Reviews - Image and Idol

'Image and Idol' was an exhibition showing sculpture from the Romanesque period up to the Reformation, in the Duveen Galleries of Tate Britain in 2001-2. It was curated by Phillip Lindley, who provided the intellectual and historical structure of the Exhibition and masterminded the selection of sculptures, and the eminent contemporary sculptor Richard Deacon, who designed the superb installation, and Clarrie Wallis of the Tate. This exhibition was a major departure for Tate Britain which until now has never exhibited art from before the Reformation. Comments from reviewers are below:


Laura Cummings, The Observer, 20 September 2001.
'This magnificent show … is art history at its most vital and arresting … Nothing made before 1540 has ever been shown at the Tate; and it is hard to remember any other art living up to the chill, inhospitable chasm of the Duveen galleries.'


Neil Cameron, The Scotsman, 25 September 2001
'This display forces a face-off between the historical and the contemporary in all kinds of unexpected ways … Here we have an exhibition which makes tangible the slippery cliché of "living history", one which takes objects from the past into completely new territory, and in doing so, lets them speak anew'.


William Packer, Financial Times, 25 September 2001
'Lindley supplies the necessary historical and contextual information and the show is set out, as it has been selected, with an admirable restraint'.


Waldemar Januszczak, Sunday Times, 30 September 2001
'An astonishingly poignant selection of medieval sculpture transferred to the central galleries of Tate Britain'.


Sarah Baylis, Country Life, 8 November 2001
‘A thought-provoking … exhibition investigates … the impact of the Reformation: the destruction of religious images in England and Wales and its legacy of fear and hostility towards three dimensional religious art. The Exhibition is the result of an innovative collaboration between the medieval sculpture historian, Dr Phillip Lindley, whose idea it was, and a contemporary artist, Richard Deacon, who has conceived the placing of the sculptures in a series of intelligent installations. The sculptures … have an extraordinary and intense presence within the cathedral-like expanse of the Duveen Galleries … This is a subtle and instructive exhibition … ‘Image and Idol' has a unique atmosphere: highly charged, compressed and resonant, it works as a brilliant, if temporary, introduction to the rehang [of Tate Britain].'