The Sneaky Magpie

Desperate to catch all the shows before they end I organised a tight schedule and stuck to it this weekend.

On Friday night I saw Ed Ruscha at the Hayward Gallery which was good but not mind blowing. Definitely few very good paintings. Afterward my friends and I went to BFI for some drinks, the new bar on the riverfront is so much nicer than the old setup and the chips are excellent too!

On Saturday I met another friend of mine at RA and saw Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill. A truly wonderful collection of sculptures and sketches. The most impressive being Bird Swallowing a Fish by Gaudier-Brzeska and Epstein’s Portrait of Iris Beerbohm Tree and the spectacular Rock Drill. Amazing show, really worth a visit.

We had a quick lunch in Soho and headed down to Somerset House to see Norman Parkinson: A Very British Glamour. Another great exhibition, a lot of pictures of Parkinson’s wife and iconic shots of Jerry Hall from the 70s. Well worth a visit, especially if you enjoyed Golden Age of Couture at V&A a couple of years ago.

Warmed up by the museum hopping we decided to end the trip at The National Picture Gallery to see the very entertaining Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed.

I watched very moving Wajda’s Katyn – a film about an incident from WWII and its aftermath that not many people know of.

And I almost finished watching Mad Men season 3, a thought of only 2 episodes left to watch is making me depressed. Drooling over Betty Draper’s outfits.

So this is my last sum-up of the year…

As usual, London delivered some amazing exhibitions this year  however not as many as the couple of previous years, here is a brief list of my favorite ones:

Funny and smart works of John Baldessari at Tate Modern.

Amazing paintings by Elizabeth Payton at Whitechapel Gallery.

A great introduction to Futurism at Tate Modern.

My favorite photography exhibition – André Kertész On Reading at The Photographer’s Gallery.

Sunning works at Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain.

And I still must catch Ed Ruscha at Hayward, Norman Parkinson at Somerset House and RA’s Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Eric Gill. Let alone all the upcoming shows, my new year’s resolutions should be: don’t leave too many shows till the last minute!