REAL FAMILIES AT THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM

Chantal Joffe Self portrait

Chantal Joffre stars in the Fitzwilliam’s new show. Seldom exhibited outside Frieze in high price Regent’s Park, her fabulous explosive frank and funny pictures finish off the current exhibition in style - an entire room celebrates her deeply personal but open and expansive work. Worth a trip there just to see that.

But there is so much more..An exquisite vase by Grayson Perry - with his famous teddy, Mr. Measles on the side, is an expression of his conflicted relationship with his own stepfather. Lucien Freud paints his own mother, an experience he confesses, made him so sad, it even affected his treatment of the Paisley motifs on her dressing gown. Tracey Emin has an entire nostalgic family album mounted in a typically offhand - but intriguing -way Where did all these ideas come from?

Real Families is a colourful vibrant look at the world through the prism of family life. From a small but dynamic idea from Psychologist Susan Golombok . Bored by a Liverpool conference she was at, she wandered into the Tate gallery next door and saw the work of Cathy Wilkes “There was one exhibit that broke my heart,” It said so much more about the difficult lives of helpless children, than any academic paper .Ar, was the way to communicate the complexity of modern family life. She suggested the idea to Luke Sysons the new supremo at the Fitwilliam - and this tremendous thought-provoking exhibition was born.

Paula Rego ‘Split’

I loved this Paula Reno picture. Who hasn’t seen the jealous glint in the eye of an otherwise adorable three year old?. The love and hate of brothers and sisters makes a persistent theme throughout the show. Jacob and Esaw depicted by Pieter Rodermondt, play out the infamous Biblical deception to fool their father into conferring his fortune on the younger unentitled Jacob. The Virgin Mary and her kinswoman embrace in a picture to show the moment when the mother of Jesus meets the mother of John the Baptist - is there a competitive element here? An Irish essayist,,Dorothy Byrne thinks so. Or even the Annunciation by Poussin - now Jesus ‘ own family frames a kind of surrogacy of two thousand years ago.

Alice Neel, The De Vegh Twins

Alice de Neel’s mysterious De Vegh twins come fresh from her exciting retrospective at the Barbican where her brilliant work has had a rapturous reception. Great to see this thoughtful but almost disturbing picture from her late paintings ( the identical twins are a little bit different in details) right in the centre of Real Families. It is just one more facet of the fascinating theme of family the exhibition delights in. The presence of this ground breaking woman artist , like Chantal Joffre, and many more in the exhibition shows what a great scope the show has.

Joshua Reynolds, The Braddy Family

Even the apparently conventional family portrait featured in the show, is not what it seems. The feted little boy in the centre is only one of four children of the patrician couple whose land and possessions peek out in the background. The other three children are girls , cannot inherit or bear the family name so are of now interest and not included. Unlike, it has to be said the the four Decker daughters born to the controversial Fitzwilliam benefactor, who sit in a row like small dolls, dressed just as their mothers would but in miniature.

Joy Labinjo, Having the conversation.

Families emerge in different guises. No question here of what the conversation is in the well known explosively coloured danger zone the artist depicts. Parents and children appear in every guise throughout the exhibition

JJ Levine, Alone Time 19

And what to make of the prolific photographer JJ Levine and his ironically titled study of an American family. Images of solitude, isolation and alienation accompany his sly depiction of the. perfectly formed group. except they are not what they seem. As a trans person she has switched the roles of the ‘mother and father’ they are the same person.

This exhibition is typical of the Fitzwiliam’s new dynamic style. The predictable and prosaic are gone. These concepts are so much nearer to the major London events chosen to make us sit up and take notice . In this case the Family becomes the centre of intrigue, conflict, love and delight. Such a treat to see it..