contemporary art
Frieze Art Fair 2011: Emotion under the IronyThursday, 13 October 2011
Every year the art lovers of the world assemble in London and burn themselves out during Frieze Week - the fairs, the galleries, the parties - and (if they're anything like me) they vow to take it a bit easier next year. It never happens. The entire... Read more... |
Tacita Dean, FILM, Tate ModernWednesday, 12 October 2011
Tate Modern’s lofty Turbine Hall is dominated by a giant CinemaScope screen flipped on its side so it becomes 42ft high and resembles a lift shaft or cathedral window. Instead of angels, saints or sinners, though, the starring role in Tacita Dean’s... Read more... |
Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, Hayward GalleryTuesday, 04 October 2011
In 1997 the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist produced one of the most delightful videos ever made, and it won her the Biennale. Ever is Over All shows a young woman skipping down a city street gaily smashing car windows with a red-hot poker; and... Read more... |
Frank Stella: Connections, Haunch of VenisonFriday, 30 September 2011
Art about art is one of my favourite kinds of art. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, films - works of art which talk about what art is, what the image is, what art can represent and what it can't - all appeal. It is not just a picture of some... Read more... |
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 40 Years, 12 Exhibitions, Annely Juda Fine ArtSunday, 18 September 2011
A retrospective of an artist’s work is not usually a history of a working relationship, but in the case of Christo, this impressive exhibition of works from the past 40 years also marks two crucial partnerships: with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who was... Read more... |
Ryan Gander: Locked Room Scenario, Artangel in Hoxton, N1Wednesday, 07 September 2011
What are the most common responses to a work of contemporary art? I can think of two: “A six-year-old could have done that” (feel free to substitute “I” or “anyone”) and “But what does it actually mean?” Ryan Gander is an artist who is rather... Read more... |
Edinburgh Art Festival: A Festival woven together by the city itselfFriday, 26 August 2011
A few days visiting the Edinburgh Art Festival and the city itself becomes the encircling gallery. Under great canvases of lowering grey cloud, plunging up and down the different levels of the Old Town and the New, things unfold against the intense... Read more... |
Imagine: Iraq in Venice, BBC TwoTuesday, 26 July 2011
For 35 years, contemporary art in Iraq was a no-no unless it was grimly, dully figurative or a gaudy mural glorifying Saddam Hussein. But this year, six Iraqi artists were invited to the most prestigious annual contemporary art event in the world;... Read more... |
Marcel van Eeden, Sprueth Magers LondonMonday, 27 June 2011
An article in this week's New Yorker bemoans the death of drawing in art. Why has the emphasis on craft, Adam Gopnik writes, been replaced by concept? He has evidently not seen the fantastic noirish drawings of Marcel van Eeden at Sprueth Magers in... Read more... |
Government Art Collection: At Work, Whitechapel GallerySunday, 12 June 2011
It owns almost twice as many artworks as the Arts Council, and two-thirds of its 13,500-strong hoard is on display at any given time, yet it’s a collection the public never usually gets to see. Since its foundation in 1898, the Government Art... Read more... |
George Shaw: The Sly and Unseen Day, South London GalleryFriday, 27 May 2011
By anyone’s standards this is an obscure year for the Turner Prize shortlist: you should consider yourself a contemporary art aficionado if you’ve heard of even one of the artists. And if this is indeed the case, that artist is likely to be George... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Paris: Inside Anish Kapoor's LeviathanSunday, 22 May 2011
All aboard! 4000 visitors a day are queuing up for a voyage in the belly of a whale. Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan, a commission for the Monumenta series at the Paris Grand Palais, is a runaway success, one of those Zeitgeist-attuned mega-installations... Read more... |
