Here are a few highlights….for lovers of art everywhere…
Bill Viola / Michelangelo* Main Galleries 26 January – 31 March 2019
Supported by the Genesis Foundation with grateful thanks to John Studzinski CBE
Supported by Dunard Fund
In January 2019, the Royal Academy of Arts will bring together the work of the pioneering video artist, Honorary Royal Academician Bill Viola (b. 1951), with drawings by Michelangelo (1475-1564). Though working five centuries apart and in radically different media, these artists share a deep preoccupation with the nature of human experience and existence. Bill Viola / Michelangelowill create an artistic exchange between these two artists and will be a unique opportunity to see major works from Viola’s long career and some of the greatest drawings by Michelangelo, together for the first time. It will be the first exhibition at the Royal Academy largely devoted to video art and has been organised in partnership with Royal Collection Trust. The exhibition will comprise 12 major video installations by Viola, from 1977 to 2013, to be shown alongside 15 works by Michelangelo. They include 14 highly finished drawings, considered to be the high point of Renaissance drawing, as well as the Royal Academy’s ‘Taddei Tondo’.
Bill Viola / Michelangelo is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in partnership with Royal Collection Trust.
Phyllida Barlow* The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries
23 February – 23 June 2019
Royal Academician Phyllida Barlow will transform the RA’s recently opened Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries with a series of large-scale installations which will spread across all three of the classical galleries, interrogating the spaces and challenging our perception of the architecture.
Throughout her long career Barlow has consistently directed her focus away from the formal permanence of the sculptural tradition – eschewing notions of the monument and the monumental. By employing materials far removed from those associated with the traditions of sculpture, her work is unweighted from the past and from its dependence on heavy and uncompromising media. Utilising everyday inexpensive material to construct her work, she adapts, paints, joins and takes it apart to create her sculptural installations.
Felix Vallotton*
(Main image credit: Felix Vallotton_The Bathing on a Summer Evening_key 32.jpg
The Sackler Wing of Galleries 30 June – 29 September 2019
An exhibition of the Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (1865–1925). Comprising over 80 paintings and prints, the exhibition will be the first ever to show Vallotton’s paintings in the UK. Often overshadowed by his more famous contemporaries in the Paris-based Nabi group of the 1890s, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, Vallotton remains comparatively little known outside his native Switzerland. Presenting a highly focused overview of his life and work, from his Nabi-style interiors and street scenes, to his bitingly satirical prints of bourgeois Paris, to later nudes, landscapes and his response to the First World War, the exhibition will demonstrate the intensity and breadth of Vallotton’s unique vision.
This exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with Fondation Félix Vallotton, Lausanne.
The Renaissance Nude The Sackler Wing of Galleries 3 March – 2 June 2019
In March 2019, the Royal Academy of Arts will present The Renaissance Nude, an exhibitionexamining the origins of the nude, and how it inspired some of the most renowned masterpieces of the western canon. Bringing together works by artists such as Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dürer and Cranach, the exhibition will examine a dynamic visual tradition that permanently altered the character and values of European art.
The Renaissance Nude will explore the emergence of the nude as a prominent artistic theme in Early Modern Europe within the contexts of the revival of the antique and the rise of naturalism. The exhibition will trace the broad scope of this achievement in Italy, as well as in Germany, France, and the Low Countries, arguing that important contributions to the establishment of the nude as a pivotal subject of European art can be found across the continent. This exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts and The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Summer Exhibition 2019 Main Galleries 10 June – 13 August 2019
The Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition, the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show, is now in its 251st year. It provides a unique platform for emerging and established artists to showcase their works to an international audience, comprising a range of media from painting, printmaking and photography, to sculpture, architecture and film. It has been held each year without interruption since 1769. Around 1200 works will go on display, the majority of which will be for sale offering visitors an opportunity to purchase original work. A significant part of funds raised continue to contribute to financing the postgraduate students at the RA Schools.
Learn more: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/
