Culture Queen-The National Portrait Gallery Exhibitions

So off to the National Portrait Gallery today, where they are currently celebrating their 150th anniversary, to see two exhibitions.

Icons and Idols

Which explores the gallery’s commissioned works over the last 25 years. Since 1980 The Gallery has commissioned 130 works in hugely differing styles, mediums and subjects and this exhibition shows the vision and diversity of the Gallery and makes you understand why The NPG is one of London’s greatest treasures. The exhibition features work by artists including David Hockney and R.B Kitaj and offers a variety of sitters from the more formal portraits of Politicians and Royalty to a film installation of David Beckham. This truly is an eclectic mix and testament to the Gallery’s ongoing efforts to capture the great and the good of this country for posterity whilst championing some of our great talents at the same time.


Andy Warhol – 10 Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century

Warhol first exhibited this collection in 1980, at that time the title caused some controversy and will probably do so again. The 10 portraits in question Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States; Martin Buber; Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, the Marx Brothers, Golda Meir, George Gershwin, Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein are a strange mix of over achievers across numerous fields whose only link is that they were all Jewish and by 1980 also deceased. There's a feeling of déjà vu seeing these pictures, some of which as stock photographs, are instantly recognisable, but given a new lease of life with vibrant colours, they become recognisable but also very new and fresh. As to what Warhol was trying to say it appears people were at a loss in 1980 and none the wiser now. I do wonder though if the exhibition would have been half as controversial if Warhol had titled and populated it with 10 portraits of Catholics or Christians? Probably not and that may have been exactly what he intended.