Visual arts
Manga, British Museum review - stories for outsidersThursday, 23 May 2019![]() Manga, the Japanese art of the graphic novel, took its modern form in the 1800s. Illustrated stories already had a long heritage in Japan — encompassing woodblock prints and illustrated scrolls and novels — but the introduction of the printing press... Read more... |
Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery review - naïve vulgarity and otherworldly onyxTuesday, 21 May 2019![]() There are children screaming in a nearby playground. Their voices rise and fall, swell and drop. Interspersed silences fill with the sound of running, the movement and cacophony orchestrated by a boy who leads on the catch tone. It's simultaneously... Read more... |
58th Venice Biennale review - confrontational, controversial, principledTuesday, 14 May 2019![]() There’s a barely disguised sense of threat running through the 2019 Venice Biennale. Of the 79 participating artists and groups, all are living and there’s a sharp sense that the purpose of the exhibition is to diagnose the ills afflicting the... Read more... |
Cathy Wilkes, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale review - poetic and personalTuesday, 14 May 2019![]() Dried flowers like offerings lie atop a gauze-covered rectangular frame. Pebbles surround its base alongside plaster casts, a desiccated dragonfly and an animal foot charm. Their placement is purposeful; their exact significance unclear. Four rib-... Read more... |
Fetes and Kermesses in the Time of the Brueghels, Musée de Flandre review - all the fun of the fairSaturday, 11 May 2019![]() Cassel in Flanders is surrounded by the gentle and verdant landscapes that inspired Pieter Bruegel the Elder to create the populous and festive scenes for which he is still known and loved, 450 years after his death. Now the small town is... Read more... |
Henry Moore at Houghton Hall: Nature and Inspiration review - big views bring new lightWednesday, 08 May 2019![]() Placed in a long and artfully Arcadian vista, earthy bronze subdued against verdant grass and trees, the restless form of Henry Moore’s Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut, 1979-81 (Main picture), both disrupts and is absorbed by its surroundings. A... Read more... |
Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, Design Museum review - immersive detailFriday, 03 May 2019![]() Who would have known that the word “Kubrickian” only entered the Oxford English Dictionary last year? You’d have thought that one of the great film directors of the 20th century would have earned his own epithet long ago. It’s taken a long time, too... Read more... |
First Person: Robert Hollingworth on I Fagiolini's 'Leonardo - Shaping the Invisible'Friday, 26 April 2019![]() Leonardo da Vinci died 500 years ago on 2 May this year. We all know he was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, pioneer of flight and anatomist – yet according to Vasari, Leonardo’s first job outside Florence was as a result of his musical... Read more... |
Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, National Gallery review - a national treasure comes to LondonFriday, 26 April 2019![]() The National Gallery is on a roll to expand ever further our understanding of western art, alternating blockbusters dedicated to familiar and bankable stars, with selections of work by lesser known figures from across the centuries. Last year for... Read more... |
Who’s Afraid of Drawing? Works on Paper from the Ramo Collection, Estorick Collection review - surprising and rewardingThursday, 25 April 2019![]() Paper is traditionally the medium though which artists think. Stray thoughts and experiments can be quickly tried out, pushed further or jettisoned. There are no penalties for starting something which goes wrong or transforms into something else... Read more... |
Sea Star: Sean Scully, National Gallery review - analysing past mastersTuesday, 23 April 2019![]() Either side of a doorway, framing a view of Turner’s The Evening Star, c. 1830 (Main picture), Sean Scully’s Landline Star, 2017, and Landline Pool, 2018, frankly acknowledge their roots. Abstract as they are, Scully’s horizontal bands of... Read more... |
Visions of the Self: Rembrandt and Now, Gagosian Gallery review - old master, new waysTuesday, 16 April 2019![]() What are we to make of the two circles dustily inscribed in the background of Rembrandt’s c.1665 self-portrait? In a painting that bears the fruits of a life’s experience, drawn freehand, they might be a display of artistic virtuosity, or – more... Read more... |
