Archive

  • Non-doms arise and fly

    This may not be the moment to pity the plight of the ‘non-dom’ art lovers. But the effect of Messrs Brown and Darling’s heavily clunking attempts to penalise them has had the direct effect of creating a climate of withdrawal…

  • Ministers come and go

    The typical political hype that caused the last UK culture minister to announce that ‘Britain was on the verge of a “new Renaissance”‘ as a justification for a proposed shift in subsidy policy has gone off like a damp squib.…

  • Lost master of the universe

    What has surprisingly not been much commented on in all the valedictory tributes to the late film director/producer Anthony Minghella was his brilliant visual sense, as opposed to his dramatising skills. All his major films are extremely, prolifically stunning in…

  • The fountain of relief

    It is intriguing to be reminded that Duchamp’s famous work ‘Fountain’, around which sanitary perfection the crowds have been eagerly jostling at Tate Modern, is in fact a duplicate of the artist’s original. This is because the original, chosen by…

  • Choreographing Cranach

    Artist Douglas Gordon has been on record recently as enthusing over the paintings of Lucas Cranach, no less (now on show at the Royal Academy). Following last year’s ‘Adam & Eve’ at the Courtauld, Gordon became increasingly taken with Luther’s…

  • Book review: The Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922-1932

    Richard Pare and Jean-Louis Cohen. Introduction by Phyllis Lambert New York: Monacelli Press, 2007 This remarkable survey was synchronised with an exhibition of the same title presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from July to October 2007.…

  • Mars Collects! The Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art: Barbican Art Gallery, London

    The Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art: Barbican Art Gallery, London 6 March–18 May 2008

  • Derek Jarman: Brutal Beauty

    Fourteen years after Derek Jarman’s death, this exhibition, together with a season of films at three cinemas across London, focuses attention on an artist whose passionate avowal of politics, sensuality, experimentation and vision makes his work as relevant now as…

  • Turner to Monet: The Triumph of Landscape

    National Gallery of Australia, 14 March-9 June 2008 Catalogue: Christine Dixon, Ron Radford, Lucina Ward, 2008

  • Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 12 February-11 May 2008 Catalogue: Pierre Rosenberg, Keith Christiansen. Poussin and Nature. New Haven, CT, New York: Yale University Press, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

  • Art & Today

    Eleanor Heartney London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2008 Art & Today is the fruit of the decade spent by the author as contributing editor to Art in America and Artpress. Her previous works include Postmodernism (Movements in Modern Art)…

  • Contemporary Drawing: Recent Studies

    Drawing has played a pivotal role in the work of most artists since the beginning of time. Following the rejection of traditional teaching methods during the 1960s when abstract art dominated, a more private character for drawing was assumed. With…

  • Statuesque Dance

    Neo Rauch: ‘Para’ Max Ernst Museum, Bruhl, until 31 March 2008 Formerly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 22 May-14 October 2007

  • Book review: Real Baroque. The Baroque Architecture of Sicily

    The Baroque Architecture of Sicily Maria Giuffrè, Photographs by Melo Minnella London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2008 This work is timely in so far as it forms part of the broad revision of architectural history that is underway in the…

  • Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

    Tate Modern, London, 21 February-26 May 2008 Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 18 June-12 October 2008

  • Win some, lose some

    The small Utrillo painting ‘Church’ stands out in the current display of ‘lost’ works in Israel on account of the seal on the frame, ‘Feldpolizei 540’. It is still around because wherever it came from, a protective Nazi specialist moved…

  • Face to Face – The Daros Collections

    Daros Exhibitions, Zürich Part I: 5 October 2007-17 February 2008; Part II: 14 March to 7 September 2008

  • That Man from Rio: Celebrating Oscar Niemeyer’s Centennial

    Considered to be Brazil’s most important architect, Oscar Niemeyer (b.1907) is also a major figure in the development of modern architecture internationally. He has become a symbol for his country for many reasons: he designed the national capital, Brasília, founded…

  • Book review: Doorway

    Simon Unwin London & New York: Routledge, 2007 With this third architectural/typological monograph, Professor Simon Unwin has completed what is effectively a trilogy. The first two works were Analysing Architecture and An Architectural Notebook: Wall. Both these works were essentially…

  • From Russia

    French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg Royal Academy of Arts until 18 April

  • John Bellany, Exhibition of Portraits

    Gainsborough House, Sudbury Opens June 2008

  • The Danish Gift

    In 1974, following a visit to the Furniture Fair in Copenhagen, the question was raised, How will Denmark follow the work of Borge Mogensen, Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner and Verner Panton, whose designs seemed so classically timeless that it was…

  • Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group

    Tate Britain, London 13 February–5 May 2008

  • A gift horse in the mouth: the Artists Rooms project and the d’Offay bequest 2008

    On 27 February 2008 a major announcement was made at Edinburgh’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Before the assembled British art luminaries, news was announced of possibly the greatest art bequest of the twentieth century and to date. Anthony d’Offay…