sat 24/05/2025

Visual arts

Romantics, Tate Britain

William Blake: 'The First Book of Urizen', Plate 7 Small Book of Designs

Everyone likes a “lost treasure” story, a story where something missing for hundreds of years turns up in an unexpected place, bringing sudden riches to the lucky finder. In the 1970s, a purchaser of an old railway timetable found, tucked inside...

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Domesday, BBC Two/ Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons, BBC Four

What was originally a coincidence of reviewing – two dispatches from the Dark Ages, Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons on BBC Four and Domesday on BBC Two – in fact turned into a remarkably instructive diptych of how and how not to make history...

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Futureproof: Scottish Photography Graduate Show, Glasgow

To Futureproof is to ensure that we don’t become technologically obsolete, but keep in touch with as yet undeveloped technologies and exploit those already in the ether. It’s an apt title for this exhibition of work by 16 graduates from the five...

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theartsdesk in Madrid: City of Photography

Isabel Muñoz's Kurdish Sufi trance series, Love and Ecstasy: 'an almost impossible number of images to absorb'

International photography festivals are rivalling rock festivals this summer - and rock festivals are featuring photographers. PhotoEspaña (PHE) Madrid beats the lot. Packed with surprise revelations, with central Madrid as the main stage, the...

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My Perspective: Down's Syndrome Photography Prize, Strand Gallery

Sunrise in Wales: 12-year-old Rory Davies's winning photograph, 'Sun'

“There is a tradition of photographing people with Down’s syndrome, but not of positive, strong images of people staring back at you, challenging you to look at them. This exhibition reverses that. The images we produce are not sympathetic or...

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Joana Vasconcelos/ Polly Morgan, Haunch of Venison

Joana Vasconcelos: 'Garden of Eden': 'As the flowers quiver, you can hear their motors faintly clicking, like a field of crickets'

The former Museum of Mankind, just behind the Royal Academy, has been the temporary home of the Haunch of Venison gallery for some two years. They’re moving back to their original home next spring, and though the newly extended building (Lord Nelson...

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Photo Gallery: Bolshoi Ballet class by Charlotte MacMillan

Charlotte MacMillan took these exclusive pictures last week of the Bolshoi corps de ballet in class. The pictures brought back memories of his training to English National Ballet's Kirov-trained principal dancer Dmitri Gruzdyev, as he prepares to...

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theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Dennis Hopper (RIP) On Show

While most will be familiar with him as an actor, and some will know him also as a photographer and painter, few will be aware of the full extent of the late Dennis Hopper’s artistic practice. Hopper, who died in May of this year, did everything...

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Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life, 1834-1910, National Portrait Gallery

Camille Silvy may be the least recognised of all the great photographic innovators of the 19th century. After a decade of almost ceaseless technical innovation, and astonishing output as the society portrait-photographer of the 1860s, he abruptly...

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Sargent and the Sea, Royal Academy

There’s a little-known side to the 19th-century American artist John Singer Sargent, and it is as far removed from the razzle-dazzle of his glittering career as a high-society portraitist as you can imagine. The artist who was famously described by...

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Brighton Photo Biennial gets an above-Parr treatment

American GI home from 120-day stay in Afghanistan, 2004

The fourth Brighton Photography Festival (BPB) has been launched amid dramatic economic hardships, but my money is on it being a roaring success. It will put Brighton on the map as somewhere other than a gay clubbers’ delight and a hen-party hub....

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Paula Rego: Oratoria, Marlborough Fine Art

Paula Rego: 'scenes of debauchery given a carnivalesque air'

I must admit that I enjoy killing things and, since the target of my murderous instincts are clothes moths, fruit flies and, occasionally, rats or mice, society condones my bloodthirsty instincts. But while I get some satisfaction from my exploits,...

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