From Caravaggio to Kiefer: The year in art

23 December 2016

January

In the bleak midwinter: Viewing Turner's watercolours

Storm at the Mount of the Grand Canal, Venice (detail), c.1840, J.M.W. Turner | Photo © National Gallery of Ireland

William Turner is famous for capturing light in his paintings. But how do you protect his delicate watercolours from the ravages of the sun? By exhibiting them only in the bleak midwinter. In January we visited the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh for two annual exhibitions of works by Turner, which were bequeathed to the museums by a rich English bachelor called Henry Vaughan on the condition that they only be shown in that month, when the sun is at its weakest.

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February

The Renaissance myth: How we got art history wrong

Waldemar Januszczak in Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy

Everyone knows about the Renaissance - it's that golden period when Italy single-handedly reinvented art... except it isn't. As his four-part series, The Renaissance Unchained, burst onto BBC Four in February, art critic and broadcaster Waldemar Januszczak explained why busting a few myths helps our understanding of a crucial period in Western civilisation.

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March

Mish-mash or master mix? Botticelli Reimagined at the V&A

The Birth of Venus, 1484, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi Gallery | Photo by DeAgostini / Getty Images

Florentine painter and draughtsman Sandro Botticelli was celebrated in his lifetime, forgotten for centuries and then lauded as one of the greatest artists ever. But what do you do, when mounting an exhibition of his work, when his most famous creation of all, The Birth of Venus, is not available? When the V&A staged Botticelli Reimagined in March, it chose to factor in the work of other artists who were inspired by the Renaissance master, in particular those who remixed his hymn to the goddess of love. What did this seemingly incongruous mash-up have to say about female beauty?

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April

British Conceptual Art at the Tate: Radical or rubbish?

Pose Work for Plinths 3, (detail) 1971, Tate. Purchased 1981. © Bruce McLean. Courtesy Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

In April, glasses of water masquerading as trees, a stack of oranges and a pile of sand were just a few of the exhibits to be found in Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 – 1979, an exhibition at Tate Britain. The show explored the work of the British artists who challenged the very idea of what art could be. Whether lauded for being ground-breaking or condemned for being trivial, Conceptual Art has often provoked strong reactions. This BBC Arts feature explores the history and legacy of a contentious and playful chapter in British art.

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May

Museum of the Year: Collecting the world under one roof at the V&A

Items from the exhibition Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear | Photo: V&A

The Art Fund's Museum of the Year award was created to celebrate outstanding galleries and museums from all parts of Britain. In May, BBC Arts profiled the five venues that earned a place on the 2016 shortlist. The winner of the award, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, based in leafy Kensington, has built an outstanding collection of art and objects from around the world. Eclectic and challenging, these works have inspired many generations of artists - a feat that has made it a cornerstone of British cultural life.

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June

Seeing double at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Gilbert and George at the Royal Academy | Photo: Stephen White

Every year the Royal Academy holds its Summer Exhibition - the oldest open-submission art show in the world. This year, alongside artwork from unknown artists to established names, the exhibition featured art from famous duos. Selected by this year's co-ordinator, the sculptor Richard Wilson, the likes of siblings Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gilbert and George, Jane and Louise Wilson and Pierre et Gilles, were represented. Find out why two artistic heads are, perhaps, better than one.

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July

Vincent van Gogh: On the Verge of Insanity in Amsterdam

Self-Portrait as a Painter (detail), Vincent van Gogh, 1887 - 1888

Vincent van Gogh is the original tortured artist. The famous severed ear, the suicide by gunshot, and the vast body of work 'discovered' after his death - all shorthand for a genius cruelly ignored and a mind that was tragically unsound. In July, On The Verge of Insanity – Van Gogh & His Illness came to Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum and tackled these preconceptions head-on. The truth about Van Gogh's creativity and mental health was actually far more complex, and richer, than simple headlines.

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August

Disobedient , marvellous and degenerate: Surreal Encounters at the Edinburgh Art Festival

Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages, 1936, Salvador Dali. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam © Salvador Dali, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS, 2015

The Edinburgh Art Festival embraced the peculiar in August with Scotland’s largest ever exhibition of Surrealist art, Surreal Encounters – Collecting the Marvellous. Loved, derided, celebrated - and decried by the Nazis as 'degenerate' - Surrealist art has long courted controversy. Featuring a huge array of surrealist art from crowd-pleasing names such as Dali, Magritte, Picasso and Miro, from four very different private collections, the exhibition was a celebration of the role of the collector as well as the works themselves. How did friendship, obsession, and a passion for conservation shape this unique exhibition?

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September

The power to amaze: Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy

Blue Poles, Jackson Pollock, 1952 © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016
Photo: David Parry

Born in post-war New York, Abstract Expressionism was a watershed moment in the evolution of 20th-century art. For a movement which redefined the nature of painting, it was remarkable that there had been no major survey of the movement since 1959 - until the Royal Academy brought together some of the most celebrated art of the past century. This exhibition afforded a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the powerful collective impact of Pollock, Rothko, Still, de Kooning and Co in one place.

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October

Master of dark arts: Caravaggio at the National Gallery

The Taking of Christ, 1602, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio © The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Boastful, drunken, dissolute, and murderous: the painter Caravaggio lived a scandalous life but was the most celebrated and notorious artist of his day. His bold work, full of shadows and drama, pushed art in a new direction and won him plenty of admirers long after his short, violent life ended. Beyond Caravaggio at the National Gallery revelled in the work and legacy of a true original.

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November

Darkness beckons in Anselm Kiefer's Walhalla

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 2016 | Photo © White Cube

Anselm Kiefer's exhibition Walhalla, which opened in November at London's White Cube and runs until February 2017, is a monument to ideas of German history and myth which mixes sculpture and painting. The exhibition features a lead-lined dormitory full of lead sheets and pillows, and a series of large-scale paintings covered in molten metal.

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December

The unflinching art of Joan Eardley captures Scotland at its rawest

Summer Fields, c.1961 © Estate of Joan Eardley

Joan Eardley's paintings helped to portray the stark reality of childhood in Glasgow’s post-war slums. In December, a new exhibition celebrating her life and work opened at Edinburgh’s Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. BBC Arts profiles the talented artist, who continues to grow in popularity many years after her death.

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