Visual Arts Reviews
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, National Portrait GallerySaturday, 12 January 2013
The first thing to say about Paul Elmsley’s portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge, which was unveiled yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery, is that it looks rather better in real life than it does in reproduction. That doesn’t make it a great painting, but nor is it a risible one. Read more...
|
The Riviera: A History in Pictures, BBC FourWednesday, 09 January 2013
For a man immortalised by his wails of rainy misery from the moors of Withnail and I, you would expect Richard E Grant to be very happy on the Riviera. He is, with the suave aristo manner of the Englishman abroad. Which is fitting for The Riviera: A History in Pictures, because the Riviera practically belonged to the Brits - we hivernots, winter escapers from northern cold - before the French realised it was there at all. Read more... |
McCullinTuesday, 01 January 2013
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" TS Eliot’s line could well stand as an epitaph to Jacqui and David Morris’s troublingly thoughtful film about British photographer Don McCullin, whose haunting images of conflict across the world over half a century have defined our perception of modern warfare (though his range of subjects goes far beyond that). Read more... |
London 2012 and Beyond: The Best of 2012Monday, 31 December 2012
The Mayan calendar recently suggested it was all over. It is now, almost. 2012 was, by anyone’s lights, an annus mirabilis for culture on these shores. The world came to the United Kingdom, and the kingdom was indeed more or less united by a genuine aura of inclusion. Clumps of funding were hurled in the general direction of the Cultural Olympiad, which became known as the London 2012 Festival, and all sorts leapt aboard. Read more... |
Art: The Best of 2012Wednesday, 26 December 2012
It was the year that everyone got just a little hysterical about Damien Hirst. That and the art market that made him. But that didn’t keep the visitors away from his retrospective at Tate Modern. The exhibition had more crowds than Wembley Stadium, or at least more than for any other exhibition in Tate Modern’s 12-year history (and possibly for any exhibition since Tate records began). It was cleverly curated (i.e. Read more... |
Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape, Royal AcademySunday, 16 December 2012
All roads start from Rome, and so it proves in this challenging exhibition put together from the holdings of the Royal Academy’s art collection, archives and library. It features 17th-century Italian paintings – some of the grandest by the French artists who settled in Rome, and took inspiration from the surrounding campagna – brought back to Britain by the Grand Tourists who, in the midst of their various adventures, amassed substantial art for their stately homes. Read more... |
Mariko Mori: Rebirth, Burlington Gardens, Royal AcademyWednesday, 12 December 2012
The Royal Academy’s spacious white galleries at Burlington Gardens are flooded with mystic light and filled with New Age baubles. You are bathed in a trippy purple haze as you enter one gallery which contains a giant glowing pod. The translucent pod is meant to resemble an ancient monolith but instead looks more like an oversized Ikea lamp. The work derives its title, Tom Na H-iu II, from the Celtic “Tom na h-iubhraich” – a site of “spiritual transmigration”. Read more... |
Carving in Britain from 1910 to Now, Fine Art SocietySunday, 09 December 2012
Carving in Britain from 1910 to Now is an accurate but unalluring title for what is a seminal show. Read more... |
Francesco Clemente, Blain SouthernWednesday, 05 December 2012
The Neapolitan Francesco Clemente was born in 1952 into a patrician Italian family, the son of a judge. He studied classics in school and architecture in Rome, became a photographer, and then turned, as a fine art autodidact, to painting and drawing. He has spent substantial time over several decades in Madras, where he had a studio, and in Varanasi, with its continual burning pyres for the dead before they are floated off into the Ganges. Read more... |
Artes Mundi Prize, National Museum Wales, CardiffFriday, 30 November 2012
An award for artists whose work engages with "social reality, lived experience and the human condition" has been won by a Mexican forensic technician whose works deals intimately with her country’s brutal drug wars. Britain’s most valuable art award to a single artist, the Cardiff-based Artes Mundi Prize, saw nominees this year from Cuba, England, India, Lithuania, Slovenia and Sweden. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Blu-ray: Chocolat
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect...
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often...
Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping...
If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the...
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala...
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was...
Rhod Gilbert, G-Live Guildford review - cancer, constipation...
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly...
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many...
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rocker...
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok,...
Britten Sinfonia, The Marian Consort, Milton Court review -...
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who...
Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs
The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We...