Laura Cumming

5 days ago | observer.co.uk | Laura Cumming

Balancing act… Giacometti’s Three Walking Men (Small Square), 1948. Giacometti’s compelling figures commune with the sculptures of New York-based artist Huma Bhabha in the Barbican’s bright and intimate new space Encounters: Giacometti x Huma BhabhaBarbican Level 2, London EC2; until 10 AugustA Giacometti in your own home: what would that be like? What presence might one of his thin men, forever fused with its base, exert on the room around it?

1 week ago | observer.co.uk | Laura Cumming

Tourists gawp at shrines and pick their way through snow, labourers work the fields and rabbits gaze at the moon in a revelatory exhibition that foregrounds the wit and humanity of the great Japanese artist – and hiker – Hiroshige British Museum, London WC1; until 7 SeptemberHiroshige’s mesmerising image of a sudden shower over a Tokyo bridge depicts rain as torrential yet mysteriously static in a downpour. The print is a famous graphic feat.

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Laura Cumming

They are sitting eye to eye, and almost knee to knee, in front of Carlo Maratta's The Baptism of Christ, transcribed in mosaic in the baptistery of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. The original painting, from the 1690s, is close by in a Vatican chapel. Maratta shows Christ in nothing more than a loin cloth, his bare feet visible in the waters of the River Jordan. On the bank, John holds the shell of water over Christ's head and above them both hovers the holy spirit, in the form of a white dove.

3 weeks ago | internazionale.it | Laura Cumming

Il quadro splende nell’oscurità, piccolo ma incandescente. Nella scena ci sono tre uomini: due a bordo di un’imbarcazione che trascina una rete, delicatamente visibile sotto la superficie dell’acqua; il terzo è in piedi sulla costa rocciosa e invita gli altri a seguirlo, in un’atmosfera che risplende di tinte dorate. I pesci nuotano in direzione dello spettatore attraverso acque verdi e trasparenti, mentre i marinai osservano rapiti il gesto eloquente di Cristo. Tutto è fluido, mobile, elementare.

3 weeks ago | msn.com | Laura Cumming

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