18-05-2025
Seeing Each Other review — Freud, Bacon, Emin and Kahlo all join the party
Looking is what artists do. But at what? At each other, endlessly, on the evidence of this new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which looks back over 125 years at the ways that artists working in Britain have portrayed each other.
It takes a broadly chronological approach to pick out specific relationships, friendships and social circles (the Slade School, which admitted women from its founding in 1868, mid-century Cornwall, the pop art scene and the YBAs are particularly rich veins) to reveal webs of connection — some more tangled than others — and to show how artists have used portrayals of their peers and heroes to pay homage.
The first image, at the entrance, is a WANTED poster. Created in 2001 by
