The presentation of work by Yves Klein in the staterooms of Blenheim Palace, the stateliest of all Britain’s stately homes, is part of a growing trend. The show follows hot on the heels of the Damien Hirst show, currently on view at Houghton Hall, another legendary stately.
23 July 2018
Sacred Noise explores themes of religion, faith and divinity in post-war and contemporary art through 30 works shown at Christie’s
22 July 2018
Roderic O’Conor is very much someone who was historically in the right place at the right time.
18 July 2018
Charlie Smith London has long been one of the most reliable innovative galleries in Shoreditch.
17 July 2018
A fascinating visit to Trieste, for the opening of a show by Olga Tobreluts, an artist whom I’ve known personally since the fairly early 1990s – that is, since just after the Soviet Union fell apart.
15 July 2018
The appearance of a new Banksy in London can create quite a media frenzy.
11 July 2018
Hanne Kemfor has hung a few of her scribed, rubbed, trailed, scratched, brushed, gestured surfaces in the foyer of the Barbican Library.
10 July 2018
As the London art world heads towards its customary deep summer hiatus, various exhibitions manifest themselves that might not perhaps attract attention at a less competitive time.
4 July 2018
Such a simple idea, yet one which combines prophecy and emotive impact as it speaks truth to power – Sam Ivin physically scratches portraits of asylum seekers erasing their eyes in order to convey the frustration engendered by the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants
2 July 2018
When I first heard that the National Portrait Gallery here in London was planning to do an exhibition about Michael Jackson, the very famous but ultimately doomed African American pop star,
28 June 2018
World War 1, was one of the bloodiest wars in all history, with a total of 41 million dead. The UK suffered over a million deaths with nearly 2 million injured. With 6% of the population affected, almost every street in Britain knew blood, gore, grief and loss.
27 June 2018
What is a mastaba? Some dictionaries will tell you that the word means a bench, but more usually it’s a term used to describe an early Ancient Egyptian form of grave monument. A type that was in use even before they began to build the pyramids.
21 June 2018
Though we have plenty of experience of and access to American art here in Britain, this means chiefly American art from the 20th century.
20 June 2018
The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary, and celebrated stained glass artist Brian Clarke can remember when the centre was merely a sketch on the back of a napkin.
19 June 2018
Frida Kahlo’s life is so interwoven with her art that there is little separation. Her biography is well-known, and so is her image. The brightly dressed artist in traditional Mexican clothes with her prominent monobrow. The pain and suffering she endured first through childhood polio and subsequently through a tram crash are well documented.
18 June 2018
Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery has a new show entitled True Colours.
13 June 2018
The R.A.’s celebration of its 250th-anniversary show has met with hosannas in the press, with maybe the loudest of all coming from those who see themselves as the declared foes and detractors of anything remotely conservative looking in the visual arts.
11 June 2018
Marc Chagall is an enigma. On one hand he is one of the most successful 20th-century artists, in the major auction rooms, with paintings achieving up to £28m, yet he remains overshadowed by his contemporaries Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and Soutine. That is until now.
10 June 2018
Aftermath is at last a good solid show at Tate Britain, rather than something anxiously politically correct, and equally anxious to demonstrate just how goody-two-shoes the Tate brand has become.
7 June 2018
The current show of late paintings by Howard Hodgkin at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill is, for me, a melancholy occasion.
4 June 2018
I’m just back from the opening of Charles March photography show at Palazzo Borghese in Rome. His work, often on a very large scale, is well suited to the grandeur of Italian palace rooms.
1 June 2018
There is a sense of the grotesque to the work of Egon Schiele. His gnarled and crooked drawings of nudes are strong but isolated within the pure space of the surrounding paper. Limbs become exaggerated and deformed as in ‘’Standing Male Nude’, 1910,
26 May 2018
Julian Schnabel currently occupies an ambiguous position in the art world, which his new solo exhibition at Pace is likely to do little to clarify.
22 May 2018
I have admired much of Tacita Dean’s earlier work. Her blackboard drawings, including her piece on the deluded round-the-world-yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst.
20 May 2018
Monumental and breathtaking are the words that first come to my mind when I think of Katharina Grosse’s site-specific installations.
18 May 2018
Photo London 2018 is, as usual, an overwhelmingly large event.
16 May 2018
Tate Modern’s new show, Shape of Light, has already received negative reviews from The Independent, The Times, and The Sunday Times.
10 May 2018
I was from quite early on a convert to the cult of Joseph Beuys.
8 May 2018
St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh (Kirk of the Castle Rock and Princes St Gardens) is currently home to an outstanding video art installation by the internationally respected American artist Bill Viola.
6 May 2018
In the society we now have, photography has become the dominant medium for conveying news, opinion, social criticisms of all kinds.
1 May 2018
Subversive humour reigns supreme as surrealist enigma Nancy Fouts continues her search for the mania and absurdity in the everyday.
30 April 2018
One of the most important American video and performance artists Joan Jonas emerged in the late 1960s.
29 April 2018
