Malaga – not a town that you immediately think of as an artistic centre – golf yes, lots – sun, sea and very burnt tourists definitely – but not a city of culture – until now, that is. Morphing from a seaside city of dubious reputation, it has become a relaxing and lovely place to spend a lazy afternoon. The centre has been completely pedestrianised and the narrow streets and squares are now totally free of traffic. There is a Roman amphitheatre which has been recently excavated which sits at the bottom of the huge Moorish castle and what was the customs house is soon to become the new Malaga Museum (now housed is a smaller space next to the Cathedral). There are Picassos and a myriad of churches to be looked at – but the surprise is the Carmen Thyssen Museum. Carmen was the wife of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose famous art collection is now housed in Madrid. It has to be said that her collection is not in any way as great and indeed she was given some rather dubious press about the weakness of her taste which tends towards the sentimental by less well-known mid-19th C. Spanish genre artists. But the space is lovely – a beautiful calm interior houses the collection and this month until October there is a good little exhibition charting the evolution of landscape from the 17th C. onwards. Made up of some small but interesting paintings it includes some of the great American landscape painters – Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt and a quite lovely little painting by Edvard Munch. So if the Spanish heat becomes just a bit too much, take a cooling walk around this show – the museum shop is wonderful too, with an abundance of original gifts including some excellent ones for children. CM

New space at the Mall Galleries

For all that London is one of the great buzzing art centres of the world, it still remains  surprisingly, and often frustratingly, impervious to any suggestions that anything interesting might perhaps be going on in the provinces. Try finding a space for any of the quite excellent shows of 20thCentury British Art shows still, somehow, being produced every year by our incredibly enterprising, if hopelessly cash-starved regional museums, galleries and art-centres and you’ll begin to see what I mean. Unless it is a nailed-on blockbuster opportunity,  a Tate-approved/supported or super-specialist show it simply doesn’t stand very much of a chance at anything other than a necessarily small and sympathetic commercial gallery, if that.

All of these thoughts came into sharp focus  for me at the glitzy  launch PV last week of a quite stunning new gallery area that, to my mind, could well change all that – the new Threadneedle Space at the Federation of British Artists’  Mall Galleries. Still a bit of a sleepyhead in many people’s belated perception, the place has in fact been undergoing something of a dramatic transformation since the arrival as Director, some 5 years or so ago, of the former BM Egyyptologist and super-successful businessman, Lewis McNaught. First there was a desperately needed refurbishment of the dowdy Main Gallery spaces, then the launch of the hugely well-endowed and -regarded Threadneedle Prize and now this large and glamorous space, designed by Fletcher Priest Architects. Carved out of a formerly, distinctly untidy, conglomeration of staircases, cloakrooms and smallish gallery – and with daylight flooding in from newly opened up windows onto The Mall – it seems to me the exhibition possibilities open to it are going to increase quite dramatically. For, as well as giving the member societies of the FBA the opportunity to mount special displays in it, plans are already afoot to mount a number of exciting special loan exhibitions there. It would, almost certainly need, some support funding to make those wider possibilities suggested above feasible but what an opportunity it presents. Meanwhile go and see for yourself – the brief opening show in the space, launched by Chairman of the Governors of the FBA, Michael Portillo, of former award-winners of the Threadneedle Prize gave an excellent idea of its tremendous potential – while the Wapping Group of Artists occupies the space currently and that looks pretty good too!  And Contemporary Perspectives is up at the end of the month.  NU

John Nash and Eric Ravilious became friends while teaching at the RCA, and visited Bristol in November 1938 on Nash’s recommendation that it was ‘a good place’ to paint. They stayed in Cornwallis Crescent from where they would walk down to the docks to watch the cargoes of tobacco and timber being unloaded and examine the paddle steamers laid up for the winter. So engrossed was Ravilious that he almost got run over by one of the Harbour Railway trains: ‘Lucky for you I saw you, old cock, or you’d have been a box of cold meat!’ The exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol (‘Eric Ravilious: Going Modern/Being British’ until 29 April) which explores his perspective on the social, cultural and physical landscape of Britain between the wars, also sees the launch of the latest in the Mainstone Press’s brilliant series on this much loved artist.  Sarah Drury

The death has been announced of Leonard Rosoman RA aged 98 – after a long and very distinguished career as painter, printmaker, muralist, illustrator (Radio Times), teacher (of David Hockney at the RCA, amongst many) and official war artist commissioned by Kenneth Clark in the Second World War, after service throughout the London Blitz as a Fireman – he narrowly escaped death in the incident from which came his haunting image House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane which can be found at the Imperial War Museum ( www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/23296 ) There’s a full obituary in The Guardian ( www.guardian.co.uk )

As a regular rail passenger passing through Stratford in East London in recent years, I can’t fail to note the progress of Anish Kapoor’s immense sculpture at the Olympic site, which seldom fails to excite comment from commuters glancing up from their laptops or newspapers and prompts travellers to break the conversing with strangers taboo. Much of this is far from complimentary – “looks like someone’s taken a blowtorch to the Eiffel Tower” or the inevitable “wasting money in desperate times”. However, the other day it ignited an animated discussion between two arty types as to whether it is actually a sculpture. There’s a lift, staircases, observation platforms, even a food outlet and it’s taller than the Statue of Liberty – which was also designed by a sculptor (Frederic Bartholdi) and contains similar features, though it is of course outwardly in more traditional sculptural form. What do you think?  AA

Anish Kapoor's Arcelor Mittal Orbit - from a speeding train . . .

The new exhibit at the Tate, opening 9^th February, is in a word: historic. The gallery is hosting works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama that cover almost her entire career from as far back as 1949. Though her collection spans across 60 years and uses entirely different media from painting to sculpture to environmental to video, it always remains in the moment. The classic ‘Infinity Net’ paintings hold the Main Space and represent her breakout in the American early 60s art scene; the later ‘Accumulation Sculptures’ were originally exhibited alongside Andy Warhol in 1962 and raise both questions about society and the human mind; both told in her selections ‘Food Obsession’ and ‘Sex Obsession’.

Other works include the ‘Walking Piece’ photo slideshow, that tells of her alienation and and the ‘Infinity Mirror Room’, 2011, designed especially for the Tate which both hold meaning for the artist; whose personal and psychological struggles have been part of her style since the beginning. As a renowned avant-garde artist and possibly the most famous living Japanese artist, this exhibit is worthy and excellent.

Gregor Scotland

Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination at the British Library. A deceptively large exhibition – put aside at least a couple of hours – but revel in the wondrous intricacy of these ancient hand written, beautifully painted, burnished with gold and highly coloured books. Don’t be put off by the fact that many are religious texts – go for the images of kings and queens, feasting and fashion, battles won and on occasion lost – and the ever with us art of advertising . . . Until 13 March

CM