Top 10 art exhibitions in London
Our critics' pick of the must-see exhibitions this season
1
British Folk Art
- Rated as: 5/5
My wife once painted a sign for a local pick-your-own strawberry farm, and it got stolen within a week. It got stolen because it was good. This is by way of illustrating the very basic transaction at work in this Tate Britain show. It is full of brilliantly executed, unselfconscious works of sublime creativity.
- Tate Britain Millbank, SW1P 4RG
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Sep 7
2
Malevich
- Rated as: 5/5
If you know one thing about Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), it’s that he is the creator of the suprematist ‘Black Square’, the first and last word in abstraction, painting’s absolute zero. Knowing this lends a fair amount of anticipation to the initial rooms of this compelling retrospective. When is it going to come, this avant-garde fetish object?
- Tate Modern Bankside, SE1 9TG
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Oct 26
3
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
- Rated as: 5/5
When illness took its toll and that giant of twentieth century French art Henri Matisse could no longer paint, he turned to to scissors and paper. The works he created in this very late period become some of his most iconic. Though he may have lost his ability to handle a paintbrush, he lost none of his brilliant vision and compositional know-how. The 120 works on display here will be amongst the best you will see in this country this year. Mad for Matisse: leading contemporary artists pay tribute to the master here. Read about all the reunited masterpieces in London this year here.
- Tate Modern Bankside, SE1 9TG
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Sep 7
4
Percy Wyndham Lewis, A Battery Shelled, 1919 digitised by Ted Dearberg (IWM)
Truth and Memory: British Art of the First World War
- Rated as: 5/5
- Free
The war was just too big, confided William Kennington after he had completed his masterpiece ‘The Kensingtons at Laventie’ in 1915, one of the first things you’ll see in the ‘Memory’ section of this captivating two-part show. The authorities had hoped that Kennington would make more paintings to rival his pin-sharp, quietly devastating depiction of his unit – knackered, wounded, each soldier caught in a moment of reflection after their march back to billets from the trenches. But he couldn’t do it. The war was just too big.
- Imperial War Museum Lambeth Rd, SE1 6HZ
- Until Sun Mar 8
5
Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920-31
- Rated as: 4/5
First there were Ben and Winifred, just married, painting the same scenes side by side like proto-modernist peas in a pod. Then along came Christopher, troubled and ambitious, who’d been to Paris to meet Picasso and wanted to be the most famous painter in Britain. Together, Ben and Winifred Nicholson and Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood made the kind of faltering steps towards modernism that render Britain’s early twentieth-century art history such a pleasant if slightly plodding affair. Throw in some biographical detail, some letters and diary entries, though, and you end up with something far pacier.
- Dulwich Picture Gallery Gallery Rd, SE21 7AD
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Sep 21
6
Fiona Banner: Mistah Kurtz – He Not Dead
- Rated as: 4/5
- Free
What does the City of London look like through the eyes of a war photographer? That’s the question Fiona Banner asked when she was invited to collaborate with the Archive of Modern Conflict, a rather mysterious Kensington-based organisation which is only really known through its publishing arm. We’re not talking about London as shot by the likes of Bill Brandt during WWII, by the way – all rubble-mired landmarks and teeming Underground shelters. We’re talking about the Square Mile right now, as witnessed by a chronicler of twenty-first-century conflict. To find out, Banner commissioned Paolo Pellegrin, an Italian Magnum photographer who has covered war in Lebanon and Kosovo and its aftermath in Bosnia. She asked him to reflect on what goes on in London’s financial heart. Needless to say, he did more than take a few snaps of the Gherkin.
7
Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961-2014
- Rated as: 4/5
- Free
There should be a health warning attached to this brief retrospective of Bridget Riley’s stripe paintings: ‘may induce nausea’. From the moment you enter the gallery, the huge, multicoloured works start to do funny things to your vision, creating wavy interference patterns and strobing sensations, shimmering and pulsating before your eyes.
- David Zwirner 24 Grafton St, W1S 4EZ
- Tue Jul 22 - Fri Jul 25
8
Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album
- Rated as: 4/5
Many stars claim that had they not been actors, they’d have been hooligans; by all accounts Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) managed to be both. In 1955 aged 19, he appeared in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. In 1961, wife-to-be Brooke Hayward gave him a camera and for the next few years, until distracted by writing and directing the 1969 film ‘Easy Rider’, he interspersed his acting roles and drug-related insanity with thousands of black-and-white photographs.
- Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Oct 19
9
The Children of Frederick, Prince of Wales, by Barthelemy du Pan, 1746. The future George III is second from the right, with bow.Royal Collection Trust / copyright Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
Single use only in relation to the exhibit
The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714-1760
- Rated as: 4/5
There are two Georgian eras. There’s the one that’s full of complicated political-religious factionalism, where a non-English-speaking German king, George I, is plonked on the throne just because he’s protestant, leading to bloody wars in Scotland, sabre-rattling from catholic France, and the beginnings of Britain’s insatiable empire building. And there’s the one which is all booze and prozzies and blokes in tricorn hats having their pockets picked as they stand around Italianate piazzas, while Hogarth does an etching of it.
- The Queen's Gallery Buckingham Gate, Buckingham Palace Rd, SW1A 1AA
- Tue Jul 22 - Sun Oct 12
10
Constant Dullaart: Stringendo, Vanishing Mediators
- Rated as: 4/5
- Free
In 1987 John Knoll took a picture of his wife Jennifer on holiday. He didn’t keep this beautiful, private snapshot to himself. No, he used it as the demonstration image in his pioneering photo software. That familiar image of Jennifer sat topless in the surf of a tropical beach has now been twisted and manipulated by countless users as they learned the ropes of Photoshop. And it’s all over this show of young Dutch artist Constant Dullaart’s work.
- Carroll/Fletcher 56-57 Eastcastle St, W1W 8EQ
- Tue Jul 22 - Thu Jul 31
Top art features
Top 10 art exhibitions in the city
Our critics' pick of the must-see art exhibitions in town this season
Users say
8 comments
One of the bext exhibitions of 2013 is the Madge Gill: Medium & Visionary exhibition at Orleans House Gallery. This free retrospective brings together over a hundred stunning works by the UK's leading outsider artist - many of which have never been shown to the public before. There is still time to see it - it ends on 26 January 2014.
Totally agree with the comments here. London no longer has a proper listings magazine, which is a major loss, and the website is terrible. Cluttered, utterly confusing to navigate, I am frequently defeated just trying to find out what's on in the major galleries or where a particular film is showing. It's totally unfit for purpose. Bring back the magazine with listings.
A little of me died when i first saw the gutted form of the Timeout I love on my return to London after two years in South Africa. At least I thought I could still find the listings online. I was wrong. What have you done with them? Sitting with a pencil planning what to do in this wonderful but at times bewildering city was once one of the highlights of my week. No more. Why?
I agree with Nik Wood totally. I was so upset when Time Out in its old form (IE you could buy it from newsagents) ceased to be as it was the art listings that I mainly bought it for. Not only is it almost impossible for me to get a copy of it now as I am never in central London when it is distributed, but it lacks the straightforward and comprehensive listings that were in the old incarnation of the magazine. Please can you reintroduce them.
Why don't you do a list of what's on any more? I don't want "Top 10". I don''t want "Critics' Choices". I don't want "Opening today". I just want a comprehensive list of what shows are running now so that I can make up my own mind which to go to.
London art calendar
See the London art exhibitions calendar
Popular art exhibitions
- Digital Revolution
- An Idiosyncratic A to Z of the Human Condition
- Banksy: The Unauthorised Retrospective
- Toy Stories
- Truth and Memory: British Art of the First World War
- Travel Photographer of the Year
- Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album
- Malevich
- Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
- Fiona Banner: Mistah Kurtz – He Not Dead
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