Author: jaywp

  • Vettriano’s popular success in art

    Painter Jack Vettriano, bête noir of the Scottish arts establishment yet feverishly pursued by collectors from both sides of the Atlantic, has been exercising intelligent philanthropy in Scotland, supporting student ventures, and yet keeping a relatively low profile in his…

  • Doodle day

    Doodle day Are architect’s doodles worth keeping, like the sketches of painters and sculptors? One of the problems is space. In the late 1970s, Robert Adam’s old home saw faded drawings being used as fire kindlers. Times have improved. Tragically,…

  • Letter from Long Island

    There have been some carping comments in British art magazines, such as ‘The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) isn’t what it used to be’. But the fact is, a major transformation is in place, and activity at MoMA Queens is…

  • Howard Hodgkin: Large Paintings 1984-2002

    Howard Hodgkin is regarded as one of the most important artists in Britain working today. Born in 1932, he studied in London and Bath. He first exhibited in 1960 and has gained recognition since that time. He was a Trustee…

  • Metamorphing: Transformation in science, art and mythology

    ‘Metamorphing’ is a Wellcome Trust exhibition at the Science Museum, London, 4 October 2002 – 16 February 2003. For humans, change has always been essential, but difficult nonetheless. For most of our history, the mysteries of change and transformation have…

  • The story of K&M

    Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid. ‘Dmitry Tveritinov’s story’ at Marat Guelman’s gallery.

  • Artist as Peacemaker – Beyond Conflict

    Beyond Conflict is an exhibition of 24 Scottish artists, which was conceived as a cultural dialogue between Scotland and Islam, in the wake of 11 September.

  • Documenta 11

    Australia is often out of synch with much of the rest of the world. The progressive Whitlam Labour era of the 1970s was described as ‘half an hour ahead’; more recently the conservative and xenophobic Howard government was accused as…

  • Kitagata Garden City, Japan

    The second scheme was essentially led by a brief by architect Arata Isozaki, in which Martha Schwartz was to be the co-ordinating landscape architect for four separate architect-designed housing groups. This was at Kitagata Garden City, Japan. The Garden City…

  • Antony Gormley Drawing – book review

    The new publication, Antony Gormley Drawing, reveals the working processes behind the sculptures of one of Britain’s most significant artists

  • Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography

    Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography

  • Rapture: Art’s seduction by fashion since 1970

    Until visiting this exhibition I had, naively and unconsciously, assumed that contemporary art and fashion were much the same thing. Damien Hirst, Stella McCartney, Tracey Emin, Kate Moss, Alexander McQueen — all seemed perfectly interchangeable in the pages of Hello…

  • StArt Artists in Malta

    An old tenement building close to the harbour in Valletta seems an unlikely location in which to launch an organisation for the promotion of avant garde art in Malta, especially as the building is believed to have been used as…

  • Barnett Newman at Tate Modern

    The Barnett Newman exhibition has opened and is a perfect fit with the Gallery spaces on Level 4. If Newman is pretentious, as one reviewer queried, then Tate Modern is all the more so: magnanimously the same reviewer offered readers…

  • Andrew Forge 1923-2002

    Andrew Forge, who died on 4 September 2002 in New Milford, Connecticut, aged 78, was a prominent and influential figure, a teacher and critic, and a distinguished painter, whose loss is regretted on both sides of the Atlantic. His contribution…

  • Millennium Bridge Gateshead

    Architects seldom get the opportunity to design bridges. Chris Wilkinson and Jim Eyre of Wilkinson Eyre have made a name for clear structural expression, with poetry too, in their recent works. Now, the £22 million Gateshead Millennium Bridge linking Gateshead…

  • Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting

    Over the summer the National Gallery, London showed Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting, an exhibition that looked at the way artists from the Renaissance to the early 20th century artists depicted dress and drapery

  • Accountancy as terrorism: ‘Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry’

    All over Hollywood, producers and screenwriters are pitching ‘high concept’ film projects that capitalise on current news headlines: urban terrorism, bombing Iraq, and the financial crises caused by accountancy malpractice. In 12 months’ time, our local multiplexes will be swamped…

  • Kassel Documenta

    Kassel Documenta is commonly compared to the Olympic games, but, being an inhabitant of former Eastern Empire, I remember great all-Union exhibitions held in the USSR, where regional unions of artists struggled fiercely for the right to ‘represent’. The rhetorical…

  • Ceri Richards – book review

    Mel Gooding’s new book on Ceri Richards, the first major publication on his work, establishes that Richards was one of the best and most significant artists of the 20th century in Britain. Gooding has also curated the exhibition at the…

  • Song of the Earth: European Artists and the Landscape – book review

    Mel Gooding and William Furlong. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. ISBN 0 500 510164.

  • David Blackburn: The Sublime Landscape

    David Blackburn’s exhibition at the Hart Gallery in London coincides with the publication of The Sublime Landscape, by Charlotte Mullins. In a long interview with the artist by Ron Phillips, Blackburn acknowledges his debts to other artists, writers and scholars…

  • 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…