Visual Arts Features

theartsdesk in Oslo: From heritage to art now

Fisun Güner Wednesday, 22 July 2015

Things you might know about Oslo: it’s expensive and the cost of a beer, wine, dinner for two – whatever your tourist yardstick – might make your hair stand on end (the cost of living is currently second only to Singapore city, according to a 2014 survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit); it’s small (population: 600,000), yet it’s also the fastest growing capital in Europe, thanks to both overseas immigration and the fact that many Norwegians are now moving to the capital; its most...

theartsdesk in New York: On Kawara at the Guggenheim Museum

Markie Robson-Scott Sunday, 05 April 2015

On a snowy day in early spring in New York, the On Kawara – Silence show at the Guggenheim is unlikely to warm you up. His date paintings, postcards, telegrams and other coldly ur-conceptual accountings spiral up those famous white Frank Lloyd Wright stairs, seemingly ad infinitum. But it’s a powerful, hypnotic experience, one that seeps into your subconscious and becomes a meditation on time and space.

Brighton Festival: The Locations That Make the Festival

Thomas H Green Friday, 03 April 2015

Andrew Comben, CEO of the Brighton Festival, chooses ten locations that have resonance with the annual event. He talks about their past and future but, most particularly, what will be happening this May

theartsdesk in Bilbao: Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim Museum

Fisun Güner Thursday, 02 April 2015

This is work that wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s what gets you in the end in this big retrospective of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle.

theartsdesk in Calais: Simon Faithfull – To the Bottom of the World and Back

Sarah Kent Sunday, 01 March 2015

The sea is the theme uniting Simon Faithfull’s mid-career retrospective. It makes the port of Calais the perfect host for this splendid exhibition and, to put you in the mood, ideally you should make the crossing by boat. Faithfull spent six days going back and forth, back and forth on the P&O ferry between Dover and Calais.

theartsdesk in Moscow: Remembering George Costakis

Tom Birchenough Sunday, 22 February 2015

Russia’s national gallery, the Tretyakov, bears the name of its founder Pavel Tretyakov, the 19th-century merchant who bequeathed his huge collection of Russian art to the city of Moscow in 1892. His bust stands proudly overseeing the entrance to the gallery’s old building, a fine, purpose-built example of early Russian 20th-century architecture.

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PJ Harvey: Recording in Progress, Artangel at Somerset House

mark Kidel Saturday, 24 January 2015

Artangel continues to instigate extraordinary events in extraordinary places. Over the past two decades and more, directors Michael Morris and James Lingwood have helped generate major and ground-breaking work by Rachel Whiteread, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Roni Horn, Jeremy Deller, Steve McQueen, Matthew Barney, Gregor Schneider, Francis Alÿs and many others. It's a long list.

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Quick! Win tickets for the London Art Fair

Fisun Güner Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Whether you’re interested in buying, just looking or attending one of the many talks and events, the London Art Fair is the place to be over the next few days if you’re keen on modern and contemporary British art.

Best of 2014: Art

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 30 December 2014

We commemorated the centenary of the start of the First World War and we celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The year also marked a 70^th anniversary for the D-Day landings. So it was oddly fitting that the London art calendar was most notable for the invasion of heavyweight Germans; namely, four postwar artists whose sense of the weight of German history is writ large in their work.

Sci-Fi Week: Through the eyes of JG Ballard

Fisun Güner Friday, 28 November 2014

A sci-fi special would be incomplete without the profoundly influential figure of JG Ballard, a writer who, when he began his career in the late Fifties, fully subscribed to the notion that “sci-fi is the literature of the 20^th century.” Unlike the “Hampstead novel,” he once said, “the sci-fi novel plays back the century to itself.”