Visual Arts Features
theartsdesk in Austin, Texas: The Library with EverythingSunday, 28 April 2013
April in Austin means South by South West is over, but the city’s permanent attractions remain: Torchy’s tacos, bats under Congress bridge, grackles (the most in-your-face birds ever) as well several cultural destinations on the University of Texas’s huge, pristine campus. Everything really is bigger in Texas, and that includes literary archives. Read more... |
Turner Prize 2013 shortlist: Is David Shrigley an artist? and other thoughtsThursday, 25 April 2013
“Is David Shrigley an artist?,” a journalist asked at Tate Britain’s Turner Prize shortlist announcement this morning. Well, many would say so, though The Arts Desk critic Judith Flanders had her own reservations after seeing his Hayward Gallery show, Brain Activity, for which he was nominated. “Just because the work’s funny, doesn’t mean it’s not serious”, was the short-shrift response of Tate Britain director and chair of judges Penelope Curtis. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Amsterdam: Reopening of the RijksmuseumSunday, 07 April 2013
The Rijksmuseum is reopening after 10 years. What took it so long? Escalating costs, contractual problems, a protracted battle with the cycling lobby (this is Amsterdam, after all). I’m sure there’s more, but one whole decade’s worth? It’s a long time to go without a national museum that represents the best of Dutch art to the Dutch people, and to the world. It’s easy to forget what a spectacular Medievalist fantasy the building actually is Read more... |
theartsdesk in Florence: The Springtime of the RenaissanceSunday, 31 March 2013
It’s an instinct of curators to put the pieces back together, to reintroduce works of art which time and market forces have scattered to the four winds. In recent memory, exhibitions have reunited in one space all of Monet’s haystacks, Cézanne’s card players and, in the case of the National Gallery’s momentous Leonardo show, both versions of The Virgin on the Rocks. A new exhibition opened this week in Florence which takes the business of synthesis to the next level. Read more... |
Parting Shot: Michael Winner, 1935-2012Monday, 21 January 2013
Michael Winner was always proud to call himself a film director but his filmography is notably short of quality moments. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the London Art Fair: DebateMonday, 14 January 2013
“The new job of art is to sit on a wall and get more expensive,” the late Robert Hughes once said. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, gallerist and dealer Larry Gagosian was particularly revealing. “I wish I was in luxury goods,” he confessed, “because then I could just call the factory and say, ‘I need 10,000 more of whatever’” – though he did add that he couldn’t, because “then it’s not art, it’s something else.” Read more... |
Art Rock: The best and worst songs about artistsTuesday, 08 January 2013
That ultimate art rocker David Bowie is 66 today. The Victoria & Albert Museum is opening with a major survey of Bowie the style icon this spring. What’s more, he’s just released a new single, with an album following in March. Fittingly, for an art school idol, he once wrote a song about his favourite artist Andy Warhol (“Andy Warhol looks a scream / Hang him on my wall / Andy Warhol, Silver Screen / Can't tell them apart at all”). Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lille: Flemish Landscape Fables - Bosch, Bles, Brueghel and BrilMonday, 24 December 2012
If hell doesn’t exist for us in the 21st century, at least not in the literal rather than the Sartrean sense, than how should we read the fabulous visions of 16th-century Flemish artists such as Hieronymus Bosch? As proto-Surrealism? As the outpourings of a mind unique in its insights into the torments of the soul and seeking expression in the inexpressible? Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 5: Hunters in the SnowSunday, 23 December 2012
The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder was instrumental in developing landscape painting as a genre in its own right. Hunters in the Snow, 1565, is one of five surviving paintings (Bruegel painted six) in his cycle depicting The Labours of the Months. Populated by villagers, peasant workers, farmers, hunters and children, each painting is of a panoramic landscape at a different time of year. Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 4: Mystic NativitySaturday, 22 December 2012
I’ve always loved this painting in the National Gallery by Sandro Botticelli. The jewel-like colours and exquisite clarity of detail create a consoling sense of lucidity, as though everything has been revealed to be alright. Read more... |
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