Visual arts
fisun.guner
Who were the Vorticists? Were they significant? Were they any good? And does this little-known British avant-garde movement – if it can be called anything as cohesive - really deserve a major survey at Tate Britain? Many of the group’s paintings never survived the First World War, and nor did one of its most talented supporters, the precocious French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; two of the most talented artists who did – David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein – were never signatories to its manifesto, and Epstein, for one, distanced himself; and, in its short life, there was only one exhibition Read more ...
fisun.guner
It owns almost twice as many artworks as the Arts Council, and two-thirds of its 13,500-strong hoard is on display at any given time, yet it’s a collection the public never usually gets to see. Since its foundation in 1898, the Government Art Collection has been purchasing work by British artists not for the nation, but to hang exclusively in the corridors of power, from Downing Street to the British consulate’s office in Azerbaijan. Perhaps, in these cost-cutting times, it now feels impelled to justify its existence to the taxpayer by giving it a taster of its work – though, in all Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Robin Rhode’s animations are pure pleasure; there’s perfection in their simplicity. They are so perfectly tuned, so light on their feet, that one simply wants to enjoy them; but because they are multilayered, they offer more than momentary pleasure. Rhode was born in South Africa and, in many ways, he is the Banksy of Johannesburg. In the late 1990s he began using the scruffy walls of the city as a canvas on which to make drawings which he describes as a “dreamscape to the impossible”.But whereas stealth is crucial to Banksy’s modus operandi – he disappears into the night, leaving his images Read more ...