1. Cezanne
Tate Trendy, London; October (runs till 12 March 2023)
Epochal present of mesmerising work by this revolutionary Frenchman – golden apples, monumental card gamers, the shimmering pyramid of Mont Sainte-Victoire, a Provençal winter as spare as a Japanese watercolour. Irrespective of how usually you go, their magnificence stays irreducibly radical and mysterious.
2. Raphael
Nationwide Gallery, London; April
First ever exhibition outdoors Italy of the Renaissance prodigy, and what a revelation it was. Tactile, seductive, amorous, dazzlingly clever in each medium from chalk to color, wool and bronze. Better of all: the casual portraits of buddies, female and male.
3. Van Gogh: Self-Portraits
Courtauld Institute, London; February
Nearly half of the 35 painted self-portraits, all made within the final 4 years of his life. Elated, sleepless, brutally shaven, apocalyptically dynamic, transcendent, a minimum of as soon as unrecognisable: a forcefield of genius, Van Gogh’s signature in each stroke.
4. A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020
Whitechapel Gallery, London; February
Iwona Blazwick’s swansong as Whitechapel director, this was a fantastically dramatic evocation of studios, from freezing log hut to movie set, laboratory, suitcase and kitchen desk. Eighty artists, 5 continents and a real sense of the inventive thoughts in situ.
5. Within the Black Implausible
Hayward Gallery, London; July
A fizzing knockout pageant of latest African diaspora artwork that turned the gloomy Hayward inside out with music, sculpture, motion pictures, work and self-portraits in gold, bronze and papier-mache. Its climax was Kara Walker’s shadow-play movie, utilizing paper silhouettes to inform the narrative of black historical past with unforgettable delicacy and tragedy.
6. Postwar Trendy: New Artwork in Britain 1945-65
Barbican Artwork Gallery, London; March
The power of twenty years of British artwork born out of the instant horrors of the second world battle got here as a shock, not least as a result of so many of those artists have been misplaced or forgotten. I shan’t overlook the eerie work of Polish refugee Franciszka Themerson, nor the blood-red encaustic canvases of Magda Cordell.
7. Howardena Pindell: A New Language
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; July
Delicate and ghostly abstractions, beautiful collages, devastating movies: all involved with American racism. By no means has rage been extra powerfully transmuted into stunning artwork.
8. A Style for Impressionism
Scottish Nationwide Gallery, Edinburgh; August
World-famous work from Scottish collections would have been sufficient – Monet’s haystacks, Degas’s portraits, Van Gogh dazzled in Arles – however there have been so many neglected surprises. Strangest of all, Courbet’s fierce darkish wave rising out of white foam, talking straight to Hokusai.
9. Reframed: The Lady within the Window
Dulwich Image Gallery, London; Might
An concept – how males body their views of ladies – reworked into an excellent exhibition. From Rembrandt’s woman leaning on her sill to Walter Sickert’s prostitute and Picasso’s trapped lover, all the way in which to Louise Bourgeois discovering the entire world in her window.
10. Invoice Lynch: The Exile of Dionysus
Brighton CCA; August
The invention (or rediscovery) of the yr, for me: a Twentieth-century American grasp, lifeless at 53, who painted his visions of a lyrical chic on panels of discovered plywood.
