balletLORENT, The Lost Happy Endings. Photo: Luke Waddington
David Hockney, Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol are all subjects of major exhibitions over the Easter weekend while the Chiswick House Camellia Festival and Electronic exhibition at the Design Museum are two more fantastic family days out.
Widely acknowledged for his expertise in drawing, David Hockney's intimate portraits are put under the spotlight at this National Portrait Gallery exhibition showing around 150 works. David Hockney: Drawing from Life focuses on four sitters close to him and his self-portraits to examine his distinctive way of observing the world. His admiration for old and modern masters, from Holbein to Matisse, is evident in his neo-Classical style line drawings of the 1970s and the 'camera lucida' drawings of the late 1990s. Always open to new technology, in the 1980s he used composite Polaroids to 'draw with the camera', as he described it, creating Cubist depictions of form which paid homage to Picasso. More recently years, he has used iPhone and iPad apps to create vast landscapes. As well as self-portraits dating from his school-boy days, this exhibition reveals four subjects dear to Hockney's heart: his muse, Celia Birtwell; his mother, Laura Hockney; the curator, Gregory Evans, and master printer, Maurice Payne.
From fashion shoots for Vogue and redefining portraits of the Royal Family to compassionate documentation of the Second World War and dazzling shots of the golden age of Hollywood, Cecil Beaton had an illustrious, wide-ranging photography career and this spring the National Portrait Gallery will be putting his works in the spotlight once again with its new exhibition, Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things. Putting rarely exhibited prints by the renowned photographer on display, the exhibition will explore the glamorous world of the 'Bright Young Things' of the twenties and thirties featuring the likes of socialite Edwina Mountbatten, composer William Walton and costume designer Oliver Messel. A celebrity in his own right, Beaton's own life will also be touched upon through self-portraits and third-party captures.
Spilling out into the foyer with dance workshops and free arts and crafts activities, the Family Weekend really opens up Sadler's Wells to a new generation of dance lovers. In 2020 balletLORENT returns to the Sadler's Wells stage with a new dance based on an original story by former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. The piece, narrated by Joanna Lumley and featuring 19 famous fairy-tale characters, takes the audience deep into the forest to meet Jub, a fearless girl with six fingers on each hand. With Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella and Goldilocks all putting in an appearance, this is the perfect Easter treat for the long weekend. As well as the shows on the main stage fun activities take place across the building including 'one step at a time like this', an interactive storybook where following the clues leads you backstage.
In spring 2020 Tate Modern stages its first major exhibition on Andy Warhol for close to 20 years. A shy, gay man from a religious, migrant, low income household, he became the epitome of the pop art movement and an American icon. Drawing on recent scholarship and displaying over 100 works, Tate Modern offers a rare personal insight into how Warhol and his work marked a period of cultural transformation. At the exhibition you'll see a recreation of the psychedelic Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with lighting and film projections that turned the Velvet Underground rock shows into an event-spectacular, and experience Warhol's floating Silver Clouds, a playful, interactive installation filled with silver helium balloons. Warhol's final works of the '80s, including the monumental memento mori, Sixty Last Suppers, created a year before his death in 1987, are presented in relation to the artist's untimely passing at the age of 58.
English National Ballet has partnered with English National Ballet School to produce the My First Ballet series, a number of special performances aimed at children as young as three to introduce them to ballet through the magic of fairytales. Cinderella, the charming tale of rags-to-riches, is performed to music by Prokofiev and accompanied by narration. Tormented by her evil stepsisters, Cinderella dreams of the day she can escape and attend the Prince's enchanting ball. One night, when she's been abandoned for yet more cleaning, Cinderella is visited by her Fairy Godmother and her dreams begin to come true.
Olivier Award-winning actress Eileen Atkins and rising star Timothee Chalamet, whose recent film credits include Little Women and The King, star in Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles at The Old Vic this spring. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated play explores the relationship between 21-year-old Leo and his 91-year-old grandmother, Vera. When he shows up at her Manhattan home after weeks of cycling across America, they spend a month living together in the faded Greenwich Village apartment only to find their griefs colliding. Directed by Matthew Warchus, it will form part of his Season 5, which also features a Christmas Carol and Endgame, and will be Chalamet's UK stage debut.
Hot on the heels of the Gauguin Portraits exhibition at the National Gallery, the French artist is the headline act of a group show at the Royal Academy of Arts in the spring. For Gauguin and the Impressionists he's joined by fellow nineteenth century artists who drew 'en plein air' as The Ordrupgaard Collection in Denmark lends 60 of its works to the London gallery. Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pisarro, Morisot and Degas are among the well known artists on display at the Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries, showing many works which have never been seen in the UK. Artists associated with the Barbizon School such as Dupre and Daubigny are also part of the exhibition which closes with a career spanning series of Gauguin's works.
Almost 100 years since the concept of surrealism was born, Dulwich Picture Gallery hosts the first major exhibition to explore its origins. British Surrealism: 1783-1952 shows how British Surrealism was a fundamental movement in the history of art and how it actually pre-dated the international movement's official beginnings. The works of more than 30 artists, including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, go on display in the exhibition, offering an eclectic mix of paintings, sculptures, etchings and prints from 1783 to 1952. The exhibition poses the question of whether Henri Fuseli and William Blake deserve the title of 'proto-surrealists', and it explores how Surrealism had a major impact on British artists in the 1930s and '40s. Visitors can expect themes of war, dreams, politics, violence, the unconscious and the uncanny.
Catwalk designs by Yves Saint Laurent, Star Wars costumes and a Jean Paul Gaultier designed kimono created for Madonna go on display at the V&A in 2020 as part of Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk - the first major exhibition on the kimono in Europe. Exploring the kimono as a dynamic and evolving icon of fashion in both Japan and the rest of the world, the exhibition will also display a broad range of artworks alongside the kimonos to reveal the sartorial, aesthetics and social significance of the garment from the 1660s to the present day. Further highlights include costumes from the Oscar-winning Memoirs of a Geisha and a couture gown designed by John Galliano for Christian Dior.
With strobe lighting and a soundtrack by Laurent Garnier, Electronic at the Design Museum reproduces the feeling of a being in a club, allowing you to throw yourself into the hypnotic world of electronic music. Travel to the dance floors of Detroit and Chicago, Paris, Berlin and the UK through the exhibition which features the people, art, design, technology and photography that have been capturing and shaping the electronic music landscape. The work of pioneering German synthmeisters Kraftwerk is transmitted via a 3D experience, rave culture is pictured on a large scale through images by Andreas Gursky and iconic DJ masks remind you of the famous figures who've lauded over the clubbing scene.
Originally launched in 1988, this four-day London International Ska Festival returns to the capital over the Easter weekend and invites more than 60 acts to perform at O2 Academy Islington, London N1, The Dixie Queen and a number of other venues in celebration of all things ska, rocksteady, reggae, 2 Tone, dub and beyond. Confirmed acts for 2020 include Big Youth, Chainska Brassika, the eight piece ska-reggae band from south east London, and The Communicators. Easter Sunday sees a special woman's day featuring one of UK's brightest reggae stars Hollie Cook, and legendary artist Susan Cadogan - famed for her global hit Hurt So Good. The day also features a club night dedicated to Jamaican producer, Sonia Pottinger, with DJs Naoko The Rock (Japan), Texas Ranger and Grace of Spades.
The largest ever Bronze Age hoard discovered in London, the third largest of its kind in the UK, goes on public display for the first time at the London Museum Docklands in 2020. An impressive collection of weapons and tools discovered in Rainham in 2018, the Havering Hoard is composed of 453 bronze objects which date to between 800 and 900 BC. Inspect unearthed axe heads, spearheads, fragments of swords, daggers and knives and deepen your understanding of Bronze Age life. The broken and damaged weapons raise questions about why these objects ended up being carefully buried in groups close together. Visit the exhibition and discover some of the theories being put forward about this significant, large scale deposit of bronze.