After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art

National Gallery, London (reposted from Facebook)

The problem with After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art at the National Gallery is that there are way, way, way too many other people there. You’re either an inch from a painting or you have a sea of people between you and it, and any highfalutin notion of communing with the artwork is lost. I think they should halve the number of admissions, at least.

Other than that, it’s a vast, outstanding exhibition covering the highlights of the three decades preceding the First World War. It has all of the Pauls - Cezanne, Gauguin, Serusier, Signac, Picasso - and very few of the Paulas, although my favourite painting was Sonia Delaunay’s Young Finnish Woman.

Picasso’s Absinthe Drinker is another of my top picks, and I have so much compassion for Paul Cezanne’s wife, pictured here in an unflattering portrait that accentuates her acne/rosacea. I can almost hear her asking, “What the fuck, Paul? Thirty years of doodling and this is the best you can do?! It looks like I’ve only got one bloody eyebrow!”