Apollo

‘What daredevils these women briefly were: publicly wearing trousers and billowing kimonos instead of corsets, bobbing their hair, smoking cigarettes, sending out Werkstätte greeting cards for Rosh Hashanah.’ Eve M. Kahn admires the spirit of the Jewish designers who powered the Wiener Werkstätte

From Franz West’s tongue-in-cheek sculptures in Vienna to a new film by Nan Goldin in London, Apollo picks must-see museum shows in November

After David Hockney at the Fondation Louis Vuitton last year (400 works) and Cézanne and co. currently at the Grand Palais (180 works), the Bourse de Commerce photography show (700 works) is the latest mega-exhibition in Paris. It’s very impressive, writes Catherine Bennett, and very exhausting.

The November issue of Apollo is out now, featuring an interview with Celia Paul, Tate’s new collection of Indian art, Berlin’s most exciting contemporary art museum at 30, a photographic love letter to London, and much more. View full contents here buff.ly/tRZwVvO

As a woman, Anne Vallayer-Coster couldn’t receive training in painting the male figure, which closed the prestige genre of history painting to her – but she exhibited at the Salon for 45 years and her career was supported by royal patrons including Marie Antoinette and later Empress Joséphine.

A visit to the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta inspired Charles Greig to start collecting 18th- and 19th-century paintings made in India. He talks to Apollo about why this art matters and why he has now given 50 works to the Tate, no strings attached.

Renoir is reported to have said that a picture should be cheerful because ‘there are too many unpleasant things in life as it is’. Sam Kitchener looks at the bright side of the Impressionist’s paintings, now on display at the National Gallery in London.

‘When eight men were hanged at Tyburn in March 1755, the artists were ready.’ Kirsten Tambling praises Meredith Gamer’s original study of the links between art and execution in 18th-century London.

‘Despite the number of new galleries, the art market has been rocked by some high-profile closures’ in recent years. Jane Morris looks at the problems faced by Pace, Stephen Friedman, and other commercial galleries.

Rakewell gives the artist Allison Ksiazkiewicz a round of a-paws for designing 12 vases depicting the history of pedigree breeds in a somewhat Attic manner.

In everyday language, the word ‘curated’ suggests an element of falsehood as much as care. Hettie Judah asks what this can tell us about the curator’s role in contemporary art.

For November's @apollo-magazine.com, I visited the Franz Marc exhibition at K20 in Düsseldorf. It was wonderful seeing how many artistic styles Marc tried out in his short life, getting a sense of his process as much as of his highlights. apollo-magazine.com/franz-marc-b...

‘Cartoons are simple things, literally legible. And yet Lichtenstein’s cartoons are also utterly illegible, poker-faced; affectless.’ Charles Darwent on whether we can, or should make sense of Roy Lichtenstein, whose work now fills the Whitney.

The collector Gustave Fayet, who bought Post-Impressionists by the score, was also a prolific artist in his own right. Both sides of his insatiable appetite are now on show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, writes Richard Pound.

The Wiener Werkstätte, which revolutionised modern design in the early 20th century, closed in 1932 and the lives of the Jewish women who powered it were upturned or destroyed by the Second World War. The Jewish Museum in New York tries to recover their legacy, writes Eve M. Kahn.

Join us in Manhattan on Tuesday 10 November as writer, curator and Apollo columnist Hettie Judah sits down with Sukhdev Sandhu to celebrate the US release of her book ‘How to Enter the Art World’. Complimentary drinks will be served from 6pm. The discussion begins at 7pm. Book your spot here:

The Bourse de Commerce attempts to tell the entire history of photography from its invention to the present day with 700 works from the Pinault Collection. Catherine Bennett tries to take it all in.

‘Scholarship at its most satisfying’: Kirsten Tambling reviews ‘City of the Gallows’, an examination of the grislier side of art in 18th-century London.

The collector Gustave Fayet, who bought Post-Impressionists by the score, was also a prolific artist in his own right. Both sides of his insatiable appetite are now on show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, writes Richard Pound.

University College London holds the largest collection of works by the neoclassical sculptor John Flaxman. Both his plaster models for funerary monuments and gestural drawings show why, 200 years after the artist’s death, his reputation is due a revival, writes Brigid von Preussen.

‘I once took part in an open studio of the whole building. Lots of weirdos came in.’ The painter and film-maker Rosalind Nashashibi talks to Apollo about her north London studio.

John Flaxman was one of the most celebrated neoclassical sculptors of his day. Two centuries after his death, his work is ripe for a renaissance, writes Brigid von Preussen

‘For Brice Marden, there really are images buried in those pure abstract planes of his, images that record experience as richly as colour does.’ To believe this requires ‘an act of faith’ – one that Morgan Falconer is willing to perform.

‘What daredevils these women briefly were: publicly wearing trousers and billowing kimonos instead of corsets, bobbing their hair, smoking cigarettes, sending out Werkstätte greeting cards for Rosh Hashanah.’ Eve M. Kahn admires the spirit of the Jewish designers who powered the Wiener Werkstätte

After David Hockney at the Fondation Louis Vuitton last year (400 works) and Cézanne and co. currently at the Grand Palais (180 works), the Bourse de Commerce photography show (700 works) is the latest mega-exhibition in Paris. It’s very impressive, writes Catherine Bennett, and very exhausting.

Anne Vallayer-Coster was much praised in her day, although when Diderot described her work as ‘excellent, vigorous, harmonious’, he added, ‘it is not Chardin, however, but if it is less good than this master, it is far above what is to be expected of a woman.’

The Jewish Museum in New York is celebrating the work of the women who powered the Wiener Werkstätte, the Vienna workshop that revolutionised modern design in the early 20th century. Eve M. Kahn is thrilled by their creative efforts.

‘Where big public prices go, a shadow market often follows and there are rising fears of illegal and reckless excavation’ in countries where exporting fossils is banned. Anna Brady reports on the ethics of the art market’s dino boom.

LAST CHANCE TO SEE: the Morgan’s survey of works from the collection of the great American poet John Ashbery – a collector guided by the idiosyncrasies of personal taste, rather than the strictures of genre or style, writes Langdon Hammer

‘Climbing up to the Olivier Theatre, the largest of the NT’s three theatres, it is still a delightful surprise to find oneself suddenly at eye level with Waterloo Bridge, watching the buses go by.’ Will Wiles on the urban drama of Denys Lasdun’s riverside masterpiece – which opened #OTD 50 years ago

Why does the British prime minister have the use of a country house in Buckinghamshire? According to the Chequers Estate Act of 1917, two days a week in the ‘high and pure air of the Chiltern Hills’ was good for the nation as well as its leader. Juliet Carey gives a tour of this very unusual home.

‘In shawls, hats, wigs, fans, kimonos; in biker goggles, flapper hats and bandeaux; as Cleopatra, and in modern clothing designed by their friend Anita Pittoni – on every wall these women glow.’ Lucy Davies on the Wulz sisters’ photographs, now at the Estorick Collection in London

‘In 1793, John Flaxman’s radically minimalist illustrations of scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey had just been published in Rome and were already causing a stir among Grand Tourists, artists and connoisseurs.’ Brigid von Preussen charts the ups and downs of this neoclassical master’s career.

‘I have fantasies of owning one and freezing it, so I can present it to my guests, glistening.’ Bring back the oyster plate, says Molly Pepper Steemson

Before Louis XIV lost interest in the Louvre and moved to Versailles, he commissioned the largest Savonnerie carpet ever made, four sections of which can now be seen at the Met. Earlier this year curator Wolf Burchard explained what makes them ‘a completely unique chapter in the history of art’.

The cubists of early 20th-century Prague ‘had a vision to unite all the arts in a single movement inspired by new understandings of space, time, form and the underlying structure of the cosmos’, writes Edwin Heathcote

Until now, there has been no doubt that ‘My Little Lagerfeld’, a miniature horse styled like the late Karl Lagerfeld, is the best small equestrian sculpture in existence. But the news that mini versions of Maurizio Cattelan’s famous suspended horse are available means there may be another runner.

With banknotes bearing historical figures increasingly a culturally fraught prospect, no wonder a growing number of countries are putting their money on wildlife – or the other way round, writes Debika Ray.

‘As far as most museum visitors know, the only nation that produced art in the 19th century was France. Rodin was the only sculptor, Monet, Manet, Degas the only painters – no one else did anything.’ The gallerist Andreas Pampoulides talks about his mission to broaden collectors’ horizons.

‘What daredevils these women briefly were: publicly wearing trousers and billowing kimonos instead of corsets, bobbing their hair, smoking cigarettes, sending out Werkstätte greeting cards for Rosh Hashanah.’ Eve M. Kahn admires the spirit of the Jewish designers who powered the Wiener Werkstätte

‘Where Pountney’s images really sing, he finds a golden light that highlights the scale and absurdity of the Valley towns, where human endeavour meets the vastness of the hills that once contained riches to be plundered.’ Owen Pritchard on Jon Pountney’s photographs of South Wales.

‘One vast curving gallery dedicated to Irving Penn contains a staggering 450 or so unlabelled works, scattered across the walls like a long, undulating sea.’ Catherine Bennett navigates the Bourse de Commerce’s colossal exhibition of photographs from the Pinault Collection.

‘Even as the portraits allow him privacy, they all generate a tension between his elusiveness and a strong physical presence. Together, the portraits in this show suggest a quality of the work as well as of the man.’ Langdon Hammer on the Morgan’s exhibition of art owned by the poet John Ashbery

After 25 years and a multimillion-euro restoration, Méréville – an 18th-century garden in the Paris region – has never looked better. Gabriel Wick describes the charms of this ‘Grand Tour in microcosm’.

‘One building is architecture but two buildings is townscape,’ wrote Gordon Cullen in his influential 1960s guide to urban planning. Will Wiles praises Cullen’s humane approach to design and the immensely skilful drawings in which he conveyed that vision.

‘AI has turned the flow of images into a tsunami; Jafa’s aesthetic, a kind of visual ADHD, mirrors the malaise’. Sukhdev Sandhu on the New Museum’s Arthur Jafa retrospective.

John Flaxman was one of the most celebrated neoclassical sculptors of his day. Two centuries after his death, his work is ripe for a renaissance, writes Brigid von Preussen. Photographs by Neil Mersh.

‘AI has turned the flow of images into a tsunami; Jafa’s aesthetic, a kind of visual ADHD, mirrors the malaise’. Sukhdev Sandhu on the New Museum’s Arthur Jafa retrospective.

‘Korean pop culture is so hot right now, and we wanted to explore where that energy is coming from.’ Lucy Waterson talks to Sang-ah Kim, curator of the British Museum’s survey of 2,000 years of Korean art.