Archive

  • Up Manhattan

    American architect Frank Gehry has at last made it to build in Manhattan, that Mecca for architects. Although on the embankment, close by the snarling six-lane highway there, and a sheaf of downmarket housing, this is every architect’s dream. Gehry’s…

  • Uruguay

    Uruguay, for one, believes in keeping the old pavilion going after 30 years. Their ‘maestro’ Pablo Atchugarry takes refuge in nature with his sculptures. These transform marble in the act of capturing the essence of a dreamworld. The mere act…

  • V & A

    Mark Jones was the perfect choice to run the V & A; he had successfully masterminded the new building for the Museum of Scotland before he left, and he appears undaunted by the challenge of the brilliant Libeskind spiral, as…

  • Virtuoso Twombly

    A stroke of curatorial genius (or plain good housekeeping) has led to the Edinburgh Festival exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly being established at Inverleith House in the Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens. Since these paintings represent the first major…

  • Viva Vivienne

    Vivienne Westwood’s re-entry into the multi-media arena is welcome as much as it is stimulating. Typically, she was quoted as saying, at the Guardian Hay festival ‘In visual art, I don’t believe that anything is happening at the moment.’ Her…

  • Wallace Collection Venture

    The Tate Modern effect is spreading: the Wallace Collection no less, has ventured into contemporary art, albeit in a self-reflective mode. ‘Sanctuary’, an exhibition of nine works by the American photographer Karen Knorr, is a triumph of self-examination

  • Warhol in History

    The exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh (at the Mound) commemorating the 20th anniversary of Warhol’s death has dramatically set to rights the prevalent theory of the 1990s that by the time he died Warhol’s best work…

  • Warhol Screen Tests

    Undoubtedly, Warhol’s most successful essays in the film medium, ‘Screen Tests’, represent an elegiac exposure of human vulnerability, albeit camped by Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper. Lou Reed seems genuinely flummoxed however, a victim if ever, of being famous for…

  • WGS and Waterlog

    The German author WG Sebald, who made Norfolk, England his adopted homeland, is this year celebrated there by a group of seven British artists, mostly Norfolk-based: Tacita Dean, Marcus Coates, Alec Finlay, Alexander and Susan Maris, Guy Moreton and Simon…

  • White Cube, Blue Panel

    White Cube gallery (London SW1) is now showing Ellsworth Kelly’s single, five-sided canvas entitled ‘Blue Panel’. Alone in its space, Kelly’s masterpiece reaffirms the vitality of American painting of the later 20th century. This painting seems to function almost as…

  • Whitechapel on the move

    An education and research tower will rise four storeys over the planned and refurbished Whitechapel Art Gallery, as well as three new galleries; one of these will be dedicated to material and works from the Whitechapel’s extensive archive and this…

  • Achille Castiglioni: an obituary

    The death of Achille Castiglioni towards the end of last year is a sad reminder that time is running out for a triumvirate who have dominated design in Italy since the Second World War.

  • Letter from Stockholm, September 2001

    September 2001 Raoul Wallenberg belonged to one of Sweden’s most famous families – a family of diplomats, bankers and politicians.

  • Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Duchamp

    Barbican Art Gallery, London 14 February–9 June 2013

  • Patrick Hughes: interview

    Hughes’ new exhibition at Flowers, Cork Street, includes nine new paintings employing his unique technique of reverspective.

  • New Order at Saatchi Gallery; Pae White at SLG; Rock on… at Serpentine Gallery

    New Order: British Art Today at the Saatchi Gallery; Pae White at SLG; Rock on Top of Another Rock at the Serpentine Gallery. April/May 2013

  • Rock on Top of Another Rock

    Placing one rock on top of another is a seemingly simple gesture, and, as the Swiss artistic duo, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, themselves said, an archaic means of man making his mark

  • Pae White: Too Much Night, Again

    Inspired by a recent bout of insomnia, using the colours of Black Sabbath’s album cover from Master of Reality, which terrified the LA-based artist Pae White so much as a child that she had to hide it under her bed…

  • New Order: British Art Today

    Long associated with its support for emerging artists and early recognition of talents to watch out for, the Saatchi Gallery is now launching a new programme of exhibitions with the aim of enabling young graduates, based in the UK, to…

  • Liane Lang: interview

    Liane Lang’s works combine a mixture of photography and grotesquely lifelike silicon and rubber sculpture. Having recently undertaken a residency at the Memento Sculpture Park in Budapest, where she found herself amidst the supersized discarded sculptures of heroes from the…

  • Coming Soon: Qatar and the Emirates

    Linked by a coastline, by ambition, by energy and by sudden wealth, Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are powering a futureworld that only feels real to the first-time visitor on contact with its burgeoning infrastructure.

  • Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993)

    Beaux Arts Gallery in London is marking the twentieth anniversary of sculptor Elizabeth Frink’s death. She was just 62 when she died, leaving an impressive body of sculpture, having been widely recognized in her twenties. Elisabeth Frink: Catalogue Raisonné of…

  • Architecture for All, Without Limits: Toyo Ito at 72

    Today, as Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, he and his colleagues continue to make life in large urban centers like Tokyo more livable by bringing natural elements and isolated individuals together in harmonious spaces.

  • A Choice Collection of Latin American Art Comes Home

    Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Cantos Cuentos Colombianos – “Colombian Songs and Tales” Para (saber) escutar – “To (know how to) listen” 23 March–8 September 2013