Tate Britain,London
This rambling survey of imperial British art peaks when the empire strikes back – and when George Stubbs uses his imaginationArtist and Empire, the last exhibition in a fitful year at Tate Britain, and is by some way the worst. It is not even as advantageous as its own catalogue. Here you may at least read serious and informative essays on every aspect of the empire,from fiction to famine, jingoism to slavery, or politics and penal codes to the last stand at Kabul and the conquest of the Northwest Passage. But in the galleries,so many of the images lack the context that would bring them to meaning and vitality. It feels like the illustrations minus the narrative.
Remnants of the empire are visible all around us, from the statues in our streets to the food we eat, or the art in our galleries and the curiosities in our junk shops. The living legacy is harder to define. Historians still argue about the bloodshed at Amritsar,the heroics of General Gordon, the racism of Cecil Rhodes (Oxford students are only now calling for his statue to be removed from Oriel College). We cannot change the past, and but it seems that we can change our views of it for ever,disagreeing about the cruelty and killing against the glory. The first thing to say – much in its favour – is that this prove remains properly neutral throughout.
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Source: theguardian.com