Visual Arts Galleries
Best of 2024: Visual ArtsMonday, 30 December 2024
I thought I might never be able to say it’s been a great year for women artists, so forgive me for focusing solely on them. Read more... |
The Most Expensive Paintings Ever SoldThursday, 16 November 2017
Yesterday the record for the most expensive painting ever sold was broken. At Christie's in New York Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi the hammer was knocked down on a price of $450 million. It's a lot of money, period, and even more for a painting which some doubt is by Leonardo at all. One doubter insists that Leonardo the great scientist would have refracted the light through the orb in Christ's hands. That won't bother the buyer, whose identity is unknown. Salvator... Read more... |
Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, British MuseumTuesday, 30 May 2017
With its striking design, characteristically restricted palette and fluent use of line, Hokusai’s The Great Wave, 1831, is one of the world’s most recognisable images, encapsulating western ideas about Japanese art. Read more... |
Highlights from Photo London 2017 - virtual reality meets vintage treasureSaturday, 20 May 2017
At heart, Photo London is a selling fair for expensive photographic prints. You wander through the steamy labyrinth of Somerset House from gallery show to gallery show surrounded by black-clad snapperati, assaulted on all sides by images until lost in photography. Read more... |
Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the WorldWednesday, 22 March 2017
I have always felt very lucky to have been working as an artist in London during the period when it transformed into the capital of the art world. It has been a beautiful, fascinating and profitable ride. Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Aberdeenshire Sand DunesFriday, 20 January 2017
These photographs of sand dunes were taken by Brian David Stevens in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, along a stretch of pristine Scottish coastline. The pictures themselves, while captivating and beautiful in their own right, also have political freight. For it is dunes such as these over which a long and ugly battle raged for several years. Read more... |
The Best of Frieze Masters 2016Saturday, 08 October 2016
The fifth edition of the highly popular Frieze Masters – the quieter sibling of the boisterous contemporary Frieze Art Fair London – is underway in Regent's Park, London. This year, the fair features 133 leading galleries from around the world. Read more... |
Les Rencontres d'Arles 2016Friday, 08 July 2016
Nous avons Brexité but we are still welcome at the 47th Rencontres d'Arles. Each summer this beautiful French town gives itself over to an international photography festival which this year features around 40 exhibitions of varying sizes with countless lectures, parties, book signings and fringe events. Read more... |
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Arts festivals the size of the Venice Biennale are inevitably patchy. The appointed directors are hardly ever given enough time to curate and fill absolutely vast volumes of space. They can exhort the many national and individual participants to follow their lead, and yet they have no editorial control over them. Read more... |
Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscoveredTuesday, 24 May 2016
In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met sailors entering the busy trading port of Thonis-Heracleion some 2,000 years ago. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Stiletto, Charing Cross Theatre review - new musical excess
That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of...
Apex Predator, Hampstead Theatre review - poor writing turns...
Motherhood is a high stress job. Ask any woman and they will tell you the same: sleepless nights, feeding problems and worry. Lots of worry. Lots...
Album: Elton John and Brandi Carlile - Who Believes in Angel...
Spring may have sprung, but there’s little in life to truly raise the sprits, so this week’s release of Who Believes in Angels? ...
Balanchine: Three Signature Works, Royal Ballet review - exu...
Is the Royal Ballet a “Balanchine company”? The question was posed at a recent Insight evening to Patricia Neary, the tireless dancer...
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his apo...
Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014...
Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, vi...
Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination...
DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance
“I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”
Coralie Fargeat,...
A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs villains again
The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds...
Connolly, BBC Philharmonic, Paterson, Bridgewater Hall, Manc...
The BBC Philharmonic took its Saturday night audience on a journey into French sonic luxuriance – in reverse order of historical formation,...