Visual arts
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 ...
fisun.guner
Does a winning photograph jump out at you? Sure, we can talk earnestly of composition, an interesting subject, a telling juxtaposition, or the abstract interplay of colour, texture and light. But perhaps more than any other visual art form, what strikes us most about a photographic image remains somehow more elusive. And the hand of the artist who presses the shutter, rather than wields the brush, is not so easily perceived.Which brings us to this year’s winning entry for the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize. The standard for this annual award and exhibition remains Read more ...
alice.vincent
With the launch of the Wunderbar Featival this week, Newcastle continues to demonstrate just what 2008’s European Capital of Culture judges missed when they anointed Liverpool. The 10-day celebration, which starts tomorrow, is international in content but thoroughly North-East in spirit: unpretentious, clever and surprising. There are 28 free and ticketed events taking place throughout the city, from conventional cultural venues such as the Baltic, Northern Stage and Gallery North to people’s private living rooms and a plot of land in Byker. It is one of those rare festivals that makes it 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 ...
josh.spero
Worries that London 2012’s Cultural Olympiad had fallen at the first hurdle – as it seemed when the proposed Olympic Friend-ship, carrying a cargo of British artists and philosophers around the world, was scrapped – can be assuaged. The organisers of the London Olympics have, in fact, turned their course around: instead of this monumental, nationalistic, elitist, pretentious idea, they have moved to the local, the inclusive, the relatable. Artists taking the lead, a co-production of Arts Council England and London 2012, has announced the 12 public art projects it is commissioning for a total Read more ...
anne.billson
I've been having rather a surreal autumn here in Paris. First, I was lucky enough to catch the last day of Une semaine de bonté at the Musée d'Orsay, where the original collages were on display in five colour-coded chambers. For those not in the know, Max Ernst's graphic novel avant le fait is a series of 182 collages made out of printed images cut from old books, and was first published in 1934, in a series of five pamphlets. The title means, "A Week of Kindness", but the contents are anything but kind.In fact, these images are downright sinister and disquieting. In one, a giant sphinx peers Read more ...
fisun.guner
By all accounts Eric Gill had a shocking private life. When it was revealed in Fiona MacCarthy’s biography, published 20 years ago, that he’d embarked on an adult incestuous relationship with not only both his of sisters but, later, with two of his teenage daughters (the family dog didn’t escape his attentions either), there were demands from some Catholic churchmen for the prompt removal of his carved stone altarpieces.But as much as Gill’s personal life appals and fascinates, we are schooled to separate the artist from the person, and this is what the Royal Academy’s riveting exhibition of Read more ...
howard.male
The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of us might define a drawing as some kind of monochromatic sketch, either produced by the artist as preparatory work for a finished painting, or to capture some ephemeral moment. The drawing represents artists, paradoxically, at their most casual and yet most focused, transcribing what is seen with intense concentration, yet often rendering it with Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile. She was then starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, and it made sense for us to look at the Morgan’s exhibition of Brontë juvenilia together. She seemed vaguely haunted by the show; I know I was. It was the sight of the tiny writing, the tiny gloves (Charlotte’s), and the locks of thin blondish Brontë hair - close enough to touch - under the glass cabinets Read more ...
josh.spero
If there is one thing which I should impress upon you about the Frieze Art Fair, it is do not believe what anyone else says (a good principle for reviewing generally): go and see it yourself this weekend. It is a great day out: Regent’s Park is beautiful, you can see a tremendous amount of good and not-so-good contemporary art, you can buy an expensive coffee and contemplate your fellow fair-goers. Frieze is the artistic cultural phenomenon of our time and it is worth seeing what the fuss (and there is fuss) is about.This entire past week in London feels like it has been revolving around the Read more ...
mark.irving
Damien Hirst's new exhibition at the Wallace Collection is evidence of a deal between nervous guardians of the past and a contemporary artist seeking to burnish his future historical credentials. It stinks. Entitled No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst - the clunking allusion to Picasso's Blue Period marks out the scale of Hirst's ambition - it presents 25 paintings that we are assured are actually by Hirst rather than a cohort of assistants.The emphasis on these paintings as autograph works is rather sweet, pandering to those for whom certificated originality is the first hurdle Read more ...