fri 08/11/2024

Visual Arts reviews, news & interviews

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Theartsdesk

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to launch a dedicated internet site devoted to coverage of the UK arts scene.

Vanessa Bell, MK Gallery review - diving into and out of abstraction

Sarah Kent

The Bloomsbury group’s habit of non-binary bed-hopping has frequently attracted more attention than the artworks they produced. But in their Vanessa Bell retrospective, the MK Gallery has steered blissfully clear of salacious tittle tattle. Thankfully, this allows one to focus on Bell’s paintings and designs rather than her complicated domestic life.

Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An...

Sarah Kent

Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is best known for taking her abstract sculptures off the pedestal and inviting people to interact with them. Dozens...

Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern review...

Sarah Kent

Like an angry teenager rejecting everything his parents stand for, American artist Mike Kelley embraced everything most despised by the art world –...

Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review -...

Sarah Kent

In September 1899, Claude Monet booked into a room at the Savoy Hotel. From there he had a good view of Waterloo Bridge and the south bank beyond....

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Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy review - from clever conceptual art to digital decor

Sarah Kent

A career in art that starts high and ends low

Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - passions translated into paint

Sarah Kent

Turmoil made manifest

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage

Sarah Kent

Fifty years of political protest by a master craftsman

Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history

Sarah Kent

Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless

Bill Viola (1951-2024) - a personal tribute

Mark Kidel

Video art and the transcendent

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s, Royal Academy review - famous avant-garde Russian artists who weren't Russian after all

Sarah Kent

A glimpse of important Ukrainian artists

Francis Alÿs: Ricochets, Barbican review - fun for the kids, yet I was moved to tears

Sarah Kent

How to be serious and light hearted at the same time

Gavin Jantjes: To Be Free, Whitechapel Gallery review - a sweet and sour response to horrific circumstances

Sarah Kent

Seething anger is cradled within beautiful images

Laura Aldridge / Andrew Sim, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh review - lightness and joy

Mark Sheerin

Two Scottish artists explore childhood and play

Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine Gallery review - art designed to change the world

Sarah Kent

At 84, the American pioneer is a force to be reckoned with

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, Tate Britain review - a triumph

Sarah Kent

Rescued from obscurity, 100 women artists prove just how good they can be

Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - a sculptor's spiritual quest for form and essence

Mark Kidel

The Paris landmark signs off with a historic survey

Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate Modern review - a missed opportunity

Sarah Kent

Wonderful paintings, but only half the story

Eye to Eye: Homage to Ernst Scheidegger, MASI Lugano review - era-defining artist portraits

Mark Sheerin

One of Switzerland's greatest photographers celebrated with a major retrospective

Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a multi-media artist

Sarah Kent

Melanie Manchot's debut is strikingly intelligent and compelling

Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one camera to 45 billion

Sarah Kent

Love it or hate it, the photographic image has ensnared us all

Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States, Serpentine Gallery review - pure delight

Sarah Kent

Weighty subject matter treated with the lightest of touch

Jane Harris: Ellipse, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, Bordeaux review - ovals to the fore

Mark Sheerin

Persistence and conviction in the works of the late English painter

Sargent and Fashion, Tate Britain review - portraiture as a performance

Sarah Kent

London’s elite posing dressed up to the nines

Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery review - a disorientating mix of fact and fiction

Sarah Kent

An exhibition that begs the question 'What and where is home?'

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern review - a fitting celebration of the early years

Sarah Kent

Acknowledgement as a major avant garde artist comes at 90

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican review - the fabric of dissent

Florence Hallett

An ambitious exploration of a neglected medium

When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery review - how to reduce good art to family fun

Sarah Kent

Seriously good sculptures presented as little more than playthings or jokes

Entangled Pasts 1768-now, Royal Academy review - an institution exploring its racist past

Sarah Kent

After a long, slow journey from invisibility to agency, black people finally get a look in

Footnote: A brief history of british art

The National Gallery, the British Museum, Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Collection - Britain's art galleries and museums are world-renowned, not only for the finest of British visual arts but core collections of antiquities and artworks from great world civilisations.

Holbein_Ambasssadors_1533The glory of British medieval art lay first in her magnificent cathedrals and manuscripts, but kings, aristocrats, scientists and explorers became the vital forces in British art, commissioning Holbein or Gainsborough portraits, founding museums of science or photography, or building palatial country mansions where architecture, craft and art united in a luxuriously cultured way of life (pictured, Holbein's The Ambassadors, 1533 © National Gallery). A rich physician Sir Hans Sloane launched the British Museum with his collection in 1753, and private collections were the basis in the 19th century for the National Gallery, the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the original Tate gallery and the Wallace Collections.

British art tendencies have long passionately divided between romantic abstraction and a deep-rooted love of narrative and reality. While 19th-century movements such as the Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian Gothic architects paid homage to decorative medieval traditions, individualists such as George Stubbs, William Hogarth, John Constable, J M W Turner and William Blake were radicals in their time.

In the 20th century sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, architects Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers embody the contrasts between fantasy and observation. More recently another key patron, Charles Saatchi, championed the sensational Britart conceptual art explosion, typified by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. The Arts Desk reviews all the major exhibitions of art and photography as well as interviewing leading creative figures in depth about their careers and working practices. Our writers include Fisun Guner, Judith Flanders, Sarah Kent, Mark Hudson, Sue Steward and Josh Spero.

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