Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 – Royal Academy of Arts

The other week I went to the Royal Academy to catch the exhibition Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 just before it closed. I’m glad I did – I didn’t know much about Mexico in the early 20th century (or Mexico at any other time, come to that), but I found it really interesting.

Revolution and regime change in Mexico inspired artists of all kinds who produced varied work including paintings, photographs, leaflets and woodcuts. Some of my favourite images were those inspired by the Day of the Dead, with grinning skulls and bright colours. I also liked the early 20th century pictures showing the revolution in action.

José Chávez Morado, ‘Carnaval en Huejotzingo’ (Carnival in Huejotzingo), 1939

Some of the images made a particularly strong impact: the photographers did not shy away from portraying the dark side of the revolution, with explicit shots of the dead and injured. While disturbing, these images really brought home the reality of the situation for the revolutionaries, and contrasted with the other images emphasising the positive side of Mexico.

Manet: Portraying Life – Royal Academy of Arts

Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy of Arts was the last exhibition I saw on Sunday. I had originally planned to visit on Friday night a couple of weeks ago, but like so many exhibitions recently, it was sold out so I decided to book in advance for a later date.

2013 0310 Royal Academy

This is the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to the work of Eduoard Manet (1832-1883). It focuses on his career as a portrait painter. Although I was aware of Manet before the exhibition, I always imagined him as a landscape painter, so this aspect was interesting to me.

Manet came from a wealthy family and didn’t have to live by his art, but he still sought approval from the Paris Salon, which was, however, often rejected. He used elements of the Old Masters and the new Impressionists, creating an art that was different from both with an unique style. Though photographic portraits were growing in popularity during the time in which he worked, Manet still believed that painting offered opportunities that photographs didn’t in evoking the personality of the individuals painted.

Manet painted several portraits, including pictures of his friends and family: his wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, and stepson, Léon, appear frequently, as do a number of studies of friends including Antonin Proust (no relation to Marcel). Some of his pictures are status portraits of political or other celebrity figures; several of these are unfinished as their sitters could not offer the time that Manet required to model for them. Some of my favourite pictures are those of the writers and artists who were Manet’s friends, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Emile Zola.

My favourite Manet pictures, however, were those which included models rather than important or celebrity figures, particularly those of Victorine Meurent, who appears in the fascinating painting The Railway (1873), in which a red-haired woman gazes at the viewer while the child beside her stands facing the other way, watching the approaching steam train whose presence is indicated by a cloud of smoke. Manet’s style is modern but influenced by older painters, striking and memorable.

Manet: Portraying Life is on until the 14th of April.

Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape – Royal Academy of Arts

On Friday night I paid a visit to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape exhibition. I love Turner and this was the main reason for my visit. In the end there wasn’t a great deal of his work on display, or that of the other named artists. A lot of the space was devoted to artists who paved the way or who were inspired by these three giants, so I felt the title of the exhibition was slightly misleading. Still, the paintings and artefacts displayed were well-chosen and the exhibition as a whole was small enough to be enjoyed without fatigue. Highlights for me included Turner’s Dolbadern Castle, while paintings by Gainsborough and Constable, artists I’d never paid much attention to in the past, appeared in a new light for me and I think I’d like to find out more about their work.