Video

The Royal Academy’s survey of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert is currently closed, but I managed to film it in its first week of opening. Since it’s the first survey of this little known artist in the UK, it’s doubly sad that audiences may not now get a chance to see it, so I hope this short film suffices as a brief introduction to his work. Prominent within the Belgian Symbolist movement, Spilliaert’s fame has never extended much further than his home country, though he’s now gaining wider recognition. Fellow Belgian painter Luc Tuymans can claim to be partly responsible for this renewed interest, having included one painting by Spilliaert in the Royal Academy’s James Ensor exhibition of 2016, which Tuymans had been invited to curate. He’s also contributed an essay for the exhibition catalogue.

The American Abstract Expressionist in a long overdue retrospective, at the Barbican Gallery.

1932 was Picasso’s Year of Wonders – the year of Spanish artist’s first retrospective and the year he painted some of his most gloriously sensual, erotic, and playful paintings of his young lover Marie Thérèse Walter.

The Kenyan-born artist talks about how Western artists of the past have influenced his approach to subjects and themes rooted in East Africa. This film was commissioned for Elephant Magazine.

Jasper Johns (b.1930) is one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. Here I talk about some of his key works (and more recent work) at the Royal Academy’s vast retrospective.

A look at the prolific and varied career of the British artist credited with creating the first Pop art work in 1947 (the collage I was a Rich Man’s Plaything).

Restlessly and endlessly inventive, Robert Rauschenberg is one of the great artists of the 20th century. Here I highlight some of the major works in Tate Modern’s superb retrospective of the American artist.

A quick tour of the Picasso Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (until 5 February, 2017). Part of a longer film (where I actually talk), which I didn’t, but still might, get round to editing…

A short film made with ZCZ Films: a tour of the National Gallery’s exhibition Delacroix and the Rise of the Modern Art.

On Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen at the Serpentine Gallery, an exhibition of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), who is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. A ZCZ Films production.

I explore the strange and beguiling paintings of Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) with Dulwich Picture Gallery director Ian Dejardin.