Paul Winstanley, Seminar (Grey), 2014, Oil on Linen, 165X160cm.
By Laura Cumming
From Frida Kahlo’s sickbed to Cindy Sherman’s Manhattan loft and Picasso’s 60s chateau, this superb show exploring where artists work is nothing less than a portal into their minds.
A show with this theme opens at the Whitechapel Gallery next week. And it turns out be a riveting experience, achieved with great wisdom and drama by Iwona Blazwick and her team. A Century of the Artist’s Studio goes in and out of this magical place in such inventive ways. There are spectacular reconstructions of actual studios – Matisse’s bedroom in the south of France, hung with magnificent embroideries; Kurt Schwitters’s Dada studio, all wild wooden stalactites – but the show also moves through global space, crossing five continents from the secret studios of Iran to the tiny kiosk in Manila where the father of Filipino art, Roberto Chabet, made conceptual sculptures.