus" (1948) of famous surrealist Salvador Dalí jumping into the air with three cats flying past him captures the essence of surrealism, bending reality while letting the imagination soar

Surrealism: reality and imagination in art and poetry

Uncovering the interplay of realism and fantasy in surrealists' universes

25 NOVEMBER 2024, 

MERYEM CHAGRAOUI

Metaphors arise from the womb of reality. They are fundamentally tied to the tangible world, and their beauty and effectiveness depend on this connection. If a metaphor cannot be traced back to real-life experiences or observations, it fails to fulfil its primary purpose. This link to reality is what makes metaphors resonate with us. They provide a way to understand complex ideas through familiar experiences, bridging the gap between the known and the unknown.

Exploring Salvador Dalí's timeless influence on surrealism

 

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

Exploring Salvador Dalí's timeless influence on surrealism

How Dalí's art challenges our perception of time and reality

12 FEBRUARY 2025, 

ORSOLYA ANTONI

In 2017, I had the opportunity to see the Salvador Dalí exhibition in Berlin. Dali's chaotic, genius pieces have always captivated me. His ability to project our crazy dreams and subconscious onto canvas is truly remarkable. What's even more fascinating is how his work, some more futuristic and others more questionable, seems to fit perfectly into today's reality. Dali's influence on modern art and culture is undeniably profound, shaping our perceptions and sparking new artistic expressions. His work has not only left an indelible mark on our collective consciousness but has also inspired a myriad of transformative impacts. Personally, I am deeply moved and inspired by the unparalleled influence of his art, and I believe his work will continue to inspire generations to come.

 

The Great Wave at Kanagawa, designed by Katsushika Hokusai

The great wave off Kanagawa

A personal exploration of Japanese tradition and identity through the lens of Hokusai’s timeless print

12 NOVEMBER 2025, 

ORSOLYA ANTONI

This exquisite print, a masterpiece of ukiyo-e, never fails to captivate with its vibrant hues and intricate details. The moment I first encountered it, I was swept away by the tumultuous roar of the ocean, a wave rising high above the distant Mount Fuji, creating a stark contrast that ignited a profound curiosity within me about the awe-inspiring world of Japanese culture, art, and cuisine. The energy of the wave, so alive and dynamic, seemed to speak to a deeper narrative of resilience and beauty amidst chaos, leaving me in a state of wonder and awe.

Jackson Pollock, Number 27 (detail), 1950. Courtesy of Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza 

Warhol, Pollock and other American spaces

21 Oct 2025 — 25 Jan 2026 at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain

24 OCTOBER 2025

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is organising an exhibition that brings together the work of Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock, two key figures in 20th-century art who focused on issues relating to new spatial strategies. Like other artists of that generation also present in the exhibition, they were united by their interest in changes in the pictorial tradition, spatiality and, in some cases, the use of large formats.

The works featured in the exhibition reveal how Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was not always an “abstract master”, while also presenting a more complex Andy Warhol (1928–1987) than the artist of dispassionately depicted, banal themes from popular culture. Midway between the abstract and the figurative, in their own way both set out to reassess the concept of space and its use as a place of concealment; a space revisited through repetition and seriality. Pollock and Warhol disrupted the notion of background and figure and developed a project which, through its very pictorial strategies, had something of camouflage about it. Frequently present in the works of both artists are traces and vestiges that refer to certain autobiographical aspects. 

The exhibition, which has benefited from the collaboration of the Comunidad de Madrid and the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the City Council of Madrid, features more than one hundred works, many of which have never previously been seen in Spain. Loaned from around thirty institutions in the United States and Europe, they include works by Warhol and Pollock as well as other artists such as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Marisol Escobar, Sol LeWitt and Cy Twombly. Among them, Brown and silver I by Pollock, Express by Robert Rauschenberg and Untitled (Green on maroon) by Mark Rothko are all from the Thyssen collection.

1. Robert Rauschenberg, Express (detail), 1963. Courtesy of Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza 
2. Marisol, Untitled, 1960. Courtesy of Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza 
3. Andy Warhol, Jackie II (sheet 5 in: 11 Pop Artists II), 1966. Courtesy of Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

MEER

Balthus in Madrid

 

Balthus. Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

Balthus

19 Feb — 26 May 2019 at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain

11 FEBRUARY 2019

In 2019 the museum presents an exhibition on the legendary artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (1908-2001), known as Balthus. The exhibition is jointly organised with the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen / Basel, where it will be seen from September 2018 to January 2019.

Considered one of the great masters of 20th-century art, Balthus is undoubtedly one of the most unique painters of his time. His diverse, ambiguous work, which has been equally admired and reviled, pursued a direction that ran completely counter to the rise of the avant-gardes. Balthus himself named some of his influences derived from the tradition of art history, ranging from Piero della Francesca to Caravaggio, Poussin, Géricault and Courbet. A more detailed study of his work also reveals references to more recent movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit and his employment of devices derived from 19th-century children’s book illustrations. In his divergence from modernity, which could now be described as “post-modern”, Balthus evolved a personal and unique type of avant-garde art and a figurative style that defies classification. His particular pictorial language, with its use of solid forms and strongly defined outlines, combines the procedures of the Old Masters with certain aspects of Surrealism. The resulting images involve numerous contradictions, juxtaposing tranquillity with extreme tension; reverie and mystery with reality; and eroticism with innocence.

The exhibition, curated by Raphaël Bouvier with the support of Michiko Kono, and Juan Ángel López-Manzanares, brings together paintings from every period of Balthus’s career from the 1920s onwards. It casts light on aspects such as the different types of intellectual interaction between the dimensions of space and time that exist in his paintings; the relationship between figure and object; and the essence of his enigmatic oeuvre.

1. Balthus. Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
2. Balthus. Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
3. Balthus. Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

MEER

 

Pablo Picasso, Playing cards, tobacco, bottle, and glass, 1914. Courtesy of Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Picasso and Klee in the Heinz Berggruen Collection

28 Aug 2025 — 1 Feb 2026 at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain

28 OCTOBER 

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting Picasso and Klee in the Heinz Berggruen Collection, an exhibition organised in collaboration with the Museum Berggruen in Berlin that reveals the artistic connection between two geniuses of modern art, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. 

Jeremy Mann / Women

  

 Jeremy Mann

WOMEN

Chagall’s stained-glass windows in Kent The sense of wonder in the world

 

All Saints church in Tudeley

Chagall’s stained-glass windows in Kent 

The sense of wonder in the world 

18 SEPTEMBER 2020, 

IRENE KUKOTA

The church of All Saints1 in the small village of Tudeley, not far from the historical medieval town of Tonbridge, can be rightfully considered another well-hidden Wonder of the World. Now, as churches began to reopen across the UK, the All Saints church welcomes worshippers and visitors again. It has a long history, harking back to the 7th century A.D and pre-dating the Domesday Book (in which it is, logically, also mentioned). During the Middle Ages the church belonged to Tonbridge Priory and was rebuilt between 12-14 centuries). After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1526 it was passed to Christ Church, Oxford, and then became the property of the Crown. Nowadays it belongs to the Diocese of Rochester. 

 

AI analysis finds £71,000 painting dismissed as copy is a Caravaggio

Exclusive: Study gives 85.7% probability Badminton House version of The Lute Player is by 17th-century master

Dalya Alberge

Sat 27 Sep 2025 

He is one of the most revered artists in western art, yet just a few dozen works by Caravaggio have survived. Now the 17th-century master’s hand has been confirmed in a painting that Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Museum in New York had dismissed as a mere copy.

The magnificent world of Shiko Munakata

 

Shiko Munakata, Mt. Hakkoda, 1924, Aomori Museum of Art 

The magnificent world of Shiko Munakata

The Van Gogh of Aomori, Japan

16 NOVEMBER 2023, 

ALMA REYES

 

"The woodcut, unconcerned with good and evil, with ideas, with differences, tells us that it consists of truth alone.”
(Shiko Munakata)