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All the leaves are brown, but the art is, like, really colourful
The end of summer is a quiet time in art, everyone’s off sunning themselves in Saint-Tropez or drinking champers with curators called Klaus in Lake Como or something. But come September, it’s back to business, and the exhibition schedule this autumn is looking pretty damn snazzy. From big famous names to relative unknowns, huge paintings to little immersive installations, the art shows taking place this autumn are going to be worth putting on a jumper and finally leaving the house for.
Painting is the artform that just won't quit, and this survey – featuring dozens of brilliant contemporary brush-wielders – proves that the medium is alive, kicking, vital and ready to get into a fist fight with any immersive installations or video art that comes its way.
Hayward Gallery. Sep 9-Dec 12. £12. Details here.
The world’s most expensive living painter does the whole drawing on paper thing. Like paintings, but you know, smaller. And on paper.
Hayward Gallery. Sep 9-Dec 12. Free. Details here.
There’s photorealist painting, and then there’s Richard Estes, who pushes the concept so far that it’ll leave your brain all frazzled. This is the artist’s first show in the UK and it’s taking over the entirety of Damien Hirst’s massive Newport Street Gallery.
Newport Street Gallery. Sep 10-tbc. Free. Details here.
Frankenthaler was one of the most important abstract painters ever, but this show focuses instead on her woodcuts, which are lovely, quiet but still somehow radical things.
Dulwich Picture Gallery. Sep 15-Apr 18 2022. £16.50. Details here.
Gross, over-the-top, figurative painting: Lewis paints big scenes of everyday life with tons of ooze and goo and grime. Like Gustave Courbet on the Stellas.
Block 336. Sep 17-Oct 23. Free. Details here.
Sterling’s painting is a collission of bright colours, cartoon-like caricature figures and big old conceptual heft, and it’s as serious and intensely political as it is fun. This new show is all about changing skin tone through fake tanning and sunbeds. She’s one of the most exciting young painters in the UK today, and her show is one of three solo exhibitions this autumn at the continually impressive GCCA.
Goldsmith’s Centre for Contemporary Art. Sep 17-Oct 31. Free. Details here.
Hals is responsible for one of the most famous male portraits ever – ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ – but are the rest of his male portraits any good? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by coming to this show, which is all about his male portraits.
The Wallace Collection. Sep 22-Jan 30 2022. £tbc. Details here.
Just like they insisted on calling it Euro 2020 despite the competition taking place in 2021, the Royal Academy’s big annual open-call art show is back, and is still called the Summer Exhibition despite taking place in what can only possibly be described as the autumn. Get ready for big crowds, red dots and lots of people saying ‘Summer Exhibition? More like AUTUMN exhibition, right!?’. Great stuff.
Royal Academy of Arts. Sep 22-Jan 2 2022. £20-22. Details here.
This brilliant American artist uses material like tar, roofing tiles and – in this instance – clay to create big, heavy, conceptual works about community building, race relations and global trade. This show is at the Whitechapel, but will extend to the V&A and the Serpentine too.
Whitechapel Gallery. Sep 29-Jan 9 2022. Free. Details here.
It’s party time in this exhibition of heady, ecstatic paintings of dance by the seventeenth-century French painter Poussin. We’re talking tambourines, wine and a lot of semi-nudity. You know, the good stuff.
National Gallery. Oct 9-Jan 2 2022. £12. Details here.
Some people see John Constable – one of Britain’s most celebrated artists – as nothing more than a peddler of boring, conservative visions of quaint fields and villages. But this show at the Royal Academy is here to prove that old John had a wild side too, with a whole host of experimental later works that would go on to influence countless artists.
Royal Academy of Arts. Oct 30-Feb 13 2022. £19-21. Details here.
Despite the title, this show isn’t about how Britain’s great William Hogarth travelled around Europe getting wrecked on his gap year, but instead how he and his continental peers captured the dawn of a new modernity.
Tate Britain. Nov 3-Mar 20 2022. £tbc. Details here.
It’s been 20 years since we’ve had a big Albrecht Dürer exhibition in the UK, and this one should more than make up for lost time. It looks at the German artist’s travels across Europe and how he helped spark conversations between the international art movements of the time.
National Gallery. Nov 20-Feb 27 2022. £tbc. Details here.
Carl Fabergé’s name is synonymous with craftsmanship, luxury, elegance and incredibly fancy eggs. This show explores the Russian goldsmith’s relationship with the UK, leading to the opening of a London branch in 1903. Expect eggs. Like, incredibly fancy ones.
V&A. Nov 20-tbc. £tbc. Details here.
This super ambitious show by the Turner Prize-winning artist gets all theatrical, placing the viewer in a series of scenes inspired by the artist’s love of the theatre. It’ll be an immersive way to approach one of the best painters working today.
Tate Britain. Nov 25-Jul 3 2022. £tbc. Details here.
CGI and sculpture combine to explore ideas of identity and belonging. And also there’s a live rendering of ocean weather data.
Chisenhale Gallery. Nov-Jan 2022. Free. Details here.
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