Visual arts
Modigliani, Tate Modern review - the pitfalls of excessFriday, 24 November 2017
Modigliani was an addict. Booze, fags, absinthe, hash, cocaine, women. He lived fast, died young, cherished an idea of what an artist should be and pursued it to his death. His nickname, Modi, played on the idea of the artiste maudit – the... Read more... |
The Machines of Steven Pippin, The Edge, University of Bath review - technology as poetryWednesday, 22 November 2017
Our universe seems to be in a state of equilibrium, neither collapsing in on itself nor expanding ad infinitum. The metaphor used by physicists to represent the delicate balance of forces needed to maintain this happy state of affairs is a pencil... Read more... |
Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland review, National Gallery - light-filled northern vistasSaturday, 18 November 2017
Finland is celebrating its centenary this year and the National Gallery's exhibition of four paintings by Akseli Gallen-Kalela (1865-1931) of a very large lake in central Finland is a beguiling glimpse of the passion its inhabitants attach to its... Read more... |
Highlights from the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 - raw emotion, not always humanThursday, 16 November 2017
What does it take to be included in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition? This year 2,423 photographers entered 5,717 images: 2,373 of those photographers are left wondering what it takes to make the grade. Remarks from the... Read more... |
The Most Expensive Paintings Ever SoldThursday, 16 November 2017
Yesterday the record for the most expensive painting ever sold was broken. At Christie's in New York Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi the hammer was knocked down on a price of $450 million. It's a lot of money, period, and even more for a painting... Read more... |
Out from the Darkness: painting out prisonMonday, 13 November 2017
When I was sent to an adult high security prison aged 14 all the normal colour, shapes and movement that I saw around me each and every day as a child disappeared. It wasn’t there. Prison does that; it’s all straight lines, hard on the eye, hard to... Read more... |
Red Star Over Russia, Tate Modern review – fascinating history in a nutshellWednesday, 08 November 2017
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s Tate Modern exhibition features an installation made in 1985 of a Moscow bedsit, its walls lined with political posters. There’s a gaping hole in the ceiling made when the occupant apparently catapulted himself through the... Read more... |
Impressionists in London, Tate Britain review - from the stodgy to the sublimeTuesday, 07 November 2017
Jules Dalou, Edouard Lantéri, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Charles-François Daubigny, Alphonse Legros, Giuseppe de Nittis? Perhaps not household-name Impressionists, but the subtitle of Tate Britain's exhibition, French Artists in Exile 1870-1904, makes... Read more... |
ArtReview Power 100 - an artist tops the listFriday, 03 November 2017
Annual lists of the richest, the most powerful, the movers and shakers, have an awful fascination: like gossip, we like to look and comment while feeling slightly morally compromised. But they also have a function as a snapshot of where we are at.... Read more... |
Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11, Imperial War Museum review - affecting but incoherentWednesday, 01 November 2017
The Imperial War Museum’s Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 brings together art made in response to the immediate events and long-term consequences of the events of 11 September. In the main the exhibition is more historical survey of conflict-related... Read more... |
Monochrome, National Gallery review - colourless but not drearyTuesday, 31 October 2017
Might a painting ever achieve the veracity of a sculpture, a "real" object in space that we can walk around and view from every angle? Could the documentary quality of an engraving ever be equalled by a painting? And how could painting respond to... Read more... |
Cézanne Portraits, National Portrait Gallery review - eye-opening and heart-breakingMonday, 30 October 2017
Some 50 portraits by Paul Cézanne – almost a third of all those the artist painted that have survived – are on view in this quietly sensational exhibition. Eye-opening and heart-breaking, it examines his art exclusively in the context of his... Read more... |
