Volume 53, Number 9 · May 25, 2006
Sickert's Theater
By Sanford Schwartz
Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910
Catalog of the exhibition by Anna Gruetzner Robins and Richard Thomson
an exhibition at Tate Britain, London,October 5, 2005–January 15, 2006; and the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.,February 18–May 14, 2006.
Tate Publishing, 231 pp., $55.00
Walter Sickert: A Life
by Matthew Sturgis
HarperCollins, 768 pp., $50.00
As its unlovely title implies, the exhibition Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910 is something of a history lesson and a sprawling mess. Organized by Tate Britain, the show aims to demonstrate chiefly that English artists (and, as pointed out in the catalog, English collectors) were no slouches when the call of modern art was sounding in France. The curators want us to see how London, home at the time to a number of French artists, as Paris had become a crucial stop for adventurous Englishmen, played a part along with the French capital during an era when city life in itself became a theme for emerging painters and sculptors. It was the period when new levels of congestion in a city, its new kinds of entertainment (and the novel nighttime lighting that now went along with it), its boulevards with their sudden huge, empty spaces, and the way urban experience was altering the role of sex in everyday life—all became motifs for young artists.
Review, 4433 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |