Archive

Still in the folds of the Tate, there was a minor tantrum in some areas of the critical mass when it became clear in May that the Tate had agreed to exhibit 150 works from the collection of the corporate…

Designer and critic Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie developed the programme for ‘Maggie’s Centres’ intended for outpatient cancer care. These are located close to major NHS hospitals to receive and welcome their stricken visitors. The small but dedicated…

The most discreet, yet perhaps the very best of small post-war collections of modern art has quietly settled this June into the public domain in Chichester – this is Architect Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson’s superb gathering of up…

The city of Kabul is etched deep into British governmental and military annals; there were disastrous episodes in the mid-19th century. This should not remove from European or American awareness the ancient significance of the city, first destroyed in 1216…

Recently, the vociferous television commentator, Alan Yentob, in an interview with Hodgkin, tried to crack the code of silence within which Hodgkin justifiably enwraps himself and his work. Even Yentob had to give up. A leading female critic tried a…

At the National Gallery of Scotland this summer, an unusually proficient 2006 Festival Exhibition of the work of the late Renaissance painter, Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610), has just opened. The majority of the over 30 known paintings displayed are executed on…

Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh specialist, believes he has proved that a so-called missing portrait by Van Gogh, found hanging in a private collection in Oklahoma, is genuine. The portrait is of a young Glasgow art dealer, Alexander Reid, who…

Exhibitions of Surrealist art just come and go. The Hayward Gallery has mounted a new show, entitled ‘Undercover Surrealism’. The show focuses on a magazine, Documents, edited by the notorious Georges Bataille. This was a weird enough product of such…

The renowned Viennese architect, Harry Seidler, died in early March of this year. An itinerant Modernist in his early career, he soon settled in Sydney, and had a profound and formative effect on Australian modern design. He also, as architect…

The refurbishment of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice is taking a new turn. Once owned by Fiat, the Agnelli combine of the day made possible the superb, massively encyclopaedic celebration of Futurism, ‘Futurismo & Futurismi’ (1986) in the Palazzo, organised…

The Musée de l’Orangerie at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris has created a brilliant coup in opening up the galleries by the removal of a poorly judged, second level gallery. Claude Monet’s extensive painting of water lilies had always been…

The American architect, Richard Meier, recently completed a somewhat controversial museum in Rome. The Ara Pacis Museum is designed to house only one exhibit in its off-white sheath (all Meier buildings tend to be white modern). There stands the exhibit,…

Well, this is what critic and author Mel Gooding sets his flag on. Hoyland was feted earlier in his career by John Russell and sprang into prominence in the 1960s. He has been absorbed into London life; however, his trajectory…

The exhibition ‘La Force de l’Art’ is intended to demonstrate the continuing wealth of French artistic talent through 200 works by contemporary artists born or resident in France. It is the special project of the French Prime Minister, Dominique de…