Masculinities at the Barbican Art Gallery, London

A photographic and video exhibition that seeks to address the strengths and weaknesses of the male gender. A difficult concept to bring together coherently but interesting to observe the attempt.  We see examples of soldiers behaving both aggressively and non-agresseively, the paternalistic role of the man weakened by age, the man as seen through the eyes of women,  the defined role of men in the African continent etc. Interesting throughout, although one's concept of masculinity would not readily be changed by the experience. ❤❤❤

Theaster Gates: Amalgam at Tate Gallery, Liverpool

The US artist is known for his multimedia work and community projects in Chicago. Here the theme of the exhibition was the history of Malaga, an island off the coast of Maine that was abandoned and the people forced to leave in the mid-19th century because black and white inhabitants had intermarried and this was against the law. So the exhibition presented the history of the island, and racism in general, alongside his ceramics, videos of his dance works based on the topic, and his sculptures made from abandoned wood from the region. Unusual and interesting. ❤❤❤❤

Radical Women:Jessica Dismorr and her Contemporaries, Pablo Bronstein: Wall Pomp and Prunella Clough: a Centenary at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

The first of these was the principal display, celebrating the history of connections among women artists of the early 20th century and focussing on Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939).  Although her work quite unjustly fell into obscurity, she was one of the major artists of the Vorticist and Rhythm groups in the 1910s and 1920s and her work also encompassed abstraction in the 1930s. She was also associated with artists of the anti-fascist movement in the '30s. Her accomplished female contemporaries included Paule Vezelay and Helen Saunders. 

The architectural artist Pablo Bronstein has decorated the staircase of the Georgian part of Pallant House with wallpaper featuring some relevant monumental sculptures. 

Prunella Clough (1919-1999) concentrated on paintings of urban landscapes and industrial scenes, in contrast with the rural landscapes often being portrayed by British artists of the same period. Much of the work here has not been exhibited before. ❤❤❤❤

Floating Worlds: Japanese Woodcuts at Brighton Art Gallery and Museum

Woodblock prints from the museum's collectionby well known artists from the Edo period (1615-1868), each presented with contemporary haiku poetry reflecting the images displayed. Some wonderful examples of how much can be portrayed with just a simple line of ink on paper. ❤❤❤❤

Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life at Tate Modern, London

The Danish-Icelandic artist specialises in spectacular large installations and Tate Modern is the ideal venue.  Most impressive were the vertiginous experience of walking through a steam-filled passage with visibility of only around 1.5 metres and constantly changing colours and the enormous kaleidoscope reflecting on the ceiling and walls.  The artist is clearly concerned with global heating; his before-and-after photos clearly show the dramatic loss of glacier size over the last 10 years. ❤❤❤❤

Troy: Myth and Reality at the British Museum, London

The story of Troy has captured imagination for over 3000 years.  For centuries it was unclear whether or not Troy ever existed and only within the last 200 years were sufficient archaeological discoveries made that verified its existence as a city on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Why have the characters of the Trojan war : Helen, Aphrodite, Odysseus, Achilles -- some human, some divine -- been responsible for artistic endeavour of others for so long, from Homer to Berlioz to the current day?  The exhibition sought to answer those questions with exhibits from the earliest archaological findings to Victorian art and sculpture. The puzzle is still intriguing. ❤❤❤❤

Nam June Paik: Encounters with a True Visionary at Tate Modern, London

The Korean American Paik (1932-2006) was active in the 1960s and worked in avant-garde musical and conceptual art circles along with the likes of John Cage and Joseph Beauys. The works exhibited here are very nostalgic, representing a time when the new technology of television and video seemed to offer a revolutionary new artistic medium -- distorted video images, prepared electrically wired pianos -- that was very different from paint on canvas.  Now they appear very unsophisticated and technically inept as computerised digital imaging can offer so much more in both vision and sound.  But interesting to reflect on how exciting it seemed at the time. ❤❤❤

Cars: Accelerating the Modern World at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This was not just a nostalgic look at old cars, although it was partly that, but it looked more deeply at the effect the invention of the motor car has had on society on a worldwide scale. This included their influence on global warming and the shocking ignorance of this fact at the time (see Esso advert photo) to the distribution of wealth and power at international level as the world became ever more dependent on oil-producing nations. The earliest car factories were the first to introduce production line values and time and motion studies and led to the rise in trade unionism and their support of improved working conditions. Interesting too to see car adverts from our own time when cars were unquestioningly seen as a male obsession, with car internal design and colour schemes designed to appeal to the female (passenger). The show coincided with one on the fashion designer Mary Quant; we were not the only couple to separate in the entrance hall and go to our own respective exhibitions. ❤❤❤❤❤

City Lights and Woodland Shade at Japan House, London

Two separate exhibitions. The first is a 360-degree video installation of CG images of Tokyo at night, a kind of mesmeric super-condensed version of all the impressions of fast-moving Tokyo. The second is an intriguing concept: Japanese traditional hand-made wooden dolls and crafted wooden animals.  As a visitor you can both create your own doll digitally with a computerised lathe and also you can have your face transferred digitally to the dolls on display.  Amazingly imaginative. ❤❤❤❤❤

Beyond Bauhaus: Modernism in Britain 1933-1966 at RIBA, London

Disappointing.  The "fresh look" at British architecture of the period and the influence of the Bauhaus, celebrating its centenary this year, involved looking at photographs of interesting enough photos of British buildings of the period. But you had to look at them through irregularly shaped apertures in MDF colums at awkward levels. Much less informative than Alan Powers' new book Bauhaus Goes West. ❤❤

Umberto Boccioni: Recreating the Lost Sculptures at the Estorick Gallery, London

The futurist artist Boccioni's (1899 - 1916) painting and sculptures derived from his interest in representing movement simultaenously from several dimensions.  Little of his sculpture still exists as it remained primarily as plaster casts which were inadvertantly thrown out in a clearance.  However, photographs of a number of these casts exist and the digital artists  Matt Smith and Anders Roden have used 3D-printing to recreate some of these major works.  The technical side of these reproductions is amazing -- the technique is illustrated with half-finished models -- and the full-sized plastic finished products are extremely impressive. ❤❤❤❤

Lithography from Leningrad at the Estorick Gallery, London

A small exhibition of interesting lithographs from the gallery's own collection, first shown in 1961 and reflecting what was at that time largely unknown examples of Soviet art. ❤❤❤