Brian Sewell once described one of Rose Wylie’s unruly pictures in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition as “a daub worthy of a child of four”. Yet, despite the late art critic’s put-down, here she is more than a decade later, at the age of 91, taking over the main galleries at Burlington House (the first female British painter to do so), with a survey of her output since 1989. Although the wilful roughness of her approach will still, no doubt, get up many people’s noses, there won’t be a more invigorating exhibition all year. Wylie’s work is irreverent, irrepressible, anarchic – and intensely charismatic. This is a blast. Read more.
Rose Wylie, Yellow Strip, 2006 (detail)
