Galleries
Ismene Brown
Is the look to be Beckmann, Bergman or Nicky Haslam? To accompany the interviews with Nutcracker designers elsewhere, here are three very different design portfolios tackling the eternal magic of this favourite ballet with unexpected reference points. Sketches by John F Macfarlane for Birmingham Royal Ballet, Antony McDonald for Scottish Ballet and Gerald Scarfe for English National Ballet are seen with production stills alongside.Read interviews with the three designers elsewhere on theartsdesk, where they explain their thinking and working methods. John Macfarlane for Birmingham Royal Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A new production by The Royal Opera of Tchaikovsky's The Tsarina's Slippers opens on Friday at Covent Garden, directed by Francesca Zambello, designed by Mikhail Mokrov and Tatiana Noginova, and with an all-Russian cast of principals conducted by Alexandr Polianichko. Read Ismene Brown's interviews with the creative team elsewhere, and enjoy this feast of design models, costume sketches and production photographs.Click on a picture to enter full view and the slideshow.Sets by Mikhail Mokrov[bg|/OPERA/ismene_brown/tsarinas_slippers/sets]Costume designs by Tatiana NoginovaCharacters: Vakula, a Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Something has just happened to make Clint Eastwood's day. We refer, of course, not to the fact that he was yesterday made a Commander of the French Legion of Honour in Paris by President Sarkozky, but to the publication of Clint Eastwood, Icon, a gorgeous assembly of artwork from around the world commemorating an incredibly long-lived career.Armed with an enthusiastic and ingenuous preface by David Frangioni, the mad-keen American collector-fan whose devotion to duty over the years has made this book possible, it encompasses posters, door panels, standees (the larger-than-life-size cut-out Read more ...
sue.steward
The British Library has for the first time created an exhibition from its unique photography archive of some 300,000 items, dating back to the first days of the process. Sue Steward reviews this major exhibition elsewhere, while here we present a selection of some of these marvellous early images.Click on a picture to enter full view and the slideshow
Anna Atkins, (algae) Dictyola dichtoma, 1843-53.
Lady Alice Mary Kerr, Portrait of William Scawen Blunt, c 1870.
Samuel Bourne, From the top of the Manirung Pass, India, 1864.
Francis Frith, Hastings from the beach – low water, 1864. Read more ...
theartsdesk
Graffiti is the only form of artistic self-expression that can get you both arrested and exhibited. Its most celebrated exponent, Banksy, is the subject of tabloid news speculation. The faces and names of most graffiti artists are even more of a closed book. Until Crack & Shine, that is. Gaining exclusive access to these creative renegades as they work, the photographer Will Robson-Scott shines a light into occluded corners of nighttime London where graffiti art finds its stealthy way onto brick walls and tube carriages. His images, which radiate both a pulsing energy and a ravishing Read more ...
theartsdesk
English National Opera's new production of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle is photographed here by Johan Persson. Directed by Daniel Kramer, designed by Giles Cadle and lit by Peter Mumford, it updates Charles Perrault's 1697 fairytale to a horrific modern reality. Clive Bayley and Michaela Martens sing Duke Bluebeard and Judith. See Ismene Brown's review.Click on an image to open full view of the portfolio.Josef Fritzl's houseBluebeard photographs feature Clive Bayley as Bluebeard, Michaela Martens as Judith, and actorsGustave Doré's 1862 engraving for Charles Perrault's Les Contes de Read more ...
theartsdesk
Half a century of Ed Ruscha's paintings are on show at the Hayward Gallery, London. Mark Hudson reviews elsewhere in theartsdesk the display of Los Angeles's most famous painter, "an aspect of American art about which we’ve remained remarkably ignorant".
Click on an image to open the full view. [bg|/ART/mark_hudson/Ed_Ruscha] All pictures copyright Ed Ruscha 2009, image credits Paul Ruscha except where marked.
Oof, 1962 - 1963, Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Securing the last letter, 1964, Courtesy Collection of Emily Fisher Landau, New York.
The Old Tech-Chem Building, Read more ...
theartsdesk
Mark Hudson reviews on another page the National Gallery's exhibition of 17th-century Spanish sculpture and art, The Sacred Made Real, which he describes as "in some ways the most contemporary exhibition in London". Here are some of the artworks on show.
Click on an image to open full view [bg|/ART/mark_hudson/Sacred_Made_Real]
Saint John of God, about 1655, Alonso Cano (1601-1667), Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada, © Photo Imagen M.A.S. Courtesy of Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada
Saint Francis in Meditation, 1635–9, Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), National Gallery, London, © Read more ...
theartsdesk
An extensive selection is shown here of the work of Romuald Hazoumé, the Benin contemporary artist whose iconic masks made from petrol canisters dumped around his poverty-stricken homeland of Benin launched his international career. A major installation is owned by the British Museum, other pieces have been exhibited in the Saatchi and Hayward Galleries. Read the article on him by Sue Steward. Click on a picture to enter each section.Masks
(Photos Jonathan Greet. Images courtesy October Gallery, London)
Sénégauloise, 2009, Found objects, 33 x 22 x 25cm. .
La Meré Cotivet, 2001, Found Read more ...
theartsdesk
Keith Pattison took photographs of Richard Jones's new production of Annie Get Your Gun for the Young Vic. Read Matt Wolf's review here.Click on a photograph to enter full view. [bg|/THEATRE/young_vic_annie] All photographs for the Young Vic by Keith Pattison.
Jane Horrocks (Annie Oakley); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler)
Jane Horrocks (Annie Oakley); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler)
Liza Sadovy (Dolly)
Buffy Davis (Mrs Potter Porter); Paul Iveson (Ensemble); Matt Turner (Ensemble); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler); Adam Venus (Ensemble); David Ricardo-Pearce (Ensemble); Michael Taibi (Ensemble) Read more ...
jillian.edelstein
Acclaimed photographer Jillian Edelstein's series of Portraits include images of significant figures from the world of arts, fashion and the demi-monde, but also politics: her portrait of Nelson Mandela, taken in Cape Town in 1997. There is also a delightful photograph of three South African boys mucking about by the water.Affinities is a series of studies of professional and personal connections between like-minded. "After I had a bad break-up, I started to think about how friendships and relationships come out of creative partnerships," she says. "Gilbert and George chose their cleaner, Read more ...
charlotte.macmillan
Charlotte MacMillan photographed the Royal Ballet's Mayerling, with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, music by Franz Liszt, and designs by Nicholas Georgiadis, which opens at the Royal Opera House on Wednesday. The cast is headed by Edward Watson as the death-obsessed Crown Prince Rudolf of the Hapsburg imperial dynasty and Mara Galeazzi as his partner in death, the court groupie Mary Vetsera.Ismene Brown writes: Kenneth MacMillan’s most narratively ambitious three-act drama ballet, premiered in 1978 at the Royal Ballet, is a feast of pomp, royal hypocrisy, sex, drugs and suicide - a far cry Read more ...