This isn’t your average summer blockbuster. The basic idea is to show the link between the greats of abstract art (your Braques, Mondrians, Kandinskys etc) and the type of no-selfie-sticks-allowed photography you’d have no trouble calling ‘art’.
In all honesty, the link between art-made-with-a-paintbush and art-made-with-a-camera is the least interesting thing about this exhibition. In places, the link feels tenuous – or flat-out distracting, as with the giant collage-like ‘Jazzmen’ by Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé plonked down in a room filled with delicate close-ups of cracked ice, glass and paint.
Many of the photographs on display contain more organic links to other artsy movements of the modern era, notably the architecture snapped by photographers like Bauhaus regular László Moholy-Nagy.
But the photos are simply worth seeing in their own right, without the need for additional context. In its best moments, there’s something pleasingly grown-up about this exhibition – it doesn’t have the Instagrammable glam of a Yayoi Kusama show, or the fail-safe ticket-selling ability of a Great Artist™ like Picasso, but if you’ve got the patience, there are some minimalist, abstract gems hanging on the densely-packed walls.
Room 5, ‘Finding Form’, contains a mini-series of brilliantly bizarre distortions of the human body by André Kertész. Bums, boobs and bulbous legs melt into mercury blobs, whilst Imogen Cunningham’s ‘Triangles’ zooms in on a pointedly pointy breast above soft rolls of belly fat.
The final room of the show is also well-worth seeing. An explosion of colour to end an otherwise studiously chic, monochrome exhibition, Toxic Avenger greens, beach-hut pastels and psychedelic stripes buzz off the walls. It’s actually a good example of what happens when you stop trying to tell a story and just let the pictures speak for themselves.