Visual arts
Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980, Tate BritainMonday, 30 July 2012
Unadulterated happiness: swinging on the wheel, high above the ground, at the fair on Hampstead Heath in 1949, in Wolf Suschitzky’s photograph that effortlessly conveys that sense of moving at ease through the sky. Fourteen years earlier the... Read more... |
Gallery: Collecting the Olympic Games, British LibraryThursday, 26 July 2012
As London 2012 finally settles into the blocks for its two-week dash after seven years of preparation, the British Library has cast a nostalgic look back to the two previous Olympiads hosted by the city, in 1908 and 1948. The story the images tell... Read more... |
The History of Art in Three Colours, BBC FourThursday, 26 July 2012
It’s a patchy history, the history of art told through the colour gold, though I suppose it would be. After all, despite the title of this new three-part series, we’re not actually talking about gold as colour, that seductively warm, buttery yellow... Read more... |
Tino Seghal: These Associations, Tate ModernWednesday, 25 July 2012
Tino Seghal’s Turbine Hall commission makes me wonder about fellow art critics. Do they not get out enough? I’m struck by how easily seduced they are by brief encounters with live, interactive artworks, as if spending so much time looking at... Read more... |
Shakespeare: Staging the World, British MuseumSaturday, 21 July 2012
Where on earth do you begin if all the world’s a stage? When not sifting through the entrails of dynastic English history or sunning themselves in Italy, the plays of Shakespeare really do put a girdle round the known globe. They send postcards from... Read more... |
Art in Action, The Tanks, Tate ModernWednesday, 18 July 2012
You now have two choices when you roll down to the bottom of the Turbine Hall's slope. You can go left to the established Tate Modern collection of paintings and sculptures in white boxes, or right to a warren of performance and video art that fills... Read more... |
Pertaining to Things Natural: Contemporary Sculpture, Chelsea Physic GardenTuesday, 17 July 2012
There is a growing fashion for new public sculpture and anthologies of contemporary sculpture outdoors, inspiring various polemics for and against. Kew Gardens has been at it for nearly a decade: there was a triumphant Henry Moore show several years... Read more... |
Jenny Saville, Modern Art Oxford and Ashmolean MuseumSunday, 15 July 2012
Jenny Saville rose to art stardom under the patronage of Charles Saatchi. Fresh out of art school, she was contracted to produce work that would then be shown in his gallery. The Royal Academy’s Sensation exhibition in 1997 followed, and she became... Read more... |
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, National GalleryThursday, 12 July 2012
Three paintings by Titian depicting stories from Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses welcome you to the National Gallery’s exhibition Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. Diana and Callisto shows Diana casting out the pregnant nymph Callisto from her company. Diana... Read more... |
Stonehenge Fire Garden, Salisbury PlainWednesday, 11 July 2012
Stonehenge, the monumental mystery of Britain’s past, decked out like a laundry yard with drying white vests and flowerpots scattered among its gigantic monoliths. It makes a most disconcerting image, and it is the precursive tableau that the public... Read more... |
Dorothea Tanning: Collages, Alison Jacques GalleryMonday, 09 July 2012
In Dorothea Tanning's Victory, a piece of charred toast is mounted on a black background and framed in gold. The work comes dangerously close to pure jest but instead propels itself into a critique of female domesticity and then down a road of... Read more... |
From Paris: A Taste for Impressionism, Royal AcademyFriday, 06 July 2012
As the clouds continue and the rain pours down, the Sackler Gallery at the Royal Academy is filled with sun-dappled scenes from France. The anthology is a potpourri of paintings culled from the remarkable collections put together by the millionaire... Read more... |
