Visual Arts Galleries

Art Gallery: Fourth Plinth Commission

Fisun Güner Friday, 20 August 2010

Katharina Fritsch's 'Hahn/ Cock': one of six contenders in a playful, enticing shortlist for the Fourth Plinth

A playful, subversive mood dominates the shortlist for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Most of the six proposals, in what is a very strong shortlist, play on notions of British identity, probing themes of heroism, heritage and conquest. The models, which include a cock (the winged variety), a cake and a kid on a rocking horse, were unveiled yesterday by Mayor Boris Johnson. Two winners will be selected next spring, with the first appearing on the Plinth at the end of next year. The six are:...

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Photo Gallery: A Century Apart, James Ravilious & John Wheeley Gutch

Ismene Brown Saturday, 14 August 2010

Life changes at such speed in cities that it seems as if all the world must move at the same pace. Photographs prove otherwise. Looking at the two portfolios of West Country photographs below, you could surely not readily believe that more than a century separates them.

Photo Gallery: Bolshoi Ballet class by Charlotte MacMillan

theartsdesk Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Charlotte MacMillan took these exclusive pictures last week of the Bolshoi corps de ballet in class. The pictures brought back memories of his training to English National Ballet's Kirov-trained principal dancer Dmitri Gruzdyev, as he prepares to perform Michael Corder's Cinderella at the Coliseum next month.

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Art Gallery: Terry Setch - Lavernock

Mark Hudson Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Terry Setch: The most underrated artist in Britain? Pictured: 'Viewing Lavernock Point', 2009

Terry Setch can lay claim to being the most underrated artist in Britain. Not that the Cardiff-based Londoner has been entirely neglected: acclaimed as one of Britain’s most powerful painters by his contemporary John Hoyland, he’s been garlanded with awards, granted a retrospective at The Serpentine and was recently made an RA. Yet Setch (born 1936) has still had nothing like the recognition he deserves as one of Britain’s most intelligent and inventive painters. And the crime for which he’s...

Art Gallery: Howard Hodgkin - Time and Place

Fisun Güner Thursday, 24 June 2010

Howard Hodgkin: 'The grand figure of British non-figurative painting'. Pictured: 'Dirty Weather' (2001)

Howard Hodgkin is unquestionably the grand figure of British non-figurative painting. Often compared to Matisse in his use of intense colour, he has always insisted that his paintings are not abstract. They allude, he says, to memories of people and places and states of being, so that his titles are what you would expect from a landscape artist or even, occasionally, a chronicler of modern manners: Dirty Weather, Spring Rain, Privacy and Self Expression in the Bedroom...

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Art Gallery: Ray Lowry - London Calling

howard Male Wednesday, 16 June 2010

It’s hard to believe that it’s 30 years since the release of The Clash's London Calling, an album that sounds as vital, immediate and relevant today as it did then. Yet there are probably people who remain more familiar with London Calling’s iconic cover than the music contained on the two discs of shiny black vinyl that came with it.

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Art Gallery: Rude Britannia - British Comic Art

Fisun Güner Thursday, 10 June 2010

There’s a rich vein of comic and satirical humour that runs through British art. Hogarth set the trend in the mid-1700s and heralded a golden age of graphic satirists. These included the three masters of the form: Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruickshank.

Art Gallery: Picasso Special - The Mediterranean Years

Fisun Güner Monday, 24 May 2010

The war was over, Picasso was finally free to leave the privations of Paris behind him and to spend more time in the South of France, marking a return to his Mediterranean heritage.

Photo Gallery: A Landscape of Wales

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 11 May 2010

The Welsh landscape promoted by the tourist board is a known entity. Postcard photographers patrol its contours waiting for the rains to desist and the sun to peer out so that they can snap splendid estuaries, meadowed shores patrolled by a lone diesel train, elegant county towns hibernating in the fold of a loafy hill, aqueducts and crumbling abbeys, beetling peaks and labyrinthine ravines.

Art Gallery: Maggi Hambling - Sea Sculptures and Paintings

Hilary Whitney Saturday, 01 May 2010

To accompany theartsdesk Q&A with artist Maggi Hambling by Hilary Whitney, this is a selection of pieces from two new exhibitions of her latest work opening in London and Cambridge. Maggi Hambling: New Sea Sculptures at Marlborough Fine Art coincides with The Wave, an exhibition of Hambling’s wave paintings at the Fitzwilliam Museum...