Visual Arts Reviews

Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915-1935, Royal Academy

Judith Flanders Wednesday, 26 October 2011

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so ambivalent about a show, and so strongly both pro and con. The pros first, then. This is an astonishing, revelatory exhibition of avant-garde art and architecture in the Soviet Union in the brief but hectic period from the Revolution to the Stalinist crackdown in the 1930s.

Comment

Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 25 October 2011

The home, and women’s place within it, gained considerable importance for artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Nicholaes Maes and Gerrit Dou are among those who placed women at the centre of the well-ordered domestic realm. They featured as servants and mistresses, nursing mothers and coquettish girls, or as serious young women dedicated to the pursuits of home-making and suitable leisure.

I Never Tell Anybody Anything: The Life and Art of Edward Burra, BBC Four

howard Male Tuesday, 25 October 2011

What a relief: Andrew Graham-Dixon got the job of presenting this documentary on one of my favourite British 20th-century artists. If it had been Waldemar Januszczak (sometimes interesting but too gimmick-laden and shouty) or Matthew Collings (sometimes interesting but too fond of the catchy sweeping statement) I would have thought twice about tuning in. But Graham-Dixon understands that the art documentary is not about him, it’s about the artist.

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Turner Prize 2011, Baltic, Gateshead

Fisun Güner Friday, 21 October 2011

The Turner Prize has headed to the North East. It’ll be back in London next year, thence to Derry for 2013. Tate Britain plan to host the prize biennially, with a regional public gallery presenting it in the years in-between. This must be hailed as good news for those who complain of London-centricity.

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Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin, Imperial War Museum

Marina Vaizey Monday, 17 October 2011

Armed American soldiers stand in the stone window frames of a ruined building in Berlin, curious and disturbing echoes of those classical statues that so often were used to add portentous significance to a facade; but here in a 1961 photograph by Don McCullin, they are overlooking, with some intensity, the East German military on the other side. The Wall has just been built.

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Frieze Art Fair 2011: Emotion under the Irony

Josh Spero Thursday, 13 October 2011

Every year the art lovers of the world assemble in London and burn themselves out during Frieze Week - the fairs, the galleries, the parties - and (if they're anything like me) they vow to take it a bit easier next year. It never happens. The entire art ecology of London takes its cue from the Frieze Art Fair: if you're going to launch something, you may as well do it now, when all the major collectors are in town.

Tacita Dean, FILM, Tate Modern

Sarah Kent Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Tate Modern’s lofty Turbine Hall is dominated by a giant CinemaScope screen flipped on its side so it becomes 42ft high and resembles a lift shaft or cathedral window. Instead of angels, saints or sinners, though, the starring role in Tacita Dean’s FILM is given to the building’s east window – the one hidden behind the huge screen. One of the main subjects of the film, then, is the very spot where you are standing – where much of the film was shot.

Anri Sala, Serpentine Gallery

Sarah Kent Sunday, 09 October 2011

A single snare drum greets you on entry to the Serpentine Gallery; there’s no one playing it, yet in response to an inaudible cue, the drumsticks begin to vibrate autonomously. Meanwhile on a nearby wall, a pair of blue rubber gloves revolves slowly as if searching for something; every now and then they take on the shape of human hands, as though embodying the gestures of the absent drummer.

Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum

Mark Hudson Saturday, 08 October 2011

You might think that a sharp-talking, cross-dressing potter-artist with a teddy bear obsession would present a challenge to the British public. Not a bit of it. Grayson Perry is music hall, he’s pantomime – there’s even a touch of Brideshead in the teddy bear thing.

Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Modern

Fisun Güner Friday, 07 October 2011

In recent years it seems we have seen an awful lot of Gerhard Richter. There have been three major exhibitions in London well within the last seven or eight years. One is hardly complaining, since there is always a demand to see “the world’s most influential living painter”, as he is often claimed to be (and not without some reason).