Since its launch in 2003, the Frieze Art Fair has been an opportunity for London’s many museums, galleries and art spaces to program eye-catching exhibitions that will lure fairgoers and other visitors during “Frieze Week.” Here is a selection.
Kerry James Marshall
Anybody who thinks painting is dead should head straight to the new Kerry James Marshall exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Staged during the American artist’s 70th birthday year, the exhibition is a powerful manifesto for the paintbrush and palette. In fact, both tools feature prominently in the very first room: A woman who seems to be both painter and model is pictured holding up a slender brush and a giant palette with blotches of dazzling color running across it.
In Marshall’s art, there are echoes of Manet, as well as of Seurat, Titian and Goya. Yet his representational style is unquestionably unique, and he uses it to deliver a deeply personal portrayal of African American life: at barbershops and hair salons, at outdoor pools and picnics, and in wallpapered interiors. These large tableaus can often seem, at first, to be cheerful and celebratory; looked at more closely, they tell the much more unsettling story of race in America.
That theme is also tackled directly in works representing Black invisibility and the origins and legacies of slavery. He depicts the trans-Atlantic crossing, portrays famous abolitionists and delivers depictions of the vast plantations of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as if they came out of a coloring book. On closer examination, however, they evoke the historical reality of slavery and, in the case of the Jefferson painting, sketch in the faces of enslaved people who worked on the estate. As elsewhere, a quiet undercurrent of pain runs through everything he does.
“Kerry James Marshall: The Histories” (running through Jan. 18) leaves you with the uplifting feeling of having experienced an outstanding exhibition. If you see just one show in London this season, make it this one.
Neo-Impressionists
The nearby National Gallery just got a 200th-anniversary makeover that has resulted in a vast and modern entrance atrium and a classy collection redisplay. So it’s definitely worth a visit.
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The post The Best Exhibitions to See in London This Fall appeared first on New York Times.
