Archive

  • Yorkshire Sculpture Park

    Few now realise that the pioneering Yorkshire Sculpture Park has now existed for a quarter of a century, in its 550 acres near Wakefield.

  • Et tu, Vettriano

    The painter Jack Vettriano moved some four years ago from Scotland to London, and now lives and works in Chelsea. Vettriano’s maternal grandfather came to Scotland from Italy and drew with a skill which the young Vettriano sought emulate. Self-taught…

  • Switzerland invites the world

    Switzerland’s Expo’02 centres on the environment of the region of the Three Lakes, in the north-west tip of Switzerland that coincides with the boundaries of France and Germany. At Murten-Morat, Jean Nouvel was commissioned to design all the actual pavilions.…

  • Spirits drained: Puvis De Chavannes returns

    The National Gallery, London does not best mourn Ian MacGregor’s departure with this valedictory recovery of the work of Pierre-Cecile Puvis de Chavannes, (d.1898). Although the most famous muralist in France when he died aged 78, and often credited together…

  • Manhattan in memoriam

    The continuing question over what should rise or spread on the World Trade Centre site becomes increasingly pertinent as 11 September approaches. Of course in mediaeval Europe, assuming the perpetrators had been caught a series of gibbets would have risen,…

  • Landscape threatens

    Quietly and with little critical attention, the Natural History Museum in London (through 15 September) shows 19 works by six artists. Entitled ‘Turbulent Landscapes’, this sequence of interactive exhibits shows the impact and essence of tornadoes, sandstorms, and other environmental…

  • Howard’s way

    The prolific Sir Howard Hodgkin has been distressing critics who equate his stage designs with art. Theatre designs cannot be considered in the same vein. But the designs for Mark Morris’s Kolam (April 2002) for ENO Covent Garden are supremely…

  • Hampton’s August thoughts

    It is over 50 years since Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner moved from Greenwich Village out to Springs. David Salle spends full-time now with a new house built at Sagonapack and Julian Schnabel in 1982 had restored his house at…

  • Royal gold medal for architecture for Archigram

    Britain’s leading architectural accolade, awarded each year by the Queen, goes this year to the Archigram Group. A most famous image from Archigram Walking City was the work of the late Ron Herron. A superb retrospective exhibition of the group’s…

  • Thomas Girtin in passing

    Few would deny that Thomas Girtin’s ‘The White House at Chelsea’ is a key British landscape painting. Girtin, (b.l775) who died in 1802, was greatly admired by 19th century successors. Turner was his exact contemporary. ‘Had Tom Girtin lived, I…