Watercolour

The word "Watercolour" this being Britain, it gets a "u" occupies the center of a wall in the museum's lobby, hovering over an image of a Turner landscape blown up to the point of grotesquerie.

Medium is message at Tate Britain 'Watercolour' show 2011

Thus the brainstorming set in: let's not be chronological, or archival, or factual, let's not be methodical or orderly, let's not instruct, inform or teach art history; let us instead apply trite themes that make little exhibitions within the larger whole and never mind inadequacy, disunity and the inevitable overlap; and above all let's just call it Watercolour and entertain the punters with technique and every irrelevant purpose to which it can be put.

Evening Standard - Home 2011

But while the "Watercolour and War" section forms a fascinating segment of the show, there's only one truly early work that makes this case: "Number 9: Sabre Wound to the Abdomen, Peltier, Belgian Hospital" 1815, by Charles Bell, and it is part of a study of wounds—again the medium in the service of science.

Magical, Layered, Transparent Tom L. Freudenheim 2011

"Watercolour," the show, does manage to be as accessible as its medium - which means it also succeeds didactically.

Medium is message at Tate Britain 'Watercolour' show 2011

Tate Britain's forthcoming exhibition, entitled simply Watercolour, aims to unsettle these easy assumptions.

Watercolour at Tate Britain - review 2011

The delights of "Watercolour," the sprawling exhibition at the Tate Britain, are so plentiful and varied that its confusing organizational rubrics seem of little import here.

Magical, Layered, Transparent Tom L. Freudenheim 2011

There's something very contemporary about "Watercolour."

Medium is message at Tate Britain 'Watercolour' show 2011

Watercolour, pen and ink on paper 22.1 cm X 14.0 cm.

Chittaprosad's Bengal Famine 2011

The Tate Britain in London, which opened the show "Watercolour" last month, is playing up this contradiction.

Medium is message at Tate Britain 'Watercolour' show 2011

"Watercolour," a show at the Tate Britain museum in London, plucks the art from its usual context—shows of U.K. landscape painters—and traces it back through 800 years of history, from medieval illuminated manuscripts to abstract works of modern-day artists.

Historic Watercolors Flood U.K. Museum 2011