sun 07/09/2025

Visual Arts Features

Gallery: Derwent Art Prize

Fisun Güner

You can use a computer to draw, as Hockney does, every day on his iPad, yet, despite all the technological advances the 21st century has thrown our way, the pencil continues to be the artist’s most basic tool.

Read more...

theartsdesk in Australia: The oldest civilisation on show

Jeremy Eccles

London is by now festooned with images showing the back-end of a horse surmounted by a black figure holding a gun across his chest. The man's head is a square black mask – a rectangular slit in it fails to reveal the expected eyes, instead taking us straight through to the clouds and sky.

Read more...

theartsdesk in the Hamptons: The $26 Million Barn

Markie Robson-Scott

There’s never a good day for traffic in the Hamptons, and a Friday in August takes the biscuit. The Montauk Highway, also known as Route 27, was bumper to bumper on the way to the Parrish Art Museum, recently relocated from nearby Southampton village to an exciting new building in the Watermill area.

Read more...

Opinion: Let's put a brake on this facile culture of 'celebration'

Fisun Güner

What happens when art is everywhere? Does it become wallpaper? Visual white noise?

Read more...

theartsdesk in Mozambique: Maputo Stories

Thembi Mutch

The capital of Mozambique pulls no punches. Parked at the old airport among sheaves of wild grass are old MiG fighter planes, as sculpturally beautiful as the massive monument made from decommissioned weapons a few hundred metres away. The new airport, a multi-million pound effort completed last year with significant Chinese help, has Dom Perignon champagne for $230 a bottle. That’s twice the national annual wage. 

Read more...

Art: theartsdesk at Manchester International Festival 2013

Fisun Güner

I’m watching someone with a mic pacing the linking bridge on the second floor of the Arndale Shopping Centre. He’s repeating the same phrase over and over again, which he’ll do for the next 20 or so minutes. “We’re souls refreshed,” I think it is. Nearby, sitting cross-legged, Lotus fashion, is a girl who, like the man with the mic, is wearing white cotton gloves.  In front of her are three stones, painted white, on a white handkerchief, and two hymnals.

Read more...

theartsdesk in Copenhagen: Degas' Method, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Fisun Güner

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is famous for its collection of antiquities: Egyptian carvings, Greek statues and Roman sculpture form the heart of its collection. Indeed, its collection of Roman portrait busts are among the finest in the world. But the 19th century also has a strong sculptural presence.

Read more...

theartsdesk in Istanbul: Art pours out of Gezi Park

Sebastian Merrick

I can’t wait to check out Istanbul’s galleries in a couple of years. Already endowed with an exploding arts and design scene, with Istanbul Modern in its unique location hanging over the Bosphorus, the retrospectively-looking Santral half integrated into an Ottoman power plant, and the area around Tophane sprouting art boutiques and design outlets like nobody’s business, its creative output has just been given a huge boost.

Read more...

theartsdesk in Warsaw: A New Jewish Museum

Simon Broughton

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, the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. It’s particularly remarkable as the building doesn’t yet have any exhibits on show.

Read more...

theartsdesk in Prague: Two Faces of Mucha

Simon Broughton

The work of Alphons Mucha (1860-1939) is immediately identifiable with its decorative flowers, delicate colours and wide-eyed women staring seductively at the viewer. He was one of the pioneers of art nouveau and the art of advertising. In Prague an exhibition recently opened which is packing them in at the glorious art nouveau Obecni Dům (Municipal House) in the centre of the city.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spirituality

At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before...

Music Reissues Weekly: Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Ye...

Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release...

I Fought the Law, ITVX review - how an 800-year-old law was...

ITV continues its passion for docudramas about injustice, which you can’t...

theartsdesk at the Lahti Sibelius Festival - early epics by...

It’s weird, if wonderful, that vibrant young composers at the end of the 19th century should have featured death so prominently in their hero-...

Deaf Republic, Royal Court review - beautiful images, shame...

The Ukraine war is not the only place of horror in the world, but it does present a challenge to theatre makers who want to respond to events that...

Album: Josh Ritter - I Believe in You, My Honeydew

Americana rocker Josh Ritter can write a beautiful song....

Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, Underbelly Boulevard Soho revie...

Laura Benanti has been enchanting Broadway audiences for several decades now, and London has this week been let in on the secret that recently...

Waley-Cohen, Manchester Camerata, Pether, Whitworth Art Gall...

Manchester Camerata is enhancing its reputation for pioneering with three performances featuring Nick Martin’s new Violin Concerto, which it has...