Visual arts
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, National Portrait GallerySaturday, 12 January 2013
The first thing to say about Paul Elmsley’s portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge, which was unveiled yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery, is that it looks rather better in real life than it does in reproduction. That doesn’t make it a great... Read more... |
The Riviera: A History in Pictures, BBC FourWednesday, 09 January 2013
For a man immortalised by his wails of rainy misery from the moors of Withnail and I, you would expect Richard E Grant to be very happy on the Riviera. He is, with the suave aristo manner of the Englishman abroad. Which is fitting for The Riviera: A... Read more... |
Art Rock: The best and worst songs about artistsTuesday, 08 January 2013
That ultimate art rocker David Bowie is 66 today. The Victoria & Albert Museum is opening with a major survey of Bowie the style icon this spring. What’s more, he’s just released a new single, with an album following in March. Fittingly, for an... Read more... |
Michelangelo Pistoletto: Pistoletto Politico, Luxembourg & Dayan,LondonSunday, 06 January 2013Works produced in the 60s and 70s by Michelangelo Pistoletto, a pivotal figure in the development of the Arte Povera movement in Italy. T he works addresse the radical socio-political currents that seized Italy du ring this period, from domestic... Read more... |
McCullinTuesday, 01 January 2013
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" TS Eliot’s line could well stand as an epitaph to Jacqui and David Morris’s troublingly thoughtful film about British photographer Don McCullin, whose haunting images of conflict across the world over half a... Read more... |
London 2012 and Beyond: The Best of 2012Monday, 31 December 2012
The Mayan calendar recently suggested it was all over. It is now, almost. 2012 was, by anyone’s lights, an annus mirabilis for culture on these shores. The world came to the United Kingdom, and the kingdom was indeed more or less united by a genuine... Read more... |
New Year Honours: Arts stand aside in an Olympics delugeSaturday, 29 December 2012
In among the deluge of New Year Honours poured over Olympians (headed by Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Ben Ainslie, Dame Sarah Storey and Companion of Honour Lord Coe), there is a modest sprinkling over the arts world too. Roald Dahl's illustrator... Read more... |
Art: The Best of 2012Wednesday, 26 December 2012
It was the year that everyone got just a little hysterical about Damien Hirst. That and the art market that made him. But that didn’t keep the visitors away from his retrospective at Tate Modern. The exhibition had more crowds than Wembley Stadium,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lille: Flemish Landscape Fables - Bosch, Bles, Brueghel and BrilMonday, 24 December 2012
If hell doesn’t exist for us in the 21st century, at least not in the literal rather than the Sartrean sense, than how should we read the fabulous visions of 16th-century Flemish artists such as Hieronymus Bosch? As proto-Surrealism? As the... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 5: Hunters in the SnowSunday, 23 December 2012
The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder was instrumental in developing landscape painting as a genre in its own right. Hunters in the Snow, 1565, is one of five surviving paintings (Bruegel painted six) in his cycle depicting The Labours... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 4: Mystic NativitySaturday, 22 December 2012
I’ve always loved this painting in the National Gallery by Sandro Botticelli. The jewel-like colours and exquisite clarity of detail create a consoling sense of lucidity, as though everything has been revealed to be alright.The reason for this... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 3: Snow Falling in the LaneFriday, 21 December 2012
Christmas might not seem the most appropriate time to ask you, dear reader, if you’ve ever suffered a nervous breakdown. Yet for many this festival of conviviality amid the darkest hours of the year exacerbates a sense of loneliness and desperation... Read more... |
