sun 17/08/2025

Visual arts

Cornelia Parker, Frith Street Gallery

Cornelia Parker came to prominence with various acts of destruction/resurrection. Some of the most famous examples include a blown-up garden shed in Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991, the charred remains of churches in Mass (Colder Darker...

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William Scott, Hepworth Wakefield

It’s the centenary of the birth of William Scott, once considered to be in the pantheon of British postwar artists. But where’s the hoopla and fanfare? Like so many British painters who had their glory years in the Fifties – before the explosion of...

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Patrick Caulfield/Gary Hume, Tate Britain

Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005) is the greatest late 20th-century British painter the international art world has never heard of. This quietly magnificent exhibition of about 35 paintings, most of them very large, may at last bring about a...

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Birth of a Collection: The Barber Institute, National Gallery

Lady Barber (1869-1933) née Hattie Onions, had her portrait painted in sumptuous style about 30 times, mostly in a sub-Orpen vein, and almost all by the unknown Belgian Nestor Cambier. But that was the very least of her occupations. Her husband, the...

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Master Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Michelangelo evidently regarded drawing as the foundation of not only painting and sculpture but  of “architecture and of every other kind of painting and the root of all science”. His all-encompassing claim is subtly demonstrated in this...

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Helen Chadwick, Richard Saltoun

It's 17 years since Helen Chadwick died without warning of heart failure at the tragically early age of 42 and nine years since the Barbican staged a retrospective of her work. Time, then, for a reappraisal and this small but beautifully presented...

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10 Questions for Artist Michael Landy

Much of Michael Landy’s work concerns destruction or decay. The British artist, who recently turned 50 and is part of the YBA generation, came to prominence in 2001 with the Artangel commission Break Down, which saw all his worldly possessions...

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The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four

You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the years following his death in 1969. "Destroy, destruct, separate, divide,” was the emphatic double-phrased imperative with which...

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theartsdesk in Warsaw: A New Jewish Museum

The Ghetto Heroes Square in the Muranow district of Warsaw is a bleak place surrounded by drab apartment blocks. But at its centre there’s now a new building that attracted over 15,000 visitors in the first two days of its opening on 20 and 21 April...

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Mariele Neudecker, Regency Town House, Brighton

Mariele Neudecker is the lead artist of this year’s HOUSE, a festival for the visual arts which is now in its sixth year and which runs parallel with the Brighton Festival. She's a fitting choice: an immersive exhibition in a beautiful wreck of a...

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Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, British Library

Every time you turn a corner, he’s there, on yet another monitor. Either the exhibition curators have a sense of humour, or Alastair Campbell really is the last word on propaganda, a subject about which the British Library has mounted an excellent...

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Michael Landy: Saints Alive, National Gallery

A series of large-scale kinetic sculptures that bring a contemp orary twist to the lives of the saints. The work is a culmination of the ar tist's two-year residency with the gallery. Until 24 November http://bit .ly/RzX2KZ

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