Art / Exhibitions

Just what is it that makes Tate Modern's current retrospective exhibition of Richard Hamilton's work so different, so appealing? Of course this is a rather tongue in cheek reworking of the title of Hamilton's now iconic 1956 piece, "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" Hamilton was, I would argue, one of the most interesting, innovative and enjoyable artists working in Britain from the late 1940s until his death in September 2011.

Cinema was in its infancy when revolution in Russia toppled the old order in 1917. From the beginning photography and film were seen as important educators by the new workers' government.

Lenin argued that finance for film should be divided between the popular and a cinema that widened the base of the revolution. For millions film brought the outside world into the their lives. Film could only be "real".

Hannah Hoch was one of the great revolutionary artistic innovators of the early 20th century. Along with Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz and John Heartfield she led the way in developing what has become known as photomontage or collage.

The avant-garde Berlin Dadaist group, of which Hoch was a member, was the most politically developed of the Dadaist groupings that sprang up across Europe and the US from around 1916. The Berlin Dadaists would use their new method of working not as a mere innovative technique in their "art practice" but, crucially, as a weapon.

Tate Britain reopened in November. The oldest part of the building has been restored, combining some of its most architecturally impressive parts with new elements. New learning studios and archive space follow the opening in May of new galleries to display "the best of British art."

£45 million has been spent on the overhaul and it's clear that a lot of the cash has come from big business. One space has been named the Sackler Octagon, while rooms that focus on particular artists or themes are given to us by BP.

Paul Klee has been described as "the left's favourite artist". This reputation stems in no small part from the use by the German critic and writer Walter Benjamin, in a typically poetic analogy, of one of Klee's works in his Thesis on the Philosophy of History:

His work is seen as straight talking stuff and "much loved" - no art school rubbish here. I naturally grew up loathing him.

This exhibition shows him in a wider context. In fact, nearly all I thought about him was wrong. He was not working class but brought up very upper middle class and only fell into the lower middle when he was in his 20s. He was not self taught and based his art on late French impressionism - until the 1940s he was shown more in Paris than in Britain.

Jeremy Deller, a Turner Prize winner who is becoming renowned for drawing influence from social issues and protest movements, has been selected to curate the British Pavillion at the international art festival in Venice.

But now an exhibition in his home city belatedly shows off the best of his graphic and dynamic prints and etchings.

It is his prints, influenced by Futurism and the Vorticists, which are by far the most exciting.

A fine example is the 1932 lino print called Grinders, a striking monochrome image of two men sharpening knives which is clearly symbolic of Sheffield's steel industry.

The work has a real sense of rhythm typical of movements that revelled in the speed of modern life and the triumph of mechanisation.

Comprising 120 works, many of which have never been seen before, this exhibition brings together paintings and sculpture made by the artist over six decades.

Two experiences seem to have had a great influence on Choucair's work. The first was a visit to Egypt in 1943 where she developed a profound love of Islamic design and architecture. The second was a few years in France in the 1940s, where she embraced modernism and joined the studio of the great painter Fernand Leger before returning to Beirut. She also drew influence from the celebrated modernist architect Corbusier.

It was also the political reference point for many Catalans, who looked north to the more exciting, progressive and forward looking Paris rather than the artistically and politically conservative world in Madrid.

In an exhibition at the Galerie Vollard - from which several exhibits are on display here - Picasso showed works revising many of the themes of Post-Impressionism. He also echoed the styles of great painters before him, from Manet and Renoir through Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.