Fashion and Textile Museum London
Until May 8th
By Nick Landon

It would be fair to say every person on planet Earth owns a t-shirt; whether it be diamond encrusted or a threadbare piece of advertising on the back of a malnourished street child in the many slums around the world.

“T-shirt, Cult, Culture and Subversion” is an exhibition that brings to light the influence of a very
basic garment, largely taken for granted by us all. The t-shirt is a global common language allowing the ordinary individual to wear their words, beliefs, hobbies or just as a piece of fashion.
Like the wheel, the t-shirt cannot be reinvented, it is the perfect basic. This simplicity makes it
a platform for creativity.

The exhibition aims to portray the t-shirt as a “communicative tool”, and so it does, thanks to the twelve installations dividing the exhibition space into the twelve categories of communication. I thought this was a piece of curating genius, reminding us that the T influence comes in the shape of hearty ethics and ecology, political and personal slogans, then moving on to fashion and angry art making the visitor recognise the communicative value of the t-shirt.

The exhibition charts the history of the “ T”, even suggesting it’s been around since AD500. This detailed history of the t-shirt with displays of this modest garment swinging on coat hangers, is an ideal introduction and provides encouragement to regard it as more than just a ’t-shirt’.
In order to demonstrate the political power of the t-shirt, the political category had a display that mimicked banners on a scaffolding-like structure, some high up and some eye level. The musical tees were hung like vinyls on a wall and the fashion items were displayed on full mannequins.

Everything about the exhibition made perfect sense. Nevertheless, I found more of a wow factor in the factual side compared to the visual side. It is extremely hard to make such a common object – the good old T into an eye-catching piece of art, it is too familiar and we have seen it all before.
The final room however, did have a photography exhibition by Susan Barnet which almost proved what the exhibition had been trying to tell us all along- an anonymous back view with an eye-catching piece of advertising on each, proving the genius of this blank canvas as an unrivalled vehicle for jargon, political satire and general hot topics and art in all its forms.

I thought this exhibition was carefully curated and the subject a very familiar friend, so although not exactly groundbreaking, it is a comforting way to spend an hour and a reminder that some basic things are hard to beat!

www.ftmlondon.org

By Lavinia Dickson-Robinson
Tate Modern, 8 March – 9 September 2018

“When we love a woman, we don’t start measuring her limbs. We love with our desires – although everything has been done to try and apply a canon, even to love.” – Pablo Picasso

The Tate Modern has without a doubt, staged one of the most beautiful and passionate solo exhibitions of Pablo Picasso’s work in modern times. If you only go to one exhibition this year make it this one, it is breath taking, truly unmissable.

Never have these works been together in one gallery before. This unique exhibition has taken 5 years from concept to the opening, and it has been possible thanks to the help of the EY Tate partnership, the Picasso family, The MOMA in New York, the Musée national Picasso Paris and many private collections. This exhibition is a shining light in the 18 years that the Tate Modern has been open. It is exhibitions like this that makes it one of the most important museums in the world.

1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso. He was the most influential living artist of his time and this was for him, a year of reflection and innovation. His passion was his mistress Maria Thérése Walter but his sense of duty and love for his first wife, the stunning Russian ballerina Olga Khokklova, show through his work. There is a sense of agonising conflict between where his love was and his duties lay. Many of the pictures show this torment and as a result, they are, in my opinion, some of his best work.

Picasso was always changing, and it was this year of 1932 which became a turning point for him and saw the start of his paintings on love, dreams, and desires. Although maybe not the most dazzling, for me the most touching pictures in this exhibition are those of his wife, Olga in a chair (1918) painted in 1918 and the portrait of his son Paulo dressed in a Pierrot costume. The dream, lent from a private collection is one of his best know works The exhibition also includes the haunting Crucifixion series, shown here in the UK for the first time, and the stunning Three paintings in three days which are being shown together for the first time in 86 years.

Girl before a Mirror, which has been lent by The MOMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) is considered an icon of modern art. We must mention the passion and dedication of the curators Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions at Tate Modern, Nancy Ireson, Curator of International Art, and Assistant Curators Juliette Rizzi and Laura Bruni, without whom this extraordinary exhibition wouldn’t have been possible.

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS
Until April 15th

Charles I unfortunately made it into the hall of fame for being arrogant, unscrupulous and having a tendency to taking bad decisions. He ended up tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649. However, during his reign, Charles I amassed and incredible art collection, through the acquisition and commissioning of exceptional masterpieces from the 15th to the 17th century, including works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Holbein, Titian and Mantegna.

Just months after his death, the collection was put on sale and dispersed across Europe. Although many works were retrieved by Charles II during the Restoration, others now form the core of collections such as the Musée du Louvre and the Museo Nacional del Prado.

This exceptional exhibition by the Royal Academy reunites around 150 of the most important works for the first time since the seventeenth century, providing an unprecedented opportunity to experience the collection that changed the appreciation of art in England. Major lenders to this exhibition include Her Majesty The Queen, The National Gallery, London, the Musée du Louvre, Paris, the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, as well as numerous other public and private
collections.

In 1623, two years prior to his ascension to the throne, Prince Charles visited Madrid and was utterly impressed by the Habsburg collection of art. He returned to England with paintings by Titian and Veronese. Intent on creating his own collection, he acquired the prestigious Gonzaga collection, which had been accumulated by the Dukes of Mantua. He also commissioned important artists, most notably Anthony van Dyck, who was appointed ‘principalle Paynter in Ordenarie to their Majesties’ in 1632, Peter Paul Rubens, Orazio Gentileschi and Guido Reni. In collaboration and competition with other collectors close to the Stuart court, namely Thomas Howard (1586-1646), Earl of Arundel, and George Villiers (1592-1628), Duke of Buckingham, Charles I amassed a collection unrivalled in the history of English taste.

Anthony van Dyck’s monumental portraits of the king and his family form the core of the exhibition. In addition, visitors can enjoy the monumental series by Andrea Mantegna The Triumph of Caesar (c.1484-92) among many other Renaissance masterpieces. It is worth mentioning the inclusion, in this exhibition, of the Mortlake tapestries of Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles, c.1631-40, one of the most spectacular set of tapestries ever produced in England, as well as the precious works formerly kept in the Cabinet at Whitehall Palace, including paintings, statuettes, miniatures and drawings.

Christopher Le Brun, President, Royal Academy of Arts comments: ‘Charles I is one of history’s greatest collectors, the Royal Collection is one of the world’s greatest collections and the Royal Academy’s galleries are amongst the finest in the world. With such a combination this exhibition provides the perfect launch for our 250th anniversary celebrations in 2018’.

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Until April 2nd, 2018
By Lavinia Dickson-Robinson

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of the art of his time. Thanks to a pioneering partnership with HTC Vive, the TATE Modern has been able to put together the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the UK, bringing together a dazzling range of his iconic portraits, sculptures and the largest ever group of nudes to be shown in this country, including many works that have never before been shown in the UK.

Modigliani was born in Livorno in 1884. He grew up in Italy, and spent his youth studying the art of antiquity and the Renaissance at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. In 1906 he moved to Paris, which at the time was a focal point of the avant-garde. It was here in Paris that he met artists such as Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi and his partner Jeanne Hebuterne. Modigliani was at first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but by 1907 he had become fascinated with the work of Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso. The exhibition begins with the artist’s arrival in Paris, exploring the creative environments and elements of popular culture that were central to his life and work. Inspired by the work of these artists, Modigliani began to experiment and develop his own distinctive visual language, characterised by elongation of faces and figures which were not well received in his lifetime.

Between 1909 and 1914 he devoted himself to sculpture. He was introduced to Contastin Brancusi by his friend and agent Paul Guillaume, and trained under Brancusi for a year. Some of his sculptures where exhibited in the Salon d’Automnein 1912 but Modigliani gave up sculpting in 1914. In June 2010, Modigliani’s Tete, a limestone carving of a woman’s head, became the third most expensive sculpture ever sold.

Modigliani’s first great romance was with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. A six-foot-tall, raven-haired and ravishing beauty, she became something of a sensation when she arrived with her husband in 1910. They headed straight to Montparnasse. It was here that she met the 25-year-old Modigliani. Anna was immediately enchanted by him; the pair became inseparable. It was a meeting of hearts and minds. Modigliani drew her no less 16 times although sadly many of these paintings have been lost. She was his first muse and in the exhibition one can see how she influenced his work over the period of their affair.

Many of Modigliani pictures, and undoubtedly his most famous work, were portraits of friends and benefactors. His circle included poets, dealers, writers and musicians, many of whom helped him financially and emotionally and posed for his portraits. Examples include Diego Rivera (1914), Juan Gris (1915) and Jean Cocteau (1916). Modigliani was an attractive man, and women came and went until Beatrice Hastings appeared into his life. She stayed with him for two years. Beatrice was the subject of several of his portraits including Madame Pompadour. It was a temptations affair and the cause of many of his drunken rages.

At the beginning of world War 1 Modigliani tried to enlist but was refused on the grounds of ill health so instead, he to the South of France for the duration of the war with his partner Jeanne Hebuterne, with whom he had a daughter. Tragically, when he died of tubercular meningitis in 1920, Jeanne committed suicide. In the South of France he painted some of his most beautiful portraits; possibly the light of the south of France being so different from Paris made the colours totally different, much more vibrant and bold. Modigliani painted several dozen nudes between 1916 and 1919, 12 of which are displayed in this exhibition, the largest group ever seen in the UK, with paintings including Nude 1917 and Reclining Nude c.1919. His explicit depictions also proved controversial and led to the police censoring his only solo exhibition in his lifetime, at Berthe Weill’s gallery in 1917, on grounds of indecency. Reclining Nude made $170,405,000 at Christies in New York in November 2015, a record for a Modigliani painting, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

I strongly recommend getting an audio guide when you visit this exhibition. It really brings alive the artist’s work in a way that couldn’t possible be done by simply watching the pictures and sculptures. Other related events taking place include: Les Chants De Maldoror Talk on Sunday 11th February and a Curators Tour on Monday 19th March. There is also a Podcast Artists’ models talk about Modigliani’s nudes. You can Listen for free at tate.org.uk/podcasts or search for Tate on Apple Podcasts.

www.tate.org.uk/Tate_Modern‎

By Lavinia Dickson-Robinson

Brought up by his father, a strict Lutheran minister and later chaplain to the King of Sweden, and his mother a nurse, Bergman once said: “I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire-angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans…”

Celebrating his centenary, BFI Southbank’s Definitive Ingmar Bergman Season is a comprehensive study of this extraordinary director’s work, taking place until 20th March 2018. Bergman is recognised as one of the most accomplished and influential filmmakers of all time. He is most famous for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) which is considered a classic of world cinema; Wild Strawberries (1957) is seen by many as one Bergman’s greatest and most moving films; while Persona (1966) is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films ever made, and also one that influenced many future directors such as Robert Altman and David Lynch.

Bergman first achieved critical and worldwide acclaim with Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes the following year. This was followed by some of his best known works – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries released 10 months apart in 1957-. The Seventh Seal was awarded the Special Jury prize at Cannes and was Bergman’s second nomination for the Palme d’Or. 
Bergman directed over sixty films and documentaries, most of which he also wrote. Many of his films dealt with complex issues such as death, love, illness, betrayal and insanity.

From 1953 Bergman forged a creative partnership with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Nykvist went on to win Academy Awards for his work on two Bergman films, Cries and Whispers (1973) and Fanny and Alexander (1983). In 2003 Nykvist was judged one of the ten most influential cinematographers of all time in a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild. It’s no wonder that these two sublime masters of their crafts formed such a strong tie and made some of the most beautiful films of all time.
This extraordinary film season is the result of a collaboration between the BFI, the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, The Swedish Film Institute, SF Studios and The Swedish Ministry of Culture.
The human condition will be the theme running through February, with screenings of his best known film The Seventh Seal (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960), in which Bergman deals with the rape of a young girl and her father’s revenge. Also showing will be Prison (1948), shot early in his career and on a very tight budget.

How can one start to comprehend, the brilliance of the late Ingmar Bergman? a writer and director of such talent, who worked not just in film, but in theatre and television as well.
I have asked the programmer of the BFI season, Geoff Andrew, to put into his own words how he would explain this complex man and incredible director.
 Bergman was unusual in focussing so many of his films on a woman’s experience and/or point of view. Generally his films seem to be rather more sympathetic to his female characters than to his male characters, who are often depicted as proud, vain, deceitful and self-deluding. This may have come about because he was devoted to his mother, and very close to his grandmother, whereas he had a very difficult relationship with his father. But his portraits of women – which are never hagiographic, but show them as plausibly flawed, rounded personalities – are probably also shaped by the actresses he worked with repeatedly over the years; very often he wrote roles with specific performers in mind. So all this probably contributed to his sympathetic and insightful depictions of women.

What makes Bergman so distinctive as a filmmaker is his readiness to draw upon his own personal fears, anxieties, doubts and uncertainties about life and death, and use them as a source of inspiration and expression for his films. This he did with a rare, uncompromising honesty. This is probably why most people think of his films as ‘dark’, but that is only because most other filmmakers do not make such personal films; instead, most of them prefer to offer up ‘feel-good’ or escapist entertainment. Bergman was different in that he dealt with the issues that affect us all (at least those of this living relatively comfortable lives in the West): questions like how we live with ourselves and others, how we find and substance a sense of balance, purpose and contentment in our lives, how we face up to our inevitable mortality, and how we cope with a world which includes so much pain, suffering and injustice. In other words, Bergman made films inspired by life, not by other movies.

Ingmar Bergman Film Season at BFI Southbank
Until March 20th 2018
www.bfi.org.uk

What the musical smash hit ‘Hamilton’ teaches us about leadership of self
Written by By Phil Wall

Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, was without doubt the theatrical sensation of 2017. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, the show has become a runaway box-office hit in the UK and the US.

Hamilton is one of America’s most influential and – prior to this production, least recognised Founding Fathers. He wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers – still the most authoritative interpretation of the US constitution. In Washington’s first cabinet, he ran the US Treasury and founded America’s first National Bank. A trained lawyer, later in life, he helped to end the legality of the slave trade. But how did such an unlikely hero emerge to scale such historical heights? Or, in the words of the libretto, How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” Hamilton endeavours to wrap up the mystery.

From her first entry, Hamilton’s would-be partner and will be long-suffering wife looks to take centre-stage. While her gender inhibits her own ambitions, her partnership with Hamilton locates her right at the centre of a historic social circle, offering her a host of opportunities, which she embraces with open arms. That is, until she discovers the humiliating details of her husband’s infidelity. Beating a tragic retreat, Elizabeth, in her own words, “erases herself from the narrative”, swapping politics and power for seclusion and solitude.

But her story doesn’t end here. In the grand finale, she re-imagines the future, putting herself back into her own story. Elizabeth Hamilton would become a renowned social reformer and philanthropist, speaking out against slavery and establishing New York’s first private orphanage. As the curtain falls, Elizabeth Hamilton is warming up for fifty years of campaigning, fundraising and social activism.

The story of Elizabeth Hamilton won’t let me go – and not only because my daughter can’t stop singing it! In times of personal disappointment, rejection or failure, many of us long to withdraw and hide. Even if we love the limelight, we all experience times when we would rather “erase ourselves from the narrative.” For some, failure leads to an identity crisis or a crash of self-confidence. For others, betrayal by loved ones, colleagues or even the organisations we serve, paves the way for intense anger, suffocating bitterness and the occasional irrational outburst. Some find themselves destroyed by fear and anxiety; others plough on through gritted teeth.

But, inspired by the example of Elizabeth Hamilton, here are 4 thought-shifts towards a comeback.

1 – You are not a victim

Are you really a victim?

In my charitable work for We See Hope, I spend a good part of my year supporting children and families in Africa whose life choices have been erased by HIV and Aids, war, famine and other atrocities besides. These people have little control of their narrative – they have every reason to see themselves as victims (though often they don’t).

I have occasionally witnessed a genuine victim in corporate life. But the great majority wield significant influence, are well remunerated, enjoy fantastic lifestyles and could choose to do something else in a flash.

If we see ourselves as victims, we cheat ourselves into believing that we are not the authors of our own story – but we are. We have choices. Believing it is the critical first step to a more positive future.

2 – Our nightmares rarely come true

Insecurity and anxiety can play foul tricks on our imagination, turning drama into crisis, and crisis into a catastrophe, and, as we catastrophise, we see the future, and our instinct is to run.

In my experience, the best way to fight off an impending catastrophe is to phone a friend, or even better, buy them a coffee. In most cases, the impending catastrophe doesn’t survive the careful examination of our trusted friend or mentor. Under the spotlight of the facts, our fears dissipate.

In the warmth of their friendship, we regain perspective. (And, if the anxiety is extreme, don’t hesitate to seek clinical support.)

3 – Revenge is not a solution

Sometimes we’re hurt by others. It happens. People let us down or put us down. It hurts. At times an organisation will do this, intentionally or unintentionally.

Getting your own back works, at best, for a moment. Becoming someone you don’t want to be, just to get your own back, is too high a price to pay for the briefest moment of relief. Far from making things better, psychologists tell us that revenge is one of the first steps on the journey to psychosis. No one should end up here.

Believe me when I say that it’s better to forgive. When we’ve been wronged, forgiveness provides the only proven way to wrest control of the narrative, set ourselves free from the hurt we feel and move on to bigger and better things.

4 – Back yourself or no one else will

Having originally believed that marriage was her one route to influence, only to be publicly humiliated by her husband’s infidelities, Elizabeth Hamilton became a major figure in her own right. If you back yourself, people will agree with you. If you don’t back yourself, people will also agree with you!

Take time to pause and reflect on the most successful moments in your story – relive them, explore them, embody them. Take confidence from the skills and strengths you know you have and think how to use them in your current narrative.

Remember who you are and what you stand for. You have capability and skills. You have ethics and values that can set you apart. Have the courage to be your unique self. Some of the things you’re committed to are of such importance that you must press on.

Make this the year that you take back control of your story – and put yourself back in the narrative.