There are two temporary offerings at the National that any self-respecting art lover finding themselves with an afternoon in London should get to. Catch Cagnacci while you can. His masterpiece, Repentant Magdalene, leaves town tomorrow! But also catch Ofili's jewel-like tapestry.
Getting down in the basement of the National Gallery springs a welcome memory of an overlooked children's classic.
Discreetly advertised, so discreetly both on the street and in the media that it would be easy to miss it, is the best exhibition in London. I went to the Michelangelo/Sebastiano yesterday but it wasn't the artistic highlight of my week. That honour goes to Unseen, an exhibition of a couple of dozen works by the Australian artist Sidney Nolan.
Coming to a brief spell of teaching at De Montfort I thought it might be of use to the casual cultured visitor to point out some of the less well-known elements of Leicester that are worthy of consideration.
Then up comes Ruscha. Was I rattled by the Ruscha? (There's one for all the Pavement fans out there.)
The last of our eating places of a very high quality weekend was the surprise package. To borrow from Rumsfeld (who seems strangely less crazy than once he did, that’s the power of 2016) Mort Subite was a known known, Belga Queen was a known unknown and Den Turk was an unknown known. Mub’Art, however,…
Seething, shimmering intensity at White Cube; quease-inducing kitsch propaganda at the BM. Both worth seeing.
All those stick balancing Yoda scroungers ,now transformed by the Magic of Christmas into rapacious aerial Santas, make a mockery of the imperial pomposity of the Square's original plan far more effectively than Shrigley's tragic waste of bronze could ever do.
Read more Review #109 National Gallery Café, Trafalgar Square
Much more interesting and surprising than the overblown yanks below, who seem the most humourless bunch of po-faced canvas wasters set against the deftly humorous savagery of Ensor and his confrères.
Francis West's thrilling paintings at Megan Piper are well worth the trip.
A London Journal 