Visual Arts Reviews
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 historical influences from Surrealism and Dada straight through to stark 1960s Minimalism. Tanning made this piece in 2005, when she was well into her nineties, and it’s a delightful example of her late work. 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 race horse breeder and art obsessed Sterling Clark – the fortune inherited from his grandfather’s involvement with the Singer Sewing Machine company - and his French actress wife Francine. Read more... |
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is PresentSaturday, 30 June 2012
For three months in the spring of 2010, New Yorkers were gripped by Abramovic fever. The mania owed its origins to a somewhat unlikely source – a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) of a 63-year-old Serbian performance artist. Read more... |
Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye, Tate ModernWednesday, 27 June 2012
Edvard Munch strikes a heroic pose. Buck naked, he’s pointing a sword at the sky – or perhaps that’s just a stick he’s picked up in the garden, where he’s surrounded by dense greenery as he stands with his arm raised in a taut diagonal. Perhaps he is dreaming of Gram, the Norse Excalibur, and himself as Sigurd. Read more... |
Andy Warhol: The Portfolios, Dulwich Picture GalleryMonday, 25 June 2012
The first room of Andy Warhol: The Portfolios at Dulwich Picture Gallery made me regret coming. The second room made me never want to leave. The first has 10 of the Flowers and 10 of the Campbell's Soup Cans, four weedy sunsets and one Marilyn in pink, purple and brown - hardly any nourishment, certainly nothing fresh. Read more... |
Yoko Ono: To The Light, Serpentine GalleryThursday, 21 June 2012
The Eurozone is in crisis and the American economy stagnating; Syria is self-destructing, the Arab Spring has stalled and climate change threatens the whole planet, yet Yoko Ono believes that “the world, now, is really turning towards the light”. Read more... |
Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings, Courtauld GalleryWednesday, 20 June 2012
They’re all here - well, most of them - the superstars of official art history. You would never get all these artists in one show if it were a painting exhibition, and it’s thrilling to see them cheek-by-jowl on the gallery walls. Drawing is widely seen as a secondary art, relegated to preparation and research for bigger works. So, of course, the majority of works in the show are studies for bigger projects from paintings to architecture. Read more... |
Into Orbit: The Culture Show Special, BBC TwoSunday, 17 June 2012
What a mismatch of ambitions was unearthed in this Culture Show special on the ArcelorMittal Orbit. Boris Johnson admitted that he’d wanted slides on it, joking heartily that “there’s nothing too vulgar for me”, whilst Anish Kapoor wished for it to be “up there with the gods”, and mused that it had moments that were meditative and contemplative. Read more... |
Invisible: Art About the Unseen, 1957-2012, Hayward GalleryWednesday, 13 June 2012
In May 1958, Yves Klein invited the Parisian art world to the Galerie Iris Clert for the opening of his latest exhibition, which was entitled The Specialisation of the Sensibility in the Raw Material State of Stabilised Pictorial Sensibility. Driven by ample press coverage, large crowds eagerly awaited the unveiling of the artist’s latest creation, only to be met with nothing. Read more... |
All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, Channel 4Wednesday, 06 June 2012
Taste and class – there’s really no separating them. Read more... |
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