Architectural Envelopes: The Modern Art Museum – Charles Saumarez Smith
The underlying momentum of this remarkable and provocatively thoughtful book, The Art Museum in Modern Times by Charles Saumarez Smith
28 March 2021
Archives: Reviews
KAWS: Reinventing Appropriation Brooklyn Museum – Raphy Sarkissian
Upon entering the Brooklyn Museum to view “Kaws: What Party”, the visitor is confronted by a colossal and strikingly iconic sculpture
24 March 2021
Arthur Jafa: The Art Of Cutting And Pasting – Revd Jonathan Evens
Since childhood, Jafa has cut pictures out of books and magazines, pasting them into new contexts. Black potention is an awareness.
18 March 2021
Kati Vilim: Optical and Tactile ─ Raphy Sarkissian
Kati Vilim’s work is seemingly weightless so as to float off into the ether, planar surfaces intercept and overlap, at once asserting the flatness of the canvas and transfiguring abstraction into illusions of solid bodies.
11 March 2021
Gabriel J. Shuldiner: The Poetry of Black — Raphy Sarkissian
“Can there be a more hypnotic colour than black?” is a question that impulsively arises when we encounter a work by Gabriel J. Shuldiner
24 February 2021
A New York Gallery Field Trip February 2021 – Ilka Scobie
A wave of cautious optimism motivated me to hit the frigid downtown streets. Luckily, this gallery field trip coincided…
14 February 2021
Lakwena Maciver: Review-Interview Hastings Contemporary – Revd Jonathan Evens
Born in 1986 to an English mother and a Ugandan father, Lakwena Maciver studied graphic design at the London College of Communications, graduating in 2009.
31 January 2021
Sean Scully: Geometry as Gesture as Perception – Raphy Sarkissian
A momentous exhibition staged at the Museum of Fine Arts—Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, “Sean Scully: Passenger—A Retrospective” celebrates
26 January 2021
Made in USA Ed Ruscha An American Perspective – Revd Jonathan Evens
Ed Ruscha: OKLA at Oklahoma Contemporary is the first exhibition to examine Ruscha’s work within the context of those formative years in Oklahoma
21 January 2021
Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things – Revd Jonathan Evens
Robert Smithson explores interests in cartography, geology, architectural ruins, prehistory, philosophy and religion.
14 January 2021
Aliza Nisenbaum: Portraits That Subvert Traditions – Tate Liverpool Alice Lenkiewicz
Aliza Nisenbaum is a painter, living and working in New York. Describing herself as torn between wanting to be a social worker or a painter
17 December 2020
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Lets The Paint Tell The Story – James Payne
Fly In League With The Night, at Tate Britain covers Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work from her graduation in 2003 to the present day, with some paintings made during lockdown.
16 December 2020
Cosmic Patches And Quilts Five Exhibitions – Revd Jonathan Evans
‘Here as in Heaven’ is the title of Ndidi Emefiele’s current exhibition, a body of work representing the artist’s philosophical attempt to understand the tragic death of her sister.
12 December 2020
Billy Childish: The Timeless Present – Neugerriemschneider Berlin – Edward Lucie-Smith
Billy Childish has been around a long time. He is not only an artist but a poet and a composer of music.
10 December 2020
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch Exploring The Inner Self – Edward Lucie-Smith
Tracey Emin is one of the two major survivors from the so-called YBA (Young British Artists) Group that made such a lot of noise in the 1990s.
3 December 2020
Antony Gormley and Martin Gayford Present Visual Culture Throughout History – Edward Lucie-Smith
The big new Thames & Hudson book Shaping the World, by Antony Gormley and Martin Gayford, turns out to be a good deal better than the truly appalling plug for it recently published in The Sunday Times’ Culture Magazines, but it still exhibits a few problems.
25 November 2020
Joseph Wright of Derby A New Book By Matthew Craske – Edward Lucie-Smith
The new book on Joseph Wright of Derby by Matthew Craske is a massive tome. Published by the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, it is entirely worthy of the artist’s high reputation.
19 November 2020
Maggi Hambling: Powerful Often Sinister Paintings – Edward Lucie-Smith
Now in her mid-70s. Maggi Hambling is a senior figure in British art. She doesn’t have much presence abroad
3 November 2020
Zanele Muholi Explores A Black Queer And Trans South Africa – Sue Hubbard
“I am re-writing a Black Queer and Trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our existence, resistance and persistence” -Zanele Muholi
1 November 2020
JMW Turner: Narrating A Modern World – Tate Britain – Edward Lucie-Smith
There can be no doubt that the new show devoted to Turner at Tate Britain is a meaty affair. The gallery is fortunate in the fact that a great deal of Turner’s legacy is in its own possession, and that other British galleries also own important examples of his work. In present circumstances, with the coronavirus still raging, this will have saved the organisers a great deal of trouble.
29 October 2020
Navigating Downtown NYC Galleries During A Pandemic Autumn 2020 – Ilka Scobie
As museums and galleries open to eager viewers, I took the easy way out and have only ventured to walking distance galleries. Luckily, this limited geography includes four stellar downtown shows.
26 October 2020
Bruce Nauman, Damien’s New Show And Painter Mark Edwards – London Autumn Exhibitions – Edward Lucie-Smith
In the midst of the chaos in the London art world caused by the current pandemic an artist occasionally shows up who seems serenely separated from the ongoing turmoil.
18 October 2020
Everyday Heroes: Southbank Exhibition Celebrates Low-paid Key Workers
How to celebrate the continuing vital and sacrificial contribution of key workers during the Covid-19 pandemic? Clap for Carers united the nation early on in lockdown but was thought to have become politicised and was vulnerable to the criticism that it distracted attention from a necessary focus on the low wages paid to many care workers.
11 October 2020
Entwining Spiritualism And Art – Three Shows – Revd Jonathan Evens
Once upon a time in modernism, the interlacing of art and religion was rendered invisible. Art was not just for art’s sake but was exclusively about art. For Clement Greenberg and his followers, art that was pure and autonomous was art that was self-critical and self-defining.
11 October 2020
Sin At The National Gallery Dreamsongs Colnaghi – Edward Lucie-Smith
In present circumstances, both public and private galleries have had to think hard about what is practical and within their reach to do. Sometimes they come up with curiously similar solutions. This is the case with two shows that have just opened in London – one at the National Gallery and the other at Colnaghi in St James’s.
8 October 2020
Royal Academy’s Free Of Bombast Summer/ Winter Exhibition – Sue Hubbard
The Royal Academy Summer Show has an unbroken record. Still, this year, due to the pandemic, it’s being held in the winter rather than the summer
8 October 2020
Artemisia Gentileschi Exhibition Opens At London’s National Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith
The Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition has opened at the National Gallery at long last. It is accompanied by a handsome, fully illustrated hardcover catalogue. The hassle is that you have to book your slot to see it.
1 October 2020
Some Fresh Blood: New London Grads Saatchi Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith
London Grads Now, the new show currently on view at the Saatchi Gallery, won’t be with us for long. It is due to close on 25 September.
16 September 2020
Quentin Blake and Victor Pasmore A Discursive Conversational Piece – Jude Cowan Montague
Quentin Blake and Victor Pasmore Hastings Contemporary: I’m standing for the first time inside the Hastings Contemporary
13 September 2020
Guston, Riley And Matisse Essential Autumn Book Releases
Three very colourful large format art books on Philip Guston, Bridget Riley and Henri Matisse have arrived this week.
1 September 2020
Ai Weiwei A Disturbing History Of Bombs IWM Marina Vaizey
Ai Weiwei IWM: History of Bombs. Little Boy, Fat Man, Daisy Cutter, Snake Eye, Grand Slam, Tomahawk, Tsar Boba, are seemingly innocuous even childlike labels for toys or games. But they are seared into the historic memory and are the actually terrifying, curious official nicknames of objects that are weapons in wars of mass destruction and attrition. The first two are those of the 1945 atomic bombs unleashed on Japan. Daisy Cutter (1970) did just that, flattening swathes through the forests of Vietnam.
30 July 2020
Wartime London Explored in Paintings – Marina Vaizey
London was never invaded, but London has been at war. The look of London during the Blitz and after is captured in this marvel of a picture book, Wartime London in Paintings by Suzanne Bardgett, which reminds us of the superb collections of Modern British art held at the Imperial War Museum.
19 July 2020