Category: Articles

Uruguay

Uruguay, for one, believes in keeping the old pavilion going after 30 years. Their ‘maestro’ Pablo Atchugarry takes refuge in nature with his sculptures. These transform marble in the act of capturing the essence of a dreamworld. The mere act…
V & A

Mark Jones was the perfect choice to run the V & A; he had successfully masterminded the new building for the Museum of Scotland before he left, and he appears undaunted by the challenge of the brilliant Libeskind spiral, as…
Virtuoso Twombly

A stroke of curatorial genius (or plain good housekeeping) has led to the Edinburgh Festival exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly being established at Inverleith House in the Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens. Since these paintings represent the first major…
Viva Vivienne

Vivienne Westwood’s re-entry into the multi-media arena is welcome as much as it is stimulating. Typically, she was quoted as saying, at the Guardian Hay festival ‘In visual art, I don’t believe that anything is happening at the moment.’ Her…
Wallace Collection Venture

The Tate Modern effect is spreading: the Wallace Collection no less, has ventured into contemporary art, albeit in a self-reflective mode. ‘Sanctuary’, an exhibition of nine works by the American photographer Karen Knorr, is a triumph of self-examination
Warhol in History

The exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh (at the Mound) commemorating the 20th anniversary of Warhol’s death has dramatically set to rights the prevalent theory of the 1990s that by the time he died Warhol’s best work…
Warhol Screen Tests

Undoubtedly, Warhol’s most successful essays in the film medium, ‘Screen Tests’, represent an elegiac exposure of human vulnerability, albeit camped by Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper. Lou Reed seems genuinely flummoxed however, a victim if ever, of being famous for…
WGS and Waterlog

The German author WG Sebald, who made Norfolk, England his adopted homeland, is this year celebrated there by a group of seven British artists, mostly Norfolk-based: Tacita Dean, Marcus Coates, Alec Finlay, Alexander and Susan Maris, Guy Moreton and Simon…
White Cube, Blue Panel

White Cube gallery (London SW1) is now showing Ellsworth Kelly’s single, five-sided canvas entitled ‘Blue Panel’. Alone in its space, Kelly’s masterpiece reaffirms the vitality of American painting of the later 20th century. This painting seems to function almost as…
Whitechapel on the move

An education and research tower will rise four storeys over the planned and refurbished Whitechapel Art Gallery, as well as three new galleries; one of these will be dedicated to material and works from the Whitechapel’s extensive archive and this…
Achille Castiglioni: an obituary

The death of Achille Castiglioni towards the end of last year is a sad reminder that time is running out for a triumvirate who have dominated design in Italy since the Second World War.
Letter from Stockholm, September 2001

September 2001 Raoul Wallenberg belonged to one of Sweden’s most famous families – a family of diplomats, bankers and politicians.
Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Duchamp

Barbican Art Gallery, London 14 February–9 June 2013
Coming Soon: Qatar and the Emirates

Linked by a coastline, by ambition, by energy and by sudden wealth, Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are powering a futureworld that only feels real to the first-time visitor on contact with its burgeoning infrastructure.
Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993)

Beaux Arts Gallery in London is marking the twentieth anniversary of sculptor Elizabeth Frink’s death. She was just 62 when she died, leaving an impressive body of sculpture, having been widely recognized in her twenties. Elisabeth Frink: Catalogue Raisonné of…
Architecture for All, Without Limits: Toyo Ito at 72

Today, as Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, he and his colleagues continue to make life in large urban centers like Tokyo more livable by bringing natural elements and isolated individuals together in harmonious spaces.
A Choice Collection of Latin American Art Comes Home

Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Cantos Cuentos Colombianos – “Colombian Songs and Tales” Para (saber) escutar – “To (know how to) listen” 23 March–8 September 2013
Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester 16 February–2 June 2013 Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, is showing Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings. The show coincides with the 65th anniversary year of the launch of Britain’s pioneering National Health Service in…
The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone

Delicate and poised, spidery and animated, these bronze casts of tree trunks, hollowed out and painted with a radiant gold-leaf interior, seem to prowl the gallery on their spindly branched limbs. This new site-specific work for the Bloomberg Commission, Spazio…
Haroon Mirza: Untitled Song

Retro furniture, disembodied speakers, bits of drum kit, wires and LEDs, Untitled Song is a sculptural installation that traverses boundaries between sound and vision, sculpture and music, analogue and digital. A collaborative effort between James Clarkson and Haroon Mirza, there…
An Exhibition to See: Landscape/Landscript: Nature as Language in the Art of Xu Bing

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford 28 February–19 May 2013
Mat Collishaw: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Blain Southern, Hanover Square, London 14 February–30 March 2013
Antony Gormley in Belgium

The sculpture Firmament III (2009) by Antony Gormley has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. The title of the work is rooted in an ancient word denoting the sky, and Gormley fashioned the…
Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA

While Los Angeles’ modern residential architecture is world renowned, the innovative nature of its infrastructure and urban planning, commercial and civic buildings, housing experiments, and other architectural forms is less well-known. Initiated by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture…