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Laura Cumming’s best art of 2021

The blockbuster battled on, British Caribbean art came home, and from Iran to Nero’s Rome, art transported us far and wide

This was the year of the great exhibition – in spite of the plague. Galleries offered online shows when they couldn’t open and riches when they could, no matter the havoc of cancelled loans, insurance hikes and unreliable transport. Schedules were dextrously shifted and blockbusters extended, so judiciously that Tate shows ran longer and the Royal Academy’s magnificent Late Constable continues straight through until next year. Still, one curator confided, 2021 was like playing poker while also juggling eggs.

Terrific surveys of female artists continued apace, though still not fast enough to make up for lost time. The wild and stirring genius of the Scottish painter Joan Eardley was celebrated in multiple centenary shows across Scotland. Swiss modernist Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s graphic wit and versatility of needle, pen and paintbrush dazzled at Tate Modern. There were lifetime commemorations of Barbara Hepworth in Wakefield, Eileen Agar at the Whitechapel, Laura Knight at Milton Keynes (still on, until 20 Feb) and US abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler at Dulwich – her visions diaphanous as mist, frequently vast, yet miraculously achieved through hard-line woodcut.

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