wed 04/12/2024

sculpture

theartsdesk in Monte Carlo: Nouveau Musée Nationale de Monaco

Famous for its fast cars, casino, and stashing away Sir Philip Green’s gazillions, the principality of Monaco certainly isn’t a destination short on bling, nor a sense of faded, somewhat seedy glamour. So it probably isn’t high on anyone’s list for...

Read more...

Art Gallery: Pordenone Montanari, An Italian Discovery

Pordenone Montenari: 'Il Pittore a la modella' (1978)

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...

Herb Alpert, Tijuana Brass and Other Delights, BBC Four

Trumpeter, businessman and artist Herb Alpert in his easy-listening heyday

I used to have a childhood fascination with the music of Herb Alpert, because I liked the tunes and always felt there was a hint of melancholy behind Herb’s breezy, nonchalant exterior. Everybody else found Alpert laughably cheesy, but happily,...

Read more...

Rachel Whiteread: Drawings, Tate Britain & Gagosian Gallery

Rachel Whiteread is best known for her exploration of space, of presence and absence, of how we look at what is present – and absent – in the textures of our lives. House, her life-sized cast of a house in a derelict street in East London, first...

Read more...

Art Gallery: Fourth Plinth Commission

Katharina Fritsch's 'Hahn/ Cock': one of six contenders in a playful, enticing shortlist for the Fourth Plinth

A playful, subversive mood dominates the shortlist for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Most of the six proposals, in what is a very strong shortlist, play on notions of British identity, probing themes of heroism, heritage and conquest. The models...

Read more...

Antony Gormley: Test Sites, White Cube

Many people use that weaselly phrase about Antony Gormley, saying he “divides the critics”. For the most part this is not true: for the most part the critics loathe Gormley’s work. They suggest he is either a bad figurative sculptor masquerading as...

Read more...

Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery

'Dad with Tits': Ged Quinn's oedipal twist on the famous portrait of George Washington

These days, it seems that approaching any new Saatchi exhibition, especially one that promises to be even bigger than all the previous ones held at the multi-galleried, three-storey Chelsea venue, makes the heart fairly sink. How much bigger, you...

Read more...

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...

Read more...

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...

Read more...

Art Gallery: Picasso Special - The Mediterranean Years

The war was over, Picasso was finally free to leave the privations of Paris behind him and to spend more time in the South of France, marking a return to his Mediterranean heritage. The Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition, curated by Picasso’s...

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Maggi Hambling

Maggi Hambling: 'You’ve got to make your work your best friend'

Next week sees the opening of an exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art of new work by Maggi Hambling, one of the most innovative and prolific - not to mention flamboyant - artists working in Britain today, which neatly coincides with a show of sea...

Read more...

Art Gallery: Maggi Hambling - Sea Sculptures and Paintings

'Wave Relief' by  Maggi Hambling

To accompany theartsdesk Q&A with artist Maggi Hambling by Hilary Whitney, this is a selection of pieces from two new exhibitions of her latest work opening in London and Cambridge. Maggi Hambling: New Sea Sculptures at Marlborough Fine Art...

Read more...
Subscribe to sculpture