Visual Arts Reviews
Anthony Caro: The Last Sculptures, Annely JudaMonday, 22 September 2014
Late Titian, Late Rembrandt, Late Picasso, Late Matisse…. What is it with Late that seems to give some artists a Golden Age irradiated by a kind of sublime carelessness, a genuine sense of anything goes? A life spent learning means that in the end it might be worn lightly and the imagination set free. Of course, such a sublime coda is not given to all, as many an artist descends into self-parody, rather than ascending into a kind of upward free-fall. Read more... |
The Real Tudors, National Portrait GalleryFriday, 19 September 2014
For all the political hurly burly, social change and religious upheaval of the Tudor period and the intriguing personal histories of its monarchs, it is surely the portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I that have done most to secure the Tudors in popular imagination. Read more... |
Jasper Johns: Regrets, Courtauld GalleryThursday, 18 September 2014
In your ninth decade it may not come as a surprise to find death staring you in the face. But it might be unnerving if you’re an artist and a menacing “death's head” skull emerges, quite unexpectedly, in an image you’ve been staring at and working from with close scrutiny for weeks and months. You might even take it, if so inclined, as a sign – if only as a sign that chance works in mysterious ways. Read more... |
Francesca Woodman: Zigzag, Victoria MiroMonday, 15 September 2014
Francesca Woodman killed herself at the age of 22, the biographical fact that colours her work and which it is de riguer to mention. She left behind paintings, it is said, as yet publicly unseen, and literally hundreds upon hundreds of negatives and 800 proofs of black and white pre-digital photography. Read more... |
British Art at War: Bomberg, Sickert and Nash, BBC FourSunday, 14 September 2014
At the end of this absorbing documentary about the art – and life – of Paul Nash we visited his tombstone in a Buckinghamshire churchyard, accompanying writer and presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon as he laid sunflowers on the grave. He reminded us that Nash saw the sunflower as a symbol for the soul, turning to the sun; indeed one of his last paintings was “Solstice of the Sunflower”. Read more... |
Late Turner: Painting Set Free, Tate BritainFriday, 12 September 2014
There is early Turner; there is late Turner. Early Turner is very much of his time: a history and landscape painter in the first half of the 19th century, looking back to the classicism of Claude and the Dutch Golden Age tradition of sombre marine painting; late Turner is outside time, or at least outside his own time. In his final decade, Turner paints his way to the future, gravitating towards formlessness and abstraction. Read more... |
The Rules of Abstraction with Matthew Collings, BBC FourTuesday, 09 September 2014
Artist and critic Matthew Collings purported to set out the rules of abstraction through taking the viewer on a very bumpy ride through 20th century painting, with a nod to Cézanne to get us started. Read more... |
Constable: A Country Rebel, BBC FourSunday, 07 September 2014
Presenter Alastair Sooke looked alarmingly fit, careering round the British countryside and the streets of Paris on his bicycle, talking all the while (and never out of breath) as he described the artistic trajectory of John Constable. Read more... |
Horst: Photographer of Style, Victoria & Albert MuseumFriday, 05 September 2014
If events in the Middle East, the prospect of the school run or the onset of autumn are conspiring to lower your spirits, then escape to the V&A and immerse yourself in the dreamy elegance of Horst P. Horst’s magical fashion photographs spanning a career that lasted 60 years. Read more... |
Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities, BBC FourThursday, 21 August 2014
Eight seconds in and my toes were already curling. Perhaps it was the authority with which the voiceover delivered some juicy clunkers. “If you wanted to be an artist in 1908, Vienna is where you’d come to make your name,” it intoned. Wow, who’d bother with Paris, eh? Picasso, you idiot, messing about with Cubism in a Montmartre hovel when you could have been sticking gold leaf on your decorative canvases, à la Klimt. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
theartsdesk Q&A: director Jacques Audiard on his Mexican...
Jacques Audiard – creator of such subversive crime dramas and alternative romances as Read My Lips (2001), The Beat That My Heart...
The Wild Duck, The Norwegian Ibsen Company, Coronet Theatre...
“I think this is all very strange,” declares 14-year-old Hedvig Ekdal at the end of The Wild Duck’s third act, just as everything is...
Albert Herring, Scottish Opera review - fun, frivolity, and...
Having premiered at the Lammermuir Festival earlier this year, Daisy Evans’s new production of...
Album: Underworld - Strawberry Hotel
Purveyors of extraordinary energy and euphoria, Underworld never miss a beat. The new album – 30 years on from their debut, and their...
London Film Festival 2024 - Angelina Jolie does Maria Callas
Maria
How do you solve a problem like Maria?...
Encounters, Royal Ballet review - exciting mixed bill with a...
In 2022, the American choreographer Pam Tanowitz made a duet on...
Emilia Perez review - Audiard's beguiling musical tribu...
A Mexican drugs cartel boss. A transitioning man. A strikingly beautiful woman lawyer risking all against corruption. Bittersweet songs...
First Person: Bob Riley on Manchester Camerata's champi...
In May, it was announced that Greater Manchester was to...
Dahomey review - return of the king
Mati Diop’s “speculative documentary” reverses the transatlantic journey of her feature debut Atlantics’ ghost Senegalese migrants, as...