Beautiful

15th August 2016

You have just six days left to visit the most beautiful exhibition I’ve seen all year: Mary Heilmann: Looking at Pictures at the Whitechapel Gallery, which closes next Sunday. And if you can’t get there, take at look at the Art21 DVD titled Fantasy that features the artist – and that you can purchase from us here.

I recognise I haven’t been to nearly as many exhibitions recently as I would have liked. Nor have I seen too many movies, read the books that I should have – or indeed written the blog posts that I intended. Blame Richard III, article deadlines, prep for the next two RSC Live from Stratford-upon-Avon shows, or a host of other things. But with a little lull across August I have started to get out more – and I am happy to report that Mary Heilmann’s retrospective is simply sensational.

Mary Heilmann is an American painter and ceramicist whose work draws on the pop culture of the west coast as well as on a dazzling range of visual references – individual works had echoes for me of Paul Klee, Robert Ryman, Ed Ruscha, Mondrian, Twombly and a host of others. But there’s also something totally distinctive about her sense of form and of colour and of the material qualities of her media.

I don’t think the Whitechapel’s trailer does justice to the works but something of their qualities still comes through:

The Whitechapel has also put together a terrific playlist of resonant music for the works and their context.

Other online resources that can either enhance your enjoyment of the exhibition or stand in for it if you can’t get there include:

• a Guardian profile of Mary Heilmann by Jason Farago

• images of a range of Mary Heilmann works from gallery Hauser & Wirth

• … and additional works at 303 Gallery

• a 4-star review of the Whitechapel exhibition by Adrian Searle for the Guardian

• a short video from Art21 featuring an interview and several works

• … together with other Art21 resources

• Ben Luke’s short but insightful Evening Standard review

• a 2013 Hyperallergic interview with Mary Heilmann

• another interview, tied to the Whitechapel show, at Apollo

• … and a very good critical essay by Charley Peters for Abcrit.

Lead image credit: detail from Mary Heilmann, Crashing Wave, 2011, © Mary Heilmann, Photo: Thomas Müller, Courtesy of the artist, 303 Gallery, New York, and Hauser & Wirth.