Florence Hallett

London

Art Writer and Critic at Freelance

Visual Arts Editor at The Arts Desk

Freelance art writer and critic

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Articles

Florence’s angels of mud

Nov 6, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

Filthy water everywhere, without warning; scores of people dead, lives and livelihoods devastated. The quantities of mud are simply beyond comprehension; the emergency response slow, disorganised, and completely inadequate. An eyewitness account of the floods that devastated Florence in 1966 is back in print for the first time since 1967. As Spain comes to terms with its own floods, it makes a horribly familiar read.
Fear comes to Istanbul’s cultural scene

Mar 19, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

Istanbul’s cultural scene is as intriguing and labyrinthine as its streets. But watching its slow implosion over the past six months has been an eye-opener. The trouble culminated last month with the resignation of Istanbul Biennial curator Iwona Blazwick.
Against the herd: the kaleidoscopic visions of Outi Pieski

Mar 5, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

In luminous colours, and kaleidoscopic variations of texture, Outi Pieski’s paintings and textile-based installations conjure visions of Sápmi, the Arctic home of the indigenous Sámi people, which today extends across the northern reaches of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula.
Forgotten photojournalist Bert Hardy revisited in new London show

Feb 21, 2024 | theartnewspaper.com | Florence Hallett

The UK photojournalist Bert Hardy (1913-95) shot some of the defining images of mid-20th century Britain—his two cheeky boys in Glasgow’s Gorbals and countless memorable images of the Blitz were among those published by the celebrated British photo-magazine Picture Post, where he was chief photographer between 1941 and 1957.
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican review - the fabric of dissent

Feb 15, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | Florence Hallett

Judy Chicago created Birth Project in the 1980s, recognising with typical perspicacity that the favouring of “the paint strokes of the great male painters” over “the incredible array of needle techniques that women have used for centuries” has implications far beyond the primacy of one art form over another.
Pasquarosa, the muse that roared

Feb 6, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

The Italian painter Pasquarosa (1896-1973) was in her teens when she decided that her first name would suffice: meticulously lettered, and often prominent, it appears as a bold decorative element in many of the earliest paintings featured in the Estorick Collection’s revelatory new exhibition Pasquarosa: From Muse to Painter. Her signature suggests youthful precocity, but Pasquarosa Marcelli’s real motive is just as likely to have been delight at her increasingly accomplished hand.
The art of Brexit

Jan 27, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

Too many of us were looking the wrong way in the lead-up to the Brexit referendum. Like the New European itself, the satirical art of Cold War Steve and Led by Donkeys only emerged in the aftermath of the vote. Yet the rage and frustration that marks their presence on the post-Brexit landscape cuts all the more keenly for its late arrival, and is symptomatic of the reverberating disbelief haunting those who failed to anticipate such an act of self-harm.
It’s going to be a very strong year in art

Jan 2, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

A handful of major anniversaries guarantees a spectacular year for art in 2024, with the Musée d’Orsay leading celebrations to mark 150 years since the first Impressionist exhibition in April 1874. Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism (March 26 – July 14) promises a fresh look at Monet, Renoir, Morisot and co – here’s hoping for new narratives to restore a sense of the radical to this much-loved movement.
Female artists take centre stage in 2023

Dec 19, 2023 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

Never mind exhibition of the year, the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer extravaganza was billed as the show to end them all. Just like the Dutch master’s jewel-like paintings, each one an invitation to enter a world of sensuous mystery and delight, the biggest Vermeer exhibition ever staged was a work in miniature, comprising 28 of 37 surviving paintings.
Harriet Backer’s music of light

Nov 14, 2023 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Florence Hallett

A terrible row broke out over dinner one evening in May 1887. Among the Nordic expat painters of Paris, conversation had turned to a new exhibition by that “insane impressionist” Monet, and Hildegard Thorrell, a Swedish painter and enthusiastic letter-writer, recorded the uproar.