Table of Contents
Art
Van Gogh Self-Portraits
From a portrait of the artist as a young man in Paris in 1886 and the artist in his mirror with a bandaged ear (from the Courtauld’s own collection), to Van Gogh’s self-portrait with a palette, painted not long before he killed himself. Featuring more than 15 works, can this really be the first ever show dedicated to his self-portraits, from every stage of his career? AS
Courtauld Gallery, London, 3 February-8 May
The World of Stonehenge
One of the most mysterious wonders of archaeology gets the blockbuster treatment. From the medieval myth that Merlin imported it from Ireland by magic to great artistic images by Blake and Constable, to the arrest of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles at the stones, this ancient place haunts British culture. JJ
British Museum, London, 17 February-17 July
A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020
The studio as workshop, factory, sanctuary and theatre, and both subject and artwork in its own right. Taking us from Francis Bacon’s photogenic chaos to a Louise Bourgeois cell, from collective, collaborative spaces to places where creativity has run out, this exhibition reveals a century of art-making and aeons of frittered time. AS
Whitechapel Gallery, London, 17 February-29 May
Carlo Crivelli: Shadows on the Sky
It has long been Ikon director Jonathan Watkins’s dream to stage a show of Italian Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli (1435-95), who was both a conservative figure and, Watkins says, “as radical as Magritte”. Susan Sontag saw Crivelli as “camp”. Curiosity piqued at Crivelli’s undoubted weirdness, I can’t wait. AS
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 23 February-29 May
Surrealism Beyond Borders
The surrealist belief that beauty comes from the unconscious was born in Paris but kindled dreams around the globe. In Prague, it unleashed the visions of novelist Bohumil Hraba and animator Jan Švankmajer. In Mexico it inspired Frida Kahlo. Follow its flame to these and many more surreal breeding grounds. JJ
Tate Modern, London, 24 February-29 August
Robert Indiana: Sculpture 1958-2018
All you need is love, and in the case of this pop artist who died in 2018 that’s all a lot of us know about him. Indiana’s defining work Love is a public sculpture that swept the world, but how did he develop? Here’s a chance to see him whole. JJ
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 12 March-8 January 2023
Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection
The 19th-century painter Kawanabe Kyōsai brought Japanese art into modern times. He lived in an age of widening encounters for Japan and was a contemporary of the French impressionists, dying in 1889. His ghosts, courtesans and animals are rollicking masterpieces. This show from a great collection reveals a genius. JJ
Royal Academy, London, 19 March-19 June
Hew Locke
Unpicking British colonial history is key to the work of the Guyanese-British artist, whose Armada, a flotilla of 45 votive boats, will be suspended from the ceiling of Tate Liverpool in February. Locke’s forthcoming commission for Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries combines the themes and material that have informed his earlier work: expect trophies from the junkyard of empire, remnants and flotsam and flowers. AS
Tate Britain, London, 22 March-23 October
Sheila Hicks: Off Grid
The Hepworth’s delayed show by the Paris-based American artist, who has used weaving as the basis of her work for more than 50 years, finally arrives. Drawing on wildly different weaving traditions, and working on both small woven drawings and large-scale installations that respond to the architecture of the gallery, the exhibition promises to be ravishing. A perfect venue for her art. AS
Hepworth Wakefield, 7 April-25 September
The Vasseur Baltic Artists’ award 2022
A great premise – get three leading artists to each nominate a younger colleague, who gets £25,000 and a show at Baltic. Culture and nature, cosmological thinking and the political and material formation of taste inform the work of Ima-Abasi Okon, Laleh Khorramian and Fernando García-Dory, selected by Otobong Nkanga, Mika Rottenberg and Hito Steyerl. AS
Baltic Gateshead, 9 April-2 October
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Gonzalez-Foerster is an enigmatic creator of rooms, situations and beguiling surprises. Speculative, literary, haunting and strange, the French artist’s work is often as autobiographical as it is a kind of sci-fi of the self and our place in the universe. The Serpentine tells us to expect “an immersive, supernatural and sensory environment”: I haven’t a clue what to expect. AS
Serpentine Gallery, London, 13 April-4 September (Dates TBC)
Cornelia Parker
Surrealism still lives in the transformations Parker performs on everyday stuff. Her often comical, accidental-on-purpose catastrophes, from blowing up a shed to crushing musical instruments to flattening the silverware, have helped make contemporary art popular. So this retrospective with all her greatest hits should go down a treat. JJ
Tate Britain, London, 18 May-16 October
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face
Picasso gobbled up artistic influences from around the world but was also able to take on European classicism. After all, he was trained in it at a 19th-century academy. This should be thrilling as we see how he squared up to the authority of Ingres with great, strange results. JJ
National Gallery, London, 3 June-9 October
Vivian Maier
Working for more than 40 years as a domestic nanny in suburban Chicago, Vivian Maier had a double life as a street photographer. Her anonymity was her disguise but it was taken to such an extreme that her art remained almost unknown until after her death. Maier saw herself as a sort of spy, recording life in Chicago, New York and wherever her obligations took her. She was brilliant, weird and wonderful. AS
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 11 June-25 September
Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics
The first survey of American artist Carolee Schneemann’s (1939-2019) work in the UK, the show celebrates a radical artist and feminist agent-provocateur. Tracing her development from early paintings and assemblage, to her confrontational performances using her body as primary medium and subject, and her later films and multimedia installations. AS
Barbican Art Gallery, London, 8 September-8 January 2023
Very Private?
The recently discovered erotic drawings of Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant should bring the crowds to this house and gallery that preserves the spirit of the early 20th-century avant garde. Grant’s openly gay sex scenes were made at a time when homosexuality was a crime. They are his masterpieces. JJ
Charleston, Sussex, 17 September -12 March 2023
Lindisfarne Gospels
Artists Monster Chetwynd and Ryan Gander are among the stars of a cultural festival across the north-east to celebrate the return of a regional wonder. The illuminated Saxon treasure the Lindisfarne Gospels, created by Northumbrian monks, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful manuscripts on Earth. And it’s coming home. JJ
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 17 September-3 December (plus region-wide events)
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
In a year that also includes its much-delayed Raphael blockbuster, the National Gallery dives into the world of a modern great. Freud belongs here. He judged himself against the likes of Titian, Rubens and Corot – and now his paintings can be assessed in their company. A genius takes his place in history. JJ
National Gallery, London, 1 October-22 January 2023
Cézanne
Cézanne remains a pivotal figure in the development of modern art. Reclusive, idealistic and curmudgeonly, this new retrospective will contain many works not seen in the UK before, and follow his development from the 1850s to his death in 1906. It’s not all about apples, mountains or the bucolic Provençal good life. Tate last mounted a Cézanne retrospective in 1996. It feels a world away. AS
Tate Modern, London, 6 October-12 March 2023
Architecture
A hole-filled slice of Swiss cheese has landed in Budapest’s wooded City Park, forming an undulating canopy above the trees. This is the new House of Hungarian Music, by experimental Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, designed to host concerts in a glade-like setting, along with a library and exhibitions on musical history.
Budapest, January
Concrete bowls bulge from the cafe ceiling of F51 in Folkestone, signalling the presence of the world’s first vertical skatepark. Billed as an “adrenaline building”, this new youth hub will house facilities for skateboarding, BMX, climbing, bouldering, boxing and more – in a building that was originally planned to be a multistorey car park.
Folkestone, early 2022
John Hejduk: Building Worlds
The postmodern American architect John Hejduk created stories and characters more than buildings, concocting casts of strange anthropomorphic structures that took on lives of their own. This free installation will see a large-scale model constructed from one of his “masques”, built in collaboration with students from the Royal College of Art.
Royal Academy, London, 22 March
After almost six years, Glasgow’s cherished venue is set to reopen, following a £68m refurbishment by John McAslan. First opened in the city’s Pollok Country Park in 1983 to house the sprawling art collection of shipping magnate Sir William Burrell, the building has been radically upgraded to improve display conditions and allow more to be shown.
Glasgow, March
A vast oblong of glowing white marble floats above a greenish-grey stone base near the Oslo waterfront, signalling the arrival of the new £544m National Museum. Designed by German architects Kleihues + Schuwerk, it will display more than 5,000 artworks across 90 galleries, the upper Light Hall containing a colossal 2,400 sq metres space for changing exhibitions.
Oslo, 11 June
From a gigantic red lip-shaped sofa to a coffee table with golden bird’s feet, this exhibition will explore how surrealism has influenced design of the past 100 years, spanning kooky furniture and interiors to graphic design, fashion and photography. Anyone for an iron studded with nails?
Design Museum, London, 14 October
From the 2m plastic bags being used every minute to the microplastics choking sea life in the deepest oceans, the material is everywhere. This exhibition will chart plastic’s 150-year history, explaining how we got here and asking what’s next for tackling one of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
V&A Dundee, 29 October
What better city to host an exhibition on horror and architecture than Birmingham? Both loved and loathed for its brutalist concrete cityscape, Birmingham is the starting point for an exhibition that explores how modernist architecture – in fiction, film and art – has been used to tap into our deepest fears.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 25 November-19 February 2023
Providing a year-round home for the Manchester International festival, the £186m performance venue is finally due to open at the end of next year, following delays, cost escalations and redesigns. Created as a hangar-like shed, its Dutch architects OMA say it aims to “preserve the city’s rough edge, as a sort of resistance to the pervasive beautification of inner cities”.
December
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/dec/28/van-gogh-self-portraits-2022-best-art-and-architecture