CONTENTS January 2012
EDITORIAL
From the archives
A show at Brooklyn Museum presents the work of the key American artists of the 1920s, yet it seems recognition came later for many of them. Aside from Stefan Hirsch, all appear unknown to Walter Sinclair, writing in 1925.
CONTEMPORARY ART
Around the galleries
The New Year begins with a wealth of international events and shows, including Master Drawings New York and India Art Fair. In the UK, 20th-century and contemporary work can be found at the London Art Fair.
Collectors’ focus
American conceptualists and minimalists command staggering prices, but the work produced this side of the Atlantic has gone under the radar. Collectors may acquire pieces by the movements’ British counterparts at a fraction of the cost.
The art market: Market preview
New York’s Old Masters Week sees sales of outstanding pieces at the auction houses and satellite shows. In December in Paris a 13th-century carved ivory Virgin and Child found the highest ever price for a medieval work.
Stanley Spencer’s Suffolk
The idyllic county of Berkshire was for a time a sort of earthly paradise for Stanley Spencer. But after World War I his marriage and his art took him to Suffolk, a locale that fired his artistic imagination but was to become a source of poignant memory
The Tribute of Isabella
Among the paintings by John White Alexander exhibited in 1897 at the Société National des Beaux-Arts was his Isabella and the Pot of Basil. The painting represents one of the few times the artist moved away from his Whistlerian style, and is Alexander’s hommage to Frederic, Lord Leighton
The Forgotten Pioneer
The artist-designed textiles produced by Edinburgh Weavers under the directorship of Alastair Morton are among the finest of the 20th century.
Youth and Beauty
Jack Kirkland’s collection reveals his ability to co-ordinate disparate pieces with ease. Twentieth-century paintings sit alongside Hellenistic bronzes, a Carracci portrait and an Egyptian faience baboon. He talks to Apollo about the evolution of his eclectic collection
The Dance of Death
Inspired by Gothic literature and contemporary film, Edward Burra’s work is underpinned by a fascination with the macabre that enabled him to capture the brutality of the 20th century in his art
A Return to Splendour
This month the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston unveils its new Renzo Piano-designed building. The museum reopens following a major refurbishment project, but has the much-loved idiosyncratic nature of the institution been preserved?
Virtuosity from the sidelines
Timothy Wilcox applauds an exhibition that reveals Johan Zoffany’s unique perspective on Georgian society and empire
Apples and rooftops
David Platzer reports on an exhibition that explores Cézanne’s faltering relationship with the French capital and the ways in which the city shaped his art
Pioneer in paint
Andrew Wilton applauds an exhibition that builds on recent scholarship to reveal the spectrum of Ford Madox Brown’s ingenuity
Off the shelf
Apollo's selection of recently published books on art, architecture and the history of collecting
English in Edinburgh
The collection of English drawings and watercolours in the National Gallery of Scotland is partially revealed in a lavish new catalogue, writes Stephen Lloyd
Inigo’s symbols
This superbly argued revisionist study of Inigo Jones examines the architect’s work in the context of Stuart-era religious tensions, writes Timothy Mowl