Art at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

First rule, as ever, is don’t go to this exhibition on a Saturday. Small, detailed prints and engravings and large, bustling crowds do not mix. The prints themselves, though, and when you get up close enough, are outstanding.

The original two-dimensional work shown in this image is free content because its copyright has expired.

More than anyone else of the era, Hogarth was an ilustrator, an artist and an incredibly canny businessman. He seems to have invented the comic strip, or at least the art of creating sequences of related pictures telling a story. He was truly a product of his times, and his skills as an artist combined with his strong moral convictions appears to be unique.

The exhibition takes us through the various areas of his work, including the famous “Rake’s Progress” and “Harlot’s Progress”, “Gin Lane” and “Beer Lane” illustrations. We also get the society portaiture and historical scenes, some of which he donated to the Foundling Hospital, an organisation set up to help deserted children, and of which he was a governor.

His work gives us insight into the state of the media at the time. A piece such as Gin Lane, for example, is intricately engraved and presents a compelling satirical message. Today we fill our newspapers with daily, almost throwaway political cartoons, the artistry of which is necessarily rough around the edges. Their meaning is presented in ever more succinct shorthand, although this may equally reflect the increased political and social awareness of the readership. But in Hogarth’s time this and his other cartoons, prints and paintings were expensive and hard to come by. Did they have more inherent value as a result? It’s hard to say, when we live in an era where we are surrounded by almost universally available publishing, where anyone can easily and electronically disseminate their artwork, journalism or opinions. But as a respected artist his views certainly carried a particular weight, combining medium and message elegantly and powerfully.

I went to see Turner’s “Blue Rigi” at Tate Britain yesterday. I don’t know if it’s worth 5 million quid, but it is astonishingly good, all translucency and shimmer and early, yawning, quiet atmosphere rendered in washy paint. I’m proud of the great British public for getting off their normally lazy fat arses to save something of some worth for the good of our artless, godless and hopeless children.

They’ve got a whole exhibition of Rigi paintings, sketches and other Turner stuff until 25th march. Recommended! 5 stars!! Etc etc.

While you’re there you can also see Mark Wallinger’s recreation of Brian Haw’s anti-war protest, before it was so callously and cynically dismanteld at 3am by the fuzz.

And once you’re done you can walk round the corner and see the empty plinth in Victoria Gardens where Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais” normally sits. It’s quite a plinth.

Canaletto’s panoramic paintings of London are awesome. I’ve seen some of his stuff at the National Gallery before, and always thought that they resembled architect’s technical drawings (this is a good thing). At the Dulwich Picture House’s exhibition of his work in London between 1746 – 1755, we get to see the preliminary sketches alongside the finished works, and this apparent scientific accuracy is on display more than ever.

Or is it? One of the continuing themes of the exhibition is Canaletto’s looseness with facts. Sometimes this is geographic and architectural, in terms of prettifying the painting’s compositions. Elsewhere it means bending to the will of his purchaser, emphasising a building or person representing his benefactor. Canaletto also took the unusual step of producing pictures on spec, so occasionally the filling in of landscape blanks was purely practical in nature, and such details anyway were usually sourced from architect’s or builder’s plans, as in the case of the pedestrian shelters on Westminster Bridge, which he painted but which never materialsed in the finished version of the bridge.

The huge landscapes are instantly impressive to the eye in size and scope. The low horizon, disproportionate amount of vast, empty sky and weighty mass of detail in the bottom third of the frame make the Canelettos an undoubted influence on Nigel Cooke. They are teeming with life when viewed close up, a truly personal view of city life at odds with the amount of minutely rendered bricks and mortar we see initially.

The golden light, the clear blue skies and the beautiful, yellowy, Venice-esque brickwork are all hopelessly idealistic, undoubtedly a plus point for the buyer. They resemble postcards. In fact they would probably have been many people’s first view of London, and I wonder if they lead to hordes of disappointed European visitors arriving in a wet, grey West End asking for their money back.

Canaletto’s paintings outside of the metropolis are less exciting, containing as they do wide expanses of green pasture from the suburbs. He was a city boy, and even in Hampton Court or Walton-on-Thames he concentrates on architectural features such as newly engineered bridges. In fact in 9 years in England he never ventured further than about 150 miles from London.

A good and thorough showing of the Italian artist’s time here. Crammed with well-annotated pieces, I can recommend setting aside at least one and a half hours for the Canaletto exhibition, and if you have some spare time you may want to check out the Picture House’s particularly well-executed Mona Lisa copy, which the owner beleived to be the original for many years.