Volume 55, Number 13 · August 14, 2008
Splendid Lies
By John Updike
J.M.W. Turner
an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 1, 2007–January 6, 2008; the Dallas Museum of Art, February 10–May 18, 2008; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 24–September 21, 2008
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Ian Warrell, with an essay by Franklin Kelly. National Gallery of Art/London: Tate Publishing, 272 pp., $55.00; $35.00 (paper)
The Turner at the Met is a bear of a show—165 items, mostly oils and watercolors, with a few prints—and the other patrons on the day of my perambulation staggered from the final chamber into the gift shop's welcoming arms as if after a tussle in a cave. Turner cannot be dismissed, but he cannot quite be embraced, either. Ian Warrell says in his catalog essay 'J.M.W. Turner and the Pursuit of Fame':
Review, 2890 words
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