Visual arts
Salvator Rosa: Bandits, Wilderness and Magic, Dulwich Picture GalleryFriday, 01 October 2010
Mount Vesuvius blew its top in 1631, spewing molten lava into the sea and filling the air with ash clouds that reached as far as Constantinople. The eruption and accompanying earthquakes killed 3,000 people and caused widespread devastation, all of... Read more... |
Gauguin: Maker of Myth, Tate ModernThursday, 30 September 2010
Gauguin has always been the poor relation in the art-legend sweepstakes. Unlike Van Gogh, there is no heartwarming story of overcoming lack of technical facility; no ghoulishly enjoyable story of genius crushed by madness. Instead, there is a... Read more... |
Von Ribbentrop in St IvesTuesday, 28 September 2010
As Tate St Ives gears itself up for a major exhibition on the iconic Cornish painter Peter Lanyon – a show that will reinforce St Ives’s claims as a modern art Mecca – the artist’s son is responding with an exhibition that gently sends up the whole... Read more... |
Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele, Royal AcademyMonday, 27 September 2010
Treasures from Budapest – phew! It’s overwhelming. One staggers out quite cross-eyed and wobbly-kneed. There are over 200 works, for heaven’s sake. And so many Virgins: sweet-faced Italian Madonnas, austere Eastern European Madonnas, pallid German... Read more... |
Sellars and Viola's Tristan und Isolde, Royal Festival HallSunday, 26 September 2010
People always overlook how much of a hippie Richard Wagner was intellectually. His philosophical stance differs little from that of Neil from The Young Ones. It's a side of Wagner you can't get away from in Tristan und Isolde, with its endless... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Monte Carlo: Nouveau Musée Nationale de MonacoSunday, 26 September 2010
Famous for its fast cars, casino, and stashing away Sir Philip Green’s gazillions, the principality of Monaco certainly isn’t a destination short on bling, nor a sense of faded, somewhat seedy glamour. So it probably isn’t high on anyone’s list for... Read more... |
Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev ExhibitionSunday, 26 September 2010
The show's curator Jane Pritchard revealed this wonderful kitchen story in a unique walk-round with theartsdesk this week. Her two-year hunt ranged from Diaghilev's passport to glorious Nijinsky costumes, from the Ballets Russes accounts book to... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Pordenone Montanari, An Italian DiscoverySunday, 26 September 2010
Our culture is hungry for stories of buried treasure, for the lost archive. So when something of startling value is brought blinking into the light after many years, it answers a romantic urge. Of course it doesn’t happen much any more, not in a... Read more... |
Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, V&AFriday, 24 September 2010
Museum shows don’t often evoke a sense of smell, but without even trying, this Ballets Russes exhibition has visitors’ nostrils flared. The show is – intentionally – a feast for the eye, and even for the ear, with ballet scores (sometimes rudely... Read more... |
The Body in Women’s Art Now: Flux, Rollo Contemporary ArtTuesday, 21 September 2010
Flux, the second in a trio of exhibitions devoted to images of women by women, immediately grabs your attention with an in-your-face animation by Swedish artist Natalie Djurberg. Clay figures enact grotesque stories that have a nasty, fairytale edge... Read more... |
Jimi Hendrix, Snap Gallery/Handel House MuseumSaturday, 18 September 2010
A soundtrack of "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe" and other eternal Jimi Hendrix hits, is currently drifting out of the Snap Gallery along the swanky Piccadilly Arcade in Mayfair. A boutique exhibition space, Snap sits incongruously amongst purveyors of "... Read more... |
Truth and Lies: Jillian Edelstein on ShowThursday, 16 September 2010
Regulars of theartsdesk will be familiar with the work of Jillian Edelstein. Her portraits of cultural figures have adorned several of our series, theartsdesk Q&A. There is now a chance to see pictures from her most celebrated collection at a... Read more... |
