Visual Arts Galleries
The Most Expensive Paintings Ever SoldThursday, 16 November 2017
Yesterday the record for the most expensive painting ever sold was broken. At Christie's in New York Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi the hammer was knocked down on a price of $450 million. It's a lot of money, period, and even more for a painting which some doubt is by Leonardo at all. One doubter insists that Leonardo the great scientist would have refracted the light through the orb in Christ's hands. That won't bother the buyer, whose identity is unknown. Salvator... Read more... |
Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, British MuseumTuesday, 30 May 2017
With its striking design, characteristically restricted palette and fluent use of line, Hokusai’s The Great Wave, 1831, is one of the world’s most recognisable images, encapsulating western ideas about Japanese art. Read more... |
Highlights from Photo London 2017 - virtual reality meets vintage treasureSaturday, 20 May 2017
At heart, Photo London is a selling fair for expensive photographic prints. You wander through the steamy labyrinth of Somerset House from gallery show to gallery show surrounded by black-clad snapperati, assaulted on all sides by images until lost in photography. Read more... |
Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the WorldWednesday, 22 March 2017
I have always felt very lucky to have been working as an artist in London during the period when it transformed into the capital of the art world. It has been a beautiful, fascinating and profitable ride. Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Aberdeenshire Sand DunesFriday, 20 January 2017
These photographs of sand dunes were taken by Brian David Stevens in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, along a stretch of pristine Scottish coastline. The pictures themselves, while captivating and beautiful in their own right, also have political freight. For it is dunes such as these over which a long and ugly battle raged for several years. Read more... |
The Best of Frieze Masters 2016Saturday, 08 October 2016
The fifth edition of the highly popular Frieze Masters – the quieter sibling of the boisterous contemporary Frieze Art Fair London – is underway in Regent's Park, London. This year, the fair features 133 leading galleries from around the world. Read more... |
Les Rencontres d'Arles 2016Friday, 08 July 2016
Nous avons Brexité but we are still welcome at the 47th Rencontres d'Arles. Each summer this beautiful French town gives itself over to an international photography festival which this year features around 40 exhibitions of varying sizes with countless lectures, parties, book signings and fringe events. Read more... |
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Arts festivals the size of the Venice Biennale are inevitably patchy. The appointed directors are hardly ever given enough time to curate and fill absolutely vast volumes of space. They can exhort the many national and individual participants to follow their lead, and yet they have no editorial control over them. Read more... |
Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscoveredTuesday, 24 May 2016
In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met sailors entering the busy trading port of Thonis-Heracleion some 2,000 years ago. Read more... |
The Best of Photo London 2016Thursday, 19 May 2016
Asking theartsdesk's theatre photographer to review Photo London is like asking a car mechanic to review the London Motor Show. "Remember the big picture!" I kept telling myself as I tried to deconstruct the lighting of a particular shot or measure the depth of field. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
I Fagiolini, Hollingworth, St Martin-in-the-Fields review -...
“Nobody likes a Messiah…”, deadpanned Robert Hollingworth, with the timing of a practised stand-up. After a pause, “…more than I do.” At...
Music Reissues Weekly: Chelsea - The Step-Forward Years
On 21 June 1977, listeners to John Peel’s radio show heard a song titled “Pretty Vacant.” It wasn’t a preview of the forthcoming Sex Pistols...
Please Don't Destroy: Treasure of Foggy Mountain review...
Despite an ominous title, there’s always fair weather in the debut comic adventure film featuring Please Don’t Destroy, a NYC sketch...
Wonka review - a confusingly mixed bag of bonbons
As the 117 minutes of Wonka tick by, the question it poses gains momentum: who is this film actually for? Children of all ages...
Smyrna review - Greece at twilight
The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers, is a topical subject...
The Peasants review - earthbound animation
After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw that jump cuts...
Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers'...
"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face with it that we find...
Album: Samara Joy - A Joyful Holiday
This six-track EP on Verve/UMG brings the breakthrough year of 2023 for Samara Joy to a neat close. In February she won two Grammys, as Best New...
Monica review - sombre American drama
There’s a rich seam of folk stories about changelings, infants snatched from home and replaced with a substitute child, to the horror and...