Visual Arts Reviews
Hernan Bas: Memphis Living, Victoria MiroMonday, 12 May 2014
At the core of Memphis Living by Hernan Bas are five large paintings of equal size that could be blown-up spreads from a fashion magazine. Each features a modellish young man surrounded by statement architecture, iconic design and lush vegetation. But in the way their backgrounds tend toward abstraction, Bas confuses the viewer and confounds the lifestyle imagery. Read more... |
Building the Picture, National GalleryWednesday, 07 May 2014
Viewed through an arch designed to evoke a dimly lit chapel, Lorenzo Costa and Gianfrancesco Maineri’s The Virgin and Child with Saints, 1498-1500, is strikingly legible (pictured below right). The Virgin sits on a marble throne beneath a richly decorated arch, the throne’s fictive architecture covered with panels depicting Biblical scenes, the infant Christ standing precariously on his mother’s knee. Read more... |
Body & Void: Echoes of Moore in Contemporary Sculpture, Henry Moore FoundationSunday, 04 May 2014
The lawns, fields, meadows and sheds of the Henry Moore Foundation themselves exemplify the notion of in-and-out, exterior-interior and are thus the ideal setting for exploring the notion of body and void in Moore’s work and the way it is echoed in the sculpture of succeeding generations. Read more... |
Julian Schnabel: Every Angel has a Dark Side, Dairy Art CentreSaturday, 26 April 2014
“Occasionally, but rarely, great imaginative leaps take place in the progression of art that seem to have come from nowhere. This can be said of Julian Schnabel….In these early paintings Schnabel worked with materials on surfaces that had never been used before....The sheer originality of Schnabel’s vision struck the art world explosively.” Read more... |
Chris Marker: A Grin Without A Cat, Whitechapel GallerySunday, 20 April 2014
If you’re not already familiar with at least some aspects of Chris Marker’s work, this exhibition will feel overwhelming, if not confusing. You may have to pay a second visit to get the most out of it, or even make sense of it. It’s certainly a demanding retrospective of the influential French filmmaker, and an immersive "surround-screen" gallery survey probably isn’t the best introduction. Read more... |
Deutsche Börse Prize 2014, Photographers' GalleryThursday, 17 April 2014
Not so long ago, photographers were rejoicing in the freedom the digital revolution seemed to bring; unencumbered by the limitations of film, paper and darkroom practice, photography was suddenly liberated from the niggling pedantry of material constraints. Read more... |
Matisse: The Cut-Outs, Tate ModernTuesday, 15 April 2014
When it comes to the two vying giants of 20th century art we do – don’t we? – all fall into that cliché of two opposing camps. You have the seductions of colour and decorative form on the one hand and you have the more classical rigours of line on the other, the one exemplified by Matisse, the other by Picasso. It’s not an absolute demarcation – a line that’s never blurred (and Matisse had, of course, a very elegant line); just a profound difference in emphasis and sensibility. Read more... |
I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart, De La Warr PavilionFriday, 04 April 2014
Given the kooky title of a new painting show at De La Warr Pavilion, it seems necessary to point out, yet again, that painting isn’t dead. The line is from poet A.E Housman, who wrote a versified dialogue between a dead man and his living friend. So while certain painters may be dead, contemporaries can talk to them. And that’s what 21 painters line up to do in this new, undogmatic survey on the South Coast. Rest assured, the conversation is breezy. Read more... |
Phyllida Barlow: Dock, Tate BritainWednesday, 02 April 2014
The revamping of Tate Britain has produced such an atmosphere of understated elegance that one hardly dares breathe for fear of displacing a particle of dust. An air of suffocating sterility has seeped into the displays, which are so tastefully arranged that even the most passionate works are drained of emotion; and without a ripple of feeling ruffling the exquisite calm of these genteel waters, British art appears unrelentingly polite – and provincial. Read more... |
Miroslaw Balka, White Cube/ Freud MuseumMonday, 31 March 2014
Perhaps my big mistake was to read the exhibition blurb before going in: as someone who worries about dark, confined spaces, I was anticipating Miroslaw Balka’s new installation with a perverse sort of excitement. Certainly, for anyone who enjoys a dose of controlled terror Above your head sounds promising, with White Cube’s basement gallery supposedly transformed into a “large cage” and the ceiling lowered to a claustrophobic two metres. Read more... |
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