Tate Modern
2011: Mariinsky, Manon, and a German DaneSunday, 01 January 2012![]() Highlights of the year are always interesting. Things you loved at the time do, sometimes surprisingly, fade very quickly. I really enjoyed the Gabriel Orozco retrospective at the Tate: I thought it inventive and exciting. But now I have hardly any... Read more... |
2011: Belgian Surrealism, Austrian Angst and a Dane in a MadhouseMonday, 26 December 2011![]() Last year, like every year, is a bit of a blur. I saw a lot, but all the good stuff seems to have clustered near the end. Maybe an end-of-year cultural bloat has finally settled. Anyway, to help jog the memory, I think I should start bottom-up.... Read more... |
Damien Hirst's spots go globalSaturday, 17 December 2011![]() Brace yourselves for pure Damien Hirst madness next year. As well as Tate Modern’s retrospective survey opening in April, there will be a “worldwide” retrospective of Hirst’s spot paintings opening next month.The Gagosian Gallery will be... Read more... |
Tacita Dean, FILM, Tate ModernWednesday, 12 October 2011![]() Tate Modern’s lofty Turbine Hall is dominated by a giant CinemaScope screen flipped on its side so it becomes 42ft high and resembles a lift shaft or cathedral window. Instead of angels, saints or sinners, though, the starring role in Tacita Dean’s... Read more... |
Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate ModernFriday, 07 October 2011![]() In recent years it seems we have seen an awful lot of Gerhard Richter. There have been three major exhibitions in London well within the last seven or eight years. One is hardly complaining, since there is always a demand to see “the world’s most... Read more... |
Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead..., Tate ModernFriday, 05 August 2011![]() For her latest project, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII, American photographer Taryn Simon spent four years searching out families the world over whose lives have been defined by circumstances largely beyond their control – not... Read more... |
Michael Clark Company, th, Tate ModernWednesday, 08 June 2011![]() Michael Clark brings dancers into Tate Modern in a long shadow cast by some memorable events from choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. Now the ground on which Ai Weiwei’s poignant porcelain seeds were piled is swept clean and laid with... Read more... |
Burke + Norfolk: Photographs From the War in Afghanistan, Tate ModernThursday, 12 May 2011![]() How easy is it to stage a dialogue between two artists when they are, in fact, separated by over a century? And is it really an artistic conversation that takes place or merely an imposition of values by the living over the dead? This pertinent... Read more... |
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, Tate ModernTuesday, 19 April 2011![]() I used to love Joan Miró. Those cute biomorphic forms; those elegantly elusive doodles; those engagingly befuddled, cartoonish faces, each staring forlornly out of the cosmic soup of Miró’s playful imagination; and, of course, those bright, jazzy... Read more... |
Daniel Barenboim, Tate ModernSaturday, 09 April 2011![]() It had all the hallmarks of being an almighty car crash of an event. Barenboim? Chopin? Turbine Hall? You might as well have dumped the piano at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Actually, acoustically, it wasn't quite that bad. It sounded as if... Read more... |
Damien Hirst's Tate retrospective - why now?Friday, 04 March 2011![]() Damien Hirst is finally getting his first UK retrospective in a public gallery next year, but the question seems to be, “Why now?” It seems both far too late and far too early, especially since Hirst has made no significant work in some years. That... 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... |
