fri 29/11/2024

drawing

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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David Nash, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

'Black Ball' looks like an alien space-ship entirely at home in Yorkshire

Wood is a mysterious substance. We do not make it, it makes itself. It is useful to us, alive and dead. Without it, our history would not be the same. But it is so ever-present, so much a part of that history, that we rarely see the wood...

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Picasso Special - Picasso: Peace and Freedom, Tate Liverpool

Picasso the genius, the sensualist, the womaniser, the priapic beast. This much we think we know of the great Spanish artist. But how about Picasso the political activist? Picasso the supporter of women’s causes? Picasso the… feminist? Oh, yes, that...

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Bridget Riley: From Life, National Portrait Gallery

Bridget Riley: 'Boy with curly hair', early 1950s (red conté crayon on paper)

Forget about art “being about the idea” for a moment. Drawing from life is still considered by many to be the litmus test for proper artistic skill, or at least the foundation from which great art can arise. And so the enquiry, “But can he really...

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Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, British Museum

This superb exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings, featuring 100 works and chosen from the outstanding graphic collections of the Uffizi and the British Museum, explores the evolution of the preparatory sketch in the 15th century. We learn how...

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Design Gallery: The Art Nouveau Dacha

Vladimir Story's 1917 brochure for patterns for building Russia's traditional wooden country houses - called dachas - has been rescued from oblivion by the chance discovery of an ancient copy of it in Georgia. Now reprinted, The Art Nouveau Dacha:...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Sarnath Banerjee

Sarnath Banerjee: 'Everybody has his own aesthetics; but mine are a bit… wonky.'

When the subversive graphic artist Sarnath Banerjee won a MacArthur grant he opted "to research the sexual landscape of contemporary Indian cities", embroiling himself in the aphrodisiac market of old Delhi and introducing the English reading public...

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The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters, Royal Academy

This exhibition may claim to reveal the real Van Gogh through his letters, but what of the Sunflowers, the Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear, oh, and Starry Night, with its roiling night sky and dark, mysterious cypress tree? What even of the dizzying...

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How To Design The Nutcracker

Christmas ballet would be unthinkable without The Nutcracker. But what kind of Christmas should it be? This year the UK fields an astonishing array of visions, from Biedermeier formality at the Royal Ballet, to Fanny and Alexander romanticism at...

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Design gallery: Three Nutcrackers

Is the look to be Beckmann, Bergman or Nicky Haslam? To accompany the interviews with Nutcracker designers elsewhere, here are three very different design portfolios tackling the eternal magic of this favourite ballet with unexpected reference...

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Drawing Attention, Dulwich Picture Gallery

Schiele's Portrait of a Girl: stretching to the very limit the pared-down language of decisive line and white space.

The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of...

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theartsdesk in New York: Extreme Blake

Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile. She was then...

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