Archive
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Liverpool tales
Tate Liverpool opens a challenging exhibition entitled ‘Telling Tales: Narrative Impulses in Recent Art’ which displays perfect timing. The absence of narrative in contemporary art has not been much questioned this year. Perhaps, 2002 will restore this long-present element of…
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The last Turner Prize?
There seems little more to be said of this drama. Although Martin Creed is an appropriate winner for 2001, and Madonna in making the award administered the expletive kick-start that she was bidden to perform more skilfully than many truly…
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Not quite the end
Francis Fukuyama has been strident, since 11 September, in re-asserting, in the Wall Street Journal, that history is indeed foreclosed, terminally in suspense, on a drip feed, but nonetheless ‘we remain at the end of history’. There was surely a…
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The Finland diaspora 2001
It has been inspiring to see how, through this year, one small European nation continues to achieve a cultural impact wholly disproportionate to its small population of less than 5.5 million, one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom. Quite apart…
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Farewell then, Chris
Another trauma with a quiet ending was the dastardly removal of the highly successful Minister for Culture, Media, and Sport. Was it that Smith too readily favoured art over sport, reversing the interest of the majority of voters in this…
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Edinburgh bids for a Guggenheim
The great trajectory of the Solomon R Guggenheim Galleries continues apace. This is a great vindication of the concept of the transferable museum brand, and has confounded the sceptics. Bilbao Guggenheim has been a phenomenal success. What are the criteria…
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Blood and lust
There is a bloodbath in Frankfurt, and it isn’t the result of Al Quaida’s targeting of the European Bank. ‘’Blood: Perspectives on Art, Power, Politics and Pathology’, runs through until 27 January at Schirn Kunsthalle, Romerberg, Frankfurt-am-Main and at mak.frankfurt.…
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Archer art hits Warhol market
Tate Modern’s Warhol Retrospective
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Millennium Dome doom
As the year proceeded, the Dome displayed its accursed, doom-laden trajectory downwards. Various dreams of ownership enterprise were touted. Legacy plc proposed a business park, Nomura and Sony teamed up to offer an outdoor market within, to be called Dome…
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Loot to boot
Today, there is a generation of war victims, descendants of 20th century pioneers, now made modern masters, who rightfully seek to reclaim works that had been held during the war, until divested by the families of the artists. Into this…