Author: jaywp

  • Chapmans again

    The ‘Rape of Goya’ might be called a curatorial wheeze. In the commodification of bad taste, this peculiar show must take the prix. However, certain elements of this apparent despoliation of Goya, by damaging posthumous etchings of the master in…

  • Art eclipsed

    The Reverend Julian Spalding, maverick commentator on the decline of British Art, has published his diatribe ‘The Eclipse of Art: Tackling the Crisis in Art Today’. Crisis? Art? Spalding deserves the Chapman treatment of superimposed clowning. But where, indeed, is…

  • Amber enigma

    The St Petersburg Amber Room has been remade after almost 25 years of patient restoration. Originally a gift in 1716 from King Frederick-William I of Prussia to Peter the Great, Second World War German forces shipped off 27 panels to…

  • Max Beckmann

    Centre Pompidou, Paris. 11 September 2002-6 January 2003. Tate Modern, London. 13 February-5 May 2003. MoMA QNS, New York. 26 June-29 September 2003.

  • Tate Britain reaches out

    It is fair to say that the painter Graham Sutherland is not being served well by the national galleries in commemoration of the centenary of his birth. In April, Tate Britain will offer one room of works from its own…

  • Going shopping?

    If there was any evidence to prove that art is becoming a commodity, and even more so a consumer product, the excellent exhibition running at Tate Liverpool makes the issue crystal clear. ‘Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture’…

  • NYC Sex in the City

    The Museum of Sex recently opened in New York City. Unlike the wow TV series Sex in the City, which is strangely, obliquely conservative (well, with a small ‘c’), this museum intends to show how even sex in America transforms…

  • Raphael removal risk

    The Duke of Northumberland’s ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ has been sold and removed from exhibition at the National Gallery to be sent to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles: just one of a continuing series of works lost to the…

  • Gormley in China

    The 120,000 clay figures produced under Antony Gormley’s direction by 300 Chinese workers in the Huada District of Guangzhou province, are shortly to travel to Beijing, where they will be marshalled into the Forbidden City, beside Tiananmen Square. This gathering,…

  • Elgin blow to the Acropolis

    ‘Treasure’ Neil MacGregor, also the safest and most inspired pair of hands in the world of National Museums and Galleries, has finally decided to put the foot down on the peripatetic speculation about the Elgin Marbles. This dashes any possible…