Visual arts
ash.smyth
A couple of nights ago I went to a book launch at Waterstone’s, Notting Hill, for a collection of un-illustrated short stories (Household Worms) by a visual artist (Stanley Donwood) perhaps best known for his work in the music industry (producing iconic record covers for Radiohead).This invitation-only party was a circus of extroverted introverts: women in bow ties, men sporting double-breasted Van Gogh jackets, and almost everyone with “interesting” hair. Think the geekier end of the Radiohead fanbase crossed with, well, the west-London literary scene. Eyes closed, though, it was pretty good Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The British grand tourists not only fell in love with Italy. They fell in love with the landscapes of 17th-century ex-pat artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682), depicting the Roman campagna in which the gods disported themselves. JMW Turner (1775-1851) also fell for the Frenchman, whose work he had seen in significant stately homes while visiting his patrons. Turner studied and copied, and it is the anatomy of this artistic love affair over two centuries that is exposed, to enchanting effect, in the National Gallery’s spring exhibition.Turner was marvellously ambitious. Rather like Picasso (who Read more ...
fisun.guner
Louise Bourgeois tirelessly, obsessively documented her 32 years of psychoanalysis. Before the discovery of her secret cache of personal musings – sheaves of hand-written notes outlining dreams and psychic burdens, doodles and self-excoriating lists – nobody had any idea that the celebrated French-American artist, who’s often been associated with Surrealism, had undergone such protracted, intensive therapy, even though it’s really all there in her work in terms of its feverish Freudian symbolism.But since the discovery of her psychoanalytic writings (two boxes discovered in 2004, and two just Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Royal families and royal academies. Aristocrats at ease in exquisitely landscaped gardens or inside in gorgeous drawings rooms. Actors emoting, notably Sir David Garrick and his troupe. Nabobs in India. All are depicted in Johan Zoffany’s rivetingly detailed paintings of Georgian society.Born near Frankfurt Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) travelled to further his career, one of many foreign artists who enlivened the more provincial English art scene. He was appointed to the Royal Academy by its founder, George III, in 1771, and became almost as famous for his depiction of painting studios as of Read more ...