Visual Arts Reviews
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarifyTuesday, 15 December 2020
Even before going to art school, Tracey Emin discovered the work of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. And even though he was born 100 years before her, she embraced him as a kindred spirit. One can see why. Read more... |
Zanele Muholi, Tate Modern review - photography as protestWednesday, 02 December 2020
Hail the Dark Lioness (Somnyama Ngonyama in Zulu) is a powerful celebration of black identity. These dramatic assertions of selfhood are more than just striking self portraits, though. Read more... |
Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, Barbican Art Gallery review - mould-breaker, ground-shakerMonday, 12 October 2020
It must be tough being Michael Clark, subject of one the largest retrospectives ever dedicated to a choreographer still living. Post-punk’s poster boy is that curious thing, a creative figurehead who defined a very particular anti-establishment strand in Britain’s recent history but who is virtually unknown to today’s under-40s. Michael who? Read more... |
Sin, National Gallery review - great subject, modest showFriday, 09 October 2020
Sin, what a wonderful theme for a show – so wonderful, in fact, that it merits a major exhibition. The National Gallery’s modest gathering of 14 pictures, mainly from the collection, can’t possibly do it justice; yet it’s worth a visit if only to remind oneself of the disastrous concept of original sin that weaves guilt into our very DNA by arguing that we are conceived in sin. Read more... |
Bruce Nauman, Tate Modern review - the human condition writ large in neonTuesday, 06 October 2020
"The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths” reads the neon sign (pictured below right) welcoming you to Bruce Nauman’s Tate Modern retrospective. The message is tongue-in-cheek, of course. How on earth could an artist cope with such a ludicrously unrealistic expectation? Read more... |
Artemisia, National Gallery review - worth the waitMonday, 05 October 2020
It takes nerve to throw a shadow across the face of your heroine, still more to banish to the margins the severed head that might so easily dominate the painting’s centre ground. Instead, in imagining the aftermath of Judith’s beheading of Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi wrings out the excruciating tension of a moment, and concentrates it in a candle flame. Read more... |
Hold Still, National Portrait Gallery review - snapshots from lockdownFriday, 25 September 2020
A digital exhibition for digital times – and just right: as a reproductive medium, photographs can work brilliantly when reproduced again. Read more... |
My Rembrandt review - hard cash and hubrisSaturday, 15 August 2020
In the gloomy splendour of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch gazes up at Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading, 1655. The painting has belonged to the Scott family for more than 250 years, and like generations before him, the duke has known it all his life. Read more... |
George IV: Art & Spectacle, The Queen's Gallery review - all is aglitterWednesday, 29 July 2020
Prince of Wales, Prince Regent, and finally King: George IV, (1762-1830) was an unpopular and greedy ruler, but his compulsive collecting and passion for redecorating have made a huge contribution to the arts of the nation, and form a significant part of the Royal Collection. Read more... |
Khadija Saye: In This Space We Breathe, 236 Westbourne Grove review - a celebrated series finds new resonanceTuesday, 21 July 2020
Khadija Saye was 24 when she died in the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, the same year that her series of photographic self-portraits showed in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: she was the youngest artist in a roster of well-established figures such as Joy Gregory and Isaac Julien. Read more... |
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