R.B. Kitaj Retrospective Comes to London a Decade After He Fled Britain Over 'Anti-Semitism'

THE INDEPENDENT
By Adrian Hamilton

R B Kitaj’s ‘The Wedding’ (1989-93)

UNITED KINGDOM---How Jewish was the art of R.B. Kitaj, one of the leading lights of postwar British art who became so upset by the critical mauling he got for his 1994 Tate exhibition that he left the country for his native America, blaming the critics not only for his departure but for the early death of his wife? Indeed, how much did anti-Semitism account, as he charged, for the ferocity of assault from a critical community which had long praised him to the skies? One asks because this retrospective of his work – the first to be seen here since the 1994 exhibition – originated in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. [link]

RB Kitaj: Obsessions – The Art of Identity Jewish Museum, London NW1 (020 7284 7384) to 16 June; Obsessions – Analyst for Our Time, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (01243 774557) to 16 June