The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

May 29, 2012, 1:41 pm

By CAROL VOGEL

The Tate in London has received a gift of nine artworks by major 20th-century British artists, including a David Hockney, a Lucian Freud and a Rachel Whiteread.

The banker and philanthropist Ian Stoutzker and his wife, Mercedes, of Salzburg, Austria, who have been generous supporters of the arts in Britain, selected the artworks from their holdings because they fill gaps in the Tate’s collection, the couple said.

“The gift was an initiative from the Stoutzkers,’’ Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “They don’t receive any tax benefit from this gift but in the current climate they were very keen to make it public because they wanted to encourage others to give works to the national collection.’’

The works will go on display together at Tate Britain in October.

By KAREN WILKIN

London

Art, even the most original, tends to be about other art—except for the work of "outsider" artists, although some of them turn out to be less innocent than presumed. It's hardly news that adventurous early 20th-century innovators looked to Pablo Picasso for direction and confirmation. (Picasso, of course, looked to Paul Cézanne.) American museum-goers are well aware of the importance of the Spanish master to artists on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to shows such as the Whitney's 2006-07 "Picasso and American Art," which traced his impact on modernists from Max Weber and Stuart Davis to Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns. More recently, surveys of David Smith and Arshile Gorky have revealed how firmly their distinctive, individual languages were rooted in Picasso's example. And more.

Picasso &

Modern British Art

Tate Britain

Through July 15

www.tate.org.uk

Succession Picasso / DACS 2011/Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

'Still Life With Mandolin' (1924) by Pablo Picasso

But if Picasso's significance to American modernism is well documented, his influence on English-speaking painters and sculptors elsewhere has been a less familiar story—that is, until "Picasso & Modern British Art," at Tate Britain. Surprisingly, the exhibition, which, the wall texts announce, was designed to examine "Picasso's evolving critical reputation" in the U.K., as well as "British artists' responses to his work," is the first to explore "Pablo Picasso's lifelong connections with Britain." ("Britain's connections with Picasso" might be more accurate, since, despite his well-known friendships with British critics such as Douglas Cooper and John Richardson, the artist was in London only in 1919, designing sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.)