Richard Dorment decides on his list of the worst shows in London for 2008. Here are a few highlights of his lowlights:
2 `Impressionism and Scotland’ at the National Gallery of Scotland was a complete mess. You know the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire? Well this show in included artists who were neither Impressionists nor Scottish and who’d never been further north than Hampstead. What were they thinking? Couldn’t someone have pulled the plug when the show was still on the drawing board?
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5 I’ve had ‘Richard Prince: Continuation’ at the Serpentine on my conscience. In the months since I saw it, the awesome triviality of the American artist’s work coupled with his total lack of real wit has slowly sunk in. I apologise for giving the show a less than scathing review.
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9 ‘Picasso and the Masters’ at the Grand Palais in Paris was an expensive turkey of a show, the art world’s answer to `Heaven’s Gate’. Not only did it lack structure of focus, the curators were determined to make us see similarities between works by Picasso and paintings by the likes of El Greco and Degas that simply weren’t there.
The Worst Art Shows of 2008 (Telegraph)
