Frida Kahlo

"Frida" A film about the life of Frida Kahlo, is a moving and fascinating story. I did not know alot about the artist but enjoyed every part of the film. From a creatives point of view it is well directed with lovely surreal animated sections, the political and cultural references throughout keep it exciting and interesting. It also seems beliveable unlike some biographical films. Recommended!

Matisse Museum

During a trip to Nice this year I visited the Matisse Museum. The location of the museum and its grounds really attributes to the work as you can see where Matisse got his inspiration from and it rounds off the whole experience, there is also a huge collection of his works presented in a great building.

HelloVon.com

I love HelloVon's stunning monochromatic illustrations. Although he also does paintings and typography I think his recent Migration project featuring drawings of animals which are being shown 'migrating' between London and New York galleries is his best work. What I like most is the flexibility of his illustrations, they could make a gorgeous print on a wall or work equally well featured on the side of a bottle. Also like the intricate and mature quality to his work.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons

Cy Twombly is considered one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. His paintings and sculptures introduced elements of hesitancy and fragility to Abstract Expressionism, a style that is generally regarded to be aggressive and bold.
I enjoy Twombly’s work as it shows how an artist’s environment can deeply affect their work and I think we can all relate to that. The pieces Twombly created in Rome during the summer of 1961 show the suffocating heat of an Italian heatwave, orange, red and yellow smears hang heavy on the canvas. The green and white paintings Twombly paints for the 1988 Venice Biennale show the ephemeral beauty of water, a sense of urgency is captured in the execution, Twombly’s handprints and finger smears can be seen in the paint giving the audience a sense of the artist behind the painting. As the exhibition continued I was drawn into the world of Abstract Expressionism, Twomly’s work seems to make more sense. Out of scrawls you can make out definite subjects, this is the kind of work you need to understand to fully appreciate.

MOMA

Whilst in New York I made a bee-line for the MOMA- took a while to find as the location is a bit secluded but it was definitely worth the trouble!

As it is so huge I was only able to visit two floors, one of my favourite exhibitions was Bernd and Hilla Becher: Landscape/Typology. Bernd and Hilla are best known for their "typologies"—grids of black-and-white photographs of examples of a single type of industrial structure. To create these works, the artists traveled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures, such as the winding towers that haul coal and iron ore to the surface and the blast furnaces that transform the ore into metal.

The typologies portray the clarity of engineer's drawings, while the landscapes make the viewer experience a particular place, all the studies are in B&W and showcase industrialisation at its most impersonal and dominating.

Duchamp, Man Ray & Picabia

This exhibition at the Tate Modern displayed a very broad range of Surrealist work over the first half of the 20th Century. As this is one of my favourite movements I really enjoyed it, although as it covered three artists there was alot to take in.
Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia shared an outlook on life and art, with a taste for jokes, irony and the erotic and forged a friendship that provided support and inspiration. As they were at the heart of the Dada movement and moved in the same artistic circles, they discussed ideas and collaborated, echoing and responding to each other’s works. The exhibition explored their affinities and parallels, it was very interesting to see how they influenced and encouraged each others work, I think it would be good to do something like that at uni!

Mapping the Imagination

I LOVE maps! so was completely consumed by this exhibition at the V & A, loads of different maps from loads of different creative minds.

The picture shown is a map made of tea and coffee stains on dressmaking pattern papers, the whole collection was vast and the modern mixed media and visual approaches to maps was so creative. Cartography is definitely an obsession of mine...

The Art of Lee Miller

Earlier this year I visited the Victoria and Albert musuem and saw one of the best exhibitions I have ever been to. The Art of Lee Miller documented the best of her life work which I have always been a admirer of. I think I enjoyed this exhibition so much because it was devoted to this female icon of the 20th Century and included her lifestyle and personality as much as her art. It helped the viewer to understand where her inspiration came from and as she was closely involved with the surrealists there were some brilliant holiday snaps of her alongside Dali and Man Ray.

Miller began her modelling career on the cover of American 'Vogue' before meeting Man Ray in Paris in 1929. She became both his lover and muse and under his guidance started to produce her own imagery. There were some great articles she had written for Vogue concerning the war and its victims, I found the exhibition so inspiring as she achieved so much in her life and had such a broad range of skills and creativity.

Still life after death

I went to see Polly Morgan's 'The Exquisite Corpse' exhibition purely because it was down the road from my flat (taxidermy has never really done it for me!) But I found the small exhibition intriguing and fascinating. Set in a huge white church at the end of Marylebone Road that definitely added to the atmosphere, the stuffed animals are in settings and scales which are intentionally unnatural and the whole thing feels quite awkward, seeing this road kill in its out of place context encourages you to look at it properly for the first time and she has definitely brought this old Victorian talent onto a new level.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/05/sm_pollymorgan05.xml