Visual arts
British Folk Art, Tate BritainWednesday, 11 June 2014
I agreed with some reluctance to review British Folk Art, since I anticipated an overdose of quaint charm, naive whimsy and endearing eccentricity. You know the kind of thing – fire screens embroidered with overblown flowers and paintings of fat... Read more... |
Marina Abramović: 512 Hours, Serpentine GalleryTuesday, 10 June 2014
I’ll admit, there's a scene that made me well up during the excellent Marina Abramović biopic The Artist is Present. If you've seen it you’ll know the scene I mean – it’s where Ulay, Abramović’s former partner, in art and in life, takes the seat... Read more... |
Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation, Tate BritainSunday, 01 June 2014
Lord, I confess I have never seen Kenneth Clark’s epic 13-part series Civilisation. Not in its entirety at any rate – only snippets on YouTube, and, more recently, excerpts at Tate Britain’s current exhibition, where highlights from his many... Read more... |
John Deakin and the Lure of Soho, Photographers' GalleryTuesday, 27 May 2014
John Deakin was lukewarm about his career as a photographer because his heart wasn’t in it. Really, he wanted to be a painter, and so it was in spite of himself that he became a staff photographer at Vogue in 1947, acquiring a reputation for... Read more... |
William Forsythe: Nowhere and Everywhere, Old Municipal Market, BrightonTuesday, 20 May 2014
On the morning I visited William Forsythe's installation there was a fire truck parked up on Circus Street. Its crew were all in the Old Municipal Market, taking in the art and, like everyone else, interacting with the kinetic sculptural elements.... Read more... |
The Story of Women and Art, BBC TwoSaturday, 17 May 2014
Last year, the German artist Georg Baselitz told Der Spiegel: “Women don't paint very well. It's a fact,” citing as evidence the failure of works by female artists to sell for the massive sums raised by their male counterparts. The amusing punchline... Read more... |
Hernan Bas: Memphis Living, Victoria MiroMonday, 12 May 2014
At the core of Memphis Living by Hernan Bas are five large paintings of equal size that could be blown-up spreads from a fashion magazine. Each features a modellish young man surrounded by statement architecture, iconic design and lush vegetation.... Read more... |
Building the Picture, National GalleryWednesday, 07 May 2014
Viewed through an arch designed to evoke a dimly lit chapel, Lorenzo Costa and Gianfrancesco Maineri’s The Virgin and Child with Saints, 1498-1500, is strikingly legible (pictured below right). The Virgin sits on a marble throne beneath a richly... Read more... |
Maria Lassnig, 1919-2014Wednesday, 07 May 2014
Maria Lassnig, the Austrian figurative painter best known for her emotionally complex self-portraits, died yesterday aged 94. She was virtually unknown in the UK until her solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 2008. In a compact survey which... Read more... |
Body & Void: Echoes of Moore in Contemporary Sculpture, Henry Moore FoundationSunday, 04 May 2014
The lawns, fields, meadows and sheds of the Henry Moore Foundation themselves exemplify the notion of in-and-out, exterior-interior and are thus the ideal setting for exploring the notion of body and void in Moore’s work and the way it is echoed in... Read more... |
Julian Schnabel: Every Angel has a Dark Side, Dairy Art CentreSaturday, 26 April 2014
“Occasionally, but rarely, great imaginative leaps take place in the progression of art that seem to have come from nowhere. This can be said of Julian Schnabel….In these early paintings Schnabel worked with materials on surfaces that had never been... Read more... |
10 Questions for Artist Yinka Shonibare MBETuesday, 22 April 2014
Yinka Shonibare MBE makes work from a less entrenched position than his many decorations suggest. This Member of the British Empire (he adopted the initials as part of his name after receiving the honour in 2005) is naturally also a Royal... Read more... |
