William Kentridge at the RA

 A show (till 11 Dec 2022) with large work, and many short films - Kentridge's early career was in theatre. 

Early drawings, 1988 some of them

Tapestry designs

Colonial landscapes

Using found encyclopedia pages for a book

...so bold and striking

Found pages used as basis of collage "flower drawings"

Detail

Some sculptures scattered around

Drawn on paper, glued to cloth - it folds up like a map

In the last room the film is Sybil, 2022

...and into the gift shop - lovely beading...

Olga de Amaral at Lisson Gallery

 Golden textiles, woven and painted (not dyed) -

How does she do it? Gesso and gold leaf are involved - this is the front of one piece -

... and this is the back -

Some of the work is massive - most of it is large -

Sometimes threads (linen) are woven around sticks -

Sometimes strips that have been woven are woven yet again -

Fascinating, intriguing, clever, beautiful. And how lovely to be among these works, that golden glow...

Olga de Amaral (b.1932) is a Colombian textile artist who, the gallery says, "spins base matter into fields of color and weaves tectonic lines through space, unselfconsciously testing the borders between crafted object and the work of art". She traveled widely in the 1950s and 60s, studying textiles at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1952 and teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in the 1960s. She represented Colombia at the 1986 Venice Biennale. She is married to an artist whose works appear incidentally in the two films that are shown.

The show runs till 29 October.

Dora Maar at Tate Modern

Because my packet of museum cards and memberships dropped out of my bag last week, I'm going round to various places to get replacement cards. Today, to Tate Modern.

Once there, new card in hand, what to go see, to make the journey worthwhile? If you're feeling a bit listless, the Dora Maar exhibition (to 15 March)is perhaps not the best choice. Or I just wasn't in the mood for lots of monochrome photographs, and did not find much that grabbed me, even among her later paintings.

She worked as a photographer in the 1930s (she was born in 1907) and the early photos - some very small - were displayed to advantage in large frames behind thick, well-cut mounts. 

Making much from little

Large-format negatives were interesting, or was it just that they introduced some colour?

Dora Maar's hands

A dress masquerading as a tattoo, c1935

The shadows of nudes are what I'll remember from the exhibition, perhaps because I've just been looking at the "ladies and vases" by Charlotte Hodes -

And of the model, Assia Granatouroff -

 A "fashion and beauty" photocollage for magazine illustration - rather sinister, perhaps because of the turbulent white impasto painted background, revealed (accidentally?) in the hand -

We know Dora Maar mostly through her relationship with Picasso and his "Weeping Woman" painting, and the exhibition includes a little book of little photographs of him, put into little pockets. The album has an interesting structure, and is perspexed to the nines -

There's a fair bit of surrealism - and the main Surrealism room has been painted an almost irridescent shade of pink. I hurried through that one.

African textiles at Brunei Gallery till 14 Dec

From a collection of thousands of textiles, 150 have been chosen. This blog pos contains a lot of pictures, but certainly not all the pieces in the show. I hope it gives a flavour of the riches on display. Click on the photos to read the labels.

The exhibition examines the links between west and north African textile traditions through a selection of important and rare examples of textile art, shown for the first time.

 "The indigo room" -

 Wonderful hats -

 Fante flags -

 Woven figures -

Floating wefts

Further details on the Karun Collection can be found by visiting http://www.karuncollection.com; follow on Instagram @karuncollection. More of the African Textiles Collection can be seen in the book ‘African Textiles’ published by Prestel, 2015.