Month / January 2024

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Stuff Happened

Nicole Eisenman: What Happened (Whitechapel Gallery, 11 October 2023–14 January 2024)

Born in Verdun, France, in the 1960s, Eisenman practices in Brooklyn and I’m very glad I caught this just before it closed – although a more awake me would have spent longer and a more alert me would have made the link to Ridykeulous at Nottingham Contemporary. (I seem to keep missing stuff here – maybe it’s just the wrong part of not central London. But engineering works led me, via the Dulwich Picture Gallery and Rubens to Blackfriars and the District Line…) It formed quite a contrast from the relative elegance of the Rubens oil on panels – especially as the theme of that exhibition was to evade the Rubenesque – and I felt much more in a R. Crumb/George Condo/Philip Guston tradition of the grotesque.

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Best Art Expotitions of 2023

Because “best” is such a subjective term, I’ve tried to spread my picks of gallery going across the calendar year. I’ve left out returns to museums in Amsterdam and Oslo (the Munchmuseet’s postwar American exhibition was great), and the long walks through MoMA, the Met, the Frink and the Whitney (although curiously one of two bijoux exhibitions at the Morgan Library was unexpectedly useful). A few themed shows – the surrealism at the Design Museum, the RAA’s southern America – might have made it in, but didn’t.

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