Visual Arts Reviews
theartsdesk in Florence: The Springtime of the RenaissanceSunday, 31 March 2013
It’s an instinct of curators to put the pieces back together, to reintroduce works of art which time and market forces have scattered to the four winds. In recent memory, exhibitions have reunited in one space all of Monet’s haystacks, Cézanne’s card players and, in the case of the National Gallery’s momentous Leonardo show, both versions of The Virgin on the Rocks. A new exhibition opened this week in Florence which takes the business of synthesis to the next level. Read more...
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Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, British MuseumSaturday, 30 March 2013
"In the midst of life we are in death.” This is a line we may feel compelled to reverse as we encounter the first exhibits in the British Museum’s extraordinarily powerful exhibition, for this is a display vividly bringing the dead to life in the very midst of their extraordinary demise. Read more... |
Ryoji Ikeda: superposition, Barbican TheatreThursday, 28 March 2013
It’s not often that a performance’s technological properties leaves you simply slack-jawed. Robert Wilson’s very long Swedish-language version of Strindberg’s A Dream Play did – at the same venue, though this time in 2001 – when the surtitle machines broke down (the audience gave an audible gasp of horror and then settled to its collective fate), but that was for altogether different reasons. Read more... |
Moore Rodin, Henry Moore FoundationThursday, 28 March 2013
Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais have decamped from their usual perch next to the House of Lords to cosy up to the work of Henry Moore. They can be found at Moore’s home and studio at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, in a tellingly succinct anthology of the towering giants of modern European sculpture. Read more... |
What Do Artists Do All Day?, BBC FourWednesday, 20 March 2013
You might phrase the question rhetorically: “just what do artists do all day?” Or you might ask it in the spirit of genuine enquiry: after all, to many, the artist is an exotic creature whose mystery is still to be fully penetrated. Either way, it’s pretty clear that though it may not be “a proper job”, artworks don’t make themselves. Read more... |
David Bowie Is, Victoria & Albert MuseumWednesday, 20 March 2013
How much more of a melancholy experience walking round this exhibition would have been if its subject hadn’t just sprung a new album on us that’s so suffused with energy and life. It’s meant that the exhibition's title - David Bowie Is – feels like a genuine statement of fact rather than just wishful thinking, at least in the literal sense. Read more... |
Glam! The Performance of Style, Tate LiverpoolFriday, 15 March 2013
Glam. Were you there? If so, what was it all about? You might come up with a list: Roxy Music, Ziggy Stardust, shiny flares, Sweet, shaggy hair, the ubiquitous platform boot, T-Rex, glittery eye-shadow, lip-gloss pouts (on men). It was the era of dressing up and gender-bending as fashion statement, though it’s also true that the glamour in Glam Rock was more glitter paste than gold. Read more... |
George Bellows: Modern American Life, Royal AcademyWednesday, 13 March 2013
One can immediately see the influence of Manet and Whistler, especially Whistler, the fellow American who spent most of his life in Paris and London. George Bellows, the first quintessentially American artist of the 20th century, made famous in his native country painting the heaving masses of New York City and the unrestrained violence in its unlicensed boxing clubs, looked first to his European antecedents, though he never left his native shores. Read more... |
Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars, Victoria & Albert MuseumSunday, 10 March 2013
Jewels, gold, silver, arms and armour, silks, embroideries, tapestries and lace: the world of the very rich and very powerful royals – and merchants – in Russia and Britain half a millennia ago is set out in glittering array in the V&A’s latest exhibition. The English imported fabulous furs from Russia, delighting in the finest sables, but also wood, hemp and tar, the better to build British ships. Read more... |
Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration, White Cube BermondseyFriday, 08 March 2013
Chuck Close is often described as a photorealist. It’s a fair description. His paintings often look like photographs, and he came to prominence in the late Sixties, when photorealism was the rage. At first his huge heads were scaled-up painted transcriptions of black and white photos, such as Big Self-Portrait, 1968, which is the painting you’ll find in most art history accounts of the period. It captures a kind of rough diamond Easy Rider persona. Read more... |
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