Odessa, Ljalja, from the series Let’s sit down before we go, 1991-2, on display at FOMU in Antwerp
(Picture: Bertien van Manen)At last, the passports have arrived (only a ten week wait!), everyone has tested negative including the dog and you’re getting to the airport five hours early (just in case). You are READY. If you’re going off on your first proper European city break in upwards of two years and you fancy a bit of culture, we’ve got you. Here are the exhibitions to see at the top destinations this summer.
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
Simon Hantaï/Fugues in Colour
Two wonderfully complementary painting exhibitions fill the vast Fondation Louis Vuitton, which is a minor faff to get to but always, always worth the bother. The development of the little-known 20th century Hungarian artist Simon Hantaï’s work is the focus of the lower three floors, following him from early figuration to a radical departure which involved dripping paint and folding canvas. The upper floors host five international contemporary artists who use colour in inventive and dramatic ways, much of it mammoth in scale. Uplifting and exhilarating.
To August 29; fondationlouisvuitton.fr
Louvre, Paris
Pharoah of the Two Lands: the African Story of the Kings of Napata
A long-overdue exploration of one of the most important (and vast) kingdoms in Africa, created in the 8th century BC when the Nubian king Piankhy conquered Egypt and founded the 25th Dynasty of Kushite kings, who ruled for more than fifty years over lands which stretched from the Nile Delta to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles - what is now broadly speaking northern Sudan. Stunning bronzes, statues, jewellery, amulets, carved hieroglyphic texts and more tell the story of a powerful line of pharaohs, focusing on its most famous king, Taharka (of Bible fame).
To July 25; louvre.fr
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Gaudí
The great and wildly eccentric 19th century Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí gets his first major exhibition in France for the first time in fifty years, in what they’re calling an “immersive museographic experience” which will, we hope, do some justice to his extraordinary creations, from cathedrals to chairs. Alas, you can’t transport the Sagrada Familia from Barcelona (besides, it’s still not quite finished, famously), but this show aims to express the incredible inventive capacity of this master of Catalan modernism, who paid very little mind to what was thought possible and simply, well, did what he wanted.
To July 17; musee-orsay.fr
Prado, Madrid
Paret
A rare chance to enjoy the full range of work by the 18th century Spanish painter Luis Paret, born in the same year as Goya but rather overshadowed by his bolshy contemporary, at least partly due to several years of being banished to Puerto Rico. A sensitive but lively painter of contemporary scenes, portraits and landscapes, Paret reflected with skill and beauty on a society moving towards modernity.
To August 28; museodelprado.es
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Ragnar Kjartansson. Emotional Landscapes
Four of the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s most internationally renowned video installations - The Visitors (2012), The Man (2010), The End (2009) and God (2007) - are brought together for the first time here, alongside a series of watercolours. Together they convey Kjartansson’s fascination with America, its landscapes and music through works set on a farm by the Hudson River and in the Rocky Mountains, accompanied by blues and jazz.
To June 26; museothyssen.org
MACBA, Barcelona
Teresa Lanceta: Weaving as an Open Source
For Teresa Lanceta, weaving is like speaking a language. It has its technicalities, many of which depend largely on the geographical or regional location where it originates, but the basic building blocks are the same. This show covers the artist’s career from the 1970s to the present day, and explores her interest in collaborative work, women’s work and the non-verbal communication of stories, through beautiful and evocative textile works.
To September 11; macba.cat
Maxxi, Rome
Tokyo Revisited: Daido Moriyama with Shomei Tomatsu
These two of Japan’s greatest street photographers, who have been committed throughout their careers to capturing the evolution of their country’s society, describe themselves as a couple of “stray dogs, running through the city”. This exhibition of their images of Tokyo, in the unique Roman context, invites visitors to “revisit” the city connecting it with Rome, Italy’s most vibrant city, which balances the weight of its tremendous visual history and its efforts to become a vigorous, contemporary place looking to the future.
To October 16; maxxi.art
Palazzo Ducale, Venice
Anselm Kiefer: Questi scritti, quando verranno bruciati, daranno finalmente un po’ di luce (Andrea Emo)
It’s reasonable to wonder whether any contemporary artist can hold their own against the likes of Tintoretto, Palma il Giovane and Andrea Vicento, whose works decorate the walls of the Ducal palace. There’s just one thing to do, by the looks of this epic site-specific installation by Anselm Kiefer - Go Big. And he’s nailed it. A truly “wow” moment when you walk in is followed by a flood of emotion as the details begin to swim into view.
To October 29; palazzoducale.visitmuve.it
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
Donatello: The Renaissance
An unmissable, historic show tracing the astonishing career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age. 100 works, inclusing 14 specially conserved for this show, juxtapose Donatello’s work with masterpieces by his contemporaries such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo, so, you know, noone special.
To July 31; palazzostrozzi.org
Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Steve McQueen: Sunshine State
Six film works and one sculpture make up this retrospective devoted to the visual art output of the British artist Steve McQueen (also known for his impeccable feature films, such as Hunger and Shame). Through his singular view, he takes a radical look at the human condition, its dramas and fragility, and asks important questions about urgent issues, such as the construction of identity, belonging, and the right to freedom.
To July 31; pirellihangarbicocca.org
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Jeppe Hein
Here’s your chance to really get into contemporary art - right into it. Berlin-based artist Jeppe Hein’s new exhibition at the Moderna Museet has been created in situ, in collaboration with visitors and in response to the building and collection. Dodge the irregular sprays of water in his installation in the museum square or take part in a workshop in one of several rooms created by Hein to represent the seven chakras. Embrace the weirdness and remember that breathing in an enclosed space with strangers wasn’t even allowed a few months ago, so there’s a joy in that alone.
To August 28; modernamuseet.se
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, nr Copenhagen
Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956–1971
This is the first large-scale survey of the New York photographer’s work to be shown in Denmark, and it traverses her entire, prolific but tragically short career. Over just 15 years, Arbus created a unique, almost unmistakeable body of work that has made her one of the most influential photographic artists of the 20th century. Working between 1956 and 1971, her acute observation sought out the singular and the different in humanity, in series focusing on everything from children to nudists, female impersonators to suburban families, at a moment when visual culture strove instead to encourage uniformity and conformity.
To July 31; louisian.dk
Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Give and Take. Images Upon Images
Cultural appropriation, but in a good way: the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s 8th Triennial of Photography focuses on images that have been exchanged and reappropriated, reflecting the uncontrollable proliferation and shifting of meaning ascribed to any given image in the internet age. The photographers whose work is on display “respond in their photographs, video works and installations to images that originated in another time or were developed for a different purpose, retrieving them in order to examine them in the light of the present day”.
To August 28; hamburger-kunsthalle.de
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Paul Gauguin: Why Are You Angry?
It’s never easy to know how to feel about Paul Gauguin’s gorgeous, evocative paintings from his time in Tahiti, where he merrily exploited local women and depicted them with an exoticising, colonial gaze. This exhibition attempts to unpick Gauguin’s self-created myth of the ‘savage artist’, acknowledging the sticky stuff while also conceding that Gauguin managed to evolve a truly unique artistic vision. It’s never simple, is it?
To July 10; gauguininberlin.de
National Museum, Warsaw
The State of Things/Chagall
Two very different exhibitions, both rather poignant in their own way. A State of Things brings together objects (such as a red clay tablet, or a crinoline and corst) that we invented and which once dictated our behaviours, but have been lost to obsolescence. Elsewhere in the museum you’ll find an exquisite showcase of a newly acquired collection of works on paper by Marc Chagall - one of the 20th century artists whose work is scarce in Poland due to the country’s difficult history and wartime losses.
To August 7 and July 24; mnw.art.pl
Albertina Museum, Vienna
Edvard Munch: In Dialogue
Munch is having a moment (the Courtauld Institute has just opened a critically acclaimed show selected from one of the finest collections of his work in the world, in Bergen) but he’s always been hugely influential. This show examines the artist’s influence on seven great 20th artists, Georg Baselitz, Andy Warhol, Miriam Cahn, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin and Jasper Johns, with more than 60 of Munch’s paintings alongside their works.
To June 19; albertina.at
FOMU, Antwerp
Bertien van Manen
A chance to look over the shoulder of the Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen, who since the 1970s has captured the daily lives of the people she meets on her travels. From the Netherlands to China and from the former Soviet Union to the Appalachians, it is the ordinary, chaotic moments that most attract the lens of her straightforward 35mm camera. A pioneer of the empathetic, intimate documentary style, she draws you in with her humanity.
To August 28; fomu.be
MUHKA, Antwerp
Lenin Was a Mushroom
Named for Sergey Kuryokhin and Sergey Sholokhov’s absurd 1991 mockumentary from the last days of the Soviet Union, this exhibition looks at film and video art of the 1990s, as wider accessibility of both video hardware and editing software elicited a proliferation. Defined here as the period between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’, the 90s, with their increased globalisation and deregulation, were a key time for the development of international video art. Artists represented include Amar Kanwar, Nedko Solakov, Rosalind Nashashibi, Stan Douglas, Shilpa Gupta and Gillian Wearing, among many others.
To August 21; mukha.be
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Early Photographs of Japan
Until 1859, the Netherlands was the only country granted the slightest access to otherwise sealed Japan, until a number of other Western powers forced access to its trade ports. In 1862, a physician, Antoon Bauduin arrived in the country to teach at the Nagasaki Yojosho Medical School, carrying his medical bag - and a camera. This collection of incredibly rare photographs - which only narrowly escaped destruction in a house fire - give us a glimpse into a moment of change in what was then only a very newly opened world.
July 1 to September 4; rijksmuseum.nl
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Colour as Language
The late Etel Adnan often took landscape as a starting point for her art. Like Van Gogh, she sought to convey the power of nature with a colour palette and painting style all of her own. This show, which includes her ‘leporello’ works, the concertina-style books for which Adnan is known, as well as tapestries and literature, places her work in dialogue with paintings by Van Gogh, resulting in a visual feast.
