Happy new year, art lovers! Now we have the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to tackling that scarring and insistent question that lurches up from our depths during the first hesitant steps of every new annus: where in the Devil’s name can we get a decent art fix in January?
As every art lover knows, art closes down over Christmas and new year, and doesn’t wake up properly until February. The museums hibernate. The curators turn back into normal people and spend time with their families. As a result January is the cruellest month for the art lover. Or it can be — if you let it. So don’t let it. A few winters ago, during a particularly bleak post-new-year slump, I had what the Germans called a “schnapsidee” — a ridiculous idea that only makes sense when you’re drunk. Except on this occasion it still felt brilliant when I sobered up.
“Find a show you really want to see,” my soggy subconscious had slurred, “make sure it’s somewhere with cheap airline connections and go there tomorrow.” So I did. I jetted off the next day to Madrid to see Velázquez at the Prado. Of course, you don’t have to go tomorrow. You can wait till the weekend. Or even the one after. But the basic schnapsidee holds true that there are marvellous things to see at this time of year if you throw travel cares out of the window and glug down some cava. I have just looked up Ryanair to Madrid on January 11. The fare is £12.99!
And don’t stop at Madrid. Another thing you could see is actually called Things, and is at the Louvre in Paris. On most occasions visiting the Louvre is a nightmare. It’s too huge, too crowded. But not in January. Things tells the story of the still life from prehistoric times to today. The show’s big point is that still lifes are never just still lifes. They invariably have deeper symbolic meanings lurking within them. As we bounce here from Rembrandt to Arcimboldo to Manet to Duchamp, we keep plunging into secretive little corners of the artistic mind and detouring into profound bits of human history. All sorts of fascinating connections are made in one of the best exhibitions I have seen here (until January 23).
If, however, you still prefer that trip to Madrid, you should visit In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. Word has it that the lorries bringing this show to Spain missed the bombardment of Kyiv by just a few hours. They made it out and now all of us can wonder and sigh at what Ukrainian modernism was up to during these key decades when no one was watching (until April 30). See you on the plane.
Copenhagen is enchanting in January. The Carlsberg Glyptotek, founded by you know who — if Carlsberg did museums! — has some exquisite winter Gauguins painted in the city when he tried, and failed, to become a Scandinavian tarpaulin salesman. Well worth a look. But the big reason to head to Denmark in a hurry is to see the once-in-a-lifetime show at the Nivaagaards Malerisamling — Sofonisba: History’s Forgotten Miracle. Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625) is one of the early female painters being re-evaluated by a determined cohort of feminist art historians. Not all their discoverees fully deserve this new attention. Anguissola certainly does.
Prompted by an encouraging family to become a painter when such a thing was rare, she brought a new voice to art and led the portrait — her speciality — on to fascinating terrain. Her self-portraits in particular are tangibly intimate. You sense a completely new aesthetic arriving in art. This is the most comprehensive collection of Anguissola’s work you will ever see. It’s a riveting show. And also a real test of the new year schnapsidee since it closes on January 15.
Flights to New York are a tough ask, I know. So it’s cheeky of me to recommend a quick trip to the Whitney Museum of American Art to see Edward Hopper’s New York. But the show continues until March 5, so there is some wriggle room in dating your escape. If you can make it, Hopper, master of urban melancholy, will repay the effort, I promise you.
The show looks back at the 60 or so years that he lived in New York, travelling to work on the subway, watching the city change, soaking himself in its atmospheres, peering into people’s windows, peering into their thoughts. Where the modernists who painted New York before him adored the urban pace of the city and were in awe of its architecture, Hopper saw only ennui and loneliness. In the choice between concrete and people, he was always on the side of the people.
Rome, too, is gorgeous in January. With all those Caravaggios in the churches still oozing so much religious prickliness. But visiting Rome no longer necessitates a journey back in time because contemporary art is also alive and kicking in and around the Forum. Especially at the Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, where it has on show, of all things, new work by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Hah!
In a previous guise as Sam Taylor-Wood, this poetic and thoughtful artist was a stand-out star of Brit art. But she gave it all up to become a hot-shot Hollywood film director, the woman who gave us Fifty Shades of Grey, no less. Now, thank God, she’s back to making art again. The Rome show features new works made in the Californian desert with the artist suspended high above the sand and the cacti, dancing a dangerous duet with a gas-guzzling American muscle car. Wow. Great to have her back (until March 26).
