fri 20/06/2025

Visual arts

Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev Exhibition

The show's curator Jane Pritchard revealed this wonderful kitchen story in a unique walk-round with theartsdesk this week. Her two-year hunt ranged from Diaghilev's passport to glorious Nijinsky costumes, from the Ballets Russes accounts book to...

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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...

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Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, V&A

Museum shows don’t often evoke a sense of smell, but without even trying, this Ballets Russes exhibition has visitors’ nostrils flared. The show is – intentionally – a feast for the eye, and even for the ear, with ballet scores (sometimes rudely...

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The Body in Women’s Art Now: Flux, Rollo Contemporary Art

'Squiggles of paint energising the canvas seem to embody her sexual excitement': Cecily Brown's 'New Louboutin Pumps'

Flux, the second in a trio of exhibitions devoted to images of women by women, immediately grabs your attention with an in-your-face animation by Swedish artist Natalie Djurberg. Clay figures enact grotesque stories that have a nasty, fairytale edge...

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Jimi Hendrix, Snap Gallery/Handel House Museum

A soundtrack of "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe" and other eternal Jimi Hendrix hits, is currently drifting out of the Snap Gallery along the swanky Piccadilly Arcade in Mayfair. A boutique exhibition space, Snap sits incongruously amongst purveyors of "...

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Truth and Lies: Jillian Edelstein on Show

Regulars of theartsdesk will be familiar with the work of Jillian Edelstein. Her portraits of cultural figures have adorned several of our series, theartsdesk Q&A. There is now a chance to see pictures from her most celebrated collection at a...

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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...

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Edward Weston, Chris Beetles Gallery

Edward Weston's 'Golden Circle Mine, Death Valley', 1938

Edward Weston was once obsessed with photographing "toilets" (his word) and did it repeatedly in pursuit of the perfect image. "That gloss enamelled receptacle of extraordinary beauty" is how he described the scuzzy lav at the Gold Circle Mine in...

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Living Architecture

Alain de Botton: 'The salvation of British housing lies in raising standards of taste'

Judging from the success of interior design magazines and property shows, you might think that this country was now as comfortable with good contemporary architecture as it is with non-native food or music. But scratch beneath the metropolitan,...

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Eadweard Muybridge, Tate Britain

Multiple images of silhouetted horses cantering against blank backgrounds in grids of movement are what most people associate with Eadward Muybridge. Made in the late 1880s, they have contributed to his lasting reputation as a pioneer of photography...

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Darren Almond: The Principle of Moments, White Cube Mason's Yard

Norilsk: 'The most northerly city in the world and an Arctic wasteland where snow storms rage 130 days of the year'

Darren Almond’s ongoing fascination with far-flung places where extreme weather conditions prevail provides the inspiration for his current show at White Cube. The Principle of Moments consists of over 10,000 tiny photographs cataloguing the ever-...

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Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud

Visit the room in the Louvre where the Mona Lisa hangs, and all you will be able to see is a glass-covered rectangle and hundreds of camera phones held high. Certainly you will be unable to examine the woman in the picture, or contemplate the work...

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