We round up the reviews for Tate Britain’s latest exhibition…
The Observer: *** “Here is a dilemma straight away: which should take precedence, the painting or the fact? Should the show present art on its own terms, or as instance, evidence, expression of social history? It is an extremely complex remit, especially given the high success of Tate Britain’s Women in Revolt: Art and Activism 1970-90, only recently closed and now touring to Edinburgh then Manchester. Now You See Us tries to go all ways.”
Evening Standard: **** “The premise of the show, that women artists are usually overlooked, is much less true than it was. But as we are reminded, a number of female artists were popular successes in the 19th century; Elizabeth Butler’s poignant depiction of Crimean War veterans, The Roll Call, was such a popular draw that police had to control the crowds coming to see it at the Royal Academy. She was nearly elected to the Academy.”
iNews: **** “Tate Britain’s historic new exhibition acknowledges the continuing limitations placed on artist women.”
The Independent: *** “Laura Knight and Artemisia Gentileschi feature among a vast array of little-known female artists in this expansive survey at Tate Britain, but some of the work on display only underlines the restrictions society has historically placed on the female imagination.”
Time Out.com: *** “As a result, it’s in the early modern era, when war started recalibrating the balance of society, that the show really comes into its own. There are Laura Knight images of women at the seaside, experimentally composed still lifes by Vanessa Bell, and a couple of amazingly industrial depictions of munitions factories in WWI by Anna Airy. Finally, you feel like you can measure the art not by the presence of men, but by their absence. This is art existing on its own terms, art of privacy, independence and innovation, finally able to peek out from the long shadows cast by men.”
The Telegraph: **** “Now You See Us surveys 400 years of women in British art, and its occasional weak-spots do little to hamper its impressive range and depth.”
The Guardian: **** “Not many exhibitions turn the story of Britain and its art upside down. But this huge archaeological dig into the nation’s cultural past, from 1520 to 1920, does precisely that. It retrieves so many unjustly forgotten female artists, so many neglected works, far more than can be mentioned in a review – and all without rhetoric. Instead, its wall texts are factual and informative, simply amassing a vast amount of evidence. Now we see them.”
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain is on display at Tate Britain until the 13th October.