sculpture
theartsdesk in Paris: Inside Anish Kapoor's LeviathanSunday, 22 May 2011
All aboard! 4000 visitors a day are queuing up for a voyage in the belly of a whale. Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan, a commission for the Monumenta series at the Paris Grand Palais, is a runaway success, one of those Zeitgeist-attuned mega-installations... 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... |
Ivor Abrahams, Mystery and Imagination, Royal AcademyWednesday, 27 April 2011
In this month of royal weddings, endless bank holidays and (possibly?) equally endless good weather, it can be hard to focus, so perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with a show that nearly got away. Instead of winsome blockbusters... 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... |
Modern British Sculpture, Royal AcademyFriday, 21 January 2011
Austere, elegant, impressive. Edwin Lutyens’s Whitehall Cenotaph is a thing of beauty, a monument that embodies permanence in the face of all that is impermanent, and solidity in the face of all that is ephemeral. It’s an inspired decision to bring... Read more... |
Robert Mapplethorpe, Alison Jacques GalleryTuesday, 18 January 2011
The first thing to make clear is that Robert Mapplethorpe, notorious for his photograph of himself with a bullwhip up his arse, is not really a photographer: he is a sculptor who works in the medium of photography. What else can explain the... Read more... |
Gabriel Orozco, Tate ModernMonday, 17 January 2011
The show opens with his iconic 1991 piece, My Hands are My Heart, a double photograph of Orozco’s naked torso. In the first photograph his hands clutch a hidden object at chest-height; in the second the hands splay open to present to the viewer a... Read more... |
Fourth Plinth winners announcedFriday, 14 January 2011
The title may suggest it’s a difficult conceptual work, but Powerless Structures, Fig 101, by Nordic duo Elmgreen & Dragset, had appeared to win the popular vote for the Fourth Plinth from the outset. And rather than being difficult, it is, in... 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... |
Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, BBC Two/ The Art of Germany, BBC FourTuesday, 30 November 2010
There is probably only one thing that Ann Widdecombe and I have ever agreed upon: we both think it might be a really good idea to stick William Wilberforce on the Fourth Plinth. Why not? It’s nice to have contemporary art in Trafalgar Square, of... Read more... |
Trisha Brown Dance Company, Tate Modern & Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 20 October 2010
A snaky conga of women in white pantsuits snuggling their loins together in a Spanish dance, and wiggling their way along a wall behind a Joseph Beuys installation may well be one of the indelible sights of my dance year. Mine, and that of only a... Read more... |
Film: Over Your Cities Grass Will GrowFriday, 15 October 2010
Action-movie season ain't over quite yet, folks. Sure. OK. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow isn't exactly your conventional salute to Armageddon. No guns, no baddies, no hot babes, no long-haired hunks. The pace is slow. The dialogue's pretty non-... Read more... |
