portraits
Judge of major art prize in intimate relationship with winnerThursday, 17 February 2011
We usually leave art award controversies to the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. So it’s a surprise to hear that the National Portrait Gallery has stepped up to the plate with their annual Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. And if you’ve... Read more... |
Watercolour, Tate BritainTuesday, 15 February 2011
Does watercolour painting suffer from an image problem? Do you think of the wild, vaporous seascapes of Turner, or Victorian ladies at their sketchbooks dabbing daintily at wishy-washy flower paintings? Do you associate the medium with radical... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: The Best View of Heaven is From HellSaturday, 29 January 2011
"There's a similarity between being a soldier and a photographer. They are both looking intensely for the moment." Bran Symondson would know. He served with the British Army in Afghanistan before returning to document the world of the Afghan... Read more... |
Cindy Sherman, Sprüth Magers LondonFriday, 14 January 2011
One of the best things about a Cindy Sherman show is you never know what you’re going to get. And in this exhibition, of a new series of "Untitled" images, what you get is very surprising indeed. Sherman's photographs are not about her, but they... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Art's Giants in Close-UpMonday, 03 January 2011
Last year gave us three giants of Post-Impressionism. The Royal Academy promised to unveil the real Van Gogh by showing us the man of letters; Tate Modern delivered a sumptuous survey of Gauguin; and a significantly smaller but nonetheless... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010Thursday, 11 November 2010
The winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Prize was announced yesterday, and as with most prizes you know there must be an element of compromise when it comes to selecting the shortlist. David Chancellor’s winning portrait of a 14... Read more... |
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010, National Portrait GalleryThursday, 11 November 2010
The National Portrait Gallery was early in picking up on the momentum gathering around photography in 2003, and committed itself then to an annual prize for portraiture. Today it’s one of the most anticipated competition exhibitions in the UK, and... Read more... |
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC FourFriday, 05 November 2010
Albrecht Dürer painted himself as Jesus (pictured below). Luckily, he was blessed with the looks, the hair and the initials – echoing the geometry of his golden locks the A straddles the D in his inscribed paintings. And when this German messiah of... Read more... |
Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance, National Portrait GalleryFriday, 22 October 2010
Thomas Lawrence was a child prodigy; from the age of 11 he supported his family by making pastel drawings of the fashionable elite who spent the season in Bath. The next step for an aspiring young artist was to learn how to paint in oils and... Read more... |
The Genius of British Art, David Starkey, Channel 4Monday, 04 October 2010
“Henry VIII is the only king whose shape we remember,” David Starkey tells us in the first of a new series of “polemical essays” on British art. To demonstrate, he reduces the king’s form to its bare Cubist geometry. He sketches a trapezoid for the... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Pordenone Montanari, An Italian DiscoverySunday, 26 September 2010
Our culture is hungry for stories of buried treasure, for the lost archive. So when something of startling value is brought blinking into the light after many years, it answers a romantic urge. Of course it doesn’t happen much any more, not in a... Read more... |
A Gothic homage to late fashion iconThursday, 23 September 2010
A grisly "shadow portrait" of the late fashion muse and stylist Isabella Blow goes on show today at the National Portrait Gallery. Crafted from taxidermied animals, including a raven, a species of rat linked to the black death and a snake, as well... Read more... |
