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Critic's Choice: Top 5 exhibitions
By Hephzibah Anderson, Evening Standard 02.02.07
Branching out: Palmsonntag by Anselm Kiefer, his painting installation at White Cube Mason's Yard
Look here too
Palmsonntag fills the ground floor of the White Cube's West End space, the Royal Academy's At Home is hard to resist and The Wallace Collection dedicates an exhibiton to Francesco Xanto Avelli...
Anselm Kiefer
White Cube Mason's Yard, W1 Royal Academy of Arts, W1
In the White Cube's West End space, a single installation, Palmsonntag, fills the ground floor, with 18 paintings lining one wall and a gangly palm tree lying across the gallery. Organic materials like flowers enliven a series of dense, complex landscapes. Around the corner at the Royal Academy of Arts, two multistorey concrete towers loom up from the classical surrounds of its courtyard. Though it lacks some of the nervy intensity of Keifer's finest work, it's an undeniably classy show. At White Cube until 17 March (020 7930 5373); at the RA until 1 April (020 7300 8000).
At Home: Portraits of Artists
Royal Academy of Arts, W1
This eclectic exhibition can feel a little bitty, but it's hard to resist its immense range. Made up entirely of works from the Academy's own collection, it to explores how artists themselves have been represented in art over the past 250 years. (020 7300 8000). Until 27 Nov.
Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet
The Wallace Collection, W1
Francesco Xanto Avelli was a leading ceramic artist in Renaissance Italy. He worked in maiolica, which involves painting onto tin-glazed earthenware to achieve rich, lasting colours. While canvases can dim over the centuries, maiolica retains its vividness, and the 60 plates and dishes assembled here offer a glimpse of an altogether brighter Renaissance, its familiar palette preserved in startling hues. This solid exhibition claims to be the first dedicated to him, and it's a treat. (020 7563 9500) Until 15 April.
Max Penson in Uzbekistan 1920-1930s
Gilbert Collection, Somerset House, WC2
For nearly a quarter of a century, Max Penson worked as a photographer for Soviet Central Asia's largest newspaper, Pravda Vostoka. By the time anti-Semitism and accusations of Western influences forced him to quit in 1948, he'd amassed an archive of some 30,000 images. The 200 on show here fuse a Modernist aesthetic with a socialist agenda to document sweeping social change. (020 7845 4600). Until 24 Feb.
The Past From Above
British Museum, WC1
Over a 40 years, Swiss-born photographer Georg Gerster has travelled to archaeological sites in 111 countries archaeological sites in order to photograph them from the air. This lofty perspective reveals not only the sites' fragility, but also the breadth of shared ideas and concerns common to cultures separated by time and space. Not all of the resulting images hold their own as photographs, but it's a trip well worth making. (020 7323 8181). Until 11 Feb.
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