Visual arts
Art Night LondonMonday, 04 July 2016
Just a few hours earlier, as helicopters clattered overhead and thousands joined the good-humoured but impassioned March for Europe, an evening of contemporary art felt like the last thing anyone needed. On this day of all days, launching an art... Read more... |
David Hockney RA: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life, Royal AcademyFriday, 01 July 2016
The opening image of this new David Hockney exhibition – a sketchily painted portrait of a seated man, slumping heavily forward, his head buried in his hands – could be a portrait of Brexit despair. In fact it is Hockney’s portrait of his close... Read more... |
Painters' Paintings, National GallerySunday, 26 June 2016
The huge and gorgeous Titian, The Vendramin Family, c.1540-c.1560, displays a frieze of males of all ages, three or four generations – and an adorable lap dog held close by the youngest boy – in marvellously sumptuous costume. The painting is... Read more... |
The Switch House, Tate ModernFriday, 17 June 2016
Here comes the Switch House. The 10-story new build attached to the Gilbert Scott Bankside power station that was the first instalment of Tate Modern in 2000 opened to the public this weekend. Tate Modern’s expansion became almost a necessity as the... Read more... |
Alex Katz, Serpentine GallerySaturday, 11 June 2016
Black Brook, 2014, is sublime. Two bands of acid-green grass frame a horizontal band of deep-violet water that appears to have hidden depths. Dotted randomly over the darkness are clusters of light blobs; they could be floating leaves or reflections... Read more... |
Whitstable Biennale 2016Thursday, 09 June 2016
As if to signal a coming of age, this year's Whitstable Biennale has a theme: The Faraway Nearby. And so for the first time artists have a guiding idea with which to post-rationalise their work. Until now, the 10-day festival of visual art has... Read more... |
Yayoi Kusama, Victoria MiroTuesday, 07 June 2016
Pure euphoria! The lady, a mere 87, her stature diminutive, her hair and lipstick a blazing scarlet, is a painter, but also a draughtsman, a sculptor, a creator of environments and installations, a performer, a designer of objects and clothing (... Read more... |
Found, The Foundling MuseumFriday, 03 June 2016
Cornelia Parker invited over 60 fellow artists to join her in exhibiting at the Foundling Museum in London. Titled Found, the show spills out from the basement gallery to infiltrate every room in the building and remind us that, when the Foundling... Read more... |
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Arts festivals the size of the Venice Biennale are inevitably patchy. The appointed directors are hardly ever given enough time to curate and fill absolutely vast volumes of space. They can exhort the many national and individual participants to... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: The School of Paris at the Guggenheim MuseumSunday, 29 May 2016
Painted during his first trip to Paris in 1900, Picasso’s Le Moulin de la Galette is an outsider’s view of an exotic and intimidating new world. Men and women are seen as if through some strange distorting lens, their blurred, mask-like faces... Read more... |
10 Questions for Photographer Tanya HabjouqaFriday, 27 May 2016
Tanya Habjouqa, winner of the World Press Photo Award 2014, is a founding member of the all-female Middle Eastern photography collective Rawiya (meaning “she who tells a story”) which focuses on raising the visibility of female Arab photographers as... Read more... |
Jeff Koons: Now, Newport Street GalleryThursday, 26 May 2016
The second exhibition staged by Damien Hirst in his stunning Newport Street Gallery is of work from his collection by the American artist, Jeff Koons. Hirst was still a student at Goldsmiths when, in 1987, Charles Saatchi showed Koons and other... Read more... |
