1. Cezanne
Tate Fashionable, London; October (runs until 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 exterior 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
Virtually half of the 35 painted self-portraits, all made within the final 4 years of his life. Elated, sleepless, brutally shaven, apocalyptically dynamic, transcendent, at the least 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 artistic thoughts in situ.
5. In the Black Fantastic
Hayward Gallery, London; July
A fizzing knockout competition 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 Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65
Barbican Artwork Gallery, London; March
The drive of twenty years of British artwork born out of the speedy horrors of the second world warfare got here as a shock, not least as a result of so many of those artists had 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 lovely artwork.
8. A Taste 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 missed surprises. Strangest of all, Courbet’s fierce darkish wave rising out of white foam, talking straight to Hokusai.
9. Reframed: The Woman in the Window
Dulwich Image Gallery, London; Could
An thought – how males body their views of ladies – remodeled into an excellent exhibition. From Rembrandt’s woman leaning on her sill to Walter Sickert’s prostitute and Picasso’s trapped lover, all the best way to Louise Bourgeois discovering the entire world in her window.
10. Bill Lynch: The Exile of Dionysus
Brighton CCA; August
The invention (or rediscovery) of the 12 months, for me: a Twentieth-century American grasp, useless at 53, who painted his visions of a lyrical elegant on panels of discovered plywood.
