modernism
What Lies Beneath: The Secret Life of PaintingsWednesday, 30 July 2014
The doctoring of political images became something of a tradition in the last century, with Stalin, Hitler and Mao all airbrushing their enemies from photographs. The latest infrared technology has revealed that something similar may have happened... Read more... |
Malevich, Tate ModernThursday, 17 July 2014
The year 1915 was a big one for Kazimir Malevich, as it was for the course of modern art. It was the year the Black Square was first exhibited (June 1915 is the likeliest date of the painting’s execution, though Malevich himself dated it to 1913,... Read more... |
Gallery: International Exchanges, Tate St IvesSunday, 06 July 2014
This summer, Tate St Ives turned 21. And this makes it as good a time as any for an exhibition repositioning the artists who were associated with St Ives, the small harbour town in Cornwall, where you'll find the gallery on the sea front at... Read more... |
Art and Life: Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Dulwich Picture GallerySaturday, 14 June 2014
At the risk of sounding crass, I can’t help feeling that had Winifred Nicholson painted fewer flowers she might be better represented in the annals of art history. Of course, being a woman hasn’t helped, but as a woman flower painter she was ever... Read more... |
Matisse: The Cut-Outs, Tate ModernTuesday, 15 April 2014
When it comes to the two vying giants of 20th century art we do – don’t we? – all fall into that cliché of two opposing camps. You have the seductions of colour and decorative form on the one hand and you have the more classical rigours of line on... Read more... |
Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry, BBC FourMonday, 24 February 2014
Is Brutalism brutal? Pugnacious? Uncouth? The name was coined by English academic and architecture writer Reynor Banham – more on him in a moment – as a play on the French béton brut (literally raw concrete) and the English “brute”, and hence... Read more... |
Matisse: The Essence of Line, Marlborough Fine ArtMonday, 09 December 2013
The photographs of Henri Matisse at work show, over the years, a sober, suited, bearded and dignified figure; there is also a charming series of Matisse in a white coat, as though he were a doctor, sitting in his studio and thoughtfully examining in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Amsterdam: Being Kazimir MalevichSaturday, 23 November 2013
All eyes were on the Rijksmuseum when it re-opened in April after a 10-year refurbishment, but across the Museumplein, Amsterdam's gallery of contemporary and modern art, the Stedelijk, was already settling into its new look, unveiled six months... Read more... |
Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900, National GalleryTuesday, 08 October 2013
“We should pity the age which finds its reflection in this ‘art’”, wrote one critic in 1911, after seeing too many Vienna Secession paintings. From the quotation marks, we see the despairing critic was attacking the art rather than the age.... Read more... |
Mexico: A Revolution in Art 1910-1940, Royal AcademyThursday, 04 July 2013
Artists love a good revolution. The social upheaval, the bubbling up of new ideas and the breaking down of old ones, attracts them like flies to fly paper. The Mexican revolution was no exception. During the years 1910-1940, Mexico attracted large... Read more... |
Chagall: Modern Master, Tate LiverpoolWednesday, 12 June 2013
“Charming” is undoubtedly a double-edged word. Along with its perfumed allure, it carries a whiff of insincerity, of something slick and not quite earned. Add “whimsical” and you know you’re in danger of saccharine overload. Chagall is both,... Read more... |
William Scott, Hepworth WakefieldFriday, 07 June 2013
It’s the centenary of the birth of William Scott, once considered to be in the pantheon of British postwar artists. But where’s the hoopla and fanfare? Like so many British painters who had their glory years in the Fifties – before the explosion of... Read more... |
