Every year, to kick off the fall season, London’s museums, galleries and art foundations put their best foot forward, programming high-profile exhibitions that will appeal not only to their regular visitors, but also to the more than 60,000 people who typically attend Frieze London and Frieze Masters. Here is a selection of shows on during Frieze Week.
Vincent van GoghIf you list the big names in the art-history canon, Vincent van Gogh is probably one of the best known: a celebrity if there ever was one. That’s thanks to his extraordinary body of work, but it also owes to his enduring image as a suicidal genius who, during a fateful stay in Provence in France, cut off his left ear.
To mark its 200th anniversary, the National Gallery has staged its first-ever van Gogh exhibition, “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” and focused on those two years that the Dutch prodigy spent in Provence (1888 to 1890). Yet the aim is to look past the clichés and demonstrate that there was a method to van Gogh’s perceived madness. His paintings, the curators show, were far from random hallucinations. They were part of a studied ensemble of works, each with a specific purpose and place — including in the famous yellow house in Arles.
Many of van Gogh’s greatest hits are on glorious display. But look out, also, for the many exquisite drawings and views of parks and trees that you’ll probably never see again.
Claude MonetUp the road from the National Gallery, at the Courtauld Gallery, are 21 paintings of London by another master of the 19th century: Claude Monet. They’re part of a series that originated in September 1899, when Monet parked his easel on his hotel balcony at the Savoy overlooking the River Thames and painted what he described as “some fog effects.”
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