A Decade of Exhibitions 2010-2019

At the end of the decade I thought I'd look back at exhibitions I saw over that time and see if I could come up with a top ten. I couldn't so I've listed my top 14 exhibitions. The criteria are really quite broad, not simply those I've personally liked but also those I've learned from, exhibitions that have brought together the widest range of paintings rather than going for the obvious exhibits, a whole host of things.

They're in chronological order rather than a countdown to the top exhibition - that's a step too far into the impossible. So here they are, the best exhibitions I've seen in the last decade.

Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light - Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris (2011)

The first exhibition about Fra Angelico I ever attended was at the Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris in 2011 and that was the first time I'd seen the widest range of his works outside of San Marco in Florence. The exhibition was made up of 20-odd paintings by Fra Angelico and about the same number by contemporary artists he influenced or was influenced by. I still remember standing in the middle of a small room being surrounded by paintings of the Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, the vivid colours, the serenity, the different compositions - definitely a wow moment.

Paul Klee: Making Visible - Tate Modern, London (2014)

I've liked works by Paul Klee since I first came across him in school in about 1978. He's not one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century but he's one of the most influential, being a member of various art movements in the first half of the century including Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. I remember this exhibition as being very big, and it was, but largely because his paintings are mainly relatively small so more fit onto the walls. There was so much colour in those galleries, shapes and textures, mesmerising paintings to gaze at and decide what they're about - is that a house in the hills? a human figure? or just a mass of colours? It doesn't matter really, the beauty emanates out of the paintings. I went back several times to be in rooms surrounded by those amazing paintings.

Matisse: The Cut-Outs - Tate Modern, London (2014)

The follow-up exhibition to the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern in 2014 was about Matisse and his cut-outs. The cut-outs are just that, coloured paper cut up and torn into different shapes and pasted  onto a background, so simple and yet so effective. Monsieur Matisse was an old man when he started creating his cut-outs and it was great seeing early film of him working as part of the exhibition. As he grew older he needed to use his assistants to place the coloured papers just right to fit his vision. How can so much beauty come from cut up bits of paper? It was an astonishing exhibition that I re-visited several times.

Inventing Impressionism - National Gallery, London (2015)

There were many Impressionist exhibitions over the decade and I attended quite a few but the Inventing Impressionism was rather special. It was based on the collection of the art dealer Paul Durant-Ruel who championed the Impressionist painters in the early days and virtually all of the paintings in the exhibition went through his hands at some stage. The exhibition contained some astonishing works that were completely new to me, a high quality exhibition without any filler at all. There was a quote on the wall of the final room of the exhibition from Durant-Ruel, 'At last the Impressionist masters triumphed...'. I loved that quote, naming the impressionist painters as 'masters', equal to the Old Masters we're familiar with.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun - Le Grand Palais, Paris (2015)

I'd never heard of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun until I went to the exhibition of her portraits in Paris in 2015 and I'm so pleased I went. Madame Vigee Le Brun had an astonish life, being the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, going into exile during the French Revolution due to her connection to royalty, travelling around Europe with her daughter making her living by painting portraits in country after country before eventually returning to France and dying in her own bed when in her 80s after attending a party that evening. Her legacy was on display in that huge exhibition that seemed to go on and on, with portrait after portrait, so lifelike and alive in expressions and colours, a true master of portraiture. The poster for the exhibition was one of her own self-portraits.

Sonia Delaunay - Tate Modern, London (2015)

I've known of the Delaunay's for quite a while but mainly Robert, Sonia's husband, so I looked forward to seeing this exhibition of Sonia's work. They worked together in the early years developing radical colour theories and putting them into practice in similar but subtly different ways. From the minutes I walked into the exhibition I was surrounded by colour, by Sonia's sketches and paintings, illustrations for Dadaist poetry, designs for clothes and samples of her work, so much variety and colour everywhere. It was great to learn about her life and work, about how she's quoted as saying she discovered black when in her 60s, about how she continued painting and experimenting into her old age in Paris. I was mightily impressed by this exhibition and, more so, by the variety of her work, always inventing, always creative.

Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse - Royal Academy, London (2016)

Another great exhibition was all about paintings of gardens in all their variety, all the colour and shapes and textures of flowers and trees and shrubs, gardens with people in them, with country cottages, with walls and just flowers. Lots of flowers. I loved it. As well as paintings it included information about the gardening habits of some of the artists, who swapped seedlings with who and who liked to paint someone else's garden. There was a  great photo of Kandinsky in his garden with a shovel, wearing shorts and with a cigarette in his mouth. I wanted to jump into some of the paintings and wallow in the flowers colours. The only poor thing about the exhibition was the rather dull poster featuring a detail of a Monet.

A Thyssen Never Seen - CaixaForum, Barcelona (2016)

I went to Barcelona to see this exhibition, mainly to see a beautiful Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, one of my favourite paintings of his, but got caught by the sheer range of paintings in the exhibition which was showing off the Thyssen collection from Madrid. From early Renaissance paintings to modern works from the mid-20th Century, there was something there for everyone. Whoever curated the exhibition and managed to get so many masterpieces from the Thyssen-Bornamisza Museum in Madrid must've been a good negotiator since it was an amazing variety of paintings from across the centuries, all first rate and no filler.

Out of Chaos - Laing Gallery, Newcastle (2017)

The 'Out of Chaos' exhibition in Newcastle was in partnership with the Ben Uri collection in London, a collection of works telling the tale of migration and escape from persecution in the first half of the 20th Century. Of course, not everyone escaped and some of the works shown were poignant in that the artists were killed or died before they could reach safety and their potential forever lost. I can still remember some of the terrible images in those paintings. I was pleased to see a couple of small works by Sonia Delaunay since she and her husband fled persecution and war. It was a powerful exhibition with some very powerful tales to tell.

Raphael: The Drawings - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2017)

This exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford consisted of drawings, big and small, by Raphael, all of which I'd never seen before but some of which were sketches for elements of paintings and I'd seen a couple of those finished paintings (such as Disco Jesus in the Vatican). To say that Raphael was a good drawer is an understatement. It was particularly good to see him practicing his compositions, having a character face this way and then that way as he experimented with what might be the most effective or dramatic. It's good to get a glimpse of how an artist of his stature worked.

Picasso 1932 - Tate Modern, London (2018)

This was  an odd exhibition in many ways - not everything in it was first rate Picasso but everything was authentic. It showed us his works from a very experimental year when he was already rich and famous but wasn't sure where to go next artistically. There was also one large room put aside to show us the works in one of his one-man exhibitions he curated that year. I loved how each exhibition was labeled with the day and date the work was done - so many works completed in less than a day before he moved on to something else. The sheer creativity of the man is astounding.

Florence - Alte Pinakothek, Munich (2019)

This was a truly great exhibition on so many levels, with great paintings from about 1300 - 1500 by painters associated with Florence. Giotto, Gaddi, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippo, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Fra Bartolomeo, Botticelli and a host of others. Altarpieces were re-imagined using available predella panels and side panels, early portraits showing the development of portraiture - so much stuff to marvel at. The museum had started work on this exhibition five years ago and it must have been a joy to see it come to fruition and see it constantly packed with visitors, both local and international to enjoy the wealth of glorious art gathered together in the same place for the first time. Well done Alte Pinakothek!

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance - Prado, Madrid (2019)

A large exhibition of works by Fra Angelico from all over the world to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado, all centred on the newly restored 'Annunciation' by Angelico that is one of the prides of the Prado's collection. It really was a stunning collection of paintings from major, large collections and obscure small pieces from small collections in towns around Europe and the USA. It was startling to see all these paintings by Fra Angelico in the same place, see his art develop, his story-telling improving, the subjects he chose to paint and the colours he used. The ficus was on one decade of 1420-30 when Angelico reached his peak with his glorious Virgin & Child paintings and the masterpiece of the 'Annunciation'. So much care went into the detail of this exhibition and chosing Adam and Eve from the 'Annunciation' to front the exhibition was inspired. Well done Prado!

Keith Haring - Tate Liverpool (2019)

The final highlight exhibition for me was the recent exhibition of works by Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool. I suspect we can all recognise his cartoon-like works but I didn't know much about him before this exhibition, his activism and his untimely early death. He would've been just a few years older than me if he hadn't died and I can't help but wonder what he'd be producing these days. It was a very big exhibition with loads of his stuff on paper, vinyl and canvas, big pieces and small, some as stand0alone works, others were for posters and his activism. His early works about AIDS were particularly powerful and his later works reflected this except they were bigger, more complicated and more painful to see. Tate Liverpool obviously understood this and the final image, just as you left the gallery, was a blown up photo of Keith with his top off and wearing parched jeans having a bit of a dance and a giggle, reminding us of the fun he enjoyed and his indomitable spirit manifest in his art.

So there you have it, a decade of exhibitions. There were many more over the decade, well over 100 or more, but these are my favourites, the ones I think back to and enjoy, even the painful ones. I'm quite pleased that so many were outside London and outside the country - you don't have to be in London to see great art, it's happening everywhere!

There were many more that weren't about painting as well, exhibitions of sculpture, folk crafts, ancient artefacts, Buddhist scriptures, manuscripts, punk memorabilia, all sorts of stuff really. Take a look at what's happening in your local gallery or museum - or maybe your local coffee house or pub even - since amazing things happen everywhere. The important thing is to open your eyes and your mind - you never know what you might find.

Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern

The work of Natalia Goncharova is one of the big Tate exhibitions this summer and this one is at Tate Modern. I thought I didn't know who she was but then I realised that I'd seen some of her work at an exhibition at the V&A about Diaghilev eight years ago where her designs for 'The Firebird' ballet for the Ballet Russe were on show. I'm pleased to say that I saw some of the designs reproduced when I saw the Royal Ballet dance 'The Firebird' at the Royal Opera House a few weeks ago with Itziar Mendizabal dancing the title role.

Natalia Goncharova was born and educated in Russia but moved to Paris in 1921 where she lived for the rest of her life. She had her first exhibitions in Moscow and St Petersburg before the First World War and was part of the avant-garde in Russia, being a member of several artistic movements including Der Blaue Reiter in Germany and developed Rayonism with her husband Mikhail Larionov. She died in 1962. Her story reminds me of Sonia Delaunay, both marrying artists, both developing new theories of art, both moving to Paris, both working in abstraction, both designing clothes, etc. Sonia was a few years younger than Natalia and died a few years after her. I assume they must have known each other and must have met.

The first couple of small rooms of the exhibition include the early works you'd expect to see in an exhibition but then you move through into the next room, very big and flooded with light. The room is usually divided into smaller spaces but opening it up like this was inspired and a nice surprise. One wall is dominated by the work called 'Harvest' (above) which was originally made up of nice panels but two are lost. This work was part of her first exhibitions in 1913 and 1914 and seems to be based on the tales of the Biblical Apocalypse.

The other walls contained a wide range of mainly larger works, some in her primitive 'cubist' style, others seem to be more along the lines of the Blue Rider and others were simply her own. I loved the bright green parrots, the gardens with graceful trees and flower beds and the paintings of flowers in bright and airy paintings. Part of a wall was filled with an impressive array of female nudes in very different styles.

Further into the exhibition I found this painting, based on Russian embroidery styles. I loved the colour and the repetition of the patterns, a very complicated and detailed design. 'Design with Birds and Flowers' was a study for some textiles she was producing in around 1925-28. Quite a lot of her work seems to have its roots in Russian folklore and folk art.

There are lots of different types of works in this exhibition, not solely paintings. There are dress designs and stage costume designs as well as drawings of stage sets, there are book illustrations and photos of Natalia as a young woman. There are also her modernist versions of traditional Russian icons that seemed to please no-one except herself, with the avant-garde not accepting them as legitimate works and the church not accepting them as icons.

The final, large room of the exhibition is given over to her theatrical work and designs for the Ballet Russe and others. I couldn't help but break into a huge grin when I walked in and saw the costumes in big glass cases while the walls were covered in design sketches and mock-ups. It was interesting to see peoples' responses when they entered the room, with some heading straight for the walls and the framed works while others headed to the costumes - I assume some were more interested in the textiles and how they were made up while others prefer exhibits on paper?

I didn't recognise the play or performance many of the set designs were for but I loved this one - imagine being on stage surrounded by all this wild colour and imagine being in the audience? I wonder if it was ever actually built? It looked like it was all great fun and some of the costume designs were totally over the top.

Something I recognised immediately was the backdrop to the final scene in 'The Firebird', the mythical town with its wild array of buildings going up and up towards the sky. I'd seen a reproduction of this a few weeks ago at the Royal Opera House and I saw what I think was the original filling an entire wall at the V&A years ago at the Diaghilev exhibition. It's gorgeous.

I now know a lot more about Natalia Goncharova than I did before visiting the exhibition. Now that I've had time to think about the works and the breadth of Natalia's talents, I think I need to go back to see it again and look at the works afresh with a better understanding. The exhibition is on until September and is worth a visit to Tate Modern to see.

Favourite Paintings: Sonia Delaunay 'Le Bal Bullier'

One of my favourite paintings is 'Le Bal Bullier' by Sonia Delaunay. It was painted in 1913 and is inspired by the tango craze that swept across Paris in the early 1910s. Sonia used to go to the Bal Bullier dancehall in Paris and sketched the dancers that ended up in this painting.

The painting is 12 feet long and the eye can't help but sweep from left to right as the dancers swirl across the painting. It's often cited as an example of the colour theory of Orphism, using primary colours against secondary colours - Sonia was very hot on colour theories and used them and experimented with them throughout her life in various media. I tend to respond to paintings on a more emotional rather than intellectual level. I don't see the theory, I see life and joy and movement and colour. I see the effect of that theory.

I saw this painting as part of the exhibition of Sonia's works at Tate Modern in 2015 and I visited it many times - I like colour. Each time I saw it I was drawn further into the dance. I stopped seeing blocks of colour and shapes and started to see couples dancing, enjoying the movement and the music and being together, and then started seeing movement as the couples danced across the dance floor. That's one of the magical things about painting - the painter doesn't dictate what you see. We all respond to art in different ways and that's a good thing.

I especially like that Sonia not only used the Bal Bullier dancehall as inspiration but she was part of it and designed her own dress to wear when she went there. That was included in the Tate exhibition.

'Le Bal Bullaire' is part of the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris so I'll have to pay it a visit on my next trip to Paris.

'Out Of Chaos' at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle

Last week I went to see the 'Out Of Chaos' exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. The exhibition is in association with the Ben Uri Gallery and is made up mostly of works in the Ben Uri collection. It's about migration and the impacts of migration but, since I visited the day before Holocaust Memorial Day and coming during a more current refugee crisis, and with Brexit and Trump all over the news, nationalism and exclusion of the other, it took on a slightly different meaning. There is forced migration and running for your life to remember, and, sometimes, it's the little stories around some of these paintings that make them come alive. There is also the sorrow of not being able to run for your life or being turned away, lives cut short and potential never realised, and that's partly what I took away from the exhibition.

It's not all tears and there is joy in this exhibition, the joy of finding two Sonia Delaunay paintings I didn't expect to see. Walking into the room, glancing round and seeing these on the wall were a magnet for me. They were only small but small can be joyful - 'Design for a Poster' and 'Greeting Card' for Gallerie Bing, both simple little works but so very much by Sonia.  Simple colours and shapes making the paint sing and say come, jump in and enjoy. Both works are from 1964 when Sonia had been settled for many years but she had spent her youth as a migrant, living in different countries and escaping wars but always working, always moving forward. Seeing any work by Sonia reminds me of the great exhibition of her works at Tate Modern a couple of years ago, everything from her early Fauvist-inspired works through her own art theory developments with her husband, Robert, to her final works.

Another quiet joy was seeing 'Svendborg Harbour, Denmark' by Martin Bloch from 1934. I've not come across Bloch before but the colours and shapes in this painting drew my eye across the room. Bloch was German who left his country when the nazis classified his work as 'degenerate' and moved to Denmark and then to Britain. Svendborg was obviously a busy harbour with boats and warehouses aplenty, jostling together with crates of fish and other goods bobbing on the tides, with a cloudy sky ready to drop rain at the first opportunity. Merchants and workers are behind those green walls keeping dry and warm - I can't see them but I know they're there while Bloch sits and sketches on the quayside.

A charming naive painting is 'Shtetl' by Chana Kowalska, in lovely bright colours showing a village scene. Bright houses with a water pump in the middle of the road for the people to share, tree-lined streets and a telegraph pole linking the village to the wider world and to the city (see the little dome of a church in the distance). The detail of the cobble stone street is lovely. This is the old world on the cusp of change, a nostalgic look back to a more idealised - and safer - past.

Chana Kowalska was a migrant. She moved from Poland to Berlin to Paris, the daughter of a rabbi, a teacher and journalist as well as a painter. By the time she painted this work in 1934 she was already looking back to a time that had almost vanished. When the Second World War reached Paris Kowalska joined the French Resistance to fight the nazis and, in 1941, she was captured, deported and killed. Her life was cut short at the age of 37 but she fought for what she believed in and against the enemy, like many others. Who knows what she might have gone on to create if she had lived?

On the wall beside 'Shtetl' is the larger 'Crucifixion' by Emmanuel Levy. Levy was the son of Jewish migrants to Britain and he grew up in Manchester so his experience is very different to many of the other artists in the exhibition. He painted this in 1942 as a protest about the news coming from Europe during the war about what was happening to Jews being rounded up from cities and towns and vanishing into camps. I'm not sure whether it is showing Christ as a modern day Jew or is meant to show the mockery of Jews by imitating Christ. The sign above his head, 'Jude' places the painting clearly in the era and the persecution of the Jews by the nazis with the figure looking up to God while his prayer shawl flaps in the breeze. By extension, the smaller crosses littering the field and going back in the distance represent other Jews, now dead and buried. It's a powerful image.

Further along the same wall is 'Interrogation' by George Grosz from 1938, a terrible, painful work in rough ink and colour. A half-naked man, beaten and bloody, with a nazi officer looking on smoking and not reacting to the horror in front of him. Grosz lived in America when he made this and it's a powerful and terrible work. The casual brutality is awful and thats why this painting needs to be shown and seen, especially with the current rise of nationalism and bigotry. We need to see where extreme nationalism can lead.

A final painting to mention is 'Refugees' by Josef Herman from 1941. He painted this in Glasgow after he had fled from Warsaw following persecution of the Jews and escaped from Brussels in 1940 when Germany invaded. It has a strange nightmare quality, thickly painted, showing a family fleeing for their lives under the moon with a suggestion that the hunt has begun. Carrying a few meagre possessions to start a new life somewhere else - if they make it.

There are other works by a wide range of other artists (including Marc Chagall and Frank Auerbach) but these are the ones that stick with me. It's not a pleasant exhibition but it's needed and now is the right time to be reminded about the lowest points of the 20th Century.  I'd suggest that some of our current world leaders should see this exhibition but that would sadly be a waste of breath.

The exhibition is on until 26 February 2017 so if you're in Newcastle I'd urge you to see it.

The Plastic Bag Awards 2015

It's that time of year again, it's time for the Plastic Bag Awards 2015, affectionately known as the Baggies! The nominations have been scrutinised, the judging panel have locked themselves away in a room for a couple of day to argue the case for one nominee above another and have finally been released with unanimous decisions.

Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, I give you … the Baggies 2015!

Best Theatre - Shakespeare

As we enter the 400th anniversary of the death of Mr Shakespeare then this award has slightly more poignancy that normal. I saw quite a few Shakespeare productions in 2015, including the long-awaited Benedict Cumberbatch version of 'Hamlet'. As ever in recent years, there were a goodly few visits to Shakespeare's Globe for some open-air theatre over the summer as well as sundry productions in more normal theatres. The nominations are:

'Romeo & Juliet' @ The Globe
'The Merchant of Venice' @ The Globe
'Measure for Measure' @ The Globe
'As You Like It' @ the National Theatre
'The Winter's Tale' @ The Garrick Theatre

The winner is the last Shakespeare production I saw over the year, the new Kenneth Branagh company production of 'The Winter's Tale' which is the best production of that play that I've yet seen. It gained double points for being set at Christmas with snow outside and a Christmas Tree inside. Judi Dench was superb.

Best Theatre - Drama

I saw a lot of plays in 2015 and most would fall into this category. I saw a great version of 'Not I' in the Beckett festival at the Barbican over the summer and a touching 'Our Country's Good' at the National but I'm afraid both were pipped at the post. The nominees are:

'Di and Viv and Rose' @ the Vaudeville Theatre
'The Motherfucker With The Hat' @ the National Theatre
'The Oresteia' @ The Globe
'Stevie' @ Hampstead Theatre
'Mr Foote's Other Leg' @ Hampstead Theatre

There were some great productions this year and included some very pleasant surprises like 'The Mofo in the Hat' and 'Stevie' but the Baggy must go to 'Mr Foote's Other Leg' with Simon Russell Beale and Dervla Kirwan, a great script and a great production.

Best Theatre - Musical

It's been a funny year for the musical - the West End is still full of them but where are the new musicals coming through? We need some new smash hits, I think, and I'm hoping that 'Kinky Boots' will rise to the challenge. The nominees are:

'Beautiful' @ the Aldwych Theatre
'Grand Hotel' @ Southwark Playhouse
'Kinky Boots' @ the Adelphi Theatre
'Guys and Dolls' @ the Savoy Theatre
'Xanadu' @ Southwark Theatre

The winner is probably inevitable judging from the number of times I went back to see it on its short run at Southwark - the masterpiece that is 'Grand Hotel'! The great cast led by Scott Garnham as the Baron and Christine Gimandi as Grushinskaya. Well done people!

Best Entertainment

As you all know by now, an 'entertainment' is anything that isn't a proper play or musical and includes a wide variety of productions, from staged talks to one-off events and song cycles. The nominees are:

'Sweeney Todd' @ the Coliseum
'An Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer' @ Hackney Empire
Tracey Thorn @ Waterstone's, Piccadilly
'Songs for a New World' @ St James's Theatre
'La Soiree' on the Southbank

The winner is 'Songs for a New World' party because it was completely new for me and something to discover and largely because of Cynthia Erivo who is currently making it big on Broadway.

Best Film

I didn't see many new films in 2015 but saw a few old films in new prints, cleaned up and re-presented. The nominees are:

'Travels With My Aunt' @ the British Film Institute
'Into The Woods' @ Brixton Ritzy
'Wild Tales' @ Curzon Victoria
'Brief Encounter @ the British Film Institute
'Gone With The Wind' @ the British Film Institute

In a surprise to myself, the winner of 'Best Film' is 'Brief Encounter' with it's terribly British accents and acting. It's a timeless love story that I've seen before on TV but seeing it on the big screen was a very different experience. Well done to Celia and Trevor, our immortal lovers.

Best Gig

2015 was a year of few gigs but they were all really good and mainly old favourites rather than new people. The nominees are:

Buffy Sainte-Marie @ the O2 Brooklyn Bowl
Amanda Palmer @ Union Chapel
Culture Club @ Hammersmith
Madonna @ the O2
Kim Wilde's Christmas Party @ the Coronet

The winner is Buffy Sainte-Marie at Brooklyn Bowl at the O2. I'd seen Buffy earlier in the year at the Tabernacle but the Brooklyn Bowl gig was spectacular in more ways than one: the new album was released by then so we had some great live versions of the songs, there was a fabulous light show, the sound was excellent and there was a definite good vibe surrounding the place. Well done Buffy!

Best Live Performance

This category is for a single performance on a stage, whether it's at a gig or in a musical, it's the performance that matters. The nominees are:

'Roses at the Station' by Scott Garnham in 'Grand Hotel'
'Stars & the Moon' by Jenna Russell in 'Songs for a New World'
'Power In The Blood' by Buffy Sainte-Marie @ Brooklyn Bowl
'Rebel Heart' by Madonna @ the O2
'Kids In America' by Kim Wilde @ the Coronet

There were some great performances this year but the winner is Jenna Russell's touching song about growth and love from 'Songs for a New World'. She gave different performances in that show to reflect the mood and the song but her wistful love song wins the day. Well done Jenna!

Best Exhibition

2015 was a year of some great exhibitions and the Goya portraits and 'Defining Beauty' Greek statues exhibitions narrowly missed the nominations, which are:

'Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends' @ the National Portrait Gallery
'Inventing Impressionism' @ the National Gallery
'Grayson Perry - Who Are You?' @ the National Portrait Gallery
'Sonia Delaunay' @ Tate Modern
Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun at Le Grand Palais, Paris

The winner is Sonia Delaunay with her wonderfully colourful works that made me gasp with wonder and shed a tear at the beauty of her paintings.

Best Book

A variety of books were explored this year, fiction, non-fiction and autobiography and the nominees are:

'Naked at the Albert Hall' by Tracey Thorn
'Anger is an Energy' by John Lydon
'The Shepherd's Crown' by Terry Pratchett
'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman
'Black by Design' by Pauline Black

The winner is John Lydon for his brutally honest autobiography, 'Anger is an Energy' in which he tackles some very difficult experiences head on. We get Johnny Rotten and John Lydon - two for the price of one. Well done John!

Best Dance

This is a new category for 2015 when I discovered the joys of dance. The nominees are:

'Woolf Works' by the Royal Ballet @ Royal Opera House
'Triple Bill' by Birmingham Royal Ballet @ Sadler's Wells
'Romeo & Juliet' by the Royal Ballet @ Royal Opera House
'Nutcracker' by the Royal Ballet @ Royal Opera House
'Sleeping Beauty' by Matthew Bourne's New Adventures @ Sadler's Wells

'Woolf Works' was the catalyst that made me want to explore ballet so hats off to that production, but it was 'Romeo & Juliet' that made me fall in love with ballet and that production by the Royal Ballet is the winner. The athleticism, the dancing, the staging and costumes all brought this classic tale to life and captured my imagination. And made me want to see more. Luckily the production is captured on DVD and, even luckier, I have it. Well done Royal Ballet!

And there you have them - the Baggies 2015! All the nominees should be pleased with themselves for making the final cut and, while not everyone can be a winner, simply being nominated is an honour and tribute.  2016 is a new year so let's see what it brings...

Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern

I saw posters for an exhibition of Sonia Delaunay's works in Paris when I was there in October 2014 but the exhibition opened the day I left so didn't manage to see it. That exhibition is now in London at the Tate Modern and opened a few days ago so I immediately went along to bask in her colours. I didn't know much about Sonia, although I'd come across her husband before (Robert Delaunay), so here was an opportunity to learn about this fascinating woman and see some of the works that have influenced avant-garde art movements throughout the last century.

As well as being an artists she branched out to design books for the dadaists, designed costumes for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe, designed fabrics for Liberty and designed clothes for the great and good such as this coat for Gloria Swanson. This makes it such a great exhibition to wander round since you have no idea what might be in the next room.

There are sketches of clothes in her special colours and designs as well as specific examples, including a couple of woollen bathing suits and a parasol. There are shoes, ties, shawls, designs for commercial adverts, a dress and waistcoat and all sorts. In one room there is a big display of three of her fabrics rolling round and round, an interesting way to exhibit her works.

She was, of course, also an artist of great perception and power and, on arriving in Paris in 1906 she was attracted to the Fauves and the first couple of rooms are dedicated to this phase of her work. There were several portraits of 'Philomene' and this was my favourite with it's bright wallpaper behind the sitter. There were also a few portraits of a Finnish girl with a similarly yellow-based face, experimenting with the contrasts of colour on the body and how the eye interpets it.

From these early figurative works Sonia soon ventured down a more abstract route, developing the concept of 'simultanism' with her husband, using contrasting bright colours to bring a new vibrancy and life to painting at a time when other painters were becoming increasingly monochrome.  One of my favourites of her move to abstraction is a painting called 'Bal Bullier', named after a ballroom Sonia used to visit to sketch the dancers during the tango craze in Paris. There are two versions of the painting on display and you can see the shapes of the dancers swirling and strutting across the dance floor. The painting is full of energy and life.

From there she moved further into abstraction, focusing on geometric shapes, particularly circles in magical colours.

She contrasts colours and shapes to give them a vibrancy, make them resonate against and with each other and they're wonderful mandalas to gaze into and see the colours bubble and glow. Her art theories extended into trying to make them sing, to represent music with shapes and colours and she began her 'Rhythm' series of paintings.

I can't help but feel her forays into design and the applied arts helped her to develop her work, adding beauty to everyday life. That's partly what art's all about and Sonia's brings added depth. The swirling colours of her fabrics and magazine covers must have helped her to see ever more clearly where she wanted to go. What happens when the fabric falls just like this and the colours sit together…?

After the Second World War Sonia started using darker colours and is noted as saying that her great achievement was to discover black as an expressive colour in its own right. Who but a great artist would say something like that? The colours of her works are deeper and richer, more striking and just as gorgeous. Her 1969 painting called 'Syncopated Rhythm, known as The Black Snake' illustrates this perfectly and represents three phases of her artistic development from right to left. It really is quite marvellous in the flesh.

Sonia died in 1979 at the age of 94. She was born in the Ukraine and grew up in St Petersburg before moving to Paris in 1906 to train as an artist and what a life she must have seen. And kept painting and designing. A true artist. She is one of only two living artists to be exhibited at the Louvre and was awarded the Legion D'Honour. I learned so much by seeing this exhibition and there is so much more to learn. I have found a new hero and I need to learn more about her.