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Red light at the National
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent16.09.08
An entire room at the National Gallery is to be transformed into a scene from Amsterdam's red-light district.
As part of the new programme of exhibitions next year, the gallery will show an installation work by American artists Ed and Nancy Kienholz.
Created in the Eighties, The Hoerengracht - meaning Whores' Alley - is described as a "highly polemical tableau" with fast-dressed, garishlylit mannequins.
Colin Wiggins, the gallery's head of education, said: "It will be like a succession of streets and you will be able to look into windows, look into doorways, see the rooms and environments beyond."
He said the work contained only the sort of "dodgy things" seen in artists of the 17th century such as de Hooch.
"We don't put warnings outside our 17th century Dutch rooms, but the subject matter is often the same."
A small selection of Dutch paintings will be displayed nearby when the work is installed at the end of next year.
The piece will coincide with a show of Spanish paintings and sculptures from the 17th century. Nicholas Penny, the gallery's director, said few people knew about the sculpture as most of it had stayed in Spain while the paintings were scattered in the great galleries of the world.
The most important show next year will be Picasso: Challenging The Past. The exhibition of 60 works will explore the ways in which the Spaniard was influenced by Old Masters.
Chris Riopelle, the curator, said the works of artists such as Picasso had been regarded as a "rupture" with the past but there was new academic interest in how the great modern artists related to the tradition of European painting. "Picasso's work was deeply implicated in the art of the past," he said.
Next summer, visitors can see an exhibition exploring landscape painting in the 19th century from Corot to Monet. Dr Penny said: "It will look at the parents and grandparents - in a metaphorical sense - of the Impressionists."
