Tag Archives: London Art

2023 Art to See – Tartan, V&A Dundee, London

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2023 Art to See – Tartan, V&A Dundee, London Opens 1st April

A radical new look at one of the world’s best-known fabrics. The exhibition explores the history and global story of Tartan. It goes beyond the Scottish Highlands and investigates how this woven pattern has influenced architecture, fashion, art, film and products around the world.

Tartan celebrates the global story of a unique pattern, and how the rules of the grid have inspired creativity from the everyday to the sublime.

Cheddar Gorgeous in a suit designed by Liquorice Black, 2017 Courtesy of V&A

This must-see exhibition tells this story through more than 300 objects including iconic examples of fashion, architecture, product design, film, performance and fine art. Tartan is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in other materials. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland, as Scottish kilts almost always have tartan patterns.

Picasso on Tartan, Fife Arms

TARTAN has connected communities worldwide, a cloth of unity and dissent, inclusivity and diversity, ritual and rebellion, both adored and derided. Inspiring great works of art, as well as playful and provocative design, it has a complex, rich and sometimes painful history.

An extravagant, exuberant experience featuring loans from around the world, including Chanel, Dior, Vivienne Westwood, McQueen, Tate, V&A, National Museums of Scotland, Fashion Museum Bath, the Highland Folk Museum and many more. The exhibition also incorporates ‘the People’s Tartan’ – a changing selection of objects owned and sent in by the public who responded to our appeal to share your tartan treasures. For several centuries, tartan remained part of the everyday garb of the Highlander. Whilst tartan was worn in other parts of Scotland, it was in the Highlands that its development continued and so it became synonymous with the symbol of clan kinship.

This is the first major exhibition curated by V&A Dundee, with Jonathan Faiers of the University of Southampton, and celebrates the 5th anniversary in 2023.

Love, Fame, Tragedy

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Tate Modern Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy is one of the most important shows Tate Modern has ever staged. Taking visitors on a month-by-month journey through 1932, a time so significant in Picasso’s life and work that it has been called his ‘year of wonders’.

The EY Exhibition Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy is one of the most significant shows the gallery has ever staged. Taking visitors on a month-by-month journey through 1932, a time so pivotal in Picasso’s life and work that it has been called his ‘year of wonders’. More than 100 outstanding paintings, sculptures and works on paper demonstrate his prolific and restlessly inventive character. They strip away common myths to reveal the man and the artist in his full complexity and richness.

1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso, even by his own standards. His paintings reached a new level of sensuality and he cemented his celebrity status as the most influential artist of the early 20th century. Over the course of this year he created some of his best loved works, from confident colour-saturated portraits to surrealist drawings, developing ideas from the voluptuous sculptures he had made at his newly acquired country estate.

The exhibition offers an unique opportunity to view some of the most important works Picasso ever made. It includes three dazzling paintings featuring the artist’s lover Marie-Thérèse Walter. Made over the course of only five days Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, Nude in a Black Armchair and The Mirror, have not been shown together since they were created in 1932. For the first time in 85 years they are reunited alongside iconic works such as Girl Before a Mirror, Rest, Sleep, The Dream and many more.

Curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions with Nancy Ireson, Curator, International Art, Laura Bruni and Juliette Rizzi, Assistant Curators, Tate Modern

The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Musée national Picasso-Paris where it will be curated by Laurence Madeline, Curator

8 MARCH – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018. Tickets on line now.

Private visits, let us know!