Visual arts
The Edwardian Grand Designer, Channel 4Monday, 24 February 2014
Britain’s last castle, Drogo, may be only just over a century old, but repair work is going on in a big way – it’s currently the National Trust’s largest-scale restoration project. That provided the excuse for the Time Team special The... Read more... |
The Brits Who Built the Modern World, BBC Four / The Man Who Fought the Planners, BBC FourFriday, 21 February 2014
There really was astonishing talent on display in The Brits Who Built the Modern World (*****), as full a television panorama of the work of the five architects whose careers were under examination – Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw... Read more... |
Listed: 10 American paintings before PollockSunday, 16 February 2014
The National Gallery recently embarked on a first: they acquired their first American painting. Men of the Docks, 1912, (main picture) may not be George Bellows’ most famous or best-regarded work; nonetheless, it’s a gritty and beautifully observed... Read more... |
theartsdesk in the Shetlands: Seasick VikingsSunday, 16 February 2014
“Would we be able to prosecute the Vikings today, should we? I mean are there parallels between what the Nazis did by plundering art and gold, or what the German soldiers did who raped Norwegian women when they occupied Norway?” Silke Roeploeg might... Read more... |
Berlinale 2014: Cathedrals of CultureFriday, 14 February 2014
Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.Exploring the theme of how architecture interacts with human beings, and attempting to capture the soul of the... Read more... |
Richard Hamilton, Tate Modern /ICAWednesday, 12 February 2014
Some artists are diminished by major retrospectives, including those artists we consider great. A gap opens up between what you see and what you hear, which is why you can never judge work with your ears, or at least your ears and nothing else. The... Read more... |
Hockney: Printmaker, Dulwich Picture GallerySunday, 09 February 2014
David Hockney has been a printmaker for almost as long as he’s been a painter. From one of his earliest ventures into print, a self-portrait colour lithograph aged 16 while at Bradford College of Art (the black pudding-bowl hair emulates early hero... Read more... |
Bailey's Stardust, National Portrait GallerySaturday, 08 February 2014
Several hundred photographs, of varying scales and most of them newly printed gelatin silver prints in superb tones of greys blacks and whites, take us into a world that has been subliminally familiar to us for nearly 50 years.Stardust is the title... Read more... |
Richard Deacon, Tate BritainWednesday, 05 February 2014
A retrospective is often a daunting prospect for all concerned, not least the poor visitor who must prepare for a gruelling marathon, visiting every forgotten cul-de-sac of an artist’s career. Putting together a retrospective of a living artist... Read more... |
Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner, Turner ContemporarySunday, 02 February 2014
Helen Frankenthaler is often presented as being both a stepping stone between art movements and as an artist who fell – because such things matter in the tidy narratives of art history – between the cracks of various American isms.... Read more... |
Martin Creed: What’s the point of it? Hayward GalleryWednesday, 29 January 2014
If you're suffering from the January blues, hurry to the Southbank Centre where Martin Creed’s exhibition is bound to make you smile. The man best known for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 by switching the lights on and off at Tate Britain has... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Sydney: Upside Down UnderSunday, 26 January 2014
Sydney has a nervous tic. People think Australians are brash and bolshy but that's not true. There's a deep sense of ingrained anxiety here. That anxiety comes from being at the edge of the world, a long way from Europe and in an unfamiliar and... Read more... |
