design
British Design 1948 - 2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, Victoria & Albert MuseumWednesday, 04 April 2012
The V&A has played a blinder. This extraordinary, exciting and unexpected exhibition provides endless trips down memory lane for many and will be a revelation for others. Ignore the clunky title, moving us from the postwar Olympics of 1948 to... Read more... |
theartsdesk Debate: But What Does It Mean? + Can Art Still Shock?Friday, 20 January 2012
The latest in the live events staged by theartsdesk aims to shed light on controversies and myths about the value and purpose of contemporary visual art. Taking place at the heart of the London Art Fair, where more than 100 galleries will present... Read more... |
Jonathan Meades on France, BBC FourThursday, 19 January 2012
Jonathan Meades’s trawl through France began with the breezy theme tune from ‘Allo ‘Allo taking an unceremonious tumble from the turntable, signalling an instant war on cliché which continued with the promise of “no Piaf, no Dordogne, no ooh la la,... Read more... |
DVD: L’amour fouTuesday, 15 November 2011
“I tell myself that I have created the modern woman's wardrobe,” declares Yves Saint Laurent during the press conference that opens L’amour fou. Hubris, but the trouser suits, safari jackets and Mondrian dresses he created did – in other... Read more... |
Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990, V&AFriday, 23 September 2011
It took a long time for architects to embrace popular culture. I attended a talk at the Architectural Association in the mid 1970s, when someone (probably the architect Robert Venturi) waxed lyrical about shiny American diners and hot-dog... Read more... |
Power of Making, Victoria and Albert MuseumFriday, 09 September 2011
Hands on! Power of Making has it all: one of the most surprising and exciting collections of contemporary stuff on view for many a while. Some is functional, from coffins to bicycles, wine caskets, guns, bespoke shoes. Some would not be out of... Read more... |
The Lion King's West End ReignSunday, 04 September 2011
The stage musical The Lion King has been seen by nearly 10 million people in the UK - almost 60 million worldwide – and Lord only knows how many must have seen Walt Disney’s animation. I have a friend who reckons he has seen it at least 26 times and... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: A Rooftop Ramble in the High Line ParkSunday, 28 August 2011
The High Line Park on the far west side of Manhattan, built on an old elevated train track, is a unique combination of everything New Yorkers love - fabulous views, a piece of history, a traffic-free zone (no dogs, skateboards or bicycles), unusual... Read more... |
Ron Arad's Curtain Call, The RoundhouseWednesday, 10 August 2011
The round and the curtain are two of theatre’s oldest pieces of stagecraft. Yet architect and design legend Ron Arad has reinvented both in celebration of the Camden Roundhouse’s fifth birthday. The north London venue, which was transformed... Read more... |
Max Bill, Annely Juda Fine ArtThursday, 19 May 2011
Max Bill might be the missing link in modern art. He died only in 1994, yet he studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau in the 1920s, taught by Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and Kandinsky. It is hard to imagine that someone who was working at... Read more... |
The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, V&ASaturday, 02 April 2011
A cult suggests unhealthy worship, and there’s more than a whiff of that in the heady decadence of the V&A’s latest art and design blockbuster, The Cult of Beauty. This is an exhibition which examines how the influence of a small clique of... Read more... |
Film Gallery: Bill Gold's PosterWorksFriday, 12 November 2010
Although there are thematic links between many of the movie posters designed by Bill Gold between 1942 and 2003, especially in the talismanic use of telephones (Dial M for Murder, Klute, The Front Page) and guns (Casablanca, Deliverance, the Dirty... Read more... |
